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Middlemarch
Eliot, George
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PRELUDE
W
ho that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture
behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of
Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking
forth one morning hand−in−hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in
the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide−eyed and
helpless−looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea;
until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great
resolve. That child−pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature
demanded an epic life: what were many−volumed romances of chivalry and the social
conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from
within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify
weariness, which would reconcile self−despair with the rapturous consciousness of life
beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.
That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of
her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein
there was a constant unfolding of far−resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the
offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill−matched with the meanness of opportunity;
perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim
lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble
agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and
formlessness; for these later−born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and
order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their
ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the
one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.
Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness
with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level
of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of
women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and
the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness
of women's coiffure and the favorite love−stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet
is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream
in fellowship with its own oary−footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa,
foundress of nothing, whose loving heart−beats and sobs after an unattained goodness
tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some
long−recognizable deed.
Middlemarch
PRELUDE 2
CHAPTER I.
"S
ince I can do no good because a woman, Reach constantly at something that is near
it. – The Maid's Tragedy: BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style
than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as
her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by
the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,
– or from one of our elder poets, – in a paragraph of to−day's newspaper. She was usually
spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more
common−sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close
observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its
arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of
which her sister shared. The pride of being ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke
connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably "good:" if you inquired
backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard−measuring or parcel−tying
forefathers – anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestor
discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterwards conformed,
and managed to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family
estate. Young women of such birth, living in a quiet country−house, and attending a village
church hardly larger than a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster's
daughter. Then there was well−bred economy, which in those days made show in dress the
first item to be deducted from, when any margin was required for expenses more distinctive
of rank. Such reasons would have been enough to account for plain dress, quite apart from
religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it; and
Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that
common−sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric
agitation. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart;
and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of
feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of
a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial
protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty
conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule
of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing
whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make
retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it.
Certainly such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her
lot, and hinder it from being decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely
canine affection. With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had
both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, on
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CHAPTER I. 4
plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and afterwards in a Swiss
family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the
disadvantages of their orphaned condition.
It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a
man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote. He had
travelled in his younger years, and was held in this part of the county to have contracted a
too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to predict as the
weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he
would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out. For the most glutinously
indefinite minds enclose some hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax about all his
own interests except the retention of his snuff−box, concerning which he was watchful,
suspicious, and greedy of clutch.
In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance; but in his
niece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults and virtues, turning sometimes into impatience
of her uncle's talk or his way of "letting things be" on his estate, and making her long all the
more for the time when she would be of age and have some command of money for
generous schemes. She was regarded as an heiress; for not only had the sisters seven
hundred a−year each from their parents, but if Dorothea married and had a son, that son
would inherit Mr. Brooke's estate, presumably worth about three thousand a−year – a rental
which seemed wealth to provincial families, still discussing Mr. Peel's late conduct on the
Catholic question, innocent of future gold−fields, and of that gorgeous plutocracy which has
so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life.
And how should Dorothea not marry? – a girl so handsome and with such prospects?
Nothing could hinder it but her love of extremes, and her insistence on regulating life
according to notions which might cause a wary man to hesitate before he made her an offer,
or even might lead her at last to refuse all offers. A young lady of some birth and fortune,
who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly
as if she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles – who had strange whims of
fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old theological books! Such a wife
might awaken you some fine morning with a new scheme for the application of her income
which would interfere with political economy and the keeping of saddle−horses: a man
would naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship. Women were
expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic life was,
that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any
lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers, was generally
in favor of Celia, as being so amiable and innocent−looking, while Miss Brooke's large eyes
seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the
innocent−looking Celia was knowing and worldly−wise; so much subtler is a human mind
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CHAPTER I. 5
than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock−face for it.
Yet those who approached Dorothea, though prejudiced against her by this alarming
hearsay, found that she had a charm unaccountably reconcilable with it. Most men thought
her bewitching when she was on horseback. She loved the fresh air and the various aspects
of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she looked very
little like a devotee. Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of
conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always
looked forward to renouncing it.
She was open, ardent, and not in the least self−admiring; indeed, it was pretty to see
how her imagination adorned her sister Celia with attractions altogether superior to her own,
and if any gentleman appeared to come to the Grange from some other motive than that of
seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that he must be in love with Celia: Sir James Chettam, for
example, whom she constantly considered from Celia's point of view, inwardly debating
whether it would be good for Celia to accept him. That he should be regarded as a suitor to
herself would have seemed to her a ridiculous irrelevance. Dorothea, with all her eagerness
to know the truths of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she
would have accepted the judicious Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from
that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John Milton when his blindness had come
on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to
endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she
expressed uncertainty, – how could he affect her as a lover? The really delightful marriage
must be that where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if
you wished it.
These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. Brooke to be all the more blamed
in neighboring families for not securing some middle−aged lady as guide and companion to
his nieces. But he himself dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available
for such a position, that he allowed himself to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and
was in this case brave enough to defy the world – that is to say, Mrs. Cadwallader the
Rector's wife, and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the northeast corner of
Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and did not at all dislike her
new authority, with the homage that belonged to it.
Sir James Chettam was going to dine at the Grange to−day with another gentleman
whom the girls had never seen, and about whom Dorothea felt some venerating expectation.
This was the Reverend Edward Casaubon, noted in the county as a man of profound
learning, understood for many years to be engaged on a great work concerning religious
history; also as a man of wealth enough to give lustre to his piety, and having views of his
own which were to be more clearly ascertained on the publication of his book. His very
name carried an impressiveness hardly to be measured without a precise chronology of
scholarship.
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CHAPTER I. 6
Early in the day Dorothea had returned from the infant school which she had set going
in the village, and was taking her usual place in the pretty sitting−room which divided the
bedrooms of the sisters, bent on finishing a plan for some buildings (a kind of work which
she delighted in), when Celia, who had been watching her with a hesitating desire to propose
something, said –
"Dorothea, dear, if you don't mind – if you are not very busy – suppose we looked at
mamma's jewels to−day, and divided them? It is exactly six months to−day since uncle gave
them to you, and you have not looked at them yet."
Celia's face had the shadow of a pouting expression in it, the full presence of the pout
being kept back by an habitual awe of Dorothea and principle; two associated facts which
might show a mysterious electricity if you touched them incautiously. To her relief,
Dorothea's eyes were full of laughter as she looked up.
"What a wonderful little almanac you are, Celia! Is it six calendar or six lunar months?"
"It is the last day of September now, and it was the first of April when uncle gave them
to you. You know, he said that he had forgotten them till then. I believe you have never
thought of them since you locked them up in the cabinet here."
"Well, dear, we should never wear them, you know." Dorothea spoke in a full cordial
tone, half caressing, half explanatory. She had her pencil in her hand, and was making tiny
side−plans on a margin.
Celia colored, and looked very grave. "I think, dear, we are wanting in respect to
mamma's memory, to put them by and take no notice of them. And," she added, after
hesitating a little, with a rising sob of mortification, "necklaces are quite usual now; and
Madame Poincon, who was stricter in some things even than you are, used to wear
ornaments. And Christians generally – surely there are women in heaven now who wore
jewels." Celia was conscious of some mental strength when she really applied herself to
argument.
"You would like to wear them?" exclaimed Dorothea, an air of astonished discovery
animating her whole person with a dramatic action which she had caught from that very
Madame Poincon who wore the ornaments. "Of course, then, let us have them out. Why did
you not tell me before? But the keys, the keys!" She pressed her hands against the sides of
her head and seemed to despair of her memory.
"They are here," said Celia, with whom this explanation had been long meditated and
prearranged.
"Pray open the large drawer of the cabinet and get out the jewel−box."
Middlemarch
CHAPTER I. 7
The casket was soon open before them, and the various jewels spread out, making a
bright parterre on the table. It was no great collection, but a few of the ornaments were really
of remarkable beauty, the finest that was obvious at first being a necklace of purple
amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and a pearl cross with five brilliants in it. Dorothea
immediately took up the necklace and fastened it round her sister's neck, where it fitted
almost as closely as a bracelet; but the circle suited the Henrietta−Maria style of Celia's head
and neck, and she could see that it did, in the pier−glass opposite.
"There, Celia! you can wear that with your Indian muslin. But this cross you must wear
with your dark dresses."
Celia was trying not to smile with pleasure. "O Dodo, you must keep the cross
yourself."
"No, no, dear, no," said Dorothea, putting up her hand with careless deprecation.
"Yes, indeed you must; it would suit you – in your black dress, now," said Celia,
insistingly. "You MIGHT wear that."
"Not for the world, not for the world. A cross is the last thing I would wear as a trinket."
Dorothea shuddered slightly.
"Then you will think it wicked in me to wear it," said Celia, uneasily.
"No, dear, no," said Dorothea, stroking her sister's cheek. "Souls have complexions too:
what will suit one will not suit another."
"But you might like to keep it for mamma's sake."
"No, I have other things of mamma's – her sandal−wood box which I am so fond of –
plenty of things. In fact, they are all yours, dear. We need discuss them no longer. There –
take away your property."
Celia felt a little hurt. There was a strong assumption of superiority in this Puritanic
toleration, hardly less trying to the blond flesh of an unenthusiastic sister than a Puritanic
persecution.
"But how can I wear ornaments if you, who are the elder sister, will never wear them?"
"Nay, Celia, that is too much to ask, that I should wear trinkets to keep you in
countenance. If I were to put on such a necklace as that, I should feel as if I had been
pirouetting. The world would go round with me, and I should not know how to walk."
Middlemarch
CHAPTER I. 8
Celia had unclasped the necklace and drawn it off. "It would be a little tight for your
neck; something to lie down and hang would suit you better," she said, with some
satisfaction. The complete unfitness of the necklace from all points of view for Dorothea,
made Celia happier in taking it. She was opening some ring−boxes, which disclosed a fine
emerald with diamonds, and just then the sun passing beyond a cloud sent a bright gleam
over the table.
"How very beautiful these gems are!" said Dorothea, under a new current of feeling, as
sudden as the gleam. "It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent I
suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St.
John. They look like fragments of heaven. I think that emerald is more beautiful than any of
them."
"And there is a bracelet to match it," said Celia. "We did not notice this at first."
"They are lovely," said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her finely turned
finger and wrist, and holding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. All the
while her thought was trying to justify her delight in the colors by merging them in her
mystic religious joy.
"You WOULD like those, Dorothea," said Celia, rather falteringly, beginning to think
with wonder that her sister showed some weakness, and also that emeralds would suit her
own complexion even better than purple amethysts. "You must keep that ring and bracelet –
if nothing else. But see, these agates are very pretty and quiet."
"Yes! I will keep these – this ring and bracelet," said Dorothea. Then, letting her hand
fall on the table, she said in another tone – "Yet what miserable men find such things, and
work at them, and sell them!" She paused again, and Celia thought that her sister was going
to renounce the ornaments, as in consistency she ought to do.
"Yes, dear, I will keep these," said Dorothea, decidedly. "But take all the rest away, and
the casket."
She took up her pencil without removing the jewels, and still looking at them. She
thought of often having them by her, to feed her eye at these little fountains of pure color.
"Shall you wear them in company?" said Celia, who was watching her with real
curiosity as to what she would do.
Dorothea glanced quickly at her sister. Across all her imaginative adornment of those
whom she loved, there darted now and then a keen discernment, which was not without a
scorching quality. If Miss Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it would not be for lack of
inward fire.
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CHAPTER I. 9
"Perhaps," she said, rather haughtily. "I cannot tell to what level I may sink."
Celia blushed, and was unhappy: she saw that she had offended her sister, and dared not
say even anything pretty about the gift of the ornaments which she put back into the box and
carried away. Dorothea too was unhappy, as she went on with her plan−drawing,
questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech in the scene which had ended with that
little explosion.
Celia's consciousness told her that she had not been at all in the wrong: it was quite
natural and justifiable that she should have asked that question, and she repeated to herself
that Dorothea was inconsistent: either she should have taken her full share of the jewels, or,
after what she had said, she should have renounced them altogether.
"I am sure – at least, I trust," thought Celia, "that the wearing of a necklace will not
interfere with my prayers. And I do not see that I should be bound by Dorothea's opinions
now we are going into society, though of course she herself ought to be bound by them. But
Dorothea is not always consistent."
Thus Celia, mutely bending over her tapestry, until she heard her sister calling her.
"Here, Kitty, come and look at my plan; I shall think I am a great architect, if I have not
got incompatible stairs and fireplaces."
As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister's arm
caressingly. Celia understood the action. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and
Celia pardoned her. Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and
awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a
yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?
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CHAPTER I. 10
CHAPTER II.
"`D
ime; no ves aquel caballero que hacia nosotros viene sobre un caballo rucio rodado
que trae puesto en la cabeza un yelmo de oro?' `Lo que veo y columbro,' respondio Sancho,
`no es sino un hombre sobre un as no pardo como el mio, que trae sobre la cabeza una cosa
que relumbra.' `Pues ese es el yelmo de Mambrino,' dijo Don Quijote." – CERVANTES.
"`Seest thou not yon cavalier who cometh toward us on a dapple−gray steed, and
weareth a golden helmet?' `What I see,' answered Sancho, `is nothing but a man on a gray
ass like my own, who carries something shiny on his head.' `Just so,' answered Don Quixote:
`and that resplendent object is the helmet of Mambrino.'"
"Sir Humphry Davy?" said Mr. Brooke, over the soup, in his easy smiling way, taking
up Sir James Chettam's remark that he was studying Davy's Agricultural Chemistry. "Well,
now, Sir Humphry Davy; I dined with him years ago at Cartwright's, and Wordsworth was
there too – the poet Wordsworth, you know. Now there was something singular. I was at
Cambridge when Wordsworth was there, and I never met him – and I dined with him twenty
years afterwards at Cartwright's. There's an oddity in things, now. But Davy was there: he
was a poet too. Or, as I may say, Wordsworth was poet one, and Davy was poet two. That
was true in every sense, you know."
Dorothea felt a little more uneasy than usual. In the beginning of dinner, the party being
small and the room still, these motes from the mass of a magistrate's mind fell too
noticeably. She wondered how a man like Mr. Casaubon would support such triviality. His
manners, she thought, were very dignified; the set of his iron−gray hair and his deep
eye−sockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke. He had the spare form and the pale
complexion which became a student; as different as possible from the blooming Englishman
of the red−whiskered type represented by Sir James Chettam.
"I am reading the Agricultural Chemistry," said this excellent baronet, "because I am
going to take one of the farms into my own hands, and see if something cannot be done in
setting a good pattern of farming among my tenants. Do you approve of that, Miss Brooke?"
"A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr. Brooke, "going into electrifying your land
and that kind of thing, and making a parlor of your cow−house. It won't do. I went into
science a great deal myself at one time; but I saw it would not do. It leads to everything; you
can let nothing alone. No, no – see that your tenants don't sell their straw, and that kind of
thing; and give them draining−tiles, you know. But your fancy farming will not do – the
most expensive sort of whistle you can buy: you may as well keep a pack of hounds."
"Surely," said Dorothea, "it is better to spend money in finding out how men can make
the most of the land which supports them all, than in keeping dogs and horses only to gallop
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CHAPTER II. 11
over it. It is not a sin to make yourself poor in performing experiments for the good of all."
She spoke with more energy than is expected of so young a lady, but Sir James had
appealed to her. He was accustomed to do so, and she had often thought that she could urge
him to many good actions when he was her brother−in−law.
Mr. Casaubon turned his eyes very markedly on Dorothea while she was speaking, and
seemed to observe her newly.
"Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr. Brooke, smiling
towards Mr. Casaubon. "I remember when we were all reading Adam Smith. THERE is a
book, now. I took in all the new ideas at one time – human perfectibility, now. But some
say, history moves in circles; and that may be very well argued; I have argued it myself. The
fact is, human reason may carry you a little too far – over the hedge, in fact. It carried me a
good way at one time; but I saw it would not do. I pulled up; I pulled up in time. But not too
hard. I have always been in favor of a little theory: we must have Thought; else we shall be
landed back in the dark ages. But talking of books, there is Southey's `Peninsular War.' I am
reading that of a morning. You know Southey?"
"No" said Mr. Casaubon, not keeping pace with Mr. Brooke's impetuous reason, and
thinking of the book only. "I have little leisure for such literature just now. I have been using
up my eyesight on old characters lately; the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I am
fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening to an imperfect reader. It is a misfortune,
in some senses: I feed too much on the inward sources; I live too much with the dead. My
mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and trying
mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes. But I find it
necessary to use the utmost caution about my eyesight."
This was the first time that Mr. Casaubon had spoken at any length. He delivered
himself with precision, as if he had been called upon to make a public statement; and the
balanced sing−song neatness of his speech, occasionally corresponded to by a movement of
his head, was the more conspicuous from its contrast with good Mr. Brooke's scrappy
slovenliness. Dorothea said to herself that Mr. Casaubon was the most interesting man she
had ever seen, not excepting even Monsieur Liret, the Vaudois clergyman who had given
conferences on the history of the Waldenses. To reconstruct a past world, doubtless with a
view to the highest purposes of truth – what a work to be in any way present at, to assist in,
though only as a lamp−holder! This elevating thought lifted her above her annoyance at
being twitted with her ignorance of political economy, that never−explained science which
was thrust as an extinguisher over all her lights.
"But you are fond of riding, Miss Brooke," Sir James presently took an opportunity of
saying. "I should have thought you would enter a little into the pleasures of hunting. I wish
you would let me send over a chestnut horse for you to try. It has been trained for a lady. I
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CHAPTER II. 12
saw you on Saturday cantering over the hill on a nag not worthy of you. My groom shall
bring Corydon for you every day, if you will only mention the time."
"Thank you, you are very good. I mean to give up riding. I shall not ride any more,"
said Dorothea, urged to this brusque resolution by a little annoyance that Sir James would be
soliciting her attention when she wanted to give it all to Mr. Casaubon.
"No, that is too hard," said Sir James, in a tone of reproach that showed strong interest.
"Your sister is given to self−mortification, is she not?" he continued, turning to Celia, who
sat at his right hand.
"I think she is," said Celia, feeling afraid lest she should say something that would not
please her sister, and blushing as prettily as possible above her necklace. "She likes giving
up."
"If that were true, Celia, my giving−up would be self−indulgence, not
self−mortification. But there may be good reasons for choosing not to do what is very
agreeable," said Dorothea.
Mr. Brooke was speaking at the same time, but it was evident that Mr. Casaubon was
observing Dorothea, and she was aware of it.
"Exactly," said Sir James. "You give up from some high, generous motive."
"No, indeed, not exactly. I did not say that of myself," answered Dorothea, reddening.
Unlike Celia, she rarely blushed, and only from high delight or anger. At this moment she
felt angry with the perverse Sir James. Why did he not pay attention to Celia, and leave her
to listen to Mr. Casaubon? – if that learned man would only talk, instead of allowing himself
to be talked to by Mr. Brooke, who was just then informing him that the Reformation either
meant something or it did not, that he himself was a Protestant to the core, but that
Catholicism was a fact; and as to refusing an acre of your ground for a Romanist chapel, all
men needed the bridle of religion, which, properly speaking, was the dread of a Hereafter.
"I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr. Brooke, as if to explain the
insight just manifested. "I know something of all schools. I knew Wilberforce in his best
days. Do you know Wilberforce?"
Mr. Casaubon said, "No."
"Well, Wilberforce was perhaps not enough of a thinker; but if I went into Parliament,
as I have been asked to do, I should sit on the independent bench, as Wilberforce did, and
work at philanthropy."
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CHAPTER II. 13
Mr. Casaubon bowed, and observed that it was a wide field.
"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, with an easy smile, "but I have documents. I began a long
while ago to collect documents. They want arranging, but when a question has struck me, I
have written to somebody and got an answer. I have documents at my back. But now, how
do you arrange your documents?"
"In pigeon−holes partly," said Mr. Casaubon, with rather a startled air of effort.
"Ah, pigeon−holes will not do. I have tried pigeon−holes, but everything gets mixed in
pigeon−holes: I never know whether a paper is in A or Z."
"I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle," said Dorothea. "I would
letter them all, and then make a list of subjects under each letter."
Mr. Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr. Brooke, "You have an excellent
secretary at hand, you perceive."
"No, no," said Mr. Brooke, shaking his head; "I cannot let young ladies meddle with my
documents. Young ladies are too flighty."
Dorothea felt hurt. Mr. Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason
for delivering this opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind as lightly as the broken wing
of an insect among all the other fragments there, and a chance current had sent it alighting
on HER.
When the two girls were in the drawing−room alone, Celia said –
"How very ugly Mr. Casaubon is!"
"Celia! He is one of the most distinguished−looking men I ever saw. He is remarkably
like the portrait of Locke. He has the same deep eye−sockets."
"Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?"
"Oh, I dare say! when people of a certain sort looked at him," said Dorothea, walking
away a little.
"Mr. Casaubon is so sallow."
"All the better. I suppose you admire a man with the complexion of a cochon de lait."
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CHAPTER II. 14
"Dodo!" exclaimed Celia, looking after her in surprise. "I never heard you make such a
comparison before."
"Why should I make it before the occasion came? It is a good comparison: the match is
perfect."
Miss Brooke was clearly forgetting herself, and Celia thought so.
"I wonder you show temper, Dorothea."
"It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely
animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul in a man's face."
"Has Mr. Casaubon a great soul?" Celia was not without a touch of naive malice.
"Yes, I believe he has," said Dorothea, with the full voice of decision. "Everything I see
in him corresponds to his pamphlet on Biblical Cosmology."
"He talks very little," said Celia
"There is no one for him to talk to."
Celia thought privately, "Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chettam; I believe she
would not accept him." Celia felt that this was a pity. She had never been deceived as to the
object of the baronet's interest. Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would
perhaps not make a husband happy who had not her way of looking at things; and stifled in
the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister was too religious for family comfort.
Notions and scruples were like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down,
or even eating.
When Miss Brooke was at the tea−table, Sir James came to sit down by her, not having
felt her mode of answering him at all offensive. Why should he? He thought it probable that
Miss Brooke liked him, and manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be
interpreted by preconceptions either confident or distrustful. She was thoroughly charming
to him, but of course he theorized a little about his attachment. He was made of excellent
human dough, and had the rare merit of knowing that his talents, even if let loose, would not
set the smallest stream in the county on fire: hence he liked the prospect of a wife to whom
he could say, "What shall we do?" about this or that; who could help her husband out with
reasons, and would also have the property qualification for doing so. As to the excessive
religiousness alleged against Miss Brooke, he had a very indefinite notion of what it
consisted in, and thought that it would die out with marriage. In short, he felt himself to be
in love in the right place, and was ready to endure a great deal of predominance, which, after
all, a man could always put down when he liked. Sir James had no idea that he should ever
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like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose cleverness he delighted.
Why not? A man's mind – what there is of it – has always the advantage of being masculine,
– as the smallest birch−tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm, – and even his
ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not have originated this estimate; but a
kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gunk or starch in the form of
tradition.
"Let me hope that you will rescind that resolution about the horse, Miss Brooke," said
the persevering admirer. "I assure you, riding is the most healthy of exercises."
"I am aware of it," said Dorothea, coldly. "I think it would do Celia good – if she would
take to it."
"But you are such a perfect horsewoman."
"Excuse me; I have had very little practice, and I should be easily thrown."
"Then that is a reason for more practice. Every lady ought to be a perfect horsewoman,
that she may accompany her husband."
"You see how widely we differ, Sir James. I have made up my mind that I ought not to
be a perfect horsewoman, and so I should never correspond to your pattern of a lady."
Dorothea looked straight before her, and spoke with cold brusquerie, very much with the air
of a handsome boy, in amusing contrast with the solicitous amiability of her admirer.
"I should like to know your reasons for this cruel resolution. It is not possible that you
should think horsemanship wrong."
"It is quite possible that I should think it wrong for me."
"Oh, why?" said Sir James, in a tender tone of remonstrance.
Mr. Casaubon had come up to the table, teacup in hand, and was listening.
"We must not inquire too curiously into motives," he interposed, in his measured way.
"Miss Brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed
with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light."
Dorothea colored with pleasure, and looked up gratefully to the speaker. Here was a
man who could understand the higher inward life, and with whom there could be some
spiritual communion; nay, who could illuminate principle with the widest knowledge a man
whose learning almost amounted to a proof of whatever he believed!
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CHAPTER II. 16
Dorothea's inferences may seem large; but really life could never have gone on at any
period but for this liberal allowance of conclusions, which has facilitated marriage under the
difficulties of civilization. Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb
of pre−matrimonial acquaintanceship?
"Certainly," said good Sir James. "Miss Brooke shall not be urged to tell reasons she
would rather be silent upon. I am sure her reasons would do her honor."
He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea had looked up at Mr.
Casaubon: it never occurred to him that a girl to whom he was meditating an offer of
marriage could care for a dried bookworm towards fifty, except, indeed, in a religious sort of
way, as for a clergyman of some distinction.
However, since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with Mr. Casaubon
about the Vaudois clergy, Sir James betook himself to Celia, and talked to her about her
sister; spoke of a house in town, and asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London. Away
from her sister, Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James said to himself that the second Miss
Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty, though not, as some people pretended,
more clever and sensible than the elder sister. He felt that he had chosen the one who was in
all respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He
would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it.
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CHAPTER II. 17
CHAPTER III.
"S
ay, goddess, what ensued, when Raphael, The affable archangel . . . Eve The story
heard attentive, and was filled With admiration, and deep muse, to hear Of things so high
and strange." – Paradise Lost, B. vii.
If it had really occurred to Mr. Casaubon to think of Miss Brooke as a suitable wife for
him, the reasons that might induce her to accept him were already planted in her mind, and
by the evening of the next day the reasons had budded and bloomed. For they had had a long
conversation in the morning, while Celia, who did not like the company of Mr. Casaubon's
moles and sallowness, had escaped to the vicarage to play with the curate's ill−shod but
merry children.
Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of Mr. Casaubon's
mind, seeing reflected there in vague labyrinthine extension every quality she herself
brought; had opened much of her own experience to him, and had understood from him the
scope of his great work, also of attractively labyrinthine extent. For he had been as
instructive as Milton's "affable archangel;" and with something of the archangelic manner he
told her how he had undertaken to show (what indeed had been attempted before, but not
with that thoroughness, justice of comparison, and effectiveness of arrangement at which
Mr. Casaubon aimed) that all the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the
world were corruptions of a tradition originally revealed. Having once mastered the true
position and taken a firm footing there, the vast field of mythical constructions became
intelligible, nay, luminous with the reflected light of correspondences. But to gather in this
great harvest of truth was no light or speedy work. His notes already made a formidable
range of volumes, but the crowning task would be to condense these voluminous
still−accumulating results and bring them, like the earlier vintage of Hippocratic books, to fit
a little shelf. In explaining this to Dorothea, Mr. Casaubon expressed himself nearly as he
would have done to a fellow−student, for he had not two styles of talking at command: it is
true that when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the English with scrupulous
care, but he would probably have done this in any case. A learned provincial clergyman is
accustomed to think of his acquaintances as of "lords, knyghtes, and other noble and worthi
men, that conne Latyn but lytille."
Dorothea was altogether captivated by the wide embrace of this conception. Here was
something beyond the shallows of ladies' school literature: here was a living Bossuet, whose
work would reconcile complete knowledge with devoted piety; here was a modern
Augustine who united the glories of doctor and saint.
The sanctity seemed no less clearly marked than the learning, for when Dorothea was
impelled to open her mind on certain themes which she could speak of to no one whom she
had before seen at Tipton, especially on the secondary importance of ecclesiastical forms
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CHAPTER III. 18
and articles of belief compared with that spiritual religion, that submergence of self in
communion with Divine perfection which seemed to her to be expressed in the best
Christian books of widely distant ages, she found in Mr. Casaubon a listener who
understood her at once, who could assure her of his own agreement with that view when
duly tempered with wise conformity, and could mention historical examples before
unknown to her.
"He thinks with me," said Dorothea to herself, "or rather, he thinks a whole world of
which my thought is but a poor twopenny mirror. And his feelings too, his whole experience
– what a lake compared with my little pool!"
Miss Brooke argued from words and dispositions not less unhesitatingly than other
young ladies of her age. Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are
illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature, every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope,
belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of matter in the shape of
knowledge. They are not always too grossly deceived; for Sinbad himself may have fallen
by good−luck on a true description, and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in
right conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and
zigzags, we now and then arrive just where we ought to be. Because Miss Brooke was hasty
in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr. Casaubon was unworthy of it.
He stayed a little longer than he had intended, on a slight pressure of invitation from
Mr. Brooke, who offered no bait except his own documents on machine−breaking and
rick−burning. Mr. Casaubon was called into the library to look at these in a heap, while his
host picked up first one and then the other to read aloud from in a skipping and uncertain
way, passing from one unfinished passage to another with a "Yes, now, but here!" and
finally pushing them all aside to open the journal of his youthful Continental travels.
"Look here – here is all about Greece. Rhamnus, the ruins of Rhamnus – you are a great
Grecian, now. I don't know whether you have given much study to the topography. I spent
no end of time in making out these things – Helicon, now. Here, now! – `We started the next
morning for Parnassus, the double−peaked Parnassus.' All this volume is about Greece, you
know," Mr. Brooke wound up, rubbing his thumb transversely along the edges of the leaves
as he held the book forward.
Mr. Casaubon made a dignified though somewhat sad audience; bowed in the right
place, and avoided looking at anything documentary as far as possible, without showing
disregard or impatience; mindful that this desultoriness was associated with the institutions
of the country, and that the man who took him on this severe mental scamper was not only
an amiable host, but a landholder and custos rotulorum. Was his endurance aided also by the
reflection that Mr. Brooke was the uncle of Dorothea?
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CHAPTER III. 19
Certainly he seemed more and more bent on making her talk to him, on drawing her out,
as Celia remarked to herself; and in looking at her his face was often lit up by a smile like
pale wintry sunshine. Before he left the next morning, while taking a pleasant walk with
Miss Brooke along the gravelled terrace, he had mentioned to her that he felt the
disadvantage of loneliness, the need of that cheerful companionship with which the presence
of youth can lighten or vary the serious toils of maturity. And he delivered this statement
with as much careful precision as if he had been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be
attended with results. Indeed, Mr. Casaubon was not used to expect that he should have to
repeat or revise his communications of a practical or personal kind. The inclinations which
he had deliberately stated on the 2d of October he would think it enough to refer to by the
mention of that date; judging by the standard of his own memory, which was a volume
where a vide supra could serve instead of repetitions, and not the ordinary long−used
blotting−book which only tells of forgotten writing. But in this case Mr. Casaubon's
confidence was not likely to be falsified, for Dorothea heard and retained what he said with
the eager interest of a fresh young nature to which every variety in experience is an epoch.
It was three o'clock in the beautiful breezy autumn day when Mr. Casaubon drove off to
his Rectory at Lowick, only five miles from Tipton; and Dorothea, who had on her bonnet
and shawl, hurried along the shrubbery and across the park that she might wander through
the bordering wood with no other visible companionship than that of Monk, the Great St.
Bernard dog, who always took care of the young ladies in their walks. There had risen
before her the girl's vision of a possible future for herself to which she looked forward with
trembling hope, and she wanted to wander on in that visionary future without interruption.
She walked briskly in the brisk air, the color rose in her cheeks, and her straw bonnet (which
our contemporaries might look at with conjectural curiosity as at an obsolete form of basket)
fell a little backward. She would perhaps be hardly characterized enough if it were omitted
that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and coiled behind so as to expose the outline of
her head in a daring manner at a time when public feeling required the meagreness of nature
to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls and bows, never surpassed by any great
race except the Feejeean. This was a trait of Miss Brooke's asceticism. But there was nothing
of an ascetic's expression in her bright full eyes, as she looked before her, not consciously
seeing, but absorbing into the intensity of her mood, the solemn glory of the afternoon with
its long swathes of light between the far−off rows of limes, whose shadows touched each
other.
All people, young or old (that is, all people in those ante−reform times), would have
thought her an interesting object if they had referred the glow in her eyes and cheeks to the
newly awakened ordinary images of young love: the illusions of Chloe about Strephon have
been sufficiently consecrated in poetry, as the pathetic loveliness of all spontaneous trust
ought to be. Miss Pippin adoring young Pumpkin, and dreaming along endless vistas of
unwearying companionship, was a little drama which never tired our fathers and mothers,
and had been put into all costumes. Let but Pumpkin have a figure which would sustain the
disadvantages of the shortwaisted swallow−tail, and everybody felt it not only natural but
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CHAPTER III. 20
necessary to the perfection of womanhood, that a sweet girl should be at once convinced of
his virtue, his exceptional ability, and above all, his perfect sincerity. But perhaps no persons
then living – certainly none in the neighborhood of Tipton – would have had a sympathetic
understanding for the dreams of a girl whose notions about marriage took their color entirely
from an exalted enthusiasm about the ends of life, an enthusiasm which was lit chiefly by its
own fire, and included neither the niceties of the trousseau, the pattern of plate, nor even the
honors and sweet joys of the blooming matron.
It had now entered Dorothea's mind that Mr. Casaubon might wish to make her his wife,
and the idea that he would do so touched her with a sort of reverential gratitude. How good
of him – nay, it would be almost as if a winged messenger had suddenly stood beside her
path and held out his hand towards her! For a long while she had been oppressed by the
indefiniteness which hung in her mind, like a thick summer haze, over all her desire to made
her life greatly effective. What could she do, what ought she to do? – she, hardly more than
a budding woman, but yet with an active conscience and a great mental need, not to be
satisfied by a girlish instruction comparable to the nibblings and judgments of a discursive
mouse. With some endowment of stupidity and conceit, she might have thought that a
Christian young lady of fortune should find her ideal of life in village charities, patronage of
the humbler clergy, the perusal of "Female Scripture Characters," unfolding the private
experience of Sara under the Old Dispensation, and Dorcas under the New, and the care of
her soul over her embroidery in her own boudoir – with a background of prospective
marriage to a man who, if less strict than herself, as being involved in affairs religiously
inexplicable, might be prayed for and seasonably exhorted. From such contentment poor
Dorothea was shut out. The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised
over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually
consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in
by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled−in maze of
small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once
exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify
by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were
never acted on. Into this soul−hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured; the union
which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own
ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her
along the grandest path.
"I should learn everything then," she said to herself, still walking quickly along the
bridle road through the wood. "It would be my duty to study that I might help him the better
in his great works. There would be nothing trivial about our lives. Every−day things with us
would mean the greatest things. It would be like marrying Pascal. I should learn to see the
truth by the same light as great men have seen it by. And then I should know what to do,
when I got older: I should see how it was possible to lead a grand life here – now – in
England. I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now: everything seems like going on
a mission to a people whose language I don't know; – unless it were building good cottages
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CHAPTER III. 21
– there can be no doubt about that. Oh, I hope I should be able to get the people well housed
in Lowick! I will draw plenty of plans while I have time."
Dorothea checked herself suddenly with self−rebuke for the presumptuous way in
which she was reckoning on uncertain events, but she was spared any inward effort to
change the direction of her thoughts by the appearance of a cantering horseman round a
turning of the road. The well−groomed chestnut horse and two beautiful setters could leave
no doubt that the rider was Sir James Chettam. He discerned Dorothea, jumped off his horse
at once, and, having delivered it to his groom, advanced towards her with something white
on his arm, at which the two setters were barking in an excited manner.
"How delightful to meet you, Miss Brooke," he said, raising his hat and showing his
sleekly waving blond hair. "It has hastened the pleasure I was looking forward to."
Miss Brooke was annoyed at the interruption. This amiable baronet, really a suitable
husband for Celia, exaggerated the necessity of making himself agreeable to the elder sister.
Even a prospective brother−in−law may be an oppression if he will always be presupposing
too good an understanding with you, and agreeing with you even when you contradict him.
The thought that he had made the mistake of paying his addresses to herself could not take
shape: all her mental activity was used up in persuasions of another kind. But he was
positively obtrusive at this moment, and his dimpled hands were quite disagreeable. Her
roused temper made her color deeply, as she returned his greeting with some haughtiness.
Sir James interpreted the heightened color in the way most gratifying to himself, and
thought he never saw Miss Brooke looking so handsome.
"I have brought a little petitioner," he said, "or rather, I have brought him to see if he
will be approved before his petition is offered." He showed the white object under his arm,
which was a tiny Maltese puppy, one of nature's most naive toys.
"It is painful to me to see these creatures that are bred merely as pets," said Dorothea,
whose opinion was forming itself that very moment (as opinions will) under the heat of
irritation.
"Oh, why?" said Sir James, as they walked forward.
"I believe all the petting that is given them does not make them happy. They are too
helpless: their lives are too frail. A weasel or a mouse that gets its own living is more
interesting. I like to think that the animals about us have souls something like our own, and
either carry on their own little affairs or can be companions to us, like Monk here. Those
creatures are parasitic."
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CHAPTER III. 22
"I am so glad I know that you do not like them," said good Sir James. "I should never
keep them for myself, but ladies usually are fond of these Maltese dogs. Here, John, take
this dog, will you?"
The objectionable puppy, whose nose and eyes were equally black and expressive, was
thus got rid of, since Miss Brooke decided that it had better not have been born. But she felt
it necessary to explain.
"You must not judge of Celia's feeling from mine. I think she likes these small pets. She
had a tiny terrier once, which she was very fond of. It made me unhappy, because I was
afraid of treading on it. I am rather short−sighted."
"You have your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke, and it is always a good
opinion."
What answer was possible to such stupid complimenting?
"Do you know, I envy you that," Sir James said, as they continued walking at the rather
brisk pace set by Dorothea.
"I don't quite understand what you mean."
"Your power of forming an opinion. I can form an opinion of persons. I know when I
like people. But about other matters, do you know, I have often a difficulty in deciding. One
hears very sensible things said on opposite sides."
"Or that seem sensible. Perhaps we don't always discriminate between sense and
nonsense."
Dorothea felt that she was rather rude.
"Exactly," said Sir James. "But you seem to have the power of discrimination."
"On the contrary, I am often unable to decide. But that is from ignorance. The right
conclusion is there all the same, though I am unable to see it."
"I think there are few who would see it more readily. Do you know, Lovegood was
telling me yesterday that you had the best notion in the world of a plan for cottages – quite
wonderful for a young lady, he thought. You had a real GENUS, to use his expression. He
said you wanted Mr. Brooke to build a new set of cottages, but he seemed to think it hardly
probable that your uncle would consent. Do you know, that is one of the things I wish to do
– I mean, on my own estate. I should be so glad to carry out that plan of yours, if you would
let me see it. Of course, it is sinking money; that is why people object to it. Laborers can
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CHAPTER III. 23
never pay rent to make it answer. But, after all, it is worth doing."
"Worth doing! yes, indeed," said Dorothea, energetically, forgetting her previous small
vexations. "I think we deserve to be beaten out of our beautiful houses with a scourge of
small cords – all of us who let tenants live in such sties as we see round us. Life in cottages
might be happier than ours, if they were real houses fit for human beings from whom we
expect duties and affections."
"Will you show me your plan?"
"Yes, certainly. I dare say it is very faulty. But I have been examining all the plans for
cottages in Loudon's book, and picked out what seem the best things. Oh what a happiness it
would be to set the pattern about here! I think instead of Lazarus at the gate, we should put
the pigsty cottages outside the park−gate."
Dorothea was in the best temper now. Sir James, as brother in−law, building model
cottages on his estate, and then, perhaps, others being built at Lowick, and more and more
elsewhere in imitation – it would be as if the spirit of Oberlin had passed over the parishes to
make the life of poverty beautiful!
Sir James saw all the plans, and took one away to consult upon with Lovegood. He also
took away a complacent sense that he was making great progress in Miss Brooke's good
opinion. The Maltese puppy was not offered to Celia; an omission which Dorothea
afterwards thought of with surprise; but she blamed herself for it. She had been engrossing
Sir James. After all, it was a relief that there was no puppy to tread upon.
Celia was present while the plans were being examined, and observed Sir James's
illusion. "He thinks that Dodo cares about him, and she only cares about her plans. Yet I am
not certain that she would refuse him if she thought he would let her manage everything and
carry out all her notions. And how very uncomfortable Sir James would be! I cannot bear
notions."
It was Celia's private luxury to indulge in this dislike. She dared not confess it to her
sister in any direct statement, for that would be laying herself open to a demonstration that
she was somehow or other at war with all goodness. But on safe opportunities, she had an
indirect mode of making her negative wisdom tell upon Dorothea, and calling her down
from her rhapsodic mood by reminding her that people were staring, not listening. Celia was
not impulsive: what she had to say could wait, and came from her always with the same
quiet staccato evenness. When people talked with energy and emphasis she watched their
faces and features merely. She never could understand how well−bred persons consented to
sing and open their mouths in the ridiculous manner requisite for that vocal exercise.
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CHAPTER III. 24
It was not many days before Mr. Casaubon paid a morning visit, on which he was
invited again for the following week to dine and stay the night. Thus Dorothea had three
more conversations with him, and was convinced that her first impressions had been just. He
was all she had at first imagined him to be: almost everything he had said seemed like a
specimen from a mine, or the inscription on the door of a museum which might open on the
treasures of past ages; and this trust in his mental wealth was all the deeper and more
effective on her inclination because it was now obvious that his visits were made for her
sake. This accomplished man condescended to think of a young girl, and take the pains to
talk to her, not with absurd compliment, but with an appeal to her understanding, and
sometimes with instructive correction. What delightful companionship! Mr. Casaubon
seemed even unconscious that trivialities existed, and never handed round that small−talk of
heavy men which is as acceptable as stale bride−cake brought forth with an odor of
cupboard. He talked of what he was interested in, or else he was silent and bowed with sad
civility. To Dorothea this was adorable genuineness, and religious abstinence from that
artificiality which uses up the soul in the efforts of pretence. For she looked as reverently at
Mr. Casaubon's religious elevation above herself as she did at his intellect and learning. He
assented to her expressions of devout feeling, and usually with an appropriate quotation; he
allowed himself to say that he had gone through some spiritual conflicts in his youth; in
short, Dorothea saw that here she might reckon on understanding, sympathy, and guidance.
On one – only one – of her favorite themes she was disappointed. Mr. Casaubon apparently
did not care about building cottages, and diverted the talk to the extremely narrow
accommodation which was to be had in the dwellings of the ancient Egyptians, as if to check
a too high standard. After he was gone, Dorothea dwelt with some agitation on this
indifference of his; and her mind was much exercised with arguments drawn from the
varying conditions of climate which modify human needs, and from the admitted
wickedness of pagan despots. Should she not urge these arguments on Mr. Casaubon when
he came again? But further reflection told her that she was presumptuous in demanding his
attention to such a subject; he would not disapprove of her occupying herself with it in
leisure moments, as other women expected to occupy themselves with their dress and
embroidery – would not forbid it when – Dorothea felt rather ashamed as she detected
herself in these speculations. But her uncle had been invited to go to Lowick to stay a couple
of days: was it reasonable to suppose that Mr. Casaubon delighted in Mr. Brooke's society
for its own sake, either with or without documents?
Meanwhile that little disappointment made her delight the more in Sir James Chettam's
readiness to set on foot the desired improvements. He came much oftener than Mr.
Casaubon, and Dorothea ceased to find him disagreeable since he showed himself so
entirely in earnest; for he had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's
estimates, and was charmingly docile. She proposed to build a couple of cottages, and
transfer two families from their old cabins, which could then be pulled down, so that new
ones could be built on the old sites. Sir James said "Exactly," and she bore the word
remarkably well.
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CHAPTER III. 25
Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members
of society under good feminine direction, if they were fortunate in choosing their
sisters−in−law! It is difficult to say whether there was or was not a little wilfulness in her
continuing blind to the possibility that another sort of choice was in question in relation to
her. But her life was just now full of hope and action: she was not only thinking of her plans,
but getting down learned books from the library and reading many things hastily (that she
might be a little less ignorant in talking to Mr. Casaubon), all the while being visited with
conscientious questionings whether she were not exalting these poor doings above measure
and contemplating them with that self−satisfaction which was the last doom of ignorance
and folly.
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CHAPTER III. 26
CHAPTER IV.
1s
t Gent. Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves.
2d Gent. Ay, truly: but I think it is the world
That brings the iron.
"Sir James seems determined to do everything you wish," said Celia, as they were
driving home from an inspection of the new building−site.
"He is a good creature, and more sensible than any one would imagine," said Dorothea,
inconsiderately.
"You mean that he appears silly."
"No, no," said Dorothea, recollecting herself, and laying her hand on her sister's a
moment, "but he does not talk equally well on all subjects."
"I should think none but disagreeable people do," said Celia, in her usual purring way.
"They must be very dreadful to live with. Only think! at breakfast, and always."
Dorothea laughed. "O Kitty, you are a wonderful creature!" She pinched Celia's chin,
being in the mood now to think her very winning and lovely – fit hereafter to be an eternal
cherub, and if it were not doctrinally wrong to say so, hardly more in need of salvation than
a squirrel. "Of course people need not be always talking well. Only one tells the quality of
their minds when they try to talk well."
"You mean that Sir James tries and fails."
"I was speaking generally. Why do you catechise me about Sir James? It is not the
object of his life to please me."
"Now, Dodo, can you really believe that?"
"Certainly. He thinks of me as a future sister – that is all." Dorothea had never hinted
this before, waiting, from a certain shyness on such subjects which was mutual between the
sisters, until it should be introduced by some decisive event. Celia blushed, but said at once
–
"Pray do not make that mistake any longer, Dodo. When Tantripp was brushing my hair
the other day, she said that Sir James's man knew from Mrs. Cadwallader's maid that Sir
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CHAPTER IV. 27
James was to marry the eldest Miss Brooke."
"How can you let Tantripp talk such gossip to you, Celia?" said Dorothea, indignantly,
not the less angry because details asleep in her memory were now awakened to confirm the
unwelcome revelation. "You must have asked her questions. It is degrading."
"I see no harm at all in Tantripp's talking to me. It is better to hear what people say. You
see what mistakes you make by taking up notions. I am quite sure that Sir James means to
make you an offer; and he believes that you will accept him, especially since you have been
so pleased with him about the plans. And uncle too – I know he expects it. Every one can
see that Sir James is very much in love with you."
The revulsion was so strong and painful in Dorothea's mind that the tears welled up and
flowed abundantly. All her dear plans were embittered, and she thought with disgust of Sir
James's conceiving that she recognized him as her lover. There was vexation too on account
of Celia.
"How could he expect it?" she burst forth in her most impetuous manner. "I have never
agreed with him about anything but the cottages: I was barely polite to him before."
"But you have been so pleased with him since then; he has begun to feel quite sure that
you are fond of him."
"Fond of him, Celia! How can you choose such odious expressions?" said Dorothea,
passionately.
"Dear me, Dorothea, I suppose it would be right for you to be fond of a man whom you
accepted for a husband."
"It is offensive to me to say that Sir James could think I was fond of him. Besides, it is
not the right word for the feeling I must have towards the man I would accept as a husband."
"Well, I am sorry for Sir James. I thought it right to tell you, because you went on as
you always do, never looking just where you are, and treading in the wrong place. You
always see what nobody else sees; it is impossible to satisfy you; yet you never see what is
quite plain. That's your way, Dodo." Something certainly gave Celia unusual courage; and
she was not sparing the sister of whom she was occasionally in awe. Who can tell what just
criticisms Murr the Cat may be passing on us beings of wider speculation?
"It is very painful," said Dorothea, feeling scourged. "I can have no more to do with the
cottages. I must be uncivil to him. I must tell him I will have nothing to do with them. It is
very painful." Her eyes filled again with tears.
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CHAPTER IV. 28
"Wait a little. Think about it. You know he is going away for a day or two to see his
sister. There will be nobody besides Lovegood." Celia could not help relenting. "Poor
Dodo," she went on, in an amiable staccato. "It is very hard: it is your favorite FAD to draw
plans."
"FAD to draw plans! Do you think I only care about my fellow−creatures' houses in that
childish way? I may well make mistakes. How can one ever do anything nobly Christian,
living among people with such petty thoughts?"
No more was said; Dorothea was too much jarred to recover her temper and behave so
as to show that she admitted any error in herself. She was disposed rather to accuse the
intolerable narrowness and the purblind conscience of the society around her: and Celia was
no longer the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit, a pink−and−white nullifidian, worse
than any discouraging presence in the "Pilgrim's Progress." The FAD of drawing plans!
What was life worth – what great faith was possible when the whole effect of one's actions
could be withered up into such parched rubbish as that? When she got out of the carriage,
her cheeks were pale and her eyelids red. She was an image of sorrow, and her uncle who
met her in the hall would have been alarmed, if Celia had not been close to her looking so
pretty and composed, that he at once concluded Dorothea's tears to have their origin in her
excessive religiousness. He had returned, during their absence, from a journey to the county
town, about a petition for the pardon of some criminal.
"Well, my dears," he said, kindly, as they went up to kiss him, "I hope nothing
disagreeable has happened while I have been away."
"No, uncle," said Celia, "we have been to Freshitt to look at the cottages. We thought
you would have been at home to lunch."
"I came by Lowick to lunch – you didn't know I came by Lowick. And I have brought a
couple of pamphlets for you, Dorothea – in the library, you know; they lie on the table in the
library."
It seemed as if an electric stream went through Dorothea, thrilling her from despair into
expectation. They were pamphlets about the early Church. The oppression of Celia,
Tantripp, and Sir James was shaken off, and she walked straight to the library. Celia went
up−stairs. Mr. Brooke was detained by a message, but when he re−entered the library, he
found Dorothea seated and already deep in one of the pamphlets which had some marginal
manuscript of Mr. Casaubon's, – taking it in as eagerly as she might have taken in the scent
of a fresh bouquet after a dry, hot, dreary walk.
She was getting away from Tipton and Freshitt, and her own sad liability to tread in the
wrong places on her way to the New Jerusalem.
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CHAPTER IV. 29
Mr. Brooke sat down in his arm−chair, stretched his legs towards the wood−fire, which
had fallen into a wondrous mass of glowing dice between the dogs, and rubbed his hands
gently, looking very mildly towards Dorothea, but with a neutral leisurely air, as if he had
nothing particular to say. Dorothea closed her pamphlet, as soon as she was aware of her
uncle's presence, and rose as if to go. Usually she would have been interested about her
uncle's merciful errand on behalf of the criminal, but her late agitation had made her
absent−minded.
"I came back by Lowick, you know," said Mr. Brooke, not as if with any intention to
arrest her departure, but apparently from his usual tendency to say what he had said before.
This fundamental principle of human speech was markedly exhibited in Mr. Brooke. "I
lunched there and saw Casaubon's library, and that kind of thing. There's a sharp air, driving.
Won't you sit down, my dear? You look cold."
Dorothea felt quite inclined to accept the invitation. Some times, when her uncle's easy
way of taking things did not happen to be exasperating, it was rather soothing. She threw off
her mantle and bonnet, and sat down opposite to him, enjoying the glow, but lifting up her
beautiful hands for a screen. They were not thin hands, or small hands; but powerful,
feminine, maternal hands. She seemed to be holding them up in propitiation for her
passionate desire to know and to think, which in the unfriendly mediums of Tipton and
Freshitt had issued in crying and red eyelids.
She bethought herself now of the condemned criminal. "What news have you brought
about the sheep−stealer, uncle?"
"What, poor Bunch? – well, it seems we can't get him off – he is to be hanged."
Dorothea's brow took an expression of reprobation and pity.
"Hanged, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with a quiet nod. "Poor Romilly! he would have
helped us. I knew Romilly. Casaubon didn't know Romilly. He is a little buried in books,
you know, Casaubon is."
"When a man has great studies and is writing a great work, he must of course give up
seeing much of the world. How can he go about making acquaintances?"
"That's true. But a man mopes, you know. I have always been a bachelor too, but I have
that sort of disposition that I never moped; it was my way to go about everywhere and take
in everything. I never moped: but I can see that Casaubon does, you know. He wants a
companion – a companion, you know."
"It would be a great honor to any one to be his companion," said Dorothea,
energetically.
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CHAPTER IV. 30
"You like him, eh?" said Mr. Brooke, without showing any surprise, or other emotion.
"Well, now, I've known Casaubon ten years, ever since he came to Lowick. But I never got
anything out of him – any ideas, you know. However, he is a tiptop man and may be a
bishop – that kind of thing, you know, if Peel stays in. And he has a very high opinion of
you, my dear."
Dorothea could not speak.
"The fact is, he has a very high opinion indeed of you. And he speaks uncommonly well
– does Casaubon. He has deferred to me, you not being of age. In short, I have promised to
speak to you, though I told him I thought there was not much chance. I was bound to tell
him that. I said, my niece is very young, and that kind of thing. But I didn't think it necessary
to go into everything. However, the long and the short of it is, that he has asked my
permission to make you an offer of marriage – of marriage, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
with his explanatory nod. "I thought it better to tell you, my dear."
No one could have detected any anxiety in Mr. Brooke's manner, but he did really wish
to know something of his niece's mind, that, if there were any need for advice, he might give
it in time. What feeling he, as a magistrate who had taken in so many ideas, could make
room for, was unmixedly kind. Since Dorothea did not speak immediately, he repeated, "I
thought it better to tell you, my dear."
"Thank you, uncle," said Dorothea, in a clear unwavering tone. "I am very grateful to
Mr. Casaubon. If he makes me an offer, I shall accept him. I admire and honor him more
than any man I ever saw."
Mr. Brooke paused a little, and then said in a lingering low tone, "Ah? . . . Well! He is a
good match in some respects. But now, Chettam is a good match. And our land lies together.
I shall never interfere against your wishes, my dear. People should have their own way in
marriage, and that sort of thing – up to a certain point, you know. I have always said that, up
to a certain point. I wish you to marry well; and I have good reason to believe that Chettam
wishes to marry you. I mention it, you know."
"It is impossible that I should ever marry Sir James Chettam," said Dorothea. "If he
thinks of marrying me, he has made a great mistake."
"That is it, you see. One never knows. I should have thought Chettam was just the sort
of man a woman would like, now."
"Pray do not mention him in that light again, uncle," said Dorothea, feeling some of her
late irritation revive.
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CHAPTER IV. 31
Mr. Brooke wondered, and felt that women were an inexhaustible subject of study,
since even he at his age was not in a perfect state of scientific prediction about them. Here
was a fellow like Chettam with no chance at all.
"Well, but Casaubon, now. There is no hurry – I mean for you. It's true, every year will
tell upon him. He is over five−and−forty, you know. I should say a good seven−and−twenty
years older than you. To be sure, – if you like learning and standing, and that sort of thing,
we can't have everything. And his income is good – he has a handsome property
independent of the Church – his income is good. Still he is not young, and I must not
conceal from you, my dear, that I think his health is not over−strong. I know nothing else
against him."
"I should not wish to have a husband very near my own age," said Dorothea, with grave
decision. "I should wish to have a husband who was above me in judgment and in all
knowledge."
Mr. Brooke repeated his subdued, "Ah? – I thought you had more of your own opinion
than most girls. I thought you liked your own opinion – liked it, you know."
"I cannot imagine myself living without some opinions, but I should wish to have good
reasons for them, and a wise man could help me to see which opinions had the best
foundation, and would help me to live according to them."
"Very true. You couldn't put the thing better – couldn't put it better, beforehand, you
know. But there are oddities in things," continued Mr. Brooke, whose conscience was really
roused to do the best he could for his niece on this occasion. "Life isn't cast in a mould – not
cut out by rule and line, and that sort of thing. I never married myself, and it will be the
better for you and yours. The fact is, I never loved any one well enough to put myself into a
noose for them. It IS a noose, you know. Temper, now. There is temper. And a husband
likes to be master."
"I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties. I never
thought of it as mere personal ease," said poor Dorothea.
"Well, you are not fond of show, a great establishment, balls, dinners, that kind of thing.
I can see that Casaubon's ways might suit you better than Chettam's. And you shall do as
you like, my dear. I would not hinder Casaubon; I said so at once; for there is no knowing
how anything may turn out. You have not the same tastes as every young lady; and a
clergyman and scholar – who may be a bishop – that kind of thing – may suit you better than
Chettam. Chettam is a good fellow, a good sound−hearted fellow, you know; but he doesn't
go much into ideas. I did, when I was his age. But Casaubon's eyes, now. I think he has hurt
them a little with too much reading."
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CHAPTER IV. 32
"I should be all the happier, uncle, the more room there was for me to help him," said
Dorothea, ardently.
"You have quite made up your mind, I see. Well, my dear, the fact is, I have a letter for
you in my pocket." Mr. Brooke handed the letter to Dorothea, but as she rose to go away, he
added, "There is not too much hurry, my dear. Think about it, you know."
When Dorothea had left him, he reflected that he had certainly spoken strongly: he had
put the risks of marriage before her in a striking manner. It was his duty to do so. But as to
pretending to be wise for young people, – no uncle, however much he had travelled in his
youth, absorbed the new ideas, and dined with celebrities now deceased, could pretend to
judge what sort of marriage would turn out well for a young girl who preferred Casaubon to
Chettam. In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before
it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid.
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CHAPTER V.
"H
ard students are commonly troubled with gowts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia,
bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds,
consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over−much sitting: they are most part lean,
dry, ill−colored . . . and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If you will
not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquainas' works; and tell
me whether those men took pains." – BURTON'S Anatomy of Melancholy, P. I, s. 2.
This was Mr. Casaubon's letter.
MY DEAR MISS BROOKE, – I have your guardian's permission to address you on a
subject than which I have none more at heart. I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of
some deeper correspondence than that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my
own life had arisen contemporaneously with the possibility of my becoming acquainted with
you. For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of your eminent and perhaps
exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of the
affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not
uninterruptedly dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the
impression an added depth by convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had
preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively those affections to which I have but now
referred. Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to you the tenor of my life
and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to the commoner order of minds. But I have
discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had
hitherto not conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with those
graces of sex that may be said at once to win and to confer distinction when combined, as
they notably are in you, with the mental qualities above indicated. It was, I confess, beyond
my hope to meet with this rare combination of elements both solid and attractive, adapted to
supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant hours; and but for the event of
my introduction to you (which, let me again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident
with foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages towards the
completion of a life's plan), I should presumably have gone on to the last without any
attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial union.
Such, my dear Miss Brooke, is the accurate statement of my feelings; and I rely on your
kind indulgence in venturing now to ask you how far your own are of a nature to confirm
my happy presentiment. To be accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of
your welfare, I should regard as the highest of providential gifts. In return I can at least offer
you an affection hitherto unwasted, and the faithful consecration of a life which, however
short in the sequel, has no backward pages whereon, if you choose to turn them, you will
find records such as might justly cause you either bitterness or shame. I await the expression
of your sentiments with an anxiety which it would be the part of wisdom (were it possible)
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CHAPTER V. 34
to divert by a more arduous labor than usual. But in this order of experience I am still young,
and in looking forward to an unfavorable possibility I cannot but feel that resignation to
solitude will be more difficult after the temporary illumination of hope. In any case, I shall
remain,
Yours with sincere devotion,
Edward CASAUBON.
Dorothea trembled while she read this letter; then she fell on her knees, buried her face,
and sobbed. She could not pray: under the rush of solemn emotion in which thoughts
became vague and images floated uncertainly, she could but cast herself, with a childlike
sense of reclining, in the lap of a divine consciousness which sustained her own. She
remained in that attitude till it was time to dress for dinner.
How could it occur to her to examine the letter, to look at it critically as a profession of
love? Her whole soul was possessed by the fact that a fuller life was opening before her: she
was a neophyte about to enter on a higher grade of initiation. She was going to have room
for the energies which stirred uneasily under the dimness and pressure of her own ignorance
and the petty peremptoriness of the world's habits.
Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties; now she would be
allowed to live continually in the light of a mind that she could reverence. This hope was not
unmixed with the glow of proud delight – the joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by
the man whom her admiration had chosen. All Dorothea's passion was transfused through a
mind struggling towards an ideal life; the radiance of her transfigured girlhood fell on the
first object that came within its level. The impetus with which inclination became resolution
was heightened by those little events of the day which had roused her discontent with the
actual conditions of her life.
After dinner, when Celia was playing an "air, with variations," a small kind of tinkling
which symbolized the aesthetic part of the young ladies' education, Dorothea went up to her
room to answer Mr. Casaubon's letter. Why should she defer the answer? She wrote it over
three times, not because she wished to change the wording, but because her hand was
unusually uncertain, and she could not bear that Mr. Casaubon should think her handwriting
bad and illegible. She piqued herself on writing a hand in which each letter was
distinguishable without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use of
this accomplishment, to save Mr. Casaubon's eyes. Three times she wrote.
MY DEAR MR. CASAUBON, – I am very grateful to you for loving me, and thinking
me worthy to be your wife. I can look forward to no better happiness than that which would
be one with yours. If I said more, it would only be the same thing written out at greater
length, for I cannot now dwell on any other thought than that I may be through life
Yours devotedly,
Dorothea Brooke.
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CHAPTER V. 35
Later in the evening she followed her uncle into the library to give him the letter, that he
might send it in the morning. He was surprised, but his surprise only issued in a few
moments' silence, during which he pushed about various objects on his writing−table, and
finally stood with his back to the fire, his glasses on his nose, looking at the address of
Dorothea's letter.
"Have you thought enough about this, my dear?" he said at last.
"There was no need to think long, uncle. I know of nothing to make me vacillate. If I
changed my mind, it must be because of something important and entirely new to me."
"Ah! – then you have accepted him? Then Chettam has no chance? Has Chettam
offended you – offended you, you know? What is it you don't like in Chettam?"
"There is nothing that I like in him," said Dorothea, rather impetuously.
Mr. Brooke threw his head and shoulders backward as if some one had thrown a light
missile at him. Dorothea immediately felt some self−rebuke, and said –
"I mean in the light of a husband. He is very kind, I think – really very good about the
cottages. A well−meaning man."
"But you must have a scholar, and that sort of thing? Well, it lies a little in our family. I
had it myself – that love of knowledge, and going into everything – a little too much – it
took me too far; though that sort of thing doesn't often run in the female−line; or it runs
underground like the rivers in Greece, you know – it comes out in the sons. Clever sons,
clever mothers. I went a good deal into that, at one time. However, my dear, I have always
said that people should do as they like in these things, up to a certain point. I couldn't, as
your guardian, have consented to a bad match. But Casaubon stands well: his position is
good. I am afraid Chettam will be hurt, though, and Mrs. Cadwallader will blame me."
That evening, of course, Celia knew nothing of what had happened. She attributed
Dorothea's abstracted manner, and the evidence of further crying since they had got home, to
the temper she had been in about Sir James Chettam and the buildings, and was careful not
to give further offence: having once said what she wanted to say, Celia had no disposition to
recur to disagreeable subjects. It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any
one – only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her, and looked like
turkey−cocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat's cradle with them whenever they
recovered themselves. And as to Dorothea, it had always been her way to find something
wrong in her sister's words, though Celia inwardly protested that she always said just how
things were, and nothing else: she never did and never could put words together out of her
own head. But the best of Dodo was, that she did not keep angry for long together. Now,
though they had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when Celia put by her
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work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was always much the earlier,
Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation,
said, with the musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her
speech like a fine bit of recitative –
"Celia, dear, come and kiss me," holding her arms open as she spoke.
Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little butterfly kiss, while Dorothea
encircled her with gentle arms and pressed her lips gravely on each cheek in turn.
"Don't sit up, Dodo, you are so pale to−night: go to bed soon," said Celia, in a
comfortable way, without any touch of pathos.
"No, dear, I am very, very happy," said Dorothea, fervently.
"So much the better," thought Celia. "But how strangely Dodo goes from one extreme
to the other."
The next day, at luncheon, the butler, handing something to Mr. Brooke, said, "Jonas is
come back, sir, and has brought this letter."
Mr. Brooke read the letter, and then, nodding toward Dorothea, said, "Casaubon, my
dear: he will be here to dinner; he didn't wait to write more – didn't wait, you know."
It could not seem remarkable to Celia that a dinner guest should be announced to her
sister beforehand, but, her eyes following the same direction as her uncle's, she was struck
with the peculiar effect of the announcement on Dorothea. It seemed as if something like the
reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed across her features, ending in one of her rare
blushes. For the first time it entered into Celia's mind that there might be something more
between Mr. Casaubon and her sister than his delight in bookish talk and her delight in
listening. Hitherto she had classed the admiration for this "ugly" and learned acquaintance
with the admiration for Monsieur Liret at Lausanne, also ugly and learned. Dorothea had
never been tired of listening to old Monsieur Liret when Celia's feet were as cold as
possible, and when it had really become dreadful to see the skin of his bald head moving
about. Why then should her enthusiasm not extend to Mr. Casaubon simply in the same way
as to Monsieur Liret? And it seemed probable that all learned men had a sort of
schoolmaster's view of young people.
But now Celia was really startled at the suspicion which had darted into her mind. She
was seldom taken by surprise in this way, her marvellous quickness in observing a certain
order of signs generally preparing her to expect such outward events as she had an interest
in. Not that she now imagined Mr. Casaubon to be already an accepted lover: she had only
begun to feel disgust at the possibility that anything in Dorothea's mind could tend towards
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such an issue. Here was something really to vex her about Dodo: it was all very well not to
accept Sir James Chettam, but the idea of marrying Mr. Casaubon! Celia felt a sort of shame
mingled with a sense of the ludicrous. But perhaps Dodo, if she were really bordering on
such an extravagance, might be turned away from it: experience had often shown that her
impressibility might be calculated on. The day was damp, and they were not going to walk
out, so they both went up to their sitting−room; and there Celia observed that Dorothea,
instead of settling down with her usual diligent interest to some occupation, simply leaned
her elbow on an open book and looked out of the window at the great cedar silvered with the
damp. She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the curate's children, and was not
going to enter on any subject too precipitately.
Dorothea was in fact thinking that it was desirable for Celia to know of the momentous
change in Mr. Casaubon's position since he had last been in the house: it did not seem fair to
leave her in ignorance of what would necessarily affect her attitude towards him; but it was
impossible not to shrink from telling her. Dorothea accused herself of some meanness in this
timidity: it was always odious to her to have any small fears or contrivances about her
actions, but at this moment she was seeking the highest aid possible that she might not dread
the corrosiveness of Celia's pretty carnally minded prose. Her reverie was broken, and the
difficulty of decision banished, by Celia's small and rather guttural voice speaking in its
usual tone, of a remark aside or a "by the bye."
"Is any one else coming to dine besides Mr. Casaubon?"
"Not that I know of."
"I hope there is some one else. Then I shall not hear him eat his soup so."
"What is there remarkable about his soup−eating?"
"Really, Dodo, can't you hear how he scrapes his spoon? And he always blinks before
he speaks. I don't know whether Locke blinked, but I'm sure I am sorry for those who sat
opposite to him if he did."
"Celia," said Dorothea, with emphatic gravity, "pray don't make any more observations
of that kind."
"Why not? They are quite true," returned Celia, who had her reasons for persevering,
though she was beginning to be a little afraid.
"Many things are true which only the commonest minds observe."
"Then I think the commonest minds must be rather useful. I think it is a pity Mr.
Casaubon's mother had not a commoner mind: she might have taught him better." Celia was
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inwardly frightened, and ready to run away, now she had hurled this light javelin.
Dorothea's feelings had gathered to an avalanche, and there could be no further
preparation.
"It is right to tell you, Celia, that I am engaged to marry Mr. Casaubon."
Perhaps Celia had never turned so pale before. The paper man she was making would
have had his leg injured, but for her habitual care of whatever she held in her hands. She laid
the fragile figure down at once, and sat perfectly still for a few moments. When she spoke
there was a tear gathering
"Oh, Dodo, I hope you will be happy." Her sisterly tenderness could not but surmount
other feelings at this moment, and her fears were the fears of affection.
Dorothea was still hurt and agitated.
"It is quite decided, then?" said Celia, in an awed under tone. "And uncle knows?"
"I have accepted Mr. Casaubon's offer. My uncle brought me the letter that contained it;
he knew about it beforehand."
"I beg your pardon, if I have said anything to hurt you, Dodo," said Celia, with a slight
sob. She never could have thought that she should feel as she did. There was something
funereal in the whole affair, and Mr. Casaubon seemed to be the officiating clergyman,
about whom it would be indecent to make remarks.
"Never mind, Kitty, do not grieve. We should never admire the same people. I often
offend in something of the same way; I am apt to speak too strongly of those who don't
please me."
In spite of this magnanimity Dorothea was still smarting: perhaps as much from Celia's
subdued astonishment as from her small criticisms. Of course all the world round Tipton
would be out of sympathy with this marriage. Dorothea knew of no one who thought as she
did about life and its best objects.
Nevertheless before the evening was at an end she was very happy. In an hour's
tete−a−tete with Mr. Casaubon she talked to him with more freedom than she had ever felt
before, even pouring out her joy at the thought of devoting herself to him, and of learning
how she might best share and further all his great ends. Mr. Casaubon was touched with an
unknown delight (what man would not have been?) at this childlike unrestrained ardor: he
was not surprised (what lover would have been?) that he should be the object of it.
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CHAPTER V. 39
"My dear young lady – Miss Brooke – Dorothea!" he said, pressing her hand between
his hands, "this is a happiness greater than I had ever imagined to be in reserve for me. That
I should ever meet with a mind and person so rich in the mingled graces which could render
marriage desirable, was far indeed from my conception. You have all – nay, more than all –
those qualities which I have ever regarded as the characteristic excellences of womanhood.
The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent self−sacrificing affection, and
herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own. Hitherto I have
known few pleasures save of the severer kind: my satisfactions have been those of the
solitary student. I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand,
but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place them in your bosom."
No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention: the frigid rhetoric at
the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not
be rash to conclude that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us
as the thin music of a mandolin?
Dorothea's faith supplied all that Mr. Casaubon's words seemed to leave unsaid: what
believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet,
expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.
"I am very ignorant – you will quite wonder at my ignorance," said Dorothea. "I have so
many thoughts that may be quite mistaken; and now I shall be able to tell them all to you,
and ask you about them. But," she added, with rapid imagination of Mr. Casaubon's
probable feeling, "I will not trouble you too much; only when you are inclined to listen to
me. You must often be weary with the pursuit of subjects in your own track. I shall gain
enough if you will take me with you there."
"How should I be able now to persevere in any path without your companionship?" said
Mr. Casaubon, kissing her candid brow, and feeling that heaven had vouchsafed him a
blessing in every way suited to his peculiar wants. He was being unconsciously wrought
upon by the charms of a nature which was entirely without hidden calculations either for
immediate effects or for remoter ends. It was this which made Dorothea so childlike, and,
according to some judges, so stupid, with all her reputed cleverness; as, for example, in the
present case of throwing herself, metaphorically speaking, at Mr. Casaubon's feet, and
kissing his unfashionable shoe−ties as if he were a Protestant Pope. She was not in the least
teaching Mr. Casaubon to ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself
anxiously how she could be good enough for Mr. Casaubon. Before he left the next day it
had been decided that the marriage should take place within six weeks. Why not? Mr.
Casaubon's house was ready. It was not a parsonage, but a considerable mansion, with much
land attached to it. The parsonage was inhabited by the curate, who did all the duty except
preaching the morning sermon.
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CHAPTER V. 40
CHAPTER VI.
M
y lady's tongue is like the meadow blades, That cut you stroking them with idle
hand. Nice cutting is her function: she divides With spiritual edge the millet−seed, And
makes intangible savings.
As Mr. Casaubon's carriage was passing out of the gateway, it arrested the entrance of a
pony phaeton driven by a lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the
recognition had been mutual, for Mr. Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the
lady was quick−eyed, and threw a nod and a "How do you do?" in the nick of time. In spite
of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the lodge−keeper regarded
her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the entrance of
the small phaeton.
"Well, Mrs. Fitchett, how are your fowls laying now?" said the high−colored,
dark−eyed lady, with the clearest chiselled utterance.
"Pretty well for laying, madam, but they've ta'en to eating their eggs: I've no peace o'
mind with 'em at all."
"Oh, the cannibals! Better sell them cheap at once. What will you sell them a couple?
One can't eat fowls of a bad character at a high price."
"Well, madam, half−a−crown: I couldn't let 'em go, not under."
"Half−a−crown, these times! Come now – for the Rector's chicken−broth on a Sunday.
He has consumed all ours that I can spare. You are half paid with the sermon, Mrs. Fitchett,
remember that. Take a pair of tumbler−pigeons for them – little beauties. You must come
and see them. You have no tumblers among your pigeons."
"Well, madam, Master Fitchett shall go and see 'em after work. He's very hot on new
sorts; to oblige you."
"Oblige me! It will be the best bargain he ever made. A pair of church pigeons for a
couple of wicked Spanish fowls that eat their own eggs! Don't you and Fitchett boast too
much, that is all!"
The phaeton was driven onwards with the last words, leaving Mrs. Fitchett laughing and
shaking her head slowly, with an interjectional "SureLY, sureLY!" – from which it might be
inferred that she would have found the country−side somewhat duller if the Rector's lady
had been less free−spoken and less of a skinflint. Indeed, both the farmers and laborers in
the parishes of Freshitt and Tipton would have felt a sad lack of conversation but for the
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CHAPTER VI. 41
stories about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did: a lady of immeasurably high birth,
descended, as it were, from unknown earls, dim as the crowd of heroic shades – who
pleaded poverty, pared down prices, and cut jokes in the most companionable manner,
though with a turn of tongue that let you know who she was. Such a lady gave a
neighborliness to both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness of uncommuted tithe.
A much more exemplary character with an infusion of sour dignity would not have furthered
their comprehension of the Thirty−nine Articles, and would have been less socially uniting.
Mr. Brooke, seeing Mrs. Cadwallader's merits from a different point of view, winced a
little when her name was announced in the library, where he was sitting alone.
"I see you have had our Lowick Cicero here," she said, seating herself comfortably,
throwing back her wraps, and showing a thin but well−built figure. "I suspect you and he are
brewing some bad polities, else you would not be seeing so much of the lively man. I shall
inform against you: remember you are both suspicious characters since you took Peel's side
about the Catholic Bill. I shall tell everybody that you are going to put up for Middlemarch
on the Whig side when old Pinkerton resigns, and that Casaubon is going to help you in an
underhand manner: going to bribe the voters with pamphlets, and throw open the
public−houses to distribute them. Come, confess!"
"Nothing of the sort," said Mr. Brooke, smiling and rubbing his eye−glasses, but really
blushing a little at the impeachment. "Casaubon and I don't talk politics much. He doesn't
care much about the philanthropic side of things; punishments, and that kind of thing. He
only cares about Church questions. That is not my line of action, you know."
"Ra−a−ther too much, my friend. I have heard of your doings. Who was it that sold his
bit of land to the Papists at Middlemarch? I believe you bought it on purpose. You are a
perfect Guy Faux. See if you are not burnt in effigy this 5th of November coming.
Humphrey would not come to quarrel with you about it, so I am come."
"Very good. I was prepared to be persecuted for not persecuting – not persecuting, you
know."
"There you go! That is a piece of clap−trap you have got ready for the hustings. Now,
DO NOT let them lure you to the hustings, my dear Mr. Brooke. A man always makes a fool
of himself, speechifying: there's no excuse but being on the right side, so that you can ask a
blessing on your humming and hawing. You will lose yourself, I forewarn you. You will
make a Saturday pie of all parties' opinions, and be pelted by everybody."
"That is what I expect, you know," said Mr. Brooke, not wishing to betray how little he
enjoyed this prophetic sketch – "what I expect as an independent man. As to the Whigs, a
man who goes with the thinkers is not likely to be hooked on by any party. He may go with
them up to a certain point – up to a certain point, you know. But that is what you ladies
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never understand."
"Where your certain point is? No. I should like to be told how a man can have any
certain point when he belongs to no party – leading a roving life, and never letting his
friends know his address. `Nobody knows where Brooke will be – there's no counting on
Brooke' – that is what people say of you, to be quite frank. Now, do turn respectable. How
will you like going to Sessions with everybody looking shy on you, and you with a bad
conscience and an empty pocket?"
"I don't pretend to argue with a lady on politics," said Mr. Brooke, with an air of smiling
indifference, but feeling rather unpleasantly conscious that this attack of Mrs. Cadwallader's
had opened the defensive campaign to which certain rash steps had exposed him. "Your sex
are not thinkers, you know – varium et mutabile semper – that kind of thing. You don't know
Virgil. I knew" – Mr. Brooke reflected in time that he had not had the personal acquaintance
of the Augustan poet – "I was going to say, poor Stoddart, you know. That was what HE
said. You ladies are always against an independent attitude – a man's caring for nothing but
truth, and that sort of thing. And there is no part of the county where opinion is narrower
than it is here – I don't mean to throw stones, you know, but somebody is wanted to take the
independent line; and if I don't take it, who will?"
"Who? Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position. People of standing
should consume their independent nonsense at home, not hawk it about. And you! who are
going to marry your niece, as good as your daughter, to one of our best men. Sir James
would be cruelly annoyed: it will be too hard on him if you turn round now and make
yourself a Whig sign−board."
Mr. Brooke again winced inwardly, for Dorothea's engagement had no sooner been
decided, than he had thought of Mrs. Cadwallader's prospective taunts. It might have been
easy for ignorant observers to say, "Quarrel with Mrs. Cadwallader;" but where is a country
gentleman to go who quarrels with his oldest neighbors? Who could taste the fine flavor in
the name of Brooke if it were delivered casually, like wine without a seal? Certainly a man
can only be cosmopolitan up to a certain point.
"I hope Chettam and I shall always be good friends; but I am sorry to say there is no
prospect of his marrying my niece," said Mr. Brooke, much relieved to see through the
window that Celia was coming in.
"Why not?" said Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharp note of surprise. "It is hardly a
fortnight since you and I were talking about it."
"My niece has chosen another suitor – has chosen him, you know. I have had nothing to
do with it. I should have preferred Chettam; and I should have said Chettam was the man
any girl would have chosen. But there is no accounting for these things. Your sex is
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CHAPTER VI. 43
capricious, you know."
"Why, whom do you mean to say that you are going to let her marry?" Mrs.
Cadwallader's mind was rapidly surveying the possibilities of choice for Dorothea.
But here Celia entered, blooming from a walk in the garden, and the greeting with her
delivered Mr. Brooke from the necessity of answering immediately. He got up hastily, and
saying, "By the way, I must speak to Wright about the horses," shuffled quickly out of the
room.
"My dear child, what is this? – this about your sister's engagement?" said Mrs.
Cadwallader.
"She is engaged to marry Mr. Casaubon," said Celia, resorting, as usual, to the simplest
statement of fact, and enjoying this opportunity of speaking to the Rector's wife alone.
"This is frightful. How long has it been going on?"
"I only knew of it yesterday. They are to be married in six weeks."
"Well, my dear, I wish you joy of your brother−in−law."
"I am so sorry for Dorothea."
"Sorry! It is her doing, I suppose."
"Yes; she says Mr. Casaubon has a great soul."
"With all my heart."
"Oh, Mrs. Cadwallader, I don't think it can be nice to marry a man with a great soul."
"Well, my dear, take warning. You know the look of one now; when the next comes and
wants to marry you, don't you accept him."
"I'm sure I never should."
"No; one such in a family is enough. So your sister never cared about Sir James
Chettam? What would you have said to HIM for a brother−in−law?"
"I should have liked that very much. I am sure he would have been a good husband.
Only," Celia added, with a slight blush (she sometimes seemed to blush as she breathed), "I
don't think he would have suited Dorothea."
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CHAPTER VI. 44
"Not high−flown enough?"
"Dodo is very strict. She thinks so much about everything, and is so particular about
what one says. Sir James never seemed to please her."
"She must have encouraged him, I am sure. That is not very creditable."
"Please don't be angry with Dodo; she does not see things. She thought so much about
the cottages, and she was rude to Sir James sometimes; but he is so kind, he never noticed
it."
"Well," said Mrs. Cadwallader, putting on her shawl, and rising, as if in haste, "I must
go straight to Sir James and break this to him. He will have brought his mother back by this
time, and I must call. Your uncle will never tell him. We are all disappointed, my dear.
Young people should think of their families in marrying. I set a bad example – married a
poor clergyman, and made myself a pitiable object among the De Bracys – obliged to get my
coals by stratagem, and pray to heaven for my salad oil. However, Casaubon has money
enough; I must do him that justice. As to his blood, I suppose the family quarterings are
three cuttle−fish sable, and a commentator rampant. By the bye, before I go, my dear, I must
speak to your Mrs. Carter about pastry. I want to send my young cook to learn of her. Poor
people with four children, like us, you know, can't afford to keep a good cook. I have no
doubt Mrs. Carter will oblige me. Sir James's cook is a perfect dragon."
In less than an hour, Mrs. Cadwallader had circumvented Mrs. Carter and driven to
Freshitt Hall, which was not far from her own parsonage, her husband being resident in
Freshitt and keeping a curate in Tipton.
Sir James Chettam had returned from the short journey which had kept him absent for a
couple of days, and had changed his dress, intending to ride over to Tipton Grange. His
horse was standing at the door when Mrs. Cadwallader drove up, and he immediately
appeared there himself, whip in hand. Lady Chettam had not yet returned, but Mrs.
Cadwallader's errand could not be despatched in the presence of grooms, so she asked to be
taken into the conservatory close by, to look at the new plants; and on coming to a
contemplative stand, she said –
"I have a great shock for you; I hope you are not so far gone in love as you pretended to
be."
It was of no use protesting, against Mrs. Cadwallader's way of putting things. But Sir
James's countenance changed a little. He felt a vague alarm.
"I do believe Brooke is going to expose himself after all. I accused him of meaning to
stand for Middlemarch on the Liberal side, and he looked silly and never denied it – talked
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CHAPTER VI. 45
about the independent line, and the usual nonsense."
"Is that all?" said Sir James, much relieved.
"Why," rejoined Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharper note, "you don't mean to say that you
would like him to turn public man in that way – making a sort of political Cheap Jack of
himself?"
"He might be dissuaded, I should think. He would not like the expense."
"That is what I told him. He is vulnerable to reason there – always a few grains of
common−sense in an ounce of miserliness. Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families;
it's the safe side for madness to dip on. And there must be a little crack in the Brooke family,
else we should not see what we are to see."
"What? Brooke standing for Middlemarch?"
"Worse than that. I really feel a little responsible. I always told you Miss Brooke would
be such a fine match. I knew there was a great deal of nonsense in her – a flighty sort of
Methodistical stuff. But these things wear out of girls. However, I am taken by surprise for
once."
"What do you mean, Mrs. Cadwallader?" said Sir James. His fear lest Miss Brooke
should have run away to join the Moravian Brethren, or some preposterous sect unknown to
good society, was a little allayed by the knowledge that Mrs. Cadwallader always made the
worst of things. "What has happened to Miss Brooke? Pray speak out."
"Very well. She is engaged to be married." Mrs. Cadwallader paused a few moments,
observing the deeply hurt expression in her friend's face, which he was trying to conceal by
a nervous smile, while he whipped his boot; but she soon added, "Engaged to Casaubon."
Sir James let his whip fall and stooped to pick it up. Perhaps his face had never before
gathered so much concentrated disgust as when he turned to Mrs. Cadwallader and repeated,
"Casaubon?"
"Even so. You know my errand now."
"Good God! It is horrible! He is no better than a mummy!" (The point of view has to be
allowed for, as that of a blooming and disappointed rival.)
"She says, he is a great soul. – A great bladder for dried peas to rattle in!" said Mrs.
Cadwallader.
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CHAPTER VI. 46
"What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?" said Sir James. "He has one
foot in the grave."
"He means to draw it out again, I suppose."
"Brooke ought not to allow it: he should insist on its being put off till she is of age. She
would think better of it then. What is a guardian for?"
"As if you could ever squeeze a resolution out of Brooke!"
"Cadwallader might talk to him."
"Not he! Humphrey finds everybody charming I never can get him to abuse Casaubon.
He will even speak well of the bishop, though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed
clergyman; what can one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies? I hide it
as well as I can by abusing everybody myself. Come, come, cheer up! you are well rid of
Miss Brooke, a girl who would have been requiring you to see the stars by daylight.
Between ourselves, little Celia is worth two of her, and likely after all to be the better match.
For this marriage to Casaubon is as good as going to a nunnery."
"Oh, on my own account – it is for Miss Brooke's sake I think her friends should try to
use their influence."
"Well, Humphrey doesn't know yet. But when I tell him, you may depend on it he will
say, `Why not? Casaubon is a good fellow – and young – young enough.' These charitable
people never know vinegar from wine till they have swallowed it and got the colic.
However, if I were a man I should prefer Celia, especially when Dorothea was gone. The
truth is, you have been courting one and have won the other. I can see that she admires you
almost as much as a man expects to be admired. If it were any one but me who said so, you
might think it exaggeration. Good−by!"
Sir James handed Mrs. Cadwallader to the phaeton, and then jumped on his horse. He
was not going to renounce his ride because of his friend's unpleasant news – only to ride the
faster in some other direction than that of Tipton Grange.
Now, why on earth should Mrs. Cadwallader have been at all busy about Miss Brooke's
marriage; and why, when one match that she liked to think she had a hand in was frustrated,
should she have straightway contrived the preliminaries of another? Was there any
ingenious plot, any hide−and−seek course of action, which might be detected by a careful
telescopic watch? Not at all: a telescope might have swept the parishes of Tipton and
Freshitt, the whole area visited by Mrs. Cadwallader in her phaeton, without witnessing any
interview that could excite suspicion, or any scene from which she did not return with the
same unperturbed keenness of eye and the same high natural color. In fact, if that convenient
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CHAPTER VI. 47
vehicle had existed in the days of the Seven Sages, one of them would doubtless have
remarked, that you can know little of women by following them about in their
pony−phaetons. Even with a microscope directed on a water−drop we find ourselves making
interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may
seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures
actively play as if they were so many animated tax−pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you
certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits
passively at his receipt of custom. In this way, metaphorically speaking, a strong lens
applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's match−making will show a play of minute causes producing
what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she needed. Her
life was rurally simple, quite free from secrets either foul, dangerous, or otherwise
important, and not consciously affected by the great affairs of the world. All the more did
the affairs of the great world interest her, when communicated in the letters of high−born
relations: the way in which fascinating younger sons had gone to the dogs by marrying their
mistresses; the fine old−blooded idiocy of young Lord Tapir, and the furious gouty humors
of old Lord Megatherium; the exact crossing of genealogies which had brought a coronet
into a new branch and widened the relations of scandal, – these were topics of which she
retained details with the utmost accuracy, and reproduced them in an excellent pickle of
epigrams, which she herself enjoyed the more because she believed as unquestionably in
birth and no−birth as she did in game and vermin. She would never have disowned any one
on the ground of poverty: a De Bracy reduced to take his dinner in a basin would have
seemed to her an example of pathos worth exaggerating, and I fear his aristocratic vices
would not have horrified her. But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious
hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high retail prices, and Mrs.
Cadwallader detested high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory:
such people were no part of God's design in making the world; and their accent was an
affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of
low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well−bred scheme of the universe.
Let any lady who is inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader inquire into the
comprehensiveness of her own beautiful views, and be quite sure that they afford
accommodation for all the lives which have the honor to coexist with hers.
With such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting everything that came near into the form
that suited it, how could Mrs. Cadwallader feel that the Miss Brookes and their matrimonial
prospects were alien to her? especially as it had been the habit of years for her to scold Mr.
Brooke with the friendliest frankness, and let him know in confidence that she thought him a
poor creature. From the first arrival of the young ladies in Tipton she had prearranged
Dorothea's marriage with Sir James, and if it had taken place would have been quite sure
that it was her doing: that it should not take place after she had preconceived it, caused her
an irritation which every thinker will sympathize with. She was the diplomatist of Tipton
and Freshitt, and for anything to happen in spite of her was an offensive irregularity. As to
freaks like this of Miss Brooke's, Mrs. Cadwallader had no patience with them, and now saw
that her opinion of this girl had been infected with some of her husband's weak
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charitableness: those Methodistical whims, that air of being more religious than the rector
and curate together, came from a deeper and more constitutional disease than she had been
willing to believe.
"However," said Mrs. Cadwallader, first to herself and afterwards to her husband, "I
throw her over: there was a chance, if she had married Sir James, of her becoming a sane,
sensible woman. He would never have contradicted her, and when a woman is not
contradicted, she has no motive for obstinacy in her absurdities. But now I wish her joy of
her hair shirt."
It followed that Mrs. Cadwallader must decide on another match for Sir James, and
having made up her mind that it was to be the younger Miss Brooke, there could not have
been a more skilful move towards the success of her plan than her hint to the baronet that he
had made an impression on Celia's heart. For he was not one of those gentlemen who
languish after the unattainable Sappho's apple that laughs from the topmost bough – the
charms which
"Smile like the knot of cowslips on the cliff, Not to be come at by the willing hand."
He had no sonnets to write, and it could not strike him agreeably that he was not an
object of preference to the woman whom he had preferred. Already the knowledge that
Dorothea had chosen Mr. Casaubon had bruised his attachment and relaxed its hold.
Although Sir James was a sportsman, he had some other feelings towards women than
towards grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife in the light of prey, valuable
chiefly for the excitements of the chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of
primitive races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was
necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage−tie. On the contrary, having the
amiable vanity which knits us to those who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who
are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere idea that a woman had a kindness
towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards hers.
Thus it happened, that after Sir James had ridden rather fast for half an hour in a
direction away from Tipton Grange, he slackened his pace, and at last turned into a road
which would lead him back by a shorter cut. Various feelings wrought in him the
determination after all to go to the Grange to−day as if nothing new had happened. He could
not help rejoicing that he had never made the offer and been rejected; mere friendly
politeness required that he should call to see Dorothea about the cottages, and now happily
Mrs. Cadwallader had prepared him to offer his congratulations, if necessary, without
showing too much awkwardness. He really did not like it: giving up Dorothea was very
painful to him; but there was something in the resolve to make this visit forthwith and
conquer all show of feeling, which was a sort of file−biting and counter−irritant. And
without his distinctly recognizing the impulse, there certainly was present in him the sense
that Celia would be there, and that he should pay her more attention than he had done
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before.
We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and
dinner−time; keep back the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to
inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges
us to hide our own hurts – not to hurt others.
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CHAPTER VII.
"P
iacer e popone Vuol la sua stagione."
– Italian Proverb.
Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great deal of his time at the Grange in
these weeks, and the hindrance which courtship occasioned to the progress of his great work
– the Key to all Mythologies – naturally made him look forward the more eagerly to the
happy termination of courtship. But he had deliberately incurred the hindrance, having made
up his mind that it was now time for him to adorn his life with the graces of female
companionship, to irradiate the gloom which fatigue was apt to hang over the intervals of
studious labor with the play of female fancy, and to secure in this, his culminating age, the
solace of female tendance for his declining years. Hence he determined to abandon himself
to the stream of feeling, and perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly shallow rill
it was. As in droughty regions baptism by immersion could only be performed symbolically,
Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost approach to a plunge which his stream
would afford him; and he concluded that the poets had much exaggerated the force of
masculine passion. Nevertheless, he observed with pleasure that Miss Brooke showed an
ardent submissive affection which promised to fulfil his most agreeable previsions of
marriage. It had once or twice crossed his mind that possibly there, was some deficiency in
Dorothea to account for the moderation of his abandonment; but he was unable to discern
the deficiency, or to figure to himself a woman who would have pleased him better; so that
there was clearly no reason to fall back upon but the exaggerations of human tradition.
"Could I not be preparing myself now to be more useful?" said Dorothea to him, one
morning, early in the time of courtship; "could I not learn to read Latin and Greek aloud to
you, as Milton's daughters did to their father, without understanding what they read?"
"I fear that would be wearisome to you," said Mr. Casaubon, smiling; "and, indeed, if I
remember rightly, the young women you have mentioned regarded that exercise in unknown
tongues as a ground for rebellion against the poet."
"Yes; but in the first place they were very naughty girls, else they would have been
proud to minister to such a father; and in the second place they might have studied privately
and taught themselves to understand what they read, and then it would have been interesting.
I hope you don't expect me to be naughty and stupid?"
"I expect you to be all that an exquisite young lady can be in every possible relation of
life. Certainly it might be a great advantage if you were able to copy the Greek character,
and to that end it were well to begin with a little reading."
Dorothea seized this as a precious permission. She would not have asked Mr. Casaubon
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at once to teach her the languages, dreading of all things to be tiresome instead of helpful;
but it was not entirely out of devotion to her future husband that she wished to know Latin
and Creek. Those provinces of masculine knowledge seemed to her a standing−ground from
which all truth could be seen more truly. As it was, she constantly doubted her own
conclusions, because she felt her own ignorance: how could she be confident that
one−roomed cottages were not for the glory of God, when men who knew the classics
appeared to conciliate indifference to the cottages with zeal for the glory? Perhaps even
Hebrew might be necessary – at least the alphabet and a few roots – in order to arrive at the
core of things, and judge soundly on the social duties of the Christian. And she had not
reached that point of renunciation at which she would have been satisfier' with having a wise
husband: she wished, poor child, to be wise herself. Miss Brooke was certainly very naive
with al: her alleged cleverness. Celia, whose mind had never been thought too powerful, saw
the emptiness of other people's pretensions much more readily. To have in general but little
feeling, seems to be the only security against feeling too much on any particular occasion.
However, Mr. Casaubon consented to listen and teach for an hour together, like a
schoolmaster of little boys, or rather like a lover, to whom a mistress's elementary ignorance
and difficulties have a touching fitness. Few scholars would have disliked teaching the
alphabet under such circumstances. But Dorothea herself was a little shocked and
discouraged at her own stupidity, and the answers she got to some timid questions about the
value of the Greek accents gave her a painful suspicion that here indeed there might be
secrets not capable of explanation to a woman's reason.
Mr. Brooke had no doubt on that point, and expressed himself with his usual strength
upon it one day that he came into the library while the reading was going forward.
"Well, but now, Casaubon, such deep studies, classics, mathematics, that kind of thing,
are too taxing for a woman – too taxing, you know."
"Dorothea is learning to read the characters simply," said Mr. Casaubon, evading the
question. "She had the very considerate thought of saving my eyes."
"Ah, well, without understanding, you know – that may not be so bad. But there is a
lightness about the feminine mind – a touch and go – music, the fine arts, that kind of thing
– they should study those up to a certain point, women should; but in a light way, you know.
A woman should be able to sit down and play you or sing you a good old English tune. That
is what I like; though I have heard most things – been at the opera in Vienna: Gluck, Mozart,
everything of that sort. But I'm a conservative in music – it's not like ideas, you know. I stick
to the good old tunes."
"Mr. Casaubon is not fond of the piano, and I am very glad he is not," said Dorothea,
whose slight regard for domestic music and feminine fine art must be forgiven her,
considering the small tinkling and smearing in which they chiefly consisted at that dark
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period. She smiled and looked up at her betrothed with grateful eyes. If he had always been
asking her to play the "Last Rose of Summer," she would have required much resignation.
"He says there is only an old harpsichord at Lowick, and it is covered with books."
"Ah, there you are behind Celia, my dear. Celia, now, plays very prettily, and is always
ready to play. However, since Casaubon does not like it, you are all right. But it's a pity you
should not have little recreations of that sort, Casaubon: the bow always strung – that kind of
thing, you know – will not do."
"I never could look on it in the light of a recreation to have my ears teased with
measured noises," said Mr. Casaubon. "A tune much iterated has the ridiculous effect of
making the words in my mind perform a sort of minuet to keep time – an effect hardly
tolerable, I imagine, after boyhood. As to the grander forms of music, worthy to accompany
solemn celebrations, and even to serve as an educating influence according to the ancient
conception, I say nothing, for with these we are not immediately concerned."
"No; but music of that sort I should enjoy," said Dorothea. "When we were coming
home from Lausanne my uncle took us to hear the great organ at Freiberg, and it made me
sob."
"That kind of thing is not healthy, my dear," said Mr. Brooke. "Casaubon, she will be in
your hands now: you must teach my niece to take things more quietly, eh, Dorothea?"
He ended with a smile, not wishing to hurt his niece, but really thinking that it was
perhaps better for her to be early married to so sober a fellow as Casaubon, since she would
not hear of Chettam.
"It is wonderful, though," he said to himself as he shuffled out of the room – "it is
wonderful that she should have liked him. However, the match is good. I should have been
travelling out of my brief to have hindered it, let Mrs. Cadwallader say what she will. He is
pretty certain to be a bishop, is Casaubon. That was a very seasonable pamphlet of his on the
Catholic Question: – a deanery at least. They owe him a deanery."
And here I must vindicate a claim to philosophical reflectiveness, by remarking that Mr.
Brooke on this occasion little thought of the Radical speech which, at a later period, he was
led to make on the incomes of the bishops. What elegant historian would neglect a striking
opportunity for pointing out that his heroes did not foresee the history of the world, or even
their own actions? – For example, that Henry of Navarre, when a Protestant baby, little
thought of being a Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the Great, when he measured his
laborious nights with burning candles, had no idea of future gentlemen measuring their idle
days with watches. Here is a mine of truth, which, however vigorously it may be worked, is
likely to outlast our coal.
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But of Mr. Brooke I make a further remark perhaps less warranted by precedent –
namely, that if he had foreknown his speech, it might not have made any great difference.
To think with pleasure of his niece's husband having a large ecclesiastical income was one
thing – to make a Liberal speech was another thing; and it is a narrow mind which cannot
look at a subject from various points of view.
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CHAPTER VIII.
"O
h, rescue her! I am her brother now, And you her father. Every gentle maid Should
have a guardian in each gentleman."
It was wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he continued to like going to the
Grange after he had once encountered the difficulty of seeing Dorothea for the first time in
the light of a woman who was engaged to another man. Of course the forked lightning
seemed to pass through him when he first approached her, and he remained conscious
throughout the interview of hiding uneasiness; but, good as he was, it must be owned that
his uneasiness was less than it would have been if he had thought his rival a brilliant and
desirable match. He had no sense of being eclipsed by Mr. Casaubon; he was only shocked
that Dorothea was under a melancholy illusion, and his mortification lost some of its
bitterness by being mingled with compassion.
Nevertheless, while Sir James said to himself that he had completely resigned her, since
with the perversity of a Desdemona she had not affected a proposed match that was clearly
suitable and according to nature; he could not yet be quite passive under the idea of her
engagement to Mr. Casaubon. On the day when he first saw them together in the light of his
present knowledge, it seemed to him that he had not taken the affair seriously enough.
Brooke was really culpable; he ought to have hindered it. Who could speak to him?
Something might be done perhaps even now, at least to defer the marriage. On his way
home he turned into the Rectory and asked for Mr. Cadwallader. Happily, the Rector was at
home, and his visitor was shown into the study, where all the fishing tackle hung. But he
himself was in a little room adjoining, at work with his turning apparatus, and he called to
the baronet to join him there. The two were better friends than any other landholder and
clergyman in the county – a significant fact which was in agreement with the amiable
expression of their faees.
Mr. Cadwallader was a large man, with full lips and a sweet smile; very plain and rough
in his exterior, but with that solid imperturbable ease and good−humor which is infectious,
and like great grassy hills in the sunshine, quiets even an irritated egoism, and makes it
rather ashamed of itself. "Well, how are you?" he said, showing a hand not quite fit to be
grasped. "Sorry I missed you before. Is there anything particular? You look vexed."
Sir James's brow had a little crease in it, a little depression of the eyebrow, which he
seemed purposely to exaggerate as he answered.
"It is only this conduct of Brooke's. I really think somebody should speak to him."
"What? meaning to stand?" said Mr. Cadwallader, going on with the arrangement of the
reels which he had just been turning. "I hardly think he means it. But where's the harm, if he
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likes it? Any one who objects to Whiggery should be glad when the Whigs don't put up the
strongest fellow. They won't overturn the Constitution with our friend Brooke's head for a
battering ram."
"Oh, I don't mean that," said Sir James, who, after putting down his hat and throwing
himself into a chair, had begun to nurse his leg and examine the sole of his boot with much
bitterness. "I mean this marriage. I mean his letting that blooming young girl marry
Casaubon."
"What is the matter with Casaubon? I see no harm in him – if the girl likes him."
"She is too young to know what she likes. Her guardian ought to interfere. He ought not
to allow the thing to be done in this headlong manner. I wonder a man like you, Cadwallader
– a man with daughters, can look at the affair with indifference: and with such a heart as
yours! Do think seriously about it."
"I am not joking; I am as serious as possible," said the Rector, with a provoking little
inward laugh. "You are as bad as Elinor. She has been wanting me to go and lecture Brooke;
and I have reminded her that her friends had a very poor opinion of the match she made
when she married me."
"But look at Casaubon," said Sir James, indignantly. "He must be fifty, and I don't
believe he could ever have been much more than the shadow of a man. Look at his legs!"
"Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your own way in the
world. Tou don't under stand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire
yourselves. Elinor used to tell her sisters that she married me for my ugliness – it was so
various and amusing that it had quite conquered her prudence."
"You! it was easy enough for a woman to love you. But this is no question of beauty. I
don't LIKE Casaubon." This was Sir James's strongest way of implying that he thought ill of
a man's character.
"Why? what do you know against him?" said the Rector laying down his reels, and
putting his thumbs into his armholes with an air of attention.
Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him
strange that people should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was
reasonable. At last he said –
"Now, Cadwallader, has he got any heart?"
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"Well, yes. I don't mean of the melting sort, but a sound kernel, THAT you may be sure
of. He is very good to his poor relations: pensions several of the women, and is educating a
young fellow at a good deal of expense. Casaubon acts up to his sense of justice. His
mother's sister made a bad match – a Pole, I think – lost herself – at any rate was disowned
by her family. If it had not been for that, Casaubon would not have had so much money by
half. I believe he went himself to find out his cousins, and see what he could do for them.
Every man would not ring so well as that, if you tried his metal. YOU would, Chettam; but
not every man."
"I don't know," said Sir James, coloring. "I am not so sure of myself." He paused a
moment, and then added, "That was a right thing for Casaubon to do. But a man may wish to
do what is right, and yet be a sort of parchment code. A woman may not be happy with him.
And I think when a girl is so young as Miss Brooke is, her friends ought to interfere a little
to hinder her from doing anything foolish. You laugh, because you fancy I have some
feeling on my own account. But upon my honor, it is not that. I should feel just the same if I
were Miss Brooke's brother or uncle."
"Well, but what should you do?"
"I should say that the marriage must not be decided on until she was of age. And depend
upon it, in that case, it would never come off. I wish you saw it as I do – I wish you would
talk to Brooke about it."
Sir James rose as he was finishing his sentence, for he saw Mrs. Cadwallader entering
from the study. She held by the hand her youngest girl, about five years old, who
immediately ran to papa, and was made comfortable on his knee.
"I hear what you are talking about," said the wife. "But you will make no impression on
Humphrey. As long as the fish rise to his bait, everybody is what he ought to be. Bless you,
Casaubon has got a trout−stream, and does not care about fishing in it himself: could there
be a better fellow?"
"Well, there is something in that," said the Rector, with his quiet, inward laugh. "It is a
very good quality in a man to have a trout−stream."
"But seriously," said Sir James, whose vexation had not yet spent itself, "don't you think
the Rector might do some good by speaking?"
"Oh, I told you beforehand what he would say," answered Mrs. Cadwallader, lifting up
her eyebrows. "I have done what I could: I wash my hands of the marriage."
"In the first place," said the Rector, looking rather grave, "it would be nonsensical to
expect that I could convince Brooke, and make him act accordingly. Brooke is a very good
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fellow, but pulpy; he will run into any mould, but he won't keep shape."
"He might keep shape long enough to defer the marriage," said Sir James.
"But, my dear Chettam, why should I use my influence to Casaubon's disadvantage,
unless I were much surer than I am that I should be acting for the advantage of Miss
Brooke? I know no harm of Casaubon. I don't care about his Xisuthrus and Fee−fo−fum and
the rest; but then he doesn't care about my fishing−tackle. As to the line he took on the
Catholic Question, that was unexpected; but he has always been civil to me, and I don't see
why I should spoil his sport. For anything I can tell, Miss Brooke may be happier with him
than she would be with any other man."
"Humphrey! I have no patience with you. You know you would rather dine under the
hedge than with Casaubon alone. You have nothing to say to each other."
"What has that to do with Miss Brooke's marrying him? She does not do it for my
amusement."
"He has got no good red blood in his body," said Sir James.
"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifying−glass and it was all semicolons and
parentheses," said Mrs. Cadwallader.
"Why does he not bring out his book, instead of marrying," said Sir James, with a
disgust which he held warranted by the sound feeling of an English layman.
"Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains. They say, when he was
a little boy, he made an abstract of `Hop o' my Thumb,' and he has been making abstracts
ever since. Ugh! And that is the man Humphrey goes on saying that a woman may be happy
with."
"Well, he is what Miss Brooke likes," said the Rector. "I don't profess to understand
every young lady's taste."
"But if she were your own daughter?" said Sir James.
"That would be a different affair. She is NOT my daughter, and I don't feel called upon
to interfere. Casaubon is as good as most of us. He is a scholarly clergyman, and creditable
to the cloth. Some Radical fellow speechifying at Middlemarch said Casaubon was the
learned straw−chopping incumbent, and Freke was the brick−and−mortar incumbent, and I
was the angling incumbent. And upon my word, I don't see that one is worse or better than
the other." The Rector ended with his silent laugh. He always saw the joke of any satire
against himself. His conscience was large and easy, like the rest of him: it did only what it
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could do without any trouble.
Clearly, there would be no interference with Miss Brooke's marriage through Mr.
Cadwallader; and Sir James felt with some sadness that she was to have perfect liberty of
misjudgment. It was a sign of his good disposition that he did not slacken at all in his
intention of carrying out Dorothea's de. sign of the cottages. Doubtless this persistence was
the best course for his own dignity: but pride only helps us to be generous; it never makes us
so, any more than vanity makes us witty. She was now enough aware of Sir James's position
with regard to her, to appreciate the rectitude of his perseverance in a landlord's duty, to
which he had at first been urged by a lover's complaisance, and her pleasure in it was great
enough to count for something even in her present happiness. Per. haps she gave to Sir
James Chettam's cottages all the interest she could spare from Mr. Casaubon, or rather from
the symphony of hopeful dreams, admiring trust, and passionate self devotion which that
learned gentleman had set playing in her soul. Hence it happened that in the good baronet's
succeed ing visits, while he was beginning to pay small attentions to Celia, he found himself
talking with more and more pleasure to Dorothea. She was perfectly unconstrained and
without irritation towards him now, and he was gradually discovering the delight there is in
frank kindness and companionship between a man and a woman who have no passion to
hide or confess.
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CHAPTER IX.
1s
t Gent. An ancient land in ancient oracles
Is called "law−thirsty": all the struggle there
Was after order and a perfect rule.
Pray, where lie such lands now? . . . 2d Gent. Why, where they lay of old – in human souls.
Mr. Casaubon's behavior about settlements was highly satisfactory to Mr. Brooke, and
the preliminaries of marriage rolled smoothly along, shortening the weeks of courtship. The
betrothed bride must see her future home, and dictate any changes that she would like to
have made there. A woman dictates before marriage in order that she may have an appetite
for submission afterwards. And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals
make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.
On a gray but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company with her
uncle and Celia. Mr. Casaubon's home was the manor−house. Close by, visible from some
parts of the garden, was the little church, with the old parsonage opposite. In the beginning
of his career, Mr. Casaubon had only held the living, but the death of his brother had put him
in possession of the manor also. It had a small park, with a fine old oak here and there, and
an avenue of limes towards the southwest front, with a sunk fence between park and
pleasure−ground, so that from the drawing−room windows the glance swept uninterruptedly
along a slope of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures, which often
seemed to melt into a lake under the setting sun. This was the happy side of the house, for
the south and east looked rather melancholy even under the brightest morning. The grounds
here were more confined, the flower−beds showed no very careful tendance, and large
clumps of trees, chiefly of sombre yews, had risen high, not ten yards from the windows.
The building, of greenish stone, was in the old English style, not ugly, but small−windowed
and melancholy−looking: the sort of house that must have children, many flowers, open
windows, and little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous home. In this latter end
of autumn, with a sparse remnant of yellow leaves falling slowly athwart the dark
evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the house too had an air of autumnal decline, and
Mr. Casaubon, when he presented himself, had no bloom that could be thrown into relief by
that background.
"Oh dear!" Celia said to herself, "I am sure Freshitt Hall would have been pleasanter
than this." She thought of the white freestone, the pillared portico, and the terrace full of
flowers, Sir James smiling above them like a prince issuing from his enchantment in a
rose−bush, with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed from the most delicately odorous
petals – Sir James, who talked so agreeably, always about things which had common−sense
in them, and not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes which grave
and weatherworn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr. Casaubon's bias
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had been different, for he would have had no chance with Celia.
Dorothea, on the contrary, found the house and grounds all that she could wish: the dark
book−shelves in the long library, the carpets and curtains with colors subdued by time, the
curious old maps and bird's−eye views on the walls of the corridor, with here and there an
old vase below, had no oppression for her, and seemed more cheerful than the easts and
pictures at the Grange, which her uncle had long ago brought home from his travels – they
being probably among the ideas he had taken in at one time. To poor Dorothea these severe
classical nudities and smirking Renaissance−Correggiosities were painfully inexplicable,
staring into the midst of her Puritanic conceptions: she had never been taught how she could
bring them into any sort of relevance with her life. But the owners of Lowick apparently had
not been travellers, and Mr. Casaubon's studies of the past were not carried on by means of
such aids.
Dorothea walked about the house with delightful emotion. Everything seemed hallowed
to her: this was to be the home of her wifehood, and she looked up with eyes full of
confidence to Mr. Casaubon when he drew her attention specially to some actual
arrangement and asked her if she would like an alteration. All appeals to her taste she met
gratefully, but saw nothing to alter. His efforts at exact courtesy and formal tenderness had
no defect for her. She filled up all blanks with unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as
she interpreted the works of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own
deafness to the higher harmonies. And there are many blanks left in the weeks of courtship
which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.
"Now, my dear Dorothea, I wish you to favor me by pointing out which room you
would like to have as your boudoir," said Mr. Casaubon, showing that his views of the
womanly nature were sufficiently large to include that requirement.
"It is very kind of you to think of that," said Dorothea, "but I assure you I would rather
have all those matters decided for me. I shall be much happier to take everything as it is –
just as you have been used to have it, or as you will yourself choose it to be. I have no
motive for wishing anything else."
"Oh, Dodo," said Celia, "will you not have the bow−windowed room up−stairs?"
Mr. Casaubon led the way thither. The bow−window looked down the avenue of limes;
the furniture was all of a faded blue, and there were miniatures of ladies and gentlemen with
powdered hair hanging in a group. A piece of tapestry over a door also showed a blue−green
world with a pale stag in it. The chairs and tables were thin−legged and easy to upset. It was
a room where one might fancy the ghost of a tight−laced lady revisiting the scene of her
embroidery. A light bookcase contained duodecimo volumes of polite literature in calf,
completing the furniture.
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"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, "this would be a pretty room with some new hangings, sofas,
and that sort of thing. A little bare now."
"No, uncle," said Dorothea, eagerly. "Pray do not speak of altering anything. There are
so many other things in the world that want altering – I like to take these things as they are.
And you like them as they are, don't you?" she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon. "Perhaps
this was your mother's room when she was young."
"It was," he said, with his slow bend of the head.
"This is your mother," said Dorothea, who had turned to examine the group of
miniatures. "It is like the tiny one you brought me; only, I should think, a better portrait.
And this one opposite, who is this?"
"Her elder sister. They were, like you and your sister, the only two children of their
parents, who hang above them, you see."
"The sister is pretty," said Celia, implying that she thought less favorably of Mr.
Casaubon's mother. It was a new open ing to Celia's imagination, that he came of a family
who had all been young in their time – the ladies wearing necklaces.
"It is a peculiar face," said Dorothea, looking closely. "Those deep gray eyes rather near
together – and the delicate irregular nose with a sort of ripple in it – and all the powdered
curls hanging backward. Altogether it seems to me peculiar rather than pretty. There is not
even a family likeness between her and your mother."
"No. And they were not alike in their lot."
"You did not mention her to me," said Dorothea.
"My aunt made an unfortunate marriage. I never saw her."
Dorothea wondered a little, but felt that it would be indelicate just then to ask for any
information which Mr. Casaubon did not proffer, and she turned to the window to admire
the view. The sun had lately pierced the gray, and the avenue of limes cast shadows.
"Shall we not walk in the garden now?" said Dorothea.
"And you would like to see the church, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "It is a droll little
church. And the village. It all lies in a nut−shell. By the way, it will suit you, Dorothea; for
the cottages are like a row of alms−houses – little gardens, gilly−flowers, that sort of thing."
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"Yes, please," said Dorothea, looking at Mr. Casaubon, "I should like to see all that."
She had got nothing from him more graphic about the Lowick cottages than that they were
"not bad."
They were soon on a gravel walk which led chiefly between grassy borders and clumps
of trees, this being the nearest way to the church, Mr. Casaubon said. At the little gate
leading into the churchyard there was a pause while Mr. Casaubon went to the parsonage
close by to fetch a key. Celia, who had been hanging a little in the rear, came up presently,
when she saw that Mr. Casaubon was gone away, and said in her easy staccato, which
always seemed to contradict the suspicion of any malicious intent –
"Do you know, Dorothea, I saw some one quite young coming up one of the walks."
"Is that astonishing, Celia?"
"There may be a young gardener, you know – why not?" said Mr. Brooke. "I told
Casaubon he should change his gardener."
"No, not a gardener," said Celia; "a gentleman with a sketch−book. He had light−brown
curls. I only saw his back. But he was quite young."
"The curate's son, perhaps," said Mr. Brooke. "Ah, there is Casaubon again, and Tucker
with him. He is going to introduce Tucker. You don't know Tucker yet."
Mr. Tucker was the middle−aged curate, one of the "inferior clergy," who are usually
not wanting in sons. But after the introduction, the conversation did not lead to any question
about his family, and the startling apparition of youthfulness was forgotten by every one but
Celia. She inwardly declined to believe that the light−brown curls and slim figure could
have any relationship to Mr. Tucker, who was just as old and musty−looking as she would
have expected Mr. Casaubon's curate to be; doubtless an excellent man who would go to
heaven (for Celia wished not to be unprincipled), but the corners of his mouth were so
unpleasant. Celia thought with some dismalness of the time she should have to spend as
bridesmaid at Lowick, while the curate had probably no pretty little children whom she
could like, irrespective of principle.
Mr. Tucker was invaluable in their walk; and perhaps Mr. Casaubon had not been
without foresight on this head, the curate being able to answer all Dorothea's questions about
the villagers and the other parishioners. Everybody, he assured her, was well off in Lowick:
not a cottager in those double cottages at a low rent but kept a pig, and the strips of garden at
the back were well tended. The small boys wore excellent corduroy, the girls went out as
tidy servants, or did a little straw−plaiting at home: no looms here, no Dissent; and though
the public disposition was rather towards laying by money than towards spirituality, there
was not much vice. The speckled fowls were so numerous that Mr. Brooke observed, "Your
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farmers leave some barley for the women to glean, I see. The poor folks here might have a
fowl in their pot, as the good French king used to wish for all his people. The French eat a
good many fowls – skinny fowls, you know."
"I think it was a very cheap wish of his," said Dorothea, indignantly. "Are kings such
monsters that a wish like that must be reckoned a royal virtue?"
"And if he wished them a skinny fowl," said Celia, "that would not be nice. But perhaps
he wished them to have fat fowls."
"Yes, but the word has dropped out of the text, or perhaps was subauditum; that is,
present in the king's mind, but not uttered," said Mr. Casaubon, smiling and bending his
head towards Celia, who immediately dropped backward a little, because she could not bear
Mr. Casaubon to blink at her.
Dorothea sank into silence on the way back to the house. She felt some disappointment,
of which she was yet ashamed, that there was nothing for her to do in Lowick; and in the
next few minutes her mind had glanced over the possibility, which she would have
preferred, of finding that her home would be in a parish which had a larger share of the
world's misery, so that she might have had more active duties in it. Then, recurring to the
future actually before her, she made a picture of more complete devotion to Mr. Casaubon's
aims in which she would await new duties. Many such might reveal themselves to the higher
knowledge gained by her in that companionship.
Mr. Tucker soon left them, having some clerical work which would not allow him to
lunch at the Hall; and as they were re−entering the garden through the little gate, Mr.
Casaubon said –
"You seem a little sad, Dorothea. I trust you are pleased with what you have seen."
"I am feeling something which is perhaps foolish and wrong," answered Dorothea, with
her usual openness – "almost wishing that the people wanted more to be done for them here.
I have known so few ways of making my life good for anything. Of course, my notions of
usefulness must be narrow. I must learn new ways of helping people."
"Doubtless," said Mr. Casaubon. "Each position has its corresponding duties. Yours, I
trust, as the mistress of Lowick, will not leave any yearning unfulfilled."
"Indeed, I believe that," said Dorothea, earnestly. "Do not suppose that I am sad."
"That is well. But, if you are not tired, we will take another way to the house than that
by which we came."
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Dorothea was not at all tired, and a little circuit was made towards a fine yew−tree, the
chief hereditary glory of the grounds on this side of the house. As they approached it, a
figure, conspicuous on a dark background of evergreens, was seated on a bench, sketching
the old tree. Mr. Brooke, who was walking in front with Celia, turned his head, and said –
"Who is that youngster, Casaubon?"
They had come very near when Mr. Casaubon answered –
"That is a young relative of mine, a second cousin: the grandson, in fact," he added,
looking at Dorothea, "of the lady whose portrait you have been noticing, my aunt Julia."
The young man had laid down his sketch−book and risen. His bushy light−brown curls,
as well as his youthfulness, identified him at once with Celia's apparition.
"Dorothea, let me introduce to you my cousin, Mr. Ladislaw. Will, this is Miss Brooke."
The cousin was so close now, that, when he lifted his hat, Dorothea could see a pair of
gray eves rather near together, a delicate irregular nose with a little ripple in it, and hair
falling backward; but there was a mouth and chin of a more prominent, threatening aspect
than belonged to the type of the grandmother's miniature. Young Ladislaw did not feel it
necessary to smile, as if he were charmed with this introduction to his future second cousin
and her relatives; but wore rather a pouting air of discontent.
"You are an artist, I see," said Mr. Brooke, taking up the sketch−book and turning it
over in his unceremonious fashion.
"No, I only sketch a little. There is nothing fit to be seen there," said young Ladislaw,
coloring, perhaps with temper rather than modesty.
"Oh, come, this is a nice bit, now. I did a little in this way myself at one time, you
know. Look here, now; this is what I call a nice thing, done with what we used to call
BRIO." Mr. Brooke held out towards the two girls a large colored sketch of stony ground
and trees, with a pool.
"I am no judge of these things," said Dorothea, not coldly, but with an eager deprecation
of the appeal to her. "You know, uncle, I never see the beauty of those pictures which you
say are so much praised. They are a language I do not understand. I suppose there is some
relation between pictures and nature which I am too ignorant to feel – just as you see what a
Greek sentence stands for which means nothing to me." Dorothea looked up at Mr.
Casaubon, who bowed his head towards her, while Mr. Brooke said, smiling nonchalantly –
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"Bless me, now, how different people are! But you had a bad style of teaching, you
know – else this is just the thing for girls – sketching, fine art and so on. But you took to
drawing plans; you don't understand morbidezza, and that kind of thing. You will come to
my house, I hope, and I will show you what I did in this way," he continued, turning to
young Ladislaw, who had to be recalled from his preoccupation in observing Dorothea.
Ladislaw had made up his mind that she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to
marry Casaubon, and what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have confirmed
that opinion even if he had believed her. As it was, he took her words for a covert judgment,
and was certain that she thought his sketch detestable. There was too much cleverness in her
apology: she was laughing both at her uncle and himself. But what a voice! It was like the
voice of a soul that had once lived in an AEolian harp. This must be one of Nature's
inconsistencies. There could be no sort of passion in a girl who would marry Casaubon. But
he turned from her, and bowed his thanks for Mr. Brooke's invitation.
"We will turn over my Italian engravings together," continued that good−natured man.
"I have no end of those things, that I have laid by for years. One gets rusty in this part of the
country, you know. Not you, Casaubon; you stick to your studies; but my best ideas get
undermost – out of use, you know. You clever young men must guard against indolence. I
was too indolent, you know: else I might have been anywhere at one time."
"That is a seasonable admonition," said Mr. Casaubon; "but now we will pass on to the
house, lest the young ladies should be tired of standing."
When their backs were turned, young Ladislaw sat down to go on with his sketching,
and as he did so his face broke into an expression of amusement which increased as he went
on drawing, till at last he threw back his head and laughed aloud. Partly it was the reception
of his own artistic production that tickled him; partly the notion of his grave cousin as the
lover of that girl; and partly Mr. Brooke's definition of the place he might have held but for
the impediment of indolence. Mr. Will Ladislaw's sense of the ludicrous lit up his features
very agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and had no mixture of sneering and
self−exaltation.
"What is your nephew going to do with himself, Casaubon?" said Mr. Brooke, as they
went on.
"My cousin, you mean – not my nephew."
"Yes, yes, cousin. But in the way of a career, you know."
"The answer to that question is painfully doubtful. On leaving Rugby he declined to go
to an English university, where I would gladly have placed him, and chose what I must
consider the anomalous course of studying at Heidelberg. And now he wants to go abroad
again, without any special object, save the vague purpose of what he calls culture,
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preparation for he knows not what. He declines to choose a profession."
"He has no means but what you furnish, I suppose."
"I have always given him and his friends reason to understand that I would furnish in
moderation what was necessary for providing him with a scholarly education, and launching
him respectably. I am−therefore bound to fulfil the expectation so raised," said Mr.
Casaubon, putting his conduct in the light of mere rectitude: a trait of delicacy which
Dorothea noticed with admiration.
"He has a thirst for travelling; perhaps he may turn out a Bruce or a Mungo Park," said
Mr. Brooke. "I had a notion of that myself at one time."
"No, he has no bent towards exploration, or the enlargement of our geognosis: that
would be a special purpose which I could recognize with some approbation, though without
felicitating him on a career which so often ends in premature and violent death. But so far is
he from having any desire for a more accurate knowledge of the earth's surface, that he said
he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that there should be some unknown
regions preserved as hunting grounds for the poetic imagination."
"Well, there is something in that, you know," said Mr. Brooke, who had certainly an
impartial mind.
"It is, I fear, nothing more than a part of his general inaccuracy and indisposition to
thoroughness of all kinds, which would be a bad augury for him in any profession, civil or
sacred, even were he so far submissive to ordinary rule as to choose one."
"Perhaps he has conscientious scruples founded on his own unfitness," said Dorothea,
who was interesting herself in finding a favorable explanation. "Because the law and
medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives
and fortunes depend on them."
"Doubtless; but I fear that my young relative Will Ladislaw is chiefly determined in his
aversion to these callings by a dislike to steady application, and to that kind of acquirement
which is needful instrumentally, but is not charming or immediately inviting to
self−indulgent taste. I have insisted to him on what Aristotle has stated with admirable
brevity, that for the achievement of any work regarded as an end there must be a prior
exercise of many energies or acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience. I
have pointed to my own manuscript volumes, which represent the toil of years preparatory
to a work not yet accomplished. But in vain. To careful reasoning of this kind he replies by
calling himself Pegasus, and every form of prescribed work `harness.'"
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Celia laughed. She was surprised to find that Mr. Casaubon could say something quite
amusing.
"Well, you know, he may turn out a Byron, a Chatterton, a Churchill – that sort of thing
– there's no telling," said Mr. Brooke. "Shall you let him go to Italy, or wherever else he
wants to go?"
"Yes; I have agreed to furnish him with moderate supplies for a year or so; he asks no
more. I shall let him be tried by the test of freedom."
"That is very kind of you," said Dorothea, looking up at Mr. Casaubon with delight. "It
is noble. After all, people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to
themselves, may they not? They may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We
should be very patient with each other, I think."
"I suppose it is being engaged to be married that has made you think patience good,"
said Celia, as soon as she and Dorothea were alone together, taking off their wrappings.
"You mean that I am very impatient, Celia."
"Yes; when people don't do and say just what you like." Celia had become less afraid of
"saying things" to Dorothea since this engagement: cleverness seemed to her more pitiable
than ever.
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CHAPTER X.
"H
e had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to wear than the skin of a
bear not yet killed." – FULLER.
Young Ladislaw did not pay that visit to which Mr. Brooke had invited him, and only
six days afterwards Mr. Casaubon mentioned that his young relative had started for the
Continent, seeming by this cold vagueness to waive inquiry. Indeed, Will had declined to fix
on any more precise destination than the entire area of Europe. Genius, he held, is
necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the utmost play for its
spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await those messages from the universe which
summon it to its peculiar work, only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all
sublime chances. The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had sincerely tried many
of them. He was not excessively fond of wine, but he had several times taken too much,
simply as an experiment in that form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he was faint, and then
supped on lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly original
had resulted from these measures; and the effects of the opium had convinced him that there
was an entire dissimilarity between his constitution and De Quincey's. The superadded
circumstance which would evolve the genius had not yet come; the universe had not yet
beckoned. Even Caesar's fortune at one time was, but a grand presentiment. We know what
a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless
embryos. – In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called
possibilities. Will saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing no
chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose plodding application,
rows of note−books, and small taper of learned theory exploring the tossed ruins of the
world, seemed to enforce a moral entirely encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the
intentions of the universe with regard to himself. He held that reliance to be a mark of
genius; and certainly it is no mark to the contrary; genius consisting neither in self−conceit
nor in humility, but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, but something in
particular. Let him start for the Continent, then, without our pronouncing on his future.
Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment interests me more in relation to
Mr. Casaubon than to his young cousin. If to Dorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere
occasion which had set alight the fine inflammable material of her youthful illusions, does it
follow that he was fairly represented in the minds of those less impassioned personages who
have hitherto delivered their judgments concerning him? I protest against any absolute
conclusion, any prejudice derived from Mrs. Cadwallader's contempt for a neighboring
clergyman's alleged greatness of soul, or Sir James Chettam's poor opinion of his rival's legs,
– from Mr. Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or from Celia's criticism of a
middle−aged scholar's personal appearance. I am not sure that the greatest man of his age, if
ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of himself
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in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to
have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has
rather a chilling rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or fine feeling
in him. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of hieroglyphs write detestable verses?
Has the theory of the solar system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational
tact? Suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener interest,
what is the report of his own consciousness about his doings or capacity: with what
hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors; what fading of hopes, or what deeper fixity of
self−delusion the years are marking off within him; and with what spirit he wrestles against
universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and bring his heart to its final
pause. Doubtless his lot is important in his own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he
asks too large a place in our consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer
him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held sublime for our
neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us. Mr. Casaubon,
too, was the centre of his own world; if he was liable to think that others were providentially
made for him, and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness for the author of a
"Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not quite alien to us, and, like the other mendicant
hopes of mortals, claims some of our pity.
Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched him more nearly than it
did any one of the persons who have hitherto shown their disapproval of it, and in the
present stage of things I feel more tenderly towards his experience of success than towards
the disappointment of the amiable Sir James. For in truth, as the day fixed for his marriage
came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find his spirits rising; nor did the contemplation of that
matrimonial garden scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was to be bordered
with flowers, prove persistently more enchanting bo him than the accustomed vaults where
he walked taper in hand. He did not confess to himself, still less could he have breathed to
another, his surprise that though he had won a lovely and noble−hearted girl he had not won
delight, – which he had also regarded as an object to be found by search. It is true that he
knew all the classical passages implying the contrary; but knowing classical passages, we
find, is a mode of motion, which explains why they leave so little extra force for their
personal application.
Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studious bachelorhood had stored up for
him a compound interest of enjoyment, and that large drafts on his affections would not fail
to be honored; for we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and
act fatally on the strength of them. And now he was in danger of being saddened by the very
conviction that his circumstances were unusually happy: there was nothing external by
which he could account for a certain blankness of sensibility which came over him just when
his expectant gladness should have been most lively, just when he exchanged the
accustomed dulness of his Lowick library for his visits to the Grange. Here was a weary
experience in which he was as utterly condemned to loneliness as in the despair which
sometimes threatened him while toiling in the morass of authorship without seeming nearer
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to the goal. And his was that worst loneliness which would shrink from sympathy. He could
not but wish that Dorothea should think him not less happy than the world would expect her
successful suitor to be; and in relation to his authorship he leaned on her young trust and
veneration, he liked to draw forth her fresh interest in listening, as a means of
encouragement to himself: in talking to her he presented all his performance and intention
with the reflected confidence of the pedagogue, and rid himself for the time of that chilling
ideal audience which crowded his laborious uncreative hours with the vaporous pressure of
Tartarean shades.
For to Dorothea, after that toy−box history of the world adapted to young ladies which
had made the chief part of her education, Mr. Casaubon's talk about his great book was full
of new vistas; and this sense of revelation, this surprise of a nearer introduction to Stoics and
Alexandrians, as people who had ideas not totally unlike her own, kept in abeyance for the
time her usual eagerness for a binding theory which could bring her own life and doctrine
into strict connection with that amazing past, and give the remotest sources of knowledge
some bearing on her actions. That more complete teaching would come – Mr. Casaubon
would tell her all that: she was looking forward to higher initiation in ideas, as she was
looking forward to marriage, and blending her dim conceptions of both. It would be a great
mistake to suppose that Dorothea would have cared about any share in Mr. Casaubon's
learning as mere accomplishment; for though opinion in the neighborhood of Freshitt and
Tipton had pronounced her clever, that epithet would not have described her to circles in
whose more precise vocabulary cleverness implies mere aptitude for knowing and doing,
apart from character. All her eagerness for acquirement lay within that full current of
sympathetic motive in which her ideas and impulses were habitually swept along. She did
not want to deck herself with knowledge – to wear it loose from the nerves and blood that
fed her action; and if she had written a book she must have done it as Saint Theresa did,
under the command of an authority that constrained her conscience. But something she
yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at once rational and ardent; and
since the time was gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer
heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but knowledge? Surely learned
men kept−the only oil; and who more learned than Mr. Casaubon?
Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea's joyous grateful expectation was unbroken, and
however her lover might occasionally be conscious of flatness, he could never refer it to any
slackening of her affectionate interest.
The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extending the wedding journey
as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon was anxious for this because he wished to inspect some
manuscripts in the Vatican.
"I still regret that your sister is not to accompany us," he said one morning, some time
after it had been ascertained that Celia objected to go, and that Dorothea did not wish for her
companionship. "You will have many lonely hours, Dorotheas, for I shall be constrained to
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make the utmost use of my time during our stay in Rome, and I should feel more at liberty if
you had a companion."
The words "I should feel more at liberty" grated on Dorothea. For the first time in
speaking to Mr. Casaubon she colored from annoyance.
"You must have misunderstood me very much," she said, "if you think I should not
enter into the value of your time – if you think that I should not willingly give up whatever
interfered with your using it to the best purpose."
"That is very amiable in you, my dear Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon, not in the least
noticing that she was hurt; "but if you had a lady as your companion, I could put you both
under the care of a cicerone, and we could thus achieve two purposes in the same space of
time."
"I beg you will not refer to this again," said Dorothea, rather haughtily. But immediately
she feared that she was wrong, and turning towards him she laid her hand on his, adding in a
different tone, "Pray do not be anxious about me. I shall have so much to think of when I am
alone. And Tantripp will be a sufficient companion, just to take care of me. I could not bear
to have Celia: she would be miserable."
It was time to dress. There was to be a dinner−party that day, the last of the parties
which were held at the Grange as proper preliminaries to the wedding, and Dorothea was
glad of a reason for moving away at once on the sound of the bell, as if she needed more
than her usual amount of preparation. She was ashamed of being irritated from some cause
she could not define even to herse1f; for though she had no intention to be untruthful, her
reply had not touched the real hurt within her. Mr. Casaubon's words had been quite
reasonable, yet they had brought a vague instantaneous sense of aloofness on his part.
"Surely I am in a strangely selfish weak state of mind," she said to herself. "How can I
have a husband who is so much above me without knowing that he needs me less than I
need him?"
Having convinced herself that Mr. Casaubon was altogether right, she recovered her
equanimity, and was an agreeable image of serene dignity when she came into the
drawing−room in her silver−gray dress – the simple lines of her dark−brown hair parted
over her brow and coiled massively behind, in keeping with the entire absence from her
manner and expression of all search after mere effect. Sometimes when Dorothea was in
company, there seemed to be as complete an air of repose about her as if she had been a
picture of Santa Barbara looking out from her tower into the clear air; but these intervals of
quietude made the energy of her speech and emotion the more remarked when some
outward appeal had touched her.
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She was naturally the subject of many observations this evening, for the dinner−party
was large and rather more miscellaneous as to the male portion than any which had been
held at the Grange since Mr. Brooke's nieces had resided with him, so that the talking was
done in duos and trios more or less inharmonious. There was the newly elected mayor of
Middlemarch, who happened to be a manufacturer; the philanthropic banker his
brother−in−law, who predominated so much in the town that some called him a Methodist,
others a hypocrite, according to the resources of their vocabulary; and there were various
professional men. In fact, Mrs. Cadwallader said that Brooke was beginning to treat the
Middlemarchers, and that she preferred the farmers at the tithe−dinner, who drank her health
unpretentiously, and were not ashamed of their grandfathers' furniture. For in that part of the
country, before reform had done its notable part in developing the political consciousness,
there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of parties; so that Mr.
Brooke's miscellaneous invitations seemed to belong to that general laxity which came from
his inordinate travel and habit of taking too much in the form of ideas.
Already, as Miss Brooke passed out of the dining−room, opportunity was found for
some interjectional "asides"
"A fine woman, Miss Brooke! an uncommonly fine woman, by God!" said Mr.
Standish, the old lawyer, who had been so long concerned with the landed gentry that he had
become landed himself, and used that oath in a deep−mouthed manner as a sort of armorial
bearings, stamping the speech of a man who held a good position.
Mr. Bulstrode, the banker, seemed to be addressed, but that gentleman disliked
coarseness and profanity, and merely bowed. The remark was taken up by Mr. Chichely, a
middle−aged bachelor and coursing celebrity, who had a complexion something like an
Easter egg, a few hairs carefully arranged, and a carriage implying the consciousness of a
distinguished appearance.
"Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to
please us. There should be a little filigree about a woman – something of the coquette. A
man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a dead set she makes at you the better."
"There's some truth in that," said Mr. Standish, disposed to be genial. "And, by God, it's
usually the way with them. I suppose it answers some wise ends: Providence made them so,
eh, Bulstrode?"
"I should be disposed to refer coquetry to another source," said Mr. Bulstrode. "I should
rather refer it to the devil."
"Ay, to be sure, there should be a little devil in a woman," said Mr. Chichely, whose
study of the fair sex seemed to have been detrimental to his theology. "And I like them
blond, with a certain gait, and a swan neck. Between ourselves, the mayor's daughter is more
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to my taste than Miss Brooke or Miss Celia either. If I were a marrying man I should choose
Miss Vincy before either of them."
"Well, make up, make up," said Mr. Standish, jocosely; "you see the middle−aged
fellows early the day."
Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to incur the
certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose.
The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely's ideal was of course not
present; for Mr. Brooke, always objecting to go too far, would not have chosen that his
nieces should meet the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer, unless it were on a public
occasion. The feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs.
Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel's widow, was not only
unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on the ground of her complaint,
which puzzled the doctors, and seemed clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional
knowledge might need the supplement of quackery. Lady Chettam, who attributed her own
remarkable health to home−made bitters united with constant medical attendance, entered
with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew's account of symptoms, and into
the amazing futility in her case of all, strengthening medicines.
"Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear?" said the mild but stately
dowager, turning to Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively, when Mrs. Renfrew's attention was
called away.
"It strengthens the disease," said the Rector's wife, much too well−born not to be an
amateur in medicine. "Everything depends on the constitution: some people make fat, some
blood, and some bile – that's my view of the matter; and whatever they take is a sort of grist
to the mill."
"Then she ought to take medicines that would reduce – reduce the disease, you know, if
you are right, my dear. And I think what you say is reasonable."
"Certainly it is reasonable. You have two sorts of potatoes, fed on the same soil. One of
them grows more and more watery – "
"Ah! like this poor Mrs. Renfrew – that is what I think. Dropsy! There is no swelling
yet – it is inward. I should say she ought to take drying medicines, shouldn't you? – or a dry
hot−air bath. Many things might be tried, of a drying nature."
"Let her try a certain person's pamphlets," said Mrs. Cadwallader in an undertone,
seeing the gentlemen enter. "He does not want drying."
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"Who, my dear?" said Lady Chettam, a charming woman, not so quick as to nullify the
pleasure of explanation.
"The bridegroom – Casaubon. He has certainly been drying up faster since the
engagement: the flame of passion, I suppose."
"I should think he is far from having a good constitution," said Lady Chettam, with a
still deeper undertone. "And then his studies – so very dry, as you say."
"Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a death's head skinned over for the
occasion. Mark my words: in a year from this time that girl will hate him. She looks up to
him as an oracle now, and by−and−by she will be at the other extreme. All flightiness!"
"How very shocking! I fear she is headstrong. But tell me – you know all about him – is
there anything very bad? What is the truth?"
"The truth? he is as bad as the wrong physic – nasty to take, and sure to disagree."
"There could not be anything worse than that," said Lady Chettam, with so vivid a
conception of the physic that she seemed to have learned something exact about Mr.
Casaubon's disadvantages. "However, James will hear nothing against Miss Brooke. He says
she is the mirror of women still."
"That is a generous make−believe of his. Depend upon it, he likes little Celia better, and
she appreciates him. I hope you like my little Celia?"
"Certainly; she is fonder of geraniums, and seems more docile, though not so fine a
figure. But we were talking of physic. Tell me about this new young surgeon, Mr. Lydgate. I
am told he is wonderfully clever: he certainly looks it – a fine brow indeed."
"He is a gentleman. I heard him talking to Humphrey. He talks well."
"Yes. Mr. Brooke says he is one of the Lydgates of Northumberland, really well
connected. One does not expect it in a practitioner of that kind. For my own part, I like a
medical man more on a footing with the servants; they are often all the cleverer. I assure you
I found poor Hicks's judgment unfailing; I never knew him wrong. He was coarse and
butcher−like, but he knew my constitution. It was a loss to me his going off so suddenly.
Dear me, what a very animated conversation Miss Brooke seems to be having with this Mr.
Lydgate!"
"She is talking cottages and hospitals with him," said Mrs. Cadwallader, whose ears and
power of interpretation were quick. "I believe he is a sort of philanthropist, so Brooke is sure
to take him up."
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"James," said Lady Chettam when her son came near, "bring Mr. Lydgate and introduce
him to me. I want to test him."
The affable dowager declared herself delighted with this opportunity of making Mr.
Lydgate's acquaintance, having heard of his success in treating fever on a new plan.
Mr. Lydgate had the medical accomplishment of looking perfectly grave whatever
nonsense was talked to him, and his dark steady eyes gave him impressiveness as a listener.
He was as little as possible like the lamented Hicks, especially in a certain careless
refinement about his toilet and utterance. Yet Lady Chettam gathered much confidence in
him. He confirmed her view of her own constitution as being peculiar, by admitting that all
constitutions might be called peculiar, and he did not deny that hers might be more peculiar
than others. He did not approve of a too lowering system, including reckless cupping, nor,
on the other hand, of incessant port wine and bark. He said "I think so" with an air of so
much deference accompanying the insight of agreement, that she formed the most cordial
opinion of his talents.
"I am quite pleased with your protege," she said to Mr. Brooke before going away.
"My protege? – dear me! – who is that?" said Mr. Brooke.
"This young Lydgate, the new doctor.−He seems to me to understand his profession
admirably."
"Oh, Lydgate! he is not my protege, you know; only I knew an uncle of his who sent me
a letter about him. However, I think he is likely to be first−rate – has studied in Paris, knew
Broussais; has ideas, you know – wants to raise the profession."
"Lydgate has lots of ideas, quite new, about ventilation and diet, that sort of thing,"
resumed Mr. Brooke, after he had handed out Lady Chettam, and had returned to be civil to
a group of Middlemarchers.
"Hang it, do you think that is quite sound? – upsetting The old treatment, which has
made Englishmen what they re?" said Mr. Standish.
"Medical knowledge is at a low ebb among us," said Mr. Bulstrode, who spoke in a
subdued tone, and had rather a sickly wir "I, for my part, hail the advent of Mr. Lydgate. I
hope to find good reason for confiding the new hospital to his management."
"That is all very fine," replied Mr. Standish, who was not fond of Mr. Bulstrode; "if you
like him to try experiments on your hospital patients, and kill a few people for charity I have
no objection. But I am not going to hand money out of my purse to have experiments tried
on me. I like treatment that has been tested a little."
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"Well, you know, Standish, every dose you take is an experiment−an experiment, you
know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards the lawyer.
"Oh, if you talk in that sense!" said Mr. Standish, with as much disgust at such
non−legal quibbling as a man can well betray towards a valuable client.
"I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me without reducing me to a
skeleton, like poor Grainger," said Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a florid man, who would have
served for a study of flesh in striking contrast with the Franciscan tints of Mr. Bulstrode.
"It's an uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the shafts of
disease, as somebody said, – and I think it a very good expression myself."
Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing. He had quitted the party early, and would
have thought it altogether tedious but for the novelty of certain introductions, especially the
introduction to Miss Brooke, whose youthful bloom, with her approaching marriage to that
faded scholar, and her interest in matters socially useful, gave her the piquancy of an
unusual combination.
"She is a good creature – that fine girl – but a little too earnest," he thought. "It is
troublesome to talk to such women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too
ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall hack on their moral sense
to settle things after their own taste."
Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate's style of woman any more than Mr.
Chichely's. Considered, indeed, in relation to the latter, whose mied was matured, she was
altogether a mistake, and calculated to shock his trust in final causes, including the
adaptation of fine young women to purplefaced bachelors. But Lydgate was less ripe, and
might possibly have experience before him which would modify his opinion as to the most
excellent things in woman.
Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of these gentlemen under her
maiden name. Not long after that dinner−party she had become Mrs. Casaubon, and was on
her way to Rome.
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CHAPTER XI.
"B
ut deeds and language such as men do use, And persons such as comedy would
choose, When she would show an image of the times, And sport with human follies, not
with crimes." – BEN JONSON.
Lydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fascinated by a woman strikingly
different from Miss Brooke: he did not in the least suppose that he had lost his balance and
fallen in love, but he had said of that particular woman, "She is grace itself; she is perfectly
lovely and accomplished. That is what a woman ought to be: she ought to produce the effect
of exquisite music." Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be
faced with philosophy and investigated by science. But Rosamond Vincy seemed to have the
true melodic charm; and when a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he
had intended to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her
resolution rather than on his. Lydgate believed that he should not marry for several years:
not marry until he had trodden out a good clear path for himself away from the broad road
which was quite ready made. He had seen Miss Vincy above his horizon almost as long as it
had taken Mr. Casaubon to become engaged and married: but this learned gentleman was
possessed of a fortune; he had assembled his voluminous notes, and had made that sort of
reputation which precedes performance, – often the larger part of a man's fame. He took a
wife, as we have seen, to adorn the remaining quadrant of his course, and be a little moon
that would cause hardly a calculable perturbation. But Lydgate was young, poor, ambitious.
He had his half−century before him instead of behind him, and he had come to Middlemarch
bent on doing many things that were not directly fitted to make his fortune or even secure
him a good income. To a man under such circumstances, taking a wife is something more
than a question of adornment, however highly he may rate this; and Lydgate was disposed to
give it the first place among wifely functions. To his taste, guided by a single conversation,
here was the point on which Miss Brooke would be found wanting, notwithstanding her
undeniable beauty. She did not look at things from the proper feminine angle. The society of
such women was about as relaxing as going from your work to teach the second form,
instead of reclining in a paradise with sweet laughs for bird−notes, and blue eyes for a
heaven.
Certainly nothing at present could seem much less important to Lydgate than the turn of
Miss Brooke's mind, or to Miss Brooke than the qualities of the woman who had attracted
this young surgeon. But any one watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots,
sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on another, which tells like a calculated
irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our unintroduced
neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.
Old provincial society had its share of this subtle movement: had not only its striking
downfalls, its brilliant young professional dandies who ended by living up an entry with a
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CHAPTER XI. 78
drab and six children for their establishment, but also those less marked vicissitudes which
are constantly shifting the boundaries of social intercourse, and begetting new consciousness
of interdependence. Some slipped a little downward, some got higher footing: people denied
aspirates, gained wealth, and fastidious gentlemen stood for boroughs; some were caught in
political currents, some in ecclesiastical, and perhaps found themselves surprisingly grouped
in consequence; while a few personages or families that stood with rocky firmness amid all
this fluctuation, were slowly presenting new aspects in spite of solidity, and altering with the
double change of self and beholder. Municipal town and rural parish gradually made fresh
threads of connection – gradually, as the old stocking gave way to the savings−bank, and the
worship of the solar guinea became extinct; while squires and baronets, and even lords who
had once lived blamelessly afar from the civic mind, gathered the faultiness of closer
acquaintanceship. Settlers, too, came from distant counties, some with an alarming novelty
of skill, others with an offensive advantage in cunning. In fact, much the same sort of
movement and mixture went on in old England as we find in older Herodotus, who also, in
telling what had been, thought it well to take a woman's lot for his starting−point; though Io,
as a maiden apparently beguiled by attractive merchandise, was the reverse of Miss Brooke,
and in this respect perhaps bore more resemblance to Rosamond Vincy, who had excellent
taste in costume, with that nymph−like figure and pure blindness which give the largest
range to choice in the flow and color of drapery. But these things made only part of her
charm. She was admitted to be the flower of Mrs. Lemon's school, the chief school in the
county, where the teaching included all that was demanded in the accomplished female –
even to extras, such as the getting in and out of a carriage. Mrs. Lemon herself had always
held up Miss Vincy as an example: no pupil, she said, exceeded that young lady for mental
acquisition and propriety of speech, while her musical execution was quite exceptional. We
cannot help the way in which people speak of us, and probably if Mrs. Lemon had
undertaken to describe Juliet or Imogen, these heroines would not have seemed poetical. The
first vision of Rosamond would have been enough with most judges to dispel any prejudice
excited by Mrs. Lemon's praise.
Lydgate could not be long in Middlemarch without having that agreeable vision, or
even without making the acquaintance of the Vincy family; for though Mr. Peacock, whose
practice he had paid something to enter on, had not been their doctor (Mrs. Vincy not liking
the lowering system adopted by him), he had many patients among their connections and
acquaintances. For who of any consequence in Middlemarch was not connected or at least
acquainted with the Vincys? They were old manufacturers, and had kept a good house for
three generations, in which there had naturally been much intermarrying with neighbors
more or less decidedly genteel. Mr. Vincy's sister had made a wealthy match in accepting
Mr. Bulstrode, who, however, as a man not born in the town, and altogether of dimly known
origin, was considered to have done well in uniting himself with a real Middlemarch family;
on the other hand, Mr. Vincy had descended a little, having taken an innkeeper's daughter.
But on this side too there was a cheering sense of money; for Mrs. Vincy's sister had been
second wife to rich old Mr. Featherstone, and had died childless years ago, so that her
nephews and nieces might be supposed to touch the affections of the widower. And it
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CHAPTER XI. 79
happened that Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Featherstone, two of Peacock's most important
patients, had, from different causes, given an especially good reception to his successor, who
had raised some partisanship as well as discussion. Mr. Wrench, medical attendant to the
Vincy family, very early had grounds for thinking lightly of Lydgate's professional
discretion, and there was no report about him which was not retailed at the Vincys', where
visitors were frequent. Mr. Vincy was more inclined to general good−fellowship than to
taking sides, but there was no need for him to be hasty in making any new man
acquaintance. Rosamond silently wished that her father would invite Mr. Lydgate. She was
tired of the faces and figures she had always been used to – the various irregular profiles and
gaits and turns of phrase distinguishing those Middlemarch young men whom she had
known as boys. She had been at school with girls of higher position, whose brothers, she felt
sure, it would have been possible for her to be more interested in, than in these inevitable
Middlemarch companions. But she would not have chosen to mention her wish to her father;
and he, for his part, was in no hurry on the subject. An alderman about to be mayor must
by−and−by enlarge his dinner−parties, but at present there were plenty of guests at his
well−spread table.
That table often remained covered with the relics of the family breakfast long after Mr.
Vincy had gone with his second son to the warehouse, and when Miss Morgan was already
far on in morning lessons with the younger girls in the schoolroom. It awaited the family
laggard, who found any sort of inconvenience (to others) less disagreeable than getting up
when he was called. This was the case one morning of the October in which we have lately
seen Mr. Casaubon visiting the Grange; and though the room was a little overheated with the
fire, which had sent the spaniel panting to a remote corner, Rosamond, for some reason,
continued to sit at her embroidery longer than usual, now and then giving herself a little
shake, and laying her work on her knee to contemplate it with an air of hesitating weariness.
Her mamma, who had returned from an excursion to the kitchen, sat on the other side of the
small work−table with an air of more entire placidity, until, the clock again giving notice
that it was going to strike, she looked up from the lace−mending which was occupying her
plump fingers and rang the bell.
"Knock at Mr. Fred's door again, Pritchard, and tell him it has struck half−past ten."
This was said without any change in the radiant good−humor of Mrs. Vincy's face, in
which forty−five years had delved neither angles nor parallels; and pushing back her pink
capstrings, she let her work rest on her lap, while she looked admiringly at her daughter.
"Mamma," said Rosamond, "when Fred comes down I wish you would not let him have
red herrings. I cannot bear the smell of them all over the house at this hour of the morning."
"Oh, my dear, you are so hard on your brothers! It is the only fault I have to find with
you. You are the sweetest temper in the world, but you are so tetchy with your brothers."
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CHAPTER XI. 80
"Not tetchy, mamma: you never hear me speak in an unladylike way."
"Well, but you want to deny them things."
"Brothers are so unpleasant."
"Oh, my dear, you must allow for young men. Be thankful if they have good hearts. A
woman must learn to put up with little things. You will be married some day."
"Not to any one who is like Fred."
"Don't decry your own brother, my dear. Few young men have less against them,
although he couldn't take his degree – I'm sure I can't understand why, for he seems to me
most clever. And you know yourself he was thought equal to the best society at college. So
particular as you are, my dear, I wonder you are not glad to have such a gentlemanly young
man for a brother. You are always finding fault with Bob because he is not Fred."
"Oh no, mamma, only because he is Bob."
"Well, my dear, you will not find any Middlemarch young man who has not something
against him."
"But" – here Rosamond's face broke into a smile which suddenly revealed two dimples.
She herself thought unfavorably of these dimples and smiled little in general society. "But I
shall not marry any Middlemarch young man."
"So it seems, my love, for you have as good as refused the pick of them; and if there's
better to be had, I'm sure there's no girl better deserves it."
"Excuse me, mamma – I wish you would not say, `the pick of them.'"
"Why, what else are they?"
"I mean, mamma, it is rather a vulgar expression."
"Very likely, my dear; I never was a good speaker. What should I say?"
"The best of them."
"Why, that seems just as plain and common. If I had had time to think, I should have
said, `the most superior young men.' But with your education you must know."
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CHAPTER XI. 81
"What must Rosy know, mother?" said Mr. Fred, who had slid in unobserved through
the half−open door while the ladies were bending over their work, and now going up to the
fire stood with his back towards it, warming the soles of his slippers.
"Whether it's right to say `superior young men,'" said Mrs. Vincy, ringing the bell.
"Oh, there are so many superior teas and sugars now. Superior is getting to be
shopkeepers' slang."
"Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?" said Rosamond, with mild gravity.
"Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class."
"There is correct English: that is not slang."
"I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays.
And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets."
"You will say anything, Fred, to gain your point."
"Well, tell me whether it is slang or poetry to call an ox a leg−plaiter."
"Of course you can call it poetry if you like."
"Aha, Miss Rosy, you don't know Homer from slang. I shall invent a new game; I shall
write bits of slang and poetry on slips, and give them to you to separate."
"Dear me, how amusing it is to hear young people talk!" said Mrs. Vincy, with cheerful
admiration.
"Have you got nothing else for my breakfast, Pritchard?" said Fred, to the servant who
brought in coffee and buttered toast; while he walked round the table surveying the ham,
potted beef, and other cold remnants, with an air of silent rejection, and polite forbearance
from signs of disgust.
"Should you like eggs, sir?"
"Eggs, no! Bring me a grilled bone."
"Really, Fred," said Rosamond, when the servant had left the room, "if you must have
hot things for breakfast, I wish you would come down earlier. You can get up at six o'clock
to go out hunting; I cannot understand why you find it so difficult to get up on other
mornings."
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CHAPTER XI. 82
"That is your want of understanding, Rosy. I can get up to go hunting because I like it."
"What would you think of me if I came down two hours after every one else and
ordered grilled bone?"
"I should think you were an uncommonly fast young lady," said Fred, eating his toast
with the utmost composure.
"I cannot see why brothers are to make themselves disagreeable, any more than sisters."
"I don't make myself disagreeable; it is you who find me so. Disagreeable is a word that
describes your feelings and not my actions."
"I think it describes the smell of grilled bone."
"Not at all. It describes a sensation in your little nose associated with certain finicking
notions which are the classics of Mrs. Lemon's school. Look at my mother you don't see her
objecting to everything except what she does herself. She is my notion of a pleasant
woman."
"Bless you both, my dears, and don't quarrel," said Mrs. Vincy, with motherly
cordiality. "Come, Fred, tell us all about the new doctor. How is your uncle pleased with
him?"
"Pretty well, I think. He asks Lydgate all sorts of questions and then screws up his face
while he hears the answers, as if they were pinching his toes. That's his way. Ah, here comes
my grilled bone."
"But how came you to stay out so late, my dear? You only said you were going to your
uncle's."
"Oh, I dined at Plymdale's. We had whist. Lydgate was there too."
"And what do you think of him? He is very gentlemanly, I suppose. They say he is of
excellent family – his relations quite county people."
"Yes," said Fred. "There was a Lydgate at John's who spent no end of money. I find this
man is a second cousin of his. But rich men may have very poor devils for second cousins."
"It always makes a difference, though, to be of good family," said Rosamond, with a
tone of decision which showed that she had thought on this subject. Rosamond felt that she
might have been happier if she had not been the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer.
She disliked anything which reminded her that her mother's father had been an innkeeper.
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CHAPTER XI. 83
Certainly any one remembering the fact might think that Mrs. Vincy had the air of a very
handsome good−humored landlady, accustomed to the most capricious orders of gentlemen.
"I thought it was odd his name was Tertius," said the bright−faced matron, "but of
course it's a name in the family. But now, tell us exactly what sort of man he is."
"Oh, tallish, dark, clever – talks well – rather a prig, I think."
"I never can make out what you mean by a prig," said Rosamond.
"A fellow who wants to show that he has opinions."
"Why, my dear, doctors must have opinions," said Mrs. Vincy. "What are they there for
else?"
"Yes, mother, the opinions they are paid for. But a prig is a fellow who is always
making you a present of his opinions."
"I suppose Mary Garth admires Mr. Lydgate," said Rosamond, not without a touch of
innuendo.
"Really, I can't say." said Fred, rather glumly, as he left the table, and taking up a novel
which he had brought down with him, threw himself into an arm−chair. "If you are jealous
of her, go oftener to Stone Court yourself and eclipse her."
"I wish you would not be so vulgar, Fred. If you have finished, pray ring the bell."
"It is true, though – what your brother says, Rosamond," Mrs. Vincy began, when the
servant had cleared the table. "It is a thousand pities you haven't patience to go and see your
uncle more, so proud of you as he is, and wanted you to live with him. There's no knowing
what he might have done for you as well as for Fred. God knows, I'm fond of having you at
home with me, but I can part with my children for their good. And now it stands to reason
that your uncle Featherstone will do something for Mary Garth."
"Mary Garth can bear being at Stone Court, because she likes that better than being a
governess," said Rosamond, folding up her work. "I would rather not have anything left to
me if I must earn it by enduring much of my uncle's cough and his ugly relations."
"He can't be long for this world, my dear; I wouldn't hasten his end, but what with
asthma and that inward complaint, let us hope there is something better for him in another.
And I have no ill−will toward's Mary Garth, but there's justice to be thought of. And Mr.
Featherstone's first wife brought him no money, as my sister did. Her nieces and nephews
can't have so much claim as my sister's. And I must say I think Mary Garth a dreadful plain
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CHAPTER XI. 84
girl – more fit for a governess."
"Every one would not agree with you there, mother," said Fred, who seemed to be able
to read and listen too.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, wheeling skilfully, "if she HAD some fortune left
her, – a man marries his wife's relations, and the Garths are so poor, and live in such a small
way. But I shall leave you to your studies, my dear; for I must go and do some shopping."
"Fred's studies are not very deep," said Rosamond, rising with her mamma, "he is only
reading a novel."
"Well, well, by−and−by he'll go to his Latin and things," said Mrs. Vincy, soothingly,
stroking her son's head. "There's a fire in the smoking−room on purpose. It's your father's
wish, you know – Fred, my dear – and I always tell him you will be good, and go to college
again to take your degree."
Fred drew his mother's hand down to his lips, but said nothing.
"I suppose you are not going out riding to−day?" said Rosamond, lingering a little after
her mamma was gone.
"No; why?"
"Papa says I may have the chestnut to ride now."
"You can go with me to−morrow, if you like. Only I am going to Stone Court,
remember."
"I want to ride so much, it is indifferent to me where we go." Rosamond really wished
to go to Stone Court, of all other places.
"Oh, I say, Rosy," said Fred, as she was passing out of the room, "if you are going to the
piano, let me come and play some airs with you."
"Pray do not ask me this morning."
"Why not this morning?"
"Really, Fred, I wish you would leave off playing the flute. A man looks very silly
playing the flute. And you play so out of tune."
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CHAPTER XI. 85
"When next any one makes love to you, Miss Rosamond, I will tell him how obliging
you are."
"Why should you expect me to oblige you by hearing you play the flute, any more than
I should expect you to oblige me by not playing it?"
"And why should you expect me to take you out riding?"
This question led to an adjustment, for Rosamond had set her mind on that particular
ride.
So Fred was gratified with nearly an hour's practice of "Ar hyd y nos," "Ye banks and
braes," and other favorite airs from his "Instructor on the Flute;" a wheezy performance, into
which he threw much ambition and an irrepressible hopefulness.
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CHAPTER XI. 86
CHAPTER XII.
"H
e had more tow on his distaffe Than Gerveis knew." – CHAUCER.
The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, lay through
a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and pastures, with hedgerows still
allowed to grow in bushy beauty and to spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details
gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from
childhood: the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees leaned
whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid−pasture; the high bank where the
ash−trees grew; the sudden slope of the old marl−pit making a red background for the
burdock; the huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach;
the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its
old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys with wondrous modulations of light and
shadow such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful. These
are the things that make the gamut of joy in landscape to midland−bred souls – the things
they toddled among, or perhaps learned by heart standing between their father's knees while
he drove leisurely.
But the road, even the byroad, was excellent; for Lowick, as we have seen, was not a
parish of muddy lanes and poor tenants; and it was into Lowick parish that Fred and
Rosamond entered after a couple of miles' riding. Another mile would bring them to Stone
Court, and at the end of the first half, the house was already visible, looking as if it had been
arrested in its growth toward a stone mansion by an unexpected budding of farm−buildings
on its left flank, which had hindered it from becoming anything more than the substantial
dwelling of a gentleman farmer. It was not the less agreeable an object in the distance for the
cluster of pinnacled corn−ricks which balanced the fine row of walnuts on the right.
Presently it was possible to discern something that might be a gig on the circular drive
before the front door.
"Dear me," said Rosamond, "I hope none of my uncle's horrible relations are there."
"They are, though. That is Mrs. Waule's gig – the last yellow gig left, I should think.
When I see Mrs. Waule in it, I understand how yellow can have been worn for mourning.
That gig seems to me more funereal than a hearse. But then Mrs. Waule always has black
crape on. How does she manage it, Rosy? Her friends can't always be dying."
"I don't know at all. And she is not in the least evangelical," said Rosamond,
reflectively, as if that religious point of view would have fully accounted for perpetual
crape. "And, not poor," she added, after a moment's pause.
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"No, by George! They are as rich as Jews, those Waules and Featherstones; I mean, for
people like them, who don't want to spend anything. And yet they hang about my uncle like
vultures, and are afraid of a farthing going away from their side of the family. But I believe
he hates them all."
The Mrs. Waule who was so far from being admirable in the eyes of these distant
connections, had happened to say this very morning (not at all with a defiant air, but in a
low, muffied, neutral tone, as of a voice heard through cotton wool) that she did not wish "to
enjoy their good opinion." She was seated, as she observed, on her own brother's hearth, and
had been Jane Featherstone five−and−twenty years before she had been Jane Waule, which
entitled her to speak when her own brother's name had been made free with by those who
had no right to it.
"What are you driving at there?" said Mr. Featherstone, holding his stick between his
knees and settling his wig, while he gave her a momentary sharp glance, which seemed to
react on him like a draught of cold air and set him coughing.
Mrs. Waule had to defer her answer till he was quiet again, till Mary Garth had supplied
him with fresh syrup, and he had begun to rub the gold knob of his stick, looking bitterly at
the fire. It was a bright fire, but it made no difference to the chill−looking purplish tint of
Mrs. Waule's face, which was as neutral as her voice; having mere chinks for eyes, and lips
that hardly moved in speaking.
"The doctors can't master that cough, brother. It's just like what I have; for I'm your own
sister, constitution and everything. But, as I was saying, it's a pity Mrs. Vincy's family can't
be better conducted."
"Tchah! you said nothing o' the sort. You said somebody had made free with my name."
"And no more than can be proved, if what everybody says is true. My brother Solomon
tells me it's the talk up and down in Middlemarch how unsteady young Vincy is, and has
been forever gambling at billiards since home he came."
"Nonsense! What's a game at billiards? It's a good gentlemanly game; and young Vincy
is not a clodhopper. If your son John took to billiards, now, he'd make a fool of himself."
"Your nephew John never took to billiards or any other game, brother, and is far from
losing hundreds of pounds, which, if what everybody says is true, must be found somewhere
else than out of Mr. Vincy the father's pocket. For they say he's been losing money for years,
though nobody would think so, to see him go coursing and keeping open house as they do.
And I've heard say Mr. Bulstrode condemns Mrs. Vincy beyond anything for her flightiness,
and spoiling her children so."!
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"What's Bulstrode to me? I don't bank with him."
"Well, Mrs. Bulstrode is Mr. Vincy's own sister, and they do say that Mr. Vincy mostly
trades on the Bank money; and you may see yourself, brother, when a woman past forty has
pink strings always flying, and that light way of laughing at everything, it's very
unbecoming. But indulging your children is one thing, and finding money to pay their debts
is another. And it's openly said that young Vincy has raised money on his expectations. I
don't say what expectations. Miss Garth hears me, and is welcome to tell again. I know
young people hang together."
"No, thank you, Mrs. Waule," said Mary Garth. "I dislike hearing scandal too much to
wish to repeat it."
Mr. Featherstone rubbed the knob of his stick and made a brief convulsive show of
laughter, which had much the same genuineness as an old whist−player's chuckle over a bad
hand. Still looking at the fire, he said –
"And who pretends to say Fred Vincy hasn't got expectations? Such a fine, spirited
fellow is like enough to have 'em."
There was a slight pause before Mrs. Waule replied, and when she did so, her voice
seemed to be slightly moistened with tears, though her face was still dry.
"Whether or no, brother, it is naturally painful to me and my brother Solomon to hear
your name made free with, and your complaint being such as may carry you off sudden, and
people who are no more Featherstones than the Merry−Andrew at the fair, openly reckoning
on your property coming to THEM. And me your own sister, and Solomon your own
brother! And if that's to be it, what has it pleased the Almighty to make families for?" Here
Mrs. Waule's tears fell, but with moderation.
"Come, out with it, Jane!" said Mr. Featherstone, looking at her. "You mean to say,
Fred Vincy has been getting somebody to advance him money on what he says he knows
about my will, eh?"
"I never said so, brother" (Mrs. Waule's voice had again become dry and unshaken). "It
was told me by my brother Solomon last night when he called coming from market to give
me advice about the old wheat, me being a widow, and my son John only three−and−twenty,
though steady beyond anything. And he had it from most undeniable authority, and not one,
but many."
"Stuff and nonsense! I don't believe a word of it. It's all a got−up story. Go to the
window, missy; I thought I heard a horse. See if the doctor's coming."
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"Not got up by me, brother, nor yet by Solomon, who, whatever else he may be – and I
don't deny he has oddities – has made his will and parted his property equal between such
kin as he's friends with; though, for my part, I think there are times when some should be
considered more than others. But Solomon makes it no secret what he means to do."
"The more fool he!" said Mr. Featherstone, with some difficulty; breaking into a severe
fit of coughing that required Mary Garth to stand near him, so that she did not find out
whose horses they were which presently paused stamping on the gravel before the door.
Before Mr. Featherstone's cough was quiet, Rosamond entered, bearing up her
riding−habit with much grace. She bowed ceremoniously to Mrs. Waule, who said stiffly,
"How do you do, miss?" smiled and nodded silently to Mary, and remained standing till the
coughing should cease, and allow her uncle to notice her.
"Heyday, miss!" he said at last, "you have a fine color. Where's Fred?"
"Seeing about the horses. He will be in presently."
"Sit down, sit down. Mrs. Waule, you'd better go."
Even those neighbors who had called Peter Featherstone an old fox, had never accused
him of being insincerely polite, and his sister was quite used to the peculiar absence of
ceremony with which he marked his sense of blood−relationship. Indeed, she herself was
accustomed to think that entire freedom from the necessity of behaving agreeably was
included in the Almighty's intentions about families. She rose slowly without any sign of
resentment, and said in her usual muffled monotone, "Brother, I hope the new doctor will be
able to do something for you. Solomon says there's great talk of his cleverness. I'm sure it's
my wish you should be spared. And there's none more ready to nurse you than your own
sister and your own nieces, if you'd only say the word. There's Rebecca, and Joanna, and
Elizabeth, you know."
"Ay, ay, I remember – you'll see I've remembered 'em all – all dark and ugly. They'd
need have some money, eh? There never was any beauty in the women of our family; but
the Featherstones have always had some money, and the Waules too. Waule had money too.
A warm man was Waule. Ay, ay; money's a good egg; and if you 've got money to leave
behind you, lay it in a warm nest. Good−by, Mrs. Waule." Here Mr. Featherstone pulled at
both sides of his wig as if he wanted to deafen himself, and his sister went away ruminating
on this oracular speech of his. Notwithstanding her jealousy of the Vincys and of Mary
Garth, there remained as the nethermost sediment in her mental shallows a persuasion that
her brother Peter Featherstone could never leave his chief property away from his
blood−relations: – else, why had the Almighty carried off his two wives both childless, after
he had gained so much by manganese and things, turning up when nobody expected it? –
and why was there a Lowick parish church, and the Waules and Powderells all sit ting in the
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same pew for generations, and the Featherstone pew next to them, if, the Sunday after her
brother Peter's death, everybody was to know that the property was gone out of the family?
The human mind has at no period accepted a moral chaos; and so preposterous a result was
not strictly conceivable. But we are frightened at much that is not strictly conceivable.
When Fred came in the old man eyed him with a peculiar twinkle, which the younger
had often had reason to interpret as pride in the satisfactory details of his appearance.
"You two misses go away," said Mr. Featherstone. "I want to speak to Fred."
"Come into my room, Rosamond, you will not mind the cold for a little while," said
Mary. The two girls had not only known each other in childhood, but had been at the same
provincial school together (Mary as an articled pupil), so that they had many memories in
common, and liked very well to talk in private. Indeed, this tete−a−tete was one of
Rosamond's objects in coming to Stone Court.
Old Featherstone would not begin the dialogue till the door had been closed. He
continued to look at Fred with the same twinkle and with one of his habitual grimaces,
alternately screwing and widening his mouth; and when he spoke, it was in a low tone,
which might be taken for that of an informer ready to be bought off, rather than for the tone
of an offended senior. He was not a man to feel any strong moral indignation even on
account of trespasses against himself. It was natural that others should want to get an
advantage over him, but then, he was a little too cunning for them.
"So, sir, you've been paying ten per cent for money which you've promised to pay off
by mortgaging my land when I'm dead and gone, eh? You put my life at a twelvemonth, say.
But I can alter my will yet."
Fred blushed. He had not borrowed money in that way, for excellent reasons. But he
was conscious of having spoken with some confidence (perhaps with more than he exactly
remembered) about his prospect of getting Featherstone's land as a future means of paying
present debts.
"I don't know what you refer to, sir. I have certainly never borrowed any money on such
an insecurity. Please to explain."
"No, sir, it's you must explain. I can alter my will yet, let me tell you. I'm of sound mind
– can reckon compound interest in my head, and remember every fool's name as well as I
could twenty years ago. What the deuce? I'm under eighty. I say, you must contradict this
story."
"I have contradicted it, sir," Fred answered, with a touch of impatience, not
remembering that his uncle did not verbally discriminate contradicting from disproving,
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CHAPTER XII. 91
though no one was further from confounding the two ideas than old Featherstone, who often
wondered that so many fools took his own assertions for proofs. "But I contradict it again.
The story is a silly lie."
"Nonsense! you must bring dockiments. It comes from authority."
"Name the authority, and make him name the man of whom I borrowed the money, and
then I can disprove the story."
"It's pretty good authority, I think – a man who knows most of what goes on in
Middlemarch. It's that fine, religious, charitable uncle o' yours. Come now!" Here Mr.
Featherstone had his peculiar inward shake which signified merriment.
"Mr. Bulstrode?"
"Who else, eh?"
"Then the story has grown into this lie out of some sermonizing words he may have let
fall about me. Do they pretend that he named the man who lent me the money?"
"If there is such a man, depend upon it Bulstrode knows him. But, supposing you only
tried to get the money lent, and didn't get it – Bulstrode 'ud know that too. You bring me a
writing from Bulstrode to say he doesn't believe you've ever promised to pay your debts out
o' my land. Come now!"
Mr. Featherstone's face required its whole scale of grimaces as a muscular outlet to his
silent triumph in the soundness of his faculties.
Fred felt himself to be in a disgusting dilemma.
"You must be joking, sir. Mr. Bulstrode, like other men, believes scores of things that
are not true, and he has a prejudice against me. I could easily get him to write that he knew
no facts in proof of the report you speak of, though it might lead to unpleasantness. But I
could hardly ask him to write down what he believes or does not believe about me." Fred
paused an instant, and then added, in politic appeal to his uncle's vanity, "That is hardly a
thing for a gentleman to ask." But he was disappointed in the result.
"Ay, I know what you mean. You'd sooner offend me than Bulstrode. And what's he? –
he's got no land hereabout that ever I heard tell of. A speckilating fellow! He may come
down any day, when the devil leaves off backing him. And that's what his religion means: he
wants God A'mighty to come in. That's nonsense! There's one thing I made out pretty clear
when I used to go to church – and it's this: God A'mighty sticks to the land. He promises
land, and He gives land, and He makes chaps rich with corn and cattle. But you take the
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other side. You like Bulstrode and speckilation better than Featherstone and land."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said Fred, rising, standing with his back to the fire and beating
his boot with his whip. "I like neither Bulstrode nor speculation." He spoke rather sulkily,
feeling himself stalemated.
"Well, well, you can do without me, that's pretty clear," said old Featherstone, secretly
disliking the possibility that Fred would show himself at all independent. "You neither want
a bit of land to make a squire of you instead of a starving parson, nor a lift of a hundred
pound by the way. It's all one to me. I can make five codicils if I like, and I shall keep my
bank−notes for a nest−egg. It's all one to me."
Fred colored again. Featherstone had rarely given him presents of money, and at this
moment it seemed almost harder to part with the immediate prospect of bank−notes than
with the more distant prospect of the land.
"I am not ungrateful, sir. I never meant to show disregard for any kind intentions you
might have towards me. On the contrary."
"Very good. Then prove it. You bring me a letter from Bulstrode saying he doesn't
believe you've been cracking and promising to pay your debts out o' my land, and then, if
there's any scrape you've got into, we'll see if I can't back you a bit. Come now! That's a
bargain. Here, give me your arm. I'll try and walk round the room."
Fred, in spite of his irritation, had kindness enough in him to be a little sorry for the
unloved, unvenerated old man, who with his dropsical legs looked more than usually pitiable
in walking. While giving his arm, he thought that he should not himself like to be an old
fellow with his constitution breaking up; and he waited good−temperedly, first before the
window to hear the wonted remarks about the guinea−fowls and the weather−cock, and then
before the scanty book−shelves, of which the chief glories in dark calf were Josephus,
Culpepper, Klopstock's "Messiah," and several volumes of the "Gentleman's Magazine."
"Read me the names o' the books. Come now! you're a college man."
Fred gave him the titles.
"What did missy want with more books? What must you be bringing her more books
for?"
"They amuse her, sir. She is very fond of reading."
"A little too fond," said Mr. Featherstone, captiously. "She was for reading when she sat
with me. But I put a stop to that. She's got the newspaper to read out loud. That's enough for
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one day, I should think. I can't abide to see her reading to herself. You mind and not bring
her any more books, do you hear?"
"Yes, sir, I hear." Fred had received this order before, and had secretly disobeyed it. He
intended to disobey it again.
"Ring the bell," said Mr. Featherstone; "I want missy to come down."
Rosamond and Mary had been talking faster than their male friends. They did not think
of sitting down, but stood at the toilet−table near the window while Rosamond took off her
hat, adjusted her veil, and applied little touches of her finger−tips to her hair – hair of
infantine fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow. Mary Garth seemed all the plainer standing at
an angle between the two nymphs – the one in the glass, and the one out of it, who looked at
each other with eyes of heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an
ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner
if these should happen to be less exquisite. Only a few children in Middlemarch looked
blond by the side of Rosamond, and the slim figure displayed by her riding−habit had
delicate undulations. In fact, most men in Middlemarch, except her brothers, held that Miss
Vincy was the best girl in the world, and some called her an angel. Mary Garth, on the
contrary, had the aspect of an ordinary sinner: she was brown; her curly dark hair was rough
and stubborn; her stature was low; and it would not be true to declare, in satisfactory
antithesis, that she had all the virtues. Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite
as much as beauty; it is apt either to feign amiability, or, not feigning it, to show all the
repulsive ness of discontent: at any rate, to be called an ugly thing in contrast with that
lovely creature your companion, is apt to produce some effect beyond a sense of fine
veracity and fitness in the phrase. At the age of two−and−twenty Mary had certainly not
attained that perfect good sense and good principle which are usually recommended to the
less fortunate girl, as if they were to be obtained in quantities ready mixed, with a flavor of
resignation as required. Her shrewdness had a streak of satiric bitterness continually
renewed and never carried utterly out of sight, except by a strong current of gratitude
towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be contented, did something to
make her so. Advancing womanhood had tempered her plainness, which was of a good
human sort, such as the mothers of our race have very commonly worn in all latitudes under
a more or less becoming headgear. Rembrandt would have painted her with pleasure, and
would have made her broad features look out of the canvas with intelligent honesty. For
honesty, truth−telling fairness, was Mary's reigning virtue: she neither tried to create
illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood she
had humor enough in her to laugh at herself. When she and Rosamond happened both to be
reflected in the glass, she said, laughingly –
"What a brown patch I am by the side of you, Rosy! You are the most unbecoming
companion."
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"Oh no! No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and useful, Mary.
Beauty is of very little consequence in reality," said Rosamond, turning her head towards
Mary, but with eyes swerving towards the new view of her neck in the glass.
"You mean my beauty," said Mary, rather sardonically.
Rosamond thought, "Poor Mary, she takes the kindest things ill." Aloud she said, "What
have you been doing lately?"
"I? Oh, minding the house – pouring out syrup – pretending to be amiable and contented
– learning to have a bad opinion of everybody."
"It is a wretched life for you."
"No," said Mary, curtly, with a little toss of her head. "I think my life is pleasanter than
your Miss Morgan's."
"Yes; but Miss Morgan is so uninteresting, and not young."
"She is interesting to herself, I suppose; and I am not at all sure that everything gets
easier as one gets older."
"No," said Rosamond, reflectively; "one wonders what such people do, without any
prospect. To be sure, there is religion as a support. But," she added, dimpling, "it is very
different with you,'Mary. You may have an offer."
"Has any one told you he means to make me one?"
"Of course not. I mean, there is a gentleman who may fall in love with you, seeing you
almost every day."
A certain change in Mary's face was chiefly determined by the resolve not to show any
change.
"Does that always make people fall in love?" she answered, carelessly; "it seems to me
quite as often a reason for detesting each other."
"Not when they are interesting and agreeable. I hear that Mr. Lydgate is both."
"Oh, Mr. Lydgate!" said Mary, with an unmistakable lapse into indifference. "You want
to know something about him," she added, not choosing to indulge Rosamond's indirectness.
"Merely, how you like him."
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"There is no question of liking at present. My liking always wants some little kindness
to kindle it. I am not magnanimous enough to like people who speak to me without seeming
to see me."
"Is he so haughty?" said Rosamond, with heightened satisfaction. "You know that he is
of good family?"
"No; he did not give that as a reason."
"Mary! you are the oddest girl. But what sort of looking man is he? Describe him to
me."
"How can one describe a man? I can give you an inventory: heavy eyebrows, dark eyes,
a straight nose, thick dark hair, large solid white hands – and – let me see – oh, an exquisite
cambric pocket−handkerchief. But you will see him. You know this is about the time of his
visits."
Rosamond blushed a little, but said, meditatively, "I rather like a haughty manner. I
cannot endure a rattling young man."
"I did not tell you that Mr. Lydgate was haughty; but il y en a pour tous les gouts, as
little Mamselle used to say, and if any girl can choose the particular sort of conceit she
would like, I should think it is you, Rosy."
"Haughtiness is not conceit; I call Fred conceited."
"I wish no one said any worse of him. He should be more careful. Mrs. Waule has been
telling uncle that Fred is very unsteady." Mary spoke from a girlish impulse which got the
better of her judgment. There was a vague uneasiness associated with the word "unsteady"
which she hoped Rosamond might say something to dissipate. But she purposely abstained
from mentioning Mrs. Waule's more special insinuation.
"Oh, Fred is horrid!" said Rosamond. She would not have allowed herself so unsuitable
a word to any one but Mary.
"What do you mean by horrid?"
"He is so idle, and makes papa so angry, and says he will not take orders."
"I think Fred is quite right."
"How can you say he is quite right, Mary? I thought you had more sense of religion."
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"He is not fit to be a clergyman."
"But he ought to be fit." – "Well, then, he is not what he ought to be. I know some other
people who are in the same case."
"But no one approves of them. I should not like to marry a clergyman; but there must be
clergymen."
"It does not follow that Fred must be one."
"But when papa has been at the expense of educating him for it! And only suppose, if he
should have no fortune left him?"
"I can suppose that very well," said Mary, dryly.
"Then I wonder you can defend Fred," said Rosamond, inclined to push this point.
"I don't defend him," said Mary, laughing; "I would defend any parish from having him
for a clergyman."
"But of course if he were a clergyman, he must be different."
"Yes, he would be a great hypocrite; and he is not that yet."
"It is of no use saying anything to you, Mary. You always take Fred's part."
"Why should I not take his part?" said Mary, lighting up. "He would take mine. He is
the only person who takes the least trouble to oblige me."
"You make me feel very uncomfortable, Mary," said Rosamond, with her gravest
mildness; "I would not tell mamma for the world."
"What would you not tell her?" said Mary, angrily.
"Pray do not go into a rage, Mary," said Rosamond, mildly as ever.
"If your mamma is afraid that Fred will make me an offer, tell her that I would not
marry him if he asked me. But he is not going to do so, that I am aware. He certainly never
has asked me."
"Mary, you are always so violent."
"And you are always so exasperating."
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"I? What can you blame me for?"
"Oh, blameless people are always the most exasperating. There is the bell – I think we
must go down."
"I did not mean to quarrel," said Rosamond, putting on her hat.
"Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes,
what is the good of being friends?"
"Am I to repeat what you have said?" "Just as you please. I never say what I am afraid
of having repeated. But let us go down."
Mr. Lydgate was rather late this morning, but the visitors stayed long enough to see
him; for Mr. Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him, and she herself was−so kind as to
propose a second favorite song of his – "Flow on, thou shining river" – after she had sung
"Home, sweet home" (which she detested). This hard−headed old Overreach approved of the
sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment
being the right thing for a song.
Mr. Featherstone was still applauding the last performance, and assuring missy that her
voice was as clear as a blackbird's, when Mr. Lydgate's horse passed the window.
His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged patient – who can
hardly believe that medicine would not "set him up" if the doctor were only clever enough –
added to his general disbelief in Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background
to this vision of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste ostentatiously to introduce
as his niece, though he had never thought it worth while to speak of Mary Garth in that light.
Nothing escaped Lydgate in Rosamond's graceful behavior: how delicately she waived the
notice which the old man's want of taste had thrust upon her by a quiet gravity, not showing
her dimples on the wrong occasion, but showing them afterwards in speaking to Mary, to
whom she addressed herself with so much good−natured interest, that Lydgate, after quickly
examining Mary more fully than he had done before, saw an adorable kindness in
Rosamond's eyes. But Mary from some cause looked rather out of temper.
"Miss Rosy has been singing me a song – you've nothing to say against that, eh,
doctor?" said Mr. Featherstone. "I like it better than your physic."
"That has made me forget how the time was going," said Rosamond, rising to reach her
hat, which she had laid aside before singing, so that her flower−like head on its white stem
was seen in perfection above−her riding−habit. "Fred, we must really go."
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"Very good," said Fred, who had his own reasons for not being in the best spirits, and
wanted to get away.
"Miss Vincy is a musician?" said Lydgate, following her with his eyes. (Every nerve
and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at.
She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own
character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.)
"The best in Middlemarch, I'll be bound," said Mr. Featherstone, "let the next be who
she will. Eh, Fred? Speak up for your sister."
"I'm afraid I'm out of court, sir. My evidence would be good for nothing."
"Middlemarch has not a very high standard, uncle," said Rosamond, with a pretty
lightness, going towards her whip, which lay at a distance.
Lydgate was quick in anticipating her. He reached the whip before she did, and turned
to present it to her. She bowed and looked at him: he of course was looking at her, and their
eyes met with that peculiar meeting which is never arrived at by effort, but seems like a
sudden divine clearance of haze. I think Lydgate turned a little paler than usual, but
Rosamond blushed deeply and felt a certain astonishment. After that, she was really anxious
to go, and did not know what sort of stupidity her uncle was talking of when she went to
shake hands with him.
Yet this result, which she took to be a mutual impression, called falling in love, was just
what Rosamond had contemplated beforehand. Ever since that important new arrival in
Middlemarch she had woven a little future, of which something like this scene was the
necessary beginning. Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to a raft, or duly escorted and
accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination for the virgin
mind, against which native merit has urged itself in vain. And a stranger was absolutely
necessary to Rosamond's social romance, which had always turned on a lover and
bridegroom who was not a Middlemarcher, and who had no connections at all like her own:
of late, indeed, the construction seemed to demand that he should somehow be related to a
baronet. Now that she and the stranger had met, reality proved much more moving than
anticipation, and Rosamond could not doubt that this was the great epoch of her life. She
judged of her own symptoms as those of awakening love, and she held it still more natural
that Mr. Lydgate should have fallen in love at first sight of her. These things happened so
often at balls, and why not by the morning light, when the complexion showed all the better
for it? Rosamond, though no older than Mary, was rather used to being fallen in love with;
but she, for her part, had remained indifferent and fastidiously critical towards both fresh
sprig and faded bachelor. And here was Mr. Lydgate suddenly corresponding to her ideal,
being altogether foreign to Middlemarch, carrying a certain air of distinction congruous with
good family, and possessing connections which offered vistas of that middle−class heaven,
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rank: a man of talent, also, whom it would be especially delightful to enslave: in fact, a man
who had touched her nature quite newly, and brought a vivid interest into her life which was
better than any fancied "might−be" such as she was in the habit of opposing to the actual.
Thus, in riding home, both the brother and the sister were preoccupied and inclined to
be silent. Rosamond, whose basis for her structure had the usual airy slightness, was of
remarkably detailed and realistic imagination when the foundation had been once
presupposed; and before they had ridden a mile she was far on in the costume and
introductions of her wedded life, having determined on her house in Middle−march, and
foreseen the visits she would pay to her husband's high−bred relatives at a distance, whose
finished manners she could appropriate as thoroughly as she had done her school
accomplishments, preparing herself thus for vaguer elevations which might ultimately come.
There was nothing financial, still less sordid, in her previsions: she cared about what were
considered refinements, and not about the money that was to pay for them.
Fred's mind, on the other hand, was busy with an anxiety which even his ready
hopefulness could not immediately quell. He saw no way of eluding Featherstone's stupid
demand without incurring consequences which he liked less even than the task of fulfilling
it. His father was already out of humor with him, and would be still more so if he were the
occasion of any additional coolness between his own family and the Bulstrodes. Then, he
himself hated having to go and speak to his uncle Bulstrode, and perhaps after drinking wine
he had said many foolish things about Featherstone's property, and these had been magnified
by report. Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a fellow who bragged about
expectations from a queer old miser like Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his
bidding. But – those expectations! He really had them, and he saw no agreeable alternative if
he gave them up; besides, he had lately made a debt which galled him extremely, and old
Featherstone had almost bargained to pay it off. The whole affair was miserably small: his
debts were small, even his expectations were not anything so very magnificent. Fred had
known men to whom he would have been ashamed of confessing the smallness of his
scrapes. Such ruminations naturally produced a streak of misanthropic bitterness. To be born
the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular, while
such men as Mainwaring and Vyan – certainly life was a poor business, when a spirited
young fellow, with a good appetite for the best of everything, had so poor an outlook.
It had not occurred to Fred that the introduction of Bulstrode's name in the matter was a
fiction of old Featherstone's; nor could this have made any difference to his position. He saw
plainly enough that the old man wanted to exercise his power by tormenting him a little, and
also probably to get some satisfaction out of seeing him on unpleasant terms with Bulstrode.
Fred fancied that he saw to the bottom of his uncle Featherstone's soul, though in reality half
what he saw there was no more than the reflex of his own inclinations. The difficult task of
knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of
their own wishes.
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Fred's main point of debate with himself was, whether he should tell his father, or try to
get through the affair without his father's knowledge. It was probably Mrs. Waule who had
been talking about him; and if Mary Garth had repeated Mrs. Waule's report to Rosamond, it
would be sure to reach his father, who would as surely question him about it. He said to
Rosamond, as they slackened their pace –
"Rosy, did Mary tell you that Mrs. Waule had said anything about me?"
"Yes, indeed, she did."
"What?"
"That you were very unsteady."
"Was that all?"
"I should think that was enough, Fred."
"You are sure she said no more?"
"Mary mentioned nothing else. But really, Fred, I think you ought to be ashamed."
"Oh, fudge! Don't lecture me. What did Mary say about it?"
"I am not obliged to tell you. You care so very much what Mary says, and you are too
rude to allow me to speak."
"Of course I care what Mary says. She is the best girl I know."
"I should never have thought she was a girl to fall in love with."
"How do you know what men would fall in love with? Girls never know."
"At least, Fred, let me advise YOU not to fall in love with her, for she says she would
not marry you if you asked her."
"She might have waited till I did ask her."
"I knew it would nettle you, Fred."
"Not at all. She would not have said so if you had not provoked her." Before reaching
home, Fred concluded that he would tell the whole affair as simply as possible to his father,
who might perhaps take on himself the unpleasant business of speaking to Bulstrode.
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CHAPTER XIII.
1s
t Gent. How class your man? – as better than the most,
Or, seeming better, worse beneath that cloak?
As saint or knave, pilgrim or hypocrite? 2d Gent. Nay, tell me how you class your wealth of
books
The drifted relics of all time.
As well sort them at once by size and livery:
Vellum, tall copies, and the common calf
Will hardly cover more diversity
Than all your labels cunningly devised
To class your unread authors.
In consequence of what he had heard from Fred, Mr. Vincy determined to speak with
Mr. Bulstrode in his private room at the Bank at half−past one, when he was usually free
from other callers. But a visitor had come in at one o'clock, and Mr. Bulstrode had so much
to say to him, that there was little chance of the interview being over in half an hour. The
banker's speech was fluent, but it was also copious, and he used up an appreciable amount of
time in brief meditative pauses. Do not imagine his sickly aspect to have been of the yellow,
black−haired sort: he had a pale blond skin, thin gray−besprinkled brown hair, light−gray
eyes, and a large forehead. Loud men called his subdued tone an undertone, and sometimes
implied that it was inconsistent with openness; though there seems to be no reason why a
loud man should not be given to concealment of anything except his own voice, unless it can
be shown that Holy Writ has placed the seat of candor in the lungs. Mr. Bulstrode had also a
deferential bending attitude in listening, and an apparently fixed attentiveness in his eyes
which made those persons who thought themselves worth hearing infer that he was seeking
the utmost improvement from their discourse. Others, who expected to make no great figure,
disliked this kind of moral lantern turned on them. If you are not proud of your cellar, there
is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wine−glass to the light and look
judicial. Such joys are reserved for conscious merit. Hence Mr. Bulstrode's close attention
was not agreeable to the publicans and sinners in Middlemarch; it was attributed by some to
his being a Pharisee, and by others to his being Evangelical. Less superficial reasoners
among them wished to know who his father and grandfather were, observing that
five−and−twenty years ago nobody had ever heard of a Bulstrode in Middlemarch. To his
present visitor, Lydgate, the scrutinizing look was a matter of indifference: he simply
formed an unfavorable opinion of the banker's constitution, and concluded that he had an
eager inward life with little enjoyment of tangible things.
"I shall be exceedingly obliged if you will look in on me here occasionally, Mr.
Lydgate," the banker observed, after a brief pause. "If, as I dare to hope, I have the privilege
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of finding you a valuable coadjutor in the interesting matter of hospital management, there
will be many questions which we shall need to discuss in private. As to the new hospital,
which is nearly finished, I shall consider what you have said about the advantages of the
special destination for fevers. The decision will rest with me, for though Lord Medlicote has
given the land and timber for the building, he is not disposed to give his personal attention to
the object."
"There are few things better worth the pains in a provincial town like this," said
Lydgate. "A fine fever hospital in addition to the old infirmary might be the nucleus of a
medical school here, when once we get our medical reforms; and what would do more for
medical education than the spread of such schools over the country? A born provincial man
who has a grain of public spirit as well as a few ideas, should do what he can to resist the
rush of everything that is a little better than common towards London. Any valid
professional aims may often find a freer, if not a richer field, in the provinces."
One of Lydgate's gifts was a voice habitually deep and sonorous, yet capable of
becoming very low and gentle at the right moment. About his ordinary bearing there was a
certain fling, a fearless expectation of success, a confidence in his own powers and integrity
much fortified by contempt for petty obstacles or seductions of which he had had no
experience. But this proud openness was made lovable by an expression of unaffected
good−will. Mr. Bulstrode perhaps liked him the better for the difference between them in
pitch and manners; he certainly liked him the better, as Rosamond did, for being a stranger
in Middlemarch. One can begin so many things with a new person! – even begin to be a
better man.
"I shall rejoice to furnish your zeal with fuller opportunities," Mr. Bulstrode answered;
"I mean, by confiding to you the superintendence of my new hospital, should a maturer
knowledge favor that issue, for I am determined that so great an object shall not be shackled
by our two physicians. Indeed, I am encouraged to consider your advent to this town as a
gracious indication that a more manifest blessing is now to be awarded to my efforts, which
have hitherto been much with stood. With regard to the old infirmary, we have gained the
initial point – I mean your election. And now I hope you will not shrink from incurring a
certain amount of jealousy and dislike from your professional brethren by presenting
yourself as a reformer."
"I will not profess bravery," said Lydgate, smiling, "but I acknowledge a good deal of
pleasure in fighting, and I should not care for my profession, if I did not believe that better
methods were to be found and enforced there as well as everywhere else."
"The standard of that profession is low in Middlemarch, my dear sir," said the banker. "I
mean in knowledge and skill; not in social status, for our medical men are most of them
connected with respectable townspeople here. My own imperfect health has induced me to
give some attention to those palliative resources which the divine mercy has placed within
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our reach. I have consulted eminent men in the metropolis, and I am painfully aware of the
backwardness under which medical treatment labors in our provincial districts."
"Yes; – with our present medical rules and education, one must be satisfied now and
then to meet with a fair practitioner. As to all the higher questions which determine the
starting−point of a diagnosis – as to the philosophy of medial evidence – any glimmering of
these can only come from a scientific culture of which country practitioners have usually no
more notion than the man in the moon."
Mr. Bulstrode, bending and looking intently, found the form which Lydgate had given
to his agreement not quite suited to his comprehension. Under such circumstances a
judicious man changes the topic and enters on ground where his own gifts may be more
useful.
"I am aware," he said, "that the peculiar bias of medical ability is towards material
means. Nevertheless, Mr. Lydgate, I hope we shall not vary in sentiment as to a measure in
which you are not likely to be actively concerned, but in which your sympathetic
concurrence may be an aid to me. You recognize, I hope; the existence of spiritual interests
in your patients?"
"Certainly I do. But those words are apt to cover different meanings to different minds."
"Precisely. And on such subjects wrong teaching is as fatal as no teaching. Now a point
which I have much at heart to secure is a new regulation as to clerical attendance at the old
infirmary. The building stands in Mr. Farebrother's parish. You know Mr. Farebrother?"
"I have seen him. He gave me his vote. I must call to thank him. He seems a very bright
pleasant little fellow. And I understand he is a naturalist."
"Mr. Farebrother, my dear sir, is a man deeply painful to contemplate. I suppose there is
not a clergyman in this country who has greater talents." Mr. Bulstrode paused and looked
meditative.
"I have not yet been pained by finding any excessive talent in Middlemarch," said
Lydgate, bluntly.
"What I desire," Mr. Bulstrode continued, looking still more serious, "is that Mr.
Farebrother's attendance at the hospital should be superseded by the appointment of a
chaplain – of Mr. Tyke, in fact – and that no other spiritual aid should be called in."
"As a medial man I could have no opinion on such a point unless I knew Mr. Tyke, and
even then I should require to know the cases in which he was applied." Lydgate smiled, but
he was bent on being circumspect.
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"Of course you cannot enter fully into the merits of this measure at present. But" – here
Mr. Bulstrode began to speak with a more chiselled emphasis – "the subject is likely to be
referred to the medical board of the infirmary, and what I trust I may ask of you is, that in
virtue of the cooperation between us which I now look forward to, you will not, so far as
you are concerned, be influenced by my opponents in this matter."
"I hope I shall have nothing to do with clerical disputes," said Lydgate. "The path I have
chosen is to work well in my own profession."
"My responsibility, Mr. Lydgate, is of a broader kind. With me, indeed, this question is
one of sacred accountableness; whereas with my opponents, I have good reason to say that it
is an occasion for gratifying a spirit of worldly opposition. But I shall not therefore drop one
iota of my convictions, or cease to identify myself with that truth which an evil generation
hates. I have devoted myself to this object of hospital−improvement, but I will boldly
confess to you, Mr. Lydgate, that I should have no interest in hospitals if I believed that
nothing more was concerned therein than the cure of mortal diseases. I have another ground
of action, and in the face of persecution I will not conceal it."
Mr. Bulstrode's voice had become a loud and agitated whisper as he said the last words.
"There we certainly differ," said Lydgate. But he was not sorry that the door was now
opened, and Mr. Vincy was announced. That florid sociable personage was become more
interesting to him since he had seen Rosamond. Not that, like her, he had been weaving any
future in which their lots were united; but a man naturally remembers a charming girl with
pleasure, and is willing to dine where he may see her again. Before he took leave, Mr. Vincy
had given that invitation which he had been "in no hurry about," for Rosamond at breakfast
had mentioned that she thought her uncle Featherstone had taken the new doctor into great
favor.
Mr. Bulstrode, alone with his brother−in−law, poured himself out a glass of water, and
opened a sandwich−box.
"I cannot persuade you to adopt my regimen, Vincy?"
"No, no; I've no opinion of that system. Life wants padding," said Mr. Vincy, unable to
omit his portable theory. "However," he went on, accenting the word, as if to dismiss all
irrelevance, "what I came here to talk about was a little affair of my young scapegrace,
Fred's."
"That is a subject on which you and I are likely to take quite as different views as on
diet, Vincy."
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CHAPTER XIII. 106
"I hope not this time." (Mr. Vincy was resolved to be good−humored.) "The fact is, it's
about a whim of old Featherstone's. Somebody has been cooking up a story out of spite, and
telling it to the old man, to try to set him against Fred. He's very fond of Fred, and is likely
to do something handsome for him; indeed he has as good as told Fred that he means to
leave him his land, and that makes other people jealous."
"Vincy, I must repeat, that you will not get any concurrence from me as to the course
you have pursued with your eldest son. It was entirely from worldly vanity that you destined
him for the Church: with a family of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted
in devoting money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in giving
him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the consequences."
To point out other people's errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from, but
Mr. Vincy was not equally prepared to be patient. When a man has the immediate prospect
of being mayor, and is ready, in the interests of commerce, to take up a firm attitude on
politics generally, he has naturally a sense of his importance to the framework of things
which seems to throw questions of private conduct into the background. And this particular
reproof irritated him more than any other. It was eminently superfluous to him to be told that
he was reaping the consequences. But he felt his neck under Bulstrode's yoke; and though he
usually enjoyed kicking, he was anxious to refrain from that relief.
"As to that, Bulstrode, it's no use going back. I'm not one of your pattern men, and I
don't pretend to be. I couldn't foresee everything in the trade; there wasn't a finer business in
Middlemarch than ours, and the lad was clever. My poor brother was in the Church, and
would have done well – had got preferment already, but that stomach fever took him off:
else he might have been a dean by this time. I think I was justified in what I tried to do for
Fred. If you come to religion, it seems to me a man shouldn't want to carve out his meat to
an ounce beforehand: – one must trust a little to Providence and be generous. It's a good
British feeling to try and raise your family a little: in my opinion, it's a father's duty to give
his sons a fine chance."
"I don't wish to act otherwise than as your best friend, Vincy, when I say that what you
have been uttering just now is one mass of worldliness and inconsistent folly."
"Very well," said Mr. Vincy, kicking in spite of resolutions, "I never professed to be
anything but worldly; and, what's more, I don't see anybody else who is not worldly. I
suppose you don't conduct business on what you call unworldly principles. The only
difference I see is that one worldliness is a little bit honester than another."
"This kind of discussion is unfruitful, Vincy," said Mr. Bulstrode, who, finishing his
sandwich, had thrown himself back in his chair, and shaded his eyes as if weary. "You had
some more particular business."
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CHAPTER XIII. 107
"Yes, yes. The long and short of it is, somebody has told old Featherstone, giving you as
the authority, that Fred has been borrowing or trying to borrow money on the prospect of his
land. Of course you never said any such nonsense. But the old fellow will insist on it that
Fred should bring him a denial in your handwriting; that is, just a bit of a note saying you
don't believe a word of such stuff, either of his having borrowed or tried to borrow in such a
fool's way. I suppose you can have no objection to do that."
"Pardon me. I have an objection. I am by no means sure that your son, in his
recklessness and ignorance – I will use no severer word – has not tried to raise money by
holding out his future prospects, or even that some one may not have been foolish enough to
supply him on so vague a presumption: there is plenty of such lax money−lending as of
other folly in the world."
"But Fred gives me his honor that he has never borrowed money on the pretence of any
understanding about his uncle's land. He is not a liar. I don't want to make him better than he
is. I have blown him up well – nobody can say I wink at what he does. But he is not a liar.
And I should have thought – but I may be wrong – that there was no religion to hinder a man
from believing the best of a young fellow, when you don't know worse. It seems to me it
would be a poor sort of religion to put a spoke in his wheel by refusing to say you don't
believe such harm of him as you've got no good reason to believe."
"I am not at all sure that I should be befriending your son by smoothing his way to the
future possession of Featherstone's property. I cannot regard wealth as a blessing to those
who use it simply as a harvest for this world. You do not like to hear these things, Vincy, but
on this occasion I feel called upon to tell you that I have no motive for furthering such a
disposition of property as that which you refer to. I do not shrink from saying that it will not
tend to your son's eternal welfare or to the glory of God. Why then should you expect me to
pen this kind of affidavit, which has no object but to keep up a foolish partiality and secure a
foolish bequest?"
"If you mean to hinder everybody from having money but saints and evangelists, you
must give up some profitable partnerships, that's all I can say," Mr. Vincy burst out very
bluntly. "It may be for the glory of God, but it is not for the glory of the Middlemarch trade,
that Plymdale's house uses those blue and green dyes it gets from the Brassing manufactory;
they rot the silk, that's all I know about it. Perhaps if other people knew so much of the profit
went to the glory of God, they might like it better. But I don't mind so much about that – I
could get up a pretty row, if I chose."
Mr. Bulstrode paused a little before he answered. "You pain me very much by speaking
in this way, Vincy. I do not expect you to understand my grounds of action – it is not an
easy thing even to thread a path for principles in the intricacies of the world – still less to
make the thread clear for the careless and the scoffing. You must remember, if you please,
that I stretch my tolerance towards you as my wife's brother, and that it little becomes you to
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complain of me as withholding material help towards the worldly position of your family. I
must remind you that it is not your own prudence or judgment that has enabled you to keep
your place in the trade."
"Very likely not; but you have been no loser by my trade yet," said Mr. Vincy,
thoroughly nettled (a result which was seldom much retarded by previous resolutions). "And
when you married Harriet, I don't see how you could expect that our families should not
hang by the same nail. If you've changed your mind, and want my family to come down in
the world, you'd better say so. I've never changed; I'm a plain Churchman now, just as I used
to be before doctrines came up. I take the world as I find it, in trade and everything else. I'm
contented to be no worse than my neighbors. But if you want us to come down in the world,
say so. I shall know better what to do then."
"You talk unreasonably. Shall you come down in the world for want of this letter about
your son?"
"Well, whether or not, I consider it very unhandsome of you to refuse it. Such doings
may be lined with religion, but outside they have a nasty, dog−in−the−manger look. You
might as well slander Fred: it comes pretty near to it when you refuse to say you didn't set a
slander going. It's this sort of thing – −this tyrannical spirit, wanting to play bishop and
banker everywhere – it's this sort of thing makes a man's name stink."
"Vincy, if you insist on quarrelling with me, it will be exceedingly painful to Harriet as
well as myself," said Mr. Bulstrode, with a trifle more eagerness and paleness than usual.
"I don't want to quarrel. It's for my interest – and perhaps for yours too – that we should
be friends. I bear you no grudge; I think no worse of you than I do of other people. A man
who half starves himself, and goes the length in family prayers, and so on, that you do,
believes in his religion whatever it may be: you could turn over your capital just as fast with
cursing and swearing: – plenty of fellows do. You like to be master, there's no denying that;
you must be first chop in heaven, else you won't like it much. But you're my sister's
husband, and we ought to stick together; and if I know Harriet, she'll consider it your fault if
we quarrel because you strain at a gnat in this way, and refuse to do Fred a good turn. And I
don't mean to say I shall bear it well. I consider it unhandsome."
Mr. Vincy rose, began to button his great−coat, and looked steadily at his
brother−in−law, meaning to imply a demand for a decisive answer.
This was not the first time that Mr. Bulstrode had begun by admonishing Mr. Vincy,
and had ended by seeing a very unsatisfactory reflection of himself in the coarse unflattering
mirror which that manufacturer's mind presented to the subtler lights and shadows of his
fellow−men; and perhaps his experience ought to have warned him how the scene would
end. But a full−fed fountain will be generous with its waters even in the rain, when they are
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CHAPTER XIII. 109
worse than useless; and a fine fount of admonition is apt to be equally irrepressible.
It was not in Mr. Bulstrode's nature to comply directly in consequence of uncomfortable
suggestions. Before changing his course, he always needed to shape his motives and bring
them into accordance with his habitual standard. He said, at last –
"I will reflect a little, Vincy. I will mention the subject to Harriet. I shall probably send
you a letter."
"Very well. As soon as you can, please. I hope it will all be settled before I see you
to−morrow."
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CHAPTER XIII. 110
CHAPTER XIV.
"F
ollows here the strict receipt For that sauce to dainty meat, Named Idleness, which
many eat By preference, and call it sweet: First watch for morsels, like a hound Mix well
with buffets, stir them round With good thick oil of flatteries, And froth with mean
self−lauding lies. Serve warm: the vessels you must choose To keep it in are dead men's
shoes."
Mr. Bulstrode's consultation of Harriet seemed to have had the effect desired by Mr.
Vincy, for early the next morning a letter came which Fred could carry to Mr. Featherstone
as the required testimony.
The old gentleman was staying in bed on account of the cold weather, and as Mary
Garth was not to be seen in the sitting−room, Fred went up−stairs immediately and
presented the letter to his uncle, who, propped up comfortably on a bed−rest, was not less
able than usual to enjoy his consciousness of wisdom in distrusting and frustrating mankind.
He put on his spectacles to read the letter, pursing up his lips and drawing down their
corners.
"Under the circumstances I will not decline to state my conviction – tchah! what fine
words the fellow puts! He's as fine as an auctioneer – that your son Frederic has not obtained
any advance of money on bequests promised by Mr. Featherstone – promised? who said I
had ever promised? I promise nothing – I shall make codicils as long as I like – and that
considering the nature of such a proceeding, it is unreasonable to presume that a young man
of sense and character would attempt it – ah, but the gentleman doesn't say you are a young
man of sense and character, mark you that, sir! – As to my own concern with any report of
such a nature, I distinctly affirm that I never made any statement to the effect that your son
had borrowed money on any property that might accrue to him on Mr. Featherstone's demise
– bless my heart! `property' – accrue – demise! Lawyer Standish is nothing to him. He
couldn't speak finer if he wanted to borrow. Well," Mr. Featherstone here looked over his
spectacles at Fred, while he handed back the letter to him with a contemptuous gesture, "you
don't suppose I believe a thing because Bulstrode writes it out fine, eh?"
Fred colored. "You wished to have the letter, sir. I should think it very likely that Mr.
Bulstrode's denial is as good as the authority which told you what he denies."
"Every bit. I never said I believed either one or the other. And now what d' you expect?"
said Mr. Featherstone, curtly, keeping on his spectacles, but withdrawing his hands under his
wraps.
"I expect nothing, sir." Fred with difficulty restrained himself from venting his
irritation. "I came to bring you the letter. If you like I will bid you good morning."
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CHAPTER XIV. 111
"Not yet, not yet. Ring the bell; I want missy to come."
It was a servant who came in answer to the bell.
"Tell missy to come!" said Mr. Featherstone, impatiently. "What business had she to go
away?" He spoke in the same tone when Mary came.
"Why couldn't you sit still here till I told you to go? want my waistcoat now. I told you
always to put it on the bed."
Mary's eyes looked rather red, as if she had been crying. It was clear that Mr.
Featherstone was in one of his most snappish humors this morning, and though Fred had
now the prospect of receiving the much−needed present of money, he would have preferred
being free to turn round on the old tyrant and tell him that Mary Garth was too good to be at
his beck. Though Fred had risen as she entered the room, she had barely noticed him, and
looked as if her nerves were quivering with the expectation that something would be thrown
at her. But she never had anything worse than words to dread. When she went to reach the
waistcoat from a peg, Fred went up to her and said, "Allow me."
"Let it alone! You bring it, missy, and lay it down here," said Mr. Featherstone. "Now
you go away again till I call you," he added, when the waistcoat was laid down by him. It
was usual with him to season his pleasure in showing favor to one person by being
especially disagreeable to another, and Mary was always at hand to furnish the condiment.
When his own relatives came she was treated better. Slowly he took out a bunch of keys
from the waistcoat pocket, and slowly he drew forth a tin box which was under the
bed−clothes.
"You expect I am going to give you a little fortune, eh?" he said, looking above his
spectacles and pausing in the act of opening the lid.
"Not at all, sir. You were good enough to speak of making me a present the other day,
else, of course, I should not have thought of the matter." But Fred was of a hopeful
disposition, and a vision had presented itself of a sum just large enough to deliver him from
a certain anxiety. When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that
something or other – he did not necessarily conceive what – would come to pass enabling
him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at
hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need:
as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a whole
one.
The deep−veined hands fingered many bank−notes−one after the other, laying them
down flat again, while Fred leaned back in his chair, scorning to look eager. He held himself
to be a gentleman at heart, and did not like courting an old fellow for his money. At last, Mr.
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Featherstone eyed him again over his spectacles and presented him with a little sheaf of
notes: Fred could see distinctly that there were but five, as the less significant edges gaped
towards him. But then, each might mean fifty pounds. He took them, saying –
"I am very much obliged to you, sir," and was going to roll them up without seeming to
think of their value. But this did not suit Mr. Featherstone, who was eying him intently.
"Come, don't you think it worth your while to count 'em? You take money like a lord; I
suppose you lose it like one."
"I thought I was not to look a gift−horse in the mouth, sir. But I shall be very happy to
count them."
Fred was not so happy, however, after he had counted them. For they actually presented
the absurdity of being less than his hopefulness had decided that they must be. What can the
fitness of things mean, if not their fitness to a man's expectations? Failing this, absurdity and
atheism gape behind him. The collapse for Fred was severe when he found that he held no
more than five twenties, and his share in the higher education of this country did not seem to
help him. Nevertheless he said, with rapid changes in his fair complexion –
"It is very handsome of you, sir."
"I should think it is," said Mr. Featherstone, locking his box and replacing it, then taking
off his spectacles deliberately, and at length, as if his inward meditation had more deeply
convinced him, repeating, "I should think it handsome."
"I assure you, sir, I am very grateful," said Fred, who had had time to recover his
cheerful air.
"So you ought to be. You want to cut a figure in the world, and I reckon Peter
Featherstone is the only one you've got to trust to." Here the old man's eyes gleamed with a
curiously mingled satisfaction in the consciousness that this smart young fellow relied upon
him, and that the smart young fellow was rather a fool for doing so.
"Yes, indeed: I was not born to very splendid chances. Few men have been more
cramped than I have been," said Fred, with some sense of surprise at his own virtue,
considering how hardly he was dealt with. "It really seems a little too bad to have to ride a
broken−winded hunter, and see men, who, are not half such good judges as yourself, able to
throw away any amount of money on buying bad bargains."
"Well, you can buy yourself a fine hunter now. Eighty pound is enough for that, I
reckon – and you'll have twenty pound over to get yourself out of any little scrape," said Mr.
Featherstone, chuckling slightly.
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"You are very good, sir," said Fred, with a fine sense of contrast between the words and
his feeling.
"Ay, rather a better uncle than your fine uncle Bulstrode. You won't get much out of his
spekilations, I think. He's got a pretty strong string round your father's leg, by what I hear,
eh?"
"My father never tells me anything about his affairs, sir."
"Well, he shows some sense there. But other people find 'em out without his telling.
HE'LL never have much to leave you: he'll most−like die without a will – he's the sort of
man to do it – let 'em make him mayor of Middlemarch as much as they like. But you won't
get much by his dying without a will, though you ARE the eldest son."
Fred thought that Mr. Featherstone had never been so disagreeable before. True, he had
never before given him quite so much money at once.
"Shall I destroy this letter of Mr. Bulstrode's, sir?" said Fred, rising with the letter as if
he would put it in the fire.
"Ay, ay, I don't want it. It's worth no money to me."
Fred carried the letter to the fire, and thrust the poker through it with much zest. He
longed to get out of the room, but he was a little ashamed before his inner self, as well as
before his uncle, to run away immediately after pocketing the money. Presently, the
farm−bailiff came up to give his master a report, and Fred, to his unspeakable relief, was
dismissed with the injunction to come again soon.
He had longed not only to be set free from his uncle, but also to find Mary Garth. She
was now in her usual place by the fire, with sewing in her hands and a book open on the
little table by her side. Her eyelids had lost some of their redness now, and she had her usual
air of self−command.
"Am I wanted up−stairs?" she said, half rising as Fred entered.
"No; I am only dismissed, because Simmons is gone up."
Mary sat down again, and resumed her work. She was certainly treating him with more
indifference than usual: she did not know how affectionately indignant he had felt on her
behalf up−stairs.
"May I stay here a little, Mary, or shall I bore you?"
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"Pray sit down," said Mary; "you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr. John Waule, who
was here yesterday, and he sat down without asking my leave."
"Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you."
"I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that
there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man
who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful. I should have thought that I, at least, might
have been safe from all that. I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying
everybody who comes near me is in love with me."
Mary did not mean to betray any feeling, but in spite of herself she ended in a tremulous
tone of vexation.
"Confound John Waule! I did not mean to make you angry. I didn't know you had any
reason for being grateful to me. I forgot what a great service you think it if any one snuffs a
candle for you. Fred also had his pride, and was not going to show that he knew what had
called forth this outburst of Mary's.
"Oh, I am not angry, except with the ways of the world. I do like to be spoken to as if I
had common−sense. I really often feel as if I could understand a little more than I ever hear
even from young gentlemen who have been to college." Mary had recovered, and she spoke
with a suppressed rippling under−current of laughter pleasant to hear.
"I don't care how merry you are at my expense this morning," said Fred, "I thought you
looked so sad when you came up−stairs. It is a shame you should stay here to be bullied in
that way."
"Oh, I have an easy life – by comparison. I have tried being a teacher, and I am not fit
for that: my mind is too fond of wandering on its own way. I think any hardship is better
than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it. Everything here I can
do as well as any one else could; perhaps better than some – Rosy, for example. Though she
is just the sort of beautiful creature that is imprisoned with ogres in fairy tales."
"ROSY!" cried Fred, in a tone of profound brotherly scepticism.
"Come, Fred!" said Mary, emphatically; "you have no right to be so critical."
"Do you mean anything particular – just now?"
"No, I mean something general – always."
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"Oh, that I am idle and extravagant. Well, I am not fit to be a poor man. I should not
have made a bad fellow if I had been rich."
"You would have done your duty in that state of life to which it has not pleased God to
call you," said Mary, laughing.
"Well, I couldn't do my duty as a clergyman, any more than you could do yours as a
governess. You ought to have a little fellow−feeling there, Mary."
"I never said you ought to be a clergyman. There are other sorts of work. It seems to me
very miserable not to resolve on some course and act accordingly."
"So I could, if – " Fred broke off, and stood up, leaning against the mantel−piece.
"If you were sure you should not have a fortune?"
"I did not say that. You want to quarrel with me. It is too bad of you to be guided by
what other people say about me."
"How can I want to quarrel with you? I should be quarrelling with all my new books,"
said Mary, lifting the volume on the table. "However naughty you may be to other people,
you are good to me."
"Because I like you better than any one else. But I know you despise me."
"Yes, I do – a little," said Mary, nodding, with a smile.
"You would admire a stupendous fellow, who would have wise opinions about
everything."
"Yes, I should." Mary was sewing swiftly, and seemed provokingly mistress of the
situation. When a conversation has taken a wrong turn for us, we only get farther and farther
into the swamp of awkwardness. This was what Fred Vincy felt.
"I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known – ever since
she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl."
"Let me see," said Mary, the corners of her mouth curling archly; "I must go back on
my experience. There is Juliet – she seems an example of what you say. But then Ophelia
had probably known Hamlet a long while; and Brenda Troil – she had known Mordaunt
Merton ever since they were children; but then he seems to have been an estimable young
man; and Minna was still more deeply in love with Cleveland, who was a stranger.
Waverley was new to Flora MacIvor; but then she did not fall in love with him. And there
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are Olivia and Sophia Primrose, and Corinne – they may be said to have fallen in love with
new men. Altogether, my experience is rather mixed."
Mary looked up with some roguishness at Fred, and that look of hers was very dear to
him, though the eyes were nothing more than clear windows where observation sat
laughingly. He was certainly an affectionate fellow, and as he had grown from boy to man,
he had grown in love with his old playmate, notwithstanding that share in the higher
education of the country which had exalted his views of rank and income.
"When a man is not loved, it is no use for him to say that he could be a better fellow –
could do anything – I mean, if he were sure of being loved in return."
"Not of the least use in the world for him to say he COULD be better. Might, could,
would – they are contemptible auxiliaries."
"I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love
him dearly."
"I think the goodness should come before he expects that."
"You know better, Mary. Women don't love men for their goodness."
"Perhaps not. But if they love them, they never think them bad."
"It is hardly fair to say I am bad."
"I said nothing at all about you."
"I never shall be good for anything, Mary, if you will not say that you love me – if you
will not promise to marry me – I mean, when I am able to marry."
"If I did love you, I would not marry you: I would certainly not promise ever to marry
you."
"I think that is quite wicked, Mary. If you love me, you ought to promise to marry me."
"On the contrary, I think it would be wicked in me to marry you even if I did love you."
"You mean, just as I am, without any means of maintaining a wife. Of course: I am but
three−and−twenty."
"In that last point you will alter. But I am not so sure of any other alteration. My father
says an idle man ought not to exist, much less, be married."
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"Then I am to blow my brains out?"
"No; on the whole I should think you would do better to pass your examination. I have
heard Mr. Farebrother say it is disgracefully easy."
"That is all very fine. Anything is easy to him. Not that cleverness has anything to do
with it. I am ten times cleverer than many men who pass."
"Dear me!" said Mary, unable to repress her sarcasm; "that accounts for the curates like
Mr. Crowse. Divide your cleverness by ten, and the quotient – dear me! – is able to take a
degree. But that only shows you are ten times more idle than the others."
"Well, if I did pass, you would not want me to go into the Church?"
"That is not the question – what I want you to do. You have a conscience of your own, I
suppose. There! there is Mr. Lydgate. I must go and tell my uncle."
"Mary," said Fred, seizing her hand as she rose; "if you will not give me some
encouragement, I shall get worse instead of better."
"I will not give you any encouragement," said Mary, reddening. "Your friends would
dislike it, and so would mine. My father would think it a disgrace to me if I accepted a man
who got into debt, and would not work!"
Fred was stung, and released her hand. She walked to the door, but there she turned and
said: "Fred, you have always been so good, so generous to me. I am not ungrateful. But
never speak to me in that way again."
"Very well," said Fred, sulkily, taking up his hat and whip. His complexion showed
patches of pale pink and dead white. Like many a plucked idle young gentleman, he was
thoroughly in love, and with a plain girl, who had no money! But having Mr. Featherstone's
land in the background, and a persuasion that, let Mary say what she would, she really did
care for him, Fred was not utterly in despair.
When he got home, he gave four of the twenties to his mother, asking her to keep them
for him. "I don't want to spend that money, mother. I want it to pay a debt with. So keep it
safe away from my fingers."
"Bless you, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy. She doted on her eldest son and her youngest
girl (a child of six), whom others thought her two naughtiest children. The mother's eyes are
not always deceived in their partiality: she at least can best judge who is the tender,
filial−hearted child. And Fred was certainly very fond of his mother. Perhaps it was his
fondness for another person also that made him particularly anxious to take some security
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against his own liability to spend the hundred pounds. For the creditor to whom he owed a
hundred and sixty held a firmer security in the shape of a bill signed by Mary's father.
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CHAPTER XV.
"B
lack eyes you have left, you say, Blue eyes fail to draw you; Yet you seem more
rapt to−day, Than of old we saw you.
"Oh, I track the fairest fair Through new haunts of pleasure; Footprints here and echoes
there Guide me to my treasure:
"Lo! she turns – immortal youth Wrought to mortal stature, Fresh as starlight's aged
truth – Many−named Nature!"
A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a
hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs
our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions
as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the
successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the proscenium and
chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were
longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were
spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated historians must not
linger after his example; and if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and
eager, as if delivered from a campstool in a parrot−house. I at least have so much to do in
unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the
light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over
that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.
At present I have to make the new settler Lydgate better known to any one interested in
him than he could possibly be even to those who had seen the most of him since his arrival
in Middlemarch. For surely all must admit that a man may be puffed and belauded, envied,
ridiculed, counted upon as a tool and fallen in love with, or at least selected as a future
husband, and yet remain virtually unknown – known merely as a cluster of signs for his
neighbors' false suppositions. There was a general impression, however, that Lydgate was
not altogether a common country doctor, and in Middlemarch at that time such an
impression was significant of great things being expected from him. For everybody's family
doctor was remarkably clever, and was understood to have immeasurable skill in the
management and training of the most skittish or vicious diseases. The evidence of his
cleverness was of the higher intuitive order, lying in his lady−patients' immovable
conviction, and was unassailable by any objection except that their intuitions were opposed
by others equally strong; each lady who saw medical truth in Wrench and "the strengthening
treatment" regarding Toller and "the lowering system" as medical perdition. For the heroic
times of copious bleeding and blistering had not yet departed, still less the times of
thorough−going theory, when disease in general was called by some bad name, and treated
accordingly without shilly−shally – as if, for example, it were to be called insurrection,
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which must not be fired on with blank−cartridge, but have its blood drawn at once. The
strengtheners and the lowerers were all "clever" men in somebody's opinion, which is really
as much as can be said for any living talents. Nobody's imagination had gone so far as to
conjecture that Mr. Lydgate could know as much as Dr. Sprague and Dr. Minchin, the two
physicians, who alone could offer any hope when danger was extreme, and when the
smallest hope was worth a guinea. Still, I repeat, there was a general impression that
Lydgate was something rather more uncommon than any general practitioner in
Middlemarch. And this was true. He was but seven−and−twenty, an age at which many men
are not quite common – at which they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance,
thinking that Mammon shall never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but
rather that Mammon, if they have anything to do with him, shall draw their chariot.
He had been left an orphan when he was fresh from a public school. His father, a
military man, had made but little provision for three children, and when the boy Tertius
asked to have a medical education, it seemed easier to his guardians to grant his request by
apprenticing him to a country practitioner than to make any objections on the score of family
dignity. He was one of the rarer lads who early get a decided bent and make up their minds
that there is something particular in life which they would like to do for its own sake, and
not because their fathers did it. Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some
morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or
sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the
voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love. Something of that sort happened
to Lydgate. He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner,
and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were
Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with
the Apocrypha in it. Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running
and hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; he
had then read through "Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea," which was neither milk for
babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him
that books were stuff, and that life was stupid. His school studies had not much modified
that opinion, for though he "did" his classics and mathematics, he was not pre−eminent in
them. It was said of him, that Lydgate could do anything he liked, but he had certainly not
yet liked to do anything remarkable. He was a vigorous animal with a ready understanding,
but no spark had yet kindled in him an intellectual passion; knowledge seemed to him a very
superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from the conversation of his elders, he had
apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life. Probably this was not an
exceptional result of expensive teaching at that period of short−waisted coats, and other
fashions which have not yet recurred. But, one vacation, a wet day sent him to the small
home library to hunt once more for a book which might have some freshness for him: in
vain! unless, indeed, he took down a dusty row of volumes with gray−paper backs and dingy
labels – the volumes of an old Cyclopaedia which he had never disturbed. It would at least
be a novelty to disturb them. They were on the highest shelf, and he stood on a chair to get
them down. But he opened the volume which he first took from the shelf: somehow, one is
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apt to read in a makeshift attitude, just where it might seem inconvenient to do so. The page
he opened on was under the head of Anatomy, and the first passage that drew his eyes was
on the valves of the heart. He was not much acquainted with valves of any sort, but he knew
that valvae were folding−doors, and through this crevice came a sudden light startling him
with his first vivid notion of finely adjusted mechanism in the human frame. A liberal
education had of course left him free to read the indecent passages in the school classics, but
beyond a general sense of secrecy and obscenity in connection with his internal structure,
had left his imagination quite unbiassed, so that for anything he knew his brains lay in small
bags at his temples, and he had no more thought of representing to himself how his blood
circulated than how paper served instead of gold. But the moment of vocation had come, and
before he got down from his chair, the world was made new to him by a presentiment of.
endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by that wordy ignorance
which he had supposed to be knowledge. From that hour Lydgate felt the growth of an
intellectual passion.
We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a
woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry
or of stupidity that we are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's
"makdom and her fairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old Troubadour
strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of "makdom and fairnesse"
which must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires? In
the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious marriage,
sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom the catastrophe is bound up with the
other passion, sung by the Troubadours. For in the multitude of middle−aged men who go
about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie
of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds
and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to
be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps their
ardor in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor of other youthful loves,
till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture
ghastly. Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the
beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breath towards
infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions: or
perhaps it came with the vibrations from a woman's glance.
Lydgate did not mean to be one of those failures, and there was the better hope of him
because his scientific interest soon took the form of a professional enthusiasm: he had a
youthful belief in his bread−winning work, not to be stifled by that initiation in makeshift
called his 'prentice days; and he carried to his studies in London, Edinburgh, and Paris, the
conviction that the medical profession as it might be was the finest in the world; presenting
the most perfect interchange between science and art; offering the most direct alliance
between intellectual conquest and the social good. Lydgate's nature demanded this
combination: he was an emotional creature, with a flesh−and−blood sense of fellowship
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which withstood all the abstractions of special study. He cared not only for "cases," but for
John and Elizabeth, especially Elizabeth.
There was another attraction in his profession: it wanted reform, and gave a man an
opportunity for some indignant resolve to reject its venal decorations and other humbug, and
to be the possessor of genuine though undemanded qualifications. He went to study in Paris
with the determination that when he provincial home again he would settle in some
provincial town as a general practitioner, and resist the irrational severance between medical
and surgical knowledge in the interest of his own scientific pursuits, as well as of the general
advance: he would keep away from the range of London intrigues, jealousies, and social
truckling, and win celebrity, however slowly, as Jenner had done, by the independent value
of his work. For it must be remembered that this was a dark period; and in spite of venerable
colleges which used great efforts to secure purity of knowledge by making it scarce, and to
exclude error by a rigid exclusiveness in relation to fees and appointments, it happened that
very ignorant young gentlemen were promoted in town, and many more got a legal right to
practise over large areas in the country. Also, the high standard held up to the public mind
by the College of which which gave its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly
rarefied medical instruction obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder
quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly
consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with
more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic
measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees.
Considering that statistics had not yet embraced a calculation as to the number of ignorant or
canting doctors which absolutely must exist in the teeth of all changes, it seemed to Lydgate
that a change in the units was the most direct mode of changing the numbers. He meant to be
a unit who would make a certain amount of difference towards that spreading change which
would one day tell appreciably upon the averages, and in the mean time have the pleasure of
making an advantageous difference to the viscera of his own patients. But he did not simply
aim at a more genuine kind of practice than was common. He was ambitious of a wider
effect: he was fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an anatomical
conception and make a link in the chain of discovery.
Does it seem incongruous to you that a Middlemarch surgeon should dream of himself
as a discoverer? Most of us, indeed, know little of the great originators until they have been
lifted up among the constellations and already rule our fates. But that Herschel, for example,
who "broke the barriers of the heavens" – did he not once play a provincial church−organ,
and give music−lessons to stumbling pianists? Each of those Shining Ones had to walk on
the earth among neighbors who perhaps thought much more of his gait and his garments
than of anything which was to give him a title to everlasting fame: each of them had his little
local personal history sprinkled with small temptations and sordid cares, which made the
retarding friction of his course towards final companionship with the immortals. Lydgate
was not blind to the dangers of such friction, but he had plenty of confidence in his
resolution to avoid it as far as possible: being seven−and−twenty, he felt himself
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experienced. And he was not going to have his vanities provoked by contact with the showy
worldly successes of the capital, but to live among people who could hold no rivalry with
that pursuit of a great idea which was to be a twin object with the assiduous practice of his
profession. There was fascination in the hope that the two purposes would illuminate each
other: the careful observation and inference which was his daily work, the use of the lens to
further his judgment in special cases, would further his thought as an instrument of larger
inquiry. Was not this the typical pre−eminence of his profession? He would be a good
Middlemarch doctor, and by that very means keep himself in the track of far−reaching
investigation. On one point he may fairly claim approval at this particular stage of his
career: he did not mean to imitate those philanthropic models who make a profit out of
poisonous pickles to support themselves while they are exposing adulteration, or hold shares
in a gambling−hell that they may have leisure to represent the cause of public morality. He
intended to begin in his own case some particular reforms which were quite certainly within
his reach, and much less of a problem than the demonstrating of an anatomical conception.
One of these reforms was to act stoutly on the strength of a recent legal decision, and simply
prescribe, without dispensing drugs or taking percentage from druggists. This was an
innovation for one who had chosen to adopt the style of general practitioner in a country
town, and would be felt as offensive criticism by his professional brethren. But Lydgate
meant to innovate in his treatment also, and he was wise enough to see that the best security
for his practising honestly according to his belief was to get rid of systematic temptations to
the contrary.
Perhaps that was a more cheerful time for observers and theorizers than the present; we
are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered,
when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom; and about
1829 the dark territories of Pathology were a fine America for a spirited young adventurer.
Lydgate was ambitious above all to contribute towards enlarging the scientific, rational basis
of his profession. The more he became interested in special questions of disease, such as the
nature of fever or fevers, the more keenly he felt the need for that fundamental knowledge of
structure which just at the beginning of the century had been illuminated by the brief and
glorious career of Bichat, who died when he was only one−and−thirty, but, like another
Alexander, left a realm large enough for many heirs. That great Frenchman first carried out
the conception that living bodies, fundamentally considered, are not associations of organs
which can be understood by studying them first apart, and then as it were federally; but must
be regarded as consisting of certain primary webs or tissues, out of which the various organs
– brain, heart, lungs, and so on – are compacted, as the various accommodations of a house
are built up in various proportions of wood, iron, stone, brick, zinc, and the rest, each
material having its peculiar composition and proportions. No man, one sees, can understand
and estimate the entire structure or its parts – what are its frailties and what its repairs,
without knowing the nature of the materials. And the conception wrought out by Bichat,
with his detailed study of the different tissues, acted necessarily on medical questions as the
turning of gas−light would act on a dim, oil−lit street, showing new connections and hitherto
hidden facts of structure which must be taken into account in considering the symptoms of
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maladies and the action of medicaments. But results which depend on human conscience
and intelligence work slowly, and now at the end of 1829, most medical practice was still
strutting or shambling along the old paths, and there was still scientific work to be done
which might have seemed to be a direct sequence of Bichat's. This great seer did not go
beyond the consideration of the tissues as ultimate facts in the living organism, marking the
limit of anatomical analysis; but it was open to another mind to say, have not these
structures some common basis from which they have all started, as your sarsnet, gauze, net,
satin, and velvet from the raw cocoon? Here would be another light, as of oxy−hydrogen,
showing the very grain of things, and revising ail former explanations. Of this sequence to
Bichat's work, already vibrating along many currents of the European mind, Lydgate was
enamoured; he longed to demonstrate the more intimate relations of living structure, and
help to define men's thought more accurately after the true order. The work had not yet been
done, but only prepared for those who knew how to use the preparation. What was the
primitive tissue? In that way Lydgate put the question – not quite in the way required by the
awaiting answer; but such missing of the right word befalls many seekers. And he counted
on quiet intervals to be watchfully seized, for taking up the threads of investigation – on
many hints to be won from diligent application, not only of the scalpel, but of the
microscope, which research had begun to use again with new enthusiasm of reliance. Such
was Lydgate's plan of his future: to do good small work for Middlemarch, and great work
for the world.
He was certainly a happy fellow at this time: to be seven−and−twenty, without any
fixed vices, with a generous resolution that his action should be beneficent, and with ideas in
his brain that made life interesting quite apart from the cultus of horseflesh and other mystic
rites of costly observance, which the eight hundred pounds left him after buying his practice
would certainly not have gone far in paying for. He was at a starting−point which makes
many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given to that
amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with
all the possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward
balance, by which a man swims and makes his point or else is carried headlong. The risk
would remain even with close knowledge of Lydgate's character; for character too is a
process and an unfolding. The man was still in the making, as much as the Middlemarch
doctor and immortal discoverer, and there were both virtues and faults capable of shrinking
or expanding. The faults will not, I hope, be a reason for the withdrawal of your interest in
him. Among our valued friends is there not some one or other who is a little too
self−confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with
commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native. prejudices; or
whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of
transient solicitations? All these things might be alleged against Lydgate, but then, they are
the periphrases of a polite preacher, who talks of Adam, and would not like to mention
anything painful to the pew−renters. The particular faults from which these delicate
generalities are distilled have distinguishable physiognomies, diction, accent, and grimaces;
filling up parts in very various dramas. Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not
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the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which
one of us differs from another. Lydgate's conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering,
never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. He would do a
great deal for noodles, being sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no
power over him: he had thought of joining the Saint Simonians when he was in Paris, in
order to turn them against some of their own doctrines. All his faults were marked by
kindred traits, and were those of a man who had a fine baritone, whose clothes hung well
upon him, and who even in his ordinary gestures had an air of inbred distinction. Where then
lay the spots of commonness? says a young lady enamoured of that careless grace. How
could there be any commonness in a man so well−bred, so ambitious of social distinction, so
generous and unusual in his views of social duty? As easily as there may be stupidity in a
man of genius if you take him unawares on the wrong subject, or as many a man who has
the best will to advance the social millennium might be ill−inspired in imagining its lighter
pleasures; unable to go beyond Offenbach's music, or the brilliant punning in the last
burlesque. Lydgate's spots of commonness lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which, in
spite of noble intention and sympathy, were half of them such as are found in ordinary men
of the world: that distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardor, did not
penetrate his feeling and judgment about furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being
known (without his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons. He did not
mean to think of furniture at present; but whenever he did so it was to be feared that neither
biology nor schemes of reform would lift him above the vulgarity of feeling that there would
be an incompatibility in his furniture not being of the best.
As to women, he had once already been drawn headlong by impetuous folly, which he
meant to be final, since marriage at some distant period would of course not be impetuous.
For those who want to be acquainted with Lydgate it will be good to know what was that
case of impetuous folly, for it may stand as an example of the fitful swerving of passion to
which he was prone, together with the chivalrous kindness which helped to make him
morally lovable. The story can be told without many words. It happened when he was
studying in Paris, and just at the time when, over and above his other work, he was occupied
with some galvanic experiments. One evening, tired with his experimenting, and not being
able to elicit the facts he needed, he left his frogs and rabbits to some repose under their
trying and mysterious dispensation of unexplained shocks, and went to finish his evening at
the theatre of the Porte Saint Martin, where there was a melodrama which he had already
seen several times; attracted, not by the ingenious work of the collaborating authors, but by
an actress whose part it was to stab her lover, mistaking him for the evil−designing duke of
the piece. Lydgate was in love with this actress, as a man is in love with a woman whom he
never expects to speak to. She was a Provencale, with dark eyes, a Greek profile, and
rounded majestic form, having that sort of beauty which carries a sweet matronliness even in
youth, and her voice was a soft cooing. She had but lately come to Paris, and bore a virtuous
reputation, her husband acting with her as the unfortunate lover. It was her acting which was
"no better than it should be," but the public was satisfied. Lydgate's only relaxation now was
to go and look at this woman, just as he might have thrown himself under the breath of the
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sweet south on a bank of violets for a while, without prejudice to his galvanism, to which he
would presently return. But this evening the old drama had a new catastrophe. At the
moment when the heroine was to act the stabbing of her lover, and he was to fall gracefully,
the wife veritably stabbed her husband, who fell as death willed. A wild shriek pierced the
house, and the Provencale fell swooning: a shriek and a swoon were demanded by the play,
but the swooning too was real this time. Lydgate leaped and climbed, he hardly knew how,
on to the stage, and was active in help, making the acquaintance of his heroine by finding a
contusion on her head and lifting her gently in his arms. Paris rang with the story of this
death: – was it a murder? Some of the actress's warmest admirers were inclined to believe in
her guilt, and liked her the better for it (such was the taste of those times); but Lydgate was
not one of these. He vehemently contended for her innocence, and the remote impersonal
passion for her beauty which he had felt before, had passed now into personal devotion, and
tender thought of her lot. The notion of murder was absurd: no motive was discoverable, the
young couple being understood to dote on each other; and it was not unprecedented that an
accidental slip of the foot should have brought these grave consequences. The legal
investigation ended in Madame Laure's release. Lydgate by this time had had many
interviews with her, and found her more and more adorable. She talked little; but that was an
additional charm. She was melancholy, and seemed grateful; her presence was enough, like
that of the evening light. Lydgate was madly anxious about her affection, and jealous lest
any other man than himself should win it and ask her to marry him. But instead of reopening
her engagement at the Porte Saint Martin, where she would have been all the more popular
for the fatal episode, she left Paris without warning, forsaking her little court of admirers.
Perhaps no one carried inquiry far except Lydgate, who felt that all science had come to a
stand−still while he imagined the unhappy Laure, stricken by ever−wandering sorrow,
herself wandering, and finding no faithful comforter. Hidden actresses, however, are not so
difficult to find as some other hidden facts, and it was not long before Lydgate gathered
indications that Laure had taken the route to Lyons. He found her at last acting with great
success at Avignon under the same name, looking more majestic than ever as a forsaken
wife carrying her child in her arms. He spoke to her after the play, was received with the
usual quietude which seemed to him beautiful as clear depths of water, and obtained leave to
visit her the next day; when he was bent on telling her that he adored her, and on asking her
to marry him. He knew that this was like the sudden impulse of a madman – incongruous
even with his habitual foibles. No matter! It was the one thing which he was resolved to do.
He had two selves within him apparently, and they must learn to accommodate each other
and bear reciprocal impediments. Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see
beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where
our persistent self pauses and awaits us.
To have approached Laure with any suit that was not reverentially tender would have
been simply a contradiction of his whole feeling towards her.
"You have come all the way from Paris to find me?" she said to him the next day, sitting
before him with folded arms, and looking at him with eyes that seemed to wonder as an
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untamed ruminating animal wonders. "Are all Englishmen like that?"
"I came because I could not live without trying to see you. You are lonely; I love you; I
want you to consent to be my wife; I will wait, but I want you to promise that you will marry
me – no one else."
Laure looked at him in silence with a melancholy radiance from under her grand
eyelids, until he was full of rapturous certainty, and knelt close to her knees.
"I will tell you something," she said, in her cooing way, keeping her arms folded. "My
foot really slipped."
"I know, I know," said Lydgate, deprecatingly. "It was a fatal accident – a dreadful
stroke of calamity that bound me to you the more."
Again Laure paused a little and then said, slowly, "I MEANT TO DO IT."
Lydgate, strong man as he was, turned pale and trembled: moments seemed to pass
before he rose and stood at a distance from her.
"There was a secret, then," he said at last, even vehemently. "He was brutal to you: you
hated him."
"No! he wearied me; he was too fond: he would live in Paris, and not in my country;
that was not agreeable to me."
"Great God!" said Lydgate, in a groan of horror. "And you planned to murder him?"
"I did not plan: it came to me in the play – I MEANT TO DO IT."
Lydgate stood mute, and unconsciously pressed his hat on while he looked at her. He
saw this woman – the first to whom he had given his young adoration – amid the throng of
stupid criminals.
"You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have
another."
Three days afterwards Lydgate was at his galvanism again in his Paris chambers,
believing that illusions were at an end for him. He was saved from hardening effects by the
abundant kindness of his heart and his belief that human life might be made better. But he
had more reason than ever for trusting his judgment, now that it was so experienced; and
henceforth he would take a strictly scientific view of woman, entertaining no expectations
but such as were justified beforehand.
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No one in Middle march was likely to have such a notion of Lydgate's past as has here
been faintly shadowed, and indeed the respectable townsfolk there were not more given than
mortals generally to any eager attempt at exactness in the representation to themselves of
what did not come under their own senses. Not only young virgins of that town, but
gray−bearded men also, were often in haste to conjecture how a new acquaintance might be
wrought into their purposes, contented with very vague knowledge as to the way in which
life had been shaping him for that instrumentality. Middlemarch, in fact, counted on
swallowing Lydgate and assimilating him very comfortably.
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CHAPTER XVI.
"A
ll that in woman is adored In thy fair self I find – For the whole sex can but afford
The handsome and the kind."
– SIR CHARLES SEDLEY.
The question whether Mr. Tyke should be appointed as salaried chaplain to the hospital
was an exciting topic to the Middlemarchers; and Lydgate heard it discussed in a way that
threw much light on the power exercised in the town by Mr. Bulstrode. The banker was
evidently a ruler, but there was an opposition party, and even among his supporters there
were some who allowed it to be seen that their support was a compromise, and who frankly
stated their impression that the general scheme of things, and especially the casualties of
trade, required you to hold a candle to the devil.
Mr. Bulstrode's power was not due simply to his being a country banker, who knew the
financial secrets of most traders in the town and could touch the springs of their credit; it
was fortified by a beneficence that was at once ready and severe – ready to confer
obligations, and severe in watching the result. He had gathered, as an industrious man
always at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities, and his private charities
were both minute and abundant. He would take a great deal of pains about apprenticing
Tegg the shoemaker's son, and he would watch over Tegg's church−going; he would defend
Mrs. Strype the washerwoman against Stubbs's unjust exaction on the score of her
drying−ground, and he would himself−scrutinize a calumny against Mrs. Strype. His private
minor loans were numerous, but he would inquire strictly into the circumstances both before
and after. In this way a man gathers a domain in his neighbors' hope and fear as well as
gratitude; and power, when once it has got into that subtle region, propagates itself,
spreading out of all proportion to its external means. It was a principle with Mr. Bulstrode to
gain as much power as possible, that he might use it for the glory of God. He went through a
great deal of spiritual conflict and inward argument in order to adjust his motives, and make
clear to himself what God's glory required. But, as we have seen, his motives were not
always rightly appreciated. There were many crass minds in Middlemarch whose reflective
scales could only weigh things in the lump; and they had a strong suspicion that since Mr.
Bulstrode could not enjoy life in their fashion, eating and drinking so little as he did, and
worreting himself about everything, he must have a sort of vampire's feast in the sense of
mastery.
The subject of the chaplaincy came up at Mr. Vincy's table when Lydgate was dining
there, and the family connection with Mr. Bulstrode did not, he observed, prevent some
freedom of remark even on the part of the host himself, though his reasons against the
proposed arrangement turned entirely on his objection to Mr. Tyke's sermons, which were
all doctrine, and his preference for Mr. Farebrother, whose sermons were free from that
taint. Mr. Vincy liked well enough the notion of the chaplain's having a salary, supposing it
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were given to Farebrother, who was as good a little fellow as ever breathed, and the best
preacher anywhere, and companionable too.
"What line shall you take, then?" said Mr. Chichely, the coroner, a great coursing
comrade of Mr. Vincy's.
"Oh, I'm precious glad I'm not one of the Directors now. I shall vote for referring the
matter to the Directors and the Medical Board together. I shall roll some of my
responsibility on your shoulders, Doctor," said Mr. Vincy, glancing first at Dr. Sprague, the
senior physician of the town, and then at Lydgate who sat opposite. "You medical gentlemen
must consult which sort of black draught you will prescribe, eh, Mr. Lydgate?"
"I know little of either," said Lydgate; "but in general, appointments are apt to be made
too much a question of personal liking. The fittest man for a particular post is not always the
best fellow or the most agreeable. Sometimes, if you wanted to get a reform, your only way
would be to pension off the good fellows whom everybody is fond of, and put them out of
the question."
Dr. Sprague, who was considered the physician of most "weight," though Dr. Minchin
was usually said to have more "penetration," divested his large heavy face of all expression,
and looked at his wine−glass while Lydgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical
and suspected about this young man – for example, a certain showiness as to foreign ideas,
and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his elders – was
positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed thirty years before by a
treatise on Meningitis, of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf. For my
part I have some fellow−feeling with Dr. Sprague: one's self−satisfaction is an untaxed kind
of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.
Lydgate's remark, however, did not meet the sense of the company. Mr. Vincy said, that
if he could have HIS way, he would not put disagreeable fellows anywhere.
"Hang your reforms!" said Mr. Chichely. "There's no greater humbug in the world. You
never hear of a reform, but it means some trick to put in new men. I hope you are not one of
the `Lancet's' men, Mr. Lydgate – wanting to take the coronership out of the hands of the
legal profession: your words appear to point that way."
"I disapprove of Wakley," interposed Dr. Sprague, "no man more: he is an
ill−intentioned fellow, who would sacrifice the respectability of the profession, which
everybody knows depends on the London Colleges, for the sake of getting some notoriety
for himself. There are men who don't mind about being kicked blue if they can only get
talked about. But Wakley is right sometimes," the Doctor added, judicially. "I could mention
one or two points in which Wakley is in the right."
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"Oh, well," said Mr. Chichely, "I blame no man for standing up in favor of his own
cloth; but, coming to argument, I should like to know how a coroner is to judge of evidence
if he has not had a legal training?"
"In my opinion," said Lydgate, "legal training only makes a man more incompetent in
questions that require knowledge a of another kind. People talk about evidence as if it could
really be weighed in scales by a blind Justice. No man can judge what is good evidence on
any particular subject, unless he knows that subject well. A lawyer is no better than an old
woman at a post−mortem examination. How is he to know the action of a poison? You
might as well say that scanning verse will teach you to scan the potato crops."
"You are aware, I suppose, that it is not the coroner's business to conduct the
post−mortem, but only to take the evidence of the medical witness?" said Mr. Chichely, with
some scorn.
"Who is often almost as ignorant as the coroner himself," said Lydgate. "Questions of
medical jurisprudence ought not to be left to the chance of decent knowledge in a medical
witness, and the coroner ought not to be a man who will believe that strychnine will destroy
the coats of the stomach if an ignorant practitioner happens to tell him so."
Lydgate had really lost sight of the fact that Mr. Chichely was his Majesty's coroner,
and ended innocently with the question, "Don't you agree with me, Dr. Sprague?"
"To a certain extent – with regard to populous districts, and in the metropolis," said the
Doctor. "But I hope it will be long before this part of the country loses the services of my
friend Chichely, even though it might get the best man in our profession to succeed him. I
am sure Vincy will agree with me."
"Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good coursing man," said Mr. Vincy, jovially.
"And in my opinion, you're safest with a lawyer. Nobody can know everything. Most things
are `visitation of God.' And as to poisoning, why, what you want to know is the law. Come,
shall we join the ladies?"
Lydgate's private opinion was that Mr. Chichely might be the very coroner without bias
as to the coats of the stomach, but he had not meant to be personal. This was one of the
difficulties of moving in good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on
knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office. Fred Vincy had called Lydgate a prig,
and now Mr. Chichely was inclined to call him prick−eared; especially when, in the
drawing−room, he seemed to be making himself eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom
he had easily monopolized in a tete−a−tete, since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the tea−table. She
resigned no domestic function to her daughter; and the matron's blooming good−natured
face, with the two volatile pink strings floating from her fine throat, and her cheery manners
to husband and children, was certainly among the great attractions of the Vincy house –
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attractions which made it all the easier to fall in love with the daughter. The tinge of
unpretentious, inoffensive vulgarity in Mrs. Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond's
refinement, which was beyond what Lydgate had expected.
Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impression of refined
manners, and the right thing said seems quite astonishingly right when it is accompanied
with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid. And Rosamond could say the right thing; for she was
clever with that sort of cleverness which catches every tone except the humorous. Happily
she never attempted to joke, and this perhaps was the most decisive mark of her cleverness.
She and Lydgate readily got into conversation. He regretted that he had not heard her
sing the other day at Stone Court. The only pleasure he allowed himself during the latter part
of his stay in Paris was to go and hear music.
"You have studied music, probably?" said Rosamond.
"No, I know the notes of many birds, and I know many melodies by ear; but the music
that I don't know at all, and have no notion about, delights me – affects me. How stupid the
world is that it does not make more use of such a pleasure within its reach!"
"Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tuneless. There are hardly any good
musicians. I only know two gentlemen who sing at all well."
"I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way, leaving you to fancy
the tune – very much as if it were tapped on a drum?"
"Ah, you have heard Mr. Bowyer," said Rosamond, with one of her rare smiles. "But we
are speaking very ill of our neighbors."
Lydgate was almost forgetting that he must carry on the conversation, in thinking how
lovely this creature was, her garment seeming to be made out of the faintest blue sky, herself
so immaculately blond, as if the petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and
disclosed her; and yet with this infantine blondness showing so much ready, self−possessed
grace. Since he had had the memory of Laure, Lydgate had lost all taste for large−eyed
silence: the divine cow no longer attracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite. But
he recalled himself.
"You will let me hear some music to−night, I hope."
"I will let you hear my attempts, if you like," said Rosamond. "Papa is sure to insist on
my singing. But I shall tremble before you, who have heard the best singers in Paris. I have
heard very little: I have only once been to London. But our organist at St. Peter's is a good
musician, and I go on studying with him."
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"Tell me what you saw in London."
"Very little." (A more naive girl would have said, "Oh, everything!" But Rosamond
knew better.) "A few of the ordinary sights, such as raw country girls are always taken to."
"Do you call yourself a raw country girl?" said Lydgate, looking at her with an
involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blush with pleasure. But she
remained simply serious, turned her long neck a little, and put up her hand to touch her
wondrous hair−plaits – an habitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten's
paw. Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph caught young and
educated at Mrs. Lemon's.
"I assure you my mind is raw," she said immediately; "I pass at Middlemarch. I am not
afraid of talking to our old neighbors. But I am really afraid of you."
"An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her
knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand things – as an
exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were any common language between them.
Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so the bears can get
taught."
"Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him from jarring all your
nerves," said Rosamond, moving to the other side of the room, where Fred having opened
the piano, at his father's desire, that Rosamond might give them some music, was
parenthetically performing "Cherry Ripe!" with one hand. Able men who have passed their
examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than the plucked Fred.
"Fred, pray defer your practising till to−morrow; you will make Mr. Lydgate ill," said
Rosamond. "He has an ear."
Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.
Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, "You perceive, the bears will not
always be taught."
"Now then, Rosy!" said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it upward for her,
with a hearty expectation of enjoyment. "Some good rousing tunes first."
Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemon's school (close to a county
town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those
excellent musicians here and there to be found in our provinces, worthy to compare with
many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical
celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant's instinct, had seized his manner of playing, and
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gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo. It was almost
startling, heard for the first time. A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Rosamond's
fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live on in perpetual echoes, and to all fine
expression there goes somewhere an originating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter.
Lydgate was taken possession of, and began to believe in her as something exceptional.
After all, he thought, one need not be surprised to find the rare conjunctions of nature under
circumstances apparently unfavorable: come where they may, they always depend on
conditions that are not obvious. He sat looking at her, and did not rise to pay her any
compliments, leaving that to others, now that his admiration was deepened.
Her singing was less remarkable? but also well trained, and sweet to hear as a chime
perfectly in tune. It is true she sang "Meet me by moonlight," and "I've been roaming;" for
mortals must share the fashions of their time, and none but the ancients can be always
classical. But Rosamond could also sing "Black−eyed Susan" with effect, or Haydn's
canzonets, or "Voi, che sapete," or "Batti, batti" – she only wanted to know what her
audience liked.
Her father looked round at the company, delighting in their admiration. Her mother sat,
like a Niobe before her troubles, with her youngest little girl on her lap, softly beating the
child's hand up and down in time to the music. And Fred, notwithstanding his general
scepticism about Rosy, listened to her music with perfect allegiance, wishing he could do
the same thing on his flute. It was the pleasantest family party that Lydgate had seen since
he came to Middlemarch. The Vincys had the readiness to enjoy, the rejection of all anxiety,
and the belief in life as a merry lot, which made a house exceptional in most county towns at
that time, when Evangelicalism had east a certain suspicion as of plague−infection over the
few amusements which survived in the provinces. At the Vincys' there was always whist,
and the card−tables stood ready now, making some of the company secretly impatient of the
music. Before it ceased Mr. Farebrother came in – a handsome, broad−chested but otherwise
small man, about forty, whose black was very threadbare: the brilliancy was all in his quick
gray eyes. He came like a pleasant change in the light, arresting little Louisa with fatherly
nonsense as she was being led out of the room by Miss Morgan, greeting everybody with
some special word, and seeming to condense more talk into ten minutes than had been held
all through the evening. He claimed from Lydgate the fulfilment of a promise to come and
see him. "I can't let you off, you know, because I have some beetles to show you. We
collectors feel an interest in every new man till he has seen all we have to show him."
But soon he swerved to the whist−table, rubbing his hands and saying, "Come now, let
us be serious! Mr. Lydgate? not play? Ah! you are too young and light for this kind of
thing."
Lydgate said to himself that the clergyman whose abilities were so painful to Mr.
Bulstrode, appeared to have found an agreeable resort in this certainly not erudite household.
He could half understand it: the good−humor, the good looks of elder and younger, and the
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provision for passing the time without any labor of intelligence, might make the house
beguiling to people who had no particular use for their odd hours.
Everything looked blooming and joyous except Miss Morgan, who was brown, dull,
and resigned, and altogether, as Mrs. Vincy often said, just the sort of person for a
governess. Lydgate did not mean to pay many such visits himself. They were a wretched
waste of the evenings; and now, when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant to
excuse himself and go.
"You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure," she said, when the whist−players
were settled. "We are very stupid, and you have been used to something quite different."
"I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike," said Lydgate. "But I have noticed
that one always believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other. I have made up
my mind to take Middlemarch as it comes, and shall be much obliged if the town will take
me in the same way. I have certainly found some charms in it which are much greater than I
had expected."
"You mean the rides towards Tipton and Lowick; every one is pleased with those," said
Rosamond, with simplicity.
"No, I mean something much nearer to me."
Rosamond rose and reached her netting, and then said, "Do you care about dancing at
all? I am not quite sure whether clever men ever dance."
"I would dance with you if you would allow me."
"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a slight deprecatory laugh. "I was only going to say that we
sometimes have dancing, and I wanted to know whether you would feel insulted if you were
asked to come."
"Not on the condition I mentioned."
After this chat Lydgate thought that he was going, but on moving towards the
whist−tables, he got interested in watching Mr. Farebrother's play, which was masterly, and
also his face, which was a striking mixture of the shrewd and the mild. At ten o'clock supper
was brought in (such were the customs of Middlemarch) and there was punch−drinking; but
Mr. Farebrother had only a glass of water. He was winning, but there seemed to be no
reason why the renewal of rubbers should end, and Lydgate at last took his leave.
But as it was not eleven o'clock, he chose to walk in the brisk air towards the tower of
St. Botolph's, Mr. Farebrother's church, which stood out dark, square, and massive against
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the starlight. It was the oldest church in Middlemarch; the living, however, was but a
vicarage worth barely four hundred a−year. Lydgate had heard that, and he wondered now
whether Mr. Farebrother cared about the money he won at cards; thinking, "He seems a very
pleasant fellow, but Bulstrode may have his good reasons." Many things would be easier to
Lydgate if it should turn out that Mr. Bulstrode was generally justifiable. "What is his
religious doctrine to me, if he carries some good notions along with it? One must use such
brains as are to be found."
These were actually Lydgate's first meditations as he walked away from Mr. Vincy's,
and on this ground I fear that many ladies will consider him hardly worthy of their attention.
He thought of Rosamond and her music only in the second place; and though, when her turn
came, he dwelt on the image of her for the rest of his walk, he felt no agitation, and had no
sense that any new current had set into his life. He could not marry yet; he wished not to
marry for several years; and therefore he was not ready to entertain the notion of being in
love with a girl whom he happened to admire. He did admire Rosamond exceedingly; but
that madness which had once beset him about Laure was not, he thought, likely to recur in
relation to any other woman Certainly, if falling in love had been at all in question, it would
have been quite safe with a creature like this Miss Vincy, who had just the kind of
intelligence one would desire in a woman – polished, refined, docile, lending itself to finish
in all the delicacies of life, and enshrined in a body which expressed this with a force of
demonstration that excluded the need for other evidence. Lydgate felt sure that if ever he
married, his wife would have that feminine radiance, that distinctive womanhood which
must be classed with flowers and music, that sort of beauty which by its very nature was
virtuous, being moulded only for pure and delicate joys.
But since he did not mean to marry for the next five years – his more pressing business
was to look into Louis' new book on Fever, which he was specially interested in, because he
had known Louis in Paris, and had followed many anatomical demonstrations in order to
ascertain the specific differences of typhus and typhoid. He went home and read far into the
smallest hour, bringing a much more testing vision of details and relations into this
pathological study than he had ever thought it necessary to apply to the complexities of love
and marriage, these being subjects on which he felt himself amply informed by literature,
and that traditional wisdom which is handed down in the genial conversation of men.
Whereas Fever had obscure conditions, and gave him that delightful labor of the imagination
which is not mere arbitrariness, but the exercise of disciplined power – combining and
constructing with the clearest eye for probabilities and the fullest obedience to knowledge;
and then, in yet more energetic alliance with impartial Nature, standing aloof to invent tests
by which to try its own work.
Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness
in indifferent drawing or cheap narration: – reports of very poor talk going on in distant
orbs; or portraits of Lucifer coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's
wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect
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life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspiration Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and
vinous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort of
lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary sequence by the
inward light which is the last refinement of Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal
atoms in its ideally illuminated space. He for his part had tossed away all cheap inventions
where ignorance finds itself able and at ease: he was enamoured of that arduous invention
which is the very eye of research, provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more
and more exactness of relation; he wanted to pierce the obscurity of those minute processes
which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares which are the first
lurking−places of anguish, mania, and crime, that delicate poise and transition which
determine the growth of happy or unhappy consciousness.
As he threw down his book, stretched his legs towards the embers in the grate, and
clasped his hands at the back of his head, in that agreeable afterglow of excitement when
thought lapses from examination of a specific object into a suffusive sense of its connections
with all the rest of our existence – seems, as it were, to throw itself on its back after vigorous
swimming and float with the repose of unexhausted strength – Lydgate felt a triumphant
delight in his studies, and something like pity for those less lucky men who were not of his
profession.
"If I had not taken that turn when I was a lad," he thought, "I might have got into some
stupid draught−horse work or other, and lived always in blinkers. I should never have been
happy in any profession that did not call forth the highest intellectual strain, and yet keep me
in good warm contact with my neighbors. There is nothing like the medical profession for
that: one can have the exclusive scientific life that touches the distance and befriend the old
fogies in the parish too. It is rather harder for a clergyman: Farebrother seems to be an
anomaly."
This last thought brought back the Vincys and all the pictures of the evening. They
floated in his mind agreeably enough, and as he took up his bed−candle his lips were curled
with that incipient smile which is apt to accompany agreeable recollections. He was an
ardent fellow, but at present his ardor was absorbed in love of his work and in the ambition
of making his life recognized as a factor in the better life of mankind – like other heroes of
science who had nothing but an obscure country practice to begin with.
Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond! Each lived in a world of which the other
knew nothing. It had not occurred to Lydgate that he had been a subject of eager meditation
to Rosamond, who had neither any reason for throwing her marriage into distant perspective,
nor any pathological studies to divert her mind from that ruminating habit, that inward
repetition of looks, words, and phrases, which makes a large part in the lives of most girls.
He had not meant to look at her or speak to her with more than the inevitable amount of
admiration and compliment which a man must give to a beautiful girl; indeed, it seemed to
him that his enjoyment of her music had remained almost silent, for he feared falling into the
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rudeness of telling her his great surprise at her possession of such accomplishment. But
Rosamond had registered every look and word, and estimated them as the opening incidents
of a preconceived romance – incidents which gather value from the foreseen development
and climax. In Rosamond's romance it was not necessary to imagine much about the inward
life of the hero, or of his serious business in the world: of course, he had a profession and
was clever, as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgate was his
good birth, which distinguished him from all Middlemarch admirers, and presented marriage
as a prospect of rising in rank and getting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in
which she would have nothing to do with vulgar people, and perhaps at last associate with
relatives quite equal to the county people who looked down on the Middlemarchers. It was
part of Rosamond's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank, and once
when she had seen the Miss Brookes accompanying their uncle at the county assizes, and
seated among the aristocracy, she had envied them, notwithstanding their plain dress.
If you think it incredible that to imagine Lydgate as a man of family could cause thrills
of satisfaction which had anything to do with the sense that she was in love with him, I will
ask you to use your power of comparison a little more effectively, and consider whether red
cloth and epaulets have never had an influence of that sort. Our passions do not live apart in
locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a
common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their
appetite.
Rosamond, in fact, was entirely occupied not exactly with Tertius Lydgate as he was in
himself, but with his relation to her; and it was excusable in a girl who was accustomed to
hear that all young men might, could, would be, or actually were in love with her, to believe
at once that Lydgate could be no exception. His looks and words meant more to her than
other men's, because she cared more for them: she thought of them diligently, and diligently
attended to that perfection of appearance, behavior, sentiments, and all other elegancies,
which would find in Lydgate a more adequate admirer than she had yet been conscious of.
For Rosamond, though she would never do anything that was disagreeable to her, was
industrious; and now more than ever she was active in sketching her landscapes and
market−carts and portraits of friends, in practising her music, and in being from morning till
night her own standard of a perfect lady, having always an audience in her own
consciousness, with sometimes the not unwelcome addition of a more variable external
audience in the numerous visitors of the house. She found time also to read the best novels,
and even the second best, and she knew much poetry by heart. Her favorite poem was "Lalla
Rookh."
"The best girl in the world! He will be a happy fellow who gets her!" was the sentiment
of the elderly gentlemen who visited the Vincys; and the rejected young men thought of
trying again, as is the fashion in country towns where the horizon is not thick with coming
rivals. But Mrs. Plymdale thought that Rosamond had been educated to a ridiculous pitch,
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for what was the use of accomplishments which would be all laid aside as soon as she was
married? While her aunt Bulstrode, who had a sisterly faithfulness towards her brother's
family, had two sincere wishes for Rosamond – that she might show a more serious turn of
mind, and that she might meet with a husband whose wealth corresponded to her habits.
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CHAPTER XVII.
"T
he clerkly person smiled and said Promise was a pretty maid, But being poor she
died unwed."
The Rev. Camden Farebrother, whom Lydgate went to see the next evening, lived in an
old parsonage, built of stone, venerable enough to match the church which it looked out
upon. All the furniture too in the house was old, but with another grade of age – that of Mr.
Farebrother's father and grandfather. There were painted white chairs, with gilding and
wreaths on them, and some lingering red silk damask with slits in it. There were engraved
portraits of Lord Chancellors and other celebrated lawyers of the last century; and there
were old pier−glasses to reflect them, as well as the little satin−wood tables and the sofas
resembling a prolongation of uneasy chairs, all standing in relief against the dark wainscot
This was the physiognomy of the drawing−room into which Lydgate was shown; and there
were three ladies to receive him, who were also old−fashioned, and of a faded but genuine
respectability: Mrs. Farebrother, the Vicar's white−haired mother, befrilled and kerchiefed
with dainty cleanliness, up right, quick−eyed, and still under seventy; Miss Noble, her sister,
a tiny old lady of meeker aspect, with frills and kerchief decidedly more worn and mended;
and Miss Winifred Farebrother, the Vicar's elder sister, well−looking like himself, but
nipped and subdued as single women are apt to be who spend their lives in uninterrupted
subjection to their elders. Lydgate had not expected to see so quaint a group: knowing
simply that Mr. Farebrother was a bachelor, he had thought of being ushered into a snuggery
where the chief furniture would probably be books and collections of natural objects. The
Vicar himself seemed to wear rather a changed aspect, as most men do when acquaintances
made elsewhere see them for the first time in their own homes; some indeed showing like an
actor of genial parts disadvantageously cast for the curmudgeon in a new piece. This was not
the case with Mr. Farebrother: he seemed a trifle milder and more silent, the chief talker
being his mother, while he only put in a good−humored moderating remark here and there.
The old lady was evidently accustomed to tell her company what they ought to think, and to
regard no subject as quite safe without her steering. She was afforded leisure for this
function by having all her little wants attended to by Miss Winifred. Meanwhile tiny Miss
Noble carried on her arm a small basket, into which she diverted a bit of sugar, which she
had first dropped in her saucer as if by mistake; looking round furtively afterwards, and
reverting to her teacup with a small innocent noise as of a tiny timid quadruped. Pray think
no ill of Miss Noble. That basket held small savings from her more portable food, destined
for the children of her poor friends among whom she trotted on fine mornings; fostering and
petting all needy creatures being so spontaneous a delight to her, that she regarded it much
as if it had been a pleasant vice that she was addicted to. Perhaps she was conscious of being
tempted to steal from those who had much that she might give to those who had nothing,
and carried in her conscience the guilt of that repressed desire. One must be poor to know
the luxury of giving!
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Mrs. Farebrother welcomed the guest with a lively formality and precision. She
presently informed him that they were not often in want of medical aid in that house. She
had brought up her children to wear flannel and not to over−eat themselves, which last habit
she considered the chief reason why people needed doctors. Lydgate pleaded for those
whose fathers and mothers had over−eaten themselves, but Mrs. Farebrother held that view
of things dangerous: Nature was more just than that; it would be easy for any felon to say
that his ancestors ought to have been hanged instead of him. If those he had bad fathers and
mothers were bad themselves, they were hanged for that. There was no need to go back on
what you couldn't see.
"My mother is like old George the Third," said the Vicar, "she objects to metaphysics."
"I object to what is wrong, Camden. I say, keep hold of a few plain truths, and make
everything square with them. When I was young, Mr. Lydgate, there never was any question
about right and wrong. We knew our catechism, and that was enough; we learned our creed
and our duty. Every respectable Church person had the same opinions. But now, if you
speak out of the Prayer−book itself, you are liable to be contradicted."
"That makes rather a pleasant time of it for those who like to maintain their own point,"
said Lydgate.
"But my mother always gives way," said the Vicar, slyly.
"No, no, Camden, you must not lead Mr. Lydgate into a mistake about ME. I shall never
show that disrespect to my parents, to give up what they taught me. Any one may see what
comes of turning. If you change once, why not twenty times?"
"A man might see good arguments for changing once, and not see them for changing
again," said Lydgate, amused with the decisive old lady.
"Excuse me there. If you go upon arguments, they are never wanting, when a man has
no constancy of mind. My father never changed, and he preached plain moral sermons
without arguments, and was a good man – few better. When you get me a good man made
out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading you the cookery−book. That's
my opinion, and I think anybody's stomach will bear me out."
"About the dinner certainly, mother," said Mr. Farebrother.
"It is the same thing, the dinner or the man. I am nearly seventy, Mr. Lydgate, and I go
upon experience. I am not likely to follow new lights, though there are plenty of them here
as elsewhere. I say, they came in with the mixed stuffs that will neither wash nor wear. It
was not so in my youth: a Churchman was a Churchman, and a clergyman, you might be
pretty sure, was a gentleman, if nothing else. But now he may be no better than a Dissenter,
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and want to push aside my son on pretence of doctrine. But whoever may wish to push him
aside, I am proud to say, Mr. Lydgate, that he will compare with any preacher in this
kingdom, not to speak of this town, which is but a low standard to go by; at least, to my
thinking, for I was born and bred at Exeter."
"A mother is never partial," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling. "What do you think Tyke's
mother says about him?"
"Ah, poor creature! what indeed?" said Mrs. Farebrother, her sharpness blunted for the
moment by her confidence in maternal judgments. "She says the truth to herself, depend
upon it."
"And what is the truth?" said−Lydgate. "I am curious to know."
"Oh, nothing bad at all," said Mr. Farebrother. "He is a zealous fellow: not very learned,
and not very wise, I think – because I don't agree with him."
"Why, Camden!" said Miss Winifred, "Griffin and his wife told me only to−day, that
Mr. Tyke said they should have no more coals if they came to hear you preach."
Mrs. Farebrother laid down her knitting, which she had resumed after her small
allowance of tea and toast, and looked at her son as if to say "You hear that?" Miss Noble
said, "Oh poor things! poor things!" in reference, probably, to the double loss of preaching
and coal. But the Vicar answered quietly –
"That is because they are not my parishioners. And I don't think my sermons are worth a
load of coals to them."
"Mr. Lydgate," said Mrs. Farebrother, who could not let this pass, "you don't know my
son: he always undervalues himself. I tell him he is undervaluing the God who made him,
and made him a most excellent preacher."
"That must be a hint for me to take Mr. Lydgate away to my study, mother," said the
Vicar, laughing. "I promised to show you my collection," he added, turning to Lydgate;
"shall we go?"
All three ladies remonstrated. Mr. Lydgate ought not to be hurried away without being
allowed to accept another cup of tea: Miss Winifred had abundance of good tea in the pot.
Why was Camden in such haste to take a visitor to his den? There was nothing but pickled
vermin, and drawers full of blue−bottles and moths, with no carpet on the floor. Mr. Lydgate
must excuse it. A game at cribbage would be far better. In short, it was plain that a vicar
might be adored by his womankind as the king of men and preachers, and yet be held by
them to stand in much need of their direction. Lydgate, with the usual shallowness of a
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CHAPTER XVII. 143
young bachelor. wondered that Mr. Farebrother had not taught them better.
"My mother is not used to my having visitors who can take any interest in my hobbies,"
said the Vicar, as he opened the door of his study, which was indeed as bare of luxuries for
the body as the ladies had implied, unless a short porcelain pipe and a tobacco−box were to
be excepted.
"Men of your profession don't generally smoke," he said. Lydgate smiled and shook his
head. "Nor of mine either, properly, I suppose. You will hear that pipe alleged against me by
Bulstrode and Company. They don't know how pleased the devil would be if I gave it up."
"I understand. You are of an excitable temper and want a sedative. I am heavier, and
should get idle with it. I should rush into idleness, and stagnate there with all my might."
"And you mean to give it all to your work. I am some ten or twelve years older than
you, and have come to a compromise. I feed a weakness or two lest they should get
clamorous. See," continued the Vicar, opening several small drawers, "I fancy I have made
an exhaustive study of the entomology of this district. I am going on both with the fauna and
flora; but I have at least done my insects well. We are singularly rich in orthoptera: I don't
know whether – Ah! you have got hold of that glass jar – you are looking into that instead of
my drawers. You don't really care about these things?"
"Not by the side of this lovely anencephalous monster. I have never had time to give
myself much to natural history. I was early bitten with an interest in structure, and it is what
lies most directly in my profession. I have no hobby besides. I have the sea to swim in
there."
"Ah! you are a happy fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, turning on his heel and beginning
to fill his pipe. "You don't know what it is to want spiritual tobacco – bad emendations of
old texts, or small items about a variety of Aphis Brassicae, with the well−known signature
of Philomicron, for the `Twaddler's Magazine;' or a learned treatise on the entomology of
the Pentateuch, including all the insects not mentioned, but probably met with by the
Israelites in their passage through the desert; with a monograph on the Ant, as treated by
Solomon, showing the harmony of the Book of Proverbs with the results of modern
research. You don't mind my fumigating you?"
Lydgate was more surprised at the openness of this talk than at its implied meaning –
that the Vicar felt himself not altogether in the right vocation. The neat fitting−up of drawers
and shelves, and the bookcase filled with expensive illustrated books on Natural History,
made him think again of the winnings at cards and their destination. But he was beginning to
wish that the very best construction of everything that Mr. Farebrother did should be the true
one. The Vicar's frankness seemed not of the repulsive sort Chat comes from an uneasy
consciousness seeking to forestall the judgment of others, but simply the relief of a desire to
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CHAPTER XVII. 144
do with as little pretence as possible. Apparently he was not without a sense that his freedom
of speech might seem premature, for he presently said –
"I have not yet told you that I have the advantage of you, Mr. Lydgate, and know you
better than you know me. You remember Trawley who shared your apartment at Paris for
some time? I was a correspondent of his, and he told me a good deal about you. I was not
quite sure when you first came that you were the same man. I was very glad when I found
that you were. Only I don't forget that you have not had the like prologue about me."
Lydgate divined some delicacy of feeling here, but did not half understand it. "By the
way," he said, "what has become of Trawley? I have quite lost sight of him. He was hot on
the French social systems, and talked of going to the Backwoods to found a sort of
Pythagorean community. Is he gone?"
"Not at all. He is practising at a German bath, and has married a rich patient."
Then my notions wear the best, so far," said Lydgate, with a short scornful laugh. "He
would have it, the medical profession was an inevitable system of humbug. I said, the fault
was in the men – men who truckle to lies and folly. Instead of preaching against humbug
outside the walls, it might be better to set up a disinfecting apparatus within. In short – I am
reporting my own conversation – you may be sure I had all the good sense on my side."
"Your scheme is a good deal more difficult to carry out than the Pythagorean
community, though. You have not only got the old Adam in yourself against you, but you
have got all those descendants of the original Adam who form the society around you. You
see, I have paid twelve or thirteen years more than you for my knowledge of difficulties.
But" – Mr. Farebrother broke off a moment, and then added, "you are eying that glass vase
again. Do you want to make an exchange? You shall not have it without a fair barter."
"I have some sea−mice – fine specimens – in spirits. And I will throw in Robert
Brown's new thing – `Microscopic Observations on the Pollen of Plants' – if you don't
happen to have it already."
"Why, seeing how you long for the monster, I might ask a higher price. Suppose I ask
you to look through my drawers and agree with me about all my new species?" The Vicar,
while he talked in this way, alternately moved about with his pipe in his mouth, and returned
to hang rather fondly over his drawers. "That would be good discipline, you know, for a
young doctor who has to please his patients in Middlemarch. You must learn to be bored,
remember. However, you shall have the monster on your own terms."
"Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humoring everybody's nonsense, till
they get despised by the very fools they humor?" said Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's
side, and looking rather absently at the insects ranged in fine gradation, with names
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CHAPTER XVII. 145
subscribed in exquisite writing. "The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people
must put up with you whether you flatter them or not."
"With all my heart. But then you must be sure of having the value, and you must keep
yourself independent. Very few men can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether,
and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a good deal where your
yoke−fellows pull you. But do look at these delicate orthoptera!"
Lydgate had after all to give some scrutiny to each drawer, the Vicar laughing at
himself, and yet persisting in the exhibition.
"Apropos of what you said about wearing harness," Lydgate began, after they had sat
down, "I made up my mind some time ago to do with as little of it as−possible. That was
why I determined not to try anything in London, for a good many years at least. I didn't like
what I saw when I was studying there – so much empty bigwiggism, and obstructive
trickery. In the country, people have less pretension to knowledge, and are less of
companions, but for that reason they affect one's amour−propre less: one makes less bad
blood, and can follow one's own course more quietly."
"Yes – well – you have got a good start; you are in the right profession, the work you
feel yourself most fit for. Some people miss that, and repent too late. But you must not be
too sure of keeping your independence."
"You mean of family ties?" said Lydgate, conceiving that these might press rather
tightly on Mr. Farebrother.
"Not altogether. Of course they make many things more difficult. But a good wife – a
good unworldly woman – may really help a man, and keep him more independent. There's a
parishioner of mine – a fine fellow, but who would hardly have pulled through as he has
done without his wife. Do you know the Garths? I think they were not Peacock's patients."
"No; but there is a Miss Garth at old Featherstone's, at Lowick."
"Their daughter: an excellent girl."
"She is very quiet – I have hardly noticed her."
"She has taken notice of you, though, depend upon it."
"I don't understand," said Lydgate; he could hardly say "Of course."
"Oh, she gauges everybody. I prepared her for confirmation – she is a favorite of mine."
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CHAPTER XVII. 146
Mr. Farebrother puffed a few moments in silence, Lydgate not caring to know more
about the Garths. At last the Vicar laid down his pipe, stretched out his legs, and turned his
bright eyes with a smile towards Lydgate, saying –
"But we Middlemarchers are not so tame as you take us to be. We have our intrigues
and our parties. I am a party man, for example, and Bulstrode is another. If you vote for me
you will offend Bulstrode."
"What is there against Bulstrode?" said Lydgate, emphatically.
"I did not say there was anything against him except that. If you vote against him you
will make him your enemy."
"I don't know that I need mind about that," said Lydgate, rather proudly; "but he seems
to have good ideas about hospitals, and he spends large sums on useful public objects. He
might help me a good deal in carrying out my ideas. As to his religious notions – why, as
Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain
quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don't mind about his
incantations."
"Very good. But then you must not offend your arsenic−man. You will not offend me,
you know," said Mr. Farebrother, quite unaffectedly. "I don't translate my own convenience
into other people's duties. I am opposed to Bulstrode in many ways. I don't like the set he
belongs to: they are a narrow ignorant set, and do more to make their neighbors
uncomfortable than to make them better. Their system is a sort of worldly−spiritual
cliqueism: they really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish
them for heaven. But," he added, smilingly, "I don't say that Bulstrode's new hospital is a
bad thing; and as to his wanting to oust me from the old one – why, if he thinks me a
mischievous fellow, he is only returning a compliment. And I am not a model clergyman –
only a decent makeshift."
Lydgate was not at all sure that the Vicar maligned himself. A model clergyman, like a
model doctor, ought to think his own profession the finest in the world, and take all
knowledge as mere nourishment to his moral pathology and therapeutics. He only said,
"What reason does Bulstrode give for superseding you?"
"That I don't teach his opinions – which he calls spiritual religion; and that I have no
time to spare. Both statements are true. But then I could make time, and I should be glad of
the forty pounds. That is the plain fact of the case. But let us dismiss it. I only wanted to tell
you that if you vote for your arsenic−man, you are not to cut me in consequence. I can't
spare you. You are a sort of circumnavigator come to settle among us, and will keep up my
belief in the antipodes. Now tell me all about them in Paris."
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CHAPTER XVIII.
"O
h, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,
Breathing bad air, ran risk of pestilence; Or, lacking lime−juice when they cross the Line,
May languish with the scurvy."
Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the chaplaincy
gathered any practical import for Lydgate, and without telling himself the reason, he
deferred the predetermination on which side he should give his vote. It would really have
been a matter of total indifference to him – that is to say, he would have taken the more
convenient side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke without any hesitation – if
he had not cared personally for Mr. Farebrother.
But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph's grew with growing acquaintanceship. That,
entering into Lydgate's position as a new−comer who had his own professional objects to
secure, Mr. Farebrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain his interest,
showed an unusual delicacy and generosity, which Lydgate's nature was keenly alive to. It
went along with other points of conduct in Mr. Fare brother which were exceptionally fine,
and made his character resemble those southern landscapes which seem divided between
natural grandeur and social slovenliness. Very few men could have been as filial and
chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and sister, whose dependence on him had in many
ways shaped his life rather uneasily for himself; few men who feel the pressure of small
needs are so nobly resolute not to dress up their inevitably self−interested desires in a pretext
of better motives. In these matters he was conscious that his life would bear the closest
scrutiny; and perhaps the consciousness encouraged a little defiance towards the critical
strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve their domestic
manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account for their actions. Then, his
preaching was ingenious and pithy, like the preaching of the English Church in its robust
age, and his sermons were delivered without book. People outside his parish went to hear
him; and, since to fill the church was always the most difficult part of a clergyman's
function, here was another ground for a careless sense of superiority. Besides, he was a
likable man: sweet−tempered, ready−witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or
other conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our friends. Lydgate liked
him heartily, and wished for his friendship.
With this feeling uppermost, he continued to waive the question of the chaplaincy, and
to persuade himself that it was not only no proper business of his, but likely enough never to
vex him with a demand for his vote. Lydgate, at Mr. Bulstrode's request, was laying down
plans for the internal arrangements of the new hospital, and the two were often in
consultation. The banker was always presupposing that he could count in general on
Lydgate as a coadjutor, but made no special recurrence to the coming decision between
Tyke and Farebrother. When the General Board of the Infirmary had met, however, and
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Lydgate had notice that the question of the chaplaincy was thrown on a council of the
directors and medical men, to meet on the following Friday, he had a vexed sense that he
must make up his mind on this trivial Middlemarch business. He could not help hearing
within him the distinct declaration that Bulstrode was prime minister, and that the Tyke
affair was a question of office or no office; and he could not help an equally pronounced
dislike to giving up the prospect of office. For his observation was constantly confirming
Mr. Farebrother's assurance that the banker would not overlook opposition. "Confound their
petty politics!" was one of his thoughts for three mornings in the meditative process of
shaving, when he had begun to feel that he must really hold a court of conscience on this
matter. Certainly there were valid things to be said against the election of Mr. Farebrother:
he had too much on his hands already, especially considering how much time he spent on
non−clerical occupations. Then again it was a continually repeated shock, disturbing
Lydgate's esteem, that the Vicar should obviously play for the sake of money, liking the play
indeed, but evidently liking some end which it served. Mr. Farebrother contended on theory
for the desirability of all games, and said that Englishmen's wit was stagnant for want of
them; but Lydgate felt certain that he would have played very much less but for the money.
There was a billiard−room at the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers and wives
regarded as the chief temptation in Middlemarch. The Vicar was a first−rate billiard−player,
and though he did not frequent the Green Dragon, there were reports that he had sometimes
been there in the daytime and had won money. And as to the chaplaincy, he did not pretend
that he cared for it, except for the sake of the forty pounds. Lydgate was no Puritan, but he
did not care for play, and winning money at it had always seemed a meanness to him;
besides, he had an ideal of life which made this subservience of conduct to the gaining of
small sums thoroughly hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life his wants had been supplied
without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was always to be liberal with
half−crowns as matters of no importance to a gentleman; it had never occurred to him to
devise a plan for getting half−crowns. He had always known in a general way that he was
not rich, but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining the part which the
want of money plays in determining the actions of men. Money had never been a motive to
him. Hence he was not ready to frame excuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains. It
was altogether repulsive to him, and he never entered into any calculation of the ratio
between the Vicar's income and his more or less necessary expenditure. It was possible that
he would not have made such a calculation in his own case.
And now, when the question of voting had come, this repulsive fact told more strongly
against Mr. Farebrother than it had done before. One would know much better what to do if
men's characters were more consistent, and especially if one's friends were invariably fit for
any function they desired to undertake! Lydgate was convinced that if there had been no
valid objection to Mr. Farebrother, he would have voted for him, whatever Bulstrode might
have felt on the subject: he did not intend to be a vassal of Bulstrode's. On the other hand,
there was Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simply curate at a
chapel of ease in St. Peter's parish, and had time for extra duty. Nobody had anything to say
against Mr. Tyke, except that they could not bear him, and suspected him of cant. Really,
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from his point of view, Bulstrode was thoroughly justified.
But whichever way Lydgate began to incline, there was something to make him wince;
and being a proud man, he was a little exasperated at being obliged to wince. He did not like
frustrating his own best purposes by getting on bad terms with Bulstrode; he did not like
voting against Farebrother, and helping to deprive him of function and salary; and the
question occurred whether the additional forty pounds might not leave the Vicar free from
that ignoble care about winning at cards. Moreover, Lydgate did not like the consciousness
that in voting for Tyke he should be voting on the side obviously convenient for himself. But
would the end really be his own convenience? Other people would say so, and would allege
that he was currying favor with Bulstrode for the sake of making himself important and
getting on in the world. What then? He for his own part knew that if his personal prospects
simply had been concerned, he would not have cared a rotten nut for the banker's friendship
or enmity. What he really cared for was a medium for his work, a vehicle for his ideas; and
after all, was he not bound to prefer the object of getting a good hospital, where he could
demonstrate the specific distinctions of fever and test therapeutic results, before anything
else connected with this chaplaincy? For the first time Lydgate was feeling the hampering
threadlike pressure of small social conditions, and their frustrating complexity. At the end of
his inward debate, when he set out for the hospital, his hope was really in the chance that
discussion might somehow give a new aspect to the question, and make the scale dip so as to
exclude the necessity for voting. I think he trusted a little also to the energy which is
begotten by circumstances – some feeling rushing warmly and making resolve easy, while
debate in cool blood had only made it more difficult. However it was, he did not distinctly
say to himself on which side he would vote; and all the while he was inwardly resenting the
subjection which had been forced upon him. It would have seemed beforehand like a
ridiculous piece of bad logic that he, with his unmixed resolutions of independence and his
select purposes, would find himself at the very outset in the grasp of petty alternatives, each
of which was repugnant to him. In his student's chambers, he had prearranged his social
action quite differently.
Lydgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two other surgeons, and several of
the directors had arrived early; Mr. Bulstrode, treasurer and chairman, being among those
who were still absent. The conversation seemed to imply that the issue was problematical,
and that a majority for Tyke was not so certain as had been generally supposed. The two
physicians, for a wonder, turned out to be unanimous, or rather, though of different minds,
they concurred in action. Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as every one had
foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother. The Doctor was more than suspected of having no
religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord
Chancellor; indeed it is probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the
world−old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still potent in the minds
even of lady−patients who had the strictest ideas of frilling and sentiment. It was perhaps
this negation in the Doctor which made his neighbors call him hard−headed and dry−witted;
conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of judgments connected
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with drugs. At all events, it is certain that if any medical man had come to Middlemarch
with the reputation of having very definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and of
otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general presumption against his
medical skill.
On this ground it was (professionally speaking) fortunate for Dr. Minchin that his
religious sympathies were of a general kind, and such as gave a distant medical sanction to
all serious sentiment, whether of Church or Dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular
tenets. If Mr. Bulstrode insisted, as he was apt to do, on the Lutheran doctrine of
justification, as that by which a Church must stand or fall, Dr. Minchin in return was quite
sure that man was not a mere machine or a fortuitous conjunction of atoms; if Mrs. Wimple
insisted on a particular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchin for his
part liked to keep the mental windows open and objected to fixed limits; if the Unitarian
brewer jested about the Athanasian Creed, Dr. Minchin quoted Pope's "Essay on Man." He
objected to the rather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague indulged, preferring
well−sanctioned quotations, and liking refinement of all kinds: it was generally known that
he had some kinship to a bishop, and sometimes spent his holidays at "the palace."
Dr. Minchin was soft−handed, pale−complexioned, and of rounded outline, not to be
distinguished from a mild clergyman in appearance: whereas Dr. Sprague was superfluously
tall; his trousers got creased at the knees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when
straps seemed necessary to any dignity of bearing; you heard him go in and out, and up and
down, as if he had come to see after the roofing. In short, he had weight, and might be
expected to grapple with a disease and throw it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to
detect it lurking and to circumvent it. They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege
of medical reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt for each other's
skill. Regarding themselves as Middlemarch institutions, they were ready to combine against
all innovators, and against non−professionals given to interference. On this ground they
were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr. Minchin had never
been in open hostility with him, and never differed from him without elaborate explanation
to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution. A
layman who pried into the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtruding
his reforms, – though he was less directly embarrassing to the two physicians than to the
surgeon−apothecaries who attended paupers by contract, was nevertheless offensive to the
professional nostril as such; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new pique against
Bulstrode, excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate. The long−established
practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were just now standing apart and having a
friendly colloquy, in which they agreed that Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve
Bulstrode's purpose. To non−medical friends they had already concurred in praising the
other young practitioner, who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock's retirement without
further recommendation than his own merits and such argument for solid professional
acquirement as might be gathered from his having apparently wasted no time on other
branches of knowledge. It was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast
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imputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between his own rank as a general
practitioner and that of the physicians, who, in the interest of the profession, felt bound to
maintain its various grades, – especially against a man who had not been to either of the
English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside study there, but
came with a libellous pretension to experience in Edinburgh and Paris, where observation
might be abundant indeed, but hardly sound.
Thus it happened that on this occasion Bulstrode became identified with Lydgate, and
Lydgate with Tyke; and owing to this variety of interchangeable names for the chaplaincy
question, diverse minds were enabled to form the same judgment concerning it.
Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly. to the group assembled when he entered, "I go for
Farebrother. A salary, with all my heart. But why take it from the Vicar? He has none too
much – has to insure his life, besides keeping house, and doing a vicar's charities. Put forty
pounds in his pocket and you'll do no harm. He's a good fellow, is Farebrother, with as little
of the parson about him as will serve to carry orders."
"Ho, ho! Doctor," said old Mr. Powderell, a retired iron−monger of some standing – his
interjection being something between a laugh and a Parliamentary disapproval; "we must let
you have your say. But what we have to consider is not anybody's income – it's the souls of
the poor sick people" – here Mr. Powderell's voice and face had a sincere pathos in them.
"He is a real Gospel preacher, is Mr. Tyke. I should vote against my conscience if I voted
against Mr. Tyke – I should indeed."
"Mr. Tyke's opponents have not asked any one to vote against his conscience, I
believe," said Mr. Hackbutt, a rich tanner of fluent speech, whose glittering spectacles and
erect hair were turned with some severity towards innocent Mr. Powderell. "But in my
judgment it behoves us, as Directors, to consider whether we will regard it as our whole
business to carry out propositions emanating from a single quarter. Will any member of the
committee aver that he would have entertained the idea of displacing the gentleman who has
always discharged the function of chaplain here, if it had not been suggested to him by
parties whose disposition it is to regard every institution of this town as a machinery for
carrying out their own views? I tax no man's motives: let them lie between himself and a
higher Power; but I do say, that there are influences at work here which are incompatible
with genuine independence, and that a crawling servility is usually dictated by
circumstances which gentlemen so conducting themselves could not afford either morally or
financially to avow. I myself am a layman, but I have given no inconsiderable attention to
the divisions in the Church and – "
"Oh, damn the divisions!" burst in Mr. Frank Hawley, lawyer and town−clerk, who
rarely presented himself at the board, but now looked in hurriedly, whip in hand. "We have
nothing to do with them here. Farebrother has been doing the work – what there was –
without pay, and if pay is to be given, it should be given to him. I call it a confounded job to
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take the thing away from Farebrother."
"I think it would be as well for gentlemen not to give their remarks a personal bearing,"
said Mr. Plymdale. "I shall vote for the appointment of Mr. Tyke, but I should not have
known, if Mr. Hackbutt hadn't hinted it, that I was a Servile Crawler."
"I disclaim any personalities. I expressly said, if I may be allowed to repeat, or even to
conclude what I was about to say – "
"Ah, here's Minchin!" said Mr. Frank Hawley; at which everybody turned away from
Mr. Hackbutt, leaving him to feel the uselessness of superior gifts in Middlemarch. "Come,
Doctor, I must have you on the right side, eh?"
"I hope so," said Dr. Minchin, nodding and shaking hands here and there; "at whatever
cost to my feelings."
"If there's any feeling here, it should be feeling for the man who is turned out, I think,"
said Mr. Frank Hawley.
"I confess I have feelings on the other side also. I have a divided esteem," said Dr.
Minchin, rubbing his hands. "I consider Mr. Tyke an exemplary man – none more so – and I
believe him to be proposed from unimpeachable motives. I, for my part, wish that I could
give him my vote. But I am constrained to take a view of the case which gives the
preponderance to Mr. Farebrother's claims. He is an amiable man, an able preacher, and has
been longer among us."
Old Mr. Powderell looked on, sad and silent. Mr. Plymdale settled his cravat, uneasily.
"You don't set up Farebrother as a pattern of what a clergyman ought to be, I hope," said
Mr. Larcher, the eminent carrier, who had just come in. "I have no ill−will towards him, but
I think we owe something to the public, not to speak of anything higher, in these
appointments. In my opinion Farebrother is too lax for a clergyman. I don't wish to bring up
particulars against him; but he will make a little attendance here go as far as he can."
"And a devilish deal better than too much," said Mr. Hawley, whose bad language was
notorious in that part of the county. "Sick people can't bear so much praying and preaching.
And that methodistical sort of religion is bad for the spirits – bad for the inside, eh?" he
added, turning quickly round to the four medical men who were assembled.
But any answer was dispensed with by the entrance of three gentlemen, with whom
there were greetings more or less cordial. These were the Reverend Edward Thesiger, Rector
of St. Peter's, Mr. Bulstrode, and our friend Mr. Brooke of Tipton, who had lately allowed
himself to be put on the board of directors in his turn, but had never before attended, his
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attendance now being due to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions. Lydgate was the only person still
expected.
Every one now sat down, Mr. Bulstrode presiding, pale and self−restrained as usual.
Mr. Thesiger, a moderate evangelical, wished for the appointment of his friend Mr. Tyke, a
zealous able man, who, officiating at a chapel of ease, had not a cure of souls too extensive
to leave him ample time for the new duty. It was desirable that chaplaincies of this kind
should be entered on with a fervent intention: they were peculiar opportunities for spiritual
influence; and while it was good that a salary should be allotted, there was the more need for
scrupulous watching lest the office should be perverted into a mere question of salary. Mr.
Thesiger's manner had so much quiet propriety that objectors could only simmer in silence.
Mr. Brooke believed that everybody meant well in the matter. He had not himself
attended to the affairs of the Infirmary, though he had a strong interest in whatever was for
the benefit of Middlemarch, and was most happy to meet the gentlemen present on any
public question – "any public question, you know," Mr. Brooke repeated, with his nod of
perfect understanding. "I am a good deal occupied as a magistrate, and in the collection of
documentary evidence, but I regard my time as being at the disposal of the public – and, in
short, my friends have convinced me that a chaplain with a salary – a salary, you know – is a
very good thing, and I am happy to be able to come here and vote for the appointment of Mr.
Tyke, who, I understand, is an unexceptionable man, apostolic and eloquent and everything
of that kind – and I am the last man to withhold my vote – under the circumstances, you
know."
"It seems to me that you have been crammed with one side of the question, Mr.
Brooke," said Mr. Frank Hawley, who was afraid of nobody, and was a Tory suspicious of
electioneering intentions. "You don't seem to know that one of the worthiest men we have
has been doing duty as chaplain here for years without pay, and that Mr. Tyke is proposed to
supersede him."
"Excuse me, Mr. Hawley," said Mr. Bulstrode. "Mr. Brooke has been fully informed of
Mr. Farebrother's character and position."
"By his enemies," flashed out Mr. Hawley.
"I trust there is no personal hostility concerned here," said Mr. Thesiger.
"I'll swear there is, though," retorted Mr. Hawley.
"Gentlemen," said Mr. Bulstrode, in a subdued tone, "the merits of the question may be
very briefly stated, and if any one present doubts that every gentleman who is about to give
his vote has not been fully informed, I can now recapitulate the considerations that should
weigh on either side."
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"I don't see the good of that," said Mr. Hawley. "I suppose we all know whom we mean
to vote for. Any man who wants to do justice does not wait till the last minute to hear both
sides of the question. I have no time to lose, and I propose that the matter be put to the vote
at once."
A brief but still hot discussion followed before each person wrote "Tyke" or
"Farebrother" on a piece of paper and slipped it into a glass tumbler; and in the mean time
Mr. Bulstrode saw Lydgate enter.
"I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present," said Mr. Bulstrode, in a clear
biting voice. Then, looking up at Lydgate –
"There is a casting−vote still to be given. It is yours, Mr. Lydgate: will you be good
enough to write?"
"The thing is settled now," said Mr. Wrench, rising. "We all know how Mr. Lydgate
will vote."
"You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir," said Lydgate, rather defiantly,
and keeping his pencil suspended.
"I merely mean that you are expected to vote with Mr. Bulstrode. Do you regard that
meaning as offensive?"
"It may be offensive to others. But I shall not desist from voting with him on that
account." Lydgate immediately wrote down "Tyke."
So the Rev. Walter Tyke became chaplain to the Infirmary, and Lydgate continued to
work with Mr. Bulstrode. He was really uncertain whether Tyke were not the more suitable
candidate, and yet his consciousness told him that if he had been quite free from indirect
bias he should have voted for Mr. Farebrother. The affair of the chaplaincy remained a sore
point in his memory as a case in which this petty medium of Middlemarch had been too
strong for him. How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and
under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he has
chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with
a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.
But Mr. Farebrother met him with the same friendliness as before. The character of the
publican and sinner is not always practically incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee,
for the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the
faultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness of our own jokes. But the Vicar of St.
Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of
admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably
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unlike them in this – that he could excuse other; for thinking slightly of him, and could
judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him.
"The world has been to strong for ME, I know," he said one day to Lydgate. "But then I
am not a mighty man – I shall never be a man of renown. The choice of Hercules is a pretty
fable; but Prodicus makes it easy work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough.
Another story says that he came to hold the distaff, and at last wore the Nessus shirt. I
suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if everybody else's resolve helped him."
The Vicar's talk was not always inspiriting: he had escaped being a Pharisee, but he had
not escaped that low estimate of possibilities which we rather hastily arrive at as an
inference from our own failure. Lydgate thought that there was a pitiable infirmity of will in
Mr. Farebrother.
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CHAPTER XIX.
"L
' altra vedete ch'ha fatto alla guancia Della sua palma, sospirando, letto." –
Purgatorio, vii.
When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of Windsor, when the
Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy was mayor of the old corporation in
Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon, born Dorothea Brooke, had taken her wedding journey to
Rome. In those days the world in general was more ignorant of good and evil by forty years
than it is at present. Travellers did not often carry full information on Christian art either in
their heads or their pockets; and even the most brilliant English critic of the day mistook the
flower−flushed tomb of the ascended Virgin for an ornamental vase due to the painter's
fancy. Romanticism, which has helped to fill some dull blanks with love and knowledge,
had not yet penetrated the times with its leaven and entered into everybody's food; it was
fermenting still as a distinguishable vigorous enthusiasm in certain long−haired German
artists at Rome, and the youth of other nations who worked or idled near them were
sometimes caught in the spreading movement.
One fine morning a young man whose hair was not immoderately long, but abundant
and curly, and who was otherwise English in his equipment, had just turned his back on the
Belvedere Torso in the Vatican and was looking out on the magnificent view of the
mountains from the adjoining round vestibule. He was sufficiently absorbed not to notice the
approach of a dark−eyed, animated German who came up to him and placing a hand on his
shoulder, said with a strong accent, "Come here, quick! else she will have changed her
pose."
Quickness was ready at the call, and the two figures passed lightly along by the
Meleager, towards the hall where the reclining Ariadne, then called the Cleopatra, lies in the
marble voluptuousness of her beauty, the drapery folding around her with a petal−like ease
and tenderness. They were just in time to see another figure standing against a pedestal near
the reclining marble: a breathing blooming girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne,
was clad in Quakerish gray drapery; her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown
backward from her arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing
somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her face around
the simply braided dark−brown hair. She was not looking at the sculpture, probably not
thinking of it: her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across
the floor. But she became conscious of the two strangers who suddenly paused as if to
contemplate the Cleopatra, and, without looking at them, immediately turned away to join a
maid−servant and courier who were loitering along the hall at a little distance off.
"What do you think of that for a fine bit of antithesis?" said the German, searching in
his friend's face for responding admiration, but going on volubly without waiting for any
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other answer. "There lies antique beauty, not corpse−like even in death, but arrested in the
complete contentment of its sensuous perfection: and here stands beauty in its breathing life,
with the consciousness of Christian centuries in its bosom. But she should be dressed as a
nun; I think she looks almost what you call a Quaker; I would dress her as a nun in my
picture. However, she is married; I saw her wedding−ring on that wonderful left hand,
otherwise I should have thought the sallow Geistlicher was her father. I saw him parting
from her a good while ago, and just now I found her in that magnificent pose. Only think! he
is perhaps rich, and would like to have her portrait taken. Ah! it is no use looking after her –
there she goes! Let us follow her home!"
"No, no," said his companion, with a little frown.
"You are singular, Ladislaw. You look struck together. Do you know her?"
"I know that she is married to my cousin," said Will Ladislaw, sauntering down the hall
with a preoccupied air, while his German friend kept at his side and watched him eagerly.
"What! the Geistlicher? He looks more like an uncle – a more useful sort of relation."
"He is not my uncle. I tell you he is my second cousin," said Ladislaw, with some
irritation.
"Schon, schon. Don't be snappish. You are not angry with me for thinking Mrs.
Second−Cousin the most perfect young Madonna I ever saw?"
"Angry? nonsense. I have only seen her once before, for a couple of minutes, when my
cousin introduced her to me, just before I left England. They were not married then. I didn't
know they were coming to Rome."
"But you will go to see them now – you will find out what they have for an address –
since you know the name. Shall we go to the post? And you could speak about the portrait."
"Confound you, Naumann! I don't know what I shall do. I am not so brazen as you."
"Bah! that is because you are dilettantish and amateurish. If you were an artist, you
would think of Mistress Second−Cousin as antique form animated by Christian sentiment –
a sort of Christian Antigone – sensuous force controlled by spiritual passion."
"Yes, and that your painting her was the chief outcome of her existence – the divinity
passing into higher completeness and all but exhausted in the act of covering your bit of
canvas. I am amateurish if you like: I do NOT think that all the universe is straining towards
the obscure significance of your pictures."
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"But it is, my dear! – so far as it is straining through me, Adolf Naumann: that stands
firm," said the good−natured painter, putting a hand on Ladislaw's shoulder, and not in the
least disturbed by the unaccountable touch of ill−humor in his tone. "See now! My existence
presupposes the existence of the whole universe – does it NOT? and my function is to paint
– and as a painter I have a conception which is altogether genialisch, of your great−aunt or
second grandmother as a subject for a picture; therefore, the universe is straining towards
that picture through that particular hook or claw which it puts forth in the shape of me – not
true?"
"But how if another claw in the shape of me is straining to thwart it? – the case is a little
less simple then."
"Not at all: the result of the struggle is the same thing – picture or no picture –
logically."
Will could not resist this imperturbable temper, and the cloud in his face broke into
sunshiny laughter.
"Come now, my friend – you will help?" said Naumann, in a hopeful tone.
"No; nonsense, Naumann! English ladies are not at everybody's service as models. And
you want to express too much with your painting. You would only have made a better or
worse portrait with a background which every connoisseur would give a different reason for
or against. And what is a portrait of a woman? Your painting and Plastik are poor stuff after
all. They perturb and dull conceptions instead of raising them. Language is a finer medium."
"Yes, for those who can't paint," said Naumann. "There you have perfect right. I did not
recommend you to paint, my friend."
The amiable artist carried his sting, but Ladislaw did not choose to appear stung. He
went on as if he had not heard.
"Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for beings vague. After all, the
true seeing is within; and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection. I feel that
especially about representations of women. As if a woman were a mere colored superficies!
You must wait for movement and tone. There is a difference in their very breathing: they
change from moment to moment. – This woman whom you have just seen, for example:
how would you paint her voice, pray? But her voice is much diviner than anything you have
seen of her."
"I see, I see. You are jealous. No man must presume to think that he can paint your
ideal. This is serious, my friend! Your great−aunt! `Der Neffe als Onkel' in a tragic sense –
ungeheuer!"
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"You and I shall quarrel, Naumann, if you call that lady my aunt again."
"How is she to be called then?"
"Mrs. Casaubon."
"Good. Suppose I get acquainted with her in spite of you, and find that she very much
wishes to be painted?"
"Yes, suppose!" said Will Ladislaw, in a contemptuous undertone, intended to dismiss
the subject. He was conscious of being irritated by ridiculously small causes, which were
half of his own creation. Why was he making any fuss about Mrs. Casaubon? And yet he felt
as if something had happened to him with regard to her. There are characters which are
continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which nobody is
prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain
innocently quiet.
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CHAPTER XX.
"A
child forsaken, waking suddenly, Whose gaze afeard on all things round doth rove,
And seeth only that it cannot see The meeting eyes of love."
Two hours later, Dorothea was seated in an inner room or boudoir of a handsome
apartment in the Via Sistina.
I am sorry to add that she was sobbing bitterly, with such abandonment to this relief of
an oppressed heart as a woman habitually controlled by pride on her own account and
thoughtfulness for others will sometimes allow herself when she feels securely alone. And
Mr. Casaubon was certain to remain away for some time at the Vatican.
Yet Dorothea had no distinctly shapen grievance that she could state even to herself;
and in the midst of her confused thought and passion, the mental act that was struggling
forth into clearness was a self−accusing cry that her feeling of desolation was the fault of her
own spiritual poverty. She had married the man of her choice, and with the advantage over
most girls that she had contemplated her marriage chiefly as the beginning of new duties:
from the very first she had thought of Mr. Casaubon as having a mind so much above her
own, that he must often be claimed by studies which she could not entirely share; moreover,
after the brief narrow experience of her girlhood she was beholding Rome, the city of visible
history, where the past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with
strange ancestral images and trophies gathered from afar.
But this stupendous fragmentariness heightened the dreamlike strangeness of her bridal
life. Dorothea had now been five weeks in Rome, and in the kindly mornings when autumn
and winter seemed to go hand in hand like a happy aged couple one of whom would
presently survive in chiller loneliness, she had driven about at first with Mr. Casaubon, but
of late chiefly with Tantripp and their experienced courier. She had been led through the
best galleries, had been taken to the chief points of view, had been shown the grandest ruins
and the most glorious churches, and she had ended by oftenest choosing to drive out to the
Campagna where she could feel alone with the earth and sky, away−from the oppressive
masquerade of ages, in which her own life too seemed to become a masque with enigmatical
costumes.
To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which
breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions
which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world.
But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that
Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in
English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the
hand−screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge
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into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most
abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and
from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous
preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on
bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo−foreign
society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas,
palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and
warm−blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from
reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings;
the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an
alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly
with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an
electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of
confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took
possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not
thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after−years.
Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the
magic−lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her
life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention
in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the
red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease
of the retina.
Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many
souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet"
among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs.
Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be
regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future
which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply
moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of
frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our
frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary
human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we
should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us
walk about well wadded with stupidity.
However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to state the cause, she
could only have done so in some such general words as I have already used: to have been
driven to be more particular would have been like trying to give a history of the lights and
shadows, for that new real future which was replacing the imaginary drew its material from
the endless minutiae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifely relation, now that
she was married to him, was gradually changing with the secret motion of a watch−hand
from what it had been in her maiden dream. It was too early yet for her fully to recognize or
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at least admit the change, still more for her to have readjusted that devotedness which was so
necessary a part of her mental life that she was almost sure sooner or later to recover it.
Permanent rebellion, the disorder of a life without some loving reverent resolve, was not
possible to her; but she was now in an interval when the very force of her nature heightened
its confusion. In this way, the early months of marriage often are times of critical tumult –
whether that of a shrimp−pool or of deeper waters – which afterwards subsides into cheerful
peace.
But was not Mr. Casaubon just as learned as before? Had his forms of expression
changed, or his sentiments become less laudable? Oh waywardness of womanhood! did his
chronology fail him, or his ability to state not only a theory but the names of those who held
it; or his provision for giving the heads of any subject on demand? And was not Rome the
place in all the world to give free play to such accomplishments? Besides, had not
Dorothea's enthusiasm especially dwelt on the prospect of relieving the weight and perhaps
the sadness with which great tasks lie on him who has to achieve them? – And that such
weight pressed on Mr. Casaubon was only plainer than before.
All these are crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same, the light had
changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a
fellow−mortal with whose nature you are acquainted solely through the brief entrances and
exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of
married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what you have
preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same. And it would be astonishing
to find how soon the change is felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To
share lodgings with a brilliant dinner−companion, or to see your favorite politician in the
Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing
little and believing much, and we sometimes end by inverting the quantities.
Still, such comparisons might mislead, for no man was more incapable of flashy
make−believe than Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal,
and he had not actively assisted in creating any illusions about himself. How was it that in
the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling
depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her
husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead
nowhither? I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and
preliminary, and the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee
delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But the door−sill of
marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked
on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the
sea is not within sight – that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.
In their conversation before marriage, Mr. Casaubon had often dwelt on some
explanation or questionable detail of which Dorothea did not see the bearing; but such
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imperfect coherence seemed due to the brokenness of their intercourse, and, supported by
her faith in their future, she had listened with fervid patience to a recitation of possible
arguments to be brought against Mr. Casaubon's entirely new view of the Philistine god
Dagon and other fish−deities, thinking that hereafter she should see this subject which
touched him so nearly from the same high ground whence doubtless it had become so
important to him. Again, the matter−of−course statement and tone of dismissal with which
he treated what to her were the most stirring thoughts, was easily accounted for as belonging
to the sense of haste and preoccupation in which she herself shared during their engagement.
But now, since they had been in Rome, with all the depths of her emotion roused to
tumultuous activity, and with life made a new problem by new elements, she had been
becoming more and more aware, with a certain terror, that her mind was continually sliding
into inward fits of anger and repulsion, or else into forlorn weariness. How far the judicious
Hooker or any other hero of erudition would have been the same at Mr. Casaubon's time of
life, she had no means of knowing, so that he could not have the advantage of comparison;
but her husband's way of commenting on the strangely impressive objects around them had
begun to affect her with a sort of mental shiver: he had perhaps the best intention of
acquitting himself worthily, but only of acquitting himself. What was fresh to her mind was
worn out to his; and such capacity of thought and feeling as had ever been stimulated in him
by the general life of mankind had long shrunk to a sort of dried preparation, a lifeless
embalmment of knowledge.
When he said, "Does this interest you, Dorothea? Shall we stay a little longer? I am
ready to stay if you wish it," – it seemed to her as if going or staying were alike dreary. Or,
"Should you like to go to the Farnesina, Dorothea? It contains celebrated frescos designed or
painted by Raphael, which most persons think it worth while to visit."
"But do you care about them?" was always Dorothea's question.
"They are, I believe, highly esteemed. Some of them represent the fable of Cupid and
Psyche, which is probably the romantic invention of a literary period, and cannot, I think, be
reckoned as a genuine mythical product. But if you like these wall−paintings we can easily
drive thither; and you ill then, I think, have seen the chief works of Raphael, any of which it
were a pity to omit in a visit to Rome. He is the painter who has been held to combine the
most complete grace of form with sublimity of expression. Such at least I have gathered to
be the opinion of conoscenti."
This kind of answer given in a measured official tone, as of a clergyman reading
according to the rubric, did not help to justify the glories of the Eternal City, or to give her
the hope that if she knew more about them the world would be joyously illuminated for her.
There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind
in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of interest or
sympathy.
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On other subjects indeed Mr. Casaubon showed a tenacity of occupation and an
eagerness which are usually regarded as the effect of enthusiasm, and Dorothea was anxious
to follow this spontaneous direction of his thoughts, instead of being made to feel that she
dragged him away from it. But she was gradually ceasing to expect with her former
delightful confidence that she should see any wide opening where she followed him. Poor
Mr. Casaubon himself was lost among small closets and winding stairs, and in an agitated
dimness about the Cabeiri, or in an exposure of other mythologists' ill−considered parallels,
easily lost sight of any purpose which had prompted him to these labors. With his taper
stuck before him he forgot the absence of windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on
other men's notions about the solar deities, he had become indifferent to the sunlight.
These characteristics, fixed and unchangeable as bone in Mr. Casaubon, might have
remained longer unfelt by Dorothea if she had been encouraged to pour forth her girlish and
womanly feeling – if he would have held her hands between his and listened with the delight
of tenderness and understanding to all the little histories which made up her experience, and
would have given her the same sort of intimacy in return, so that the past life of each could
be included in their mutual knowledge and affection – or if she could have fed her affection
with those childlike caresses which are the bent of every sweet woman, who has begun by
showering kisses on the hard pate of her bald doll, creating a happy soul within that
woodenness from the wealth of her own love. That was Dorothea's bent. With all her
yearning to know what was afar from her and to be widely benignant, she had ardor enough
for what was near, to have kissed Mr. Casaubon's coat−sleeve, or to have caressed his
shoe−latchet, if he would have made any other sign of acceptance than pronouncing her,
with his unfailing propriety, to be of a most affectionate and truly feminine nature,
indicating at the same time by politely reaching a chair for her that he regarded these
manifestations as rather crude and startling. Having made his clerical toilet with due care in
the morning, he was prepared only for those amenities of life which were suited to the
well−adjusted stiff cravat of the period, and to a mind weighted with unpublished matter.
And by a sad contradiction Dorothea's ideas and resolves seemed like melting ice
floating and lost in the warm flood of which they had been but another form. She was
humiliated to find herself a mere victim of feeling, as if she could know nothing except
through that medium: all her strength was scattered in fits of agitation, of struggle, of
despondency, and then again in visions of more complete renunciation, transforming all hard
conditions into duty. Poor Dorothea! she was certainly troublesome – to herself chiefly; but
this morning for the first time she had been troublesome to Mr. Casaubon.
She had begun, while they were taking coffee, with a determination to shake off what
she inwardly called her selfishness, and turned a face all cheerful attention to her husband
when he said, "My dear Dorothea, we must now think of all that is yet left undone, as a
preliminary to our departure. I would fain have returned home earlier that we might have
been at Lowick for the Christmas; but my inquiries here have been protracted beyond their
anticipated period. I trust, however, that the time here has not been passed unpleasantly to
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you. Among the sights of Europe, that of Rome has ever been held one of the most striking
and in some respects edifying. I well remember that I considered it an epoch in my life when
I visited it for the first time; after the fall of Napoleon, an event which opened the Continent
to travellers. Indeed I think it is one among several cities to which an extreme hyperbole has
been applied – `See Rome and die:' but in your case I would propose an emendation and say,
See Rome as a bride, and live henceforth as a happy wife."
Mr. Casaubon pronounced this little speech with the most conscientious intention,
blinking a little and swaying his head up and down, and concluding with a smile. He had not
found marriage a rapturous state, but he had no idea of being anything else than an
irreproachable husband, who would make a charming young woman as happy as she
deserved to be.
"I hope you are thoroughly satisfied with our stay – I mean, with the result so far as
your studies are concerned," said Dorothea, trying to keep her mind fixed on what most
affected her husband.
"Yes," said Mr. Casaubon, with that peculiar pitch of voice which makes the word half
a negative. "I have been led farther than I had foreseen, and various subjects for annotation
have presented themselves which, though I have no direct need of them, I could not
pretermit. The task, notwithstanding the assistance of my amanuensis, has been a somewhat
laborious one, but your society has happily prevented me from that too continuous
prosecution of thought beyond the hours of study which has been the snare of my solitary
life."
"I am very glad that my presence has made any difference to you," said Dorothea, who
had a vivid memory of evenings in which she had supposed that Mr. Casaubon's mind had
gone too deep during the day to be able to get to the surface again. I fear there was a little
temper in her reply. "I hope when we get to Lowick, I shall be more useful to you, and be
able to enter a little more into what interests you."
"Doubtless, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon, with a slight bow. "The notes I have here
made will want sifting, and you can, if you please, extract them under my direction."
"And all your notes," said Dorothea, whose heart had already burned within her on this
subject, so that now she could not help speaking with her tongue. "All those rows of
volumes – will you not now do what you used to speak of? – will you not make up your
mind what part of them you will use, and begin to write the book which will make your vast
knowledge useful to the world? I will write to your dictation, or I will copy and extract what
you tell me: I can be of no other use." Dorothea, in a most unaccountable, darkly feminine
manner, ended with a slight sob and eyes full of tears.
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The excessive feeling manifested would alone have been highly disturbing to Mr.
Casaubon, but there were other reasons why Dorothea's words were among the most cutting
and irritating to him that she could have been impelled to use. She was as blind to his inward
troubles as he to hers: she had not yet learned those hidden conflicts in her husband which
claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently to his heartbeats, but only felt that her own
was beating violently. In Mr. Casaubon's ear, Dorothea's voice gave loud emphatic iteration
to those muffled suggestions of consciousness which it was possible to explain as mere
fancy, the illusion of exaggerated sensitiveness: always when such suggestions are
unmistakably repeated from without, they are resisted as cruel and unjust. We are angered
even by the full acceptance of our humiliating confessions – how much more by hearing in
hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those confused murmurs which we
try to call morbid, and strive against as if they were the oncoming of numbness! And this
cruel outward accuser was there in the shape of a wife – nay, of a young bride, who, instead
of observing his abundant pen−scratches and amplitude of paper with the uncritical awe of
an elegant−minded canary−bird, seemed to present herself as a spy watching everything
with a malign power of inference. Here, towards this particular point of the compass, Mr.
Casaubon had a sensitiveness to match Dorothea's, and an equal quickness to imagine more
than the fact. He had formerly observed with approbation her capacity for worshipping the
right object; he now foresaw with sudden terror that this capacity might be replaced by
presumption, this worship by the most exasperating of all criticism, – that which sees
vaguely a great many fine ends, and has not the least notion what it costs to reach them.
For the first time since Dorothea had known him, Mr. Casaubon's face had a quick
angry flush upon it.
"My love," he said, with irritation reined in by propriety, "you may rely upon me for
knowing the times and the seasons, adapted to the different stages of a work which is not to
be measured by the facile conjectures of ignorant onlookers. It had been easy for me to gain
a temporary effect by a mirage of baseless opinion; but it is ever the trial of the scrupulous
explorer to be saluted with the impatient scorn of chatterers who attempt only the smallest
achievements, being indeed equipped for no other. And it were well if all such could be
admonished to discriminate judgments of which the true subject−matter lies entirely beyond
their reach, from those of which the elements may be compassed by a narrow and superficial
survey."
This speech was delivered with an energy and readiness quite unusual with Mr.
Casaubon. It was not indeed entirely an improvisation, but had taken shape in inward
colloquy, and rushed out like the round grains from a fruit when sudden heat cracks it.
Dorothea was not only his wife: she was a personification of that shallow world which
surrounds the appreciated or desponding author.
Dorothea was indignant in her turn. Had she not been repressing everything in herself
except the desire to enter into some fellowship with her husband's chief interests?
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"My judgment WAS a very superficial one – such as I am capable of forming," she
answered, with a prompt resentment, that needed no rehearsal. "You showed me the rows of
notebooks – you have often spoken of them – you have often said that they wanted
digesting. But I never heard you speak of the writing that is to be published. Those were
very simple facts, and my judgment went no farther. I only begged you to let me be of some
good to you."
Dorothea rose to leave the table and Mr. Casaubon made no reply, taking up a letter
which lay beside him as if to reperuse it. Both were shocked at their mutual situation – that
each should have betrayed anger towards the other. If they had been at home, settled at
Lowick in ordinary life among their neighbors, the clash would have been less
embarrassing: but on a wedding journey, the express object of which is to isolate two people
on the ground that they are all the world to each other, the sense of disagreement is, to say
the least, confounding and stultifying. To have changed your longitude extensively and
placed yourselves in a moral solitude in order to have small explosions, to find conversation
difficult and to hand a glass of water without looking, can hardly be regarded as satisfactory
fulfilment even to the toughest minds. To Dorothea's inexperienced sensitiveness, it seemed
like a catastrophe, changing all prospects; and to Mr. Casaubon it was a new pain, he never
having been on a wedding journey before, or found himself in that close union which was
more of a subjection than he had been able to imagine, since this charming young bride not
only obliged him to much consideration on her behalf (which he had sedulously given), but
turned out to be capable of agitating him cruelly just where he most needed soothing.
Instead of getting a soft fence against the cold, shadowy, unapplausive audience of his life,
had he only given it a more substantial presence?
Neither of them felt it possible to speak again at present. To have reversed a previous
arrangement and declined to go out would have been a show of persistent anger which
Dorothea's conscience shrank from, seeing that she already began to feel herself guilty.
However just her indignation might be, her ideal was not to claim justice, but to give
tenderness. So when the carriage came to the door, she drove with Mr. Casaubon to the
Vatican, walked with him through the stony avenue of inscriptions, and when she parted
with him at the entrance to the Library, went on through the Museum out of mere
listlessness as to what was around her. She had not spirit to turn round and say that she
would drive anywhere. It was when Mr. Casaubon was quitting her that Naumann had first
seen her, and he had entered the long gallery of sculpture at the same time with her; but here
Naumann had to await Ladislaw with whom he was to settle a bet of champagne about an
enigmatical mediaeval−looking figure there. After they had examined the figure, and had
walked on finishing their dispute, they had parted, Ladislaw lingering behind while
Naumann had gone into the Hall of Statues where he again saw Dorothea, and saw her in
that brooding abstraction which made her pose remarkable. She did not really see the streak
of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues: she was inwardly seeing the light of
years to come in her own home and over the English fields and elms and hedge−bordered
highroads; and feeling that the way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness
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was not so clear to her as it had been. But in Dorothea's mind there was a current into which
all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to flow – the reaching forward of the whole
consciousness towards the fullest truth, the least partial good. There was clearly something
better than anger and despondency.
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CHAPTER XXI.
"H
ire facounde eke full womanly and plain, No contrefeted termes had she To semen
wise."
– CHAUCER.
It was in that way Dorothea came to be sobbing as soon as she was securely alone. But
she was presently roused by a knock at the door, which made her hastily dry her eyes before
saying, "Come in." Tantripp had brought a card, and said that there was a gentleman waiting
in the lobby. The courier had told him that only Mrs. Casaubon was at home, but he said he
was a relation of Mr. Casaubon's: would she see him?
"Yes," said Dorothea, without pause; "show him into the salon." Her chief impressions
about young Ladislaw were that when she had seen him at Lowick she had been made aware
of Mr. Casaubon's generosity towards him, and also that she had been interested in his own
hesitation about his career. She was alive to anything that gave her an opportunity for active
sympathy, and at this moment it seemed as if the visit had come to shake her out of her
self−absorbed discontent – to remind her of her husband's goodness, and make her feel that
she had now the right to be his helpmate in all kind deeds. She waited a minute or two, but
when she passed into the next room there were just signs enough that she had been crying to
make her open face look more youthful and appealing than usual. She met Ladislaw with
that exquisite smile of good−will which is unmixed with vanity, and held out her hand to
him. He was the elder by several years, but at that moment he looked much the younger, for
his transparent complexion flushed suddenly, and he spoke with a shyness extremely unlike
the ready indifference of his manner with his male companion, while Dorothea became all
the calmer with a wondering desire to put him at ease.
"I was not aware that you and Mr. Casaubon were in Rome, until this morning, when I
saw you in the Vatican Museum," he said. "I knew you at once – but – I mean, that I
concluded Mr. Casaubon's address would be found at the Poste Restante, and I was anxious
to pay my respects to him and you as early as possible."
"Pray sit down. He is not here now, but he will be glad to hear of you, I am sure," said
Dorothea, seating herself unthinkingly between the fire and the light of the tall window, and
pointing to a chair opposite, with the quietude of a benignant matron. The signs of girlish
sorrow in her face were only the more striking. "Mr. Casaubon is much engaged; but you
will leave your address – will you not? – and he will write to you."
"You are very good," said Ladislaw, beginning to lose his diffidence in the interest with
which he was observing the signs of weeping which had altered her face. "My address is on
my card. But if you will allow me I will call again to−morrow at an hour when Mr.
Casaubon is likely to be at home."
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"He goes to read in the Library of the Vatican every day, and you can hardly see him
except by an appointment. Especially now. We are about to leave Rome, and he is very
busy. He is usually away almost from breakfast till dinner. But I am sure he will wish you to
dine with us."
Will Ladislaw was struck mute for a few moments. He had never been fond of Mr.
Casaubon, and if it had not been for the sense of obligation, would have laughed at him as a
Bat of erudition. But the idea of this dried−up pedant, this elaborator of small explanations
about as important as the surplus stock of false antiquities kept in a vendor's back chamber,
having first got this adorable young creature to marry him, and then passing his honeymoon
away from her, groping after his mouldy futilities (Will was given to hyperbole) – this
sudden picture stirred him with a sort of comic disgust: he was divided between the impulse
to laugh aloud and the equally unseasonable impulse to burst into scornful invective.
For an instant he felt that the struggle, was causing a queer contortion of his mobile
features, but with a good effort he resolved it into nothing more offensive than a merry
smile.
Dorothea wondered; but the smile was irresistible, and shone back from her face too.
Will Ladislaw's smile was delightful, unless you were angry with him beforehand: it was a
gush of inward light illuminating the transparent skin as well as the eyes, and playing about
every curve and line as if some Ariel were touching them with a new charm, and banishing
forever the traces of moodiness. The reflection of that smile could not but have a little
merriment in it too, even under dark eyelashes still moist, as Dorothea said inquiringly,
"Something amuses you?"
"Yes," said Will, quick in finding resources. "I am thinking of the sort of figure I cut the
first time I saw you, when you annihilated my poor sketch with your criticism."
"My criticism?" said Dorothea, wondering still more. "Surely not. I always feel
particularly ignorant about painting."
"I suspected you of knowing so much, that you knew how to say just what was most
cutting. You said – I dare say you don't remember it as I do – that the relation of my sketch
to nature was quite hidden from you. At least, you implied that." Will could laugh now as
well as smile.
"That was really my ignorance," said Dorothea, admiring
Will's good−humor. "I must have said so only because I never could see any beauty in
the pictures which my uncle told me all judges thought very fine. And I have gone about
with just the same ignorance in Rome. There are comparatively few paintings that I can
really enjoy. At first when I enter a room where the walls are covered with frescos, or with
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rare pictures, I feel a kind of awe – like a child present at great ceremonies where there are
grand robes and processions; I feel myself in the presence of some higher life than my own.
But when I begin to examine the pictures one by on the life goes out of them, or else is
something violent and strange to me. It must be my own dulness. I am seeing so much all at
once, and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be
told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel that it is fine – something like being
blind, while people talk of the sky."
"Oh, there is a great deal in the feeling for art which must be acquired," said Will. (It
was impossible now to doubt the directness of Dorothea's confession.) "Art is an old
language with a great many artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one
gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing. I enjoy the art of all sorts here
immensely; but I suppose if I could pick my enjoyment to pieces I should find it made up of
many different threads. There is something in daubing a little one's self, and having an idea
of the process."
"You mean perhaps to be a painter?" said Dorothea, with a new direction of interest.
"You mean to make painting your profession? Mr. Casaubon will like to hear that you have
chosen a profession."
"No, oh no," said Will, with some coldness. "I have quite made up my mind against it. It
is too one−sided a life. I have been seeing a great deal of the German artists here: I travelled
from Frankfort with one of them. Some are fine, even brilliant fellows – but I should not like
to get into their way of looking at the world entirely from the studio point of view."
"That I can understand," said Dorothea, cordially. "And in Rome it seems as if there
were so many things which are more wanted in the world than pictures. But if you have a
genius for painting, would it not be right to take that as a guide? Perhaps you might do better
things than these – or different, so that there might not be so many pictures almost all alike
in the same place."
There was no mistaking this simplicity, and Will was won by it into frankness. "A man
must have a very rare genius to make changes of that sort. I am afraid mine would not carry
me even to the pitch of doing well what has been done already, at least not so well as to
make it worth while. And I should never succeed in anything by dint of drudgery. If things
don't come easily to me I never get them."
"I have heard Mr. Casaubon say that he regrets your want of patience," said Dorothea,
gently. She was rather shocked at this mode of taking all life as a holiday.
"Yes, I know Mr. Casaubon's opinion. He and I differ."
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The slight streak of contempt in this hasty reply offended Dorothea. She was all the
more susceptible about Mr. Casaubon because of her morning's trouble.
"Certainly you differ," she said, rather proudly. "I did not think of comparing you: such
power of persevering devoted labor as Mr. Casaubon's is not common."
Will saw that she was offended, but this only gave an additional impulse to the new
irritation of his latent dislike towards Mr. Casaubon. It was too intolerable that Dorothea
should be worshipping this husband: such weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but
the husband in question. Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbor's
buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.
"No, indeed," he answered, promptly. "And therefore it is a pity that it should be thrown
away, as so much English scholarship is, for want of knowing what is being done by the rest
of the world. If Mr. Casaubon read German he would save himself a great deal of trouble."
"I do not understand you," said Dorothea, startled and anxious.
"I merely mean," said Will, in an offhand way, "that the Germans have taken the lead in
historical inquiries, and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in woods with a
pocket−compass while they have made good roads. When I was with Mr. Casaubon I saw
that he deafened himself in that direction: it was almost against his will that he read a Latin
treatise written by a German. I was very sorry."
Will only thought of giving a good pinch that would annihilate that vaunted
laboriousness, and was unable to imagine the mode in which Dorothea would be wounded.
Young Mr. Ladislaw was not at all deep himself in German writers; but very little
achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.
Poor Dorothea felt a pang at the thought that the labor of her husband's life might be
void, which left her no energy to spare for the question whether this young relative who was
so much obliged to him ought not to have repressed his observation. She did not even speak,
but sat looking at her hands, absorbed in the piteousness of that thought.
Will, however, having given that annihilating pinch, was rather ashamed, imagining
from Dorothea's silence that he had offended her still more; and having also a conscience
about plucking the tail−feathers from a benefactor.
"I regretted it especially," he resumed, taking the usual course from detraction to
insincere eulogy, "because of my gratitude and respect towards my cousin. It would not
signify so much in a man whose talents and character were less distinguished."
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Dorothea raised her eyes, brighter than usual with excited feeling, and said in her
saddest recitative, "How I wish I had learned German when I was at Lausanne! There were
plenty of German teachers. But now I can be of no use."
There was a new light, but still a mysterious light, for Will in Dorothea's last words.
The question how she had come to accept Mr. Casaubon – which he had dismissed when he
first saw her by saying that she must be disagreeable in spite of appearances – was not now
to be answered on any such short and easy method. Whatever else she might be, she was not
disagreeable. She was not coldly clever and indirectly satirical, but adorably simple and full
of feeling. She was an angel beguiled. It would be a unique delight to wait and watch for the
melodious fragments in which her heart and soul came forth so directly and ingenuously.
The AEolian harp again came into his mind.
She must have made some original romance for herself in this marriage. And if Mr.
Casaubon had been a dragon who had carried her off to his lair with his talons simply and
without legal forms, it would have been an unavoidable feat of heroism to release her and
fall at her feet. But he was something more unmanageable than a dragon: he was a
benefactor with collective society at his back, and he was at that moment entering the room
in all the unimpeachable correctness of his demeanor, while Dorothea was looking animated
with a newly roused alarm and regret, and Will was looking animated with his admiring
speculation about her feelings.
Mr. Casaubon felt a surprise which was quite unmixed with pleasure, but he did not
swerve from his usual politeness of greeting, when Will rose and explained his presence.
Mr. Casaubon was less happy than usual, and this perhaps made him look all the dimmer
and more faded; else, the effect might easily have been produced by the contrast of his
young cousin's appearance. The first impression on seeing Will was one of sunny brightness,
which added to the uncertainty of his changing expression. Surely, his very features changed
their form, his jaw looked sometimes large and sometimes small; and the little ripple in his
nose was a preparation for metamorphosis. When he turned his head quickly his hair seemed
to shake out light, and some persons thought they saw decided genius in this coruscation.
Mr. Casaubon, on the contrary, stood rayless.
As Dorothea's eyes were turned anxiously on her husband she was perhaps not
insensible to the contrast, but it was only mingled with other causes in making her more
conscious of that new alarm on his behalf which was the first stirring of a pitying tenderness
fed by the realities of his lot and not by her own dreams. Yet it was a source of greater
freedom to her that Will was there; his young equality was agreeable, and also perhaps his
openness to conviction. She felt an immense need of some one to speak to, and she had
never before seen any one who seemed so quick and pliable, so likely to understand
everything.
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Mr. Casaubon gravely hoped that Will was passing his time profitably as well as
pleasantly in Rome – had thought his intention was to remain in South Germany – but
begged him to come and dine to−morrow, when he could converse more at large: at present
he was somewhat weary. Ladislaw understood, and accepting the invitation immediately
took his leave.
Dorothea's eyes followed her husband anxiously, while he sank down wearily at the end
of a sofa, and resting his elbow supported his head and looked on the floor. A little flushed,
and with bright eyes, she seated herself beside him, and said –
"Forgive me for speaking so hastily to you this morning. I was wrong. I fear I hurt you
and made the day more burdensome."
"I am glad that you feel that, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon. He spoke quietly and
bowed. his head a little, but there was still an uneasy feeling in his eyes as he looked at her.
"But you do forgive me?" said Dorothea, with a quick sob. In her need for some
manifestation of feeling she was ready to exaggerate her own fault. Would not love see
returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck and kiss it?
"My dear Dorothea – `who with repentance is not satisfied, is not of heaven nor earth:' –
you do not think me worthy to be banished by that severe sentence," said Mr. Casaubon,
exerting himself to make a strong statement, and also to smile faintly.
Dorothea was silent, but a tear which had come up with the sob would insist on falling.
"You are excited, my dear.. And I also am feeling some unpleasant consequences of too
much mental disturbance," said Mr. Casaubon. In fact, he had it in his thought to tell her that
she ought not to have received young Ladislaw in his absence: but he abstained, partly from
the sense that it would be ungracious to bring a new complaint in the moment of her penitent
acknowledgment, partly because he wanted to avoid further agitation of himself by speech,
and partly because he was too proud to betray that jealousy of disposition which was not so
exhausted on his scholarly compeers that there was none to spare in other directions. There
is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the
cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.
"I think it is time for us to dress," he added, looking at his watch. They both rose, and
there was never any further allusion between them to what had passed on this day.
But Dorothea remembered it to the last with the vividness with which we all remember
epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.
Today she had begun to see that she had been under a wild illusion in expecting a response
to her feeling from Mr. Casaubon, and she had felt the waking of a presentiment that there
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might be a sad consciousness in his life which made as great a need on his side as on her
own.
We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our
supreme selves: Dorothea had early begun to emerge from that stupidity, but yet it had been
easier to her to imagine how she would devote herself to Mr. Casaubon, and become wise
and strong in his strength and wisdom, than to conceive with that distinctness which is no
longer reflection but feeling – an idea wrought back to the directness of sense, like the
solidity of objects – that he had an equivalent centre of self, whence the lights and shadows
must always fall with a certain difference.
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CHAPTER XXII.
"N
ous causames longtemps; elle etait simple et bonne. Ne sachant pas le mal, elle
faisait le bien; Des richesses du coeur elle me fit l'aumone, Et tout en ecoutant comme le
coeur se donne, Sans oser y penser je lui donnai le mien; Elle emporta ma vie, et n'en sut
jamais rien." – ALFRED DE MUSSET.
Will Ladislaw was delightfully agreeable at dinner the next day, and gave no
opportunity for Mr. Casaubon to show disapprobation. On the contrary it seemed to
Dorothea that Will had a happier way of drawing her husband into conversation and of
deferentially listening to him than she had ever observed in any one before. To be sure, the
listeners about Tipton were not highly gifted! Will talked a good deal himself, but what he
said was thrown in with such rapidity, and with such an unimportant air of saying something
by the way, that it seemed a gay little chime after the great bell. If Will was not always
perfect, this was certainly one of his good days. He described touches of incident among the
poor people in Rome, only to be seen by one who could move about freely; he found himself
in agreement with Mr. Casaubon as to the unsound opinions of Middleton concerning the
relations of Judaism and Catholicism; and passed easily to a half−enthusiastic half−playful
picture of the enjoyment he got out of the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the
mind flexible with constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world's ages as a set
of box−like partitions without vital connection. Mr. Casaubon's studies, Will observed, had
always been of too broad a kind for that, and he had perhaps never felt any such sudden
effect, but for himself he confessed that Rome had given him quite a new sense of history as
a whole: the fragments stimulated his imagination and made him constructive. Then
occasionally, but not too often, he appealed to Dorothea, and discussed what she said, as if
her sentiment were an item to be considered in the final judgment even of the Madonna di
Foligno or the Laocoon. A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion makes
conversation particularly cheerful; and Mr. Casaubon too was not without his pride in his
young wife, who spoke better than most women, as indeed he had perceived in choosing her.
Since things were going on so pleasantly, Mr. Casaubon's statement that his labors in
the Library would be suspended for a couple of days, and that after a brief renewal he should
have no further reason for staying in Rome, encouraged Will to urge that Mrs. Casaubon
should not go away without seeing a studio or two. Would not Mr. Casaubon take her? That
sort of thing ought not to be missed: it was quite special: it was a form of life that grew like
a small fresh vegetation with its population of insects on huge fossils. Will would be happy
to conduct them – not to anything wearisome, only to a few examples.
Mr. Casaubon, seeing Dorothea look earnestly towards him, could not but ask her if she
would be interested in such visits: he was now at her service during the whole day; and it
was agreed that Will should come on the morrow and drive with them.
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Will could not omit Thorwaldsen, a living celebrity about whom even Mr. Casaubon
inquired, but before the day was far advanced he led the way to the studio of his friend
Adolf Naumann, whom he mentioned as one of the chief renovators of Christian art, one of
those who had not only revived but expanded that grand conception of supreme events as
mysteries at which the successive ages were spectators, and in relation to which the great
souls of all periods became as it were contemporaries. Will added that he had made himself
Naumann's pupil for the nonce.
"I have been making some oil−sketches under him," said Will. "I hate copying. I must
put something of my own in. Naumann has been painting the Saints drawing the Car of the
Church, and I have been making a sketch of Marlowe's Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered
Kings in his Chariot. I am not so ecclesiastical as Naumann, and I sometimes twit him with
his excess of meaning. But this time I mean to outdo him in breadth of intention. I take
Tamburlaine in his chariot for the tremendous course of the world's physical history lashing
on the harnessed dynasties. In my opinion, that is a good mythical interpretation." Will here
looked at Mr. Casaubon, who received this offhand treatment of symbolism very uneasily,
and bowed with a neutral air.
"The sketch must be very grand, if it conveys so much," said Dorothea. "I should need
some explanation even of the meaning you give. Do you intend Tamburlaine to represent
earthquakes and volcanoes?"
"Oh yes," said Will, laughing, "and migrations of races and clearings of forests – and
America and the steam−engine. Everything you can imagine!"
"What a difficult kind of shorthand!" said Dorothea, smiling towards her husband. "It
would require all your knowledge to be able to read it."
Mr. Casaubon blinked furtively at Will. He had a suspicion that he was being laughed
at. But it was not possible to include Dorothea in the suspicion.
They found Naumann painting industriously, but no model was present; his pictures
were advantageously arranged, and his own plain vivacious person set off by a
dove−colored blouse and a maroon velvet cap, so that everything was as fortunate as if he
had expected the beautiful young English lady exactly at that time.
The painter in his confident English gave little dissertations on his finished and
unfinished subjects, seeming to observe Mr. Casaubon as much as he did Dorothea. Will
burst in here and there with ardent words of praise, marking out particular merits in his
friend's work; and Dorothea felt that she was getting quite new notions as to the significance
of Madonnas seated under inexplicable canopied thrones with the simple country as a
background, and of saints with architectural models in their hands, or knives accidentally
wedged in their skulls. Some things which had seemed monstrous to her were gathering
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intelligibility and even a natural meaning: but all this was apparently a branch of knowledge
in which Mr. Casaubon had not interested himself.
"I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than have to read it as an enigma;
but I should learn to understand these pictures sooner than yours with the very wide
meaning," said Dorothea, speaking to Will.
"Don't speak of my painting before Naumann," said Will. "He will tell you, it is all
pfuscherei, which is his most opprobrious word!"
"Is that true?" said Dorothea, turning her sincere eyes on Naumann, who made a slight
grimace and said –
"Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting. His walk must be belles−lettres. That
is wi−ide."
Naumann's pronunciation of the vowel seemed to stretch the word satirically. Will did
not half like it, but managed to laugh: and Mr. Casaubon, while he felt some disgust at the
artist's German accent, began to entertain a little respect for his judicious severity.
The respect was not diminished when Naumann, after drawing Will aside for a moment
and looking, first at a large canvas, then at Mr. Casaubon, came forward again and said –
"My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say that a sketch of your head
would be invaluable to me for the St. Thomas Aquinas in my picture there. It is too much to
ask; but I so seldom see just what I want – the idealistic in the real."
"You astonish me greatly, sir," said Mr. Casaubon, his looks improved with a glow of
delight; "but if my poor physiognomy, which I have been accustomed to regard as of the
commonest order, can be of any use to you in furnishing some traits for the angelical doctor,
I shall feel honored. That is to say, if the operation will not be a lengthy one; and if Mrs.
Casaubon will not object to the delay."
As for Dorothea, nothing could have pleased her more, unless it had been a miraculous
voice pronouncing Mr. Casaubon the wisest and worthiest among the sons of men. In that
case her tottering faith would have become firm again.
Naumann's apparatus was at hand in wonderful completeness, and the sketch went on at
once as well as the conversation. Dorothea sat down and subsided into calm silence, feeling
happier than she had done for a long while before. Every one about her seemed good, and
she said to herself that Rome, if she had only been less ignorant, would have been full of
beauty its sadness would have been winged with hope. No nature could be less suspicious
than hers: when she was a child she believed in the gratitude of wasps and the honorable
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susceptibility of sparrows, and was proportionately indignant when their baseness was made
manifest.
The adroit artist was asking Mr. Casaubon questions about English polities, which
brought long answers, and, Will meanwhile had perched himself on some steps in the
background overlooking all.
Presently Naumann said – "Now if I could lay this by for half an hour and take it up
again – come and look, Ladislaw – I think it is perfect so far."
Will vented those adjuring interjections which imply that admiration is too strong for
syntax; and Naumann said in a tone of piteous regret –
"Ah – now – if I could but have had more – but you have other engagements – I could
not ask it – or even to come again to−morrow."
"Oh, let us stay!" said Dorothea. "We have nothing to do to−day except go about, have
we?" she added, looking entreatingly at Mr. Casaubon. "It would be a pity not to make the
head as good as possible."
"I am at your service, sir, in the matter," said Mr. Casaubon, with polite condescension.
"Having given up the interior of my head to idleness, it is as well that the exterior should
work in this way."
"You are unspeakably good – now I am happy!" said Naumann, and then went on in
German to Will, pointing here and there to the sketch as if he were considering that. Putting
it aside for a moment, he looked round vaguely, as if seeking some occupation for his
visitors, and afterwards turning to Mr. Casaubon, said –
"Perhaps the beautiful bride, the gracious lady, would not be unwilling to let me fill up
the time by trying to make a slight sketch of her – not, of course, as you see, for that picture
– only as a single study."
Mr. Casaubon, bowing, doubted not that Mrs. Casaubon would oblige him, and
Dorothea said, at once, "Where shall I put myself?"
Naumann was all apologies in asking her to stand, and allow him to adjust her attitude,
to which she submitted without any of the affected airs and laughs frequently thought
necessary on such occasions, when the painter said, "It is as Santa Clara that I want you to
stand – leaning so, with your cheek against your hand – so – looking at that stool, please,
so!"
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Will was divided between the inclination to fall at the Saint's feet and kiss her robe, and
the temptation to knock Naumann down while he was adjusting her arm. All this was
impudence and desecration, and he repented that he had brought her.
The artist was diligent, and Will recovering himself moved about and occupied Mr.
Casaubon as ingeniously as he could; but he did not in the end prevent the time from
seeming long to that gentleman, as was clear from his expressing a fear that Mrs. Casaubon
would be tired. Naumann took the hint and said –
"Now, sir, if you can oblige me again; I will release the lady−wife."
So Mr. Casaubon's patience held out further, and when after all it turned out that the
head of Saint Thomas Aquinas would be more perfect if another sitting could be had, it was
granted for the morrow. On the morrow Santa Clara too was retouched more than once. The
result of all was so far from displeasing to Mr. Casaubon, that he arranged for the purchase
of the picture in which Saint Thomas Aquinas sat among the doctors of the Church in a
disputation too abstract to be represented, but listened to with more or less attention by an
audience above. The Santa Clara, which was spoken of in the second place, Naumann
declared himself to be dissatisfied with – he could not, in conscience, engage to make a
worthy picture of it; so about the Santa Clara the arrangement was conditional.
I will not dwell on Naumann's jokes at the expense of Mr. Casaubon that evening, or on
his dithyrambs about Dorothea's charm, in all which Will joined, but with a difference. No
sooner did Naumann mention any detail of Dorothea's beauty, than Will got exasperated at
his presumption: there was grossness in his choice of the most ordinary words, and what
business had he to talk of her lips? She was not a woman to be spoken of as other women
were. Will could not say just what he thought, but he became irritable. And yet, when after
some resistance he had consented to take the Casaubons to his friend's studio, he had been
allured by the gratification of his pride in being the person who could grant Naumann such
an opportunity of studying her loveliness – or rather her divineness, for the ordinary phrases
which might apply to mere bodily prettiness were not applicable to her. (Certainly all Tipton
and its neighborhood, as well as Dorothea herself, would have been surprised at her beauty
being made so much of. In that part of the world Miss Brooke had been only a "fine young
woman.")
"Oblige me by letting the subject drop, Naumann. Mrs. Casaubon is not to be talked of
as if she were a model," said Will. Naumann stared at him.
"Schon! I will talk of my Aquinas. The head is not a bad type, after all. I dare say the
great scholastic himself would have been flattered to have his portrait asked for. Nothing
like these starchy doctors for vanity! It was as I thought: he cared much less for her portrait
than his own."
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"He's a cursed white−blooded pedantic coxcomb," said Will, with gnashing
impetuosity. His obligations to Mr. Casaubon were not known to his hearer, but Will himself
was thinking of them, and wishing that he could discharge them all by a check.
Naumann gave a shrug and said, "It is good they go away soon, my dear. They are
spoiling your fine temper."
All Will's hope and contrivance were now concentrated on seeing Dorothea when she
was alone. He only wanted her to take more emphatic notice of him; he only wanted to be
something more special in her remembrance than he could yet believe himself likely to be.
He was rather impatient under that open ardent good−will, reach he saw was her usual state
of feeling. The remote worship of a woman throned out of their reach plays a great part in
men's lives, but in most cases the worshipper longs for some queenly recognition, some
approving sign by which his soul's sovereign may cheer him without descending from her
high place. That was precisely what Will wanted. But there were plenty of contradictions in
his imaginative demands. It was beautiful to see how Dorothea's eyes turned with wifely
anxiety and beseeching to Mr. Casaubon: she would have lost some of her halo if she had
been without that duteous preoccupation; and yet at the next moment the husband's sandy
absorption of such nectar was too intolerable; and Will's longing to say damaging things
about him was perhaps not the less tormenting because he felt the strongest reasons for
restraining it.
Will had not been invited to dine the next day. Hence he persuaded himself that he was
bound to call, and that the only eligible time was the middle of the day, when Mr. Casaubon
would not be at home.
Dorothea, who had not been made aware that her former reception of Will had
displeased her husband, had no hesitation about seeing him, especially as he might be come
to pay a farewell visit. When he entered she was looking at some cameos which she had
been buying for Celia. She greeted Will as if his visit were quite a matter of course, and said
at once, having a cameo bracelet in her hand –
"I am so glad you are come. Perhaps you understand all about cameos, and can tell me
if these are really good. I wished to have you with us in choosing them, but Mr. Casaubon
objected: he thought there was not time. He will finish his work to−morrow, and we shall go
away in three days. I have been uneasy about these cameos. Pray sit down and look at
them."
"I am not particularly knowing, but there can be no great mistake about these little
Homeric bits: they are exquisitely neat. And the color is fine: it will just suit you."
"Oh, they are for my sister, who has quite a different complexion. You saw her with me
at Lowick: she is light−haired and very pretty – at least I think so. We were never so long
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away from each other in our lives before. She is a great pet and never was naughty in her
life. I found out before I came away that she wanted me to buy her some cameos, and I
should be sorry for them not to be good – after their kind." Dorothea added the last words
with a smile.
"You seem not to care about cameos," said Will, seating himself at some distance from
her, and observing her while she closed the oases.
"No, frankly, I don't think them a great object in life," said Dorothea
"I fear you are a heretic about art generally. How is that? I should have expected you to
be very sensitive to the beautiful everywhere."
"I suppose I am dull about many things," said Dorothea, simply. "I should like to make
life beautiful – I mean everybody's life. And then all this immense expense of art, that seems
somehow to lie outside life and make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my
enjoyment of anything when I am made to think that most people are shut out from it."
"I call that the fanaticism of sympathy," said Will, impetuously. "You might say the
same of landscape, of poetry, of all refinement. If you carried it out you ought to be
miserable in your own goodness, and turn evil that you might have no advantage over
others. The best piety is to enjoy – when you can. You are doing the most then to save the
earth's character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. It is of no use to try and
take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight – in art or in
anything else. Would you turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and
moralizing over misery? I suspect that you have some false belief in the virtues of misery,
and want to make your life a martyrdom." Will had gone further than he intended, and
checked himself. But Dorothea's thought was not taking just the same direction as his own,
and she answered without any special emotion –
"Indeed you mistake me. I am not a sad, melancholy creature. I am never unhappy long
together. I am angry and naughty – not like Celia: I have a great outburst, and then all seems
glorious again. I cannot help believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way. I should be
quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is so much that I don't know the reason of – so
much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness rather than beauty. The painting and
sculpture may be wonderful, but the feeling is often low and brutal, and sometimes even
ridiculous. Here and there I see what takes me at once as noble – something that I might
compare with the Alban Mountains or the sunset from the Pincian Hill; but that makes it the
greater pity that there is so little of the best kind among all that mass of things over which
men have toiled so."
"Of course there is always a great deal of poor work: the rarer things want that soil to
grow in."
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"Oh dear," said Dorothea, taking up that thought into the chief current of her anxiety; "I
see it must be very difficult to do anything good. I have often felt since I have been in Rome
that most of our lives would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures, if they
could be put on the wall."
Dorothea parted her lips again as if she were going to say more, but changed her mind
and paused.
"You are too young – it is an anachronism for you to have such thoughts," said Will,
energetically, with a quick shake of the head habitual to him. "You talk as if you had never
known any youth. It is monstrous – as if you had had a vision of Hades in your childhood,
like the boy in the legend. You have been brought up in some of those horrible notions that
choose the sweetest women to devour – like Minotaurs And now you will go and be shut up
in that stone prison at Lowick: you will be buried alive. It makes me savage to think of it! I
would rather never have seen you than think of you with such a prospect."
Will again feared that he had gone too far; but the meaning we attach to words depends
on our feeling, and his tone of angry regret had so much kindness in it for Dorothea's heart,
which had always been giving out ardor and had never been fed with much from the living
beings around her, that she felt a new sense of gratitude and answered with a gentle smile –
"It is very good of you to be anxious about me. It is because you did not like Lowick
yourself: you had set your heart on another kind of life. But Lowick is my chosen home."
The last sentence was spoken with an almost solemn cadence, and Will did not know
what to say, since it would not be useful for him to embrace her slippers, and tell her that he
would die for her: it was clear that she required nothing of the sort; and they were both silent
for a moment or two, when Dorothea began again with an air of saying at last what had been
in her mind beforehand.
"I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day. Perhaps it was half
of it your lively way of speaking: I notice that you like to put things strongly; I myself often
exaggerate when I speak hastily."
"What was it?" said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity quite new in her. "I
have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire as it goes. I dare say I shall have to retract."
"I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German – I mean, for the
subjects that Mr. Casaubon is engaged in. I have been thinking about it; and it seems to me
that with Mr. Casaubon's learning he must have before him the same materials as German
scholars – has he not?" Dorothea's timidity was due to an indistinct consciousness that she
was in the strange situation of consulting a third person about the adequacy of Mr.
Casaubon's learning.
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"Not exactly the same materials," said Will, thinking that he would be duly reserved.
"He is not an Orientalist, you know. He does not profess to have more than second−hand
knowledge there."
"But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written a long while
ago by scholars who knew nothing about these modern things; and they are still used. Why
should Mr. Casaubon's not be valuable, like theirs?" said Dorothea, with more remonstrant
energy. She was impelled to have the argument aloud, which she had been having in her
own mind.
"That depends on the line of study taken," said Will, also getting a tone of rejoinder.
"The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as changing as chemistry: new discoveries are
constantly making new points of view. Who wants a system on the basis of the four
elements, or a book to refute Paracelsus? Do you not see that it is no use now to be crawling
a little way after men of the last century – men like Bryant – and correcting their mistakes? –
living in a lumber−room and furbishing up broken−legged theories about Chus and
Mizraim?"
"How can you bear to speak so lightly?" said Dorothea, with a look between sorrow and
anger. "If it were as you say, what could be sadder than so much ardent labor all in vain? I
wonder it does not affect you more painfully, if you really think that a man like Mr.
Casaubon, of so much goodness, power, and learning, should in any way fail in what has
been the labor of his best years." She was beginning to be shocked that she had got to such a
point of supposition, and indignant with Will for having led her to it.
"You questioned me about the matter of fact, not of feeling," said Will. "But if you wish
to punish me for the fact, I submit. I am not in a position to express my feeling toward Mr.
Casaubon: it would be at best a pensioner's eulogy."
"Pray excuse me," said Dorothea, coloring deeply. "I am aware, as you say, that I am in
fault in having introduced the subject. Indeed, I am wrong altogether. Failure after long
perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a
failure."
"I quite agree with you," said Will, determined to change the situation – "so much so
that I have made up my mind not to run that risk of never attaining a failure. Mr. Casaubon's
generosity has perhaps been dangerous to me, and I mean to renounce the liberty it has given
me. I mean to go back to England shortly and work my own way – depend on nobody else
than myself."
"That is fine – I respect that feeling," said Dorothea, with returning kindness. "But Mr.
Casaubon, I am sure, has never thought of anything in the matter except what was most for
your welfare."
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"She has obstinacy and pride enough to serve instead of love, now she has married
him," said Will to himself. Aloud he said, rising –
"I shall not see you again."
"Oh, stay till Mr. Casaubon comes," said Dorothea, earnestly. "I am so glad we met in
Rome. I wanted to know you."?
"And I have made you angry," said Will. "I have made you think ill of me."
"Oh no. My sister tells me I am always angry with people who do not say just what I
like. But I hope I am not given to think ill of them. In the end I am usually obliged to think
ill of myself. for being so impatient."
"Still, you don't like me; I have made myself an unpleasant thought to you."
"Not at all," said Dorothea, with the most open kindness. "I like you very much."
Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have been of more
importance if he had been disliked. He said nothing, but looked lull, not to say sulky.
"And I am quite interested to see what you will do," Dorothea went on cheerfully. "I
believe devoutly in a natural difference of vocation. If it were not for that belief, I suppose I
should be very narrow – there are so many things, besides painting, that I am quite ignorant
of. You would hardly believe how little I have taken in of music and literature, which you
know so much of. I wonder what your vocation will turn out to be: perhaps you will be a
poet?"
"That depends. To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality
escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered
variety on the chords of emotion – a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into
feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. One may have that condition
by fits only."
"But you leave out the poems," said Dorothea. "I think they are wanted to complete the
poet. I understand what you mean about knowledge passing into feeling, for that seems to be
just what I experience. But I am sure I could never produce a poem."
"You ARE a poem – and that is to be the best part of a poet – what makes up the poet's
consciousness in his best moods," said Will, showing such originality as we all share with
the morning and the spring−time and other endless renewals.
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"I am very glad to hear it," said Dorothea, laughing out her words in a bird−like
modulation, and looking at Will with playful gratitude in her eyes. "What very kind things
you say to me!"
"I wish I could ever do anything that would be what you call kind – that I could ever be
of the slightest service to you I fear I shall never have the opportunity." Will spoke with
fervor.
"Oh yes," said Dorothea, cordially. "It will come; and I shall remember how well you
wish me. I quite hoped that we should be friends when I first saw you – because of your
relationship to Mr. Casaubon." There was a certain liquid brightness in her eyes, and Will
was conscious that his own were obeying a law of nature and filling too. The allusion to Mr.
Casaubon would have spoiled all if anything at that moment could have spoiled the
subduing power, the sweet dignity, of her noble unsuspicious inexperience.
"And there is one thing even now that you can do," said Dorothea, rising and walking a
little way under the strength of a recurring impulse. "Promise me that you will not again, to
any one, speak of that subject – I mean about Mr. Casaubon's writings – I mean in that kind
of way. It was I who led to it. It was my fault. But promise me."
She had returned from her brief pacing and stood opposite Will, looking gravely at him.
"Certainly, I will promise you," said Will, reddening however. If he never said a cutting
word about Mr. Casaubon again and left off receiving favors from him, it would clearly be
permissible to hate him the more. The poet must know how to hate, says Goethe; and Will
was at least ready with that accomplishment. He said that he must go now without waiting
for Mr. Casaubon, whom he would come to take leave of at the last moment. Dorothea gave
him her hand, and they exchanged a simple "Good−by."
But going out of the porte cochere he met Mr. Casaubon, and that gentleman,
expressing the best wishes for his cousin, politely waived the pleasure of any further
leave−taking on the morrow, which would be sufficiently crowded with the preparations for
departure.
"I have something to tell you about our cousin Mr. Ladislaw, which I think will
heighten your opinion of him," said Dorothea to her husband in the coarse of the evening.
She had mentioned immediately on his entering that Will had just gone away, and would
come again, but Mr. Casaubon had said, "I met him outside, and we made our final adieux, I
believe," saying this with the air and tone by which we imply that any subject, whether
private or public, does not interest us enough to wish for a further remark upon it. So
Dorothea had waited.
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CHAPTER XXII. 187
"What is that, my love?" said Mr Casaubon (he always said "my love" when his manner
was the coldest).
"He has made up his mind to leave off wandering at once, and to give up his
dependence on your generosity. He means soon to go back to England, and work his own
way. I thought you would consider that a good sign," said Dorothea, with an appealing look
into her husband's neutral face.
"Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would addict himself?"
"No. But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him in your generosity. Of course
he will write to you about it. Do you not think better of him for his resolve?"
"I shall await his communication on the subject," said Mr. Casaubon.
"I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did for him was his own
welfare. I remembered your goodness in what you said about him when I first saw him at
Lowick," said Dorothea, putting her hand on her husband's
"I had a duty towards him," said Mr. Casaubon, laying his other hand on Dorothea's in
conscientious acceptance of her caress, but with a glance which he could not hinder from
being uneasy. "The young man, I confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor
need we, I think, discuss his future course, which it is not ours to determine beyond the
limits which I have sufficiently indicated." Dorothea did not mention Will again.
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CHAPTER XXII. 188
CHAPTER XXIII.
"Y
our horses of the Sun," he said, "And first−rate whip Apollo! Whate'er they be, I'll
eat my head, But I will beat them hollow."
Fred Vincy, we have seen. had a debt on his mind, and though no such immaterial
burthen could depress that buoyant−hearted young gentleman for many hours together, there
were circumstances connected with this debt which made the thought of it unusually
importunate. The creditor was Mr. Bambridge a horse−dealer of the neighborhood, whose
company was much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood to be "addicted to
pleasure." During the vacations Fred had naturally required more amusements than he had
ready money for, and Mr. Bambridge had been accommodating enough not only to trust him
for the hire of horses and the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter, but also to make a
small advance by which he might be able to meet some losses at billiards. The total debt was
a hundred and sixty pounds. Bambridge was in no alarm about his money, being sure that
young Vincy had backers; but he had required something to show for it, and Fred had at first
given a bill with his own signature. Three months later he had renewed this bill with the
signature of Caleb Garth. On both occasions Fred had felt confident that he should meet the
bill himself, having ample funds at disposal in his own hopefulness. You will hardly demand
that his confidence should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know, is
something less coarse and materialistic: it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect
that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still
greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about agreeable
issues, such as are consistent with our good taste in costume, and our general preference for
the best style of thing. Fred felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle, that he
should have a run of luck, that by dint of "swapping" he should gradually metamorphose a
horse worth forty pounds into a horse that would fetch a hundred at any moment –
"judgment" being always equivalent to an unspecified sum in hard cash. And in any case,
even supposing negations which only a morbid distrust could imagine, Fred had always (at
that time) his father's pocket as a last resource, so that his assets of hopefulness had a sort of
gorgeous superfluity about them. Of what might be the capacity of his father's pocket, Fred
had only a vague notion: was not trade elastic? And would not the deficiencies of one year
be made up for by the surplus of another? The Vincys lived in an easy profuse way, not with
any new ostentation, but according to the family habits and traditions, so that the children
had no standard of economy, and the elder ones retained some of their infantine notion that
their father might pay for anything if he would. Mr. Vincy himself had expensive
Middlemarch habits – spent money on coursing, on his cellar, and on dinner−giving, while
mamma had those running accounts with tradespeople, which give a cheerful sense of
getting everything one wants without any question of payment. But it was in the nature of
fathers, Fred knew, to bully one about expenses: there was always a little storm over his
extravagance if he had to disclose a debt, and Fred disliked bad weather within doors. He
was too filial to be disrespectful to his father, and he bore the thunder with the certainty that
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it was transient; but in the mean time it was disagreeable to see his mother cry, and also to
be obliged to look sulky instead of having fun; for Fred was so good−tempered that if he
looked glum under scolding, it was chiefly for propriety's sake. The easier course plainly,
was to renew the bill with a friend's signature. Why not? With the superfluous securities of
hope at his command, there was no reason why he should not have increased other people's
liabilities to any extent, but for the fact that men whose names were good for anything were
usually pessimists, indisposed to believe that the universal order of things would necessarily
be agreeable to an agreeable young gentleman.
With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do justice to their more amiable
qualities, forgive their little offenses, and concerning each in turn, try to arrive at the
conclusion that he will be eager to oblige us, our own eagerness to be obliged being as
communicable as other warmth. Still there is always a certain number who are dismissed as
but moderately eager until the others have refused; and it happened that Fred checked off all
his friends but one, on the ground that applying to them would be disagreeable; being
implicitly convinced that he at least (whatever might be maintained about mankind
generally) had a right to be free from anything disagreeable. That he should ever fall into a
thoroughly unpleasant position – wear trousers shrunk with washing, eat cold mutton, have
to walk for want of a horse, or to "duck under" in any sort of way – was an absurdity
irreconcilable with those cheerful intuitions implanted in him by nature. And Fred winced
under the idea of being looked down upon as wanting funds for small debts. Thus it came to
pass that the friend whom he chose to apply to was at once the poorest and the kindest –
namely, Caleb Garth.
The Garths were very fond of Fred, as he was of them; for when he and Rosamond were
little ones, and the Garths were better off, the slight connection between the two families
through Mr. Featherstone's double marriage (the first to Mr. Garth's sister, and the second to
Mrs. Vincy's) had led to an acquaintance which was carried on between the children rather
than the parents: the children drank tea together out of their toy teacups, and spent whole
days together in play. Mary was a little hoyden, and Fred at six years old thought her the
nicest girl in the world making her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut from an
umbrella. Through all the stages of his education he had kept his affection for the Garths,
and his habit of going to their house as a second home, though any intercourse between them
and the elders of his family had long ceased. Even when Caleb Garth was prosperous, the
Vincys were on condescending terms with him and his wife, for there were nice distinctions
of rank in Middlemarch; and though old manufacturers could not any more than dukes be
connected with none but equals, they were conscious of an inherent social superiority which
was defined with great nicety in practice, though hardly expressible theoretically. Since then
Mr. Garth had failed in the building business, which he had unfortunately added to his other
avocations of surveyor, valuer, and agent, had conducted that business for a time entirely for
the benefit of his assignees, and had been living narrowly, exerting himself to the utmost
that he might after all pay twenty shillings in the pound. He had now achieved this, and from
all who did not think it a bad precedent, his honorable exertions had won him due esteem;
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CHAPTER XXIII. 191
but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable
furniture and complete dinner−service. Mrs. Vincy had never been at her ease with Mrs.
Garth, and frequently spoke of her as a woman who had had to work for her bread –
meaning that Mrs. Garth had been a teacher before her marriage; in which case an intimacy
with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions was something like a draper's discrimination
of calico trademarks, or a courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman who was
better off needed that sort of thing. And since Mary had been keeping Mr. Featherstone's
house, Mrs. Vincy's want of liking for the Garths had been converted into something more
positive, by alarm lest Fred should engage himself to this plain girl, whose parents "lived in
such a small way." Fred, being aware of this, never spoke at home of his visits to Mrs.
Garth, which had of late become more frequent, the increasing ardor of his affection for
Mary inclining him the more towards those who belonged to her.
Mr. Garth had a small office in the town, and to this Fred went with his request. He
obtained it without much difficulty, for a large amount of painful experience had not
sufficed to make Caleb Garth cautious about his own affairs, or distrustful of his
fellow−men when they had not proved themselves untrustworthy; and he had the highest
opinion of Fred, was "sure the lad would turn out well – an open affectionate fellow, with a
good bottom to his character – you might trust him for anything." Such was Caleb's
psychological argument. He was one of those rare men who are rigid to themselves and
indulgent to others. He had a certain shame about his neighbors' errors, and never spoke of
them willingly; hence he was not likely to divert his mind from the best mode of hardening
timber and other ingenious devices in order to preconceive those errors. If he had to blame
any one, it was necessary for him to move all the papers within his reach, or describe various
diagrams with his stick, or make calculations with the odd money in his pocket, before he
could begin; and he would rather do other men's work than find fault with their doing. I fear
he was a bad disciplinarian.
When Fred stated the circumstances of his debt, his wish to meet it without troubling his
father, and the certainty that the money would be forthcoming so as to cause no one any
inconvenience, Caleb pushed his spectacles upward, listened, looked into his favorite's clear
young eyes, and believed him, not distinguishing confidence about the future from veracity
about the past; but he felt that it was an occasion for a friendly hint as to conduct, and that
before giving his signature he must give a rather strong admonition. Accordingly, he took
the paper and lowered his spectacles, measured the space at his command, reached his pen
and examined it, dipped it in the ink and examined it again, then pushed the paper a little
way from him, lifted up his spectacles again, showed a deepened depression in the outer
angle of his bushy eyebrows, which gave his face a peculiar mildness (pardon these details
for once – you would have learned to love them if you had known Caleb Garth), and said in
a comfortable tone –
"It was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse's knees? And then, these exchanges,
they don't answer when you have 'cute jockeys to deal with. You'll be wiser another time,
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CHAPTER XXIII. 192
my boy."
Whereupon Caleb drew down his spectacles, and proceeded to write his signature with
the care which he always gave to that performance; for whatever he did in the way of
business he did well. He contemplated the large well−proportioned letters and final flourish,
with his head a trifle on one side for an instant, then handed it to Fred, said "Good−by," and
returned forthwith to his absorption in a plan for Sir James Chettam's new farm−buildings.
Either because his interest in this work thrust the incident of the signature from his
memory, or for some reason of which Caleb was more conscious, Mrs. Garth remained
ignorant of the affair.
Since it occurred, a change had come over Fred's sky, which altered his view of the
distance, and was the reason why his uncle Featherstone's present of money was of
importance enough to make his color come and go, first with a too definite expectation, and
afterwards with a proportionate disappointment. His failure in passing his examination, had
made his accumulation of college debts the more unpardonable by his father, and there had
been an unprecedented storm at home. Mr. Vincy had sworn that if he had anything more of
that sort to put up with, Fred should turn out and get his living how he could; and he had
never yet quite recovered his good−humored tone to his son, who had especially enraged
him by saying at this stage of things that he did not want to be a clergyman, and would
rather not "go on with that." Fred was conscious that he would have been yet more severely
dealt with if his family as well as himself had not secretly regarded him as Mr.
Featherstone's heir; that old gentleman's pride in him, and apparent fondness for him,
serving in the stead of more exemplary conduct – just as when a youthful nobleman steals
jewellery we call the act kleptomania, speak of it with a philosophical smile, and never think
of his being sent to the house of correction as if he were a ragged boy who had stolen
turnips. In fact, tacit expectations of what would be done for him by uncle Featherstone
determined the angle at which most people viewed Fred Vincy in Middlemarch; and in his
own consciousness, what uncle Featherstone would do for him in an emergency, or what he
would do simply as an incorporated luck, formed always an immeasurable depth of aerial
perspective. But that present of bank−notes, once made, was measurable, and being applied
to the amount of the debt, showed a deficit which had still to be filled up either by Fred's
"judgment" or by luck in some other shape. For that little episode of the alleged borrowing,
in which he had made his father the agent in getting the Bulstrode certificate, was a new
reason against going to his father for money towards meeting his actual debt. Fred was keen
enough to foresee that anger would confuse distinctions, and that his denial of having
borrowed expressly on the strength of his uncle's will would be taken as a falsehood. He had
gone to his father and told him one vexatious affair, and he had left another untold: in such
cases the complete revelation always produces the impression of a previous duplicity. Now
Fred piqued himself on keeping clear of lies, and even fibs; he often shrugged his shoulders
and made a significant grimace at what he called Rosamond's fibs (it is only brothers who
can associate such ideas with a lovely girl); and rather than incur the accusation of falsehood
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he would even incur some trouble and self−restraint. It was under strong inward pressure of
this kind that Fred had taken the wise step of depositing the eighty pounds with his mother.
It was a pity that he had not at once given them to Mr. Garth; but he meant to make the sum
complete with another sixty, and with a view to this, he had kept twenty pounds in his own
pocket as a sort of seed−corn, which, planted by judgment, and watered by luck, might yield
more than threefold – a very poor rate of multiplication when the field is a young
gentleman's infinite soul, with all the numerals at command.
Fred was not a gambler: he had not that specific disease in which the suspension of the
whole nervous energy on a chance or risk becomes as necessary as the dram to the drunkard;
he had only the tendency to that diffusive form of gambling which has no alcoholic
intensity, but is carried on with the healthiest chyle−fed blood, keeping up a joyous
imaginative activity which fashions events according to desire, and having no fears about its
own weather, only sees the advantage there must be to others in going aboard with it.
Hopefulness has a pleasure in making a throw of any kind, because the prospect of success
is certain; and only a more generous pleasure in offering as many as possible a share in the
stake. Fred liked play, especially billiards, as he liked hunting or riding a steeple−chase; and
he only liked it the better because he wanted money and hoped to win. But the twenty
pounds' worth of seed−corn had been planted in vain in the seductive green plot – all of it at
least which had not been dispersed by the roadside – and Fred found himself close upon the
term of payment with no money at command beyond the eighty pounds which he had
deposited with his mother. The broken−winded horse which he rode represented a present
which had been made to him a long while ago by his uncle Featherstone: his father always
allowed him to keep a horse, Mr. Vincy's own habits making him regard this as a reasonable
demand even for a son who was rather exasperating. This horse, then, was Fred's property,
and in his anxiety to meet the imminent bill he determined to sacrifice a possession without
which life would certainly be worth little. He made the resolution with a sense of heroism –
heroism forced on him by the dread of breaking his word to Mr. Garth, by his love for Mary
and awe of her opinion. He would start for Houndsley horse−fair which was to be held the
next morning, and – simply sell his horse, bringing back the money by coach? – Well, the
horse would hardly fetch more than thirty pounds, and there was no knowing what might
happen; it would be folly to balk himself of luck beforehand. It was a hundred to one that
some good chance would fall in his way; the longer he thought of it, the less possible it
seemed that he should not have a good chance, and the less reasonable that he should not
equip himself with the powder and shot for bringing it down. He would ride to Houndsley
with Bambridge and with Horrock "the vet," and without asking them anything expressly, he
should virtually get the benefit of their opinion. Before he set out, Fred got the eighty
pounds from his mother.
Most of those who saw Fred riding out of Middlemarch in company with Bambridge
and Horrock, on his way of course to Houndsley horse−fair, thought that young Vincy was
pleasure−seeking as usual; and but for an unwonted consciousness of grave matters on hand,
he himself would have had a sense of dissipation, and of doing what might be expected of a
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gay young fellow. Considering that Fred was not at all coarse, that he rather looked down on
the manners and speech of young men who had not been to the university, and that he had
written stanzas as pastoral and unvoluptuous as his flute−playing, his attraction towards
Bambridge and Horrock was an interesting fact which even the love of horse−flesh would
not wholly account for without that mysterious influence of Naming which determinates so
much of mortal choice. Under any other name than "pleasure" the society of Messieurs
Bambridge and Horrock must certainly have been regarded as monotonous; and to arrive
with them at Houndsley on a drizzling afternoon, to get down at the Red Lion in a street
shaded with coal−dust, and dine in a room furnished with a dirt−enamelled map of the
county, a bad portrait of an anonymous horse in a stable, His Majesty George the Fourth
with legs and cravat, and various leaden spittoons, might have seemed a hard business, but
for the sustaining power of nomenclature which determined that the pursuit of these things
was "gay."
In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent unfathomableness which offered play to
the imagination. Costume, at a glance, gave him a thrilling association with horses (enough
to specify the hat−brim which took the slightest upward angle just to escape the suspicion of
bending downwards), and nature had given him a face which by dint of Mongolian eyes, and
a nose, mouth, and chin seeming to follow his hat−brim in a moderate inclination upwards,
gave the effect of a subdued unchangeable sceptical smile, of all expressions the most
tyrannous over a susceptible mind, and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to
create the reputation of an invincible understanding, an infinite fund of humor – too dry to
flow, and probably in a state of immovable crust, – and a critical judgment which, if you
could ever be fortunate enough to know it, would be THE thing and no other. It is a
physiognomy seen in all vocations, but perhaps it has never been more powerful over the
youth of England than in a judge of horses.
Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's fetlock, turned sideways in his
saddle, and watched the horse's action for the space of three minutes, then turned forward,
twitched his own bridle, and remained silent with a profile neither more nor less sceptical
than it had been.
The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective. A mixture of
passions was excited in Fred – a mad desire to thrash Horrock's opinion into utterance,
restrained by anxiety to retain the advantage of his friendship. There was always the chance
that Horrock might say something quite invaluable at the right moment.
Mr. Bambridge had more open manners, and appeared to give forth his ideas without
economy. He was loud, robust, and was sometimes spoken of as being "given to indulgence"
– chiefly in swearing, drinking, and beating his wife. Some people who had lost by him
called him a vicious man; but he regarded horse−dealing as the finest of the arts, and might
have argued plausibly that it had nothing to do with morality. He was undeniably a
prosperous man, bore his drinking better than others bore their moderation, and, on the
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whole, flourished like the green bay−tree. But his range of conversation was limited, and
like the fine old tune, "Drops of brandy," gave you after a while a sense of returning upon
itself in a way that might make weak heads dizzy. But a slight infusion of Mr. Bambridge
was felt to give tone and character to several circles in Middlemarch; and he was a
distinguished figure in the bar and billiard−room at the Green Dragon. He knew some
anecdotes about the heroes of the turf, and various clever tricks of Marquesses and
Viscounts which seemed to prove that blood asserted its pre−eminence even among
black−legs; but the minute retentiveness of his memory was chiefly shown about the horses
he had himself bought and sold; the number of miles they would trot you in no time without
turning a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of passionate asseveration, in
which he would assist the imagination of his hearers by solemnly swearing that they never
saw anything like it. In short, Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.
Fred was subtle, and did not tell his friends that he was going to Houndsley bent on
selling his horse: he wished to get indirectly at their genuine opinion of its value, not being
aware that a genuine opinion was the last thing likely to be extracted from such eminent
critics. It was not Mr. Bambridge's weakness to be a gratuitous flatterer. He had never before
been so much struck with the fact that this unfortunate bay was a roarer to a degree which
required the roundest word for perdition to give you any idea of it.
"You made a bad hand at swapping when you went to anybody but me, Vincy! Why,
you never threw your leg across a finer horse than that chestnut, and you gave him for this
brute. If you set him cantering, he goes on like twenty sawyers. I never heard but one worse
roarer in my life, and that was a roan: it belonged to Pegwell, the corn−factor; he used to
drive him in his gig seven years ago, and he wanted me to take him, but I said, `Thank you,
Peg, I don't deal in wind−instruments.' That was what I said. It went the round of the
country, that joke did. But, what the hell! the horse was a penny trumpet to that roarer of
yours."
"Why, you said just now his was worse than mine," said Fred, more irritable than usual.
"I said a lie, then," said Mr. Bambridge, emphatically. "There wasn't a penny to choose
between 'em."
Fred spurred his horse, and they trotted on a little way. When they slackened again, Mr.
Bambridge said –
"Not but what the roan was a better trotter than yours."
"I'm quite satisfied with his paces, I know," said Fred, who required all the
consciousness of being in gay company to support him; "I say his trot is an uncommonly
clean one, eh, Horrock?"
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Mr. Horrock looked before him with as complete a neutrality as if he had been a portrait
by a great master.
Fred gave up the fallacious hope of getting a genuine opinion; but on reflection he saw
that Bambridge's depreciation and Horrock's silence were both virtually encouraging, and
indicated that they thought better of the horse than they chose to say.
That very evening, indeed, before the fair had set in, Fred thought he saw a favorable
opening for disposing advantageously of his horse, but an opening which made him
congratulate himself on his foresight in bringing with him his eighty pounds. A young
farmer, acquainted with Mr. Bambridge, came into the Red Lion, and entered into
conversation about parting with a hunter, which he introduced at once as Diamond, implying
that it was a public character. For himself he only wanted a useful hack, which would draw
upon occasion; being about to marry and to give up hunting. The hunter was in a friend's
stable at some little distance; there was still time for gentlemen to see it before dark. The
friend's stable had to be reached through a back street where you might as easily have been
poisoned without expense of drugs as in any grim street of that unsanitary period. Fred was
not fortified against disgust by brandy, as his companions were, but the hope of having at
last seen the horse that would enable him to make money was exhilarating enough to lead
him over the same ground again the first thing in the morning. He felt sure that if he did not
come to a bargain with the farmer, Bambridge would; for the stress of circumstances, Fred
felt, was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him with all the constructive power of
suspicion. Bambridge had run down Diamond in a way that he never would have done (the
horse being a friend's) if he had not thought of buying it; every one who looked at the animal
– even Horrock – was evidently impressed with its merit. To get all the advantage of being
with men of this sort, you must know how to draw your inferences, and not be a spoon who
takes things literally. The color of the horse was a dappled gray, and Fred happened to know
that Lord Medlicote's man was on the look−out for just such a horse. After all his running
down, Bambridge let it out in the course of the evening, when the farmer was absent, that he
had seen worse horses go for eighty pounds. Of course he contradicted himself twenty times
over, but when you know what is likely to be true you can test a man's admissions. And Fred
could not but reckon his own judgment of a horse as worth something. The farmer had
paused over Fred's respectable though broken−winded steed long enough to show that he
thought it worth consideration, and it seemed probable that he would take it, with
five−and−twenty pounds in addition, as the equivalent of Diamond. In that case Fred, when
he had parted with his new horse for at least eighty pounds, would be fifty−five pounds in
pocket by the transaction, and would have a hundred and thirty−five pounds towards
meeting the bill; so that the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at the utmost be
twenty−five pounds. By the time he was hurrying on his clothes in the morning, he saw so
clearly the importance of not losing this rare chance, that if Bambridge and Horrock had
both dissuaded him, he would not have been deluded into a direct interpretation of their
purpose: he would have been aware that those deep hands held something else than a young
fellow's interest. With regard to horses, distrust was your only clew. But scepticism, as we
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know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill: something we
must believe in and do, and whatever that something may be called, it is virtually our own
judgment, even when it seems like the most slavish reliance on another. Fred believed in the
excellence of his bargain, and even before the fair had well set in, had got possession of the
dappled gray, at the price of his old horse and thirty pounds in addition – only five pounds
more than he had expected to give.
But he felt a little worried and wearied, perhaps with mental debate, and without
waiting for the further gayeties of the horse−fair, he set out alone on his fourteen miles'
journey, meaning to take it very quietly and keep his horse fresh.
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CHAPTER XXIV.
"T
he offender's sorrow brings but small relief To him who wears the strong offence's
cross." – SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
I am sorry to say that only the third day after the propitious events at Houndsley Fred
Vincy had fallen into worse spirits than he had known in his life before. Not that he had
been disappointed as to the possible market for his horse, but that before the bargain could
be concluded with Lord Medlicote's man, this Diamond, in which hope to the amount of
eighty pounds had been invested, had without the slightest warning exhibited in the stable a
most vicious energy in kicking, had just missed killing the groom, and had ended in laming
himself severely by catching his leg in a rope that overhung the stable−board. There was no
more redress for this than for the discovery of bad temper after marriage – which of course
old companions were aware of before the ceremony. For some reason or other, Fred had
none of his usual elasticity under this stroke of ill−fortune: he was simply aware that he had
only fifty pounds, that there was no chance of his getting any more at present, and that the
bill for a hundred and sixty would be presented in five days. Even if he had applied to his
father on the plea that Mr. Garth should be saved from loss, Fred felt smartingly that his
father would angrily refuse to rescue Mr. Garth from the consequence of what he would call
encouraging extravagance and deceit. He was so utterly downcast that he could frame no
other project than to go straight to Mr. Garth and tell him the sad truth, carrying with him
the fifty pounds, and getting that sum at least safely out of his own hands. His father, being
at the warehouse, did not yet know of the accident: when he did, he would storm about the
vicious brute being brought into his stable; and before meeting that lesser annoyance Fred
wanted to get away with all his courage to face the greater. He took his father's nag, for he
had made up his mind that when he had told Mr. Garth, he would ride to Stone Court and
confess all to Mary. In fact, it is probable that but for Mary's existence and Fred's love for
her, his conscience would hare been much less active both in previously urging the debt on
his thought and impelling him not to spare himself after his usual fashion by deferring an
unpleasant task, but to act as directly and simply as he could. Even much stronger mortals
than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love best. "The
theatre of all my actions is fallen," said an antique personage when his chief friend was
dead; and they are fortunate who get a theatre where the audience demands their best.
Certainly it would have made a considerable difference to Fred at that time if Mary Garth
had had no decided notions as to what was admirable in character.
Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which was a little way
outside the town – a homely place with an orchard in front of it, a rambling, old−fashioned,
half−timbered building, which before the town had spread had been a farm−house, but was
now surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen. We get the fonder of our houses
if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends have. The Garth family, which was
rather a large one, for Mary had four brothers and one sister, were very fond of their old
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house, from which all the best furniture had long been sold. Fred liked it too, knowing it by
heart even to the attic which smelt deliciously of apples and quinces, and until to−day he had
never come to it without pleasant expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now with the
sense that he should probably have to make his confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom he
was rather more in awe than of her husband. Not that she was inclined to sarcasm and to
impulsive sallies, as Mary was. In her present matronly age at least, Mrs. Garth never
committed herself by over−hasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth,
and learned self−control. She had that rare sense which discerns what is unalterable, and
submits to it without murmuring. Adoring her husband's virtues, she had very early made up
her mind to his incapacity of minding his own interests, and had met the consequences
cheerfully. She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all pride in teapots or children's
frilling, and had never poured any pathetic confidences into the ears of her feminine
neighbors concerning Mr. Garth's want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he
had been like other men. Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or eccentric,
and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as "your fine Mrs. Garth." She was not
without her criticism of them in return, being more accurately instructed than most matrons
in Middlemarch, and – where is the blameless woman? – apt to be a little severe towards her
own sex, which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate. On the other hand, she
was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings of men, and was often heard to say
that these were natural. Also, it must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in
her resistance to what she held to be follies: the passage from governess into housewife had
wrought itself a little too strongly into her consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while
her grammar and accent were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the
family dinner, and darned all the stockings. She had sometimes taken pupils in a peripatetic
fashion, making them follow her about in the kitchen with their book or slate. She thought it
good for them to see that she could make an excellent lather while she corrected their
blunders "without looking," – that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows
might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid Zone – that, in short, she might
possess "education" and other good things ending in "tion," and worthy to be pronounced
emphatically, without being a useless doll. When she made remarks to this edifying effect,
she had a firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not hinder her face from looking
benevolent, and her words which came forth like a procession were uttered in a fervid
agreeable contralto. Certainly, the exemplary Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her
character sustained her oddities, as a very fine wine sustains a flavor of skin.
Towards Fred Vincy she had a motherly feeling, and had always been disposed to
excuse his errors, though she would probably not have excused Mary for engaging herself to
him, her daughter being included in that more rigorous judgment which she applied to her
own sex. But this very fact of her exceptional indulgence towards him made it the harder to
Fred that he must now inevitably sink in her opinion. And the circumstances of his visit
turned out to be still more unpleasant than he had expected; for Caleb Garth had gone out
early to look at some repairs not far off. Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in the
kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several occupations at once there – making
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her pies at the well−scoured deal table on one side of that airy room, observing Sally's
movements at the oven and dough−tub through an open door, and giving lessons to her
youngest boy and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table with their books and
slates before them. A tub and a clothes−horse at the other end of the kitchen indicated an
intermittent wash of small things also going on.
Mrs. Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling her pastry –
applying her rolling−pin and giving ornamental pinches, while she expounded with
grammatical fervor what were the right views about the concord of verbs and pronouns with
"nouns of multitude or signifying many," was a sight agreeably amusing. She was of the
same curly−haired, square−faced type as Mary, but handsomer, with more delicacy of
feature, a pale skin, a solid matronly figure, and a remarkable firmness of glance. In her
snowy−frilled cap she reminded one of that delightful Frenchwoman whom we have all seen
marketing, basket on arm. Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter would
become like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a dowry – the mother too often
standing behind the daughter like a malignant prophecy – "Such as I am, she will shortly
be."
"Now let us go through that once more," said Mrs. Garth, pinching an apple−puff which
seemed to distract Ben, an energetic young male with a heavy brow, from due attention to
the lesson. "`Not without regard to the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of
idea' – tell me again what that means, Ben."
(Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient paths, and in a
general wreck of society would have tried to hold her "Lindley Murray" above the waves.)
"Oh – it means – you must think what you mean," said Ben, rather peevishly. "I hate
grammar. What's the use of it?"
"To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be understood," said Mrs.
Garth, with severe precision. "Should you like to speak as old Job does?"
"Yes," said Ben, stoutly; "it's funnier. He says, `Yo goo' – that's just as good as `You
go.'"
"But he says, `A ship's in the garden,' instead of `a sheep,'" said Letty, with an air of
superiority. "You might think he meant a ship off the sea."
"No, you mightn't, if you weren't silly," said Ben. "How could a ship off the sea come
there?"
"These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of grammar," said
Mrs. Garth. "That apple−peel is to be eaten by the pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them
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your piece of pasty. Job has only to speak about very plain things. How do you think you
would write or speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of grammar than
he does? You would use wrong words, and put words in the wrong places, and instead of
making people understand you, they would turn away from you as a tiresome person. What
would you do then?"
"I shouldn't care, I should leave off," said Ben, with a sense that this was an agreeable
issue where grammar was concerned.
"I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben," said Mrs. Garth, accustomed to these
obstructive arguments from her male offspring. Having finished her pies, she moved
towards the clothes−horse, and said, "Come here and tell me the story I told you on
Wednesday, about Cincinnatus."
"I know! he was a farmer," said Ben.
"Now, Ben, he was a Roman – let ME tell," said Letty, using her elbow contentiously.
"You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing."
"Yes, but before that – that didn't come first – people wanted him," said Letty.
"Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first," insisted Ben. "He was a wise
man, like my father, and that made the people want his advice. And he was a brave man, and
could fight. And so could my father – couldn't he, mother?"
"Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us," said Letty, frowning.
"Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak."
"Letty, I am ashamed of you," said her mother, wringing out the caps from the tub.
"When your brother began, you ought to have waited to see if he could not tell the story.
How rude you look, pushing and frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows!
Cincinnatus, I am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so." (Mrs. Garth
delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation, and Letty felt that between
repressed volubility and general disesteem, that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a
painful affair.) "Now, Ben."
"Well – oh – well – why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were all
blockheads, and – I can't tell it just how you told it – but they wanted a man to be captain
and king and everything – "
"Dictator, now," said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish to make her
mother repent.
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"Very well, dictator!" said Ben, contemptuously. "But that isn't a good word: he didn't
tell them to write on slates."
"Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that," said Mrs. Garth, carefully serious.
"Hark, there is a knock at the door! Run, Letty, and open it."
The knock was Fred's; and when Letty said that her father was not in yet, but that her
mother was in the kitchen, Fred had no alternative. He could not depart from his usual
practice of going to see Mrs. Garth in the kitchen if she happened to be at work there. He put
his arm round Letty's neck silently, and led her into the kitchen without his usual jokes and
caresses.
Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not a feeling that she
was given to express, and she only said, quietly continuing her work –
"You, Fred, so early in the day? You look quite pale. Has anything happened?"
"I want to speak to Mr. Garth," said Fred, not yet ready to say more – "and to you also,"
he added, after a little pause, for he had no doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the
bill, and he must in the end speak of it before her, if not to her solely.
"Caleb will be in again in a few minutes," said Mrs. Garth, who imagined some trouble
between Fred and his father. "He is sure not to be long, because he has some work at his
desk that must be done this morning. Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my
matters here?"
"But we needn't go on about Cincinnatus, need we?" said Ben, who had taken Fred's
whip out of his hand, and was trying its efficiency on the eat.
"No, go out now. But put that whip down. How very mean of you to whip poor old
Tortoise! Pray take the whip from him, Fred."
"Come, old boy, give it me," said Fred, putting out his hand.
"Will you let me ride on your horse to−day?" said Ben, rendering up the whip, with an
air of not being obliged to do it.
"Not to−day – another time. I am not riding my own horse."
"Shall you see Mary to−day?"
"Yes, I think so," said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.
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"Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun."
"Enough, enough, Ben! run away," said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred was teased. . .
"Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?" said Fred, when the children
were gone and it was needful to say something that would pass the time. He was not yet sure
whether he should wait for Mr. Garth, or use any good opportunity in conversation to
confess to Mrs. Garth herself, give her the money and ride away.
"One – only one. Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven. I am not getting a great
income now," said Mrs. Garth, smiling. "I am at a low ebb with pupils. But I have saved my
little purse for Alfred's premium: I have ninety−two pounds. He can go to Mr. Hanmer's
now; he is just at the right age."
This did not lead well towards the news that Mr. Garth was on the brink of losing
ninety−two pounds and more. Fred was silent. "Young gentlemen who go to college are
rather more costly than that," Mrs. Garth innocently continued, pulling out the edging on a
cap−border. "And Caleb thinks that Alfred will turn out a distinguished engineer: he wants
to give the boy a good chance. There he is! I hear him coming in. We will go to him in the
parlor, shall we?"
When they entered the parlor Caleb had thrown down his hat and was seated at his desk.
"What! Fred, my boy!" he said, in a tone of mild surprise, holding his pen still
undipped; "you are here betimes." But missing the usual expression of cheerful greeting in
Fred's face, he immediately added, "Is there anything up at home? – anything the matter?"
"Yes, Mr. Garth, I am come to tell something that I am afraid will give you a bad
opinion of me. I am come to tell you and Mrs. Garth that I can't keep my word. I can't find
the money to meet the bill after all. I have been unfortunate; I have only got these fifty
pounds towards the hundred and sixty."
While Fred was speaking, he had taken out the notes and laid them on the desk before
Mr. Garth. He had burst forth at once with the plain fact, feeling boyishly miserable and
without verbal resources. Mrs. Garth was mutely astonished, and looked at her husband for
an explanation. Caleb blushed, and after a little pause said –
"Oh, I didn't tell you, Susan: I put my name to a bill for Fred; it was for a hundred and
sixty pounds. He made sure he could meet it himself."
There was an evident change in Mrs. Garth's face, but it was like a change below the
surface of water which remains smooth. She fixed her eyes on Fred, saying –
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"I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money and he has refused
you."
"No," said Fred, biting his lip, and speaking with more difficulty; "but I know it will be
of no use to ask him; and unless it were of use, I should not like to mention Mr. Garth's
name in the matter."
"It has come at an unfortunate time," said Caleb, in his hesitating way, looking down at
the notes and nervously fingering the paper, "Christmas upon us – I'm rather hard up just
now. You see, I have to cut out everything like a tailor with short measure. What can we do,
Susan? I shall want every farthing we have in the bank. It's a hundred and ten pounds, the
deuce take it!"
"I must give you the ninety−two pounds that I have put by for Alfred's premium," said
Mrs. Garth, gravely and decisively, though a nice ear might have discerned a slight tremor in
some of the words. "And I have no doubt that Mary has twenty pounds saved from her
salary by this time. She will advance it."
Mrs. Garth had not again looked at Fred, and was not in the least calculating what
words she should use to cut him the most effectively. Like the eccentric woman she was, she
was at present absorbed in considering what was to be done, and did not fancy that the end
could be better achieved by bitter remarks or explosions. But she had made Fred feel for the
first time something like the tooth of remorse. Curiously enough, his pain in the affair
beforehand had consisted almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonorable, and
sink in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the inconvenience and
possible injury that his breach might occasion them, for this exercise of the imagination on
other people's needs is not common with hopeful young gentlemen. Indeed we are most of
us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is something
irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong. But at this moment he suddenly saw
himself as a pitiful rascal who was robbing two women of their savings.
"I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth – ultimately," he stammered out.
"Yes, ultimately," said Mrs. Garth, who having a special dislike to fine words on ugly
occasions, could not now repress an epigram. "But boys cannot well be apprenticed
ultimately: they should be apprenticed at fifteen." She had never been so little inclined to
make excuses for Fred.
"I was the most in the wrong, Susan," said Caleb. "Fred made sure of finding the
money. But I'd no business to be fingering bills. I suppose you have looked all round and
tried all honest means?" he added, fixing his merciful gray eyes on Fred. Caleb was too
delicate, to specify Mr. Featherstone.
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"Yes, I have tried everything – I really have. I should have had a hundred and thirty
pounds ready but for a misfortune with a horse which I was about to sell. My uncle had
given me eighty pounds, and I paid away thirty with my old horse in order to get another
which I was going to sell for eighty or more – I meant to go without a horse – but now it has
turned out vicious and lamed itself. I wish I and the horses too had been at the devil, before I
had brought this on you. There's no one else I care so much for: you and Mrs. Garth have
always been so kind to me. However, it's no use saying that. You will always think me a
rascal now."
Fred turned round and hurried out of the room, conscious that he was getting rather
womanish, and feeling confusedly that his being sorry was not of much use to the Garths.
They could see him mount, and quickly pass through the gate.
"I am disappointed in Fred Vincy," said Mrs. Garth. "I would not have believed
beforehand that he would have drawn you into his debts. I knew he was extravagant, but I
did not think that he would be so mean as to hang his risks on his oldest friend, who could
the least afford to lose."
"I was a fool, Susan:"
"That you were," said the wife, nodding and smiling. "But I should not have gone to
publish it in the market−place. Why should you keep such things from me? It is just so with
your buttons: you let them burst off without telling me, and go out with your wristband
hanging. If I had only known I might have been ready with some better plan."
"You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan," said Caleb, looking feelingly at her. "I can't
abide your losing the money you've scraped together for Alfred."
"It is very well that I HAD scraped it together; and it is you who will have to suffer, for
you must teach the boy yourself. You must give up your bad habits. Some men take to
drinking, and you have taken to working without pay. You must indulge yourself a little less
in that. And you must ride over to Mary, and ask the child what money she has."
Caleb had pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his head slowly, and
fitting his finger−tips together with much nicety.
"Poor Mary!" he said. "Susan," he went on in a lowered tone, "I'm afraid she may be
fond of Fred."
"Oh no! She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think of her in any other than a
brotherly way."
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Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up his chair to the
desk, and said, "Deuce take the bill – I wish it was at Hanover! These things are a sad
interruption to business!"
The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory expression, and
was uttered with a slight snarl easy to imagine. But it would be difficult to convey to those
who never heard him utter the word "business," the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of
religious regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in its
gold−fringed linen.
Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the indispensable might of
that myriad−headed, myriad−handed labor by which the social body is fed, clothed, and
housed. It had laid hold of his imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer
where roof or keel were a−making, the signal−shouts of the workmen, the roar of the
furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to him; the felling and
lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating star−like in the distance along the highway,
the crane at work on the wharf, the piled−up produce in warehouses, the precision and
variety of muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out, – all these sights of his
youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of the poets. had made a philosophy for
him without the aid of philosophers, a religion without the aid of theology. His early
ambition had been to have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was
peculiarly dignified by him with the name of "business;" and though he had only been a
short time under a surveyor, and had been chiefly his own teacher, he knew more of land,
building, and mining than most of the special men in the county.
His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the categories of
more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these advanced times. He divided them
into "business, politics, preaching, learning, and amusement." He had nothing to say against
the last four; but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than his own.
In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he would not himself have liked to be
of any rank in which he had not such close contact with "business" as to get often honorably
decorated with marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of the
woods and fields. Though he had never regarded himself as other than an orthodox
Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the subject were proposed to him, I think
his virtual divinities were good practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful
completion of undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. But there was no
spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to him that he was ready to
accept any number of systems, like any number of firmaments, if they did not obviously
interfere with the best land−drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring
(for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical intelligence. But he could
not manage finance: he knew values well, but he had no keenness of imagination for
monetary results in the shape of profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he
determined to give up all forms of his beloved "business" which required that talent. He
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gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of work which he could do without handling
capital, and was one of those precious men within his own district whom everybody would
choose to work for them, because he did his work well, charged very little, and often
declined to charge at all. It is no wonder, then, that the Garths were poor, and "lived in a
small way." However, they did not mind it.
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CHAPTER XXV.
"L
ove seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care But for another gives its
ease And builds a heaven in hell's despair. . . . . . . . Love seeketh only self to please, To bind
another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite."
– W. BLAKE: Songs of Experience
Fred Vincy wanted to arrive at Stone Court when Mary could not expect him, and when
his uncle was not down−stairs in that case she might be sitting alone in the wainscoted
parlor. He left his horse in the yard to avoid making a noise on the gravel in front, and
entered the parlor without other notice than the noise of the door−handle. Mary was in her
usual corner, laughing over Mrs. Piozzi's recollections of Johnson, and looked up with the
fun still in her face. It gradually faded as she saw Fred approach her without speaking, and
stand before her with his elbow on the mantel−piece, looking ill. She too was silent, only
raising her eyes to him inquiringly.
"Mary," he began, "I am a good−for−nothing blackguard."
"I should think one of those epithets would do at a time," said Mary, trying to smile, but
feeling alarmed.
"I know you will never think well of me any more. You will think me a liar. You will
think me dishonest. You will think I didn't care for you, or your father and mother. You
always do make the worst of me, I know."
"I cannot deny that I shall think all that of you, Fred, if you give me good reasons. But
please to tell me at once what you have done. I would rather know the painful truth than
imagine it."
"I owed money – a hundred and sixty pounds. I asked your father to put his name to a
bill. I thought it would not signify to him. I made sure of paying the money myself, and I
have tried as hard as I could. And now, I have been so unlucky – a horse has turned out
badly – I can only pay fifty pounds. And I can't ask my father for the money: he would not
give me a farthing. And my uncle gave me a hundred a little while ago. So what can I do?
And now your father has no ready money to spare, and your mother will have to pay away
her ninety−two pounds that she has saved, and she says your savings must go too. You see
what a – "
"Oh, poor mother, poor father!" said Mary, her eyes filling with tears, and a little sob
rising which she tried to repress. She looked straight before her and took no notice of Fred,
all the consequences at home becoming present to her. He too remained silent for some
moments, feeling more miserable than ever. "I wouldn't have hurt you for the world, Mary,"
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CHAPTER XXV. 209
he said at last. "You can never forgive me."
"What does it matter whether I forgive you?" said Mary, passionately. "Would that
make it any better for my mother to lose the money she has been earning by lessons for four
years, that she might send Alfred to Mr. Hanmer's? Should you think all that pleasant
enough if I forgave you?"
"Say what you like, Mary. I deserve it all."
"I don't want to say anything," said Mary, more quietly, "and my anger is of no use."
She dried her eyes, threw aside her book, rose and fetched her sewing.
Fred followed her with his eyes, hoping that they would meet hers, and in that way find
access for his imploring penitence. But no! Mary could easily avoid looking upward.
"I do care about your mother's money going," he said, when she was seated again and
sewing quickly. "I wanted to ask you, Mary – don't you think that Mr. Featherstone – if you
were to tell him – tell him, I mean, about apprenticing Alfred – would advance the money?"
"My family is not fond of begging, Fred. We would rather work for our money.
Besides, you say that Mr. Featherstone has lately given you a hundred pounds. He rarely
makes presents; he has never made presents to us. I am sure my father will not ask him for
anything; and even if I chose to beg of him, it would be of no use."
"I am so miserable, Mary – if you knew how miserable I am, you would be sorry for
me."
"There are other things to be more sorry for than that. But selfish people always think
their own discomfort of more importance than anything else in the world. I see enough of
that every day."
"It is hardly fair to call me selfish. If you knew what things other young men do, you
would think me a good way off the worst."
"I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves without knowing
how they shall pay, must be selfish. They are always thinking of what they can get for
themselves, and not of what other people may lose."
"Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when he meant it.
There is not a better man in the world than your father, and yet he got into trouble."
"How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred?" said Mary, in
a deep tone of indignation. "He never got into trouble by thinking of his own idle pleasures,
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CHAPTER XXV. 210
but because he was always thinking of the work he was doing for other people. And he has
fared hard, and worked hard to make good everybody's loss."
"And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary. It is not generous to
believe the worst of a man. When you have got any power over him, I think you might try
and use it to make him better i but that is what you never do. However, I'm going," Fred
ended, languidly. "I shall never speak to you about anything again. I'm very sorry for all the
trouble I've caused – that's all."
Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up. There is often something
maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary's hard experience had wrought her nature to an
impressibility very different from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness. At Fred's
last words she felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother feels at the
imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which may lose itself and get harm. And
when, looking up, her eyes met his dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her
anger and all her other anxieties.
"Oh, Fred, how ill you look! Sit down a moment. Don't go yet. Let me tell uncle that
you are here. He has been wondering that he has not seen you for a whole week." Mary
spoke hurriedly, saying the words that came first without knowing very well what they were,
but saying them in a half−soothing half−beseeching tone, and rising as if to go away to Mr.
Featherstone. Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had parted and a gleam had come: he
moved and stood in her way.
"Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything. Say you will not think the worst of me –
will not give me up altogether."
"As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you," said Mary, in a mournful tone. "As
if it were not very painful to me to see you an idle frivolous creature. How can you bear to
be so contemptible, when others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be
done – how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is useful? And with so much
good in your disposition, Fred, – you might be worth a great deal."
"I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you love me."
"I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be hanging on others,
and reckoning on what they would do for him. What will you be when you are forty? Like
Mr. Bowyer, I suppose – just as idle, living in Mrs. Beck's front parlor – fat and shabby,
hoping somebody will invite you to dinner – spending your morning in learning a comic
song – oh no! learning a tune on the flute."
Mary's lips had begun to curl with a smile as soon as she had asked that question about
Fred's future (young souls are mobile), and before she ended, her face had its full
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CHAPTER XXV. 211
illumination of fun. To him it was like the cessation of an ache that Mary could laugh at
him, and with a passive sort of smile he tried to reach her hand; but she slipped away
quickly towards the door and said, "I shall tell uncle. You MUST see him for a moment or
two."
Fred secretly felt that his future was guaranteed against the fulfilment of Mary's
sarcastic prophecies, apart from that "anything" which he was ready to do if she would
define it He never dared in Mary's presence to approach the subject of his expectations from
Mr. Featherstone, and she always ignored them, as if everything depended on himself. But if
ever he actually came into the property, she must recognize the change in his position. All
this passed through his mind somewhat languidly, before he went up to see his uncle. He
stayed but a little while, excusing himself on the ground that he had a cold; and Mary did not
reappear before he left the house. But as he rode home, he began to be more conscious of
being ill, than of being melancholy.
When Caleb Garth arrived at Stone Court soon after dusk, Mary was not surprised,
although he seldom had leisure for paying her a visit, and was not at all fond of having to
talk with Mr. Featherstone. The old man, on the other hand, felt himself ill at ease with a
brother−in−law whom he could not annoy, who did not mind about being considered poor,
had nothing to ask of him, and understood all kinds of farming and mining business better
than he did. But Mary had felt sure that her parents would want to see her, and if her father
had not come, she would have obtained leave to go home for an hour or two the next day.
After discussing prices during tea with Mr. Featherstone Caleb rose to bid him good−by, and
said, "I want to speak to you, Mary."
She took a candle into another large parlor, where there was no fire, and setting down
the feeble light on the dark mahogany table, turned round to her father, and putting her arms
round his neck kissed him with childish kisses which he delighted in, – the expression of his
large brows softening as the expression of a great beautiful dog softens when it is caressed.
Mary was his favorite child, and whatever Susan might say, and right as she was on all other
subjects, Caleb thought it natural that Fred or any one else should think Mary more lovable
than other girls.
"I've got something to tell you, my dear," said Caleb in his hesitating way. "No very
good news; but then it might be worse."
"About money, father? I think I know what it is."
"Ay? how can that be? You see, I've been a bit of a fool again, and put my name to a
bill, and now it comes to paying; and your mother has got to part with her savings, that's the
worst of it, and even they won't quite make things even. We wanted a hundred and ten
pounds: your mother has ninety−two, and I have none to spare in the bank; and she thinks
that you have some savings."
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CHAPTER XXV. 212
"Oh yes; I have more than four−and−twenty pounds. I thought you would come, father,
so I put it in my bag. See! beautiful white notes and gold."
Mary took out the folded money from her reticule and put it into her father's hand.
"Well, but how – we only want eighteen – here, put the rest back, child, – but how did
you know about it?" said Caleb, who, in his unconquerable indifference to money, was
beginning to be chiefly concerned about the relation the affair might have to Mary's
affections.
"Fred told me this morning."
"Ah! Did he come on purpose?"
"Yes, I think so. He was a good deal distressed."
"I'm afraid Fred is not to be trusted, Mary," said the father, with hesitating tenderness.
"He means better than he acts, perhaps. But I should think it a pity for any body's happiness
to be wrapped up in him, and so would your mother."
"And so should I, father," said Mary, not looking up, but putting the back of her father's
hand against her cheek.
"I don't want to pry, my dear. But I was afraid there might be something between you
and Fred, and I wanted to caution you. You see, Mary" – here Caleb's voice became more
tender; he had been pushing his hat about on the table and looking at it, but finally he turned
his eyes on his daughter – "a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with
the life her husband makes for her. Your mother has had to put up with a good deal because
of me."
Mary turned the back of her father's hand to her lips and smiled at him.
"Well, well, nobody's perfect, but" – here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the
inadequacy of words – "what I am thinking of is – what it must be for a wife when she's
never sure of her husband, when he hasn't got a principle in him to make him more afraid of
doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched. That's the long and the
short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and
they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day,
my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in
cotton−wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his
daughter, and you are all by yourself here."
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CHAPTER XXV. 213
"Don't fear for me, father," said Mary, gravely meeting her father's eyes; "Fred has
always been very good to me; he is kind−hearted and affectionate, and not false, I think,
with all his self−indulgence. But I will never engage myself to one who has no manly
independence, and who goes on loitering away his time on the chance that others will
provide for him. You and my mother have taught me too much pride for that."
"That's right – that's right. Then I am easy," said Mr. Garth, taking up his {hat or bet.
????} But it's hard to run away with your earnings, eh child."
"Father!" said Mary, in her deepest tone of remonstrance. "Take pocketfuls of love
besides to them all at home," was her last word before he closed the outer door on himself.
"I suppose your father wanted your earnings," said old Mr. Featherstone, with his usual
power of unpleasant surmise, when Mary returned to him. "He makes but a tight fit, I
reckon. You're of age now; you ought to be saving for yourself."
"I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir," said Mary, coldly.
Mr. Featherstone grunted: he could not deny that an ordinary sort of girl like her might
be expected to be useful, so he thought of another rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be
always apropos. "If Fred Vincy comes to−morrow, now, don't you keep him chattering: let
him come up to me."
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CHAPTER XXV. 214
CHAPTER XXVI.
"H
e beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction! would it were otherwise – that I
could beat him while he railed at me. – " – Troilus and Cressida.
But Fred did not go to Stone Court the next day, for reasons that were quite peremptory.
From those visits to unsanitary Houndsley streets in search of Diamond, he had brought
back not only a bad bargain in horse−flesh, but the further misfortune of some ailment
which for a day or two had deemed mere depression and headache, but which got so much
worse when he returned from his visit to Stone Court that, going into the dining−room, he
threw himself on the sofa, and in answer to his mother's anxious question, said, "I feel very
ill: I think you must send for Wrench."
Wrench came, but did not apprehend anything serious, spoke of a "slight derangement,"
and did not speak of coming again on the morrow. He had a due value for the Vincys' house,
but the wariest men are apt to be dulled by routine, and on worried mornings will sometimes
go through their business with the zest of the daily bell−ringer. Mr. Wrench was a small,
neat, bilious man, with a well−dressed wig: he had a laborious practice, an irascible temper,
a lymphatic wife and seven children; and he was already rather late before setting out on a
four−miles drive to meet Dr. Minchin on the other side of Tipton, the decease of Hicks, a
rural practitioner, having increased Middlemarch practice in that direction. Great statesmen
err, and why not small medical men? Mr. Wrench did not neglect sending the usual white
parcels, which this time had black and drastic contents. Their effect was not alleviating to
poor Fred, who, however, unwilling as he said to believe that he was "in for an illness," rose
at his usual easy hour the next morning and went down−stairs meaning to breakfast, but
succeeded in nothing but in sitting and shivering by the fire. Mr. Wrench was again sent for,
but was gone on his rounds, and Mrs. Vincy seeing her darling's changed looks and general
misery, began to cry and said she would send for Dr. Sprague.
"Oh, nonsense, mother! It's nothing," said Fred, putting out his hot dry hand to her, "I
shall soon be all right. I must have taken cold in that nasty damp ride."
"Mamma!" said Rosamond, who was seated near the window (the dining−room
windows looked on that highly respectable street called Lowick Gate), "there is Mr.
Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one. If I were you I would call him in. He has cured
Ellen Bulstrode. They say he cures every one."
Mrs. Vincy sprang to the window and opened it in an instant, thinking only of Fred and
not of medical etiquette. Lydgate was only two yards off on the other side of some iron
palisading, and turned round at the sudden sound of the sash, before she called to him. In
two minutes he was in the room, and Rosamond went out, after waiting just long enough to
show a pretty anxiety conflicting with her sense of what was becoming.
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CHAPTER XXVI. 215
Lydgate had to hear a narrative in which Mrs. Vincy's mind insisted with remarkable
instinct on every point of minor importance, especially on what Mr. Wrench had said and
had not said about coming again. That there might be an awkward affair with Wrench,
Lydgate saw at once; but the ease was serious enough to make him dismiss that
consideration: he was convinced that Fred was in the pink−skinned stage of typhoid fever,
and that he had taken just the wrong medicines. He must go to bed immediately, must have a
regular nurse, and various appliances and precautions must be used, about which Lydgate
was particular. Poor Mrs. Vincy's terror at these indications of danger found vent in such
words as came most easily. She thought it "very ill usage on the part of Mr. Wrench, who
had attended their house so many years in preference to Mr. Peacock, though Mr. Peacock
was equally a friend. Why Mr. Wrench should neglect her children more than others, she
could not for the life of her understand. He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher's when they had
the measles, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that he should. And if anything
should happen – "
Here poor Mrs. Vincy's spirit quite broke down, and her Niobe throat and
good−humored face were sadly convulsed. This was in the hall out of Fred's hearing, but
Rosamond had opened the drawing−room door, and now came forward anxiously. Lydgate
apologized for Mr. Wrench, said that the symptoms yesterday might have been disguising,
and that this form of fever was very equivocal in its beginnings: he would go immediately to
the druggist's and have a prescription made up in order to lose no time, but he would write to
Mr. Wrench and tell him what had been done.
"But you must come again – you must go on attending Fred. I can't have my boy left to
anybody who may come or not. I bear nobody ill−will, thank God, and Mr. Wrench saved
me in the pleurisy, but he'd better have let me die – if – if – "
"I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?" said Lydgate, really believing that Wrench
was not well prepared to deal wisely with a case of this kind.
"Pray make that arrangement, Mr. Lydgate," said Rosamond, coming to her mother's
aid, and supporting her arm to lead her away.
When Mr. Vincy came home he was very angry with Wrench, and did not care if he
never came into his house again. Lydgate should go on now, whether Wrench liked it or not.
It was no joke to have fever in the house. Everybody must be sent to now, not to come to
dinner on Thursday. And Pritchard needn't get up any wine: brandy was the best thing
against infection. "I shall drink brandy," added Mr. Vincy, emphatically – as much as to say,
this was not an occasion for firing with blank−cartridges. "He's an uncommonly unfortunate
lad, is Fred. He'd need have – some luck by−and−by to make up for all this – else I don't
know who'd have an eldest son."
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CHAPTER XXVI. 216
"Don't say so, Vincy," said the mother, with a quivering lip, "if you don't want him to be
taken from me."
"It will worret you to death, Lucy; THAT I can see," said Mr. Vincy, more mildly.
"However, Wrench shall know what I think of the matter." (What Mr. Vincy thought
confusedly was, that the fever might somehow have been hindered if Wrench had shown the
proper solicitude about his – the Mayor's – family.) "I'm the last man to give in to the cry
about new doctors, or new parsons either – whether they're Bulstrode's men or not. But
Wrench shall know what I think, take it as he will."
Wrench did not take it at all well. Lydgate was as polite as he could be in his offhand
way, but politeness in a man who has placed you at a disadvantage is only an additional
exasperation, especially if he happens to have been an object of dislike beforehand. Country
practitioners used to be an irritable species, susceptible on the point of honor; and Mr.
Wrench was one of the most irritable among them. He did not refuse to meet Lydgate in the
evening, but his temper was somewhat tried on the occasion. He had to hear Mrs. Vincy say
–
"Oh, Mr. Wrench, what have I ever done that you should use me so? – To go away, and
never to come again! And my boy might have been stretched a corpse!"
Mr. Vincy, who had been keeping up a sharp fire on the enemy Infection, and was a
good deal heated in consequence, started up when he heard Wrench come in, and went into
the hall to let him know what he thought.
"I'll tell you what, Wrench, this is beyond a joke," said the Mayor, who of late had had
to rebuke offenders with an official air, and how broadened himself by putting his thumbs in
his armholes. – "To let fever get unawares into a house like this. There are some things that
ought to be actionable, and are not so – that's my opinion."
But irrational reproaches were easier to bear than the sense of being instructed, or rather
the sense that a younger man, like Lydgate, inwardly considered him in need of instruction,
for "in point of fact," Mr. Wrench afterwards said, Lydgate paraded flighty, foreign notions,
which would not wear. He swallowed his ire for the moment, but he afterwards wrote to
decline further attendance in the case. The house might be a good one, but Mr. Wrench was
not going to truckle to anybody on a professional matter. He reflected, with much
probability on his side, that Lydgate would by−and−by be caught tripping too, and that his
ungentlemanly attempts to discredit the sale of drugs by his professional brethren, would
by−and−by recoil on himself. He threw out biting remarks on Lydgate's tricks, worthy only
of a quack, to get himself a factitious reputation with credulous people. That cant about
cures was never got up by sound practitioners.
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CHAPTER XXVI. 217
This was a point on which Lydgate smarted as much as Wrench could desire. To be
puffed by ignorance was not only humiliating, but perilous, and not more enviable than the
reputation of the weather−prophet. He was impatient of the foolish expectations amidst
which all work must be carried on, and likely enough to damage himself as much as Mr.
Wrench could wish, by an unprofessional openness.
However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, and the event was
a subject of general conversation in Middlemarch. Some said, that the Vincys had behaved
scandalously, that Mr. Vincy had threatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused him
of poisoning her son. Others were of opinion that Mr. Lydgate's passing by was providential,
that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that Bulstrode was in the right to bring him
forward. Many people believed that Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really due to
Bulstrode; and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her information in
misleading fragments caught between the rows of her knitting, had got it into her head that
Mr. Lydgate was a natural son of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions
of evangelical laymen.
She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother, who did not
fail to tell her son of it, observing –
"I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should be sorry to think it of
Mr. Lydgate."
"Why, mother," said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, "you know very well
that Lydgate is of a good family in the North. He never heard of Bulstrode before he came
here."
"That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden," said the old lady,
with an air of precision. – "But as to Bulstrode – the report may be true of some other son."
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CHAPTER XXVI. 218
CHAPTER XXVII.
L
et the high Muse chant loves Olympian: We are but mortals, and must sing of man.
An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture
by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your
pier−glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be
minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted
candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a
fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are
going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering
illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection.
These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any
person now absent – of Miss Vincy, for example. Rosamond had a Providence of her own
who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who seemed to have arranged
Fred's illness and Mr. Wrench's mistake in order to bring her and Lydgate within effective
proximity. It would have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented
to go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do, especially since
Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless. Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the
children were sent away to a farmhouse the morning after Fred's illness had declared itself,
Rosamond refused to leave papa and mamma.
Poor mamma indeed was an object to touch any creature born of woman; and Mr.
Vincy, who doted on his wife, was more alarmed on her account than on Fred's. But for his
insistence she would have taken no rest: her brightness was all bedimmed; unconscious of
her costume which had always been se fresh and gay, she was like a sick bird with languid
eye and plumage ruffled, her senses dulled to the sights and sounds that used most to interest
her. Fred's delirium, in which he seemed to be wandering out of her reach, tore her heart.
After her first outburst against−Mr. Wrench she went about very quietly: her one low cry
was to Lydgate. She would follow him out of the room and put her hand on his arm moaning
out, "Save my boy." Once she pleaded, "He has always been good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he
never had a hard word for his mother," – as if poor Fred's suffering were an accusation
against him. All the deepest fibres of the mother's memory were stirred, and the young man
whose voice took a gentler tone when he spoke to her, was one with the babe whom she had
loved, with a love new to her, before he was born.
"I have good hope, Mrs. Vincy," Lydgate would say. "Come down with me and let us
talk about the food." In that way he led her to the parlor where Rosamond was, and made a
change for her, surprising her into taking some tea or broth which had been prepared for her.
There was a constant understanding between him and Rosamond on these matters. He
almost always saw her before going to the sickroom, and she appealed to him as to what she
could do for mamma. Her presence of mind and adroitness in carrying out his hints were
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admirable, and it is not wonderful that the idea of seeing Rosamond began to mingle itself
with his interest in the case. Especially when the critical stage was passed, and he began to
feel confident of Fred's recovery. In the more doubtful time, he had advised calling in Dr.
Sprague (who, if he could, would rather have remained neutral on Wrench's account); but
after two consultations, the conduct of the case was left to Lydgate, and there was every
reason to make him assiduous. Morning and evening he was at Mr. Vincy's, and gradually
the visits became cheerful as Fred became simply feeble, and lay not only in need of the
utmost petting but conscious of it, so that Mrs. Vincy felt as if, after all, the illness had made
a festival for her tenderness.
Both father and mother held it an added reason for good spirits, when old Mr.
Featherstone sent messages by Lydgate, saying that Fred−must make haste and get well, as
he, Peter Featherstone, could not do without him, and missed his visits sadly. The old man
himself was getting bedridden. Mrs. Vincy told these messages to Fred when he could listen,
and he turned towards her his delicate, pinched face, from which all the thick blond hair had
been cut away, and in which the eyes seemed to have got larger, yearning for some word
about Mary – wondering what she felt about his illness. No word passed his lips; but "to
hear with eyes belongs to love's rare wit," and the mother in the fulness of her heart not only
divined Fred's longing, but felt ready for any sacrifice in order to satisfy him.
"If I can only see my boy strong again," she said, in her loving folly; "and who knows?
– perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry anybody he likes then."
"Not if they won't have me, mother," said Fred. The illness had made him childish, and
tears came as he spoke.
"Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, secretly incredulous of any such
refusal.
She never left Fred's side when her husband was not in the house, and thus Rosamond
was in the unusual position of being much alone. Lydgate, naturally, never thought of
staying long with her, yet it seemed that the brief impersonal conversations they had
together were creating that peculiar intimacy which consists in shyness. They were obliged
to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking could not be carried through as
the matter of course which it really was. Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness
unpleasant and one day looked down, or anywhere, like an ill−worked puppet. But this
turned out badly: the next day, Rosamond looked down, and the consequence was that when
their eyes met again, both were more conscious than before. There was no help for this in
science, and as Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed to be no help for it in folly. It was
therefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered the house in quarantine, and when
the chances of seeing Rosamond alone were very much reduced.
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But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling
something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with. Talk about the
weather and other well−bred topics is apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly
become easy unless it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination – which of course need not
mean anything deep or serious. This was the way in which Rosamond and Lydgate slid
gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse lively again. Visitors came and went as
usual, there was once more music in the drawing−room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr.
Vincy's mayoralty returned. Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by Rosamond's side,
and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her captive – meaning, all the while, not to be
her captive. The preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a satisfactory
establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee against danger. This play at being
a little in love was agreeable, and did not interfere with graver pursuits. Flirtation, after all,
was not necessarily a singeing process. Rosamond, for her part, had never enjoyed the days
so much in her life before: she was sure of being admired by some one worth captivating,
and she did not distinguish flirtation from love, either in herself or in another. She seemed to
be sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts were much occupied
with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped would by−and−by be vacant. She
was quite determined, when she was married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who
were not agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawing−room in her favorite
house with various styles of furniture.
Certainly her thoughts were much occupied with Lydgate himself; he seemed to her
almost perfect: if he had known his notes so that his enchantment under her music had been
less like an emotional elephant's, and if he had been able to discriminate better the
refinements of her taste in dress, she could hardly have mentioned a deficiency in him. How
different he was from young Plymdale or Mr. Caius Larcher! Those young men had not a
notion of French, and could speak on no subject with striking knowledge, except perhaps the
dyeing and carrying trades, which of course they were ashamed to mention; they were
Middlemarch gentry, elated with their silver−headed whips and satin stocks, but
embarrassed in their manners, and timidly jocose: even Fred was above them, having at least
the accent and manner of a university man. Whereas Lydgate was always listened to, bore
himself with the careless politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right
clothes on by a certain natural affinity, without ever having to think about them. Rosamond
was proud when he entered the room, and when he approached her with a distinguishing
smile, she had a delicious sense that she was the object of enviable homage. If Lydgate had
been aware of all the pride he excited in that delicate bosom, he might have been just as well
pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant of humoral pathology or fibrous
tissue: he held it one of the prettiest attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's
pre−eminence without too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in. But Rosamond was
not one of those helpless girls who betray themselves unawares, and whose behavior is
awkwardly driven by their impulses, instead of being steered by wary grace and propriety.
Do you imagine that her rapid forecast and rumination concerning house−furniture and
society were ever discernible in her conversation, even with her mamma? On the contrary,
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CHAPTER XXVII. 221
she would have expressed the prettiest surprise and disapprobation if she had heard that
another young lady had been detected in that immodest prematureness – indeed, would
probably have disbelieved in its possibility. For Rosamond never showed any unbecoming
knowledge, and was always that combination of correct sentiments, music, dancing,
drawing, elegant note−writing, private album for extracted verse, and perfect blond
loveliness, which made the irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date. Think no
unfair evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or mercenary; in fact, she
never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always
provide. She was not in the habit of devising falsehoods, and if her statements were no direct
clew to fact, why, they were not intended in that light – they were among her elegant
accomplishments, intended to please. Nature had inspired many arts in finishing Mrs.
Lemon's favorite pupil, who by general consent (Fred's excepted) was a rare compound of
beauty, cleverness, and amiability.
Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was no constraint
now, there was a delightful interchange of influence in their eyes, and what they said had
that superfluity of meaning for them, which is observable with some sense of flatness by a
third person; still they had no interviews or asides from which a third person need have been
excluded. In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was secure in the belief that they did nothing
else. If a man could not love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time?
Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great bores, and Lydgate did
not care about commercial politics or cards: what was he to do for relaxation? He was often
invited to the Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and Mrs.
Bulstrode's NAIVE way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life
and the desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best
damask, was not a sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable seriousness.
The Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the pleasanter by contrast; besides, it nourished
Rosamond – sweet to look at as a half−opened blush−rose, and adorned with
accomplishments for the refined amusement of man.
But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss Vincy. One
evening he came into the drawing−room rather late, when several other visitors were there.
The card−table had drawn off the elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in
Middlemarch, though not one of its leading minds) was in tete−a−tete with Rosamond. He
had brought the last "Keepsake," the gorgeous watered−silk publication which marked
modern progress at that time; and he considered himself very fortunate that he could be the
first to look over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny copper−plate
cheeks and copper−plate smiles, and pointing to comic verses as capital and sentimental
stories as interesting. Rosamond was gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the
very best thing in art and literature as a medium for "paying addresses" – the very thing to
please a nice girl. He had also reasons, deep rather than ostensible, for being satisfied with
his own appearance. To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking
as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about
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the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful.
"I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you," said Mr. Ned. He kept the book
open at the bewitching portrait, and looked at it rather languishingly.
"Her back is very large; she seems to have sat for that," said Rosamond, not meaning
any satire, but thinking how red young Plymdale's hands were, and wondering why Lydgate
did not come. She went on with her tatting all the while.
"I did not say she was as beautiful as you are," said Mr. Ned, venturing to look from the
portrait to its rival.
"I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer," said Rosamond, feeling sure that she should
have to reject this young gentleman a second time.
But now Lydgate came in; the book was closed before he reached Rosamond's corner,
and as he took his seat with easy confidence on the other side of her, young Plymdale's jaw
fell like a barometer towards the cheerless side of change. Rosamond enjoyed not only
Lydgate's presence but its effect: she liked to excite jealousy.
"What a late comer you are!" she said, as they shook hands. "Mamma had given you up
a little while ago. How do you find Fred?"
"As usual; going on well, but slowly. I want him to go away – to Stone Court, for
example. But your mamma seems to have some objection."
"Poor fellow!" said Rosamond, prettily. "You will see Fred so changed," she added,
turning to the other suitor; "we have looked to Mr. Lydgate as our guardian angel during this
illness."
Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the "Keepsake" towards him and
opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed up his chill, as if in wonderment at human
folly.
"What are you laughing at so profanely?" said Rosamond, with bland neutrality.
"I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest – the engravings or the writing here,"
said Lydgate, in his most convinced tone, while he turned over the pages quickly, seeming
to see all through the book in no time, and showing his large white hands to much
advantage, as Rosamond thought. "Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church: did
you ever see such a `sugared invention' – as the Elizabethans used to say? Did any
haberdasher ever look so smirking? Yet I will answer for it the story makes him one of the
first gentlemen in the land."
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"You are so severe, I am frightened at you," said Rosamond, keeping her amusement
duly moderate. Poor young Plymdale had lingered with admiration over this very engraving,
and his spirit was stirred.
"There are a great many celebrated people writing in the `Keepsake,' at all events," he
said, in a tone at once piqued and timid. "This is the first time I have heard it called silly."
"I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth," said Rosamond,
looking at Lydgate with a smile. "I suspect you know nothing about Lady Blessington and
L. E. L." Rosamond herself was not without relish for these writers, but she did not readily
commit herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest hint that anything was not,
according to Lydgate, in the very highest taste.
"But Sir Walter Scott – I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him," said young Plymdale, a
little cheered by this advantage.
"Oh, I read no literature now," said Lydgate, shutting the book, and pushing it away. "I
read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it will last me all my life. I used to know
Scott's poems by heart."
"I should like to know when you left off," said Rosamond, "because then I might be
sure that I knew something which you did not know."
"Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing," said Mr. Ned, purposely caustic.
"On the contrary," said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with exasperating
confidence at Rosamond. "It would be worth knowing by the fact that Miss Vincy could tell
it me."
Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist−playing, thinking that Lydgate was one
of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever been his ill−fortune to meet.
"How rash you are!" said Rosamond, inwardly delighted. "Do you see that you have
given offence?"
"What! is it Mr. Plymdale's book? I am sorry. I didn't think about it."
"I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came here – that you are
a bear, and want teaching by the birds."
"Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will. Don't I listen to her willingly?"
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CHAPTER XXVII. 224
To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged. That they were
some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a
more solid kind of existence, the necessary materials being at hand. It is true, Lydgate had
the counter−idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a shadow east by
other resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking. Circumstance was almost sure
to be on the side of Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through
watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a jelly−fish which gets
melted without knowing it.
That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a process of
maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he wrote out his daily notes with as
much precision as usual. The reveries from which it was difficult for him to detach himself
were ideal constructions of something else than Rosamond's virtues, and the primitive tissue
was still his fair unknown. Moreover, he was beginning to feel some zest for the growing
though half−suppressed feud between him and the other medical men, which was likely to
become more manifest, now that Bulstrode's method of managing the new hospital was
about to be declared; and there were various inspiriting signs that his non−acceptance by
some of Peacock's patients might be counterbalanced by the impression he had produced in
other quarters. Only a few days later, when he had happened to overtake Rosamond on the
Lowick road and had got down from his horse to walk by her side until he had quite
protected her from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant on horseback with a
message calling him in to a house of some importance where Peacock had never attended;
and it was the second instance of this kind. The servant was Sir James Chettam's, and the
house was Lowick Manor.
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
1s
t Gent. All times are good to seek your wedded home
Bringing a mutual delight.
2d Gent. Why, true.
The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and even death
Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
No life apart.
Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon, returning from their wedding journey, arrived at Lowick
Manor in the middle of January. A light snow was falling as they descended at the door, and
in the morning, when Dorothea passed from her dressing−room avenue the blue−green
boudoir that we know of, she saw the long avenue of limes lifting their trunks from a white
earth, and spreading white branches against the dun and motionless sky. The distant flat
shrank in uniform whiteness and low−hanging uniformity of cloud. The very furniture in the
room seemed to have shrunk since she saw it before: the slag in the tapestry looked more
like a ghost in his ghostly blue−green world; the volumes of polite literature in the bookcase
looked morn like immovable imitations of books. The bright fire of dry oak−boughs burning
on the dogs seemed an incongruous renewal of life and glow – like the figure of Dorothea
herself as she entered carrying the red−leather cases containing the cameos for Celia.
She was glowing from her morning toilet as only healthful youth can glow: there was
gem−like brightness on her coiled hair and in her hazel eyes; there was warm red life in her
lips; her throat had a breathing whiteness above the differing white of the fur which itself
seemed to wind about her neck and cling down her blue−gray pelisse with a tenderness
gathered from her own, a sentient commingled innocence which kept its loveliness against
the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow. As she laid the cameo− cases on the table in the
bow−window, she unconsciously kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed in looking
out on the still, white enclosure which made her visible world.
Mr. Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of palpitation, was in the library giving
audience to his curate Mr. Tucker. By−and−by Celia would come in her quality of
bridesmaid as well as sister, and through the next weeks there would be wedding visits
received and given; all in continuance of that transitional life understood to correspond with
the excitement of bridal felicity, and keeping up the sense of busy ineffectiveness, as of a
dream which the dreamer begins to suspect. The duties of her married life, contemplated as
so great beforehand, seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white vapor−walled
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CHAPTER XXVIII. 226
landscape. The clear heights where she expected to walk in full communion had become
difficult to see even in her imagination; the delicious repose of the soul on a complete
superior had been shaken into uneasy effort and alarmed with dim presentiment. When
would the days begin of that active wifely devotion which was to strengthen her husband's
life and exalt her own? Never perhaps, as she had preconceived them; but somehow – still
somehow. In this solemnly pledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new
form of inspiration and give a new meaning to wifely love.
Meanwhile there was the snow and the low arch of dun vapor – there was the stifling
oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where everything was done for her and none asked
for her aid – where the sense of connection with a manifold pregnant existence had to be
kept up painfully as an inward vision, instead of coming from without in claims that would
have shaped her energies. – "What shall I do?" "Whatever you please, my dear: "that had
been her brief history since she had left off learning morning lessons and practising silly
rhythms on the hated piano. Marriage, which was to bring guidance into worthy and
imperative occupation, had not yet freed her from the gentlewoman's oppressive liberty: it
had not even filled her leisure with the ruminant joy of unchecked tenderness. Her blooming
full−pulsed youth stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the chill,
colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the never−read books, and the
ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that seemed to be vanishing from the daylight.
In the first minutes when Dorothea looked out she felt nothing but the dreary
oppression; then came a keen remembrance, and turning away from the window she walked
round the room. The ideas and hopes which were living in her mind when she first saw this
room nearly three months before were present now only as memories: she judged them as
we judge transient and departed things. All existence seemed to beat with a lower pulse than
her own, and her religious faith was a solitary cry, the struggle out of a nightmare in which
every object was withering and shrinking away from her. Each remembered thing in the
room was disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wandering gaze
came to the group of miniatures, and there at last she saw something which had gathered
new breath and meaning: it was the miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt Julia, who had made
the unfortunate marriage – of Will Ladislaw's grandmother. Dorothea could fancy that it was
alive now – the delicate woman's face which yet had a headstrong look, a peculiarity
difficult to interpret. Was it only her friends who thought her marriage unfortunate? or did
she herself find it out to be a mistake, and taste the salt bitterness of her tears in the merciful
silence of the night? What breadths of experience Dorothea seemed to have passed over
since she first looked at this miniature! She felt a new companionship with it, as if it had an
ear for her and could see how she was looking at it. Here was a woman who had known
some difficulty about marriage. Nay, the colors deepened, the lips and chin seemed to get
larger, the hair and eyes seemed to be sending out light, the face was masculine and beamed
on her with that full gaze which tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for the
slightest movement of her eyelid to pass unnoticed and uninterpreted. The vivid presentation
came like a pleasant glow to Dorothea: she felt herself smiling, and turning from the
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miniature sat down and looked up as if she were again talking to a figure in front of her. But
the smile disappeared as she went on meditating, and at last she said aloud –
"Oh, it was cruel to speak so! How sad – how dreadful!"
She rose quickly and went out of the room, hurrying along the corridor, with the
irresistible impulse to go and see her husband and inquire if she could do anything for him.
Perhaps Mr. Tucker was gone and Mr. Casaubon was alone in the library. She felt as if all
her morning's gloom would vanish if she could see her husband glad because of her
presence.
But when she reached the head of the dark oak there was Celia coming up, and below
there was Mr. Brooke, exchanging welcomes and congratulations with Mr. Casaubon.
"Dodo!" said Celia, in her quiet staccato; then kissed her sister, whose arms encircled
her, and said no more. I think they both cried a little in a furtive manner, while Dorothea ran
down−stairs to greet her uncle.
"I need not ask how you are, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, after kissing her forehead.
"Rome has agreed with you, I see – happiness, frescos, the antique – that sort of thing. Well,
it's very pleasant to have you back again, and you understand all about art now, eh? But
Casaubon is a little pale, I tell him – a little pale, you know. Studying hard in his holidays is
carrying it rather too far. I overdid it at one time" – Mr. Brooke still held Dorothea's hand,
but had turned his face to Mr. Casaubon – "about topography, ruins, temples – I thought I
had a clew, but I saw it would carry me too far, and nothing might come of it. You may go
any length in that sort of thing, and nothing may come of it, you know."
Dorothea's eyes also were turned up to her husband's face with some anxiety at the idea
that those who saw him afresh after absence might be aware of signs which she had not
noticed.
"Nothing to alarm you, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, observing her expression. "A little
English beef and mutton will soon make a difference. It was all very well to look pale,
sitting for the portrait of Aquinas, you know – we got your letter just in time. But Aquinas,
now – he was a little too subtle, wasn't he? Does anybody read Aquinas?"
"He is not indeed an author adapted to superficial minds," said Mr. Casaubon, meeting
these timely questions with dignified patience.
"You would like coffee in your own room, uncle?" said Dorothea, coming to the rescue.
"Yes; and you must go to Celia: she has great news to tell you, you know. I leave it all
to her."
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CHAPTER XXVIII. 228
The blue−green boudoir looked much more cheerful when Celia was seated there in a
pelisse exactly like her sister's, surveying the cameos with a placid satisfaction, while the
conversation passed on to other topics.
"Do you think it nice to go to Rome on a wedding journey?" said Celia, with her ready
delicate blush which Dorothea was used to on the smallest occasions.
"It would not suit all – not you, dear, for example," said Dorothea, quietly. No one
would ever know what she thought of a wedding journey to Rome.
"Mrs. Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going a long journey when they are
married. She says they get tired to death of each other, and can't quarrel comfortably, as they
would at home. And Lady Chettam says she went to Bath." Celia's color changed again and
again – seemed
To come and go with tidings from the heart, As it a running messenger had been.
It must mean more than Celia's blushing usually did.
"Celia! has something happened?" said Dorothea, in a tone full of sisterly feeling.
"Have you really any great news to tell me?"
"It was because you went away, Dodo. Then there was nobody but me for Sir James to
talk to," said Celia, with a certain roguishness in her eyes.
"I understand. It is as I used to hope and believe," said Dorothea, taking her sister's face
between her hands, and looking at her half anxiously. Celia's marriage seemed more serious
than it used to do.
"It was only three days ago," said Celia. "And Lady Chettam is very kind."
"And you are very happy?"
"Yes. We are not going to be married yet. Because every thing is to be got ready. And I
don't want to be married so very soon, because I think it is nice to be engaged. And we shall
be married all our lives after."
"I do believe you could not marry better, Kitty. Sir James is a good, honorable man,"
said Dorothea, warmly.
"He has gone on with the cottages, Dodo. He will tell you about them when he comes.
Shall you be glad to see him?"
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CHAPTER XXVIII. 229
"Of course I shall. How can you ask me?"
"Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned," said Celia, regarding Mr.
Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in due time saturate a neighboring body.
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CHAPTER XXVIII. 230
CHAPTER XXIX.
"I
found that no genius in another could please me. My unfortunate paradoxes had
entirely dried up that source of comfort." – GOLDSMITH.
One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea – but why always
Dorothea? Was her point of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage? protest
against all our interest, all our effort at understanding being given to the young skins that
look blooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get faded, and will know the older and
more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect. In spite of the blinking eyes and white
moles objectionable to Celia, and the want of muscular curve which was morally painful to
Sir James, Mr. Casaubon had an intense consciousness within him, and was spiritually
a−hungered like the rest of us. He had done nothing exceptional in marrying – nothing but
what society sanctions, and considers an occasion for wreaths and bouquets. It had occurred
to him that he must not any longer defer his intention of matrimony, and he had reflected
that in taking a wife, a man of good position should expect and carefully choose a blooming
young lady – the younger the better, because more educable and submissive – of a rank
equal to his own, of religious principles, virtuous disposition, and good understanding. On
such a young lady he would make handsome settlements, and he would neglect no
arrangement for her happiness: in return, he should receive family pleasures and leave
behind him that copy of himself which seemed so urgently required of a man – to the
sonneteers of the sixteenth century. Times had altered since then, and no sonneteer had
insisted on Mr. Casaubon's leaving a copy of himself; moreover, he had not yet succeeded in
issuing copies of his mythological key; but he had always intended to acquit himself by
marriage, and the sense that he was fast leaving the years behind him, that the world was
getting dimmer and that he felt lonely, was a reason to him for losing no more time in
overtaking domestic delights before they too were left behind by the years.
And when he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even more than he
demanded: she might really be such a helpmate to him as would enable him to dispense with
a hired secretary, an aid which Mr. Casaubon had never yet employed and had a suspicious
dread of. (Mr. Casaubon was nervously conscious that he was expected to manifest a
powerful mind.) Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the wife he needed. A
wife, a modest young lady, with the purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is
sure to think her husband's mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of
Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to
him. Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about
his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making
himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife hut his wife's husband! Or as if
he were bound to provide charms for his posterity in his own person! – When Dorothea
accepted him with effusion, that was only natural; and Mr. Casaubon believed that his
happiness was going to begin.
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CHAPTER XXIX. 231
He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life. To know intense joy
without a strong bodily frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul. Mr. Casaubon had never
had a strong bodily frame, and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too
languid to thrill out of self−consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the
swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience
was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be
known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for
transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread−like in small currents of
self−preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many
scruples: he was capable of a severe self−restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honor
according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognized opinion. In conduct
these ends had been attained; but the difficulty of making his Key to all Mythologies
unimpeachable weighed like lead upon his mind; and the pamphlets – or "Parerga" as he
called them – by which he tested his public and deposited small monumental records of his
march, were far from having been seen in all their significance. He suspected the
Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painful doubt as to what was really thought
of them by the leading minds of Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance
Carp had been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked in a small
drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet of his verbal memory. These were
heavy impressions to struggle against, and brought that melancholy embitterment which is
the consequence of all excessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with his wavering
trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope in immortality
seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten Key to all Mythologies. For my part
I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet
not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a
small hungry shivering self – never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to
have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of
a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and
timid, scrupulous and dim−sighted. Becoming a dean or even a bishop would make little
difference, I fear, to Mr. Casaubon's uneasiness. Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed
that behind the big mask and the speaking−trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes
peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.
To this mental estate mapped out a quarter of a century before, to sensibilities thus
fenced in, Mr. Casaubon had thought of annexing happiness with a lovely young bride; but
even before marriage, as we have seen, he found himself under a new depression in the
consciousness that the new bliss was not blissful to him. Inclination yearned back to its old,
easier custom. And the deeper he went in domesticity the more did the sense of acquitting
himself and acting with propriety predominate over any other satisfaction. Marriage, like
religion and erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward
requirement, and Edward Casaubon was bent on fulfilling unimpeachably all requirements.
Even drawing Dorothea into use in his study, according to his own intention before
marriage, was an effort which he was always tempted to defer, and but for her pleading
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insistence it might never have begun. But she had succeeded in making it a matter of course
that she should take her place at an early hour in the library and have work either of reading
aloud or copying assigned her. The work had been easier to define because Mr. Casaubon
had adopted an immediate intention: there was to be a new Parergon, a small monograph on
some lately traced indications concerning the Egyptian mysteries whereby certain assertions
of Warburton's could be corrected. References were extensive even here, but not altogether
shoreless; and sentences were actually to be written in the shape wherein they would be
scanned by Brasenose and a less formidable posterity. These minor monumental productions
were always exciting to Mr. Casaubon; digestion was made difficult by the interference of
citations, or by the rivalry of dialectical phrases ringing against each other in his brain. And
from the first there was to be a Latin dedication about which everything was uncertain
except that it was not to be addressed to Carp: it was a poisonous regret to Mr. Casaubon
that he had once addressed a dedication to Carp in which he had numbered that member of
the animal kingdom among the viros nullo aevo perituros, a mistake which would infallibly
lay the dedicator open to ridicule in the next age, and might even be chuckled over by Pike
and Tench in the present.
Thus Mr. Casaubon was in one of his busiest epochs, and as I began to say a little while
ago, Dorothea joined him early in the library where he had breakfasted alone. Celia at this
time was on a second visit to Lowick, probably the last before her marriage, and was in the
drawing−room expecting Sir James.
Dorothea had learned to read the signs of her husband's mood, and she saw that the
morning had become more foggy there during the last hour. She was going silently to her
desk when he said, in that distant tone which implied that he was discharging a disagreeable
duty –
"Dorothea, here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in one addressed to me."
It was a letter of two pages, and she immediately looked at the signature.
"Mr. Ladislaw! What can he have to say to me?" she exclaimed, in a tone of pleased
surprise. "But," she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon, "I can imagine what he has written to
you about."
"You can, if you please, read the letter," said Mr. Casaubon, severely pointing to it with
his pen, and not looking at her. "But I may as well say beforehand, that I must decline the
proposal it contains to pay a visit here. I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval of
complete freedom from such distractions as have been hitherto inevitable, and especially
from guests whose desultory vivacity makes their presence a fatigue."
There had been no clashing of temper between Dorothea and her husband since that
little explosion in Rome, which had left such strong traces in her mind that it had been easier
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ever since to quell emotion than to incur the consequence of venting it. But this ill−tempered
anticipation that she could desire visits which might be disagreeable to her husband, this
gratuitous defence of himself against selfish complaint on her part, was too sharp a sting to
be meditated on until after it had been resented. Dorothea had thought that she could have
been patient with John Milton, but she had never imagined him behaving in this way; and
for a moment Mr. Casaubon seemed to be stupidly undiscerning and odiously unjust. Pity,
that "new−born babe" which was by−and−by to rule many a storm within her, did not "stride
the blast" on this occasion. With her first words, uttered in a tone that shook him, she
startled Mr. Casaubon into looking at her, and meeting the flash of her eyes.
"Why do you attribute to me a wish for anything that would annoy you? You speak to
me as if I were something you had to contend against. Wait at least till I appear to consult
my own pleasure apart from yours."
"Dorothea, you are hasty," answered Mr. Casaubon, nervously.
Decidedly, this woman was too young to be on the formidable level of wifehood –
unless she had been pale and feature less and taken everything for granted.
"I think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositions about my feeling,"
said Dorothea, in the same tone. The fire was not dissipated yet, and she thought it was
ignoble in her husband not to apologize to her.
"We will, if you please, say no more on this subject, Dorothea. I have neither leisure nor
energy for this kind of debate."
Here Mr. Casaubon dipped his pen and made as if he would return to his writing,
though his hand trembled so much that the words seemed to be written in an unknown
character. There are answers which, in turning away wrath, only send it to the other end of
the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your
own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.
Dorothea left Ladislaw's two letters unread on her husband's writing−table and went to
her own place, the scorn and indignation within her rejecting the reading of these letters, just
as we hurl away any trash towards which we seem to have been suspected of mean cupidity.
She did not in the least divine the subtle sources of her husband's bad temper about these
letters: she only knew that they had caused him to offend her. She began to work at once,
and her hand did not tremble; on the contrary, in writing out the quotations which had been
given to her the day before, she felt that she was forming her letters beautifully, and it
seemed to her that she saw the construction of the Latin she was copying, and which she was
beginning to understand, more clearly than usual. In her indignation there was a sense of
superiority, but it went out for the present in firmness of stroke, and did not compress itself
into an inward articulate voice pronouncing the once "affable archangel" a poor creature.
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There had been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea had not looked away
from her own table, when she heard the loud bang of a book on the floor, and turning
quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the library steps clinging forward as if he were in some bodily
distress. She started up and bounded towards him in an instant: he was evidently in great
straits for breath. Jumping on a stool she got close to his elbow and said with her whole soul
melted into tender alarm –
"Can you lean on me, dear?"
He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her, unable to speak or
move, gasping for breath. When at last he descended the three steps and fell backward in the
large chair which Dorothea had drawn close to the foot of the ladder, he no longer gasped
but seemed helpless and about to faint. Dorothea rang the bell violently, and presently Mr.
Casaubon was helped to the couch: he did not faint, and was gradually reviving, when Sir
James Chettam came in, having been met in the hall with the news that Mr. Casaubon had
"had a fit in the library."
"Good God! this is just what might have been expected," was his immediate thought. If
his prophetic soul had been urged to particularize, it seemed to him that "fits" would have
been the definite expression alighted upon. He asked his informant, the butler, whether the
doctor had been sent for. The butler never knew his master want the doctor before; but
would it not be right to send for a physician?
When Sir James entered the library, however, Mr. Casaubon could make some signs of
his usual politeness, and Dorothea, who in the reaction from her first terror had been
kneeling and sobbing by his side now rose and herself proposed that some one should ride
off for a medical man.
"I recommend you to send for Lydgate," said Sir James. "My mother has called him in,
and she has found him uncommonly clever. She has had a poor opinion of the physicians
since my father's death."
Dorothea appealed to her husband, and he made a silent sign of approval. So Mr.
Lydgate was sent for and he came wonderfully soon, for the messenger, who was Sir James
Chettam's man and knew Mr. Lydgate, met him leading his horse along the Lowick road and
giving his arm to Miss Vincy.
Celia, in the drawing−room, had known nothing of the trouble till Sir James told her of
it. After Dorothea's account, he no longer considered the illness a fit, but still something "of
that nature."
"Poor dear Dodo – how dreadful!" said Celia, feeling as much grieved as her own
perfect happiness would allow. Her little hands were clasped, and enclosed by Sir James's as
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a bud is enfolded by a liberal calyx. "It is very shocking that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but
I never did like him. And I think he is not half fond enough of Dorothea; and he ought to be,
for I am sure no one else would have had him – do you think they would?"
"I always thought it a horrible sacrifice of your sister," said Sir James.
"Yes. But poor Dodo never did do what other people do, and I think she never will."
"She is a noble creature," said the loyal−hearted Sir James. He had just had a fresh
impression of this kind, as he had seen Dorothea stretching her tender arm under her
husband's neck and looking at him with unspeakable sorrow. He did not know how much
penitence there was in the sorrow.
"Yes," said Celia, thinking it was very well for Sir James to say so, but HE would not
have been comfortable with Dodo. "Shall I go to her? Could I help her, do you think?"
"I think it would be well for you just to go and see her before Lydgate comes," said Sir
James, magnanimously. "Only don't stay long."
While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt
about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr. Brooke's
indifference. If Cadwallader – if every one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had
done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girl blindly
decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have
any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he
had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories
of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet
odors – floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could
remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness.
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CHAPTER XXX.
"Q
ui veut delasser hors de propos, lasse." – PASCAL.
Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and in a few days
began to recover his usual condition. But Lydgate seemed to think the case worth a great
deal of attention. He not only used his stethoscope (which had not become a matter of course
in practice at that time), but sat quietly by his patient and watched him. To Mr. Casaubon's
questions about himself, he replied that the source of the illness was the common error of
intellectual men – a too eager and monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied
with moderate work, and to seek variety of relaxation. Mr. Brooke, who sat by on one
occasion, suggested that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader did, and have a
turning−room, make toys, table−legs, and that kind of thing.
"In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second childhood," said
poor Mr. Casaubon, with some bitterness. "These things," he added, looking at Lydgate,
"would be to me such relaxation as tow−picking is to prisoners in a house of correction."
"I confess," said Lydgate, smiling, "amusement is rather an unsatisfactory prescription.
It is something like telling people to keep up their spirits. Perhaps I had better say, that you
must submit to be mildly bored rather than to go on working."
"Yes, yes," said Mr. Brooke. "Get Dorothea to play back. gammon with you in the
evenings. And shuttlecock, now – I don't know a finer game than shuttlecock for the
daytime. I remember it all the fashion. To be sure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon.
But you must unbend, you know. Why, you might take to some light study: conchology,
now: it always think that must be a light study. Or get Dorothea to read you light things,
Smollett – `Roderick Random,' `Humphrey Clinker:' they are a little broad, but she may read
anything now she's married, you know. I remember they made me laugh uncommonly –
there's a droll bit about a postilion's breeches. We have no such humor now. I have gone
through all these things, but they might be rather new to you."
"As new as eating thistles," would have been an answer to represent Mr. Casaubon's
feelings. But he only bowed resignedly, with due respect to his wife's uncle, and observed
that doubtless the works he mentioned had "served as a resource to a certain order of
minds."
"You see," said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside the door,
"Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a loss when you forbid him his
particular work, which I believe is something very deep indeed – in the line of research, you
know. I would never give way to that; I was always versatile. But a clergyman is tied a little
tight. If they would make him a bishop, now! – he did a very good pamphlet for Peel. He
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would have more movement then, more show; he might get a little flesh. But I recommend
you to talk to Mrs. Casaubon. She is clever enough for anything, is my niece. Tell her, her
husband wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics."
Without Mr. Brooke's advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking to Dorothea. She
had not been present while her uncle was throwing out his pleasant suggestions as to the
mode in which life at Lowick might be enlivened, but she was usually by her husband's side,
and the unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and voice about whatever touched his
mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was inclined to watch. He said to himself that
he was only doing right in telling her the truth about her husband's probable future, but he
certainly thought also that it would be interesting to talk confidentially with her. A medical
man likes to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies
is too easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought.
Lydgate had often been satirical on this gratuitous prediction, and he meant now to be
guarded.
He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he was going
away, when Dorothea and Celia appeared, both glowing from their struggle with the March
wind. When Lydgate begged to speak with her alone, Dorothea opened the library door
which happened to be the nearest, thinking of nothing at the moment but what he might have
to say about Mr. Casaubon. It was the first time she had entered this room since her husband
had been taken ill, and the servant had chosen not to open the shutters. But there was light
enough to read by from the narrow upper panes of the windows.
"You will not mind this sombre light," said Dorothea, standing in the middle of the
room. "Since you forbade books, the library has been out of the question. But Mr. Casaubon
will soon be here again, I hope. Is he not making progress?"
"Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected. Indeed, he is already nearly in
his usual state of health."
"You do not fear that the illness will return?" said Dorothea, whose quick ear had
detected some significance in Lydgate's tone.
"Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon," said Lydgate. "The only point
on which I can be confident is that it will be desirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon's
account, lest he should in any way strain his nervous power."
"I beseech you to speak quite plainly," said Dorothea, in an imploring tone. "I cannot
bear to think that there might be something which I did not know, and which, if I had known
it, would have made me act differently." The words came out like a cry: it was evident that
they were the voice of some mental experience which lay not very far off.
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"Sit down," she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, and throwing off her bonnet
and gloves, with an instinctive discarding of formality where a great question of destiny was
concerned.
"What you say now justifies my own view," said Lydgate. "I think it is one's function as
a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far as possible. But I beg you to observe that
Mr. Casaubon's case is precisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce
upon. He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without much worse health than he has
had hitherto."
Dorothea had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said in a low voice, "You
mean if we are very careful."
"Yes – careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against excessive application."
"He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work," said Dorothea, with a quick
prevision of that wretchedness.
"I am aware of that. The only course is to try by all means, direct and indirect, to
moderate and vary his occupations. With a happy concurrence of circumstances, there is, as
I said, no immediate danger from that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the
cause of his late attack. On the other hand, it is possible that the disease may develop itself
more rapidly: it is one of those eases in which death is sometimes sudden. Nothing should be
neglected which might be affected by such an issue."
There was silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she had been turned to
marble, though the life within her was so intense that her mind had never before swept in
brief time over an equal range of scenes and motives.
"Help me, pray," she said, at last, in the same low voice as before. "Tell me what I can
do."
"What do you think of foreign travel? You have been lately in Rome, I think."
The memories which made this resource utterly hopeless were a new current that shook
Dorothea out of her pallid immobility.
"Oh, that would not do – that would be worse than anything," she said with a more
childlike despondency, while the tears rolled down. "Nothing will be of any use that he does
not enjoy."
"I wish that I could have spared you this pain," said Lydgate, deeply touched, yet
wondering about her marriage. Women just like Dorothea had not entered into his traditions.
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"It was right of you to tell me. I thank you for telling me the truth."
"I wish you to understand that I shall not say anything to enlighten Mr. Casaubon
himself. I think it desirable for him to know nothing more than that he must not overwork
him self, and must observe certain rules. Anxiety of any kind would be precisely the most
unfavorable condition for him."
Lydgate rose, and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time? unclasping her cloak
and throwing it off as if it stifled her. He was bowing and quitting her, when an impulse
which if she had been alone would have turned into a prayer, made her say with a sob in her
voice –
"Oh, you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life and death. Advise me.
Think what I can do. He has been laboring all his life and looking forward. He minds about
nothing else. – And I mind about nothing else – "
For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary
appeal – this cry from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with
kindred natures in the same embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully illuminated life.
But what could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon again to−morrow?
When he was gone, Dorothea's tears gushed forth, and relieved her stifling oppression.
Then she dried her eyes, reminded that her distress must not be betrayed to her husband; and
looked round the room thinking that she must order the servant to attend to it as usual, since
Mr. Casaubon might now at any moment wish to enter. On his writing−table there were
letters which had lain untouched since the morning when he was taken ill, and among them,
as Dorothea. well remembered, there were young Ladislaw's letters, the one addressed to her
still unopened. The associations of these letters had been made the more painful by that
sudden attack of illness which she felt that the agitation caused by her anger might have
helped to bring on: it would be time enough to read them when they were again thrust upon
her, and she had had no inclination to fetch them from the library. But now it occurred to her
that they should be put out of her husband's sight: whatever might have been the sources of
his annoyance about them, he must, if possible, not be annoyed again; and she ran her eyes
first over the letter addressed to him to assure herself whether or not it would be necessary to
write in order to hinder the offensive visit.
Will wrote from Rome, and began by saying that his obligations to Mr. Casaubon were
too deep for all thanks not to seem impertinent. It was plain that if he were not grateful, he
must be the poorest−spirited rascal who had ever found a generous friend. To expand in
wordy thanks would be like saying, "I am honest." But Will had come to perceive that his
defects – defects which Mr. Casaubon had himself often pointed to – needed for their
correction that more strenuous position which his relative's generosity had hitherto
prevented from being inevitable. He trusted that he should make the best return, if return
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were possible, by showing the effectiveness of the education for which he was indebted, and
by ceasing in future to need any diversion towards himself of funds on which others might
have a better claim. He was coming to England, to try his fortune, as many other young men
were obliged to do whose only capital was in their brains. His friend Naumann had desired
him to take charge of the "Dispute" – the picture painted for Mr. Casaubon, with whose
permission, and Mrs. Casaubon's, Will would convey it to Lowick in person. A letter
addressed to the Poste Restante in Paris within the fortnight would hinder him, if necessary,
from arriving at an inconvenient moment. He enclosed a letter to Mrs. Casaubon in which he
continued a discussion about art, begun with her in Rome.
Opening her own letter Dorothea saw that it was a lively continuation of his
remonstrance with her fanatical sympathy and her want of sturdy neutral delight in things as
they were – an outpouring of his young vivacity which it was impossible to read just now.
She had immediately to consider what was to be done about the other letter: there was still
time perhaps to prevent Will from coming to Lowick. Dorothea ended by giving the letter to
her uncle, who was still in the house, and begging him to let Will know that Mr. Casaubon
had been ill, and that his health would not allow the reception of any visitors.
No one more ready than Mr. Brooke to write a letter: his only difficulty was to write a
short one, and his ideas in this case expanded over the three large pages and the inward
foldings. He had simply said to Dorothea –
"To be sure, I will write, my dear. He's a very clever young fellow – this young
Ladislaw – I dare say will be a rising young man. It's a good letter – marks his sense of
things, you know. However, I will tell him about Casaubon."
But the end of Mr. Brooke's pen was a thinking organ, evolving sentences, especially of
a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mind could well overtake them. It expressed regrets
and proposed remedies, which, when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously worded –
surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which he had never before thought of.
In this case, his pen found it such a pity young Ladislaw should not have come into the
neighborhood. just at that time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance more
fully, and that they might go over the long−neglected Italian drawings together – it also felt
such an interest in a young man who was starting in life with a stock of ideas – that by the
end of the second page it had persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite young Ladislaw, since he
could not be received at Lowick, to come to Tipton Grange. Why not? They could find a
great many things to do together, and this was a period of peculiar growth – the political
horizon was expanding, and – in short, Mr. Brooke's pen went off into a little speech which
it had lately reported for that imperfectly edited organ the "Middlemarch Pioneer." While
Mr. Brooke was sealing this letter, he felt elated with an influx of dim projects: – a young
man capable of putting ideas into form, the "Pioneer" purchased to clear the pathway for a
new candidate, documents utilized – who knew what might come of it all? Since Celia was
going to marry immediately, it would be very pleasant to have a young fellow at table with
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him, at least for a time.
But he went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into the letter, for she was
engaged with her husband, and – in fact, these things were of no importance to her.
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CHAPTER XXXI.
H
ow will you know the pitch of that great bell Too large for you to stir? Let but a flute
Play 'neath the fine−mixed metal listen close Till the right note flows forth, a silvery rill.
Then shall the huge bell tremble – then the mass With myriad waves concurrent shall
respond In low soft unison.
Lydgate that evening spoke to Miss Vincy of Mrs. Casaubon, and laid some emphasis
on the strong feeling she appeared to have for that formal studious man thirty years older
than herself.
"Of course she is devoted to her husband," said Rosamond, implying a notion of
necessary sequence which the scientific man regarded as the prettiest possible for a woman;
but she was thinking at the same time that it was not so very melancholy to be mistress of
Lowick Manor with a husband likely to die soon. "Do you think her very handsome?"
"She certainly is handsome, but I have not thought about it," said Lydgate.
"I suppose it would be unprofessional," said Rosamond, dimpling. "But how your
practice is spreading! You were called in before to the Chettams, I think; and now, the
Casaubons."
"Yes," said Lydgate, in a tone of compulsory admission. "But I don't really like
attending such people so well as the poor. The cases are more monotonous, and one has to
go through more fuss and listen more deferentially to nonsense."
"Not more than in Middlemarch," said Rosamond. "And at least you go through wide
corridors and have the scent of rose−leaves everywhere."
"That is true, Mademoiselle de Montmorenci," said Lydgate, just bending his head to
the table and lifting with his fourth finger her delicate handkerchief which lay at the mouth
of her reticule, as if to enjoy its scent, while he looked at her with a smile.
But this agreeable holiday freedom with which Lydgate hovered about the flower of
Middlemarch, could not continue indefinitely. It was not more possible to find social
isolation in that town than elsewhere, and two people persistently flirting could by no means
escape from "the various entanglements, weights, blows, clashings, motions, by which
things severally go on." Whatever Miss Vincy did must be remarked, and she was perhaps
the more conspicuous to admirers and critics because just now Mrs. Vincy, after some
struggle, had gone with Fred to stay a little while at Stone Court, there being no other way of
at once gratifying old Featherstone and keeping watch against Mary Garth, who appeared a
less tolerable daughter−in−law in proportion as Fred's illness disappeared.
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Aunt Bulstrode, for example, came a little oftener into Lowick Gate to see Rosamond,
now she was alone. For Mrs. Bulstrode had a true sisterly feeling for her brother; always
thinking that he might have married better, but wishing well to the children. Now Mrs.
Bulstrode had a long−standing intimacy with Mrs. Plymdale. They had nearly the same
preferences in silks, patterns for underclothing, china−ware, and clergymen; they confided
their little troubles of health and household management to each other, and various little
points of superiority on Mrs. Bulstrode's side, namely, more decided seriousness, more
admiration for mind, and a house outside the town, sometimes served to give color to their
conversation without dividing them – well−meaning women both, knowing very little of
their own motives.
Mrs. Bulstrode, paying a morning visit to Mrs. Plymdale, happened to say that she
could not stay longer, because she was going to see poor Rosamond.
"Why do you say `poor Rosamond'?" said Mrs. Plymdale, a round−eyed sharp little
woman, like a tamed falcon.
"She is so pretty, and has been brought up in such thoughtlessness. The mother, you
know, had always that levity about her, which makes me anxious for the children."
"Well, Harriet, if I am to speak my mind," said Mrs. Plymdale, with emphasis, "I must
say, anybody would suppose you and Mr. Bulstrode would be delighted with what has
happened, for you have done everything to put Mr. Lydgate forward."
"Selina, what do you mean?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, in genuine surprise.
"Not but what I am truly thankful for Ned's sake," said Mrs. Plymdale. "He could
certainly better afford to keep such a wife than some people can; but I should wish him to
look elsewhere. Still a mother has anxieties, and some young men would take to a bad life in
consequence. Besides, if I was obliged to speak, I should say I was not fond of strangers
coming into a town."
"I don't know, Selina," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with a little emphasis in her turn. "Mr.
Bulstrode was a stranger here at one time. Abraham and Moses were strangers in the land,
and we are told to entertain strangers. And especially," she added, after a slight pause,
"when they are unexceptionable."
"I was not speaking in a religious sense, Harriet. I spoke as a mother."
"Selina, I am sure you have never heard me say anything against a niece of mine
marrying your son."
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"Oh, it is pride in Miss Vincy – I am sure it is nothing else," said Mrs. Plymdale, who
had never before given all her confidence to "Harriet" on this subject. "No young man in
Middlemarch was good enough for her: I have heard her mother say as much. That is not a
Christian spirit, I think. But now, from all I hear, she has found a man AS proud as herself."
"You don't mean that there is anything between Rosamond and Mr. Lydgate?" said Mrs.
Bulstrode, rather mortified at finding out her own ignorance
"Is it possible you don't know, Harriet?"
"Oh, I go about so little; and I am not fond of gossip; I really never hear any. You see so
many people that I don't see. Your circle is rather different from ours."
"Well, but your own niece and Mr. Bulstrode's great favorite – and yours too, I am sure,
Harriet! I thought, at one time, you meant him for Kate, when she is a little older."
"I don't believe there can be anything serious at present," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "My
brother would certainly have told me."
"Well, people have different ways, but I understand that nobody can see Miss Vincy and
Mr. Lydgate together without taking them to be engaged. However, it is not my business.
Shall I put up the pattern of mittens?"
After this Mrs. Bulstrode drove to her niece with a mind newly weighted. She was
herself handsomely dressed, but she noticed with a little more regret than usual that
Rosamond, who was just come in and met her in walking−dress, was almost as expensively
equipped. Mrs. Bulstrode was a feminine smaller edition of her brother, and had none of her
husband's low−toned pallor. She had a good honest glance and used no circumlocution.
"You are alone, I see, my dear," she said, as they entered the drawing−room together,
looking round gravely. Rosamond felt sure that her aunt had something particular to say, and
they sat down near each other. Nevertheless, the quilling inside Rosamond's bonnet was so
charming that it was impossible not to desire the same kind of thing for Kate, and Mrs.
Bulstrode's eyes, which were rather fine, rolled round that ample quilled circuit, while she
spoke.
"I have just heard something about you that has surprised me very much, Rosamond."
"What is that, aunt?" Rosamond's eyes also were roaming over her aunt's large
embroidered collar.
"I can hardly believe it – that you should be engaged without my knowing it – without
your father's telling me." Here Mrs. Bulstrode's eyes finally rested on Rosamond's, who
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blushed deeply, and said –
"I am not engaged, aunt."
"How is it that every one says so, then – that it is the town's talk?"
"The town's talk is of very little consequence, I think," said Rosamond, inwardly
gratified.
"Oh, my dear, be more thoughtful; don't despise your neighbors so. Remember you are
turned twenty−two now, and you will have no fortune: your father, I am sure, will not be
able to spare you anything. Mr. Lydgate is very intellectual and clever; I know there is an
attraction in that. I like talking to such men myself; and your uncle finds him very useful.
But the profession is a poor one here. To be sure, this life is not everything; but it is seldom
a medical man has true religious views – there is too much pride of intellect. And you are
not fit to marry a poor man.
"Mr. Lydgate is not a poor man, aunt. He has very high connections."
"He told me himself he was poor."
"That is because he is used to people who have a high style
"My dear Rosamond, YOU must not think of living in high style."
Rosamond looked down and played with her reticule. She was not a fiery young lady
and had no sharp answers, but she meant to live as she pleased.
"Then it is really true?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking very earnestly at her niece. "You
are thinking of Mr. Lydgate – there is some understanding between you, though your father
doesn't know. Be open, my dear Rosamond: Mr. Lydgate has really made you an offer?"
Poor Rosamond's feelings were very unpleasant. She had been quite easy as to
Lydgate's feeling and intention, but now when her aunt put this question she did not like
being unable to say Yes. Her pride was hurt, but her habitual control of manner helped her.
"Pray excuse me, aunt. I would rather not speak on the subject."
"You would not give your heart to a man without a decided prospect, I trust, my dear.
And think of the two excellent offers I know of that you have refused! – and one still within
your reach, if you will not throw it away. I knew a very great beauty who married badly at
last, by doing so. Mr. Ned Plymdale is a nice young man – some might think good−looking;
and an only son; and a large business of that kind is better than a profession. Not that
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marrying is everything I would have you seek first the kingdom of God. But a girl should
keep her heart within her own power."
"I should never give it to Mr. Ned Plymdale, if it were. I have already refused him. If I
loved, I should love at once and without change," said Rosamond, with a great sense of
being a romantic heroine, and playing the part prettily.
"I see how it is, my dear," said Mrs. Bulstrode, in a melancholy voice, rising to go.
"You have allowed your affections to be engaged without return."
"No, indeed, aunt," said Rosamond, with emphasis.
"Then you are quite confident that Mr. Lydgate has a serious attachment to you?"
Rosamond's cheeks by this time were persistently burning, and she felt much
mortification. She chose to be silent, and her aunt went away all the more convinced.
Mr. Bulstrode in things worldly and indifferent was disposed to do what his wife bade
him, and she now, without telling her reasons, desired him on the next opportunity to find
out in conversation with Mr. Lydgate whether he had any intention of marrying soon. The
result was a decided negative. Mr. Bulstrode, on being cross−questioned, showed that
Lydgate had spoken as no man would who had any attachment that could issue in
matrimony. Mrs. Bulstrode now felt that she had a serious duty before her, and she soon
managed to arrange a tete−a−tete with Lydgate, in which she passed from inquiries about
Fred Vincy's health, and expressions of her sincere anxiety for her brother's large family, to
general remarks on the dangers which lay before young people with regard to their
settlement in life. Young men were often wild and disappointing, making little return for the
money spent on them, and a girl was exposed to many circumstances which might interfere
with her prospects.
"Especially when she has great attractions, and her parents see much company," said
Mrs. Bulstrode "Gentlemen pay her attention, and engross her all to themselves, for the mere
pleasure of the moment, and that drives off others. I think it is a heavy responsibility, Mr.
Lydgate, to interfere with the prospects of any girl." Here Mrs. Bulstrode fixed her eyes on
him, with an unmistakable purpose of warning, if not of rebuke.
"Clearly," said Lydgate, looking at her – perhaps even staring a little in return. "On the
other hand, a man must be a great coxcomb to go about with a notion that he must not pay
attention to a young lady lest she should fall in love with him, or lest others should think she
must."
"Oh, Mr. Lydgate, you know well what your advantages are. You know that our young
men here cannot cope with you. Where you frequent a house it may militate very much
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against a girl's making a desirable settlement in life, and prevent her from accepting offers
even if they are made."
Lydgate was less flattered by his advantage over the Middlemarch Orlandos than he was
annoyed by the perception of Mrs. Bulstrode's meaning. She felt that she had spoken as
impressively as it was necessary to do, and that in using the superior word "militate" she had
thrown a noble drapery over a mass of particulars which were still evident enough.
Lydgate was fuming a little, pushed his hair back with one hand, felt curiously in his
waistcoat−pocket with the other, and then stooped to beckon the tiny black spaniel, which
had the insight to decline his hollow caresses. It would not have been decent to go away,
because he had been dining with other guests, and had just taken tea. But Mrs. Bulstrode,
having no doubt that she had been understood, turned the conversation.
Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so
an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes. The next day Mr. Farebrother, parting from
Lydgate in the street, supposed that they should meet at Vincy's in the evening. Lydgate
answered curtly, no – he had work to do – he must give up going out in the evening.
"What! you are going to get lashed to the mast, eh, and are stopping your ears?" said the
Vicar. "Well, if you don't mean to be won by the sirens, you are right to take precautions in
time."
A few days before, Lydgate would have taken no notice of these words as anything
more than the Vicar's usual way of putting things. They seemed now to convey an innuendo
which confirmed the impression that he had been making a fool of himself and behaving so
as to be misunderstood: not, he believed, by Rosamond herself; she, he felt sure, took
everything as lightly as he intended it. She had an exquisite tact and insight in relation to all
points of manners; but the people she lived among were blunderers and busybodies.
However, the mistake should go no farther. He resolved – and kept his resolution – that he
would not go to Mr. Vincy's except on business.
Rosamond became very unhappy. The uneasiness first stirred by her aunt's questions
grew and grew till at the end of ten days that she had not seen Lydgate, it grew into terror at
the blank that might possibly come – into foreboding of that ready, fatal sponge which so
cheaply wipes out the hopes of mortals. The world would have a new dreariness for her, as a
wilderness that a magician's spells had turned for a little while into a garden. She felt that
she was beginning to know the pang of disappointed love, and that no other man could be
the occasion of such delightful aerial building as she had been enjoying for the last six
months. Poor Rosamond lost her appetite and felt as forlorn as Ariadne – as a charming
stage Ariadne left behind with all her boxes full of costumes and no hope of a coach.
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There are many wonderful mixtures in the world which are all alike called love, and
claim the privileges of a sublime rage which is an apology for everything (in literature and
the drama). Happily Rosamond did not think of committing any desperate act: she plaited
her fair hair as beautifully as usual, and kept herself proudly calm. Her most cheerful
supposition was that her aunt Bulstrode had interfered in some way to hinder Lydgate's
visits: everything was better than a spontaneous indifference in him. Any one who imagines
ten days too short a time – not for falling into leanness, lightness, or other measurable
effects of passion, but – for the whole spiritual circuit of alarmed conjecture and
disappointment, is ignorant of what can go on in the elegant leisure of a young lady's mind.
On the eleventh day, however, Lydgate when leaving Stone Court was requested by
Mrs. Vincy to let her husband know that there was a marked change in Mr. Featherstone's
health, and that she wished him to come to Stone Court on that day. Now Lydgate might
have called at the warehouse, or might have written a message on a leaf of his pocket−book
and left it at the door. Yet these simple devices apparently did not occur to him, from which
we may conclude that he had no strong objection to calling at the house at an hour when Mr.
Vincy was not at home, and leaving the message with Miss Vincy. A man may, from various
motives, decline to give his company, but perhaps not even a sage would be gratified that
nobody missed him. It would be a graceful, easy way of piecing on the new habits to the old,
to have a few playful words with Rosamond about his resistance to dissipation, and his firm
resolve to take long fasts even from sweet sounds. It must be confessed, also, that
momentary speculations as to all the possible grounds for Mrs. Bulstrode's hints had
managed to get woven like slight clinging hairs into the more substantial web of his
thoughts.
Miss Vincy was alone, and blushed so deeply when Lydgate came in that he felt a
corresponding embarrassment, and instead of any playfulness, he began at once to speak of
his reason for calling, and to beg her, almost formally, to deliver the message to her father.
Rosamond, who at the first moment felt as if her happiness were returning, was keenly hurt
by Lydgate's manner; her blush had departed, and she assented coldly, without adding an
unnecessary word, some trivial chain−work which she had in her hands enabling her to
avoid looking at Lydgate higher than his chin. In all failures, the beginning is certainly the
half of the whole. After sitting two long moments while he moved his whip and could say
nothing, Lydgate rose to go, and Rosamond, made nervous by her struggle between
mortification and the wish not to betray it, dropped her chain as if startled, and rose too,
mechanically. Lydgate instantaneously stooped to pick up the chain. When he rose he was
very near to a lovely little face set on a fair long neck which he had been used to see turning
about under the most perfect management of self−contented grace. But as he raised his eyes
now he saw a certain helpless quivering which touched him quite newly, and made him look
at Rosamond with a questioning flash. At this moment she was as natural as she had ever
been when she was five years old: she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to
do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her
cheeks, even as they would.
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That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather−touch: it shook flirtation into
love. Remember that the ambitious man who was looking at those Forget−me−nots under
the water was very warm−hearted and rash. He did not know where the chain went; an idea
had thrilled through the recesses within him which had a miraculous effect in raising the
power of passionate love lying buried there in no sealed sepulchre, but under the lightest,
easily pierced mould. His words were quite abrupt and awkward; but the tone made them
sound like an ardent, appealing avowal.
"What is the matter? you are distressed. Tell me, pray."
Rosamond had never been spoken to in such tones before. I am not sure that she knew
what the words were: but she looked at Lydgate and the tears fell over her cheeks. There
could have been no more complete answer than that silence, and Lydgate, forgetting
everything else, completely mastered by the outrush of tenderness at the sudden belief that
this sweet young creature depended on him for her joy, actually put his arms round her,
folding her gently and protectingly – he was used to being gentle with the weak and
suffering – and kissed each of the two large tears. This was a strange way of arriving at an
understanding, but it was a short way. Rosamond was not angry, but she moved backward a
little in timid happiness, and Lydgate could now sit near her and speak less incompletely.
Rosamond had to make her little confession, and he poured out words of gratitude and
tenderness with impulsive lavishment. In half an hour he left the house an engaged man,
whose soul was not his own, but the woman's to whom he had bound himself.
He came again in the evening to speak with Mr. Vincy, who, just returned from Stone
Court, was feeling sure that it would not be long before he heard of Mr. Featherstone's
demise. The felicitous word "demise," which had seasonably occurred to him, had raised his
spirits even above their usual evening pitch. The right word is always a power, and
communicates its definiteness to our action. Considered as a demise, old Featherstone's
death assumed a merely legal aspect, so that Mr. Vincy could tap his snuff−box over it and
be jovial, without even an intermittent affectation of solemnity; and Mr. Vincy hated both
solemnity and affectation. Who was ever awe struck about a testator, or sang a hymn on the
title to real property? Mr. Vincy was inclined to take a jovial view of all things that evening:
he even observed to Lydgate that Fred had got the family constitution after all, and would
soon be as fine a fellow as ever again; and when his approbation of Rosamond's engagement
was asked for, he gave it with astonishing facility, passing at once to general remarks on the
desirableness of matrimony for young men and maidens, and apparently deducing from the
whole the appropriateness of a little more punch.
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CHAPTER XXXII.
"T
hey'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk." – SHAKESPEARE: Tempest.
The triumphant confidence of the Mayor founded on Mr. Featherstone's insistent
demand that Fred and his mother should not leave him, was a feeble emotion compared with
all that was agitating the breasts of the old man's blood−relations, who naturally manifested
more their sense of the family tie and were more visibly numerous now that he had become
bedridden. Naturally: for when "poor Peter" had occupied his arm−chair in the wainscoted
parlor, no assiduous beetles for whom the cook prepares boiling water could have been less
welcome on a hearth which they had reasons for preferring, than those persons whose
Featherstone blood was ill−nourished, not from penuriousness on their part, but from
poverty. Brother Solomon and Sister Jane were rich, and the family candor and total
abstinence from false politeness with which they were always received seemed to them no
argument that their brother in the solemn act of making his will would overlook the superior
claims of wealth. Themselves at least he had never been unnatural enough to banish from his
house, and it seemed hardly eccentric that he should hare kept away Brother Jonah, Sister
Martha, and the rest, who had no shadow of such claims. They knew Peter's maxim, that
money was a good egg, and should be laid in a warm nest.
But Brother Jonah, Sister Martha, and all the needy exiles, held a different point of
view. Probabilities are as various as the faces to be seen at will in fretwork or
paper−hangings: every form is there, from Jupiter to Judy, if you only look with creative
inclination. To the poorer and least favored it seemed likely that since Peter had done
nothing for them in his life, he would remember them at the last. Jonah argued that men
liked to make a surprise of their wills, while Martha said that nobody need be surprised if he
left the best part of his money to those who least expected it. Also it was not to be thought
but that an own brother "lying there" with dropsy in his legs must come to feel that blood
was thicker than water, and if he didn't alter his will, he might have money by him. At any
rate some blood−relations should be on the premises and on the watch against those who
were hardly relations at all. Such things had been known as forged wills and disputed wills,
which seemed to have the golden−hazy advantage of somehow enabling non−legatees to
live out of them. Again, those who were no blood−relations might be caught making away
with things – and poor Peter "lying there" helpless! Somebody should be on the watch. But
in this conclusion they were at one with Solomon and Jane; also, some nephews, nieces, and
cousins, arguing with still greater subtilty as to what might be done by a man able to "will
away" his property and give himself large treats of oddity, felt in a handsome sort of way
that there was a family interest to be attended to, and thought of Stone Court as a place
which it would be nothing but right for them to visit. Sister Martha, otherwise Mrs. Cranch,
living with some wheeziness in the Chalky Flats, could not undertake the journey; but her
son, as being poor Peter's own nephew, could represent her advantageously, and watch lest
his uncle Jonah should make an unfair use of the improbable things which seemed likely to
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happen. In fact there was a general sense running in the Featherstone blood that everybody
must watch everybody else, and that it would be well for everybody else to reflect that the
Almighty was watching him.
Thus Stone Court continually saw one or other blood−relation alighting or departing,
and Mary Garth had the unpleasant task of carrying their messages to Mr. Featherstone, who
would see none of them, and sent her down with the still more unpleasant task of telling
them so. As manager of the household she felt bound to ask them in good provincial fashion
to stay and eat; but she chose to consult Mrs. Vincy on the point of extra down−stairs
consumption now that Mr. Featherstone was laid up.
"Oh, my dear, you must do things handsomely where there's last illness and a property.
God knows, I don't grudge them every ham in the house – only, save the best for the funeral.
Have some stuffed veal always, and a fine cheese in cut. You must expect to keep open
house in these last illnesses," said liberal Mrs. Vincy, once more of cheerful note and bright
plumage.
But some of the visitors alighted and did not depart after the handsome treating to veal
and ham. Brother Jonah, for example (there are such unpleasant people in most families;
perhaps even in the highest aristocracy there are Brobdingnag specimens, gigantically in
debt and bloated at greater expense) – Brother Jonah, I say, having come down in the world,
was mainly supported by a calling which he was modest enough not to boast of, though it
was much better than swindling either on exchange or turf, but which did not require his
presence at Brassing so long as he had a good corner to sit in and a supply of food. He chose
the kitchen−corner, partly because he liked it best, and partly because he did not want to sit
with Solomon, concerning whom he had a strong brotherly opinion. Seated in a famous
arm−chair and in his best suit, constantly within sight of good cheer, he had a comfortable
consciousness of being on the premises, mingled with fleeting suggestions of Sunday and
the bar at the Green Man; and he informed Mary Garth that he should not go out of reach of
his brother Peter while that poor fellow was above ground. The troublesome ones in a family
are usually either the wits or the idiots. Jonah was the wit among the Featherstones, and
joked with the maid− servants when they came about the hearth, but seemed to consider
Miss Garth a suspicious character, and followed her with cold eyes.
Mary would have borne this one pair of eyes with comparative ease, but unfortunately
there was young Cranch, who, having come all the way from the Chalky Flats to represent
his mother and watch his uncle Jonah, also felt it his duty to stay and to sit chiefly in the
kitchen to give his uncle company. Young Cranch was not exactly the balancing point
between the wit and the idiot, – verging slightly towards the latter type, and squinting so as
to leave everything in doubt about his sentiments except that they were not of a forcible
character. When Mary Garth entered the kitchen and Mr. Jonah Featherstone began to
follow her with his cold detective eyes, young Cranch turning his head in the same direction
seemed to insist on it that she should remark how he was squinting, as if he did it with
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design, like the gypsies when Borrow read the New Testament to them. This was rather too
much for poor Mary; sometimes it made her bilious, sometimes it upset her gravity. One day
that she had an opportunity she could not resist describing the kitchen scene to Fred, who
would not be hindered from immediately going to see it, affecting simply to pass through.
But no sooner did he face the four eyes than he had to rush through the nearest door which
happened to lead to the dairy, and there under the high roof and among the pans he gave way
to laughter which made a hollow resonance perfectly audible in the kitchen. He fled by
another doorway, but Mr. Jonah, who had not before seen Fred's white complexion, long
legs, and pinched delicacy of face, prepared many sarcasms in which these points of
appearance were wittily combined with the lowest moral attributes.
"Why, Tom, YOU don't wear such gentlemanly trousers – you haven't got half such fine
long legs," said Jonah to his nephew, winking at the same time, to imply that there was
something more in these statements than their undeniableness. Tom looked at his legs, but
left it uncertain whether he preferred his moral advantages to a more vicious length of limb
and reprehensible gentility of trouser.
In the large wainscoted parlor too there were constantly pairs of eyes on the watch, and
own relatives eager to be "sitters−up." Many came, lunched, and departed, but Brother
Solomon and the lady who had been Jane Featherstone for twenty−five years before she was
Mrs. Waule found it good to be there every day for hoars, without other calculable
occupation than that of observing the cunning Mary Garth (who was so deep that she could
be found out in nothing) and giving occasional dry wrinkly indications of crying – as if
capable of torrents in a wetter season – at the thought that they were not allowed to go into
Mr. Featherstone's room. For the old man's dislike of his own family seemed to get stronger
as he got less able to amuse himself by saying biting things to them. Too languid to sting, he
had the more venom refluent in his blood.
Not fully believing the message sent through Mary Garth, they had presented
themselves together within the door of the bedroom, both in black – Mrs. Waule having a
white handkerchief partially unfolded in her hand – and both with faces in a sort of
half−mourning purple; while Mrs. Vincy with her pink cheeks and pink ribbons flying was
actually administering a cordial to their own brother, and the light−complexioned Fred, his
short hair curling as might be expected in a gambler's, was lolling at his ease in a large chair.
Old Featherstone no sooner caught sight of these funereal figures appearing in spite of
his orders than rage came to strengthen him more successfully than the cordial. He was
propped up on a bed−rest, and always had his gold−headed stick lying by him. He seized it
now and swept it backwards and forwards in as large an area as he could, apparently to ban
these ugly spectres, crying in a hoarse sort of screech –
"Back, back, Mrs. Waule! Back, Solomon!"
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"Oh, Brother. Peter," Mrs. Waule began – but Solomon put his hand before her
repressingly. He was a large−cheeked man, nearly seventy, with small furtive eyes, and was
not only of much blander temper but thought himself much deeper than his brother Peter;
indeed not likely to be deceived in any of his fellow−men, inasmuch as they could not well
be more greedy and deceitful than he suspected them of being. Even the invisible powers, he
thought, were likely to be soothed by a bland parenthesis here and there – coming from a
man of property, who might have been as impious as others.
"Brother Peter," he said, in a wheedling yet gravely official tone, "It's nothing but right I
should speak to you about the Three Crofts and the Manganese. The Almighty knows what
I've got on my mind – "
"Then he knows more than I want to know," said Peter, laying down his stick with a
show of truce which had a threat in it too, for he reversed the stick so as to make the gold
handle a club in case of closer fighting, and looked hard at Solomon's bald head.
"There's things you might repent of, Brother, for want of speaking to me," said
Solomon, not advancing, however. "I could sit up with you to−night, and Jane with me,
willingly, and you might take your own time to speak, or let me speak."
"Yes, I shall take my own time – you needn't offer me yours," said Peter.
"But you can't take your own time to die in, Brother," began Mrs. Waule, with her usual
woolly tone. "And when you lie speechless you may be tired of having strangers about you,
and you may think of me and my children" – but here her voice broke under the touching
thought which she was attributing to her speechless brother; the mention of ourselves being
naturally affecting.
"No, I shan't," said old Featherstone, contradictiously. "I shan't think of any of you. I've
made my will, I tell you, I've made my will." Here he turned his head towards Mrs. Vincy,
and swallowed some more of his cordial.
"Some people would be ashamed to fill up a place belonging by rights to others," said
Mrs. Waule, turning her narrow eyes in the same direction.
"Oh, sister," said Solomon, with ironical softness, "you and me are not fine, and
handsome, and clever enough: we must be humble and let smart people push themselves
before us."
Fred's spirit could not bear this: rising and looking at Mr. Featherstone, he said, "Shall
my mother and I leave the room, sir, that you may be alone with your friends?"
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"Sit down, I tell you," said old Featherstone, snappishly. "Stop where you are.
Good−by, Solomon," he added, trying to wield his stick again, but failing now that he had
reversed the handle. "Good−by, Mrs. Waule. Don't you come again."
"I shall be down−stairs, Brother, whether or no," said Solomon. "I shall do my duty, and
it remains to be seen what the Almighty will allow."
"Yes, in property going out of families," said Mrs. Waule, in continuation, – "and where
there's steady young men to carry on. But I pity them who are not such, and I pity their
mothers. Good−by, Brother Peter."
"Remember, I'm the eldest after you, Brother, and prospered from the first, just as you
did, and have got land already by the name of Featherstone," said Solomon, relying much on
that reflection, as one which might be suggested in the watches of the night. "But I bid you
good−by for the present."
Their exit was hastened by their seeing old Mr. Featherstone pull his wig on each side
and shut his eyes with his mouth−widening grimace, as if he were determined to be deaf and
blind.
None the less they came to Stone Court daily and sat below at the post of duty,
sometimes carrying on a slow dialogue in an undertone in which the observation and
response were so far apart, that any one hearing them might have imagined himself listening
to speaking automata, in some doubt whether the ingenious mechanism would really work,
or wind itself up for a long time in order to stick and be silent. Solomon and Jane would
have been sorry to be quick: what that led to might be seen on the other side of the wall in
the person of Brother Jonah.
But their watch in the wainscoted parlor was sometimes varied by the presence of other
guests from far or near. Now that Peter Featherstone was up−stairs, his property could be
discussed with all that local enlightenment to be found on the spot: some rural and
Middlemarch neighbors expressed much agreement with the family and sympathy with their
interest against the Vincys, and feminine visitors were even moved to tears, in conversation
with Mrs. Waule, when they recalled the fact that they themselves had been disappointed in
times past by codicils and marriages for spite on the part of ungrateful elderly gentlemen,
who, it might have been supposed, had been spared for something better. Such conversation
paused suddenly, like an organ when the bellows are let drop, if Mary Garth came into the
room; and all eyes were turned on her as a possible legatee, or one who might get access to
iron chests.
But the younger men who were relatives or connections of the family, were disposed to
admire her in this problematic light, as a girl who showed much conduct, and who among all
the chances that were flying might turn out to be at least a moderate prize. Hence she had
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her share of compliments and polite attentions.
Especially from Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, a distinguished bachelor and auctioneer of
those parts, much concerned in the sale of land and cattle: a public character, indeed, whose
name was seen on widely distributed placards, and who might reasonably be sorry for those
who did not know of him. He was second cousin to Peter Featherstone, and had been treated
by him with more amenity than any other relative, being useful in matters of business; and in
that programme of his funeral which the old man had himself dictated, he had been named
as a Bearer. There was no odious cupidity in Mr. Borthrop Trumbull – nothing more than a
sincere sense of his own merit, which, he was aware, in case of rivalry might tell against
competitors; so that if Peter Featherstone, who so far as he, Trumbull, was concerned, had
behaved like as good a soul as ever breathed, should have done anything handsome by him,
all he could say was, that he had never fished and fawned, but had advised him to the best of
his experience, which now extended over twenty years from the time of his apprenticeship at
fifteen, and was likely to yield a knowledge of no surreptitious kind. His admiration was far
from being confined to himself, but was accustomed professionally as well as privately to
delight in estimating things at a high rate. He was an amateur of superior phrases, and never
used poor language without immediately correcting himself – which was fortunate, as he
was rather loud, and given to predominate, standing or walking about frequently, pulling
down his waistcoat with the air of a man who is very much of his own opinion, trimming
himself rapidly with his fore−finger, and marking each new series in these movements by a
busy play with his large seals. There was occasionally a little fierceness in his demeanor, but
it was directed chiefly against false opinion, of which there is so much to correct in the
world that a man of some reading and experience necessarily has his patience tried. He felt
that the Featherstone family generally was of limited understanding, but being a man of the
world and a public character, took everything as a matter of course, and even went to
converse with Mr. Jonah and young Cranch in the kitchen, not doubting that he had
impressed the latter greatly by his leading questions concerning the Chalky Flats. If anybody
had observed that Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, being an auctioneer, was bound to know the
nature of everything, he would have smiled and trimmed himself silently with the sense that
he came pretty near that. On the whole, in an auctioneering way, he was an honorable man,
not ashamed of his business, and feeling that "the celebrated Peel, now Sir Robert," if
introduced to him, would not fail to recognize his importance.
"I don't mind if I have a slice of that ham, and a glass of that ale, Miss Garth, if you will
allow me," he said, coming into the parlor at half−past eleven, after having had the
exceptional privilege of seeing old Featherstone, and standing with his back to the fire
between Mrs. Waule and Solomon.
"It's not necessary for you to go out; – let me ring the bell."
"Thank you," said Mary, "I have an errand."
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"Well, Mr. Trumbull, you're highly favored," said Mrs. Waule.
"What! seeing the old man?" said the auctioneer, playing with his seals dispassionately.
"Ah, you see he has relied on me considerably." Here he pressed his lips together, and
frowned meditatively.
"Might anybody ask what their brother has been saying?" said Solomon, in a soft tone
of humility, in which he had a sense of luxurious cunning, he being a rich man and not in
need of it.
"Oh yes, anybody may ask," said Mr. Trumbull, with loud and good−humored though
cutting sarcasm. "Anybody may interrogate. Any one may give their remarks an
interrogative turn," he continued, his sonorousness rising with his style. "This is constantly
done by good speakers, even when they anticipate no answer. It is what we call a figure of
speech – speech at a high figure, as one may say." The eloquent auctioneer smiled at his own
ingenuity.
"I shouldn't be sorry to hear he'd remembered you, Mr. Trumbull," said Solomon. "I
never was against the deserving. It's the undeserving I'm against."
"Ah, there it is, you see, there it is," said Mr. Trumbull, significantly. "It can't be denied
that undeserving people have been legatees, and even residuary legatees. It is so, with
testamentary dispositions." Again he pursed up his lips and frowned a little.
"Do you mean to say for certain, Mr. Trumbull, that my brother has left his land away
from our family?" said Mrs. Waule, on whom, as an unhopeful woman, those long words
had a depressing effect.
"A man might as well turn his land into charity land at once as leave it to some people,"
observed Solomon, his sister's question having drawn no answer.
"What, Blue−Coat land?" said Mrs. Waule, again. "Oh, Mr. Trumbull, you never can
mean to say that. It would be flying in the face of the Almighty that's prospered him."
While Mrs. Waule was speaking, Mr. Borthrop Trumbull walked away from the
fireplace towards the window, patrolling with his fore−finger round the inside of his stock,
then along his whiskers and the curves of his hair. He now walked to Miss Garth's
work−table, opened a book which lay there and read the title aloud with pompous emphasis
as if he were offering it for sale:
"`Anne of Geierstein' (pronounced Jeersteen) or the `Maiden of the Mist, by the author
of Waverley.'" Then turning the page, he began sonorously – "The course of four centuries
has well−nigh elapsed since the series of events which are related in the following chapters
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took place on the Continent." He pronounced the last truly admirable word with the accent
on the last syllable, not as unaware of vulgar usage, but feeling that this novel delivery
enhanced the sonorous beauty which his reading had given to the whole.
And now the servant came in with the tray, so that the moments for answering Mrs.
Waule's question had gone by safely, while she and Solomon, watching Mr. Trumbull's
movements, were thinking that high learning interfered sadly with serious affairs. Mr.
Borthrop Trumbull really knew nothing about old Featherstone's will; but he could hardly
have been brought to declare any ignorance unless he had been arrested for misprision of
treason.
"I shall take a mere mouthful of ham and a glass of ale," he said, reassuringly. "As a
man with public business, I take a snack when I can. I will back this ham," he added, after
swallowing some morsels with alarming haste, "against any ham in the three kingdoms. In
my opinion it is better than the hams at Freshitt Hall – and I think I am a tolerable judge."
"Some don't like so much sugar in their hams," said Mrs. Waule. "But my poor brother
would always have sugar."
"If any person demands better, he is at liberty to do so; but, God bless me, what an
aroma! I should be glad to buy in that quality, I know. There is some gratification to a
gentleman" – here Mr. Trumbull's voice conveyed an emotional remonstrance – "in having
this kind of ham set on his table."
He pushed aside his plate, poured out his glass of ale and drew his chair a little forward,
profiting by the occasion to look at the inner side of his legs, which he stroked approvingly –
Mr. Trumbull having all those less frivolous airs and gestures which distinguish the
predominant races of the north.
"You have an interesting work there, I see, Miss Garth," he observed, when Mary
re−entered. "It is by the author of `Waverley': that is Sir Walter Scott. I have bought one of
his works myself – a very nice thing, a very superior publication, entitled `Ivanhoe.' You
will not get any writer to beat him in a hurry, I think – he will not, in my opinion, be
speedily surpassed. I have just been reading a portion at the commencement of `Anne of
Jeersteen.' It commences well." (Things never began with Mr. Borthrop Trumbull: they al
ways commenced, both in private life and on his handbills.) "You are a reader, I see. Do you
subscribe to our Middlemarch library?"
"No," said Mary. "Mr. Fred Vincy brought this book."
"I am a great bookman myself," returned Mr. Trumbull. "I have no less than two
hundred volumes in calf, and I flatter myself they are well selected. Also pictures by
Murillo, Rubens, Teniers, Titian, Vandyck, and others. I shall be happy to lend you any
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work you like to mention, Miss Garth."
"I am much obliged," said Mary, hastening away again, "but I have little time for
reading."
"I should say my brother has done something for HER in his will," said Mr. Solomon, in
a very low undertone, when she had shut the door behind her, pointing with his head
towards the absent Mary.
"His first wife was a poor match for him, though," said Mrs. Waule. "She brought him
nothing: and this young woman is only her niece, – and very proud. And my brother has
always paid her wage."
"A sensible girl though, in my opinion," said Mr. Trumbull, finishing his ale and
starting up with an emphatic adjustment of his waistcoat. "I have observed her when she has
been mixing medicine in drops. She minds what she is doing, sir. That is a great point in a
woman, and a great point for our friend up−stairs, poor dear old soul. A man whose life is of
any value should think of his wife as a nurse: that is what I should do, if I married; and I
believe I have lived single long enough not to make a mistake in that line. Some men must
marry to elevate themselves a little, but when I am in need of that, I hope some one will tell
me so – I hope some individual will apprise me of the fact. I wish you good morning, Mrs.
Waule. Good morning, Mr. Solomon. I trust we shall meet under less melancholy auspices."
When Mr. Trumbull had departed with a fine bow, Solomon, leaning forward, observed
to his sister, "You may depend, Jane, my brother has left that girl a lumping sum."
"Anybody would think so, from the way Mr. Trumbull talks," said Jane. Then, after a
pause, "He talks as if my daughters wasn't to be trusted to give drops."
"Auctioneers talk wild," said Solomon. "Not but what Trumbull has made money."
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CHAPTER XXXIII.
"C
lose up his eyes and draw the curtain close; And let us all to meditation." – 2 Henry
VI.
That night after twelve o'clock Mary Garth relieved the watch in Mr. Featherstone's
room, and sat there alone through the small hours. She often chose this task, in which she
found some pleasure, notwithstanding the old man's testiness whenever he demanded her
attentions. There were intervals in which she could sit perfectly still, enjoying the outer
stillness and the subdued light. The red fire with its gently audible movement seemed like a
solemn existence calmly independent of the petty passions, the imbecile desires, the
straining after worthless uncertainties, which were daily moving her contempt. Mary was
fond of her own thoughts, and could amuse herself well sitting in twilight with her hands in
her lap; for, having early had strong reason to believe that things were not likely to be
arranged for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time in astonishment and annoyance at
that fact. And she had already come to take life very much as a comedy in which she had a
proud, nay, a generous resolution not to act the mean or treacherous part. Mary might have
become cynical if she had not had parents whom she honored, and a well of affectionate
gratitude within her, which was all the fuller because she had learned to make no
unreasonable claims.
She sat to−night revolving, as she was wont, the scenes of the day, her lips often curling
with amusement at the oddities to which her fancy added fresh drollery: people were so
ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies
opaque while everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions to
everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy. Yet
there were some illusions under Mary's eyes which were not quite comic to her. She was
secretly convinced, though she had no other grounds than her close observation of old
Featherstone's nature, that in spite of his fondness for having the Vincys about him, they
were as likely to be disappointed as any of the relations whom he kept at a distance. She had
a good deal of disdain for Mrs. Vincy's evident alarm lest she and Fred should be alone
together, but it did not hinder her from thinking anxiously of the way in which Fred would
be affected, if it should turn out that his uncle had left him as poor as ever. She could make a
butt of Fred when he was present, but she did not enjoy his follies when he was absent.
Yet she liked her thoughts: a vigorous young mind not overbalanced by passion, finds a
good in making acquaintance with life, and watches its own powers with interest. Mary had
plenty of merriment within.
Her thought was not veined by any solemnity or pathos about the old man on the bed:
such sentiments are easier to affect than to feel about an aged creature whose life is not
visibly anything but a remnant of vices. She had always seen the most disagreeable side of
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Mr. Featherstone. he was not proud of her, and she was only useful to him. To be anxious
about a soul that is always snapping at you must be left to the saints of the earth; and Mary
was not one of them. She had never returned him a harsh word, and had waited on him
faithfully: that was her utmost. Old Featherstone himself was not in the least anxious about
his soul, and had declined to see Mr. Tucker on the subject.
To−night he had not snapped, and for the first hour or two he lay remarkably still, until
at last Mary heard him rattling his bunch of keys against the tin box which he always kept in
the bed beside him. About three o'clock he said, with remarkable distinctness, "Missy, come
here!"
Mary obeyed, and found that he had already drawn the tin box from under the clothes,
though he usually asked to have this done for him; and he had selected the key. He now
unlocked the box, and, drawing from it another key, looked straight at her with eyes that
seemed to have recovered all their sharpness and said, "How many of 'em are in the house?"
"You mean of your own relations, sir," said Mary, well used to the old man's way of
speech. He nodded slightly and she went on.
"Mr. Jonah Featherstone and young Cranch are sleeping here."
"Oh ay, they stick, do they? and the rest – they come every day, I'll warrant – Solomon
and Jane, and all the young uns? They come peeping, and counting and casting up?"
"Not all of them every day. Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule are here every day, and the
others come often."
The old man listened with a grimace while she spoke, and then said, relaxing his face,
"The more fools they. You hearken, missy. It's three o'clock in the morning, and I've got all
my faculties as well as ever I had in my life. I know all my property, and where the money's
put out, and everything. And I've made everything ready to change my mind, and do as I like
at the last. Do you hear, missy? I've got my faculties."
"Well, sir?" said Mary, quietly.
He now lowered his tone with an air of deeper cunning. "I've made two wills, and I'm
going to burn one. Now you do as I tell you. This is the key of my iron chest, in the closet
there. You push well at the side of the brass plate at the top, till it goes like a bolt: then you
can put the key in the front lock and turn it. See and do that; and take out the topmost paper
– Last Will and Testament – big printed."
"No, sir," said Mary, in a firm voice, "I cannot do that."
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"Not do it? I tell you, you must," said the old man, his voice beginning to shake under
the shock of this resistance.
"I cannot touch your iron chest or your will. I must refuse to do anything that might lay
me open to suspicion."
"I tell you, I'm in my right mind. Shan't I do as I like at the last? I made two wills on
purpose. Take the key, I say."
"No, sir, I will not," said Mary, more resolutely still. Her repulsion was getting stronger.
"I tell you, there's no time to lose."
"I cannot help that, sir. I will not let the close of your life soil the beginning of mine. I
will not touch your iron chest or your will." She moved to a little distance from the bedside.
The old man paused with a blank stare for a little while, holding the one key erect on the
ring; then with an agitated jerk he began to work with his bony left hand at emptying the tin
box before him.
"Missy," he began to say, hurriedly, "look here! take the money – the notes and gold –
look here – take it – you shall have it all – do as I tell you."
He made an effort to stretch out the key towards her as far as possible, and Mary again
retreated.
"I will not touch your key or your money, sir. Pray don't ask me to do it again. If you
do, I must go and call your brother."
He let his hand fall, and for the first time in her life Mary saw old Peter Featherstone
begin to cry childishly. She said, in as gentle a tone as she could command, "Pray put up
your money, sir;" and then went away to her seat by the fire, hoping this would help to
convince him that it was useless to say more. Presently he rallied and said eagerly –
"Look here, then. Call the young chap. Call Fred Vincy."
Mary's heart began to beat more quickly. Various ideas rushed through her mind as to
what the burning of a second will might imply. She had to make a difficult decision in a
hurry.
"I will call him, if you will let me call Mr. Jonah and others with him."
"Nobody else, I say. The young chap. I shall do as I like."
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"Wait till broad daylight, sir, when every one is stirring. Or let me call Simmons now, to
go and fetch the lawyer? He can be here in less than two hours."
"Lawyer? What do I want with the lawyer? Nobody shall know – I say, nobody shall
know. I shall do as I like."
"Let me call some one else, sir," said Mary, persuasively. She did not like her position –
alone with the old man, who seemed to show a strange flaring of nervous energy which
enabled him to speak again and again without falling into his usual cough; yet she desired
not to push unnecessarily the contradiction which agitated him. "Let me, pray, call some one
else."
"You let me alone, I say. Look here, missy. Take the money. You'll never have the
chance again. It's pretty nigh two hundred – there's more in the box, and nobody knows how
much there was. Take it and do as I tell you."
Mary, standing by the fire, saw its red light falling on the old man, propped up on his
pillows and bed−rest, with his bony hand holding out the key, and the money lying on the
quilt before him. She never forgot that vision of a man wanting to do as he liked at the last.
But the way in which he had put the offer of the money urged her to speak with harder
resolution than ever.
"It is of no use, sir. I will not do it. Put up your money. I will not touch your money. I
will do anything else I can to comfort you; but I will not touch your keys or your money."
"Anything else anything else!" said old Featherstone, with hoarse rage, which, as if in a
nightmare, tried to be loud, and yet was only just audible. "I want nothing else. You come
here – you come here."
Mary approached him cautiously, knowing him too well. She saw him dropping his
keys and trying to grasp his stick, while he looked at her like an aged hyena, the muscles of
his face getting distorted with the effort of his hand. She paused at a safe distance.
"Let me give you some cordial," she said, quietly, "and try to compose yourself. You
will perhaps go to sleep. And to−morrow by daylight you can do as you like."
He lifted the stick, in spite of her being beyond his reach, and threw it with a hard effort
which was but impotence. It fell, slipping over the foot of the bed. Mary let it lie, and
retreated to her chair by the fire. By−and−by she would go to him with the cordial. Fatigue
would make him passive. It was getting towards the chillest moment of the morning, the fire
had got low, and she could see through the chink between the moreen window−curtains the
light whitened by the blind. Having put some wood on the fire and thrown a shawl over her,
she sat down, hoping that Mr. Featherstone might now fall asleep. If she went near him the
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irritation might be kept up. He had said nothing after throwing the stick, but she had seen
him taking his keys again and laying his right hand on the money. He did not put it up,
however, and she thought that he was dropping off to sleep.
But Mary herself began to be more agitated by the remembrance of what she had gone
through, than she had been by the reality – questioning those acts of hers which had come
imperatively and excluded all question in the critical moment.
Presently the dry wood sent out a flame which illuminated every crevice, and Mary saw
that the old man was lying quietly with his head turned a little on one side. She went towards
him with inaudible steps, and thought that his face looked strangely motionless; but the next
moment the movement of the flame communicating itself to all objects made her uncertain.
The violent beating of her heart rendered her perceptions so doubtful that even when she
touched him and listened for his breathing, she could not trust her conclusions. She went to
the window and gently propped aside the curtain and blind, so that the still light of the sky
fell on the bed.
The next moment she ran to the bell and rang it energetically. In a very little while there
was no longer any doubt that Peter Featherstone was dead, with his right hand clasping the
keys, and his left hand lying on the heap of notes and gold.
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CHAPTER XXXIV.
1s
t Gent. Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws.
Carry no weight, no force. 2d Gent. But levity
Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight.
For power finds its place in lack of power;
Advance is cession, and the driven ship
May run aground because the helmsman's thought
Lacked force to balance opposites."
It was on a morning of May that Peter Featherstone was buried. In the prosaic
neighborhood of Middlemarch, May was not always warm and sunny, and on this particular
morning a chill wind was blowing the blossoms from the surrounding gardens on to the
green mounds of Lowick churchyard. Swiftly moving clouds only now and then allowed a
gleam to light up any object, whether ugly or beautiful, that happened to stand within its
golden shower. In the churchyard the objects were remarkably various, for there was a little
country crowd waiting to see the funeral. The news had spread that it was to be a "big
burying;" the old gentleman had left written directions about everything and meant to have a
funeral "beyond his betters." This was true; for old Featherstone had not been a Harpagon
whose passions had all been devoured by the ever−lean and ever−hungry passion of saving,
and who would drive a bargain with his undertaker beforehand. He loved money, but he also
loved to spend it in gratifying his peculiar tastes, and perhaps he loved it best of all as a
means of making others feel his power more or less uncomfortably. If any one will here
contend that there must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstone, I will not presume
to deny this; but I must observe that goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and
when much privacy, elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme
privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman
theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal
acquaintance. In any case, he had been bent on having a handsome funeral, and on having
persons "bid" to it who would rather have stayed at home. He had even desired that female
relatives should follow him to the grave, and poor sister Martha had taken a difficult journey
for this purpose from the Chalky Flats. She and Jane would have been altogether cheered (in
a tearful manner) by this sign that a brother who disliked seeing them while he was living
had been prospectively fond of their presence when he should have become a testator, if the
sign had not been made equivocal by being extended to Mrs. Vincy, whose expense in
handsome crape seemed to imply the most presumptuous hopes, aggravated by a bloom of
complexion which told pretty plainly that she was not a blood−relation, but of that generally
objectionable class called wife's kin.
We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire;
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and poor old Featherstone, who laughed much at the way in which others cajoled
themselves, did not escape the fellowship of illusion. In writing the programme for his burial
he certainly did not make clear to himself that his pleasure in the little drama of which it
formed a part was confined to anticipation. In chuckling over the vexations he could inflict
by the rigid clutch of his dead hand, he inevitably mingled his consciousness with that livid
stagnant presence, and so far as he was preoccupied with a future life, it was with one of
gratification inside his coffin. Thus old Featherstone was imaginative, after his fashion.
However, the three mourning−coaches were filled according to the written orders of the
deceased. There were pall−bearers on horseback, with the richest scarfs and hatbands, and
even the under−bearers had trappings of woe which were of a good well−priced quality. The
black procession, when dismounted, looked the larger for the smallness of the churchyard;
the heavy human faces and the black draperies shivering in the wind seemed to tell of a
world strangely incongruous with the lightly dropping blossoms and the gleams of sunshine
on the daisies. The clergyman who met the procession was Mr. Cadwallader – also
according to the request of Peter Featherstone, prompted as usual by peculiar reasons.
Having a contempt for curates, whom he always called understrappers, he was resolved to
be buried by a beneficed clergyman. Mr. Casaubon was out of the question, not merely
because he declined duty of this sort, but because Featherstone had an especial dislike to
him as the rector of his own parish, who had a lien on the land in the shape of tithe, also as
the deliverer of morning sermons, which the old man, being in his pew and not at all sleepy,
had been obliged to sit through with an inward snarl. He had an objection to a parson stuck
up above his head preaching to him. But his relations with Mr. Cadwallader had been of a
different kind: the trout−stream which ran through Mr. Casaubon's land took its course
through Featherstone's also, so that Mr. Cadwallader was a parson who had had to ask a
favor instead of preaching. Moreover, he was one of the high gentry living four miles away
from Lowick, and was thus exalted to an equal sky with the sheriff of the county and other
dignities vaguely regarded as necessary to the system of things. There would be a
satisfaction in being buried by Mr. Cadwallader, whose very name offered a fine opportunity
for pronouncing wrongly if you liked.
This distinction conferred on the Rector of Tipton and Freshitt was the reason why Mrs.
Cadwallader made one of the group that watched old Featherstone's funeral from an upper
window of the manor. She was not fond of visiting that house, but she liked, as she said, to
see collections of strange animals such as there would be at this funeral; and she had
persuaded Sir James and the young Lady Chettam to drive the Rector and herself to Lowick
in order that the visit might be altogether pleasant.
"I will go anywhere with you, Mrs. Cadwallader," Celia had said; "but I don't like
funerals."
"Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must accommodate your
tastes: I did that very early. When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons,
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and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning,
because I couldn't have the end without them."
"No, to be sure not," said the Dowager Lady Chettam, with stately emphasis.
The upper window from which the funeral could be well seen was in the room occupied
by Mr. Casaubon when he had been forbidden to work; but he had resumed nearly his
habitual style of life now in spite of warnings and prescriptions, and after politely
welcoming Mrs. Cadwallader had slipped again into the library to chew a cud of erudite
mistake about Cush and Mizraim.
But for her visitors Dorothea too might have been shut up in the library, and would not
have witnessed this scene of old Featherstone's funeral, which, aloof as it seemed to be from
the tenor of her life, always afterwards came back to her at the touch of certain sensitive
points in memory, just as the vision of St. Peter's at Rome was inwoven with moods of
despondency. Scenes which make vital changes in our neighbors' lot are but the background
of our own, yet, like a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for us
with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of that unity which lies in the selection
of our keenest consciousness.
The dream−like association of something alien and ill−understood with the deepest
secrets of her experience seemed to mirror that sense of loneliness which was due to the
very ardor of Dorothea's nature. The country gentry of old time lived in a rarefied social air:
dotted apart on their stations up the mountain they looked down with imperfect
discrimination on the belts of thicker life below. And Dorothea was not at ease in the
perspective and chilliness of that height.
"I shall not look any more," said Celia, after the train had entered the church, placing
herself a little behind her husband's elbow so that she could slyly touch his coat with her
cheek. "I dare say Dodo likes it: she is fond of melancholy things and ugly people."
"I am fond of knowing something about the people I live among," said Dorothea, who
had been watching everything with the interest of a monk on his holiday tour. "It seems to
me we know nothing of our neighbors, unless they are cottagers. One is constantly
wondering what sort of lives other people lead, and how they take things. I am quite obliged
to Mrs. Cadwallader for coming and calling me out of the library."
"Quite right to feel obliged to me," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Your rich Lowick farmers
are as curious as any buffaloes or bisons, and I dare say you don't half see them at church.
They are quite different from your uncle's tenants or Sir James's – monsters – farmers
without landlords – one can't tell how to class them."
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"Most of these followers are not Lowick people," said Sir James; "I suppose they are
legatees from a distance, or from Middlemarch. Lovegood tells me the old fellow has left a
good deal of money as well as land."
"Think of that now! when so many younger sons can't dine at their own expense," said
Mrs. Cadwallader. "Ah," turning round at the sound of the opening door, "here is Mr.
Brooke. I felt that we were incomplete before, and here is the explanation. You are come to
see this odd funeral, of course?"
"No, I came to look after Casaubon – to see how he goes on, you know. And to bring a
little news – a little news, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at Dorothea as she came
towards him. "I looked into the library, and I saw Casaubon over his books. I told him it
wouldn't do: I said, `This will never do, you know: think of your wife, Casaubon.' And he
promised me to come up. I didn't tell him my news: I said, he must come up."
"Ah, now they are coming out of church," Mrs. Cadwallader exclaimed. "Dear me, what
a wonderfully mixed set! Mr. Lydgate as doctor, I suppose. But that is really a good looking
woman, and the fair young man must be her son. Who are they, Sir James, do you know?"
"I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife and son," said Sir
James, looking interrogatively at Mr. Brooke, who nodded and said –
"Yes, a very decent family – a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to the manufacturing
interest. You have seen him at my house, you know."
"Ah, yes: one of your secret committee," said Mrs. Cadwallader, provokingly.
"A coursing fellow, though," said Sir James, with a fox−hunter's disgust.
"And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom weavers in Tipton
and Freshitt. That is how his family look so fair and sleek," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Those
dark, purple−faced people are an excellent foil. Dear me, they are like a set of jugs! Do look
at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above them in his white
surplice."
"It's a solemn thing, though, a funeral," said Mr. Brooke, "if you take it in that light, you
know."
"But I am not taking it in that light. I can't wear my solemnity too often, else it will go
to rags. It was time the old man died, and none of these people are sorry."
"How piteous!" said Dorothea. "This funeral seems to me the most dismal thing I ever
saw. It is a blot on the morning I cannot bear to think that any one should die and leave no
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love behind."
She was going to say more, but she saw her husband enter and seat himself a little in the
background. The difference his presence made to her was not always a happy one: she felt
that he often inwardly objected to her speech.
"Positively," exclaimed Mrs. Cadwallader, "there is a new face come out from behind
that broad man queerer than any of them: a little round head with bulging eyes – a sort of
frog−face – do look. He must be of another blood, I think."
"Let me see!" said Celia, with awakened curiosity, standing behind Mrs. Cadwallader
and leaning forward over her head. "Oh, what an odd face!" Then with a quick change to
another sort of surprised expression, she added, "Why, Dodo, you never told me that Mr.
Ladislaw was come again!"
Dorothea felt a shock of alarm: every one noticed her sudden paleness as she looked up
immediately at her uncle, while Mr. Casaubon looked at her.
"He came with me, you know; he is my guest – puts up with me at the Grange," said
Mr. Brooke, in his easiest tone, nodding at Dorothea, as if the announcement were just what
she might have expected. "And we have brought the picture at the top of the carriage. I knew
you would be pleased with the surprise, Casaubon. There you are to the very life – as
Aquinas, you know. Quite the right sort of thing. And you will hear young Ladislaw talk
about it. He talks uncommonly well – points out this, that, and the other – knows art and
everything of that kind – companionable, you know – is up with you in any track – what I've
been wanting a long while."
Mr. Casaubon bowed with cold politeness, mastering his irritation, but only so far as to
be silent. He remembered Will's letter quite as well as Dorothea did; he had noticed that it
was not among the letters which had been reserved for him on his recovery, and secretly
concluding that Dorothea had sent word to Will not to come to Lowick, he had shrunk with
proud sensitiveness from ever recurring to the subject. He now inferred that she had asked
her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and she felt it impossible at that moment to enter into
any explanation.
Mrs. Cadwallader's eyes, diverted from the churchyard, saw a good deal of dumb show
which was not so intelligible to her as she could have desired, and could not repress the
question, "Who is Mr. Ladislaw?"
"A young relative of Mr. Casaubon's," said Sir James, promptly. His good−nature often
made him quick and clear−seeing in personal matters, and he had divined from Dorothea's
glance at her husband that there was some alarm in her mind.
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"A very nice young fellow – Casaubon has done everything for him," explained Mr.
Brooke. "He repays your expense in him, Casaubon," he went on, nodding encouragingly. "I
hope he will stay with me a long while and we shall make something of my documents. I
have plenty of ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he is just the man to put them into
shape – remembers what the right quotations are, omne tulit punctum, and that sort of thing
– gives subjects a kind of turn. I invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon;
Dorothea said you couldn't have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to
write."
Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle's was about as pleasant as a grain of
sand in the eye to Mr. Casaubon. It would be altogether unfitting now to explain that she had
not wished her uncle to invite Will Ladislaw. She could not in the least make clear to herself
the reasons for her husband's dislike to his presence – a dislike painfully impressed on her
by the scene in the library; but she felt the unbecomingness of saying anything that might
convey a notion of it to others. Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly represented those
mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of us, seeking rather for
justification than for self−knowledge. But he wished to repress outward signs, and only
Dorothea could discern the changes in her husband's face before he observed with more of
dignified bending and sing−song than usual –
"You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you acknowledgments for
exercising your hospitality towards a relative of mine."
The funeral was ended now, and the churchyard was being cleared.
"Now you can see him, Mrs. Cadwallader," said Celia. "He is just like a miniature of
Mr. Casaubon's aunt that hangs in Dorothea's boudoir – quite nice−looking."
"A very pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, dryly. "What is your nephew to be, Mr.
Casaubon?"
"Pardon me, he is not my nephew. He is my cousin."
"Well, you know," interposed Mr. Brooke, "he is trying his wings. He is just the sort of
young fellow to rise. I should be glad to give him an opportunity. He would make a good
secretary, now, like Hobbes, Milton, Swift – that sort of man."
"I understand," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "One who can write speeches."
"I'll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon?" said Mr. Brooke. "He wouldn't come in till I had
announced him, you know. And we'll go down and look at the picture. There you are to the
life: a deep subtle sort of thinker with his fore−finger on the page, while Saint Bonaventure
or somebody else, rather fat and florid, is looking up at the Trinity. Everything is
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symbolical, you know – the higher style of art: I like that up to a certain point, but not too
far – it's rather straining to keep up with, you know. But you are at home in that, Casaubon.
And your painter's flesh is good – solidity, transparency, everything of that sort. I went into
that a great deal at one time. However, I'll go and fetch Ladislaw."
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CHAPTER XXXV.
"N
on, je ne comprends pas de plus charmant plaisir Que de voir d'heritiers une troupe
affligee Le maintien interdit, et la mine allongee, Lire un long testament ou pales, etonnes
On leur laisse un bonsoir avec un pied de nez. Pour voir au naturel leur tristesse profonde Je
reviendrais, je crois, expres de l'autre monde."
– REGNARD: Le Legataire Universel.
When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied species made
much private remark on each other, and were tempted to think that so many forms feeding
on the same store of fodder were eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations.
(I fear the part played by the vultures on that occasion would be too painful for art to
represent, those birds being disadvantageously naked about the gullet, and apparently
without rites and ceremonies.)
The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed Peter
Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their minds bent on a limited store
which each would have liked to get the most of. The long−recognized blood−relations and
connections by marriage made already a goodly number, which, multiplied by possibilities,
presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and pathetic hopefulness. Jealousy of the
Vincys had created a fellowship in hostility among all persons of the Featherstone blood, so
that in the absence of any decided indication that one of themselves was to have more than
the rest, the dread lest that long−legged Fred Vincy should have the land was necessarily
dominant, though it left abundant feeling and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were
entertained towards Mary Garth. Solomon found time to reflect that Jonah was undeserving,
and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder sister, held that Martha's children
ought not to expect so much as the young Waules; and Martha, more lax on the subject of
primogeniture, was sorry to think that Jane was so "having." These nearest of kin were
naturally impressed with the unreasonableness of expectations in cousins and second
cousins, and used their arithmetic in reckoning the large sums that small legacies might
mount to, if there were too many of them. Two cousins were present to hear the will, and a
second cousin besides Mr. Trumbull. This second cousin was a Middlemarch mercer of
polite manners and superfluous aspirates. The two cousins were elderly men from Brassing,
one of them conscious of claims on the score of inconvenient expense sustained by him in
presents of oysters and other eatables to his rich cousin Peter; the other entirely saturnine,
leaning his hands and chin on a stick, and conscious of claims based on no narrow
performance but on merit generally: both blameless citizens of Brassing, who wished that
Jonah Featherstone did not live there. The wit of a family is usually best received among
strangers.
"Why, Trumbull himself is pretty sure of five hundred – THAT you may depend, – I
shouldn't wonder if my brother promised him," said Solomon, musing aloud with his sisters,
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the evening before the funeral.
"Dear, dear!" said poor sister Martha, whose imagination of hundreds had been
habitually narrowed to the amount of her unpaid rent.
But in the morning all the ordinary currents of conjecture were disturbed by the
presence of a strange mourner who had plashed among them as if from the moon. This was
the stranger described by Mrs. Cadwallader as frog−faced: a man perhaps about two or three
and thirty, whose prominent eyes, thin−lipped, downward−curved mouth, and hair sleekly
brushed away from a forehead that sank suddenly above the ridge of the eyebrows, certainly
gave his face a batrachian unchangeableness of expression. Here, clearly, was a new legatee;
else why was he bidden as a mourner? Here were new possibilities, raising a new
uncertainty, which almost checked remark in the mourning−coaches. We are all humiliated
by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been
staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it. No one
had seen this questionable stranger before except Mary Garth, and she knew nothing more of
him than that he had twice been to Stone Court when Mr. Featherstone was down−stairs, and
had sat alone with him for several hours. She had found an opportunity of mentioning this to
her father, and perhaps Caleb's were the only eyes, except the lawyer's, which examined the
stranger with more of inquiry than of disgust or suspicion. Caleb Garth, having little
expectation and less cupidity, was interested in the verification of his own guesses, and the
calmness with which he half smilingly rubbed his chin and shot intelligent glances much as
if he were valuing a tree, made a fine contrast with the alarm or scorn visible in other faces
when the unknown mourner, whose name was understood to be Rigg, entered the
wainscoted parlor and took his seat near the door to make part of the audience when the will
should be read. Just then Mr. Solomon and Mr. Jonah were gone up−stairs with the lawyer
to search for the will; and Mrs. Waule, seeing two vacant seats between herself and Mr.
Borthrop Trumbull, had the spirit to move next to that great authority, who was handling his
watch−seals and trimming his outlines with a determination not to show anything so
compromising to a man of ability as wonder or surprise.
"I suppose you know everything about what my poor brother's done, Mr. Trumbull,"
said Mrs. Waule, in the lowest of her woolly tones, while she turned her crape−shadowed
bonnet towards Mr. Trumbull's ear.
"My good lady, whatever was told me was told in confidence," said the auctioneer,
putting his hand up to screen that secret.
"Them who've made sure of their good−luck may be disappointed yet," Mrs. Waule
continued, finding some relief in this communication.
"Hopes are often delusive," said Mr. Trumbull, still in confidence.
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"Ah!" said Mrs. Waule, looking across at the Vincys, and then moving back to the side
of her sister Martha.
"It's wonderful how close poor Peter was," she said, in the same undertones. "We none
of us know what he might have had on his mind. I only hope and trust he wasn't a worse
liver than we think of, Martha."
Poor Mrs. Cranch was bulky, and, breathing asthmatically, had the additional motive for
making her remarks unexceptionable and giving them a general bearing, that even her
whispers were loud and liable to sudden bursts like those of a deranged barrel−organ.
"I never WAS covetious, Jane," she replied; "but I have six children and have buried
three, and I didn't marry into money. The eldest, that sits there, is but nineteen – so I leave
you to guess. And stock always short, and land most awkward. But if ever I've begged and
prayed; it's been to God above; though where there's one brother a bachelor and the other
childless after twice marrying – anybody might think!"
Meanwhile, Mr. Vincy had glanced at the passive face of Mr. Rigg, and had taken out
his snuff−box and tapped it, but had put it again unopened as an indulgence which, however
clarifying to the judgment, was unsuited to the occasion. "I shouldn't wonder if Featherstone
had better feelings than any of us gave him credit for," he observed, in the ear of his wife.
"This funeral shows a thought about everybody: it looks well when a man wants to be
followed by his friends, and if they are humble, not to be ashamed of them. I should be all
the better pleased if he'd left lots of small legacies. They may be uncommonly useful to
fellows in a small way."
"Everything is as handsome as could be, crape and silk and everything," said Mrs.
Vincy, contentedly.
But I am sorry to say that Fred was under some difficulty in repressing a laugh, which
would have been more unsuitable than his father's snuff−box. Fred had overheard Mr. Jonah
suggesting something about a "love−child," and with this thought in his mind, the stranger's
face, which happened to be opposite him, affected him too ludicrously. Mary Garth,
discerning his distress in the twitchings of his mouth, and his recourse to a cough, came
cleverly to his rescue by asking him to change seats with her, so that he got into a shadowy
corner. Fred was feeling as good−naturedly as possible towards everybody, including Rigg;
and having some relenting towards all these people who were less lucky than he was aware
of being himself, he would not for the world have behaved amiss; still, it was particularly
easy to laugh.
But the entrance of the lawyer and the two brothers drew every one's attention. The
lawyer was Mr. Standish, and he had come to Stone Court this morning believing that he
knew thoroughly well who would be pleased and who disappointed before the day was over.
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The will he expected to read was the last of three which he had drawn up for Mr.
Featherstone. Mr. Standish was not a man who varied his manners: he behaved with the
same deep−voiced, off−hand civility to everybody, as if he saw no difference in them, and
talked chiefly of the hay−crop, which would be "very fine, by God!" of the last bulletins
concerning the King, and of the Duke of Clarence, who was a sailor every inch of him, and
just the man to rule over an island like Britain.
Old Featherstone had often reflected as he sat looking at the fire that Standish would be
surprised some day: it is true that if he had done as he liked at the last, and burnt the will
drawn up by another lawyer, he would not have secured that minor end; still he had had his
pleasure in ruminating on it. And certainly Mr. Standish was surprised, but not at all sorry;
on the contrary, he rather enjoyed the zest of a little curiosity in his own mind, which the
discovery of a second will added to the prospective amazement on the part of the
Featherstone family.
As to the sentiments of Solomon and Jonah, they were held in utter suspense: it seemed
to them that the old will would have a certain validity, and that there might be such an
interlacement of poor Peter's former and latter intentions as to create endless "lawing" before
anybody came by their own – an inconvenience which would have at least the advantage of
going all round. Hence the brothers showed a thoroughly neutral gravity as they re−entered
with Mr. Standish; but Solomon took out his white handkerchief again with a sense that in
any case there would be affecting passages, and crying at funerals, however dry, was
customarily served up in lawn.
Perhaps the person who felt the most throbbing excitement at this moment was Mary
Garth, in the consciousness that it was she who had virtually determined the production of
this second will, which might have momentous effects on the lot of some persons present.
No soul except herself knew what had passed on that final night.
"The will I hold in my hand," said Mr. Standish, who, seated at the table in the middle
of the room, took his time about everything, including the coughs with which he showed a
disposition to clear his voice, "was drawn up by myself and executed by our deceased friend
on the 9th of August, 1825. But I find that there is a subsequent instrument hitherto
unknown to me, bearing date the 20th of July, 1826, hardly a year later than the previous
one.
And there is farther, I see" – Mr. Standish was cautiously travelling over the document
with his spectacles – "a codicil to this latter will, bearing date March 1, 1828."
"Dear, dear!" said sister Martha, not meaning to be audible, but driven to some
articulation under this pressure of dates.
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"I shall begin by reading the earlier will," continued Mr. Standish, "since such, as
appears by his not having destroyed the document, was the intention of deceased."
The preamble was felt to be rather long, and several besides Solomon shook their heads
pathetically, looking on the ground: all eyes avoided meeting other eyes, and were chiefly
fixed either on the spots in the table−cloth or on Mr. Standish's bald head; excepting Mary
Garth's. When all the rest were trying to look nowhere in particular, it was safe for her to
look at them. And at the sound of the first "give and bequeath" she could see all
complexions changing subtly, as if some faint vibration were passing through them, save
that of Mr. Rigg. He sat in unaltered calm, and, in fact, the company, preoccupied with more
important problems, and with the complication of listening to bequests which might or
might not be revoked, had ceased to think of him. Fred blushed, and Mr. Vincy found it
impossible to do without his snuff−box in his hand, though he kept it closed.
The small bequests came first, and even the recollection that there was another will and
that poor Peter might have thought better of it, could not quell the rising disgust and
indignation. One likes to be done well by in every tense, past, present, and future. And here
was Peter capable five years ago of leaving only two hundred apiece to his own brothers and
sisters, and only a hundred apiece to his own nephews and nieces: the Garths were not
mentioned, but Mrs. Vincy and Rosamond were each to have a hundred. Mr. Trumbull was
to have the gold−headed cane and fifty pounds; the other second cousins and the cousins
present were each to have the like handsome sum, which, as the saturnine cousin observed,
was a sort of legacy that left a man nowhere; and there was much more of such offensive
dribbling in favor of persons not present – problematical, and, it was to be feared, low
connections. Altogether, reckoning hastily, here were about three thousand disposed of.
Where then had Peter meant the rest of the money to go – and where the land? and what was
revoked and what not revoked – and was the revocation for better or for worse? All emotion
must be conditional, and might turn out to be the wrong thing. The men were strong enough
to bear up and keep quiet under this confused suspense; some letting their lower lip fall,
others pursing it up, according to the habit of their muscles. But Jane and Martha sank under
the rush of questions, and began to cry; poor Mrs. Cranch being half moved with the
consolation of getting any hundreds at all without working for them, and half aware that her
share was scanty; whereas Mrs. Waule's mind was entirely flooded with the sense of being
an own sister and getting little, while somebody else was to have much. The general
expectation now was that the "much" would fall to Fred Vincy, but the Vincys themselves
were surprised when ten thousand pounds in specified investments were declared to be
bequeathed to him: – was the land coming too? Fred bit his lips: it was difficult to help
smiling, and Mrs. Vincy felt herself the happiest of women – possible revocation shrinking
out of sight in this dazzling vision.
There was still a residue of personal property as well as the land, but the whole was left
to one person, and that person was – O possibilities! O expectations founded on the favor of
"close" old gentlemen! O endless vocatives that would still leave expression slipping
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helpless from the measurement of mortal folly! – that residuary legatee was Joshua Rigg,
who was also sole executor, and who was to take thenceforth the name of Featherstone.
There was a rustling which seemed like a shudder running round the room. Every one
stared afresh at Mr. Rigg, who apparently experienced no surprise.
"A most singular testamentary disposition!" exclaimed Mr. Trumbull, preferring for
once that he should be considered ignorant in the past. "But there is a second will – there is a
further document. We have not yet heard the final wishes of the deceased."
Mary Garth was feeling that what they had yet to hear were not the final wishes. The
second will revoked everything except the legacies to the low persons before mentioned
(some alterations in these being the occasion of the codicil), and the bequest of all the land
lying in Lowick parish with all the stock and household furniture, to Joshua Rigg. The
residue of the property was to be devoted to the erection and endowment of almshouses for
old men, to be called Featherstone's Alms−Houses, and to be built on a piece of land near
Middlemarch already bought for the purpose by the testator, he wishing – so the document
declared – to please God Almighty. Nobody present had a farthing; but Mr. Trumbull had
the gold−headed cane. It took some time for the company to recover the power of
expression. Mary dared not look at Fred.
Mr. Vincy was the first to speak – after using his snuff− box energetically – and he
spoke with loud indignation. "The most unaccountable will I ever heard! I should say he was
not in his right mind when he made it. I should say this last will was void," added Mr.
Vincy, feeling that this expression put the thing in the true light. "Eh Standish?"
"Our deceased friend always knew what he was about, I think," said Mr. Standish.
"Everything is quite regular. Here is a letter from Clemmens of Brassing tied with the will.
He drew it up. A very respectable solicitor."
"I never noticed any alienation of mind – any aberration of intellect in the late Mr.
Featherstone," said Borthrop Trumbull, "but I call this will eccentric. I was always willingly
of service to the old soul; and he intimated pretty plainly a sense of obligation which would
show itself in his will. The gold−headed cane is farcical considered as an acknowledgment
to me; but happily I am above mercenary considerations."
"There's nothing very surprising in the matter that I can see," said Caleb Garth.
"Anybody might have had more reason for wondering if the will had been what you might
expect from an open−minded straightforward man. For my part, I wish there was no such
thing as a will."
"That's a strange sentiment to come from a Christian man, by God!" said the lawyer. "I
should like to know how you will back that up, Garth!"
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"Oh," said Caleb, leaning forward, adjusting his finger−tips with nicety and looking
meditatively on the ground. It always seemed to him that words were the hardest part of
"business."
But here Mr. Jonah Featherstone made himself heard. "Well, he always was a fine
hypocrite, was my brother Peter. But this will cuts out everything. If I'd known, a wagon and
six horses shouldn't have drawn me from Brassing. I'll put a white hat and drab coat on
to−morrow."
"Dear, dear," wept Mrs. Cranch, "and we've been at the expense of travelling, and that
poor lad sitting idle here so long! It's the first time I ever heard my brother Peter was so
wishful to please God Almighty; but if I was to be struck helpless I must say it's hard – I can
think no other."
"It'll do him no good where he's gone, that's my belief," said Solomon, with a bitterness
which was remarkably genuine, though his tone could not help being sly. "Peter was a bad
liver, and almshouses won't cover it, when he's had the impudence to show it at the last."
"And all the while had got his own lawful family – brothers and sisters and nephews
and nieces – and has sat in church with 'em whenever he thought well to come," said Mrs.
Waule. "And might have left his property so respectable, to them that's never been used to
extravagance or unsteadiness in no manner of way – and not so poor but what they could
have saved every penny and made more of it. And me – the trouble I've been at, times and
times, to come here and be sisterly – and him with things on his mind all the while that
might make anybody's flesh creep. But if the Almighty's allowed it, he means to punish him
for it. Brother Solomon, I shall be going, if you'll drive me."
"I've no desire to put my foot on the premises again," said Solomon. "I've got land of
my own and property of my own to will away."
"It's a poor tale how luck goes in the world," said Jonah. "It never answers to have a bit
of spirit in you. You'd better be a dog in the manger. But those above ground might learn a
lesson. One fool's will is enough in a family."
"There's more ways than one of being a fool," said Solomon. "I shan't leave my money
to be poured down the sink, and I shan't leave it to foundlings from Africay. I like Feather,
stones that were brewed such, and not turned Featherstones with sticking the name on 'em."
Solomon addressed these remarks in a loud aside to Mrs. Waule as he rose to
accompany her. Brother Jonah felt himself capable of much more stinging wit than this, but
he reflected that there was no use in offending the new proprietor of Stone Court, until you
were certain that he was quite without intentions of hospitality towards witty men whose
name he was about to bear.
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Mr. Joshua Rigg, in fact, appeared to trouble himself little about any innuendoes, but
showed a notable change of manner, walking coolly up to Mr. Standish and putting business
questions with much coolness. He had a high chirping voice and a vile accent. Fred, whom
he no longer moved to laughter, thought him the lowest monster he had ever seen. But Fred
was feeling rather sick. The Middlemarch mercer waited for an opportunity of engaging Mr.
Rigg in conversation: there was no knowing how many pairs of legs the new proprietor
might require hose for, and profits were more to be relied on than legacies. Also, the mercer,
as a second cousin, was dispassionate enough to feel curiosity.
Mr. Vincy, after his one outburst, had remained proudly silent, though too much
preoccupied with unpleasant feelings to think of moving, till he observed that his wife had
gone to Fred's side and was crying silently while she held her darling's hand. He rose
immediately, and turning his back on the company while he said to her in an undertone, –
"Don't give way, Lucy; don't make a fool of yourself, my dear, before these people," he
added in his usual loud voice – "Go and order the phaeton, Fred; I have no time to waste."
Mary Garth had before this been getting ready to go home with her father. She met Fred
in the hall, and now for the first time had the courage to look at him He had that withered
sort of paleness which will sometimes come on young faces, and his hand was very cold
when she shook it. Mary too was agitated; she was conscious that fatally, without will of her
own, she had perhaps made a great difference to Fred's lot.
"Good−by," she said, with affectionate sadness. "Be brave, Fred. I do believe you are
better without the money. What was the good of it to Mr. Featherstone?"
"That's all very fine," said Fred, pettishly. "What is a fellow to do? I must go into the
Church now." (He knew that this would vex Mary: very well; then she must tell him what
else he could do.) "And I thought I should be able to pay your father at once and make
everything right. And you have not even a hundred pounds left you. What shall you do now,
Mary?"
"Take another situation, of course, as soon as I can get one. My father has enough to do
to keep the rest, without me. Good−by."
In a very short time Stone Court was cleared of well−brewed Featherstones and other
long−accustomed visitors. Another stranger had been brought to settle in the neighborhood
of Middlemarch, but in the case of Mr. Rigg Featherstone there was more discontent with
immediate visible consequences than speculation as to the effect which his presence might
have in the future. No soul was prophetic enough to have any foreboding as to what might
appear on the trial of Joshua Rigg.
And here I am naturally led to reflect on the means of elevating a low subject. Historical
parallels are remarkably efficient in this way. The chief objection to them is, that the diligent
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narrator may lack space, or (what is often the same thing) may not be able to think of them
with any degree of particularity, though he may have a philosophical confidence that if
known they would be illustrative. It seems an easier and shorter way to dignity, to observe
that – since there never was a true story which could not be told in parables, where you
might put a monkey for a margrave, and vice versa – whatever has been or is to be narrated
by me about low people, may be ennobled by being considered a parable; so that if any bad
habits and ugly consequences are brought into view, the reader may have the relief of
regarding them as not more than figuratively ungenteel, and may feel himself virtually in
company with persons of some style. Thus while I tell the truth about loobies, my reader's
imagination need not be entirely excluded from an occupation with lords; and the petty sums
which any bankrupt of high standing would be sorry to retire upon, may be lifted to the level
of high commercial transactions by the inexpensive addition of proportional ciphers.
As to any provincial history in which the agents are all of high moral rank, that must be
of a date long posterior to the first Reform Bill, and Peter Featherstone, you perceive, was
dead and buried some months before Lord Grey came into office.
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CHAPTER XXXVI.
"'T
is strange to see the humors of these men, These great aspiring spirits, that should
be wise: . . . . . . . . For being the nature of great spirits to love To be where they may be
most eminent; They, rating of themselves so farre above Us in conceit, with whom they do
frequent, Imagine how we wonder and esteeme All that they do or say; which makes them
strive To make our admiration more extreme, Which they suppose they cannot, 'less they
give Notice of their extreme and highest thoughts. – DANIEL: Tragedy of Philotas.
Mr. Vincy went home from the reading of the will with his point of view considerably
changed in relation to many subjects. He was an open−minded man, but given to indirect
modes of expressing himself: when he was disappointed in a market for his silk braids, he
swore at the groom; when his brother−in−law Bulstrode had vexed him, he made cutting
remarks on Methodism; and it was now apparent that he regarded Fred's idleness with a
sudden increase of severity, by his throwing an embroidered cap out of the smoking−room
on to the hall−floor.
"Well, sir," he observed, when that young gentleman was moving off to bed, "I hope
you've made up your mind now to go up next term and pass your examination. I've taken my
resolution, so I advise you to lose no time in taking yours."
Fred made no answer: he was too utterly depressed. Twenty−four hours ago he had
thought that instead of needing to know what he should do, he should by this time know that
he needed to do nothing: that he should hunt in pink, have a first−rate hunter, ride to cover
on a fine hack, and be generally respected for doing so; moreover, that he should be able at
once to pay Mr. Garth, and that Mary could no longer have any reason for not marrying him.
And all this was to have come without study or other inconvenience, purely by the favor of
providence in the shape of an old gentleman's caprice. But now, at the end of the
twenty−four hours, all those firm expectations were upset. It was "rather hard lines" that
while he was smarting under this disappointment he should be treated as if he could have
helped it. But he went away silently and his mother pleaded for him.
"Don't be hard on the poor boy, Vincy. He'll turn out well yet, though that wicked man
has deceived him. I feel as sure as I sit here, Fred will turn out well – else why was he
brought back from the brink of the grave? And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the
land, to promise it; and what is promising, if making everybody believe is not promising?
And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then took it away again."
"Took it away again!" said Mr. Vincy, pettishly. "I tell you the lad's an unlucky lad,
Lucy. And you've always spoiled him."
"Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when he came. You
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were as proud as proud," said Mrs. Vincy, easily recovering her cheerful smile.
"Who knows what babies will turn to? I was fool enough, I dare say," said the husband
– more mildly, however.
"But who has handsomer, better children than ours? Fred is far beyond other people's
sons: you may hear it in his speech, that he has kept college company. And Rosamond –
where is there a girl like her? She might stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the
better for it. You see – Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest company and been everywhere, and
he fell in love with her at once. Not but what I could have wished Rosamond had not
engaged herself. She might have met somebody on a visit who would have been a far better
match; I mean at her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby's. There are relations in that family
quite as high as Mr. Lydgate's."
"Damn relations!" said Mr. Vincy; "I've had enough of them. I don't want a son−in−law
who has got nothing but his relations to recommend him."
"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, "you seemed as pleased as could be about it. It's true,
I wasn't at home; but Rosamond told me you hadn't a word to say against the engagement.
And she has begun to buy in the best linen and cambric for her underclothing."
"Not by my will," said Mr. Vincy. "I shall have enough to do this year, with an idle
scamp of a son, without paying for wedding−clothes. The times are as tight as can be;
everybody is being ruined; and I don't believe Lydgate has got a farthing. I shan't give my
consent to their marrying. Let 'em wait, as their elders have done before 'em."
"Rosamond will take it hard, Vincy, and you know you never could bear to cross her."
"Yes, I could. The sooner the engagement's off, the better. I don't believe he'll ever
make an income, the way he goes on. He makes enemies; that's all I hear of his making."
"But he stands very high with Mr. Bulstrode, my dear. The marriage would please HIM,
I should think."
"Please the deuce!" said Mr. Vincy. "Bulstrode won't pay for their keep. And if Lydgate
thinks I'm going to give money for them to set up housekeeping, he's mistaken, that's all. I
expect I shall have to put down my horses soon. You'd better tell Rosy what I say."
This was a not infrequent procedure with Mr. Vincy – to be rash in jovial assent, and on
becoming subsequently conscious that he had been rash, to employ others in making the
offensive retractation. However, Mrs. Vincy, who never willingly opposed her husband, lost
no time the next morning in letting Rosamond know what he had said. Rosamond,
examining some muslin−work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a certain turn of her
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graceful neck, of which only long experience could teach you that it meant perfect
obstinacy.
"What do you say, my dear?" said her mother, with affectionate deference.
"Papa does not mean anything of the kind," said Rosamond, quite calmly. "He has
always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved. And I shall marry Mr. Lydgate. It is
seven weeks now since papa gave his consent. And I hope we shall have Mrs. Bretton's
house."
"Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa. You always do manage
everybody. But if we ever do go and get damask, Sadler's is the place – far better than
Hopkins's. Mrs. Bretton's is very large, though: I should love you to have such a house; but
it will take a great deal of furniture – carpeting and everything, besides plate and glass. And
you hear, your papa says he will give no money. Do you think Mr. Lydgate expects it?"
"You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma. Of course he understands his own
affairs."
"But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of your having
a pretty legacy as well as Fred; – and now everything is so dreadful – there's no pleasure in
thinking of anything, with that poor boy disappointed as he is."
"That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma. Fred must leave off being idle. I am
going up−stairs to take this work to Miss Morgan: she does the open hemming very well.
Mary Garth might do some work for me now, I should think. Her sewing is exquisite; it is
the nicest thing I know about Mary. I should so like to have all my cambric frilling
double−hemmed. And it takes a long time."
Mrs. Vincy's belief that Rosamond could manage her papa was well founded. Apart
from his dinners and his coursing, Mr. Vincy, blustering as he was, had as little of his own
way as if he had been a prime minister: the force of circumstances was easily too much for
him, as it is for most pleasure−loving florid men; and the circumstance called Rosamond
was particularly forcible by means of that mild persistence which, as we know, enables a
white soft living substance to make its way in spite of opposing rock. Papa was not a rock:
he had no other fixity than that fixity of alternating impulses sometimes called habit, and
this was altogether unfavorable to his taking the only decisive line of conduct in relation to
his daughter's engagement – namely, to inquire thoroughly into Lydgate's circumstances,
declare his own inability to furnish money, and forbid alike either a speedy marriage or an
engagement which must be too lengthy. That seems very simple and easy in the statement;
but a disagreeable resolve formed in the chill hours of the morning had as many conditions
against it as the early frost, and rarely persisted under the warming influences of the day.
The indirect though emphatic expression of opinion to which Mr. Vincy was prone suffered
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much restraint in this case: Lydgate was a proud man towards whom innuendoes were
obviously unsafe, and throwing his hat on the floor was out of the question. Mr. Vincy was a
little in awe of him, a little vain that he wanted to marry Rosamond, a little indisposed to
raise a question of money in which his own position was not advantageous, a little afraid of
being worsted in dialogue with a man better educated and more highly bred than himself,
and a little afraid of doing what his daughter would not like. The part Mr. Vincy preferred
playing was that of the generous host whom nobody criticises. In the earlier half of the day
there was business to hinder any formal communication of an adverse resolve; in the later
there was dinner, wine, whist, and general satisfaction. And in the mean while the hours
were each leaving their little deposit and gradually forming the final reason for inaction,
namely, that action was too late. The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick
Gate, and a love−making not at all dependent on money−advances from fathers−in−law, or
prospective income from a profession, went on flourishingly under Mr. Vincy's own eyes.
Young love−making – that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to – the things whence
its subtle interlacings are swung – are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of fingertips,
meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and
lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys,
yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate
fell to spinning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience
supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure – in spite too of medicine and biology;
for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia's),
and other incidents of scientific inquiry, are observed to be less incompatible with poetic
love than a native dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose. As for Rosamond, she
was in the water−lily's expanding wonderment at its own fuller life, and she too was
spinning industriously at the mutual web. All this went on in the corner of the
drawing−room where the piano stood, and subtle as it was, the light made it a sort of
rainbow visible to many observers besides Mr. Farebrother. The certainty that Miss Vincy
and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general in Middlemarch without the aid of formal
announcement.
Aunt Bulstrode was again stirred to anxiety; but this time she addressed herself to her
brother, going to the warehouse expressly to avoid Mrs. Vincy's volatility. His replies were
not satisfactory.
"Walter, you never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go on without
inquiry into Mr. Lydgate's prospects?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, opening her eyes with wider
gravity at her brother, who was in his peevish warehouse humor. "Think of this girl brought
up in luxury – in too worldly a way, I am sorry to say – what will she do on a small
income?"
"Oh, confound it, Harriet I what can I do when men come into the town without any
asking of mine? Did you shut your house up against Lydgate? Bulstrode has pushed him
forward more than anybody. I never made any fuss about the young fellow. You should go
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and talk to your husband about it, not me."
"Well, really, Walter, how can Mr. Bulstrode be to blame? I am sure he did not wish for
the engagement."
"Oh, if Bulstrode had not taken him by the hand, I should never have invited him."
"But you called him in to attend on Fred, and I am sure that was a mercy," said Mrs.
Bulstrode, losing her clew in the intricacies of the subject.
"I don't know about mercy," said Mr. Vincy, testily. "I know I am worried more than I
like with my family. I was a good brother to you, Harriet, before you married Bulstrode, and
I must say he doesn't always show that friendly spirit towards your family that might have
been expected of him." Mr. Vincy was very little like a Jesuit, but no accomplished Jesuit
could have turned a question more adroitly. Harriet had to defend her husband instead of
blaming her brother, and the conversation ended at a point as far from the beginning as some
recent sparring between the brothers−in−law at a vestry meeting.
Mrs. Bulstrode did not repeat her brother's complaints to her husband, but in the
evening she spoke to him of Lydgate and Rosamond. He did not share her warm interest,
however; and only spoke with resignation of the risks attendant on the beginning of medical
practice and the desirability of prudence.
"I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl – brought up as she has been,"
said Mrs. Bulstrode, wishing to rouse her husband's feelings.
"Truly, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, assentingly. "Those who are not of this world can
do little else to arrest the errors of the obstinately worldly. That is what we must accustom
ourselves to recognize with regard to your brother's family. I could have wished that Mr.
Lydgate had not entered into such a union; but my relations with him are limited to that use
of his gifts for God's purposes which is taught us by the divine government under each
dispensation."
Mrs. Bulstrode said no more, attributing some dissatisfaction which she felt to her own
want of spirituality. She believed that her husband was one of those men whose memoirs
should be written when they died.
As to Lydgate himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept all the
consequences which he believed himself to foresee with perfect clearness. Of course he
must be married in a year – perhaps even in half a year. This was not what he had intended;
but other schemes would not be hindered: they would simply adjust themselves anew.
Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way. A house must be taken instead
of the rooms he at present occupied; and Lydgate, having heard Rosamond speak with
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admiration of old Mrs. Bretton's house (situated in Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell
vacant after the old lady's death, and immediately entered into treaty for it.
He did this in an episodic way, very much as he gave orders to his tailor for every
requisite of perfect dress, without any notion of being extravagant. On the contrary, he
would have despised any ostentation of expense; his profession had familiarized him with all
grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered hardships. He would have
behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served in a jug with the handle off, and he
would have remembered nothing about a grand dinner except that a man was there who
talked well. But it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he
would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at
table. In warming himself at French social theories he had brought away no smell of
scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our
dinner−giving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own ease, link us indissolubly
with the established order. And Lydgate's tendency was not towards extreme opinions: he
would have liked no barefooted doctrines, being particular about his boots: he was no radical
in relation to anything but medical reform and the prosecution of discovery. In the rest of
practical life he walked by hereditary habit; half from that personal pride and unreflecting
egoism which I have already called commonness, and half from that naivete which belonged
to preoccupation with favorite ideas.
Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement which had
stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of money. Certainly, being in love
and being expected continually by some one who always turned out to be prettier than
memory could represent her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which
might serve some "plodding fellow of a German" to make the great, imminent discovery.
This was really an argument for not deferring the marriage too long, as he implied to Mr.
Farebrother, one day that the Vicar came to his room with some pond−products which he
wanted to examine under a better microscope than his own, and, finding Lydgate's tableful
of apparatus and specimens in confusion, said sarcastically –
"Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings
back chaos."
"Yes, at some stages," said Lydgate, lifting his brows and smiling, while he began to
arrange his microscope. "But a better order will begin after."
"Soon?" said the Vicar.
"I hope so, really. This unsettled state of affairs uses up the time, and when one has
notions in science, every moment is an opportunity. I feel sure that marriage must be the
best thing for a man who wants to work steadily. He has everything at home then – no
teasing with personal speculations – he can get calmness and freedom."
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"You are an enviable dog," said the Vicar, "to have such a prospect – Rosamond,
calmness and freedom, all to your share. Here am I with nothing but my pipe and
pond−animalcules. Now, are you ready?"
Lydgate did not mention to the Vicar another reason he had for wishing to shorten the
period of courtship. It was rather irritating to him, even with the wine of love in his veins, to
be obliged to mingle so often with the family party at the Vincys', and to enter so much into
Middlemarch gossip, protracted good cheer, whist−playing, and general futility. He had to
be deferential when Mr. Vincy decided questions with trenchant ignorance, especially as to
those liquors which were the best inward pickle, preserving you from the effects of bad air.
Mrs. Vincy's openness and simplicity were quite unstreaked with suspicion as to the subtle
offence she might give to the taste of her intended son−in−law; and altogether Lydgate had
to confess to himself that he was descending a little in relation to Rosamond's family. But
that exquisite creature herself suffered in the same sort of way: – it was at least one
delightful thought that in marrying her, he could give her a much−needed transplantation.
"Dear!" he said to her one evening, in his gentlest tone, as he sat down by her and
looked closely at her face –
But I must first say that he had found her alone in the drawing−room, where the great
old−fashioned window, almost as large as the side of the room, was opened to the summer
scents of the garden at the back of the house. Her father and mother were gone to a party,
and the rest were all out with the butterflies.
"Dear! your eyelids are red."
"Are they?" said Rosamond. "I wonder why." It was not in her nature to pour forth
wishes or grievances. They only came forth gracefully on solicitation.
"As if you could hide it from me!"? said Lydgate, laying his hand tenderly on both of
hers. "Don't I see a tiny drop on one of the lashes? Things trouble you, and you don't tell me.
That is unloving."
"Why should I tell you what you cannot alter? They are every−day things: – perhaps
they have been a little worse lately."
"Family annoyances. Don't fear speaking. I guess them."
"Papa has been more irritable lately. Fred makes him angry, and this morning there was
a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw his whole education away, and do something
quite beneath him. And besides – "
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Rosamond hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush. Lydgate had never
seen her in trouble since the morning of their engagement, and he had never felt so
passionately towards her as at this moment. He kissed the hesitating lips gently, as if to
encourage them.
"I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement," Rosamond continued,
almost in a whisper; "and he said last night that he should certainly speak to you and say it
must be given up."
"Will you give it up?" said Lydgate, with quick energy – almost angrily.
"I never give up anything that I choose to do," said Rosamond, recovering her calmness
at the touching of this chord.
"God bless you!" said Lydgate, kissing her again. This constancy of purpose in the right
place was adorable. He went on: –
"It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be given up. You are
of age, and I claim you as mine. If anything is done to make you unhappy, – that is a reason
for hastening our marriage."
An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his, and the radiance
seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine. Ideal happiness (of the kind known in
the Arabian Nights, in which you are invited to step from the labor and discord of the street
into a paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed to be an affair
of a few weeks' waiting, more or less.
"Why should we defer it?" he said, with ardent insistence. "I have taken the house now:
everything else can soon be got ready – can it not? You will not mind about new clothes.
Those can be bought afterwards."
"What original notions you clever men have!" said Rosamond, dimpling with more
thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity. "This is the first time I ever
heard of wedding−clothes being bought after marriage."
"But you don't mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for the sake of
clothes?" said Lydgate, half thinking that Rosamond was tormenting him prettily, and half
fearing that she really shrank from speedy marriage. "Remember, we are looking forward to
a better sort of happiness even than this – being continually together, independent of others,
and ordering our lives as we will. Come, dear, tell me how soon you can be altogether
mine."
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There was a serious pleading in Lydgate's tone, as if he felt that she would be injuring
him by any fantastic delays. Rosamond became serious too, and slightly meditative; in fact,
she was going through many intricacies of lace−edging and hosiery and petticoat−tucking, in
order to give an answer that would at least be approximative.
"Six weeks would be ample – say so, Rosamond," insisted Lydgate, releasing her hands
to put his arm gently round her.
One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave her neck a meditative
turn, and then said seriously –
"There would be the house−linen and the furniture to be prepared. Still, mamma could
see to those while we were away."
"Yes, to be sure. We must be away a week or so."
"Oh, more than that!" said Rosamond, earnestly. She was thinking of her evening
dresses for the visit to Sir Godwin Lydgate's, which she had long been secretly hoping for as
a delightful employment of at least one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her
introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also a pleasing though sober kind of
rank, when sustained by blood). She looked at her lover with some wondering remonstrance
as she spoke, and he readily understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet time of
double solitude.
"Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed. But let us take a decided
course, and put an end to any discomfort you may be suffering. Six weeks! – I am sure they
would be ample."
"I could certainly hasten the work," said Rosamond. "Will you, then, mention it to
papa? – I think it would be better to write to him." She blushed and looked at him as the
garden flowers look at us when we walk forth happily among them in the transcendent
evening light: is there not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half child, in those delicate
petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?
He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and they sat quite still
for many minutes which flowed by them like a small gurgling brook with the kisses of the
sun upon it. Rosamond thought that no one could be more in love than she was; and Lydgate
thought that after all his wild mistakes and absurd credulity, he had found perfect
womanhood – felt as If already breathed upon by exquisite wedded affection such as would
be bestowed by an accomplished creature who venerated his high musings and momentous
labors and would never interfere with them; who would create order in the home and
accounts with still magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and transform life into
romance at any moment; who was instructed to the true womanly limit and not a hair's−
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breadth beyond – docile, therefore, and ready to carry out behests which came from that
limit. It was plainer now than ever that his notion of remaining much longer a bachelor had
been a mistake: marriage would not be an obstruction but a furtherance. And happening the
next day to accompany a patient to Brassing, he saw a dinner−service there which struck
him as so exactly the right thing that he bought it at once. It saved time to do these things
just when you thought of them, and Lydgate hated ugly crockery. The dinner−service in
question was expensive, but that might be in the nature of dinner−services. Furnishing was
necessarily expensive; but then it had to be done only once.
"It must be lovely," said Mrs. Vincy, when Lydgate mentioned his purchase with some
descriptive touches. "Just what Rosy ought to have. I trust in heaven it won't be broken!"
"One must hire servants who will not break things," said Lydgate. (Certainly, this was
reasoning with an imperfect vision of sequences. But at that period there was no sort of
reasoning which was not more or less sanctioned by men of science.)
Of course it was unnecessary to defer the mention of anything to mamma, who did not
readily take views that were not cheerful, and being a happy wife herself, had hardly any
feeling but pride in her daughter's marriage. But Rosamond had good reasons for suggesting
to Lydgate that papa should be appealed to in writing. She prepared for the arrival of the
letter by walking with her papa to the warehouse the next morning, and telling him on the
way that Mr. Lydgate wished to be married soon.
"Nonsense, my dear!" said Mr. Vincy. "What has he got to marry on? You'd much
better give up the engagement. I've told you so pretty plainly before this. What have you had
such an education for, if you are to go and marry a poor man? It's a cruel thing for a father to
see."
"Mr. Lydgate is not poor, papa. He bought Mr. Peacock's practice, which, they say, is
worth eight or nine hundred a−year."
"Stuff and nonsense! What's buying a practice? He might as well buy next year's
swallows. It'll all slip through his fingers."
"On the contrary, papa, he will increase the practice. See how he has been called in by
the Chettams and Casaubons."
"I hope he knows I shan't give anything – with this disappointment about Fred, and
Parliament going to be dissolved, and machine−breaking everywhere, and an election
coming on – "
"Dear papa! what can that have to do with my marriage?"
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"A pretty deal to do with it! We may all be ruined for what I know – the country's in
that state! Some say it's the end of the world, and be hanged if I don't think it looks like it!
Anyhow, it's not a time for me to be drawing money out of my business, and I should wish
Lydgate to know that."
"I am sure he expects nothing, papa. And he has such very high connections: he is sure
to rise in one way or another. He is engaged in making scientific discoveries."
Mr. Vincy was silent.
"I cannot give up my only prospect of happiness, papa Mr. Lydgate is a gentleman. I
could never love any one who was not a perfect gentleman. You would not like me to go
into a consumption, as Arabella Hawley did. And you know that I never change my mind."
Again papa was silent.
"Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish. We shall never give each
other up; and you know that you have always objected to long courtships and late
marriages."
There was a little more urgency of this kind, till Mr. Vincy said, "Well, well, child, he
must write to me first before I car answer him," – and Rosamond was certain that she had
gained her point.
Mr. Vincy's answer consisted chiefly in a demand that Lydgate should insure his life – a
demand immediately conceded. This was a delightfully reassuring idea supposing that
Lydgate died, but in the mean time not a self−supporting idea. However, it seemed to make
everything comfortable about Rosamond's marriage; and the necessary purchases went on
with much spirit. Not without prudential considerations, however. A bride (who is going to
visit at a baronet's) must have a few first−rate pocket−handkerchiefs; but beyond the
absolutely necessary half−dozen, Rosamond contented herself without the very highest style
of embroidery and Valenciennes. Lydgate also, finding that his sum of eight hundred pounds
had been considerably reduced since he had come to Middlemarch, restrained his inclination
for some plate of an old pattern which was shown to him when he went into Kibble's
establishment at Brassing to buy forks and spoons. He was too proud to act as if he
presupposed that Mr. Vincy would advance money to provide furniture−; and though, since
it would not be necessary to pay for everything at once, some bills would be left standing
over, he did not waste time in conjecturing how much his father−in−law would give in the
form of dowry, to make payment easy. He was not going to do anything extravagant, but the
requisite things must be bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a poor quality.
All these matters were by the bye. Lydgate foresaw that science and his profession were the
objects he should alone pursue enthusiastically; but he could not imagine himself pursuing
them in such a home as Wrench had – the doors all open, the oil−cloth worn, the children in
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soiled pinafores, and lunch lingering in the form of bones, black−handled knives, and
willow−pattern. But Wrench had a wretched lymphatic wife who made a mummy of herself
indoors in a large shawl; and he must have altogether begun with an ill−chosen domestic
apparatus.
Rosamond, however, was on her side much occupied with conjectures, though her quick
imitative perception warned her against betraying them too crudely.
"I shall like so much to know your family," she said one day, when the wedding journey
was being discussed. "We might perhaps take a direction that would allow us to see them as
we returned. Which of your uncles do you like best?"
"Oh, – my uncle Godwin, I think. He is a good−natured old fellow."
"You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy, were you not?
I should so like to see the old spot and everything you were used to. Does he know you are
going to be married?"
"No," said Lydgate, carelessly, turning in his chair and rubbing his hair up.
"Do send him word of it, you naughty undutiful nephew. He will perhaps ask you to
take me to Quallingham; and then you could show me about the grounds, and I could
imagine you there when you were a boy. Remember, you see me in my home, just as it has
been since I was a child. It is not fair that I should be so ignorant of yours. But perhaps you
would be a little ashamed of me. I forgot that."
Lydgate smiled at her tenderly, and really accepted the suggestion that the proud
pleasure of showing so charming a bride was worth some trouble. And now he came to think
of it, he would like to see the old spots with Rosamond.
"I will write to him, then. But my cousins are bores."
It seemed magnificent to Rosamond to be able to speak so slightingly of a baronet's
family, and she felt much contentment in the prospect of being able to estimate them
contemptuously on her own account.
But mamma was near spoiling all, a day or two later, by saying –
"I hope your uncle Sir Godwin will not look down on Rosy, Mr. Lydgate. I should think
he would do something handsome. A thousand or two can be nothing to a baronet."
"Mamma!" said Rosamond, blushing deeply; and Lydgate pitied her so much that he
remained silent and went to the other end of the room to examine a print curiously, as if he
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had been absent−minded. Mamma had a little filial lecture afterwards, and was docile as
usual. But Rosamond reflected that if any of those high−bred cousins who were bores,
should be induced to visit Middlemarch, they would see many things in her own family
which might shock them. Hence it seemed desirable that Lydgate should by−and−by get
some first−rate position elsewhere than in Middlemarch; and this could hardly be difficult in
the case of a man who had a titled uncle and could make discoveries. Lydgate, you perceive,
had talked fervidly to Rosamond of his hopes as to the highest uses of his life, and had found
it delightful to be listened to by a creature who would bring him the sweet furtherance of
satisfying affection – beauty – repose – such help as our thoughts get from the summer sky
and the flower−fringed meadows.
Lydgate relied much on the psychological difference between what for the sake of
variety I will call goose and gander: especially on the innate submissiveness of the goose as
beautifully corresponding to the strength of the gander.
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CHAPTER XXXVII.
"T
hrice happy she that is so well assured Unto herself and settled so in heart That
neither will for better be allured Ne fears to worse with any chance to start, But like a steddy
ship doth strongly part The raging waves and keeps her course aright; Ne aught for tempest
doth from it depart, Ne aught for fairer weather's false delight. Such self−assurance need not
fear the spight Of grudging foes; ne favour seek of friends; But in the stay of her own
stedfast might Neither to one herself nor other bends. Most happy she that most assured doth
rest, But he most happy who such one loves best." – SPENSER.
The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general election or the end of
the world that was coming on, now that George the Fourth was dead, Parliament dissolved,
Wellington and Peel generally depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type
of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time. With the glow−worm lights of country
places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory
Ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return
Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which
seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious
by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found
themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many
had given up the "Pioneer" – which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in the van
of progress – because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus blotted its
Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal; but they were illsatisfied with the
"Trumpet," which – since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public
mind (nobody knowing who would support whom) – had become feeble in its blowing.
It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the "Pioneer," when the crying needs
of the country might well counteract a reluctance to public action on the part of men whose
minds had from long experience acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of
judgment as well as tolerance, dispassionateness as well as energy – in fact, all those
qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the least disposed to
share lodgings.
Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely than usual,
and leaving much uncertainty as to its ultimate channel, was heard to say in Mr. Hawley's
office that the article in question "emanated" from Brooke of Tipton, and that Brooke had
secretly bought the "Pioneer" some months ago.
"That means mischief, eh?" said Mr. Hawley. "He's got the freak of being a popular
man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise. So much the worse for him. I've had my
eye on him for some time. He shall be prettily pumped upon. He's a damned bad landlord.
What business has an old county man to come currying favor with a low set of dark−blue
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freemen? As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing himself. It would be worth our
paying for."
"I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who can write the
highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything in the London papers. And he means
to take very high ground on Reform."
"Let Brooke reform his rent−roll. He's a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his
estate are going to rack. I sup pose this young fellow is some loose fish from London."
"His name is Ladislaw. He is said to be of foreign extraction."
"I know the sort," said Mr. Hawley; "some emissary. He'll begin with flourishing about
the Rights of Man and end with murdering a wench. That's the style."
"You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley," said Mr. Hackbutt, foreseeing some
political disagreement with his family lawyer. "I myself should never favor immoderate
views – in fact I take my stand with Huskisson – but I cannot blind myself to the
consideration that the non−representation of large towns – "
"Large towns be damned!" said Mr. Hawley, impatient of exposition. "I know a little
too much about Middlemarch elections. Let 'em quash every pocket borough to−morrow,
and bring in every mushroom town in the kingdom – they'll only increase the expense of
getting into Parliament. I go upon facts."
Mr. Hawley's disgust at the notion of the "Pioneer" being edited by an emissary, and of
Brooke becoming actively political – as if a tortoise of desultory pursuits should protrude its
small head ambitiously and become rampant – was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by
some members of Mr. Brooke's own family. The result had oozed forth gradually, like the
discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of manufacture which will be
permanently under your nostrils without legal remedy. The "Pioneer" had been secretly
bought even before Will Ladislaw's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in
the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which did not pay; and in the
interval since Mr. Brooke had written his invitation, those germinal ideas of making his
mind tell upon the world at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but
had hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover.
The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which proved greater
even than he had anticipated. For it seemed that Will was not only at home in all those
artistic and literary subjects which Mr. Brooke had gone into at one time, but that he was
strikingly ready at seizing the points of the political situation, and dealing with them in that
large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to quotation and general
effectiveness of treatment.
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"He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know," Mr. Brooke took an opportunity of
saying, for the gratification of Mr. Casaubon. "I don't mean as to anything objectionable –
laxities or atheism, or anything of that kind, you know – Ladislaw's sentiments in every way
I am sure are good – indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night. But he has the
same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation – a fine thing under guidance –
under guidance, you know. I think I shall be able to put him on the right tack; and I am the
more pleased because he is a relation of yours, Casaubon."
If the right tack implied anything more precise than the rest of Mr. Brooke's speech, Mr.
Casaubon silently hoped that it referred to some occupation at a great distance from Lowick.
He had disliked Will while he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now
that Will had declined his help. That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy
in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey−sipping cousin
(whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us,
and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves. Having the scruples
of rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of injuring him – rather we meet all his
claims on us by active benefits; and the drawing of cheeks for him, being a superiority
which he must recognize, gives our bitterness a milder infusion. Now Mr. Casaubon had
been deprived of that superiority (as anything more than a remembrance) in a sudden,
capricious manner. His antipathy to Will did not spring from the common jealousy of a
winter−worn husband: it was something deeper, bred by his lifelong claims and discontents;
but Dorothea, now that she was present – Dorothea, as a young wife who herself had shown
an offensive capability of criticism, necessarily gave concentration to the uneasiness which
had before been vague.
Will Ladislaw on his side felt that his dislike was flourishing at the expense of his
gratitude, and spent much inward discourse in justifying the dislike. Casaubon hated him –
he knew that very well; on his first entrance he could discern a bitterness in the mouth and a
venom in the glance which would almost justify declaring war in spite of past benefits. He
was much obliged to Casaubon in the past, but really the act of marrying this wife was a
set−off against the obligation It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is
done for one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another. And
Casaubon had done a wrong to Dorothea in marrying her. A man was bound to know
himself better than that, and if he chose to grow gray crunching bones in a cavern, he had no
business to be luring a girl into his companionship. "It is the most horrible of
virgin−sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward
sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he
would watch over her – if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and
she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had – to use Sir Thomas Browne's
phrase – a "passionate prodigality" of statement both to himself and others. The simple truth
was that nothing then invited him so strongly as the presence of Dorothea.
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Invitations of the formal kind had been wanting, however, for Will had never been
asked to go to Lowick. Mr. Brooke, indeed, confident of doing everything agreeable which
Casaubon, poor fellow, was too much absorbed to think of, had arranged to bring Ladislaw
to Lowick several times (not neglecting meanwhile to introduce him elsewhere on every
opportunity as "a young relative of Casaubon's"). And though Will had not seen Dorothea
alone, their interviews had been enough to restore her former sense of young companionship
with one who was cleverer than herself, yet seemed ready to be swayed by her. Poor
Dorothea before her marriage had never found much room in other minds for what she cared
most to say; and she had not, as we know, enjoyed her husband's superior instruction so
much as she had expected. If she spoke with any keenness of interest to Mr. Casaubon, he
heard her with an air of patience as if she had given a quotation from the Delectus familiar
to him from his tender years, and sometimes mentioned curtly what ancient sects or
personages had held similar ideas, as if there were too much of that sort in stock already; at
other times he would inform her that she was mistaken, and reassert what her remark had
questioned.
But Will Ladislaw always seemed to see more in what she said than she herself saw.
Dorothea had little vanity, but she had the ardent woman's need to rule beneficently by
making the joy of another soul. Hence the mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like
a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny air; and this
pleasure began to nullify her original alarm at what her husband might think about the
introduction of Will as her uncle's guest. On this subject Mr. Casaubon had remained dumb.
But Will wanted to talk with Dorothea alone, and was impatient of slow circumstance.
However slight the terrestrial intercourse between Dante and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura,
time changes the proportion of things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets
and more conversation. Necessity excused stratagem, but stratagem was limited by the dread
of offending Dorothea. He found out at last that he wanted to take a particular sketch at
Lowick; and one morning when Mr. Brooke had to drive along the Lowick road on his way
to the county town, Will asked to be set down with his sketch−book and camp−stool at
Lowick, and without announcing himself at the Manor settled himself to sketch in a position
where he must see Dorothea if she came out to walk – and he knew that she usually walked
an hour in the morning.
But the stratagem was defeated by the weather. Clouds gathered with treacherous
quickness, the rain came down, and Will was obliged to take shelter in the house. He
intended, on the strength of relationship, to go into the drawing−room and wait there without
being announced; and seeing his old acquaintance the butler in the hall, he said, "Don't
mention that I am here, Pratt; I will wait till luncheon; I know Mr. Casaubon does not like to
be disturbed when he is in the library."
"Master is out, sir; there's only Mrs. Casaubon in the library. I'd better tell her you're
here, sir," said Pratt, a red−cheeked man given to lively converse with Tantripp, and often
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agreeing with her that it must be dull for Madam.
"Oh, very well; this confounded rain has hindered me from sketching," said Will,
feeling so happy that he affected indifference with delightful ease.
In another minute he was in the library, and Dorothea was meeting him with her sweet
unconstrained smile.
"Mr. Casaubon has gone to the Archdeacon's," she said, at once. "I don't know whether
he will be at home again long before dinner. He was uncertain how long he should be. Did
you want to say anything particular to him?"
"No; I came to sketch, but the rain drove me in. Else I would not have disturbed you
yet. I supposed that Mr. Casaubon was here, and I know he dislikes interruption at this
hour."
"I am indebted to the rain, then. I am so glad to see you." Dorothea uttered these
common words with the simple sincerity of an unhappy child, visited at school.
"I really came for the chance of seeing you alone," said Will, mysteriously forced to be
just as simple as she was. He could not stay to ask himself, why not? "I wanted to talk about
things, as we did in Rome. It always makes a difference when other people are present."
"Yes," said Dorothea, in her clear full tone of assent. "Sit down." She seated herself on a
dark ottoman with the brown books behind her, looking in her plain dress of some thin
woollen−white material, without a single ornament on her besides her wedding−ring, as if
she were under a vow to be different from all other women; and Will sat down opposite her
at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and delicate but rather petulant
profile, with its defiant curves of lip and chin. Each looked at the other as if they had been
two flowers which had opened then and there. Dorothea for the moment forgot her husband's
mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at her thirsty lips to speak without
fear to the one person whom she had found receptive; for in looking backward through
sadness she exaggerated a past solace.
"I have often thought that I should like to talk to you again," she said, immediately. "It
seems strange to me how many things I said to you."
"I remember them all," said Will, with the unspeakable content in his soul of feeling
that he was in the presence of a creature worthy to be perfectly loved. I think his own
feelings at that moment were perfect, for we mortals have our divine moments, when love is
satisfied in the completeness the beloved object.
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"I have tried to learn a great deal since we were in Rome," said Dorothea. "I can read
Latin a little, and I am beginning to understand just a little Greek. I can help Mr. Casaubon
better now. I can find out references for him and save his eyes in many ways. But it is very
difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and
can never enjoy them because they are too tired."
"If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is
decrepit," said Will, with irrepressible quickness. But through certain sensibilities Dorothea
was as quick as he, and seeing her face change, he added, immediately, "But it is quite true
that the best minds have been sometimes overstrained in working out their ideas."
"You correct me," said Dorothea. "I expressed myself ill. I should have said that those
who have great thoughts get too much worn in working them out. I used to feel about that,
even when I was a little girl; and it always seemed to me that the use I should like to make
of my life would be to help some one who did great works, so that his burthen might be
lighter."
Dorothea was led on to this bit of autobiography without any sense of making a
revelation. But she had never before said anything to Will which threw so strong a light on
her marriage. He did not shrug his shoulders; and for want of that muscular outlet he thought
the more irritably of beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and other emptinesses ecclesiastically
enshrined. Also he had to take care that his speech should not betray that thought.
"But you may easily carry the help too far," he said, "and get over−wrought yourself.
Are you not too much shut up? You already look paler. It would be better for Mr. Casaubon
to have a secretary; he could easily get a man who would do half his work for him. It would
save him more effectually, and you need only help him in lighter ways."
"How can you think of that?" said Dorothea, in a tone of earnest remonstrance. "I
should have no happiness if I did not help him in his work. What could I do? There is no
good to be done in Lowick. The only thing I desire is to help him more. And he objects to a
secretary: please not to mention that again."
"Certainly not, now I know your feeling. But I have heard both Mr. Brooke and Sir
James Chettam express the same wish."
"Yes?" said Dorothea, "but they don't understand – they want me to be a great deal on
horseback, and have the garden altered and new conservatories, to fill up my days. I thought
you could understand that one's mind has other wants," she added, rather impatiently –
"besides, Mr. Casaubon cannot bear to hear of a secretary."
"My mistake is excusable," said Will. "In old days I used to hear Mr. Casaubon speak as
if he looked forward to having a secretary. Indeed he held out the prospect of that office to
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me. But I turned out to be – not good enough for it."
Dorothea was trying to extract out of this an excuse for her husband's evident repulsion,
as she said, with a playful smile, "You were not a steady worker enough."
"No," said Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of a−spirited
horse. And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to give another good pinch at the
moth−wings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory, he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr.
Casaubon does not like any one to overlook his work. and know thoroughly what he is
doing. He is too doubtful – too uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, but he
dislikes me because I disagree with him."
Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little
triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.
And it was too intolerable that Casaubon's dislike of him should not be fairly accounted for
to Dorothea. Yet when he had spoken he was rather uneasy as to the effect on her.
But Dorothea was strangely quiet – not immediately indignant, as she had been on a like
occasion in Rome. And the cause lay deep. She was no longer struggling against the
perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception; and now when she
looked steadily at her husband's failure, still more at his possible consciousness of failure,
she seemed to be looking along the one tract where duty became tenderness. Will's want of
reticence might have been met with more severity, if he had not already been recommended
to her mercy by her husband's dislike, which must seem hard to her till she saw better reason
for it.
She did not answer at once, but after looking down ruminatingly she said, with some
earnestness, "Mr. Casaubon must have overcome his dislike of you so far as his actions were
concerned: and that is admirable."
"Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters. It was an abominable thing that
my grandmother should have been disinherited because she made what they called a
mesalliance, though there was nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a
Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread."
"I wish I knew all about her!" said Dorothea. "I wonder how she bore the change from
wealth to poverty: I wonder whether she was happy with her husband! Do you know much
about them?"
"No; only that my grandfather was a patriot – a bright fellow – could speak many
languages – musical – got his bread by teaching all sorts of things. They both died rather
early. And I never knew much of my father, beyond what my mother told me; but he
inherited the musical talents. I remember his slow walk and his long thin hands; and one day
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remains with me when he was lying ill, and I was very hungry, and had only a little bit of
bread."
"Ah, what a different life from mine!" said Dorothea, with keen interest, clasping her
hands on her lap. "I have always had too much of everything. But tell me how it was – Mr.
Casaubon could not have known about you then."
"No; but my father had made himself known to Mr. Casaubon, and that was my last
hungry day. My father died soon after, and my mother and I were well taken care of. Mr.
Casaubon always expressly recognized it as his duty to take care of us because of the harsh
injustice which had been shown to his mother's sister. But now I am telling you what is not
new to you."
In his inmost soul Will was conscious of wishing to tell Dorothea what was rather new
even in his own construction of things – namely, that Mr. Casaubon had never done more
than pay a debt towards him. Will was much too good a fellow to be easy under the sense of
being ungrateful. And when gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways
of escaping from its bonds.
"No," answered Dorothea; "Mr. Casaubon has always avoided dwelling on his own
honorable actions." She did not feel that her husband's conduct was depreciated; but this
notion of what justice had required in his relations with Will Ladislaw took strong hold on
her mind. After a moment's pause, she added, "He had never told me that he supported your
mother. Is she still living?"
"No; she died by an accident – a fall – four years ago. It is curious that my mother, too,
ran away from her family, but not for the sake of her husband. She never would tell me
anything about her family, except that she forsook them to get her own living – went on the
stage, in fact. She was a dark−eyed creature, with crisp ringlets, and never seemed to be
getting old. You see I come of rebellious blood on both sides," Will ended, smiling brightly
at Dorothea, while she was still looking with serious intentness before her, like a child
seeing a drama for the first time.
But her face, too, broke into a smile as she said, "That is your apology, I suppose, for
having yourself been rather rebellious; I mean, to Mr. Casaubon's wishes. You must
remember that you have not done what he thought best for you. And if he dislikes you – you
were speaking of dislike a little while ago – but I should rather say, if he has shown any
painful feelings towards you, you must consider how sensitive he has become from the
wearing effect of study. Perhaps," she continued, getting into a pleading tone, "my uncle has
not told you how serious Mr. Casaubon's illness was. It would be very petty of us who are
well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of
trial."
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"You teach me better," said Will. "I will never grumble on that subject again." There
was a gentleness in his tone which came from the unutterable contentment of perceiving –
what Dorothea was hardly conscious of – that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure
pity and loyalty towards her husband. Will was ready to adore her pity and loyalty, if she
would associate himself with her in manifesting them. "I have really sometimes been a
perverse fellow," he went on, "but I will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you
would disapprove."
"That is very good of you," said Dorothea, with another open smile. "I shall have a little
kingdom then, where I shall give laws. But you will soon go away, out of my rule, I
imagine. You will soon be tired of staying at the Grange."
"That is a point I wanted to mention to you – one of the reasons why I wished to speak
to you alone. Mr. Brooke proposes that I should stay in this neighborhood. He has bought
one of the Middlemarch newspapers, and he wishes me to conduct that, and also to help him
in other ways."
"Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?" said Dorothea.
"Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and not settling to
anything. And here is something offered to me. If you would not like me to accept it, I will
give it up. Otherwise I would rather stay in this part of the country than go away. I belong to
nobody anywhere else."
"I should like you to stay very much," said Dorothea, at once, as simply and readily as
she had spoken at Rome. There was not the shadow of a reason in her mind at the moment
why she should not say so.
"Then I WILL stay," said Ladislaw, shaking his head backward, rising and going
towards the window, as if to see whether the rain had ceased.
But the next moment, Dorothea, according to a habit which was getting continually
stronger, began to reflect that her husband felt differently from herself, and she colored
deeply under the double embarrassment of having expressed what might be in opposition to
her husband's feeling, and of having to suggest this opposition to Will. If is face was not
turned towards her, and this made it easier to say –
"But my opinion is of little consequence on such a subject. I think you should be guided
by Mr. Casaubon. I spoke without thinking of anything else than my own feeling, which has
nothing to do with the real question. But it now occurs to me – perhaps Mr. Casaubon might
see that the proposal was not wise. Can you not wait now and mention it to him?"
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"I can't wait to−day," said Will, inwardly seared by the possibility that Mr. Casaubon
would enter. "The rain is quite over now. I told Mr. Brooke not to call for me: I would rather
walk the five miles. I shall strike across Halsell Common, and see the gleams on the wet
grass. I like that."
He approached her to shake hands quite hurriedly, longing but not daring to say, "Don't
mention the subject to Mr. Casaubon." No, he dared not, could not say it. To ask her to be
less simple and direct would be like breathing on the crystal that you want to see the light
through. And there was always the other great dread – of himself becoming dimmed and
forever ray−shorn in her eyes.
"I wish you could have stayed," said Dorothea, with a touch of mournfulness, as she
rose and put out her hand. She also had her thought which she did not like to express: – Will
certainly ought to lose no time in consulting Mr. Casaubon's wishes, but for her to urge this
might seem an undue dictation.
So they only said "Good−by," and Will quitted the house, striking across the fields so as
not to run any risk of encountering Mr. Casaubon's carriage, which, however, did not appear
at the gate until four o'clock. That was an unpropitious hour for coming home: it was too
early to gain the moral support under ennui of dressing his person for dinner, and too late to
undress his mind of the day's frivolous ceremony and affairs, so as to be prepared for a good
plunge into the serious business of study. On such occasions he usually threw into an
easy−chair in the library, and allowed Dorothea to read the London papers to him, closing
his eyes the while. To−day, however, he declined that relief, observing that he had already
had too many public details urged upon him; but he spoke more cheerfully than usual, when
Dorothea asked about his fatigue, and added with that air of formal effort which never
forsook him even when he spoke without his waistcoat and cravat –
"I have had the gratification of meeting my former acquaintance, Dr. Spanning, to−day,
and of being praised by one who is himself a worthy recipient of praise. He spoke very
handsomely of my late tractate on the Egyptian Mysteries, – using, in fact, terms which it
would not become me to repeat." In uttering the last clause, Mr. Casaubon leaned over the
elbow of his chair, and swayed his head up and down, apparently as a muscular outlet
instead of that recapitulation which would not have been becoming.
"I am very glad you have had that pleasure," said Dorothea, delighted to see her
husband less weary than usual at this hour. "Before you came I had been regretting that you
happened to be out to−day."
"Why so, my dear?" said Mr. Casaubon, throwing himself backward again.
"Because Mr. Ladislaw has been here; and he has mentioned a proposal of my uncle's
which I should like to know your opinion of." Her husband she felt was really concerned in
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this question. Even with her ignorance of the world she had a vague impression that the
position offered to Will was out of keeping with his family connections, and certainly Mr.
Casaubon had a claim to be consulted. He did not speak, but merely bowed.
"Dear uncle, you know, has many projects. It appears that he has bought one of the
Middlemarch newspapers, and he has asked Mr. Ladislaw to stay in this neighborhood and
conduct the paper for him, besides helping him in other ways."
Dorothea looked at her husband while she spoke, but he had at first blinked and finally
closed his eyes, as if to save them; while his lips became more tense. "What is your
opinion?" she added, rather timidly, after a slight pause.
"Did Mr. Ladislaw come on purpose to ask my opinion?" said Mr. Casaubon, opening
his eyes narrowly with a knife−edged look at Dorothea. She was really uncomfortable on the
point he inquired about, but she only became a little more serious, and her eyes did not
swerve.
"No," she answered immediately, "he did not say that he came to ask your opinion. But
when he mentioned the proposal, he of course expected me to tell you of it."
Mr. Casaubon was silent.
"I feared that you might feel some objection. But certainly a young man with so much
talent might be very useful to my uncle – might help him to do good in a better way. And
Mr. Ladislaw wishes to have some fixed occupation. He has been blamed, he says, for not
seeking something of that kind, and he would like to stay in this neighborhood because no
one cares for him elsewhere."
Dorothea felt that this was a consideration to soften her husband. However, he did not
speak, and she presently recurred to Dr. Spanning and the Archdeacon's breakfast. But there
was no longer sunshine on these subjects.
The next morning, without Dorothea's knowledge, Mr. Casaubon despatched the
following letter, beginning "Dear Mr. Ladislaw" (he had always before addressed him as
"Will"): –
"Mrs. Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and (according to an
inference by no means stretched) has on your part been in some degree entertained, which
involves your residence in this neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying
touches my own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and warrantable IN me
when that effect is viewed under the influence of legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me
when the same effect is considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once that
your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly offensive to me. That I
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have some claim to the exercise of a veto here, would not, I believe, be denied by any
reasonable person cognizant of the relations between us: relations which, though thrown into
the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby annulled in their character of determining
antecedents. I will not here make reflections on any person's judgment. It is enough for me
to point out to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties which should
hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any wise conspicuous in this
vicinity in a status not only much beneath my own, but associated at best with the sciolism
of literary or political adventurers. At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from
further reception at my house.
Yours faithfully,
"Edward CASAUBON."
Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was innocently at work towards the further embitterment
of her husband; dwelling, with a sympathy that grew to agitation, on what Will had told her
about his parents and grandparents. Any private hours in her day were usually spent in her
blue−green boudoir, and she had come to be very fond of its pallid quaintness. Nothing had
been outwardly altered there; but while the summer had gradually advanced over the
western fields beyond the avenue of elms, the bare room had gathered within it those
memories of an inward life which fill the air as with a cloud of good or had angels, the
invisible yet active forms of our spiritual triumphs or our spiritual falls. She had been so
used to struggle for and to find resolve in looking along the avenue towards the arch of
western light that the vision itself had gained a communicating power. Even the pale stag
seemed to have reminding glances and to mean mutely, "Yes, we know." And the group of
delicately touched miniatures had made an audience as of beings no longer disturbed about
their own earthly lot, but still humanly interested. Especially the mysterious "Aunt Julia"
about whom Dorothea had never found it easy to question her husband.
And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had gathered round that
Aunt Julia who was Will's grandmother; the presence of that delicate miniature, so like a
living face that she knew, helping to concentrate her feelings. What a wrong, to cut off the
girl from the family protection and inheritance only because she had chosen a man who was
poor! Dorothea, early troubling her elders with questions about the facts around her, had
wrought herself into some independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons why
eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed: those reasons, impressing
her with a certain awe, might be weightier than she knew, but here was a question of ties
which left them uninfringed. Here was a daughter whose child – even according to the
ordinary aping of aristocratic institutions by people who are no more aristocratic than retired
grocers, and who have no more land to "keep together" than a lawn and a paddock – would
have a prior claim. Was inheritance a question of liking or of responsibility? All the energy
of Dorothea's nature went on the side of responsibility – the fulfilment of claims founded on
our own deeds, such as marriage and parentage.
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It was true, she said to herself, that Mr. Casaubon had a debt to the Ladislaws – that he
had to pay back what the Ladislaws had been wronged of. And now she began to think of
her husband's will, which had been made at the time of their marriage, leaving the bulk of
his property to her, with proviso in case of her having children. That ought to be altered; and
no time ought to be lost. This very question which had just arisen about Will Ladislaw's
occupation, was the occasion for placing things on a new, right footing. Her husband, she
felt sure, according to all his previous conduct, would be ready to take the just view, if she
proposed it – she, in whose interest an unfair concentration of the property had been urged.
His sense of right had surmounted and would continue to surmount anything that might be
called antipathy. She suspected that her uncle's scheme was disapproved by Mr. Casaubon,
and this made it seem all the more opportune that a fresh understanding should be begun, so
that instead of Will's starting penniless and accepting the first function that offered itself, he
should find himself in possession of a rightful income which should be paid by her husband
during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of the will, should be secured at his death.
The vision of all this as what ought to be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of
daylight, waking her from her previous stupidity and incurious self−absorbed ignorance
about her husband's relation to others. Will Ladislaw had refused Mr. Casaubon's future aid
on a ground that no longer appeared right to her; and Mr. Casaubon had never himself seen
fully what was the claim upon him. "But he will!" said Dorothea. "The great strength of his
character lies here. And what are we doing with our money? We make no use of half of our
income. My own money buys me nothing but an uneasy conscience."
There was a peculiar fascination for Dorothea in this division of property intended for
herself, and always regarded by her as excessive. She was blind, you see, to many things
obvious to others – likely to tread in the wrong places, as Celia had warned her; yet her
blindness to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by the side of
precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear.
The thoughts which had gathered vividness in the solitude of her boudoir occupied her
incessantly through the day on which Mr. Casaubon had sent his letter to Will. Everything
seemed hindrance to her till she could find an opportunity of opening her heart to her
husband. To his preoccupied mind all subjects were to be approached gently, and she had
never since his illness lost from her consciousness the dread of agitating him. Bat when
young ardor is set brooding over the conception of a prompt deed, the deed itself seems to
start forth with independent life, mastering ideal obstacles. The day passed in a sombre
fashion, not unusual, though Mr. Casaubon was perhaps unusually silent; but there were
hours of the night which might be counted on as opportunities of conversation; for Dorothea,
when aware of her husband's sleeplessness, had established a habit of rising, lighting a
candle, and reading him to sleep again. And this night she was from the beginning sleepless,
excited by resolves. He slept as usual for a few hours, but she had risen softly and had sat in
the darkness for nearly an hour before he said –
"Dorothea, since you are up, will you light a candle?"
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"Do you feel ill, dear?" was her first question, as she obeyed him.
"No, not at all; but I shall be obliged, since you are up, if you will read me a few pages
of Lowth."
"May I talk to you a little instead?" said Dorothea.
"Certainly."
"I have been thinking about money all day – that I have always had too much, and
especially the prospect of too much."
"These, my dear Dorothea, are providential arrangements."
"But if one has too much in consequence of others being wronged, it seems to me that
the divine voice which tells us to set that wrong right must be obeyed."
"What, my love, is the bearing of your remark?"
"That you have been too liberal in arrangements for me – I mean, with regard to
property; and that makes me unhappy."
"How so? I have none but comparatively distant connections."
"I have been led to think about your aunt Julia, and how she was left in poverty only
because she married a poor man, an act which was not disgraceful, since he was not
unworthy. It was on that ground, I know, that you educated Mr. Ladislaw and provided for
his mother."
Dorothea waited a few moments for some answer that would help her onward. None
came, and her next words seemed the more forcible to her, falling clear upon the dark
silence.
"But surely we should regard his claim as a much greater one, even to the half of that
property which I know that you have destined for me. And I think he ought at once to be
provided for on that understanding. It is not right that he should be in the dependence of
poverty while we are rich. And if there is any objection to the proposal he mentioned, the
giving him his true place and his true share would set aside any motive for his accepting it."
"Mr. Ladislaw has probably been speaking to you on this subject?" said Mr. Casaubon,
with a certain biting quickness not habitual to him.
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"Indeed, no!" said Dorothea, earnestly. "How can you imagine it, since he has so lately
declined everything from you? I fear you think too hardly of him, dear. He only told me a
little about his parents and grandparents, and almost all in answer to my questions. You are
so good, so just – you have done everything you thought to be right. But it seems to me clear
that more than that is right; and I must speak about it, since I am the person who would get
what is called benefit by that `more' not being done."
There was a perceptible pause before Mr. Casaubon replied, not quickly as before, but
with a still more biting emphasis.
"Dorothea, my love, this is not the first occasion, but it were well that it should be the
last, on which you have assumed a judgment on subjects beyond your scope. Into the
question how far conduct, especially in the matter of alliances, constitutes a forfeiture of
family claims, I do not now enter. Suffice it, that you are not here qualified to discriminate.
What I now wish you to understand is, that I accept no revision, still less dictation within
that range of affairs which I have deliberated upon as distinctly and properly mine. It is not
for you to interfere between me and Mr. Ladislaw, and still less to encourage
communications from him to you which constitute a criticism on my procedure."
Poor Dorothea, shrouded in the darkness, was in a tumult of conflicting emotions.
Alarm at the possible effect on himself of her husband's strongly manifested anger, would
have checked any expression of her own resentment, even if she had been quite free from
doubt and compunction under the consciousness that there might be some justice in his last
insinuation. Hearing him breathe quickly after he had spoken, she sat listening, frightened,
wretched – with a dumb inward cry for help to bear this nightmare of a life in which every
energy was arrested by dread. But nothing else happened, except that they both remained a
long while sleepless, without speaking again.
The next day, Mr. Casaubon received the following answer from Will Ladislaw: –
"DEAR MR. CASAUBON, – I have given all due consideration to your letter of
yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual position. With the
fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to me in the past, I must still maintain that
an obligation of this kind cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should.
Granted that a benefactor's wishes may constitute a claim; there must always be a
reservation as to the quality of those wishes. They may possibly clash with more imperative
considerations. Or a benefactor's veto might impose such a negation on a man's life that the
consequent blank might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous. I am merely using
strong illustrations. In the present case I am unable to take your view of the bearing which
my acceptance of occupation – not enriching certainly, but not dishonorable – will have on
your own position which seems to me too substantial to be affected in that shadowy manner.
And though I do not believe that any change in our relations will occur (certainly none has
yet occurred) which can nullify the obligations imposed on me by the past, pardon me for
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not seeing that those obligations should restrain me from using the ordinary freedom of
living where I choose, and maintaining myself by any lawful occupation I may choose.
Regretting that there exists this difference between us as to a relation in which the conferring
of benefits has been entirely on your side –
I remain, yours with persistent obligation,
WILL LADISLAW."
Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him a little?) that
no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than he. Young Ladislaw, he was sure,
meant to defy and annoy him, meant to win Dorothea's confidence and sow her mind with
disrespect, and perhaps aversion, towards her husband. Some motive beneath the surface had
been needed to account for Will's sudden change of in rejecting Mr. Casaubon's aid and
quitting his travels; and this defiant determination to fix himself in the neighborhood by
taking up something so much at variance with his former choice as Mr. Brooke's
Middlemarch projects, revealed clearly enough that the undeclared motive had relation to
Dorothea. Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any doubleness: he
had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little less uncomfortable) the positive
knowledge that her tendency to form opinions about her husband's conduct was
accompanied with a disposition to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by
what he said. His own proud reticence had prevented him from ever being undeceived in the
supposition that Dorothea had originally asked her uncle to invite Will to his house.
And now, on receiving Will's letter, Mr. Casaubon had to consider his duty. He would
never have been easy to call his action anything else than duty; but in this case, contending
motives thrust him back into negations.
Should he apply directly to Mr. Brooke, and demand of that troublesome gentleman to
revoke his proposal? Or should he consult Sir James Chettam, and get him to concur in
remonstrance against a step which touched the whole family? In either case Mr. Casaubon
was aware that failure was just as probable as success. It was impossible for him to mention
Dorothea's name in the matter, and without some alarming urgency Mr. Brooke was as
likely as not, after meeting all representations with apparent assent, to wind up by saying,
"Never fear, Casaubon! Depend upon it, young Ladislaw will do you credit. Depend upon it,
I have put my finger on the right thing." And Mr. Casaubon shrank nervously from
communicating on the subject with Sir James Chettam, between whom and himself there
had never been any cordiality, and who would immediately think of Dorothea without any
mention of her.
Poor Mr. Casaubon was distrustful of everybody's feeling towards him, especially as a
husband. To let any one suppose that he was jealous would be to admit their (suspected)
view of his disadvantages: to let them know that he did not find marriage particularly
blissful would imply his conversion to their (probably) earlier disapproval. It would be as
bad as letting Carp, and Brasenose generally, know how backward he was in organizing the
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matter for his "Key to all Mythologies." All through his life Mr. Casaubon had been trying
not to admit even to himself the inward sores of self−doubt and jealousy. And on the most
delicate of all personal subjects, the habit of proud suspicious reticence told doubly.
Thus Mr. Casaubon remained proudly, bitterly silent. But he had forbidden Will to
come to Lowick Manor, and he was mentally preparing other measures of frustration.
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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
"C
'est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions humaines; tot ou tard il
devient efficace." – GUIZOT.
Sir James Chettam could not look with any satisfaction on Mr. Brooke's new courses;
but it was easier to object than to hinder. Sir James accounted for his having come in alone
one day to lunch with the Cadwalladers by saying –
"I can't talk to you as I want, before Celia: it might hurt her. Indeed, it would not be
right."
"I know what you mean – the `Pioneer' at the Grange!" darted in Mrs. Cadwallader,
almost before the last word was off her friend's tongue. "It is frightful – this taking to buying
whistles and blowing them in everybody's hearing. Lying in bed all day and playing at
dominoes, like poor Lord Plessy, would be more private and bearable."
"I see they are beginning to attack our friend Brooke in the `Trumpet,'" said the Rector,
lounging back and smiling easily, as he would have done if he had been attacked himself.
"There are tremendous sarcasms against a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch,
who receives his own rents, and makes no returns."
"I do wish Brooke would leave that off," said Sir James, with his little frown of
annoyance.
"Is he really going to be put in nomination, though?" said Mr. Cadwallader. "I saw
Farebrother yesterday – he's Whiggish himself, hoists Brougham and Useful Knowledge;
that's the worst I know of him; – and he says that Brooke is getting up a pretty strong party.
Bulstrode, the banker, is his foremost man. But he thinks Brooke would come off badly at a
nomination."
"Exactly," said Sir James, with earnestness. "I have been inquiring into the thing, for
I've never known anything about Middlemarch politics before – the county being my
business. What Brooke trusts to, is that they are going to turn out Oliver because he is a
Peelite. But Hawley tells me that if they send up a Whig at all it is sure to be Bagster, one of
those candidates who come from heaven knows where, but dead against Ministers, and an
experienced Parliamentary man. Hawley's rather rough: he forgot that he was speaking to
me. He said if Brooke wanted a pelting, he could get it cheaper than by going to the
hustings."
"I warned you all of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her hands outward. "I said to
Humphrey long ago, Mr. Brooke is going to make a splash in the mud. And now he has done
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it."
"Well, he might have taken it into his head to marry," said the Rector. "That would have
been a graver mess than a little flirtation with politics."
"He may do that afterwards," said Mrs. Cadwallader – "when he has come out on the
other side of the mud with an ague."
"What I care for most is his own dignity," said Sir James. "Of course I care the more
because of the family. But he's getting on in life now, and I don't like to think of his
exposing himself. They will be raking up everything against him."
"I suppose it's no use trying any persuasion," said the Rector. "There's such an odd
mixture of obstinacy and changeableness in Brooke. Have you tried him on the subject?"
"Well, no," said Sir James; "I feel a delicacy in appearing to dictate. But I have been
talking to this young Ladislaw that Brooke is making a factotum of. Ladislaw seems clever
enough for anything. I thought it as well to hear what he had to say; and he is against
Brooke's standing this time. I think he'll turn him round: I think the nomination may be
staved off."
"I know," said Mrs. Cadwallader, nodding. "The independent member hasn't got his
speeches well enough by heart."
"But this Ladislaw – there again is a vexatious business," said Sir James. "We have had
him two or three times to dine at the Hall (you have met him, by the bye) as Brooke's guest
and a relation of Casaubon's, thinking he was only on a flying visit. And now I find he's in
everybody's mouth in Middlemarch as the editor of the `Pioneer.' There are stories going
about him as a quill−driving alien, a foreign emissary, and what not."
"Casaubon won't like that," said the Rector.
"There IS some foreign blood in Ladislaw," returned Sir James. "I hope he won't go into
extreme opinions and carry Brooke on."
"Oh, he's a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Ladislaw," said Mrs. Cadwallader, "with his
opera songs and his ready tongue. A sort of Byronic hero – an amorous conspirator, it strikes
me. And Thomas Aquinas is not fond of him. I could see that, the day the picture was
brought."
"I don't like to begin on the subject with Casaubon," said Sir James. "He has more right
to interfere than I. But it's a disagreeable affair all round. What a character for anybody with
decent connections to show himself in! – one of those newspaper fellows! You have only to
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look at Keck, who manages the `Trumpet.' I saw him the other day with Hawley. His writing
is sound enough, I believe, but he's such a low fellow, that I wished he had been on the
wrong side."
"What can you expect with these peddling Middlemarch papers?" said the Rector. "I
don't suppose you could get a high style of man anywhere to be writing up interests he
doesn't really care about, and for pay that hardly keeps him in at elbows."
"Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Brooke should have put a man who has a sort
of connection with the family in a position of that kind. For my part, I think Ladislaw is
rather a fool for accepting."
"It is Aquinas's fault," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Why didn't he use his interest to get
Ladislaw made an attache or sent to India? That is how families get rid of troublesome
sprigs."
"There is no knowing to what lengths the mischief may go," said Sir James, anxiously.
"But if Casaubon says nothing, what can I do?"
"Oh my dear Sir James," said the Rector, "don't let us make too much of all this. It is
likely enough to end in mere smoke. After a month or two Brooke and this Master Ladislaw
will get tired of each other; Ladislaw will take wing; Brooke will sell the `Pioneer,' and
everything will settle down again as usual."
"There is one good chance – that he will not like to feel his money oozing away," said
Mrs. Cadwallader. "If I knew the items of election expenses I could scare him. It's no use
plying him with wide words like Expenditure: I wouldn't talk of phlebotomy, I would empty
a pot of leeches upon him. What we good stingy people don't like, is having our sixpences
sucked away from us."
"And he will not like having things raked up against him," said Sir James. "There is the
management of his estate. they have begun upon that already. And it really is painful for me
to see. It is a nuisance under one's very nose. I do think one is bound to do the best for one's
land and tenants, especially in these hard times."
"Perhaps the `Trumpet' may rouse him to make a change, and some good may come of
it all," said the Rector. "I know I should be glad. I should hear less grumbling when my tithe
is paid. I don't know what I should do if there were not a modus in Tipton."
"I want him to have a proper man to look after things – I want him to take on Garth
again," said Sir James. "He got rid of Garth twelve years ago, and everything has been going
wrong since. I think of getting Garth to manage for me – he has made such a capital plan for
my buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark. But Garth would not undertake the
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Tipton estate again unless Brooke left it entirely to him."
"In the right of it too," said the Rector. "Garth is an independent fellow: an original,
simple−minded fellow. One day, when he was doing some valuation for me, he told me
point−blank that clergymen seldom understood anything about business, and did mischief
when they meddled; but he said it as quietly and respectfully as if he had been talking to me
about sailors. He would make a different parish of Tipton, if Brooke would let him manage.
I wish, by the help of the `Trumpet,' you could bring that round."
"If Dorothea had kept near her uncle, there would have been some chance," said Sir
James. "She might have got some power over him in time, and she was always uneasy about
the estate. She had wonderfully good notions about such things. But now Casaubon takes
her up entirely. Celia complains a good deal. We can hardly get her to dine with us, since he
had that fit." Sir James ended with a look of pitying disgust, and Mrs. Cadwallader shrugged
her shoulders as much as to say that SHE was not likely to see anything new in that
direction.
"Poor Casaubon!" the Rector said. "That was a nasty attack. I thought he looked
shattered the other day at the Archdeacon's."
"In point of fact," resumed Sir James, not choosing to dwell on "fits," "Brooke doesn't
mean badly by his tenants or any one else, but he has got that way of paring and clipping at
expenses."
"Come, that's a blessing," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "That helps him to find himself in a
morning. He may not know his own opinions, but he does know his own pocket."
"I don't believe a man is in pocket by stinginess on his land," said Sir James.
"Oh, stinginess may be abused like other virtues: it will not do to keep one's own pigs
lean," said Mrs. Cadwallader, who had risen to look out of the window. "But talk of an
independent politician and he will appear."
"What! Brooke?" said her husband.
"Yes. Now, you ply him with the `Trumpet,' Humphrey; and I will put the leeches on
him. What will you do, Sir James?"
"The fact is, I don't like to begin about it with Brooke, in our mutual position; the whole
thing is so unpleasant. I do wish people would behave like gentlemen," said the good
baronet, feeling that this was a simple and comprehensive programme for social well−being.
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"Here you all are, eh?" said Mr. Brooke, shuffling round and shaking hands. "I was
going up to the Hall by−and−by, Chettam. But it's pleasant to find everybody, you know.
Well, what do you think of things? – going on a little fast! It was true enough, what Lafitte
said – `Since yesterday, a century has passed away:' – they're in the next century, you know,
on the other side of the water. Going on faster than we are."
"Why, yes," said the Rector, taking up the newspaper. "Here is the `Trumpet' accusing
you of lagging behind – did you see?"
"Eh? no," said Mr. Brooke, dropping his gloves into his hat and hastily adjusting his
eye−glass. But Mr. Cadwallader kept the paper in his hand, saying, with a smile in his eyes –
"Look here! all this is about a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who
receives his own rents. They say he is the most retrogressive man in the county. I think you
must have taught them that word in the `Pioneer.'"
"Oh, that is Keek – an illiterate fellow, you know. Retrogressive, now! Come, that's
capital. He thinks it means destructive: they want to make me out a destructive, you know,"
said Mr. Brooke, with that cheerfulness which is usually sustained by an adversary's
ignorance.
"I think he knows the meaning of the word. Here is a sharp stroke or two. If we had to
describe a man who is retrogressive in the most evil sense of the word – we should say, he is
one who would dub himself a reformer of our constitution, while every interest for which he
is immediately responsible is going to decay: a philanthropist who cannot bear one rogue to
be hanged, but does not mind five honest tenants being half−starved: a man who shrieks at
corruption, and keeps his farms at rack−rent: who roars himself red at rotten boroughs, and
does not mind if every field on his farms has a rotten gate: a man very open−hearted to
Leeds and Manchester, no doubt; he would give any number of representatives who will pay
for their seats out of their own pockets: what he objects to giving, is a little return on
rent−days to help a tenant to buy stock, or an outlay on repairs to keep the weather out at a
tenant's barn−door or make his house look a little less like an Irish cottier's. But we all know
the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square
of the distance. And so on. All the rest is to show what sort of legislator a philanthropist is
likely to make," ended the Rector, throwing down the paper, and clasping his hands at the
back of his head, while he looked at Mr. Brooke with an air of amused neutrality.
"Come, that's rather good, you know," said Mr. Brooke, taking up the paper and trying
to bear the attack as easily as his neighbor did, but coloring and smiling rather nervously;
"that about roaring himself red at rotten boroughs – I never made a speech about rotten
boroughs in my life. And as to roaring myself red and that kind of thing – these men never
understand what is good satire. Satire, you know, should be true up to a certain point. I
recollect they said that in `The Edinburgh' somewhere – it must be true up to a certain
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point."
"Well, that is really a hit about the gates," said Sir James, anxious to tread carefully.
"Dagley complained to me the other day that he hadn't got a decent gate on his farm. Garth
has invented a new pattern of gate – I wish you would try it. One ought to use some of one's
timber in that way."
"You go in for fancy farming, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, appearing to
glance over the columns of the "Trumpet." "That's your hobby, and you don't mind the
expense."
"I thought the most expensive hobby in the world was standing for Parliament," said
Mrs. Cadwallader. "They said the last unsuccessful candidate at Middlemarch – Giles,
wasn't his name? – spent ten thousand pounds and failed because he did not bribe enough.
What a bitter reflection for a man!"
"Somebody was saying," said the Rector, laughingly, "that East Retford was nothing to
Middlemarch, for bribery."
"Nothing of the kind," said Mr. Brooke. "The Tories bribe, you know: Hawley and his
set bribe with treating, hot codlings, and that sort of thing; and they bring the voters drunk to
the poll. But they are not going to have it their own way in future – not in future, you know.
Middlemarch is a little backward, I admit – the freemen are a little backward. But we shall
educate them – we shall bring them on, you know. The best people there are on our side."
"Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm," remarked Sir James.
"He says Bulstrode the banker will do you harm."
"And that if you got pelted," interposed Mrs. Cadwallader, "half the rotten eggs would
mean hatred of your committee−man. Good heavens! Think what it must be to be pelted for
wrong opinions. And I seem to remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let
him fall into a dust−heap on purpose!"
"Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one's coat," said the Rector. "I confess that's
what I should be afraid of, if we parsons had to stand at the hustings for preferment. I should
be afraid of their reckoning up all my fishing days. Upon my word, I think the truth is the
hardest missile one can be pelted with."
"The fact is," said Sir James, "if a man goes into public life he must be prepared for the
consequences. He must make himself proof against calumny."
"My dear Chettam, that is all very fine, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "But how will you
make yourself proof against calumny? You should read history – look at ostracism,
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persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you
know. But what is that in Horace? – 'fiat justitia, ruat . . . something or other."
"Exactly," said Sir James, with a little more heat than usual. "What I mean by being
proof against calumny is being able to point to the fact as a contradiction."
"And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's self," said Mrs.
Cadwallader.
But it was Sir James's evident annoyance that most stirred Mr. Brooke. "Well, you
know, Chettam," he said, rising, taking up his hat and leaning on his stick, "you and I have a
different system. You are all for outlay with your farms. I don't want to make out that my
system is good under all circumstances – under all circumstances, you know."
"There ought to be a new valuation made from time to time," said Sir James. "Returns
are very well occasionally, but I like a fair valuation. What do you say, Cadwallader?"
"I agree with you. If I were Brooke, I would choke the `Trumpet' at once by getting
Garth to make a new valuation of the farms, and giving him carte blanche about gates and
repairs: that's my view of the political situation," said the Rector, broadening himself by
sticking his thumbs in his armholes, and laughing towards Mr. Brooke.
"That's a showy sort of thing to do, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "But I should like you
to tell me of another landlord who has distressed his tenants for arrears as little as I have. I
let the old tenants stay on. I'm uncommonly easy, let me tell you, uncommonly easy. I have
my own ideas, and I take my stand on them, you know. A man who does that is always
charged with eccentricity, inconsistency, and that kind of thing. When I change my line of
action, I shall follow my own ideas."
After that, Mr. Brooke remembered that there was a packet which he had omitted to
send off from the Grange, and he bade everybody hurriedly good−by.
"I didn't want to take a liberty with Brooke," said Sir James; "I see he is nettled. But as
to what he says about old tenants, in point of fact no new tenant would take the farms on the
present terms."
"I have a notion that he will be brought round in time," said the Rector. "But you were
pulling one way, Elinor, and we were pulling another. You wanted to frighten him away
from expense, and we want to frighten him into it. Better let him try to be popular and see
that his character as a landlord stands in his way. I don't think it signifies two straws about
the `Pioneer,' or Ladislaw, or Brooke's speechifying to the Middlemarchers. But it does
signify about the parishioners in Tipton being comfortable."
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"Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "You
should have proved to him that he loses money by bad management, and then we should all
have pulled together. If you put him a−horseback on politics, I warn you of the
consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas."
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CHAPTER XXXIX.
"I
f, as I have, you also doe, Vertue attired in woman see, And dare love that, and say so
too, And forget the He and She;
And if this love, though placed so, From prophane men you hide, Which will no faith
on this bestow, Or, if they doe, deride:
Then you have done a braver thing Than all the Worthies did, And a braver thence will
spring, Which is, to keep that hid." – DR. DONNE.
Sir James Chettam's mind was not fruitful ill devices, but his growing anxiety to "act on
Brooke," once brought close to his constant belief in Dorothea's capacity for influence,
became formative, and issued in a little plan; namely, to plead Celia's indisposition as a
reason for fetching Dorothea by herself to the Hall, and to leave her at the Grange with the
carriage on the way, after making her fully aware of the situation concerning the
management of the estate.
In this way it happened that one day near four o'clock, when Mr. Brooke and Ladislaw
were seated in the library, the door opened and Mrs. Casaubon was announced.
Will, the moment before, had been low in the depths of boredom, and, obliged to help
Mr. Brooke in arranging "documents" about hanging sheep−stealers, was exemplifying the
power our minds have of riding several horses at once by inwardly arranging measures
towards getting a lodging for himself in Middlemarch and cutting short his constant
residence at the Grange; while there flitted through all these steadier images a tickling vision
of a sheep−stealing epic written with Homeric particularity. When Mrs. Casaubon was
announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his finger−ends. Any
one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his
facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that
every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. For
effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches
which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man's passion for one woman
differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and
white mountain−top differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels? Will, too,
was made of very impressible stuff. The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at
one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted – as easily
as his mood. Dorothea's entrance was the freshness of morning.
"Well, my dear, this is pleasant, now," said Mr. Brooke, meeting and kissing her. "You
have left Casaubon with his books, I suppose. That's right. We must not have you getting too
learned for a woman, you know."
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"There is no fear of that, uncle," said Dorothea, turning to Will and shaking hands with
open cheerfulness, while she made no other form of greeting, but went on answering her
uncle. "I am very slow. When I want to be busy with books, I am often playing truant among
my thoughts. I find it is not so easy to be learned as to plan cottages."
She seated herself beside her uncle opposite to Will, and was evidently preoccupied
with something that made her almost unmindful of him. He was ridiculously disappointed,
as if he had imagined that her coming had anything to do with him.
"Why, yes, my dear, it was quite your hobby to draw plans. But it was good to break
that off a little. Hobbies are apt to ran away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away
with. We must keep the reins. I have never let myself be run away with; I always pulled up.
That is what I tell Ladislaw. He and I are alike, you know: he likes to go into everything. We
are working at capital punishment. We shall do a great deal together, Ladislaw and I."
"Yes," said Dorothea, with characteristic directness, "Sir James has been telling me that
he is in hope of seeing a great change made soon in your management of the estate – that
you are thinking of having the farms valued, and repairs made, and the cottages improved,
so that Tipton may look quite another place. Oh, how happy!" – she went on, clasping her
hands, with a return to that more childlike impetuous manner, which had been subdued since
her marriage. "If I were at home still, I should take to riding again, that I might go about
with you and see all that! And you are going to engage Mr. Garth, who praised my cottages,
Sir James says."
"Chettam is a little hasty, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, coloring slightly; "a little hasty,
you know. I never said I should do anything of the kind. I never said I should NOT do it,
you know."
"He only feels confident that you will do it," said Dorothea, in a voice as clear and
unhesitating as that of a young chorister chanting a credo, "because you mean to enter
Parliament as a member who cares for the improvement of the people, and one of the first
things to be made better is the state of the land and the laborers. Think of Kit Downes, uncle,
who lives with his wife and seven children in a house with one sitting room and one
bedroom hardly larger than this table! – and those poor Dagleys, in their tumble−down
farmhouse, where they live in the back kitchen and leave the other rooms to the rats! That is
one reason why I did not like the pictures here, dear uncle – which you think me stupid
about. I used to come from the village with all that dirt and coarse ugliness like a pain within
me, and the simpering pictures in the drawing−room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to
find delight in what is false, while we don't mind how hard the truth is for the neighbors
outside our walls. I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for
good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands."
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Dorothea had gathered emotion as she went on, and had forgotten everything except the
relief of pouring forth her feelings, unchecked: an experience once habitual with her, but
hardly ever present since her marriage, which had been a perpetual struggle of energy with
fear. For the moment, Will's admiration was accompanied with a chilling sense of
remoteness. A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a woman so well when
he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having intended greatness for men. But nature has
sometimes made sad oversights in carrying out her intention; as in the case of good Mr.
Brooke, whose masculine consciousness was at this moment in rather a stammering
condition under the eloquence of his niece. He could not immediately find any other mode
of expressing himself than that of rising, fixing his eye−glass, and fingering the papers
before him. At last he said –
"There is something in what you say, my dear, something in what you say – but not
everything – eh, Ladislaw? You and I don't like our pictures and statues being found fault
with. Young ladies are a little ardent, you know – a little one−sided, my dear. Fine art,
poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation – emollit mores – you understand a little Latin
now. But – eh? what?"
These interrogatives were addressed to the footman who had come in to say that the
keeper had found one of Dagley's boys with a leveret in his hand just killed.
"I'll come, I'll come. I shall let him off easily, you know," said Mr. Brooke aside to
Dorothea, shuffling away very cheerfully.
"I hope you feel how right this change is that I – that Sir James wishes for," said
Dorothea to Will, as soon as her uncle was gone.
"I do, now I have heard you speak about it. I shall not forget what you have said. But
can you think of something else at this moment? I may not have another opportunity of
speaking to you about what has occurred," said Will, rising with a movement of impatience,
and holding the back of his chair with both hands.
"Pray tell me what it is," said Dorothea, anxiously, also rising and going to the open
window, where Monk was looking in, panting and wagging his tail. She leaned her back
against the window−frame, and laid her hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she
was not fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was always attentive
to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to decline their advances.
Will followed her only with his eyes and said, "I presume you know that Mr. Casaubon
has forbidden me to go to his house."
"No, I did not," said Dorothea, after a moment's pause. She was evidently much moved.
"I am very, very sorry," she added, mournfully. She was thinking of what Will had no
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knowledge of – the conversation between her and her husband in the darkness; and she was
anew smitten with hopelessness that she could influence Mr. Casaubon's action. But the
marked expression of her sorrow convinced Will that it was not all given to him personally,
and that Dorothea had not been visited by the idea that Mr. Casaubon's dislike and jealousy
of him turned upon herself. He felt an odd mixture of delight and vexation: of delight that he
could dwell and be cherished in her thought as in a pure home, without suspicion and
without stint – of vexation because he was of too little account with her, was not formidable
enough, was treated with an unhesitating benevolence which did not flatter him. But his
dread of any change in Dorothea was stronger than his discontent, and he began to speak
again in a tone of mere explanation.
"Mr. Casaubon's reason is, his displeasure at my taking a position here which he
considers unsuited to my rank as his cousin. I have told him that I cannot give way on this
point. It is a little too hard on me to expect that my course in life is to be hampered by
prejudices which I think ridiculous. Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a
brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning. I would not
have accepted the position if I had not meant to make it useful and honorable. I am not
bound to regard family dignity in any other light."
Dorothea felt wretched. She thought her husband altogether in the wrong, on more
grounds than Will had mentioned.
"It is better for us not to speak on the subject," she said, with a tremulousness not
common in her voice, "since you and Mr. Casaubon disagree. You intend to remain?" She
was looking out on the lawn, with melancholy meditation.
"Yes; but I shall hardly ever see you now," said Will, in a tone of almost boyish
complaint.
"No," said Dorothea, turning her eyes full upon him, "hardly ever. But I shall hear of
you. I shall know what you are doing for my uncle."
"I shall know hardly anything about you," said Will. "No one will tell me anything."
"Oh, my life is very simple," said Dorothea, her lips curling with an exquisite smile,
which irradiated her melancholy. "I am always at Lowick."
"That is a dreadful imprisonment," said Will, impetuously.
"No, don't think that," said Dorothea. "I have no longings."
He did not speak, but she replied to some change in his expression. "I mean, for myself.
Except that I should like not to have so much more than my share without doing anything
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for others. But I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me."
"What is that?" said Will, rather jealous of the belief.
"That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and
cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil – widening the skirts
of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower."
"That is a beautiful mysticism – it is a – "
"Please not to call it by any name," said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly.
"You will say it is Persian, or something else geographical. It is my life. I have found it out,
and cannot part with it. I have always been finding out my religion since I was a little girl. I
used to pray so much – now I hardly ever pray. I try not to have desires merely for myself,
because they may not be good for others, and I have too much already. I only told you, that
you might know quite well how my days go at Lowick."
"God bless you for telling me!" said Will, ardently, and rather wondering at himself.
They were looking at each other like two fond children who were talking confidentially of
birds.
"What is YOUR religion?" said Dorothea. "I mean – not what you know about religion,
but the belief that helps you most?"
"To love what is good and beautiful when I see it," said Will. "But I am a rebel: I don't
feel bound, as you do, to submit to what I don't like."
"But if you like what is good, that comes to the same thing," said Dorothea, smiling.
"Now you are subtle," said Will.
"Yes; Mr. Casaubon often says I am too subtle. I don't feel as if I were subtle," said
Dorothea, playfully. "But how long my uncle is! I must go and look for him. I must really go
on to the Hall. Celia is expecting me."
Will offered to tell Mr. Brooke, who presently came and said that he would step into the
carriage and go with Dorothea as far as Dagley's, to speak about the small delinquent who
had been caught with the Ieveret. Dorothea renewed the subject of the estate as they drove
along, but Mr. Brooke, not being taken unawares, got the talk under his own control.
"Chettam, now," he replied; "he finds fault with me, my dear; but I should not preserve
my game if it were not for Chettam, and he can't say that that expense is for the sake of the
tenants, you know. It's a little against my feeling: – poaching, now, if you come to look into
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it – I have often thought of getting up the subject. Not long ago, Flavell, the Methodist
preacher, was brought up for knocking down a hare that came across his path when he and
his wife were walking out together. He was pretty quick, and knocked it on the neck."
"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
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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.
"Dagley, my good fellow," began Mr. Brooke, conscious that he was going to be very
friendly about the boy.
"Oh, ay, I'm a good feller, am I? Thank ye, sir, thank ye," said Dagley, with a loud
snarling irony which made Fag the sheep−dog stir from his seat and prick his ears; but
seeing Monk enter the yard after some outside loitering, Fag seated himself again in an
attitude of observation. "I'm glad to hear I'm a good feller."
Mr. Brooke reflected that it was market−day, and that his worthy tenant had probably
been dining, but saw no reason why he should not go on, since he could take the precaution
of repeating what he had to say to Mrs. Dagley.
"Your little lad Jacob has been caught killing a leveret, Dagley: I have told Johnson to
lock him up in the empty stable an hour or two, just to frighten him, you know. But he will
be brought home by−and−by, before night: and you'll just look after him, will you, and give
him a reprimand, you know?"
"No, I woon't: I'll be dee'd if I'll leather my boy to please you or anybody else, not if
you was twenty landlords istid o' one, and that a bad un."
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Dagley's words were loud enough to summon his wife to the back−kitchen door – the
only entrance ever used, and one always open except in bad weather – and Mr. Brooke,
saying soothingly, "Well, well, I'll speak to your wife – I didn't mean beating, you know,"
turned to walk to the house. But Dagley, only the more inclined to "have his say" with a
gentleman who walked away from him, followed at once, with Fag slouching at his heels
and sullenly evading some small and probably charitable advances on the part of Monk.
"How do you do, Mrs. Dagley?" said Mr. Brooke, making some haste. "I came to tell
you about your boy: I don't want you to give him the stick, you know." He was careful to
speak quite plainly this time.
Overworked Mrs. Dagley – a thin, worn woman, from whose life pleasure had so
entirely vanished that she had not even any Sunday clothes which could give her satisfaction
in preparing for church – had already had a misunderstanding with her husband since he had
come home, and was in low spirits, expecting the worst. But her husband was beforehand in
answering.
"No, nor he woon't hev the stick, whether you want it or no," pursued Dagley, throwing
out his voice, as if he wanted it to hit hard. "You've got no call to come an' talk about sticks
o' these primises, as you woon't give a stick tow'rt mending. Go to Middlemarch to ax for
YOUR charrickter."
"You'd far better hold your tongue, Dagley," said the wife, "and not kick your own
trough over. When a man as is father of a family has been an' spent money at market and
made himself the worse for liquor, he's done enough mischief for one day. But I should like
to know what my boy's done, sir."
"Niver do you mind what he's done," said Dagley, more fiercely, "it's my business to
speak, an' not yourn. An' I wull speak, too. I'll hev my say – supper or no. An' what I say is,
as I've lived upo' your ground from my father and grandfather afore me, an' hev dropped our
money into't, an' me an' my children might lie an' rot on the ground for top−dressin' as we
can't find the money to buy, if the King wasn't to put a stop."
"My good fellow, you're drunk, you know," said Mr. Brooke, confidentially but not
judiciously. "Another day, another day," he added, turning as if to go.
But Dagley immediately fronted him, and Fag at his heels growled low, as his master's
voice grew louder and more insulting, while Monk also drew close in silent dignified watch.
The laborers on the wagon were pausing to listen, and it seemed wiser to be quite passive
than to attempt a ridiculous flight pursued by a bawling man.
"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,
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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
close−fisted 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.
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CHAPTER XL.
W
ise 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 tea−spoon 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
bread−crumb." 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?" said Mrs. Garth, laying the letters down.
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"I shall go to the school at York," said Mary. "I am less unfit to teach in a school than in
a family. I like to teach classes best. And, you see, I must teach: there is nothing else to be
done."
"Teaching seems to me the most delightful work in the world," said Mrs. Garth, with a
touch of rebuke in her tone. "I could understand your objection to it if you had not
knowledge enough, Mary, or if you disliked children."
"I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like, mother," said
Mary, rather curtly. "I am not fond of a schoolroom: I like the outside world better. It is a
very inconvenient fault of mine."
"It must be very stupid to be always in a girls' school," said Alfred. "Such a set of
nincompoops, like Mrs. Ballard's pupils walking two and two."
"And they have no games worth playing at," said Jim. "They can neither throw nor leap.
I don't wonder at Mary's not liking it."
"What is that Mary doesn't like, eh?" said the father, looking over his spectacles and
pausing before he opened his next letter.
"Being among a lot of nincompoop girls," said Alfred.
"Is it the situation you had heard of, Mary?" said Caleb, gently, looking at his daughter.
"Yes, father: the school at York. I have determined to take it. It is quite the best.
Thirty−five pounds a−year, and extra pay for teaching the smallest strummers at the piano."
"Poor child! I wish she could stay at home with us, Susan," said Caleb, looking
plaintively at his wife.
"Mary would not be happy without doing her duty," said Mrs. Garth, magisterially,
conscious of having done her own.
"It wouldn't make me happy to do such a nasty duty as that," said Alfred – at which
Mary and her father laughed silently, but Mrs. Garth said, gravely –
"Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred, for everything that you think
disagreeable. And suppose that Mary could help you to go to Mr. Hanmer's with the money
she gets?"
"That seems to me a great shame. But she's an old brick," said Alfred, rising from his
chair, and pulling Mary's head backward to kiss her.
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Mary colored and laughed, but could not conceal that the tears were coming. Caleb,
looking on over his spectacles, with the angles of his eyebrows falling, had an expression of
mingled delight and sorrow as he returned to the opening of his letter; and even Mrs. Garth,
her lips curling with a calm contentment, allowed that inappropriate language to pass
without correction, although Ben immediately took it up, and sang, "She's an old brick, old
brick, old brick!" to a cantering measure, which he beat out with his fist on Mary's arm.
But Mrs. Garth's eyes were now drawn towards her husband, who was already deep in
the letter he was reading. His face had an expression of grave surprise, which alarmed her a
little, but he did not like to be questioned while he was reading, and she remained anxiously
watching till she saw him suddenly shaken by a little joyous laugh as he turned back to the
beginning of the letter, and looking at her above his spectacles, said, in a low tone, "What do
you think, Susan?"
She went and stood behind him, putting her hand on his shoulder, while they read the
letter together. It was from Sir James Chettam, offering to Mr. Garth the management of the
family estates at Freshitt and elsewhere, and adding that Sir James had been requested by
Mr. Brooke of Tipton to ascertain whether Mr. Garth would be disposed at the same time to
resume the agency of the Tipton property. The Baronet added in very obliging words that he
himself was particularly desirous of seeing the Freshitt and Tipton estates under the same
management, and he hoped to be able to show that the double agency might be held on
terms agreeable to Mr. Garth, whom he would be glad to see at the Hall at twelve o'clock on
the following day.
"He writes handsomely, doesn't he, Susan?" said Caleb, turning his eyes upward to his
wife, who raised her hand from his shoulder to his ear, while she rested her chin on his head.
"Brooke didn't like to ask me himself, I can see," he continued, laughing silently.
"Here is an honor to your father, children," said Mrs. Garth, looking round at the five
pair of eyes, all fixed on the parents. "He is asked to take a post again by those who
dismissed him long ago. That shows that he did his work well, so that they feel the want of
him."
"Like Cincinnatus – hooray!" said Ben, riding on his chair, with a pleasant confidence
that discipline was relaxed.
"Will they come to fetch him, mother?" said Letty, thinking of the Mayor and
Corporation in their robes.
Mrs. Garth patted Letty's head and smiled, but seeing that her husband was gathering up
his letters and likely soon to be out of reach in that sanctuary "business," she pressed his
shoulder and said emphatically –
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"Now, mind you ask fair pay, Caleb."
"Oh yes," said Caleb, in a deep voice of assent, as if it would be unreasonable to
suppose anything else of him. "It'll come to between four and five hundred, the two
together." Then with a little start of remembrance he said, "Mary, write and give up that
school. Stay and help your mother. I'm as pleased as Punch, now I've thought of that."
No manner could have been less like that of Punch triumphant than Caleb's, but his
talents did not lie in finding phrases, though he was very particular about his letter−writing,
and regarded his wife as a treasury of correct language.
There was almost an uproar among the children now, and Mary held up the cambric
embroidery towards her mother entreatingly, that it might be put out of reach while the boys
dragged her into a dance. Mrs. Garth, in placid joy, began to put the cups and plates
together, while Caleb pushing his chair from the table, as if he were going to move to the
desk, still sat holding his letters in his hand and looking on the ground meditatively,
stretching out the fingers of his left hand, according to a mute language of his own. At last
he said –
"It's a thousand pities Christy didn't take to business, Susan. I shall want help
by−and−by. And Alfred must go off to the engineering – I've made up my mind to that." He
fell into meditation and finger−rhetoric again for a little while, and then continued: "I shall
make Brooke have new agreements with the tenants, and I shall draw up a rotation of crops.
And I'll lay a wager we can get fine bricks out of the clay at Bott's corner. I must look into
that: it would cheapen the repairs. It's a fine bit of work, Susan! A man without a family
would be glad to do it for nothing."
"Mind you don't, though," said his wife, lifting up her finger.
"No, no; but it's a fine thing to come to a man when he's seen into the nature of
business: to have the chance of getting a bit of the country into good fettle, as they say, and
putting men into the right way with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and
solid building done – that those who are living and those who come after will be the better
for. I'd sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work that is." Here Caleb
laid down his letters, thrust his fingers between the buttons of his waistcoat, and sat upright,
but presently proceeded with some awe in his voice and moving his head slowly aside – "It's
a great gift of God, Susan."
"That it is, Caleb," said his wife, with answering fervor. "And it will be a blessing to
your children to have had a father who did such work: a father whose good work remains
though his name may be forgotten." She could not say any more to him then about the pay.
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In the evening, when Caleb, rather tired with his day's work, was seated in silence with
his pocket−book open on his knee, while Mrs. Garth and Mary were at their sewing, and
Letty in a corner was whispering a dialogue with her doll, Mr. Farebrother came up the
orchard walk, dividing the bright August lights and shadows with the tufted grass and the
apple−tree boughs. We know that he was fond of his parishioners the Garths, and had
thought Mary worth mentioning to Lydgate. He used to the full the clergyman's privilege of
disregarding the Middlemarch discrimination of ranks, and always told his mother that Mrs.
Garth was more of a lady than any matron in the town. Still, you see, he spent his evenings
at the Vincys', where the matron, though less of a lady, presided over a well−lit
drawing−room and whist. In those days human intercourse was not determined solely by
respect. But the Vicar did heartily respect the Garths, and a visit from him was no surprise to
that family. Nevertheless he accounted for it even while he was shaking hands, by saying, "I
come as an envoy, Mrs. Garth: I have something to say to you and Garth on behalf of Fred
Vincy. The fact is, poor fellow," he continued, as he seated himself and looked round with
his bright glance at the three who were listening to him, "he has taken me into his
confidence."
Mary's heart beat rather quickly: she wondered how far Fred's confidence had gone.
"We haven't seen the lad for months," said Caleb. "I couldn't think what was become of
him."
"He has been away on a visit," said the Vicar, "because home was a little too hot for
him, and Lydgate told his mother that the poor fellow must not begin to study yet. But
yesterday he came and poured himself out to me. I am very glad he did, because I have seen
him grow up from a youngster of fourteen, and I am so much at home in the house that the
children are like nephews and nieces to me. But it is a difficult case to advise upon.
However, he has asked me to come and tell you that he is going away, and that he is so
miserable about his debt to you, and his inability to pay, that he can't bear to come himself
even to bid you good by."
"Tell him it doesn't signify a farthing," said Caleb, waving his hand. "We've had the
pinch and have got over it. And now I'm going to be as rich as a Jew."
"Which means," said Mrs. Garth, smiling at the Vicar, "that we are going to have
enough to bring up the boys well and to keep Mary at home."
"What is the treasure−trove?" said Mr. Farebrother.
"I'm going to be agent for two estates, Freshitt and Tipton; and perhaps for a pretty little
bit of land in Lowick besides: it's all the same family connection, and employment spreads
like water if it's once set going. It makes me very happy, Mr. Farebrother" – here Caleb
threw back his head a little, and spread his arms on the elbows of his chair – "that I've got an
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CHAPTER XL. 333
opportunity again with the letting of the land, and carrying out a notion or two with
improvements. It's a most uncommonly cramping thing, as I've often told Susan, to sit on
horseback and look over the hedges at the wrong thing, and not be able to put your hand to it
to make it right. What people do who go into politics I can't think: it drives me almost mad
to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres."
It was seldom that Caleb volunteered so long a speech, but his happiness had the effect
of mountain air: his eyes were bright, and the words came without effort.
"I congratulate you heartily, Garth," said the Vicar. "This is the best sort of news I could
have had to carry to Fred Vincy, for he dwelt a good deal on the injury he had done you in
causing you to part with money – robbing you of it, he said – which you wanted for other
purposes. I wish Fred were not such an idle dog; he has some very good points, and his
father is a little hard upon him."
"Where is he going?" said Mrs. Garth, rather coldly.
"He means to try again for his degree, and he is going up to study before term. I have
advised him to do that. I don't urge him to enter the Church – on the contrary. But if he will
go and work so as to pass, that will be some guarantee that he has energy and a will; and he
is quite at sea; he doesn't know what else to do. So far he will please his father, and I have
promised in the mean time to try and reconcile Vincy to his son's adopting some other line
of life. Fred says frankly he is not fit for a clergyman, and I would do anything I could to
hinder a man from the fatal step of choosing the wrong profession. He quoted to me what
you said, Miss Garth – do you remember it?" (Mr. Farebrother used to say "Mary" instead of
"Miss Garth," but it was part of his delicacy to treat her with the more deference because,
according to Mrs. Vincy's phrase, she worked for her bread.)
Mary felt uncomfortable, but, determined to take the matter lightly, answered at once, "I
have said so many impertinent things to Fred – we are such old playfellows."
"You said, according to him, that he would be one of those ridiculous clergymen who
help to make the whole clergy ridiculous. Really, that was so cutting that I felt a little cut
myself."
Caleb laughed. "She gets her tongue from you, Susan," he said, with some enjoyment.
"Not its flippancy, father," said Mary, quickly, fearing that her mother would be
displeased. "It is rather too bad of Fred to repeat my flippant speeches to Mr. Farebrother."
"It was certainly a hasty speech, my dear," said Mrs. Garth, with whom speaking evil of
dignities was a high misdemeanor. "We should not value our Vicar the less because there
was a ridiculous curate in the next parish."
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CHAPTER XL. 334
"There's something in what she says, though," said Caleb, not disposed to have Mary's
sharpness undervalued. "A bad workman of any sort makes his fellows mistrusted. Things
hang together," he added, looking on the floor and moving his feet uneasily with a sense that
words were scantier than thoughts.
"Clearly," said the Vicar, amused. "By being contemptible we set men's minds, to the
tune of contempt. I certainly agree with Miss Garth's view of the matter, whether I am
condemned by it or not. But as to Fred Vincy, it is only fair he should be excused a little: old
Featherstone's delusive behavior did help to spoil him. There was something quite diabolical
in not leaving him a farthing after all. But Fred has the good taste not to dwell on that. And
what he cares most about is having offended you, Mrs. Garth; he supposes you will never
think well of him again."
"I have been disappointed in Fred," said Mrs. Garth, with decision. "But I shall be ready
to think well of him again when he gives me good reason to do so."
At this point Mary went out of the room, taking Letty with her.
"Oh, we must forgive young people when they're sorry," said Caleb, watching Mary
close the door. "And as you say, Mr. Farebrother, there was the very devil in that old man."
Now Mary's gone out, I must tell you a thing – it's only known to Susan and me, and
you'll not tell it again. The old scoundrel wanted Mary to burn one of the wills the very night
he died, when she was sitting up with him by herself, and he offered her a sum of money
that he had in the box by him if she would do it. But Mary, you understand, could do no
such thing – would not be handling his iron chest, and so on. Now, you see, the will he
wanted burnt was this last, so that if Mary had done what he wanted, Fred Vincy would have
had ten thousand pounds. The old man did turn to him at the last. That touches poor Mary
close; she couldn't help it – she was in the right to do what she did, but she feels, as she says,
much as if she had knocked down somebody's property and broken it against her will, when
she was rightfully defending herself. I feel with her, somehow, and if I could make any
amends to the poor lad, instead of bearing him a grudge for the harm he did us, I should be
glad to do it. Now, what is your opinion, sir? Susan doesn't agree with me. She says – tell
what you say, Susan."
"Mary could not have acted otherwise, even if she had known what would be the effect
on Fred," said Mrs. Garth, pausing from her work, and looking at Mr. Farebrother.
"And she was quite ignorant of it. It seems to me, a loss which falls on another because
we have done right is not to lie upon our conscience."
The Vicar did not answer immediately, and Caleb said, "It's the feeling. The child feels
in that way, and I feel with her. You don't mean your horse to tread on a dog when you're
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backing out of the way; but it goes through you, when it's done."
"I am sure Mrs. Garth would agree with you there," said Mr. Farebrother, who for some
reason seemed more inclined to ruminate than to speak. "One could hardly say that the
feeling you mention about Fred is wrong – or rather, mistaken – though no man ought to
make a claim on such feeling."
"Well, well," said Caleb, "it's a secret. You will not tell Fred."
"Certainly not. But I shall carry the other good news – that you can afford the loss he
caused you."
Mr. Farebrother left the house soon after, and seeing Mary in the orchard with Letty,
went to say good−by to her. They made a pretty picture in the western light which brought
out the brightness of the apples on the old scant−leaved boughs – Mary in her lavender
gingham and black ribbons holding a basket, while Letty in her well−worn nankin picked up
the fallen apples. If you want to know more particularly how Mary looked, ten to one you
will see a face like hers in the crowded street to−morrow, if you are there on the watch: she
will not be among those daughters of Zion who are haughty, and walk with stretched−out
necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go: let all those pass, and fix your eyes on some
small plump brownish person of firm but quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not
suppose that anybody is looking at her. If she has a broad face and square brow,
well−marked eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her glance
which her mouth keeps the secret of, and for the rest features entirely insignificant – take
that ordinary but not disagreeable person for a portrait of Mary Garth. If you made her
smile, she would show you perfect little teeth; if you made her angry, she would not raise
her voice, but would probably say one of the bitterest things you have ever tasted the flavor
of; if you did her a kindness, she would never forget it. Mary admired the keen−faced
handsome little Vicar in his well−brushed threadbare clothes more than any man she had
had the opportunity of knowing. She had never heard him say a foolish thing, though she
knew that he did unwise ones; and perhaps foolish sayings were more objectionable to her
than any of Mr. Farebrother's unwise doings. At least, it was remarkable that the actual
imperfections of the Vicar's clerical character never seemed to call forth the same scorn and
dislike which she showed beforehand for the predicted imperfections of the clerical
character sustained by Fred Vincy. These irregularities of judgment, I imagine, are found
even in riper minds than Mary Garth's: our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and
demerit, which none of us ever saw. Will any one guess towards which of those widely
different men Mary had the peculiar woman's tenderness? – the one she was most inclined to
be severe on, or the contrary?
"Have you any message for your old playfellow, Miss Garth?" said the Vicar, as he took
a fragrant apple from the basket which she held towards him, and put it in his pocket.
"Something to soften down that harsh judgment? I am going straight to see him."
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"No," said Mary, shaking her head, and smiling. "If I were to say that he would not be
ridiculous as a clergyman, I must say that he would be something worse than ridiculous. But
I am very glad to hear that he is going away to work."
"On the other hand, I am very glad to hear that YOU are not going away to work. My
mother, I am sure, will be all the happier if you will come to see her at the vicarage: you
know she is fond of having young people to talk to, and she has a great deal to tell about old
times. You will really be doing a kindness."
"I should like it very much, if I may," said Mary. "Everything seems too happy for me
all at once. I thought it would always be part of my life to long for home, and losing that
grievance makes me feel rather empty: I suppose it served instead of sense to fill up my
mind?"
"May I go with you, Mary?" whispered Letty – a most inconvenient child, who listened
to everything. But she was made exultant by having her chin pinched and her cheek kissed
by Mr. Farebrother – an incident which she narrated to her mother and father.
As the Vicar walked to Lowick, any one watching him closely might have seen him
twice shrug his shoulders. I think that the rare Englishmen who have this gesture are never
of the heavy type – for fear of any lumbering instance to the contrary, I will say, hardly ever;
they have usually a fine temperament and much tolerance towards the smaller errors of men
(themselves inclusive). The Vicar was holding an inward dialogue in which he told himself
that there was probably something more between Fred and Mary Garth than the regard of
old playfellows, and replied with a question whether that bit of womanhood were not a great
deal too choice for that crude young gentleman. The rejoinder to this was the first shrug.
Then he laughed at himself for being likely to have felt jealous, as if he had been a man able
to marry, which, added he, it is as clear as any balance−sheet that I am not. Whereupon
followed the second shrug.
What could two men, so different from each other, see in this "brown patch," as Mary
called herself? It was certainly not her plainness that attracted them (and let all plain young
ladies be warned against the dangerous encouragement given them by Society to confide in
their want of beauty). A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very wonderful whole,
the slow creation of long interchanging influences: and charm is a result of two such wholes,
the one loving and the one loved.
When Mr. and Mrs. Garth were sitting alone, Caleb said, "Susan, guess what I'm
thinking of."
"The rotation of crops," said Mrs. Garth, smiling at him, above her knitting, "or else the
back−doors of the Tipton cottages."
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"No," said Caleb, gravely; "I am thinking that I could do a great turn for Fred Vincy.
Christy's gone, Alfred will be gone soon, and it will be five years before Jim is ready to take
to business. I shall want help, and Fred might come in and learn the nature of things and act
under me, and it might be the making of him into a useful man, if he gives up being a
parson. What do you think?"
"I think, there is hardly anything honest that his family would object to more," said Mrs.
Garth, decidedly.
"What care I about their objecting?" said Caleb, with a sturdiness which he was apt to
show when he had an opinion. "The lad is of age and must get his bread. He has sense
enough and quickness enough; he likes being on the land, and it's my belief that he could
learn business well if he gave his mind to it."
"But would he? His father and mother wanted him to be a fine gentleman, and I think he
has the same sort of feeling himself. They all think us beneath them. And if the proposal
came from you, I am sure Mrs. Vincy would say that we wanted Fred for Mary."
"Life is a poor tale, if it is to be settled by nonsense of that sort," said Caleb, with
disgust.
"Yes, but there is a certain pride which is proper, Caleb."
"I call it improper pride to let fools' notions hinder you from doing a good action.
There's no sort of work," said Caleb, with fervor, putting out his hand and moving it up and
down to mark his emphasis, "that could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say.
You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow."
"I will not oppose any plan you have set your mind on, Caleb," said Mrs. Garth, who
was a firm woman, but knew that there were some points on which her mild husband was
yet firmer. "Still, it seems to be fixed that Fred is to go back to college: will it not be better
to wait and see what he will choose to do after that? It is not easy to keep people against
their will. And you are not yet quite sure enough of your own position, or what you will
want."
"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.
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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.
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CHAPTER XLI.
"B
y swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it raineth every day. – Twelfth Night
The transactions referred to by Caleb Garth as having gone forward between Mr.
Bulstrode and Mr. Joshua Rigg Featherstone concerning the land attached to Stone Court,
had occasioned the interchange of a letter or two between these personages.
Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? If it happens to have been cut in stone,
though it lie face down−most for ages on a forsaken beach, or "rest quietly under the drums
and tramplings of many conquests," it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations
and other scandals gossiped about long empires ago: – this world being apparently a huge
whispering−gallery. Such conditions are often minutely represented in our petty lifetimes.
As the stone which has been kicked by generations of clowns may come by curious little
links of effect under the eyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at last fix the date of
invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent
wrapping or stop−gap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have
knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe. To Uriel watching the
progress of planetary history from the sun, the one result would be just as much of a
coincidence as the other.
Having made this rather lofty comparison I am less uneasy in calling attention to the
existence of low people by whose interference, however little we may like it, the course of
the world is very much determined. It would be well, certainly, if we could help to reduce
their number, and something might perhaps be done by not lightly giving occasion to their
existence. Socially speaking, Joshua Rigg would have been generally pronounced a
superfluity. But those who like Peter Featherstone never had a copy of themselves
demanded, are the very last to wait for such a request either in prose or verse. The copy in
this case bore more of outside resemblance to the mother, in whose sex frog−features,
accompanied with fresh−colored cheeks and a well−rounded figure, are compatible with
much charm for a certain order of admirers. The result is sometimes a frog−faced male,
desirable, surely, to no order of intelligent beings. Especially when he is suddenly brought
into evidence to frustrate other people's expectations – the very lowest aspect in which a
social superfluity can present himself.
But Mr. Rigg Featherstone's low characteristics were all of the sober, water−drinking
kind. From the earliest to the latest hour of the day he was always as sleek, neat, and cool as
the frog he resembled, and old Peter had secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more
calculating, and far more imperturbable, than himself. I will add that his finger−nails were
scrupulously attended to, and that he meant to marry a well−educated young lady (as yet
unspecified) whose person was good, and whose connections, in a solid middle−class way,
were undeniable. Thus his nails and modesty were comparable to those of most gentlemen;
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though his ambition had been educated only by the opportunities of a clerk and accountant
in the smaller commercial houses of a seaport. He thought the rural Featherstones very
simple absurd people, and they in their turn regarded his "bringing up" in a seaport town as
an exaggeration of the monstrosity that their brother Peter, and still more Peter's property,
should have had such belongings.
The garden and gravel approach, as seen from the two windows of the wainscoted
parlor at Stone Court, were never in better trim than now, when Mr. Rigg Featherstone
stood, with his hands behind him, looking out on these grounds as their master. But it
seemed doubtful whether he looked out for the sake of contemplation or of turning his back
to a person who stood in the middle of the room, with his legs considerably apart and his
hands in his trouser−pockets: a person in all respects a contrast to the sleek and cool Rigg.
He was a man obviously on the way towards sixty, very florid and hairy, with much gray in
his bushy whiskers and thick curly hair, a stoutish body which showed to disadvantage the
somewhat worn joinings of his clothes, and the air of a swaggerer, who would aim at being
noticeable even at a show of fireworks, regarding his own remarks on any other person's
performance as likely to be more interesting than the performance itself.
His name was John Raffles, and he sometimes wrote jocosely W.A.G. after his
signature, observing when he did so, that he was once taught by Leonard Lamb of Finsbury
who wrote B.A. after his name, and that he, Raffles, originated the witticism of calling that
celebrated principal Ba−Lamb. Such were the appearance and mental flavor of Mr. Raffles,
both of which seemed to have a stale odor of travellers' rooms in the commercial hotels of
that period.
"Come, now, Josh," he was saying, in a full rumbling tone, "look at it in this light: here
is your poor mother going into the vale of years, and you could afford something handsome
now to make her comfortable."
"Not while you live. Nothing would make her comfortable while you live," returned
Rigg, in his cool high voice. "What I give her, you'll take."
"You bear me a grudge, Josh, that I know. But come, now – as between man and man –
without humbug – a little capital might enable me to make a first−rate thing of the shop. The
tobacco trade is growing. I should cut my own nose off in not doing the best I could at it. I
should stick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake. I should always be on the spot. And
nothing would make your poor mother so happy. I've pretty well done with my wild oats –
turned fifty−five. I want to settle down in my chimney−corner. And if I once buckled to the
tobacco trade, I could bring an amount of brains and experience to bear on it that would not
be found elsewhere in a hurry. I don't want to be bothering you one time after another, but to
get things once for all into the right channel. Consider that, Josh – as between man and man
– and with your poor mother to be made easy for her life. I was always fond of the old
woman, by Jove!"
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"Have you done?" said Mr. Rigg, quietly, without looking away from the window.
"Yes, I've done," said Raffles, taking hold of his hat which stood before him on the
table, and giving it a sort of oratorical push.
"Then just listen to me. The more you say anything, the less I shall believe it. The more
you want me to do a thing, the more reason I shall have for never doing it. Do you think I
mean to forget your kicking me when I was a lad, and eating all the best victual away from
me and my mother? Do you think I forget your always coming home to sell and pocket
everything, and going off again leaving us in the lurch? I should be glad to see you whipped
at the cart−tail. My mother was a fool to you: she'd no right to give me a father−in−law, and
she's been punished for it. She shall have her weekly allowance paid and no more: and that
shall be stopped if you dare to come on to these premises again, or to come into this country
after me again. The next time you show yourself inside the gates here, you shall be driven
off with the dogs and the wagoner's whip."
As Rigg pronounced the last words he turned round and looked at Raffles with his
prominent frozen eyes. The contrast was as striking as it could have been eighteen years
before, when Rigg was a most unengaging kickable boy, and Raffles was the rather
thick−set Adonis of bar−rooms and back−parlors. But the advantage now was on the side of
Rigg, and auditors of this conversation might probably have expected that Raffles would
retire with the air of a defeated dog. Not at all. He made a grimace which was habitual with
him whenever he was "out" in a game; then subsided into a laugh, and drew a brandy−flask
from his pocket.
"Come, Josh," he said, in a cajoling tone, "give us a spoonful of brandy, and a sovereign
to pay the way back, and I'll go. Honor bright! I'll go like a bullet, BY Jove!"
"Mind," said Rigg, drawing out a bunch of keys, "if I ever see you again, I shan't speak
to you. I don't own you any more than if I saw a crow; and if you want to own me you'll get
nothing by it but a character for being what you are – a spiteful, brassy, bullying rogue."
"That's a pity, now, Josh," said Raffles, affecting to scratch his head and wrinkle his
brows upward as if he were nonplussed. "I'm very fond of you; BY Jove, I am! There's
nothing I like better than plaguing you – you're so like your mother, and I must do without
it. But the brandy and the sovereign's a bargain."
He jerked forward the flask and Rigg went to a fine old oaken bureau with his keys. But
Raffles had reminded himself by his movement with the flask that it had become
dangerously loose from its leather covering, and catching sight of a folded paper which had
fallen within the fender, he took it up and shoved it under the leather so as to make the glass
firm.
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By that time Rigg came forward with a brandy−bottle, filled the flask, and handed
Raffles a sovereign, neither looking at him nor speaking to him. After locking up the bureau
again, he walked to the window and gazed out as impassibly as he had done at the beginning
of the interview, while Raffles took a small allowance from the flask, screwed it up, and
deposited it in his side−pocket, with provoking slowness, making a grimace at his stepson's
back.
"Farewell, Josh – and if forever!" said Raffles, turning back his head as he opened the
door.
Rigg saw him leave the grounds and enter the lane. The gray day had turned to a light
drizzling rain, which freshened the hedgerows and the grassy borders of the by−roads, and
hastened the laborers who were loading the last shocks of corn. Raffles, walking with the
uneasy gait of a town loiterer obliged to do a bit of country journeying on foot, looked as
incongruous amid this moist rural quiet and industry as if he had been a baboon escaped
from a menagerie. But there were none to stare at him except the long−weaned calves, and
none to show dislike of his appearance except the little water−rats which rustled away at his
approach.
He was fortunate enough when he got on to the highroad to be overtaken by the
stage−coach, which carried him to Brassing; and there he took the new−made railway,
observing to his fellow−passengers that he considered it pretty well seasoned now it had
done for Huskisson. Mr. Raffles on most occasions kept up the sense of having been
educated at an academy, and being able, if he chose, to pass well everywhere; indeed, there
was not one of his fellow−men whom he did not feel himself in a position to ridicule and
torment, confident of the entertainment which he thus gave to all the rest of the company.
He played this part now with as much spirit as if his journey had been entirely
successful, resorting at frequent intervals to his flask. The paper with which he had wedged
it was a letter signed Nicholas Bulstrode, but Raffles was not likely to disturb it from its
present useful position.
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CHAPTER XLII.
"H
ow much, methinks, I could despise this man Were I not bound in charity against it!
– SHAKESPEARE: Henry VIII.
One of the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his return from his
wedding−journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a letter which had requested him
to fix a time for his visit.
Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature of his illness to
Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as to how far it might be likely
to cut short his labors or his life. On this point, as on all others, he shrank from pity; and if
the suspicion of being pitied for anything in his lot surmised or known in spite of himself
was embittering, the idea of calling forth a show of compassion by frankly admitting an
alarm or a sorrow was necessarily intolerable to him. Every proud mind knows something of
this experience, and perhaps it is only to be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough
to make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty instead of exalting.
But Mr. Casaubon was now brooding over something through which the question of his
health and life haunted his silence with a more harassing importunity even than through the
autumnal unripeness of his authorship. It is true that this last might be called his central
ambition; but there are some kinds of authorship in which by far the largest result is the
uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the consciousness of the author one knows of the river
by a few streaks amid a long−gathered deposit of uncomfortable mud. That was the way
with Mr. Casaubon's hard intellectual labors. Their most characteristic result was not the
"Key to all Mythologies," but a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place
which he had not demonstrably merited – a perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views
entertained of him were not to his advantage – a melancholy absence of passion in his
efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the confession that he had achieved
nothing.
Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed and dried him,
was really no security against wounds, least of all against those which came from Dorothea.
And he had begun now to frame possibilities for the future which were somehow more
embittering to him than anything his mind had dwelt on before.
Against certain facts he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw's existence his defiant stay
in the neighborhood of Lowick, and his flippant state of mind with regard to the possessors
of authentic, well−stamped erudition: against Dorothea's nature, always taking on some new
shape of ardent activity, and even in submission and silence covering fervid reasons which it
was an irritation to think of: against certain notions and likings which had taken possession
of her mind in relation to subjects that he could not possibly discuss with her. "There was no
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denying that Dorothea was as virtuous and lovely a young lady as he could have obtained
for a wife; but a young lady turned out to be something more troublesome than he had
conceived. She nursed him, she read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous
about his feelings; but there had entered into the husband's mind the certainty that she
judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like a penitential expiation of unbelieving
thoughts – was accompanied with a power of comparison by which himself and his doings
were seen too luminously as a part of things in general. His discontent passed vapor−like
through all her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to that inappreciative world which
she had only brought nearer to him.
Poor Mr. Casaubon! This suffering was the harder to bear because it seemed like a
betrayal: the young creature who had worshipped him with perfect trust had quickly turned
into the critical wife; and early instances of criticism and resentment had made an
impression which no tenderness and submission afterwards could remove. To his suspicious
interpretation Dorothea's silence now was a suppressed rebellion; a remark from her which
he had not in any way anticipated was an assertion of conscious superiority; her gentle
answers had an irritating cautiousness in them; and when she acquiesced it was a
self−approved effort of forbearance. The tenacity with which he strove to hide this inward
drama made it the more vivid for him; as we hear with the more keenness what we wish
others not to hear.
Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think it quite ordinary.
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only
a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self. And who, if Mr.
Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents – his suspicions that he was not any longer
adored without criticism – could have denied that they were founded on good reasons? On
the contrary, there was a strong reason to be added, which he had not himself taken
explicitly into account – namely, that he was not unmixedly adorable. He suspected this,
however, as he suspected other things, without confessing it, and like the rest of us, felt how
soothing it would have been to have a co pan ion who would never find it out.
This sore susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly prepared before Will
Ladislaw had returned to Lowick, and what had occurred since then had brought Mr.
Casaubon's power of suspicious construction into exasperated activity. To all the facts which
he knew, he added imaginary facts both present and future which become more real to him
than those because they called up a stronger dislike, a more predominating bitterness.
Suspicion and jealousy of Will Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's
impressions, were constantly at their weaving work. It would be quite unjust to him to
suppose that he could have entered into any coarse misinterpretation of Dorothea: his own
habits of mind and conduct, quite as much as the open elevation of her nature, saved him
from any such mistake. What he was jealous of was her opinion, the sway that might be
given to her ardent mind in its judgments, and the future possibilities to which these might
lead her. As to Will, though until his last defiant letter he had nothing definite which he
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would choose formally to allege against him, he felt himself warranted in believing that he
was capable of any design which could fascinate a rebellious temper and an undisciplined
impulsiveness. He was quite sure that Dorothea was the cause of Will's return from Rome,
and his determination to settle in the neighborhood; and he was penetrating enough to
imagine that Dorothea had innocently encouraged this course. It was as clear as possible that
she was ready to be attached to Will and to be pliant to his suggestions: they had never had a
tete−a−tete without her bringing away from it some new troublesome impression, and the
last interview that Mr. Casaubon was aware of (Dorothea, on returning from Freshitt Hall,
had for the first time been silent about having seen Will) had led to a scene which roused an
angrier feeling against them both than he had ever known before. Dorothea's outpouring of
her notions about money, in the darkness of the night, had done nothing but bring a mixture
of more odious foreboding into her husband's mind.
And there was the shock lately given to his health always sadly present with him. He
was certainly much revived; he had recovered all his usual power of work: the illness might
have been mere fatigue, and there might still be twenty years of achievement before him,
which would justify the thirty years of preparation. That prospect was made the sweeter by a
flavor of vengeance against the hasty sneers of Carp Company; for even when Mr. Casaubon
was carrying his taper among the tombs of the past, those modern figures came athwart the
dim light, and interrupted his diligent exploration. To convince Carp of his mistake, so that
he would have to eat his own words with a good deal of indigestion, would be an agreeable
accident of triumphant authorship, which the prospect of living to future ages on earth and to
all eternity in heaven could not exclude from contemplation. Since, thus, the prevision of his
own unending bliss could not nullify the bitter savors of irritated jealousy and
vindictiveness, it is the less surprising that the probability of a transient earthly bliss for
other persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a potently
sweetening effect. If the truth should be that some undermining disease was at work within
him, there might be large opportunity for some people to be the happier when he was gone;
and if one of those people should be Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon objected so strongly that
it seemed as if the annoyance would make part of his disembodied existence.
This is a very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting the case. The human
soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we know, had a sense of rectitude and an
honorable pride in satisfying the requirements of honor, which compelled him to find other
reasons for his conduct than those of jealousy and vindictiveness. The way in which Mr.
Casaubon put the case was this: – "In marrying Dorothea Brooke I had to care for her
well−being in case of my death. But well−being is not to be secured by ample, independent
possession of property; on the contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession
might expose her to the more danger. She is ready prey to any man who knows how to play
adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic enthusiasm; and a man stands by
with that very intention in his mind – a man with no other principle than transient caprice,
and who has a personal animosity towards me – I am sure of it – an animosity which is fed
by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly vented in ridicule of
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which I am as well assured as if I had heard it. Even if I live I shall not be without
uneasiness as to what he may attempt through indirect influence. This man has gained
Dorothea's ear: he has fascinated her attention; he has evidently tried to impress her mind
with the notion that he has claims beyond anything I have done for him. If I die – and he is
waiting here on the watch for that – he will persuade her to marry him. That would be
calamity for her and success for him. SHE would not think it calamity: he would make her
believe anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment which she inwardly
reproaches me for not responding to, and already her mind is occupied with his fortunes. He
thinks of an easy conquest and of entering into my nest. That I will hinder! Such a marriage
would be fatal to Dorothea. Has he ever persisted in anything except from contradiction? In
knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small cost. In religion he could be, as long as
it suited him, the facile echo of Dorothea's vagaries. When was sciolism ever dissociated
from laxity? I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to the utmost the
fulfilment of his designs."
The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong measures open to
him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably dwelt so much on the probabilities of his
own life that the longing to get the nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his
proud reticence, and had determined him to ask Lydgate's opinion as to the nature of his
illness.
He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at half−past
three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he had felt ill, replied, – "No, I merely
wish to have his opinion concerning some habitual symptoms. You need not see him, my
dear. I shall give orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew−tree Walk, where I shall be
taking my usual exercise."
When Lydgate entered the Yew−tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly receding with
his hands behind him according to his habit, and his head bent forward. It was a lovely
afternoon; the leaves from the lofty limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens,
while the lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the cawing of the
rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that last solemn lullaby, a dirge. Lydgate,
conscious of an energetic frame in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he
was likely soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more
markedly than ever the signs of premature age – the student's bent shoulders, the emaciated
limbs, and the melancholy lines of the mouth. "Poor fellow," he thought, "some men with
his years are like lions; one can tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown."
"Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably po lite air, "I am exceedingly
obliged to you for your punctuality. We will, if you please, carry on our conversation in
walking to and fro."
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"I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return of unpleasant symptoms," said
Lydgate, filling up a pause.
"Not immediately – no. In order to account for that wish I must mention – what it were
otherwise needless to refer to – that my life, on all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a
possible importance from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its
best years. In short, I have long had on hand a work which I would fain leave behind me in
such a state, at least, that it might be committed to the press by – others. Were I assured that
this is the utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful circumscription
of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and negative determination of my course."
Here Mr. Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust it between the
buttons of his single−breasted coat. To a mind largely instructed in the human destiny hardly
anything could be more interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal measured
address, delivered with the usual sing−song and motion of the head. Nay, are there many
situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of the soul with the demand to renounce a
work which has been all the significance of its life – a significance which is to vanish as the
waters which come and go where no man has need of them? But there was nothing to strike
others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate, who had some contempt at hand for
futile scholarship, felt a little amusement mingling with his pity. He was at present too ill
acquainted with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is below the level
of tragedy except the passionate egoism of the sufferer.
"You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?" he said, wishing to help
forward Mr. Casaubon's purpose, which seemed to be clogged by some hesitation.
"I do. You have not implied to me that the symptoms which – I am bound to testify –
you watched with scrupulous care, were those of a fatal disease. But were it so, Mr. Lydgate,
I should desire to know the truth without reservation, and I appeal to you for an exact
statement of your conclusions: I request it as a friendly service. If you can tell me that my
life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary casualties, I shall rejoice, on grounds
which I have already indicated. If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to me."
"Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course," said Lydgate; "but the first thing I must
impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly uncertain – uncertain not only because of
my fallibility, but because diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions
on. In any ease, one can hardly increase appreciably the tremendous uncertainty of life."
Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.
"I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty degeneration of the heart, a
disease which was first divined and explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the
stethoscope, not so very many years ago. A good deal of experience – a more lengthened
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observation – is wanting on the subject. But after what you have said, it is my duty to tell
you that death from this disease is often sudden. At the same time, no such result can be
predicted. Your condition may be consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another
fifteen years, or even more. I could add no information to this beyond anatomical or medical
details, which would leave expectation at precisely the same point." Lydgate's instinct was
fine enough to tell him that plain speech, quite free from ostentatious caution, would be felt
by Mr. Casaubon as a tribute of respect.
"I thank you, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment's pause. "One thing
more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you have now told me to Mrs.
Casaubon?"
"Partly – I mean, as to the possible issues." Lydgate was going to explain why he had
told Dorothea, but Mr. Casaubon, with an unmistakable desire to end the conversation,
waved his hand slightly, and said again, "I thank you," proceeding to remark on the rare
beauty of the day.
Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him; and the black figure
with hands behind and head bent forward continued to pace the walk where the dark
yew−trees gave him a mute companionship in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or
leaf that fleeted across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in the presence of a
sorrow. Here was a man who now for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of
death – who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience when we feel the
truth of a commonplace, which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of
waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot be had
to cool the burning tongue. When the commonplace "We must all die" transforms itself
suddenly into the acute consciousness "I must die – and soon," then death grapples us, and
his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and
our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first. To Mr. Casaubon now, it
was as if he suddenly found himself on the dark river−brink and heard the plash of the
oncoming oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In such an hour the
mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward in imagination to the other side
of death, gazing backward – perhaps with the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the
petty anxieties of self−assertion. What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts will give us a clew
to. He held himself to be, with some private scholarly reservations, a believing Christian, as
to estimates of the present and hopes of the future. But what we strive to gratify, though we
may call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which men drudge up
city alleys exists already in their imagination and love. And Mr. Casaubon's immediate
desire was not for divine communion and light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate
longings, poor man, clung low and mist−like in very shady places.
Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had stepped into the
garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband. But she hesitated, fearing to offend
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him by obtruding herself; for her ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense
memory, to heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she
wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him advancing. Then she
went towards him, and might have represented a heaven−sent angel coming with a promise
that the short hours remaining should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the
closer to a comprehended grief. His glance in reply to hers was so chill that she felt her
timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand through his arm.
Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to cling with
difficulty against his rigid arm.
There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this unresponsive
hardness inflicted on her. That is a strong word, but not too strong: it is in these acts called
trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with
haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth bears no
harvest of sweetness – calling their denial knowledge. You may ask why, in the name of
manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in that way. Consider that his was a mind
which shrank from pity: have you ever watched in such a mind the effect of a suspicion that
what is pressing it as a grief may be really a source of contentment, either actual or future, to
the being who already offends by pitying? Besides, he knew little of Dorothea's sensations,
and had not reflected that on such an occasion as the present they were comparable in
strength to his own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.
Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak. Mr. Casaubon
did not say, "I wish to be alone," but he directed his steps in silence towards the house, and
as they entered by the glass door on this eastern side, Dorothea withdrew her arm and
lingered on the matting, that she might leave her husband quite free. He entered the library
and shut himself in, alone with his sorrow.
She went up to her boudoir. The open bow−window let in the serene glory of the
afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime−trees east long shadows. But Dorothea knew
nothing of the scene. She threw herself on a chair, not heeding that she was in the dazzling
sun−rays: if there were discomfort in that, how could she tell that it was not part of her
inward misery?
She was in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she had felt since her
marriage. Instead of tears there came words: –
"What have I done – what am I – that he should treat me so? He never knows what is in
my mind – he never cares. What is the use of anything I do? He wishes he had never married
me."
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She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness. Like one who has lost his way
and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance all the paths of her young hope which she
should never find again. And just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her
husband's solitude – how they walked apart so that she was obliged to survey him. If he had
drawn her towards him, she would never have surveyed him – never have said, "Is he worth
living for?" but would have felt him simply a part of her own life. Now she said bitterly, "It
is his fault, not mine." In the jar of her whole being, Pity was overthrown. Was it her fault
that she had believed in him – had believed in his worthiness? – And what, exactly, was he?
– She was able enough to estimate him – she who waited on his glances with trembling, and
shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to
please him. In such a crisis as this, some women begin to hate.
The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down again, but
would send a message to her husband saying that she was not well and preferred remaining
up−stairs. She had never deliberately allowed her resentment to govern her in this way
before, but she believed now that she could not see him again without telling him the truth
about her feeling, and she must wait till she could do it without interruption. He might
wonder and be hurt at her message. It was good that he should wonder and be hurt. Her
anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her – that all heaven, though it were
crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side. She had determined to ring her
bell, when there came a rap at the door.
Mr. Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner in the library. He wished to
be quite alone this evening, being much occupied.
"I shall not dine, then, Tantripp."
"Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?"
"No; I am not well. Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray do not disturb
me again."
Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the evening slowly
deepened into night. But the struggle changed continually, as that of a man who begins with
a movement towards striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike. The energy that
would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a resolved, submission, when
the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself. That thought with which Dorothea had gone out to
meet her husband – her conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his
work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long without rising
beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking at her anger with sad
remonstrance. It cost her a litany of pictured sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the
mercy for those sorrows – but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was
still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon habitually went to rest, she
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opened her door gently and stood outside in the darkness waiting for his coming up−stairs
with a light in his hand. If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and
even risk incurring another pang. She would never again expect anything else. But she did
hear the library door open, and slowly the light advanced up the staircase without noise from
the footsteps on the carpet. When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face
was more haggard. He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up at him beseechingly,
without speaking.
"Dorothea!" he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone. "Were you waiting for me?"
"Yes, I did not like to disturb you."
"Come, my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your life by watching."
When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears, she felt
something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we had narrowly escaped hurting
a lamed creature. She put her hand into her husband's, and they went along the broad
corridor together.
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CHAPTER XLIII.
T
his figure hath high price: 't was wrought with love Ages ago in finest ivory; Nought
modish in it, pure and noble lines Of generous womanhood that fits all time That too is
costly ware; majolica Of deft design, to please a lordly eye: The smile, you see, is perfect –
wonderful As mere Faience! a table ornament To suit the richest mounting."
Dorothea seldom left home without her husband, but she did occasionally drive into
Middlemarch alone, on little errands of shopping or charity such as occur to every lady of
any wealth when she lives within three miles of a town. Two days after that scene in the
Yew−tree Walk, she determined to use such an opportunity in order if possible to see
Lydgate, and learn from him whether her husband had really felt any depressing change of
symptoms which he was concealing from her, and whether he had insisted on knowing the
utmost about himself. She felt almost guilty in asking for knowledge about him from
another, but the dread of being without it – the dread of that ignorance which would make
her unjust or hard – overcame every scruple. That there had been some crisis in her
husband's mind she was certain: he had the very next day begun a new method of arranging
his notes, and had associated her quite newly in carrying out his plan. Poor Dorothea needed
to lay up stores of patience.
It was about four o'clock when she drove to Lydgate's house in Lowick Gate, wishing,
in her immediate doubt of finding him at home, that she had written beforehand. And he was
not at home.
"Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?" said Dorothea, who had never, that she knew of, seen
Rosamond, but now remembered the fact of the marriage. Yes, Mrs. Lydgate was at home.
"I will go in and speak to her, if she will allow me. Will you ask her if she can see me –
see Mrs. Casaubon, for a few minutes?"
When the servant had gone to deliver that message, Dorothea could hear sounds of
music through an open window – a few notes from a man's voice and then a piano bursting
into roulades. But the roulades broke off suddenly, and then the servant came back saying
that Mrs. Lydgate would be happy to see Mrs. Casaubon.
When the drawing−room door opened and Dorothea entered, there was a sort of contrast
not infrequent in country life when the habits of the different ranks were less blent than now.
Let those who know, tell us exactly what stuff it was that Dorothea wore in those days of
mild autumn – that thin white woollen stuff soft to the touch and soft to the eye. It always
seemed to have been lately washed, and to smell of the sweet hedges – was always in the
shape of a pelisse with sleeves hanging all out of the fashion. Yet if she had entered before a
still audience as Imogene or Cato's daughter, the dress might have seemed right enough: the
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grace and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her simply parted hair and candid
eyes the large round poke which was then in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a
head−dress than the gold trencher we call a halo. By the present audience of two persons, no
dramatic heroine could have been expected with more interest than Mrs. Casaubon. To
Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not mixing with Middlemarch mortality,
whose slightest marks of manner or appearance were worthy of her study; moreover,
Rosamond was not without satisfaction that Mrs. Casaubon should have an opportunity of
studying HER. What is the use of being exquisite if you are not seen by the best judges? and
since Rosamond had received the highest compliments at Sir Godwin Lydgate's, she felt
quite confident of the impression she must make on people of good birth. Dorothea put out
her hand with her usual simple kindness, and looked admiringly at Lydgate's lovely bride –
aware that there was a gentleman standing at a distance, but seeing him merely as a coated
figure at a wide angle. The gentleman was too much occupied with the presence of the one
woman to reflect on the contrast between the two – a contrast that would certainly have been
striking to a calm observer. They were both tall, and their eyes were on a level; but imagine
Rosamond's infantine blondness and wondrous crown of hair−plaits, with her pale−blue
dress of a fit and fashion so perfect that no dressmaker could look at it without emotion, a
large embroidered collar which it was to be hoped all beholders would know the price of,
her small hands duly set off with rings, and that controlled self−consciousness of manner
which is the expensive substitute for simplicity.
"Thank you very much for allowing me to interrupt you," said Dorothea, immediately.
"I am anxious to see Mr. Lydgate, if possible, before I go home, and I hoped that you might
possibly tell me where I could find him, or even allow me to wait for him, if you expect him
soon."
"He is at the New Hospital," said Rosamond; "I am not sure how soon he will come
home. But I can send for him,"
"Will you let me go and fetch him?" said Will Ladislaw, coming forward. He had
already taken up his hat before Dorothea entered. She colored with surprise, but put out her
hand with a smile of unmistakable pleasure, saying –
"I did not know it was you: I had no thought of seeing you here."
"May I go to the Hospital and tell Mr. Lydgate that you wish to see him?" said Will.
"It would be quicker to send the carriage for him," said Dorothea, "if you will be kind
enough to give the message to the coachman."
Will was moving to the door when Dorothea, whose mind had flashed in an instant over
many connected memories, turned quickly and said, "I will go myself, thank you. I wish to
lose no time before getting home again. I will drive to the Hospital and see Mr. Lydgate
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there. Pray excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate. I am very much obliged to you."
Her mind was evidently arrested by some sudden thought, and she left the room hardly
conscious of what was immediately around her – hardly conscious that Will opened the door
for her and offered her his arm to lead her to the carriage. She took the arm but said nothing.
Will was feeling rather vexed and miserable, and found nothing to say on his side. He
handed her into the carriage in silence, they said good−by, and Dorothea drove away.
In the five minutes' drive to the Hospital she had time for some reflections that were
quite new to her. Her decision to go, and her preoccupation in leaving the room, had come
from the sudden sense that there would be a sort of deception in her voluntarily allowing any
further intercourse between herself and Will which she was unable to mention to her
husband, and already her errand in seeking Lydgate was a matter of concealment. That was
all that had been explicitly in her mind; but she had been urged also by a vague discomfort.
Now that she was alone in her drive, she heard the notes of the man's voice and the
accompanying piano, which she had not noted much at the time, returning on her inward
sense; and she found herself thinking with some wonder that Will Ladislaw was passing his
time with Mrs. Lydgate in her husband's absence. And then she could not help remembering
that he had passed some time with her under like circumstances, so why should there be any
unfitness in the fact? But Will was Mr. Casaubon's relative, and one towards whom she was
bound to show kindness. Still there had been signs which perhaps she ought to have
understood as implying that Mr. Casaubon did not like his cousin's visits during his own
absence. "Perhaps I have been mistaken in many things," said poor Dorothea to herself,
while the tears came rolling and she had to dry them quickly. She felt confusedly unhappy,
and the image of Will which had been so clear to her before was mysteriously spoiled. But
the carriage stopped at the gate of the Hospital. She was soon walking round the grass plots
with Lydgate, and her feelings recovered the strong bent which had made her seek for this
interview.
Will Ladislaw, meanwhile, was mortified, and knew the reason of it clearly enough. His
chances of meeting Dorothea were rare; and here for the first time there had come a chance
which had set him at a disadvantage. It was not only, as it had been hitherto, that she was not
supremely occupied with him, but that she had seen him under circumstances in which he
might appear not to be supremely occupied with her. He felt thrust to a new distance from
her, amongst the circles of Middlemarchers who made no part of her life. But that was not
his fault: of course, since he had taken his lodgings in the town, he had been making as
many acquaintances as he could, his position requiring that he should know everybody and
everything. Lydgate was really better worth knowing than any one else in the neighborhood,
and he happened to have a wife who was musical and altogether worth calling upon. Here
was the whole history of the situation in which Diana had descended too unexpectedly on
her worshipper. It was mortifying. Will was conscious that he should not have been at
Middlemarch but for Dorothea; and yet his position there was threatening to divide him
from her with those barriers of habitual sentiment which are more fatal to the persistence of
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mutual interest than all the distance between Rome and Britain. Prejudices about rank and
status were easy enough to defy in the form of a tyrannical letter from Mr. Casaubon; but
prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle – solid as the
pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as the memory of hyacinths which once
scented the darkness. And Will was of a temperament to feel keenly the presence of
subtleties: a man of clumsier perceptions would not have felt, as he did, that for the first time
some sense of unfitness in perfect freedom with him had sprung up in Dorothea's mind, and
that their silence, as he conducted her to the carriage, had had a chill in it. Perhaps
Casaubon, in his hatred and jealousy, had been insisting to Dorothea that Will had slid
below her socially. Confound Casaubon!
Will re−entered the drawing−room, took up his hat, and looking irritated as he advanced
towards Mrs. Lydgate, who had seated herself at her work−table, said –
"It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted. May I come another day and just
finish about the rendering of `Lungi dal caro bene'?"
"I shall be happy to be taught," said Rosamond. "But I am sure you admit that the
interruption was a very beautiful one. I quite envy your acquaintance with Mrs. Casaubon. Is
she very clever? She looks as if she were."
"Really, I never thought about it," said Will, sulkily.
"That is just the answer Tertius gave me, when I first asked him if she were handsome.
What is it that you gentlemen are thinking of when you are with Mrs. Casaubon?"
"Herself," said Will, not indisposed to provoke the charming Mrs. Lydgate. "When one
sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her attributes – one is conscious of her presence."
"I shall be jealous when Tertius goes to Lowick," said Rosamond, dimpling, and
speaking with aery lightness. "He will come back and think nothing of me."
"That does not seem to have been the effect on Lydgate hitherto. Mrs. Casaubon is too
unlike other women for them to be compared with her."
"You are a devout worshipper, I perceive. You often see her, I suppose."
"No," said Will, almost pettishly. "Worship is usually a matter of theory rather than of
practice. But I am practising it to excess just at this moment – I must really tear myself
away.
"Pray come again some evening: Mr. Lydgate will like to hear the music, and I cannot
enjoy it so well without him."
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CHAPTER XLIII. 357
When her husband was at home again, Rosamond said, standing in front of him and
holding his coat−collar with both her hands, "Mr. Ladislaw was here singing with me when
Mrs. Casaubon came in. He seemed vexed. Do you think he disliked her seeing him at our
house? Surely your position is more than equal to his – whatever may be his relation to the
Casaubons."
"No, no; it must be something else if he were really vexed, Ladislaw is a sort of gypsy;
he thinks nothing of leather and prunella."
"Music apart, he is not always very agreeable. Do you like him?"
"Yes: I think he is a good fellow: rather miscellaneous and bric−a−brac, but likable."
"Do you know, I think he adores Mrs. Casaubon."
"Poor devil!" said Lydgate, smiling and pinching his wife's ears.
Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world, especially in
discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood had been inconceivable to her
except as a dim tragedy in by−gone costumes – that women, even after marriage, might
make conquests and enslave men. At that time young ladies in the country, even when
educated at Mrs. Lemon's, read little French literature later than Racine, and public prints
had not cast their present magnificent illumination over the scandals of life. Still, vanity,
with a woman's whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints,
especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite conquests. How delightful to make
captives from the throne of marriage with a husband as crown−prince by your side – himself
in fact a subject – while the captives look up forever hopeless, losing their rest probably, and
if their appetite too, so much the better! But Rosamond's romance turned at present chiefly
on her crown−prince, and it was enough to enjoy his assured subjection. When he said,
"Poor devil I" she asked, with playful curiosity –
"Why so?"
"Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids? He only
neglects his work and runs up bills."
"I am sure you do not neglect your work. You are always at the Hospital, or seeing poor
patients, or thinking about some doctor's quarrel; and then at home you always want to pore
over your microscope and phials. Confess you like those things better than me."
"Haven't you ambition enough to wish that your husband should be something better
than a Middlemarch doctor?" said Lydgate, letting his hands fall on to his wife's shoulders,
and looking at her with affectionate gravity. "I shall make you learn my favorite bit from an
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old poet –
`Why should our pride make such a stir to be And be forgot? What good is like to this,
To do worthy the writing, and to write Worthy the reading and the worlds delight?'
What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing, – and to write out myself what I have
done. A man must work, to do that, my pet."
"Of course, I wish you to make discoveries: no one could more wish you to attain a high
position in some better place than Middlemarch. You cannot say that I have ever tried to
hinder you from working. But we cannot live like hermits. You are not discontented with
me, Tertius?"
"No, dear, no. I am too entirely contented."
"But what did Mrs. Casaubon want to say to you?"
"Merely to ask about her husband's health. But I think she is going to be splendid to our
New Hospital: I think she will give us two hundred a−year."
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CHAPTER XLIV.
I
would not creep along the coast but steer Out in mid−sea, by guidance of the stars.
When Dorothea, walking round the laurel−planted plots of the New Hospital with
Lydgate, had learned from him that there were no signs of change in Mr. Casaubon's bodily
condition beyond the mental sign of anxiety to know the truth about his illness, she was
silent for a few moments, wondering whether she had said or done anything to rouse this
new anxiety. Lydgate, not willing to let slip an opportunity of furthering a favorite purpose,
ventured to say –
"I don't know whether your or Mr. – Casaubon's attention has been drawn to the needs
of our New Hospital. Circumstances have made it seem rather egotistic in me to urge the
subject; but that is not my fault: it is because there is a fight being made against it by the
other medical men. I think you are generally interested in such things, for I remember that
when I first had the pleasure of seeing you at Tipton Grange before your marriage, you were
asking me some questions about the way in which the health of the poor was affected by
their miserable housing."
"Yes, indeed," said Dorothea, brightening. "I shall be quite grateful to you if you will
tell me how I can help to make things a little better. Everything of that sort has slipped away
from me since I have been married. I mean," she said, after a moment's hesitation, "that the
people in our village are tolerably comfortable, and my mind has been too much taken up for
me to inquire further. But here – in such a place as Middlemarch – there must be a great deal
to be done."
"There is everything to be done," said Lydgate, with abrupt energy. "And this Hospital
is a capital piece of work, due entirely to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions, and in a great degree to
his money. But one man can't do everything in a scheme of this sort. Of course he looked
forward to help. And now there's a mean, petty feud set up against the thing in the town, by
certain persons who want to make it a failure."
"What can be their reasons?" said Dorothea, with naive surprise.
"Chiefly Mr. Bulstrode's unpopularity, to begin with. Half the town would almost take
trouble for the sake of thwarting him. In this stupid world most people never consider that a
thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set. I had no connection with
Bulstrode before I came here. I look at him quite impartially, and I see that he has some
notions – that he has set things on foot – which I can turn to good public purpose. If a fair
number of the better educated men went to work with the belief that their observations might
contribute to the reform of medical doctrine and practice, we should soon see a change for
the better. That's my point of view. I hold that by refusing to work with Mr. Bulstrode I
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should be turning my back on an opportunity of making my profession more generally
serviceable."
"I quite agree with you," said Dorothea, at once fascinated by the situation sketched in
Lydgate's words. "But what is there against Mr. Bulstrode? I know that my uncle is friendly
with him."
"People don't like his religious tone," said Lydgate, breaking off there.
"That is all the stronger reason for despising such an opposition," said Dorothea,
looking at the affairs of Middlemarch by the light of the great persecutions.
"To put the matter quite fairly, they have other objections to him: – he is masterful and
rather unsociable, and he is concerned with trade, which has complaints of its own that I
know nothing about. But what has that to do with the question whether it would not be a fine
thing to establish here a more valuable hospital than any they have in the county? The
immediate motive to the opposition, however, is the fact that Bulstrode has put the medical
direction into my hands. Of course I am glad of that. It gives me an opportunity of doing
some good work, – and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me. But the
consequence is, that the whole profession in Middlemarch have set themselves tooth and
nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse to cooperate themselves, but try to blacken the
whole affair and hinder subscriptions."
"How very petty!" exclaimed Dorothea, indignantly.
"I suppose one must expect to fight one's way: there is hardly anything to be done
without it. And the ignorance of people about here is stupendous. I don't lay claim to
anything else than having used some opportunities which have not come within everybody's
reach; but there is no stifling the offence of being young, and a new−comer, and happening
to know something more than the old inhabitants. Still, if I believe that I can set going a
better method of treatment – if I believe that I can pursue certain observations and inquiries
which may be a lasting benefit to medical practice, I should be a base truckler if I allowed
any consideration of personal comfort to hinder me. And the course is all the clearer from
there being no salary in question to put my persistence in an equivocal light."
"I am glad you have told me this, Mr. Lydgate," said Dorothea, cordially. "I feel sure I
can help a little. I have some money, and don't know what to do with it – that is often an
uncomfortable thought to me. I am sure I can spare two hundred a−year for a grand purpose
like this. How happy you must be, to know things that you feel sure will do great good! I
wish I could awake with that knowledge every morning. There seems to be so much trouble
taken that one can hardly see the good of!"
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There was a melancholy cadence in Dorothea's voice as she spoke these last words. But
she presently added, more cheerfully, "Pray come to Lowick and tell us more of this. I will
mention the subject to Mr. Casaubon. I must hasten home now."
She did mention it that evening, and said that she should like to subscribe two hundred
a−year – she had seven hundred a−year as the equivalent of her own fortune, settled on her
at her marriage. Mr. Casaubon made no objection beyond a passing remark that the sum
might be disproportionate in relation to other good objects, but when Dorothea in her
ignorance resisted that suggestion, he acquiesced. He did not care himself about spending
money, and was not reluctant to give it. If he ever felt keenly any question of money it was
through the medium of another passion than the love of material property.
Dorothea told him that she had seen Lydgate, and recited the gist of her conversation
with him about the Hospital. Mr. Casaubon did not question her further, but he felt sure that
she had wished to know what had passed between Lydgate and himself "She knows that I
know," said the ever−restless voice within; but that increase of tacit knowledge only thrust
further off any confidence between them. He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is
more lonely than distrust?
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CHAPTER XLV.
I
t is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers, and declaim against
the wickedness of times present. Which notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do,
without the borrowed help and satire of times past; condemning the vices of their own times,
by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which cannot but argue the
community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal, and Persius, were no prophets,
although their lines did seem to indigitate and point at our times. – SIR THOMAS
BROWNE: Pseudodoxia Epidemica.
That opposition to the New Fever Hospital which Lydgate had sketched to Dorothea
was, like other oppositions, to be viewed in many different lights. He regarded it as a
mixture of jealousy and dunderheaded prejudice. Mr. Bulstrode saw in it not only medical
jealousy but a determination to thwart himself, prompted mainly by a hatred of that vital
religion of which he had striven to be an effectual lay representative – a hatred which
certainly found pretexts apart from religion such as were only too easy to find in the
entanglements of human action. These might be called the ministerial views. But
oppositions have the illimitable range of objections at command, which need never stop
short at the boundary of knowledge, but can draw forever on the vasts of ignorance. What
the opposition in Middlemarch said about the New Hospital and its administration had
certainly a great deal of echo in it, for heaven has taken care that everybody shall not be an
originator; but there were differences which represented every social shade between the
polished moderation of Dr. Minchin and the trenchant assertion of Mrs. Dollop, the landlady
of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane.
Mrs. Dollop became more and more convinced by her own asseveration, that Dr.
Lydgate meant to let the people die in the Hospital, if not to poison them, for the sake of
cutting them up without saying by your leave or with your leave; for it was a known "fac"
that he had wanted to cut up Mrs. Goby, as respectable a woman as any in Parley Street,
who had money in trust before her marriage – a poor tale for a doctor, who if he was good
for anything should know what was the matter with you before you died, and not want to pry
into your inside after you were gone. If that was not reason, Mrs. Dollop wished to know
what was; but there was a prevalent feeling in her audience that her opinion was a bulwark,
and that if it were overthrown there would be no limits to the cutting−up of bodies, as had
been well seen in Burke and Hare with their pitch−plaisters – such a hanging business as
that was not wanted in Middlemarch!
And let it not be supposed that opinion at the Tankard in Slaughter Lane was
unimportant to the medical profession: that old authentic public−house – the original
Tankard, known by the name of Dollop's – was the resort of a great Benefit Club, which had
some months before put to the vote whether its long−standing medical man, "Doctor
Gambit," should not be cashiered in favor of "this Doctor Lydgate," who was capable of
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performing the most astonishing cures, and rescuing people altogether given up by other
practitioners. But the balance had been turned against Lydgate by two members, who for
some private reasons held that this power of resuscitating persons as good as dead was an
equivocal recommendation, and might interfere with providential favors. In the course of the
year, however, there had been a change in the public sentiment, of which the unanimity at
Dollop's was an index
A good deal more than a year ago, before anything was known of Lydgate's skill, the
judgments on it had naturally been divided, depending on a sense of likelihood, situated
perhaps in the pit of the stomach or in the pineal gland, and differing in its verdicts, but not
the less valuable as a guide in the total deficit of evidence. Patients who had chronic diseases
or whose lives had long been worn threadbare, like old Featherstone's, had been at once
inclined to try him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills, thought agreeably
of opening an account with a new doctor and sending for him without stint if the children's
temper wanted a dose, occasions when the old practitioners were often crusty; and all
persons thus inclined to employ Lydgate held it likely that he was clever. Some considered
that he might do more than others "where there was liver;" – at least there would be no harm
in getting a few bottles of "stuff" from him, since if these proved useless it would still be
possible to return to the Purifying Pills, which kept you alive if they did not remove the
yellowness. But these were people of minor importance. Good Middlemarch families were
of course not going to change their doctor without reason shown; and everybody who had
employed Mr. Peacock did not feel obliged to accept a new man merely in the character of
his successor, objecting that he was "not likely to be equal to Peacock."
But Lydgate had not been long in the town before there were particulars enough
reported of him to breed much more specific expectations and to intensify differences into
partisanship; some of the particulars being of that impressive order of which the significance
is entirely hidden, like a statistical amount without a standard of comparison, but with a note
of exclamation at the end. The cubic feet of oxygen yearly swallowed by a full−grown man
– what a shudder they might have created in some Middlemarch circles! "Oxygen! nobody
knows what that may be – is it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic? And yet there are
people who say quarantine is no good!"
One of the facts quickly rumored was that Lydgate did not dispense drugs. This was
offensive both to the physicians whose exclusive distinction seemed infringed on, and to the
surgeon−apothecaries with whom he ranged himself; and only a little while before, they
might have counted on having the law on their side against a man who without calling
himself a London−made M.D. dared to ask for pay except as a charge on drugs. But Lydgate
had not been experienced enough to foresee that his new course would be even more
offensive to the laity; and to Mr. Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market, who,
though not one of his patients, questioned him in an affable manner on the subject, he was
injudicious enough to give a hasty popular explanation of his reasons, pointing out to Mr.
Mawmsey that it must lower the character of practitioners, and be a constant injury to the
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public, if their only mode of getting paid for their work was by their making out long bills
for draughts, boluses, and mixtures.
"It is in that way that hard−working medical men may come to be almost as
mischievous as quacks," said Lydgate, rather thoughtlessly. "To get their own bread they
must overdose the king's lieges; and that's a bad sort of treason, Mr. Mawmsey – undermines
the constitution in a fatal way."
Mr. Mawmsey was not only an overseer (it was about a question of outdoor pay that he
was having an interview with Lydgate), he was also asthmatic and had an increasing family:
thus, from a medical point of view, as well as from his own, he was an important man;
indeed, an exceptional grocer, whose hair was arranged in a flame−like pyramid, and whose
retail deference was of the cordial, encouraging kind – jocosely complimentary, and with a
certain considerate abstinence from letting out the full force of his mind. It was Mr.
Mawmsey's friendly jocoseness in questioning him which had set the tone of Lydgate's
reply. But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the
sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.
Lydgate smiled as he ended his speech, putting his foot into the stirrup, and Mr.
Mawmsey laughed more than he would have done if he had known who the king's lieges
were, giving his "Good morning, sir, good−morning, sir," with the air of one who saw
everything clearly enough. But in truth his views were perturbed. For years he had been
paying bills with strictly made items, so that for every half−crown and eighteen−pence he
was certain something measurable had been delivered. He had done this with satisfaction,
including it among his responsibilities as a husband and father, and regarding a longer bill
than usual as a dignity worth mentioning. Moreover, in addition to the massive benefit of the
drugs to "self and family," he had enjoyed the pleasure of forming an acute judgment as to
their immediate effects, so as to give an intelligent statement for the guidance of Mr. Gambit
– a practitioner just a little lower in status than Wrench or Toller, and especially esteemed as
an accoucheur, of whose ability Mr. Mawmsey had the poorest opinion on all other points,
but in doctoring, he was wont to say in an undertone, he placed Gambit above any of them.
Here were deeper reasons than the superficial talk of a new man, which appeared still
flimsier in the drawing−room over the shop, when they were recited to Mrs. Mawmsey, a
woman accustomed to be made much of as a fertile mother, – generally under attendance
more or less frequent from Mr. Gambit, and occasionally having attacks which required Dr.
Minchin.
"Does this Mr. Lydgate mean to say there is no use in taking medicine?" said Mrs.
Mawmsey, who was slightly given to drawling. "I should like him to tell me how I could
bear up at Fair time, if I didn't take strengthening medicine for a month beforehand. Think of
what I have to provide for calling customers, my dear!" – here Mrs. Mawmsey turned to an
intimate female friend who sat by – "a large veal pie – a stuffed fillet – a round of beef –
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ham, tongue, et cetera, et cetera! But what keeps me up best is the pink mixture, not the
brown. I wonder, Mr. Mawmsey, with your experience, you could have patience to listen. I
should have told him at once that I knew a little better than that."
"No, no, no," said Mr. Mawmsey; "I was not going to tell him my opinion. Hear
everything and judge for yourself is my motto. But he didn't know who he was talking to. I
was not to be turned on HIS finger. People often pretend to tell me things, when they might
as well say, `Mawmsey, you're a fool.' But I smile at it: I humor everybody's weak place. If
physic had done harm to self and family, I should have found it out by this time."
The next day Mr. Gambit was told that Lydgate went about saying physic was of no
use.
"Indeed!" said he, lifting his eyebrows with cautious surprise. (He was a stout husky
man with a large ring on his fourth finger.) "How will he cure his patients, then?"
"That is what I say," returned Mrs. Mawmsey, who habitually gave weight to her speech
by loading her pronouns. "Does HE suppose that people will pay him only to come and sit
with them and go away again?"
Mrs. Mawmsey had had a great deal of sitting from Mr. Gambit, including very full
accounts of his own habits of body and other affairs; but of course he knew there was no
innuendo in her remark, since his spare time and personal narrative had never been charged
for. So he replied, humorously –
"Well, Lydgate is a good−looking young fellow, you know."
"Not one that I would employ," said Mrs. Mawmsey. "OTHERS may do as they
please."
Hence Mr. Gambit could go away from the chief grocer's without fear of rivalry, but not
without a sense that Lydgate was one of those hypocrites who try to discredit others by
advertising their own honesty, and that it might be worth some people's while to show him
up. Mr. Gambit, however, had a satisfactory practice, much pervaded by the smells of retail
trading which suggested the reduction of cash payments to a balance. And he did not think it
worth his while to show Lydgate up until he knew how. He had not indeed great resources
of education, and had had to work his own way against a good deal of professional
contempt; but he made none the worse accoucheur for calling the breathing apparatus
"longs."
Other medical men felt themselves more capable. Mr. Toller shared the highest practice
in the town and belonged to an old Middlemarch family: there were Tollers in the law and
everything else above the line of retail trade. Unlike our irascible friend Wrench, he had the
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CHAPTER XLV. 366
easiest way in the world of taking things which might be supposed to annoy him, being a
well−bred, quietly facetious man, who kept a good house, was very fond of a little sporting
when he could get it, very friendly with Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr. Bulstrode. It may
seem odd that with such pleasant habits he should hare been given to the heroic treatment,
bleeding and blistering and starving his patients, with a dispassionate disregard to his
personal example; but the incongruity favored the opinion of his ability among his patients,
who commonly observed that Mr. Toller had lazy manners, but his treatment was as active
as you could desire: no man, said they, carried more seriousness into his profession: he was
a little slow in coming, but when he came, he DID something. He was a great favorite in his
own circle, and whatever he implied to any one's disadvantage told doubly from his careless
ironical tone.
He naturally got tired of smiling and saying, "Ah!" when he was told that Mr. Peacock's
successor did not mean to dispense medicines; and Mr. Hackbutt one day mentioning it over
the wine at a dinner−party, Mr. Toller said, laughingly, "Dibbitts will get rid of his stale
drugs, then. I'm fond of little Dibbitts – I'm glad he's in luck."
"I see your meaning, Toller," said Mr. Hackbutt, "and I am entirely of your opinion. I
shall take an opportunity of expressing myself to that effect. A medical man should be
responsible for the quality of the drugs consumed by his patients. That is the rationale of the
system of charging which has hitherto obtained; and nothing is more offensive than this
ostentation of reform, where there is no real amelioration."
"Ostentation, Hackbutt?" said Mr. Toller, ironically. "I don't see that. A man can't very
well be ostentatious of what nobody believes in. There's no reform in the matter: the
question is, whether the profit on the drugs is paid to the medical man by the druggist or by
the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay under the name of attendance."
"Ah, to be sure; one of your damned new versions of old humbug," said Mr. Hawley,
passing the decanter to Mr. Wrench.
Mr. Wrench, generally abstemious, often drank wine rather freely at a party, getting the
more irritable in consequence.
"As to humbug, Hawley," he said, "that's a word easy to fling about. But what I contend
against is the way medical men are fouling their own nest, and setting up a cry about the
country as if a general practitioner who dispenses drugs couldn't be a gentleman. I throw
back the imputation with scorn. I say, the most ungentlemanly trick a man can be guilty of is
to come among the members of his profession with innovations which are a libel on their
time−honored procedure. That is my opinion, and I am ready to maintain it against any one
who contradicts me." Mr. Wrench's voice had become exceedingly sharp.
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CHAPTER XLV. 367
"I can't oblige you there, Wrench," said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into his
trouser−pockets.
"My dear fellow," said Mr. Toller, striking in pacifically! and looking at Mr. Wrench,
"the physicians have their toes trodden on more than we have. If you come to dignity it is a
question for Minchin and Sprague."
"Does medical jurisprudence provide nothing against these infringements?" said Mr.
Hackbutt, with a disinterested desire to offer his lights. "How does the law stand, eh,
Hawley?"
"Nothing to be done there," said Mr. Hawley. "I looked into it for Sprague. You'd only
break your nose against a damned judge's decision."
"Pooh! no need of law," said Mr. Toller. "So far as practice is concerned the attempt is
an absurdity. No patient will like it – certainly not Peacock's, who have been used to
depletion. Pass the wine."
Mr. Toller's prediction was partly verified. If Mr. and Mrs. Mawmsey, who had no idea
of employing Lydgate, were made uneasy by his supposed declaration against drugs, it was
inevitable that those who called him in should watch a little anxiously to see whether he did
"use all the means he might use" in the case. Even good Mr. Powderell, who in his constant
charity of interpretation was inclined to esteem Lydgate the more for what seemed a
conscientious pursuit of a better plan, had his mind disturbed with doubts during his wife's
attack of erysipelas, and could not abstain from mentioning to Lydgate that Mr. Peacock on
a similar occasion had administered a series of boluses which were not otherwise definable
than by their remarkable effect in bringing Mrs. Powderell round before Michaelmas from
an illness which had begun in a remarkably hot August. At last, indeed, in the conflict
between his desire not to hurt Lydgate and his anxiety that no "means" should be lacking, he
induced his wife privately to take Widgeon's Purifying Bills, an esteemed Middlemarch
medicine, which arrested every disease at the fountain by setting to work at once upon the
blood. This co−operative measure was not to be mentioned to Lydgate, and Mr. Powderell
himself had no certain reliance on it, only hoping that it might be attended with a blessing.
But in this doubtful stage of Lydgate's introduction he was helped by what we mortals
rashly call good fortune. I suppose no doctor ever came newly to a place without making
cures that surprised somebody – cures which may be called fortune's testimonials, and
deserve as much credit as the ten or printed kind. Various patients got well while Lydgate
was attending them, some even of dangerous illnesses; and it was remarked that the new
doctor with his new ways had at least the merit of bringing people back from the brink of
death. The trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate, because it
gave precisely the sort of prestige which an incompetent and unscrupulous man would
desire, and was sure to be imputed to him by the simmering dislike of the other medical men
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as an encouragement on his own part of ignorant puffing. But even his proud outspokenness
was checked by the discernment that it was as useless to fight against the interpretations of
ignorance as to whip the fog; and "good fortune" insisted on using those interpretations.
Mrs. Larcher having just become charitably concerned about alarming symptoms in her
charwoman, when Dr. Minchin called, asked him to see her then and there, and to give her a
certificate for the Infirmary; whereupon after examination he wrote a statement of the case
as one of tumor, and recommended the bearer Nancy Nash as an out−patient. Nancy, calling
at home on her way to the Infirmary, allowed the stay maker and his wife, in whose attic she
lodged, to read Dr. Minchin's paper, and by this means became a subject of compassionate
conversation in the neighboring shops of Churchyard Lane as being afflicted with a tumor at
first declared to be as large and hard as a duck's egg, but later in the day to be about the size
of "your fist." Most hearers agreed that it would have to be cut out, but one had known of oil
and another of "squitchineal" as adequate to soften and reduce any lump in the body when
taken enough of into the inside – the oil by gradually "soopling," the squitchineal by eating
away.
Meanwhile when Nancy presented herself at the Infirmary, it happened to be one of
Lydgate's days there. After questioning and examining her, Lydgate said to the
house−surgeon in an undertone, "It's not tumor: it's cramp." He ordered her a blister and
some steel mixture, and told her to go home and rest, giving her at the same time a note to
Mrs. Larcher, who, she said, was her best employer, to testify that she was in need of good
food.
But by−and−by Nancy, in her attic, became portentously worse, the supposed tumor
having indeed given way to the blister, but only wandered to another region with angrier
pain. The staymaker's wife went to fetch Lydgate, and he continued for a fortnight to attend
Nancy in her own home, until under his treatment she got quite well and went to work again.
But the case continued to be described as one of tumor in Churchyard Lane and other streets
– nay, by Mrs. Larcher also; for when Lydgate's remarkable cure was mentioned to Dr.
Minchin, he naturally did not like to say, "The case was not one of tumor, and I was
mistaken in describing it as such," but answered, "Indeed! ah! I saw it was a surgical case,
not of a fatal kind." He had been inwardly annoyed, however, when he had asked at the
Infirmary about the woman he had recommended two days before, to hear from the
house−surgeon, a youngster who was not sorry to vex Minchin with impunity, exactly what
had occurred: he privately pronounced that it was indecent in a general practitioner to
contradict a physician's diagnosis in that open manner, and afterwards agreed with Wrench
that Lydgate was disagreeably inattentive to etiquette. Lydgate did not make the affair a
ground for valuing himself or (very particularly) despising Minchin, such rectification of
misjudgments often happening among men of equal qualifications. But report took up this
amazing case of tumor, not clearly distinguished from cancer, and considered the more
awful for being of the wandering sort; till much prejudice against Lydgate's method as to
drugs was overcome by the proof of his marvellous skill in the speedy restoration of Nancy
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CHAPTER XLV. 369
Nash after she had been rolling and rolling in agonies from the presence of a tumor both
hard and obstinate, but nevertheless compelled to yield.
How could Lydgate help himself? It is offensive to tell a lady when she is expressing
her amazement at your skill, that she is altogether mistaken and rather foolish in her
amazement. And to have entered into the nature of diseases would only have added to his
breaches of medical propriety. Thus he had to wince under a promise of success given by
that ignorant praise which misses every valid quality.
In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, Lydgate was
conscious of having shown himself something better than an every−day doctor, though here
too it was an equivocal advantage that he won. The eloquent auctioneer was seized with
pneumonia, and having been a patient of Mr. Peacock's, sent for Lydgate, whom he had
expressed his intention to patronize. Mr Trumbull was a robust man, a good subject for
trying the expectant theory upon – watching the course of an interesting disease when left as
much as possible to itself, so that the stages might be noted for future guidance; and from
the air with which he described his sensations Lydgate surmised that he would like to be
taken into his medical man's confidence, and be represented as a partner in his own cure.
The auctioneer heard, without much surprise, that his was a constitution which (always with
due watching) might be left to itself, so as to offer a beautiful example of a disease with all
its phases seen in clear delineation, and that he probably had the rare strength of mind
voluntarily to become the test of a rational procedure, and thus make the disorder of his
pulmonary functions a general benefit to society.
Mr. Trumbull acquiesced at once, and entered strongly into the view that an illness of
his was no ordinary occasion for medical science.
"Never fear, sir; you are not speaking to one who is altogether ignorant of the vis
medicatrix," said he, with his usual superiority of expression, made rather pathetic by
difficulty of breathing. And he went without shrinking through his abstinence from drugs,
much sustained by application of the thermometer which implied the importance of his
temperature, by the sense that he furnished objects for the microscope, and by learning many
new words which seemed suited to the dignity of his secretions. For Lydgate was acute
enough to indulge him with a little technical talk.
It may be imagined that Mr. Trumbull rose from his couch with a disposition to speak
of an illness in which he had manifested the strength of his mind as well as constitution; and
he was not backward in awarding credit to the medical man who had discerned the quality of
patient he had to deal with. The auctioneer was not an ungenerous man, and liked to give
others their due, feeling that he could afford it. He had caught the words "expectant
method," and rang chimes on this and other learned phrases to accompany the assurance that
Lydgate "knew a thing or two more than the rest of the doctors – was far better versed in the
secrets of his profession than the majority of his compeers."
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This had happened before the affair of Fred Vincy's illness had given to Mr. Wrench's
enmity towards Lydgate more definite personal ground. The new−comer already threatened
to be a nuisance in the shape of rivalry, and was certainly a nuisance in the shape of practical
criticism or reflections on his hard−driven elders, who had had something else to do than to
busy themselves with untried notions. His practice had spread in one or two quarters, and
from the first the report of his high family had led to his being pretty generally invited, so
that the other medical men had to meet him at dinner in the best houses; and having to meet
a man whom you dislike is not observed always to end in a mutual attachment. There was
hardly ever so much unanimity among them as in the opinion that Lydgate was an arrogant
young fellow, and yet ready for the sake of ultimately predominating to show a crawling
subservience to Bulstrode. That Mr. Farebrother, whose name was a chief flag of the
anti−Bulstrode party, always defended Lydgate and made a friend of him, was referred to
Farebrother's unaccountable way of fighting on both sides.
Here was plenty of preparation for the outburst of professional disgust at the
announcement of the laws Mr. Bulstrode was laying down for the direction of the New
Hospital, which were the more exasperating because there was no present possibility of
interfering with his will and pleasure, everybody except Lord Medlicote having refused help
towards the building, on the ground that they preferred giving to the Old Infirmary. Mr.
Bulstrode met all the expenses, and had ceased to be sorry that he was purchasing the right
to carry out his notions of improvement without hindrance from prejudiced coadjutors; but
he had had to spend large sums, and the building had lingered. Caleb Garth had undertaken
it, had failed during its progress, and before the interior fittings were begun had retired from
the management of the business; and when referring to the Hospital he often said that
however Bulstrode might ring if you tried him, he liked good solid carpentry and masonry,
and had a notion both of drains and chimneys. In fact, the Hospital had become an object of
intense interest to Bulstrode, and he would willingly have continued to spare a large yearly
sum that he might rule it dictatorially without any Board; but he had another favorite object
which also required money for its accomplishment: he wished to bay some land in the
neighborhood of Middlemarch, and therefore he wished to get considerable contributions
towards maintaining the Hospital. Meanwhile he framed his plan of management. The
Hospital was to be reserved for fever in all its forms; Lydgate was to be chief medical
superintendent, that he might have free authority to pursue all comparative investigations
which his studies, particularly in Paris, had shown him the importance of, the other medical
visitors having a consultative influence, but no power to contravene Lydgate's ultimate
decisions; and the general management was to be lodged exclusively in the hands of five
directors associated with Mr. Bulstrode, who were to have votes in the ratio of their
contributions, the Board itself filling up any vacancy in its numbers, and no mob of small
contributors being admitted to a share of government.
There was an immediate refusal on the part of every medical man in the town to become
a visitor at the Fever Hospital.
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"Very well," said Lydgate to Mr. Bulstrode, "we have a capital house−surgeon and
dispenser, a clear−headed, neat−handed fellow; we'll get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a
country practitioner as any of them, to come over twice a−week, and in case of any
exceptional operation, Protheroe will come from Brassing. I must work the harder, that's all,
and I have given up my post at the Infirmary. The plan will flourish in spite of them, and
then they'll be glad to come in. Things can't last as they are: there must be all sorts of reform
soon, and then young fellows may be glad to come and study here." Lydgate was in high
spirits.
"I shall not flinch, you may depend upon it, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Bulstrode. "While I
see you carrying out high intentions with vigor, you shall have my unfailing support. And I
have humble confidence that the blessing which has hitherto attended my efforts against the
spirit of evil in this town will not be withdrawn. Suitable directors to assist me I have no
doubt of securing. Mr. Brooke of Tipton has already given me his concurrence, and a pledge
to contribute yearly: he has not specified the sum – probably not a great one. But he will be
a useful member of the board."
A useful member was perhaps to be defined as one who would originate nothing, and
always vote with Mr. Bulstrode.
The medical aversion to Lydgate was hardly disguised now. Neither Dr. Sprague nor
Dr. Minchin said that he disliked Lydgate's knowledge, or his disposition to improve
treatment: what they disliked was his arrogance, which nobody felt to be altogether deniable.
They implied that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless innovation for the
sake of noise and show which was the essence of the charlatan.
The word charlatan once thrown on the air could not be let drop. In those days the world
was agitated about the wondrous doings of Mr. St. John Long, "noblemen and gentlemen"
attesting his extraction of a fluid like mercury from the temples of a patient.
Mr. Toller remarked one day, smilingly, to Mrs. Taft, that "Bulstrode had found a man
to suit him in Lydgate; a charlatan in religion is sure to like other sorts of charlatans."
"Yes, indeed, I can imagine," said Mrs. Taft, keeping the number of thirty stitches
carefully in her mind all the while; "there are so many of that sort. I remember Mr. Cheshire,
with his irons, trying to make people straight when the Almighty had made them crooked."
"No, no," said Mr. Toller, "Cheshire was all right – all fair and above board. But there's
St. John Long – that's the kind of fellow we call a charlatan, advertising cures in ways
nobody knows anything about: a fellow who wants to make a noise by pretending to go
deeper than other people. The other day he was pretending to tap a man's brain and get
quicksilver out of it."
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"Good gracious! what dreadful trifling with people's constitutions!" said Mrs. Taft.
After this, it came to be held in various quarters that Lydgate played even with
respectable constitutions for his own purposes, and how much more likely that in his flighty
experimenting he should make sixes and sevens of hospital patients. Especially it was to be
expected, as the landlady of the Tankard had said, that he would recklessly cut up their dead
bodies. For Lydgate having attended Mrs. Goby, who died apparently of a heart−disease not
very clearly expressed in the symptoms, too daringly asked leave of her relatives to open the
body, and thus gave an offence quickly spreading beyond Parley Street, where that lady had
long resided on an income such as made this association of her body with the victims of
Burke and Hare a flagrant insult to her memory.
Affairs were in this stage when Lydgate opened the subject of the Hospital to Dorothea.
We see that be was bearing enmity and silly misconception with much spirit, aware that they
were partly created by his good share of success.
"They will not drive me away," he said, talking confidentially in Mr. Farebrother's
study. "I have got a good opportunity here, for the ends I care most about; and I am pretty
sure to get income enough for our wants. By−and−by I shall go on as quietly as possible: I
have no seductions now away from home and work. And I am more and more convinced
that it will be possible to demonstrate the homogeneous origin of all the tissues. Raspail and
others are on the same track, and I have been losing time."
"I have no power of prophecy there," said Mr. Farebrother, who had been puffing at his
pipe thoughtfully while Lydgate talked; "but as to the hostility in the town, you'll weather it
if you are prudent."
"How am I to be prudent?" said Lydgate, "I just do what comes before me to do. I can't
help people's ignorance and spite, any more than Vesalius could. It isn't possible to square
one's conduct to silly conclusions which nobody can foresee."
"Quite true; I didn't mean that. I meant only two things. One is, keep yourself as
separable from Bulstrode as you can: of course, you can go on doing good work of your own
by his help; but don't get tied. Perhaps it seems like personal feeling in me to say so – and
there's a good deal of that, I own – but personal feeling is not always in the wrong if you boil
it down to the impressions which make it simply an opinion."
"Bulstrode is nothing to me," said Lydgate, carelessly, "except on public grounds. As to
getting very closely united to him, I am not fond enough of him for that. But what was the
other thing you meant?" said Lydgate, who was nursing his leg as comfortably as possible,
and feeling in no great need of advice.
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CHAPTER XLV. 373
"Why, this. Take care – experto crede – take care not to get hampered about money
matters. I know, by a word you let fall one day, that you don't like my playing at cards so
much for money. You are right enough there. But try and keep clear of wanting small sums
that you haven't got. I am perhaps talking rather superfluously; but a man likes to assume
superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and sermonizing on it."
Lydgate took Mr. Farebrother's hints very cordially, though he would hardly have borne
them from another man. He could not help remembering that he had lately made some debts,
but these had seemed inevitable, and he had no intention now to do more than keep house in
a simple way. The furniture for which he owed would not want renewing; nor even the stock
of wine for a long while.
Many thoughts cheered him at that time – and justly. A man conscious of enthusiasm
for worthy aims is sustained under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who had
to fight their way not without wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly
helping. At home, that same evening when he had been chatting with Mr. Farebrother, he
had his long legs stretched on the sofa, his head thrown back, and his hands clasped behind
it according to his favorite ruminating attitude, while Rosamond sat at the piano, and played
one tune after another, of which her husband only knew (like the emotional elephant he
was!) that they fell in with his mood as if they had been melodious sea−breezes.
There was something very fine in Lydgate's look just then, and any one might have been
encouraged to bet on his achievement. In his dark eyes and on his mouth and brow there was
that placidity which comes from the fulness of contemplative thought – the mind not
searching, but beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled with what is behind it.
Presently Rosamond left the piano and seated herself on a chair close to the sofa and
opposite her husband's face.
"Is that enough music for you, my lord?" she said, folding her hands before her and
putting on a little air of meekness.
"Yes, dear, if you are tired," said Lydgate, gently, turning his eyes and resting them on
her, but not otherwise moving. Rosamond's presence at that moment was perhaps no more
than a spoonful brought to the lake, and her woman's instinct in this matter was not dull.
"What is absorbing you?" she said, leaning forward and bringing her face nearer to his.
He moved his hands and placed them gently behind her shoulders.
"I am thinking of a great fellow, who was about as old as I am three hundred years ago,
and had already begun a new era in anatomy."
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CHAPTER XLV. 374
"I can't guess," said Rosamond, shaking her head. "We used to play at guessing
historical characters at Mrs. Lemon's, but not anatomists."
"I'll tell you. His name was Vesalius. And the only way he could get to know anatomy
as he did, was by going to snatch bodies at night, from graveyards and places of execution."
"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a look of disgust on her pretty face, "I am very glad you are
not Vesalius. I should have thought he might find some less horrible way than that."
"No, he couldn't," said Lydgate, going on too earnestly to take much notice of her
answer. "He could only get a complete skeleton by snatching the whitened bones of a
criminal from the gallows, and burying them, and fetching them away by bits secretly, in the
dead of night."
"I hope he is not one of your great heroes," said Rosamond, half playfully, half
anxiously, "else I shall have you getting up in the night to go to St. Peter's churchyard. You
know how angry you told me the people were about Mrs. Goby. You have enemies enough
already."
"So had Vesalius, Rosy. No wonder the medical fogies in Middlemarch are jealous,
when some of the greatest doctors living were fierce upon Vesalius because they had
believed in Galen, and he showed that Galen was wrong. They called him a liar and a
poisonous monster. But the facts of the human frame were on his side; and so he got the
better of them."
"And what happened to him afterwards?" said Rosamond, with some interest.
"Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last. And they did exasperate him enough at
one time to make him burn a good deal of his work. Then he got shipwrecked just as he was
coming from Jerusalem to take a great chair at Padua. He died rather miserably."
There was a moment's pause before Rosamond said, "Do you know, Tertius, I often
wish you had not been a medical man."
"Nay, Rosy, don't say that," said Lydgate, drawing her closer to him. "That is like
saying you wish you had married another man."
"Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you might easily have been something
else. And your cousins at Quallingham all think that you have sunk below them in your
choice of a profession."
"The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil!" said Lydgate, with scorn. "It was
like their impudence if they said anything of the sort to you."
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CHAPTER XLV. 375
"Still," said Rosamond, "I do NOT think it is a nice profession, dear." We know that she
had much quiet perseverance in her opinion.
"It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond," said Lydgate, gravely. "And to
say that you love me without loving the medical man in me, is the same sort of thing as to
say that you like eating a peach but don't like its flavor. Don't say that again, dear, it pains
me."
"Very well, Doctor Grave−face," said Rosy, dimpling, "I will declare in future that I
dote on skeletons, and body−snatchers, and bits of things in phials, and quarrels with
everybody, that end in your dying miserably."
"No, no, not so bad as that," said Lydgate, giving up remonstrance and petting her
resignedly.
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CHAPTER XLV. 376
CHAPTER XLVI.
P
ues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos aquello que podremos.
Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we can get. – Spanish Proverb.
While Lydgate, safely married and with the Hospital under his command, felt himself
struggling for Medical Reform against Middlemarch, Middlemarch was becoming more and
more conscious of the national struggle for another kind of Reform.
By the time that Lord John Russell's measure was being debated in the House of
Commons, there was a new political animation in Middlemarch, and a new definition of
parties which might show a decided change of balance if a new election came. And there
were some who already predicted this event, declaring that a Reform Bill would never be
carried by the actual Parliament. This was what Will Ladislaw dwelt on to Mr. Brooke as a
reason for congratulation that he had not yet tried his strength at the hustings.
"Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will. "The public temper
will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question of Reform has set in. There is likely to be
another election before long, and by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its
head. What we have to work at now is the `Pioneer' and political meetings."
"Quite right, Ladislaw; we shall make a new thing of opinion here," said Mr. Brooke.
"Only I want to keep myself independent about Reform, you know; I don't want to go too
far. I want to take up. Wilberforce's and Romilly's line, you know, and work at Negro
Emancipation, Criminal Law – that kind of thing. But of course I should support Grey."
"If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared to take what the
situation offers," said Will. "If everybody pulled for his own bit against everybody else, the
whole question would go to tatters."
"Yes, yes, I agree with you – I quite take that point of view. I should put it in that light.
I should support Grey, you know. But I don't want to change the balance of the constitution,
and I don't think Grey would."
"But that is what the country wants,"−said Will. "Else there would be no meaning in
political unions or any other movement that knows what it's about. It wants to have a House
of Commons which is not weighted with nominees of the landed class, but with
representatives of the other interests. And as to contending for a reform short of that, it is
like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to thunder."
"That is fine, Ladislaw: that is the way to put it. Write that down, now. We must begin
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to get documents about the feeling of the country, as well as the machine−breaking and
general distress."
"As to documents," said Will, "a two−inch card will hold plenty. A few rows of figures
are enough to deduce misery from, and a few more will show the rate at which the political
determination of the people is growing."
"Good: draw that out a little more at length, Ladislaw. That is an idea, now: write it out
in the `Pioneer.' Put the figures and deduce the misery, you know; and put the other figures
and deduce – and so on. You have a way of putting things. Burke, now: – when I think of
Burke, I can't help wishing somebody had a pocket−borough to give you, Ladislaw. You'd
never get elected, you know. And we shall always want talent in the House: reform as we
will, we shall always want talent. That avalanche and the thunder, now, was really a little
like Burke. I want that sort of thing – not ideas, you know, but a way of putting them."
"Pocket−boroughs would be a fine thing," said Ladislaw, "if they were always in the
right pocket, and there were always a Burke at hand."
Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison, even from Mr. Brooke;
for it is a little too trying to human flesh to be conscious of expressing one's self better than
others and never to have it noticed, and in the general dearth of admiration for the right
thing, even a chance bray of applause falling exactly in time is rather fortifying. Will felt
that his literary refinements were usually beyond the limits of Middlemarch perception;
nevertheless, he was beginning thoroughly to like the work of which when he began he had
said to himself rather languidly, "Why not?" – and he studied the political situation with as
ardent an interest as he had ever given to poetic metres or mediaevalism. It is undeniable
that but for the desire to be where Dorothea was, and perhaps the want of knowing what else
to do, Will would not at this time have been meditating on the needs of the English people or
criticising English statesmanship: he would probably have been rambling in Italy sketching
plans for several dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and finding it
too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures, leaving off because they were "no
good," and observing that, after all, self−culture was the principal point; while in politics he
would have been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general. Our sense of
duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism and make us
feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.
Ladislaw had now accepted his bit of work, though it was not that indeterminate loftiest
thing which he had once dreamed of as alone worthy of continuous effort. His nature
warmed easily in the presence of subjects which were visibly mixed with life and action, and
the easily stirred rebellion in him helped the glow of public spirit. In spite of Mr. Casaubon
and the banishment from Lowick, he was rather happy; getting a great deal of fresh
knowledge in a vivid way and for practical purposes, and making the "Pioneer" celebrated as
far as Brassing (never mind the smallness of the area; the writing was not worse than much
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CHAPTER XLVI. 378
that reaches the four corners of the earth).
Mr. Brooke was occasionally irritating; but Will's impatience was relieved by the
division of his time between visits to the Grange and retreats to his Middlemarch lodgings,
which gave variety to his life.
"Shift the pegs a little," he said to himself, "and Mr. Brooke might be in the Cabinet,
while I was Under−Secretary. That is the common order of things: the little waves make the
large ones and are of the same pattern. I am better here than in the sort of life Mr. Casaubon
would have trained me for, where the doing would be all laid down by a precedent too rigid
for me to react upon. I don't care for prestige or high pay."
As Lydgate had said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the sense of
belonging to no class; he had a feeling of romance in his position, and a pleasant
consciousness of creating a little surprise wherever he went. That sort of enjoyment had
been disturbed when he had felt some new distance between himself and Dorothea in their
accidental meeting at Lydgate's, and his irritation had gone out towards Mr. Casaubon, who
had declared beforehand that Will would lose caste. "I never had any caste," he would have
said, if that prophecy had been uttered to him, and the quick blood would have come and
gone like breath in his transparent skin. But it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing
to like its consequences.
Meanwhile, the town opinion about the new editor of the "Pioneer" was tending to
confirm Mr. Casaubon's view. Will's relationship in that distinguished quarter did not, like
Lydgate's high connections, serve as an advantageous introduction: if it was rumored that
young Ladislaw was Mr. Casaubon's nephew or cousin, it was also rumored that "Mr.
Casaubon would have nothing to do with him."
"Brooke has taken him up," said Mr. Hawley, "because that is what no man in his
senses could have expected. Casaubon has devilish good reasons, you may be sure, for
turning the cold shoulder on a young fellow whose bringing−up he paid for. Just like Brooke
– one of those fellows who would praise a cat to sell a horse."
And some oddities of Will's, more or less poetical, appeared to support Mr. Keck, the
editor of the "Trumpet," in asserting that Ladislaw, if the truth were known, was not only a
Polish emissary but crack−brained, which accounted for the preternatural quickness and
glibness of his speech when he got on to a platform – as he did whenever he had an
opportunity, speaking with a facility which cast reflections on solid Englishmen generally. It
was disgusting to Keck to see a strip of a fellow, with light curls round his head, get up and
speechify by the hour against institutions "which had existed when he was in his cradle."
And in a leading article of the "Trumpet," Keck characterized Ladislaw's speech at a Reform
meeting as "the violence of an energumen – a miserable effort to shroud in the brilliancy of
fireworks the daring of irresponsible statements and the poverty of a knowledge which was
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CHAPTER XLVI. 379
of the cheapest and most recent description."
"That was a rattling article yesterday, Keck," said Dr. Sprague, with sarcastic intentions.
"But what is an energumen?"
"Oh, a term that came up in the French Revolution," said Keck.
This dangerous aspect of Ladislaw was strangely contrasted with other habits which
became matter of remark. He had a fondness, half artistic, half affectionate, for little
children – the smaller they were on tolerably active legs, and the funnier their clothing, the
better Will liked to surprise and please them. We know that in Rome he was given to ramble
about among the poor people, and the taste did not quit him in Middlemarch.
He had somehow picked up a troop of droll children, little hatless boys with their
galligaskins much worn and scant shirting to hang out, little girls who tossed their hair out of
their eyes to look at him, and guardian brothers at the mature age of seven. This troop he had
led out on gypsy excursions to Halsell Wood at nutting−time, and since the cold weather had
set in he had taken them on a clear day to gather sticks for a bonfire in the hollow of a
hillside, where he drew out a small feast of gingerbread for them, and improvised a
Punch−and−Judy drama with some private home−made puppets. Here was one oddity.
Another was, that in houses where he got friendly, he was given to stretch himself at full
length on the rug while he talked, and was apt to be discovered in this attitude by occasional
callers for whom such an irregularity was likely to confirm the notions of his dangerously
mixed blood and general laxity.
But Will's articles and speeches naturally recommended him in families which the new
strictness of party division had marked off on the side of Reform. He was invited to Mr.
Bulstrode's; but here he could not lie down on the rug, and Mrs. Bulstrode felt that his mode
of talking about Catholic countries, as if there were any truce with Antichrist, illustrated the
usual tendency to unsoundness in intellectual men.
At Mr. Farebrother's, however, whom the irony of events had brought on the same side
with Bulstrode in the national movement, Will became a favorite with the ladies; especially
with little Miss Noble, whom it was one of his oddities to escort when he met her in the
street with her little basket, giving her his arm in the eyes of the town, and insisting on going
with her to pay some call where she distributed her small filchings from her own share of
sweet things.
But the house where he visited oftenest and lay most on the rug was Lydgate's. The two
men were not at all alike, but they agreed none the worse. Lydgate was abrupt but not
irritable, taking little notice of megrims in healthy people; and Ladislaw did not usually
throw away his susceptibilities on those who took no notice of them. With Rosamond, on the
other hand, he pouted and was wayward – nay, often uncomplimentary, much to her inward
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CHAPTER XLVI. 380
surprise; nevertheless he was gradually becoming necessary to her entertainment by his
companionship in her music, his varied talk, and his freedom from the grave preoccupation
which, with all her husband's tenderness and indulgence, often made his manners
unsatisfactory to her, and confirmed her dislike of the medical profession.
Lydgate, inclined to be sarcastic on the superstitious faith of the people in the efficacy
of "the bill," while nobody cared about the low state of pathology, sometimes assailed Will
with troublesome questions. One evening in March, Rosamond in her cherry−colored dress
with swansdown trimming about the throat sat at the tea−table; Lydgate, lately come in tired
from his outdoor work, was seated sideways on an easy−chair by the fire with one leg over
the elbow, his brow looking a little troubled as his eyes rambled over the columns of the
"Pioneer," while Rosamond, having noticed that he was perturbed, avoided looking at him,
and inwardly thanked heaven that she herself had not a moody disposition. Will Ladislaw
was stretched on the rug contemplating the curtain−pole abstractedly, and humming very
low the notes of "When first I saw thy face;" while the house spaniel, also stretched out with
small choice of room, looked from between his paws at the usurper of the rug with silent but
strong objection.
Rosamond bringing Lydgate his cup of tea, he threw down the paper, and said to Will,
who had started up and gone to the table –
"It's no use your puffing Brooke as a reforming landlord, Ladislaw: they only pick the
more holes in his coat in the `Trumpet.'"
"No matter; those who read the `Pioneer' don't read the `Trumpet,'" said Will,
swallowing his tea and walking about. "Do you suppose the public reads with a view to its
own conversion? We should have a witches' brewing with a vengeance then – `Mingle,
mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may' – and nobody would know which side he was
going to take."
"Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected if the opportunity came:
the very men who profess to be for him would bring another member out of the bag at the
right moment."
"There's no harm in trying. It's good to have resident members."
"Why?" said Lydgate, who was much given to use that inconvenient word in a curt tone.
"They represent the local stupidity better," said Will, laughing, and shaking his curls;
"and they are kept on their best behavior in the neighborhood. Brooke is not a bad fellow,
but he has done some good things on his estate that he never would have done but for this
Parliamentary bite."
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CHAPTER XLVI. 381
"He's not fitted to be a public man," said Lydgate, with contemptuous decision. "He
would disappoint everybody who counted on him: I can see that at the Hospital. Only, there
Bulstrode holds the reins and drives him."
"That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will. "He's good
enough for the occasion: when the people have made up their mind as they are making it up
now, they don't want a man – they only want a vote."
"That is the way with you political writers, Ladislaw – crying up a measure as if it were
a universal cure, and crying up men who are a part of the very disease that wants curing."
"Why not? Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land without knowing
it," said Will, who could find reasons impromptu, when he had not thought of a question
beforehand.
"That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of hopes about this
particular measure, helping the cry to swallow it whole and to send up voting popinjays who
are good for nothing but to carry it. You go against rottenness, and there is nothing more
thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured by a political
hocus−pocus."
"That's very fine, my dear fellow. But your cure must begin somewhere, and put it that a
thousand things which debase a population can never be reformed without this particular
reform to begin with. Look what Stanley said the other day – that the House had been
tinkering long enough at small questions of bribery, inquiring whether this or that voter has
had a guinea when everybody knows that the seats have been sold wholesale. Wait for
wisdom and conscience in public agents – fiddlestick! The only conscience we can trust to is
the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work is the wisdom of
balancing claims. That's my text – which side is injured? I support the man who supports
their claims; not the virtuous upholder of the wrong."
"That general talk about a particular case is mere question begging, Ladislaw. When I
say, I go in for the dose that cures, it doesn't follow that I go in for opium in a given case of
gout."
"I am not begging the question we are upon – whether we are to try for nothing till we
find immaculate men to work with. Should you go on that plan? If there were one man who
would carry you a medical reform and another who would oppose it, should you inquire
which had the better motives or even the better brains?"
"Oh, of course," said Lydgate, seeing himself checkmated by a move which he had
often used himself, "if one did not work with such men as are at hand, things must come to a
dead−lock. Suppose the worst opinion in the town about Bulstrode were a true one, that
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CHAPTER XLVI. 382
would not make it less true that he has the sense and the resolution to do what I think ought
to be done in the matters I know and care most about; but that is the only ground on which I
go with him," Lydgate added rather proudly, bearing in mind Mr. Farebrother's remarks. "He
is nothing to me otherwise; I would not cry him up on any personal ground – I would keep
clear of that."
"Do you mean that I cry up Brooke on any personal ground?" said Will Ladislaw,
nettled, and turning sharp round. For the first time he felt offended with Lydgate; not the
less so, perhaps, because he would have declined any close inquiry into the growth of his
relation to Mr. Brooke.
"Not at all," said Lydgate, "I was simply explaining my own action. I meant that a man
may work for a special end with others whose motives and general course are equivocal, if
he is quite sure of his personal independence, and that he is not working for his private
interest – either place or money."
"Then, why don't you extend your liberality to others?" said Will, still nettled. "My
personal independence is as important to me as yours is to you. You have no more reason to
imagine that I have personal expectations from Brooke, than I have to imagine that you have
personal expectations from Bulstrode. Motives are points of honor, I suppose – nobody can
prove them. But as to money and place in the world." Will ended, tossing back his head, "I
think it is pretty clear that I am not determined by considerations of that sort."
"You quite mistake me, Ladislaw," said Lydgate, surprised. He had been preoccupied
with his own vindication, and had been blind to what Ladislaw might infer on his own
account. "I beg your pardon for unintentionally annoying you. In fact, I should rather
attribute to you a romantic disregard of your own worldly interests. On the political
question, I referred simply to intellectual bias."
"How very unpleasant you both are this evening!" said Rosamond. "I cannot conceive
why money should have been referred to. Polities and Medicine are sufficiently disagreeable
to quarrel upon. You can both of you go on quarrelling with all the world and with each
other on those two topics."
Rosamond looked mildly neutral as she said this, rising to ring the bell, and then
crossing to her work−table.
"Poor Rosy!" said Lydgate, putting out his hand to her as she was passing him.
"Disputation is not amusing to cherubs. Have some music. Ask Ladislaw to sing with you."
When Will was gone Rosamond said to her husband, "What put you out of temper this
evening, Tertius?"
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CHAPTER XLVI. 383
"Me? It was Ladislaw who was out of temper. He is like a bit of tinder."
"But I mean, before that. Something had vexed you before you came in, you looked
cross. And that made you begin to dispute with Mr. Ladislaw. You hurt me very much when
you look so, Tertius."
"Do I? Then I am a brute," said Lydgate, caressing her penitently.
"What vexed you?"
"Oh, outdoor things – business." It was really a letter insisting on the payment of a bill
for furniture. But Rosamond was expecting to have a baby, and Lydgate wished to save her
from any perturbation.
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CHAPTER XLVII.
W
as never true love loved in vain, For truest love is highest gain. No art can make it: it
must spring Where elements are fostering. So in heaven's spot and hour Springs the little
native flower, Downward root and upward eye, Shapen by the earth and sky.
It happened to be on a Saturday evening that Will Ladislaw had that little discussion
with Lydgate. Its effect when he went to his own rooms was to make him sit up half the
night, thinking over again, under a new irritation, all that he had before thought of his having
settled in Middlemarch and harnessed himself with Mr. Brooke. Hesitations before he had
taken the step had since turned into susceptibility to every hint that he would have been
wiser not to take it; and hence came his heat towards Lydgate – a heat which still kept him
restless. Was he not making a fool of himself? – and at a time when he was more than ever
conscious of being something better than a fool? And for what end?
Well, for no definite end. True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities: there is no
human being who having both passions and thoughts does not think in consequence of his
passions – does not find images rising in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or
sting it with dread. But this, which happens to us all, happens to some with a wide
difference; and Will was not one of those whose wit "keeps the roadway:" he had his
bypaths where there were little joys of his own choosing, such as gentlemen cantering on the
highroad might have thought rather idiotic. The way in which he made a sort of happiness
for himself out of his feeling for Dorothea was an example of this. It may seem strange, but
it is the fact, that the ordinary vulgar vision of which Mr. Casaubon suspected him – namely,
that Dorothea might become a widow, and that the interest he had established in her mind
might turn into acceptance of him as a husband – had no tempting, arresting power over
him; he did not live in the scenery of such an event, and follow it out, as we all do with that
imagined "otherwise" which is our practical heaven. It was not only that he was unwilling to
entertain thoughts which could be accused of baseness, and was already uneasy in the sense
that he had to justify himself from the charge of ingratitude – the latent consciousness of
many other barriers between himself and Dorothea besides the existence of her husband, had
helped to turn away his imagination from speculating on what might befall Mr. Casaubon.
And there were yet other reasons. Will, we know, could not bear the thought of any flaw
appearing in his crystal: he was at once exasperated and delighted by the calm freedom with
which Dorothea looked at him and spoke to him, and there was something so exquisite in
thinking of her just as she was, that he could not long for a change which must somehow
change her. Do we not shun the street version of a fine melody? – or shrink from the news
that the rarity – some bit of chiselling or engraving perhaps – which we have dwelt on even
with exultation in the trouble it has cost us to snatch glimpses of it, is really not an
uncommon thing, and may be obtained as an every−day possession? Our good depends on
the quality and breadth of our emotion; and to Will, a creature who cared little for what are
called the solid things of life and greatly for its subtler influences, to have within him such a
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feeling as he had towards Dorothea, was like the inheritance of a fortune. What others might
have called the futility of his passion, made an additional delight for his imagination: he was
conscious of a generous movement, and of verifying in his own experience that higher
love−poetry which had charmed his fancy. Dorothea, he said to himself, was forever
enthroned in his soul: no other woman could sit higher than her footstool; and if he could
have written out in immortal syllables the effect she wrought within him, he might have
boasted after the example of old Drayton, that, –
"Queens hereafter might be glad to live Upon the alms of her superfluous praise."
But this result was questionable. And what else could he do for Dorothea? What was his
devotion worth to her? It was impossible to tell. He would not go out of her reach. He saw
no creature among her friends to whom he could believe that she spoke with the same
simple confidence as to him. She had once said that she would like him to stay; and stay he
would, whatever fire−breathing dragons might hiss around her.
This had always been the conclusion of Will's hesitations. But he was not without
contradictoriness and rebellion even towards his own resolve. He had often got irritated, as
he was on this particular night, by some outside demonstration that his public exertions with
Mr. Brooke as a chief could not seem as heroic as he would like them to be, and this was
always associated with the other ground of irritation – that notwithstanding his sacrifice of
dignity for Dorothea's sake, he could hardly ever see her. Whereupon, not being able to
contradict these unpleasant facts, he contradicted his own strongest bias and said, "I am a
fool."
Nevertheless, since the inward debate necessarily turned on Dorothea, he ended, as he
had done before, only by getting a livelier sense of what her presence would be to him; and
suddenly reflecting that the morrow would be Sunday, he determined to go to Lowick
Church and see her. He slept upon that idea, but when he was dressing in the rational
morning light, Objection said –
"That will be a virtual defiance of Mr. Casaubon's prohibition to visit Lowick, and
Dorothea will be displeased."
"Nonsense!" argued Inclination, "it would be too monstrous for him to hinder me from
going out to a pretty country church on a spring morning. And Dorothea will be glad."
"It will be clear to Mr. Casaubon that you have come either to annoy him or to see
Dorothea."
"It is not true that I go to annoy him, and why should I not go to see Dorothea? Is he to
have everything to himself and be always comfortable? Let him smart a little, as other
people are obliged to do. I have always liked the quaintness of the church and congregation;
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besides, I know the Tuckers: I shall go into their pew."
Having silenced Objection by force of unreason, Will walked to Lowick as if he had
been on the way to Paradise, crossing Halsell Common and skirting the wood, where the
sunlight fell broadly under the budding boughs, bringing out the beauties of moss and
lichen, and fresh green growths piercing the brown. Everything seemed to know that it was
Sunday, and to approve of his going to Lowick Church. Will easily felt happy when nothing
crossed his humor, and by this time the thought of vexing Mr. Casaubon had become rather
amusing to him, making his face break into its merry smile, pleasant to see as the breaking
of sunshine on the water – though the occasion was not exemplary. But most of us are apt to
settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing
him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves. Will went along with a
small book under his arm and a hand in each side−pocket, never reading, but chanting a
little, as he made scenes of what would happen in church and coming out. He was
experimenting in tunes to suit some words of his own, sometimes trying a ready−made
melody, sometimes improvising. The words were not exactly a hymn, but they certainly
fitted his Sunday experience: –
"O me, O me, what frugal cheer My love doth feed upon! A touch, a ray, that is not
here, A shadow that is gone:
"A dream of breath that might be near, An inly−echoed tone, The thought that one may
think me dear, The place where one was known,
"The tremor of a banished fear, An ill that was not done – O me, O me, what frugal
cheer My love doth feed upon!"
Sometimes, when he took off his hat, shaking his head backward, and showing his
delicate throat as he sang, he looked like an incarnation of the spring whose spirit filled the
air – a bright creature, abundant in uncertain promises.
The bells were still ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went into the curate's pew
before any one else arrived there. But he was still left alone in it when the congregation had
assembled. The curate's pew was opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel,
and Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not come while he looked round at the group
of rural faces which made the congregation from year to year within the white−washed walls
and dark old pews, hardly with more change than we see in the boughs of a tree which
breaks here and there with age, but yet has young shoots. Mr. Rigg's frog−face was
something alien and unaccountable, but notwithstanding this shock to the order of things,
there were still the Waules and the rural stock of the Powderells in their pews side by side;
brother Samuel's cheek had the same purple round as ever, and the three generations of
decent cottagers came as of old with a sense of duty to their betters generally – the smaller
children regarding Mr. Casaubon, who wore the black gown and mounted to the highest box,
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as probably the chief of all betters, and the one most awful if offended. Even in 1831
Lowick was at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the Sunday
sermon. The congregation had been used to seeing Will at church in former days, and no one
took much note of him except the choir, who expected him to make a figure in the singing.
Dorothea did at last appear on this quaint background, walking up the short aisle in her
white beaver bonnet and gray cloak – the same she had worn in the Vatican. Her face being,
from her entrance, towards the chancel, even her shortsighted eyes soon discerned Will, but
there was no outward show of her feeling except a slight paleness and a grave bow as she
passed him. To his own surprise Will felt suddenly uncomfortable, and dared not look at her
after they had bowed to each other. Two minutes later, when Mr. Casaubon came out of the
vestry, and, entering the pew, seated himself in face of Dorothea, Will felt his paralysis more
complete. He could look nowhere except at the choir in the little gallery over the
vestry−door: Dorothea was perhaps pained, and he had made a wretched blunder. It was no
longer amusing to vex Mr. Casaubon, who had the advantage probably of watching him and
seeing that he dared not turn his head. Why had he not imagined this beforehand? – but he
could not expect that he should sit in that square pew alone, unrelieved by any Tuckers, who
had apparently departed from Lowick altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk. Still
he called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it would be impossible for him to look
towards Dorothea – nay, that she might feel his coming an impertinence. There was no
delivering himself from his cage, however; and Will found his places and looked at his book
as if he had been a school−mistress, feeling that the morning service had never been so
immeasurably long before, that he was utterly ridiculous, out of temper, and miserable. This
was what a man got by worshipping the sight of a woman! The clerk observed with surprise
that Mr. Ladislaw did not join in the tune of Hanover, and reflected that he might have a
cold.
Mr. Casaubon did not preach that morning, and there was no change in Will's situation
until the blessing had been pronounced and every one rose. It was the fashion at Lowick for
"the betters" to go out first. With a sudden determination to break the spell that was upon
him, Will looked straight at Mr. Casaubon. But that gentleman's eyes were on the button of
the pew−door, which he opened, allowing Dorothea to pass, and following her immediately
without raising his eyelids. Will's glance had caught Dorothea's as she turned out of the pew,
and again she bowed, but this time with a look of agitation, as if she were repressing tears.
Will walked out after them, but they went on towards the little gate leading out of the
churchyard into the shrubbery, never looking round.
It was impossible for him to follow them, and he could only walk back sadly at
mid−day along the same road which he had trodden hopefully in the morning. The lights
were all changed for him both without and within.
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CHAPTER XLVIII
S
urely the golden hours are turning gray And dance no more, and vainly strive to run: I
see their white locks streaming in the wind – Each face is haggard as it looks at me, Slow
turning in the constant clasping round Storm−driven.
Dorothea's distress when she was leaving the church came chiefly from the perception
that Mr. Casaubon was determined not to speak to his cousin, and that Will's presence at
church had served to mark more strongly the alienation between them. Will's coming
seemed to her quite excusable, nay, she thought it an amiable movement in him towards a
reconciliation which she herself had been constantly wishing for. He had probably imagined,
as she had, that if Mr. Casaubon and he could meet easily, they would shake hands and
friendly intercourse might return. But now Dorothea felt quite robbed of that hope. Will was
banished further than ever, for Mr. Casaubon must have been newly embittered by this
thrusting upon him of a presence which he refused to recognize.
He had not been very well that morning, suffering from some difficulty in breathing,
and had not preached in consequence; she was not surprised, therefore, that he was nearly
silent at luncheon, still less that he made no allusion to Will Ladislaw. For her own part she
felt that she could never again introduce that subject. They usually spent apart the hours
between luncheon and dinner on a Sunday; Mr. Casaubon in the library dozing chiefly, and
Dorothea in her boudoir, where she was wont to occupy herself with some of her favorite
books. There was a little heap of them on the table in the bow−window – of various sorts,
from Herodotus, which she was learning to read with Mr. Casaubon, to her old companion
Pascal, and Keble's "Christian Year." But to−day opened one after another, and could read
none of them. Everything seemed dreary: the portents before the birth of Cyrus – Jewish
antiquities – oh dear! – devout epigrams – the sacred chime of favorite hymns – all alike
were as flat as tunes beaten on wood: even the spring flowers and the grass had a dull shiver
in them under the afternoon clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the sustaining thoughts
which had become habits seemed to have in them the weariness of long future days in which
she would still live with them for her sole companions. It was another or rather a fuller sort
of companionship that poor Dorothea was hungering for, and the hunger had grown from the
perpetual effort demanded by her married life. She was always trying to be what her
husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was. The thing that she
liked, that she spontaneously cared to have, seemed to be always excluded from her life; for
if it was only granted and not shared by her husband it might as well have been denied.
About Will Ladislaw there had been a difference between them from the first, and it had
ended, since Mr. Casaubon had so severely repulsed Dorothea's strong feeling about his
claims on the family property, by her being convinced that she was in the right and her
husband in the wrong, but that she was helpless. This afternoon the helplessness was more
wretchedly benumbing than ever: she longed for objects who could be dear to her, and to
whom she could be dear. She longed for work which would be directly beneficent like the
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sunshine and the rain, and now it appeared that she was to live more and more in a virtual
tomb, where there was the apparatus of a ghastly labor producing what would never see the
light. Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and seen Will Ladislaw receding into the
distant world of warm activity and fellowship – turning his face towards her as he went.
Books were of no use. Thinking was of no use. It was Sunday, and she could not have
the carriage to go to Celia, who had lately had a baby. There was no refuge now from
spiritual emptiness and discontent, and Dorothea had to bear her bad mood, as she would
have borne a headache.
After dinner, at the hour when she usually began to read aloud, Mr. Casaubon proposed
that they should go into the library, where, he said, he had ordered a fire and lights. He
seemed to have revived, and to be thinking intently.
In the library Dorothea observed that he had newly arranged a row of his note−books on
a table, and now he took up and put into her hand a well−known volume, which was a table
of contents to all the others.
"You will oblige me, my dear," he said, seating himself, "if instead of other reading this
evening, you will go through this aloud, pencil in hand, and at each point where I say `mark,'
will make a cross with your pencil. This is the first step in a sifting process which I have
long had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to indicate to you certain principles of
selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent participation in my purpose."
This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his memorable interview
with Lydgate, that Mr. Casaubon's original reluctance to let Dorothea work with him had
given place to the contrary disposition, namely, to demand much interest and labor from her.
After she had read and marked for two hours, he said, "We will take the volume
up−stairs – and the pencil, if you please – and in case of reading in the night, we can pursue
this task. It is not wearisome to you, I trust, Dorothea?"
"I prefer always reading what you like best to hear," said Dorothea, who told the simple
truth; for what she dreaded was to exert herself in reading or anything else which left him as
joyless as ever.
It was a proof of the force with which certain characteristics in Dorothea impressed
those around her, that her husband, with all his jealousy and suspicion, had gathered implicit
trust in the integrity of her promises, and her power of devoting herself to her idea of the
right and best. Of late he had begun to feel that these qualities were a peculiar possession for
himself, and he wanted to engross them.
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The reading in the night did come. Dorothea in her young weariness had slept soon and
fast: she was awakened by a sense of light, which seemed to her at first like a sudden vision
of sunset after she had climbed a steep hill: she opened her eyes and saw her husband
wrapped in his warm gown seating himself in the arm−chair near the fire−place where the
embers were still glowing. He had lit two candles, expecting that Dorothea would awake,
but not liking to rouse her by more direct means.
"Are you ill, Edward?" she said, rising immediately.
"I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture. I will sit here for a time." She threw wood
on the fire, wrapped herself up, and said, "You would like me to read to you?"
"You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon, with a shade
more meekness than usual in his polite manner. "I am wakeful: my mind is remarkably
lucid."
"I fear that the excitement may be too great for you," said Dorothea, remembering
Lydgate's cautions.
"No, I am not conscious of undue excitement. Thought is easy." Dorothea dared not
insist, and she read for an hour or more on the same plan as she had done in the evening, but
getting over the pages with more quickness. Mr. Casaubon's mind was more alert, and he
seemed to anticipate what was coming after a very slight verbal indication, saying, "That
will do – mark that" – or "Pass on to the next head – I omit the second excursus on Crete."
Dorothea was amazed to think of the bird−like speed with which his mind was surveying the
ground where it had been creeping for years. At last he said –
"Close the book now, my dear. We will resume our work to−morrow. I have deferred it
too long, and would gladly see it completed. But you observe that the principle on which my
selection is made, is to give adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the
theses enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched. You have perceived that
distinctly, Dorothea?"
"Yes," said Dorothea, rather tremulously. She felt sick at heart.
"And now I think that I can take some repose," said Mr. Casaubon. He laid down again
and begged her to put out the lights. When she had lain down too, and there was a darkness
only broken by a dull glow on the hearth, he said –
"Before I sleep, I have a request to make, Dorothea."
"What is it?" said Dorothea, with dread in her mind.
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"It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my death, you will
carry out my wishes: whether you will avoid doing what I should deprecate, and apply
yourself to do what I should desire."
Dorothea was not taken by surprise: many incidents had been leading her to the
conjecture of some intention on her husband's part which might make a new yoke for her.
She did not answer immediately.
"You refuse?" said Mr. Casaubon, with more edge in his tone.
"No, I do not yet refuse," said Dorothea, in a clear voice, the need of freedom asserting
itself within her; "but it is too solemn – I think it is not right – to make a promise when I am
ignorant what it will bind me to. Whatever affection prompted I would do without
promising."
"But you would use your own judgment: I ask you to obey mine; you refuse."
"No, dear, no!" said Dorothea, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears. "But may I
wait and reflect a little while? I desire with my whole soul to do what will comfort you; but I
cannot give any pledge suddenly – still less a pledge to do I know not what."
"You cannot then confide in the nature of my wishes?"
"Grant me till to−morrow," said Dorothea, beseechingly.
"Till to−morrow then," said Mr. Casaubon.
Soon she could hear that he was sleeping, but there was no more sleep for her. While
she constrained herself to lie still lest she should disturb him, her mind was carrying on a
conflict in which imagination ranged its forces first on one side and then on the other. She
had no presentiment that the power which her husband wished to establish over her future
action had relation to anything else than his work. But it was clear enough to her that he
would expect her to devote herself to sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to
be the doubtful illustration of principles still more doubtful. The poor child had become
altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key which had made the ambition
and the labor of her husband's life. It was not wonderful that, in spite of her small
instruction, her judgment in this matter was truer than his: for she looked with unbiassed
comparison and healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked all his egoism. And
now she pictured to herself the days, and months, and years which she must spend in sorting
what might be called shattered mummies, and fragments of a tradition which was itself a
mosaic wrought from crushed ruins – sorting them as food for a theory which was already
withered in the birth like an elfin child. Doubtless a vigorous error vigorously pursued has
kept the embryos of truth a−breathing: the quest of gold being at the same time a
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questioning of substances, the body of chemistry is prepared for its soul, and Lavoisier is
born. But Mr. Casaubon's theory of the elements which made the seed of all tradition was
not likely to bruise itself unawares against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures
no more solid than those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in sound
until it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible: it was a method of
interpretation which was not tested by the necessity of forming anything which had sharper
collisions than an elaborate notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free from interruption as a
plan for threading the stars together. And Dorothea had so often had to check her weariness
and impatience over this questionable riddle−guessing, as it revealed itself to her instead of
the fellowship in high knowledge which was to make life worthier! She could understand
well enough now why her husband had come to cling to her, as possibly the only hope left
that his labors would ever take a shape in which they could be given to the world. At first it
had seemed that he wished to keep even her aloof from any close knowledge of what he was
doing; but gradually the terrible stringency of human need – the prospect of a too speedy
death –
And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's past – nay, to his
present hard struggle with a lot which had grown out of that past: the lonely labor, the
ambition breathing hardly under the pressure of self−distrust; the goal receding, and the
heavier limbs; and now at last the sword visibly trembling above him! And had she not
wished to marry him that she might help him in his life's labor? – But she had thought the
work was to be something greater, which she could serve in devoutly for its own sake. Was
it right, even to soothe his grief – would it be possible, even if she promised – to work as in
a treadmill fruitlessly?
And yet, could she deny him? Could she say, "I refuse to content this pining hunger?" It
would be refusing to do for him dead, what she was almost sure to do for him living. If he
lived as Lydgate had said he might, for fifteen years or more, her life would certainly be
spent in helping him and obeying him.
Still, there was a deep difference between that devotion to the living and that indefinite
promise of devotion to the dead. While he lived, he could claim nothing that she would not
still be free to remonstrate against, and even to refuse. But – the thought passed through her
mind more than once, though she could not believe in it – might he not mean to demand
something more from her than she had been able to imagine, since he wanted her pledge to
carry out his wishes without telling her exactly what they were? No; his heart was bound up
in his work only: that was the end for which his failing life was to be eked out by hers.
And now, if she were to say, "No! if you die, I will put no finger to your work" – it
seemed as if she would be crushing that bruised heart.
For four hours Dorothea lay in this conflict, till she felt ill and bewildered, unable to
resolve, praying mutely. Helpless as a child which has sobbed and sought too long, she fell
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into a late morning sleep, and when she waked Mr. Casaubon was already up. Tantripp told
her that he had read prayers, breakfasted, and was in the library.
"I never saw you look so pale, madam," said Tantripp, a solid−figured woman who had
been with the sisters at Lausanne.
"Was I ever high−colored, Tantripp?" said Dorothea, smiling faintly.
"Well, not to say high−colored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose. But always smelling
those leather books, what can be expected? Do rest a little this morning, madam. Let me say
you are ill and not able to go into that close library."
"Oh no, no! let me make haste," said Dorothea. "Mr. Casaubon wants me particularly."
When she went down she felt sure that she should promise to fulfil his wishes; but that
would be later in the day – not yet.
As Dorothea entered the library, Mr. Casaubon turned round from the table where he
had been placing some books, and said –
"I was waiting for your appearance, my dear. I had hoped to set to work at once this
morning, but I find myself under some indisposition, probably from too much excitement
yesterday. I am going now to take a turn in the shrubbery, since the air is milder."
"I am glad to hear that," said Dorothea. "Your mind, I feared, was too active last night."
"I would fain have it set at rest on the point I last spoke of, Dorothea. You can now, I
hope, give me an answer."
"May I come out to you in the garden presently?" said Dorothea, winning a little
breathing space in that way.
"I shall be in the Yew−tree Walk for the next half−hour," said Mr. Casaubon, and then
he left her.
Dorothea, feeling very weary, rang and asked Tantripp to bring her some wraps. She
had been sitting still for a few minutes, but not in any renewal of the former conflict: she
simply felt that she was going to say "Yes" to her own doom: she was too weak, too full of
dread at the thought of inflicting a keen−edged blow on her husband, to do anything but
submit completely. She sat still and let Tantripp put on her bonnet and shawl, a passivity
which was unusual with her, for she liked to wait on herself.
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"God bless you, madam!" said Tantripp, with an irrepressible movement of love
towards the beautiful, gentle creature for whom she felt unable to do anything more, now
that she had finished tying the bonnet.
This was too much for Dorothea's highly−strung feeling, and she burst into tears,
sobbing against Tantripp's arm. But soon she checked herself, dried her eyes, and went out
at the glass door into the shrubbery.
"I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for your master," said
Tantripp to Pratt, the butler, finding him in the breakfast−room. She had been at Rome, and
visited the antiquities, as we know; and she always declined to call Mr. Casaubon anything
but "your master," when speaking to the other servants.
Pratt laughed. He liked his master very well, but he liked Tantripp better.
When Dorothea was out on the gravel walks, she lingered among the nearer clumps of
trees, hesitating, as she had done once before, though from a different cause. Then she had
feared lest her effort at fellowship should be unwelcome; now she dreaded going to the spot
where she foresaw that she must bind herself to a fellowship from which she shrank. Neither
law nor the world's opinion compelled her to this – only her husband's nature and her own
compassion, only the ideal and not the real yoke of marriage. She saw clearly enough the
whole situation, yet she was fettered: she could not smite the stricken soul that entreated
hers. If that were weakness, Dorothea was weak. But the half−hour was passing, and she
must not delay longer. When she entered the Yew−tree Walk she could not see her husband;
but the walk had bends, and she went, expecting to catch sight of his figure wrapped in a
blue cloak, which, with a warm velvet cap, was his outer garment on chill days for the
garden. It occurred to her that he might be resting in the summer−house, towards which the
path diverged a little. Turning the angle, she could see him seated on the bench, close to a
stone table. His arms were resting on the table, and his brow was bowed down on them, the
blue cloak being dragged forward and screening his face on each side.
"He exhausted himself last night," Dorothea said to herself, thinking at first that he was
asleep, and that the summer−house was too damp a place to rest in. But then she
remembered that of late she had seen him take that attitude when she was reading to him, as
if he found it easier than any other; and that he would sometimes speak, as well as listen,
with his face down in that way. She went into the summerhouse and said, "I am come,
Edward; I am ready."
He took no notice, and she thought that he must be fast asleep. She laid her hand on his
shoulder, and repeated, "I am ready!" Still he was motionless; and with a sudden confused
fear, she leaned down to him, took off his velvet cap, and leaned her cheek close to his head,
crying in a distressed tone –
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"Wake, dear, wake! Listen to me. I am come to answer." But Dorothea never gave her
answer.
Later in the day, Lydgate was seated by her bedside, and she was talking deliriously,
thinking aloud, and recalling what had gone through her mind the night before. She knew
him, and called him by his name, but appeared to think it right that she should explain
everything to him; and again, and again, begged him to explain everything to her husband.
"Tell him I shall go to him soon: I am ready to promise. Only, thinking about it was so
dreadful – it has made me ill. Not very ill. I shall soon be better. Go and tell him."
But the silence in her husband's ear was never more to be broken.
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CHAPTER XLIX.
A
task too strong for wizard spells This squire had brought about; 'T is easy dropping
stones in wells, But who shall get them out?"
"I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this," said Sir James Chettam,
with a little frown on his brow, and an expression of intense disgust about his mouth.
He was standing on the hearth−rug in the library at Lowick Grange, and speaking to Mr.
Brooke. It was the day after Mr. Casaubon had been buried, and Dorothea was not yet able
to leave her room.
"That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix, and she likes to go
into these things – property, land, that kind of thing. She has her notions, you know," said
Mr. Brooke, sticking his eye−glasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a folded
paper which he held in his hand; "and she would like to act – depend upon it, as an executrix
Dorothea would want to act. And she was twenty−one last December, you know. I can
hinder nothing."
Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then lifting his eyes suddenly
fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, "I will tell you what we can do. Until Dorothea is well,
all business must be kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to
us. Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing in the world for her, and will pass
away the time. And meanwhile you must get rid of Ladislaw: you must send him out of the
country." Here Sir James's look of disgust returned in all its intensity.
Mr. Brooke put his hands behind him, walked to the window and straightened his back
with a little shake before he replied.
"That is easily said, Chettam, easily said, you know."
"My dear sir," persisted Sir James, restraining his indignation within respectful forms,
"it was you who brought him here, and you who keep him here – I mean by the occupation
you give him."
"Yes, but I can't dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons, my dear Chettam.
Ladislaw has been invaluable, most satisfactory. I consider that I have done this part of the
country a service by bringing him – by bringing him, you know." Mr. Brooke ended with a
nod, turning round to give it.
"It's a pity this part of the country didn't do without him, that's all I have to say about it.
At any rate, as Dorothea's brother−in−law, I feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being
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kept here by any action on the part of her friends. You admit, I hope, that I have a right to
speak about what concerns the dignity of my wife's sister?"
Sir James was getting warm.
"Of course, my dear Chettam, of course. But you and I have different ideas – different –
"
"Not about this action of Casaubon's, I should hope," interrupted Sir James. "I say that
he has most unfairly compromised Dorothea. I say that there never was a meaner, more
ungentlemanly action than this – a codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time of
his marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family – a positive insult to Dorothea!"
"Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw. Ladislaw has told me
the reason – dislike of the bent he took, you know – Ladislaw didn't think much of
Casaubon's notions, Thoth and Dagon – that sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn't
like the independent position Ladislaw had taken up. I saw the letters between them, you
know. Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books – he didn't know the world."
"It's all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it," said Sir James. "But I believe
Casaubon was only jealous of him on Dorothea's account, and the world will suppose that
she gave him some reason; and that is what makes it so abominable – coupling her name
with this young fellow's."
"My dear Chettam, it won't lead to anything, you know," said Mr. Brooke, seating
himself and sticking on his eye− glass again. "It's all of a piece with Casaubon's oddity. This
paper, now, `Synoptical Tabulation' and so on, `for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,' it was locked
up in the desk with the will. I suppose he meant Dorothea to publish his researches, eh? and
she'll do it, you know; she has gone into his studies uncommonly."
"My dear sir," said Sir James, impatiently, "that is neither here nor there. The question
is, whether you don't see with me the propriety of sending young Ladislaw away?"
"Well, no, not the urgency of the thing. By−and−by, perhaps, it may come round. As to
gossip, you know, sending him away won't hinder gossip. People say what they like to say,
not what they have chapter and verse for," said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths
that lay on the side of his own wishes. "I might get rid of Ladislaw up to a certain point –
take away the `Pioneer' from him, and that sort of thing; but I couldn't send him out of the
country if he didn't choose to go – didn't choose, you know."
Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the nature of last year's
weather, and nodding at the end with his usual amenity, was an exasperating form of
obstinacy.
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"Good God!" said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed, "let us get him a
post; let us spend money on him. If he could go in the suite of some Colonial Governor!
Grampus might take him – and I could write to Fulke about it."
"But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear fellow; Ladislaw has
his ideas. It's my opinion that if he were to part from me to−morrow, you'd only hear the
more of him in the country. With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there
are few men who could come up to him as an agitator – an agitator, you know."
"Agitator!" said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the syllables of this word
properly repeated were a sufficient exposure of its hatefulness.
"But be reasonable, Chettam. Dorothea, now. As you say, she had better go to Celia as
soon as possible. She can stay under your roof, and in the mean time things may come round
quietly. Don't let us be firing off our guns in a hurry, you know. Standish will keep our
counsel, and the news will be old before it's known. Twenty things may happen to carry off
Ladislaw – without my doing anything, you know."
"Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?"
"Decline, Chettam? – no – I didn't say decline. But I really don't see what I could do.
Ladislaw is a gentleman."
"I am glad to hear It!" said Sir James, his irritation making him forget himself a little. "I
am sure Casaubon was not."
"Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder her from marrying
again at all, you know."
"I don't know that," said Sir James. "It would have been less indelicate."
"One of poor Casaubon's freaks! That attack upset his brain a little. It all goes for
nothing. She doesn't WANT to marry Ladislaw."
"But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did. I don't believe
anything of the sort about Dorothea," said Sir James – then frowningly, "but I suspect
Ladislaw. I tell you frankly, I suspect Ladislaw."
"I couldn't take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam. In fact, if it were
possible to pack him off – send him to Norfolk Island – that sort of thing – it would look all
the worse for Dorothea to those who knew about it. It would seem as if we distrusted her –
distrusted her, you know."
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CHAPTER XLIX. 399
That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend to soothe Sir James.
He put out his hand to reach his hat, implying that he did not mean to contend further, and
said, still with some heat –
"Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once, because her friends
were too careless. I shall do what I can, as her brother, to protect her now."
"You can't do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible, Chettam. I approve that
plan altogether," said Mr. Brooke, well pleased that he had won the argument. It would have
been highly inconvenient to him to part with Ladislaw at that time, when a dissolution might
happen any day, and electors were to be convinced of the course by which the interests of
the country would be best served. Mr. Brooke sincerely believed that this end could be
secured by his own return to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the
nation.
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CHAPTER XLIX. 400
CHAPTER L.
"`T
his Loller here wol precilen us somewhat.' `Nay by my father's soule! that schal he
nat,' Sayde the Schipman, `here schal he not preche, We schal no gospel glosen here ne
teche. We leven all in the gret God,' quod he. He wolden sowen some diffcultee."
Canterbury Tales.
Dorothea had been safe at Freshitt Hall nearly a week before she had asked any
dangerous questions. Every morning now she sat with Celia in the prettiest of up−stairs
sitting−rooms, opening into a small conservatory – Celia all in white and lavender like a
bunch of mixed violets, watching the remarkable acts of the baby, which were so dubious to
her inexperienced mind that all conversation was interrupted by appeals for their
interpretation made to the oracular nurse. Dorothea sat by in her widow's dress, with an
expression which rather provoked Celia, as being much too sad; for not only was baby quite
well, but really when a husband had been so dull and troublesome while he lived, and
besides that had – well, well! Sir James, of course, had told Celia everything, with a strong
representation how important it was that Dorothea should not know it sooner than was
inevitable.
But Mr. Brooke had been right in predicting that Dorothea would not long remain
passive where action had been assigned to her; she knew the purport of her husband's will
made at the time of their marriage, and her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her
position, was silently occupied with what she ought to do as the owner of Lowick Manor
with the patronage of the living attached to it.
One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit, though with an unusual alacrity in his
manner which he accounted for by saying that it was now pretty certain Parliament would be
dissolved forthwith, Dorothea said –
"Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have the living at Lowick. After
Mr. Tucker had been provided for, I never heard my husband say that he had any clergyman
in his mind as a successor to himself. I think I ought to have the keys now and go to Lowick
to examine all my husband's papers. There may be something that would throw light on his
wishes."
"No hurry, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, quietly. "By−and−by, you know, you can go, if
you like. But I cast my eyes over things in the desks and drawers – there was nothing –
nothing but deep subjects, you know – besides the will. Everything can be done by−and−by.
As to the living, I have had an application for interest already – I should say rather good. Mr.
Tyke has been strongly recommended to me – I had something to do with getting him an
appointment before. An apostolic man, I believe – the sort of thing that would suit you, my
dear."
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CHAPTER L. 401
"I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge for myself, if Mr.
Casaubon has not left any expression of his wishes. He has perhaps made some addition to
his will – there may be some instructions for me," said Dorothea, who had all the while had
this conjecture in her mind with relation to her husband's work.
"Nothing about the rectory, my dear – nothing," said Mr. Brooke, rising to go away, and
putting out his hand to his nieces: "nor about his researches, you know. Nothing in the will."
Dorothea's lip quivered.
"Come, you must not think of these things yet, my dear. By−and−by, you know."
"I am quite well now, uncle; I wish to exert myself."
"Well, well, we shall see. But I must run away now – I have no end of work now – it's a
crisis – a political crisis, you know. And here is Celia and her little man – you are an aunt,
you know, now, and I am a sort of grandfather," said Mr. Brooke, with placid hurry, anxious
to get away and tell Chettam that it would not be his (Mr. Brooke's) fault if Dorothea
insisted on looking into everything.
Dorothea sank back in her chair when her uncle had left the room, and cast her eyes
down meditatively on her crossed hands.
"Look, Dodo! look at him! Did you ever see anything like that?" said Celia, in her
comfortable staccato.
"What, Kitty?" said Dorothea, lifting her eyes rather absently.
"What? why, his upper lip; see how he is drawing it down, as if he meant to make a
face. Isn't it wonderful! He may have his little thoughts. I wish nurse were here. Do look at
him."
A large tear which had been for some time gathering, rolled down Dorothea's cheek as
she looked up and tried to smile.
"Don't be sad, Dodo; kiss baby. What are you brooding over so? I am sure you did
everything, and a great deal too much. You should be happy now."
"I wonder if Sir James would drive me to Lowick. I want to look over everything – to
see if there were any words written for me."
"You are not to go till Mr. Lydgate says you may go. And he has not said so yet (here
you are, nurse; take baby and walk up and down the gallery). Besides, you have got a wrong
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notion in your head as usual, Dodo – I can see that: it vexes me."
"Where am I wrong, Kitty?" said Dorothea, quite meekly. She was almost ready now to
think Celia wiser than herself, and was really wondering with some fear what her wrong
notion was. Celia felt her advantage, and was determined to use it. None of them knew Dodo
as well as she did, or knew how to manage her. Since Celia's baby was born, she had had a
new sense of her mental solidity and calm wisdom. It seemed clear that where there was a
baby, things were right enough, and that error, in general, was a mere lack of that central
poising force.
"I can see what you are thinking of as well as can be, Dodo," said Celia. "You are
wanting to find out if there is anything uncomfortable for you to do now, only because Mr.
Casaubon wished it. As if you had not been uncomfortable enough before. And he doesn't
deserve it, and you will find that out. He has behaved very badly. James is as angry with him
as can be. And I had better tell you, to prepare you."
"Celia," said Dorothea, entreatingly, "you distress me. Tell me at once what you mean."
It glanced through her mind that' Mr. Casaubon had left the property away from her – which
would not be so very distressing.
"Why, he has made a codicil to his will, to say the property was all to go away from you
if you married – I mean – "
"That is of no consequence," said Dorothea, breaking in impetuously.
"But if you married Mr. Ladislaw, not anybody else," Celia went on with persevering
quietude. "Of course that is of no consequence in one way – you never WOULD marry Mr.
Ladislaw; but that only makes it worse of Mr. Casaubon."
The blood rushed to Dorothea's face and neck painfully. But Celia was administering
what she thought a sobering dose of fact. It was taking up notions that had done Dodo's
health so much harm. So she went on in her neutral tone, as if she had been remarking on
baby's robes.
"James says so. He says it is abominable, and not like a gentleman. And there never was
a better judge than James. It is as if Mr. Casaubon wanted to make people believe that you
would wish to marry Mr. Ladislaw – which is ridiculous. Only James says it was to hinder
Mr. Ladislaw from wanting to marry you for your money – just as if he ever would think of
making you an offer. Mrs. Cadwallader said you might as well marry an Italian with white
mice! But I must just go and look at baby," Celia added, without the least change of tone,
throwing a light shawl over her, and tripping away.
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CHAPTER L. 403
Dorothea by this time had turned cold again, and now threw herself back helplessly in
her chair. She might have compared her experience at that moment to the vague, alarmed
consciousness that her life was taking on a new form that she was undergoing a
metamorphosis in which memory would not adjust itself to the stirring of new organs.
Everything was changing its aspect: her husband's conduct, her own duteous feeling towards
him, every struggle between them – and yet more, her whole relation to Will Ladislaw. Her
world was in a state of convulsive change; the only thing she could say distinctly to herself
was, that she must wait and think anew. One change terrified her as if it had been a sin; it
was a violent shock of repulsion from her departed husband, who had had hidden thoughts,
perhaps perverting everything she said and did. Then again she was conscious of another
change which also made her tremulous; it was a sudden strange yearning of heart towards
Will Ladislaw. It had never before entered her mind that he could, under any circumstances,
be her lover: conceive the effect of the sudden revelation that another had thought of him in
that light – that perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a possibility, – and this with
the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting conditions, and questions not soon to be solved.
It seemed a long while – she did not know how long – before she heard Celia saying,
"That will do, nurse; he will be quiet on my lap now. You can go to lunch, and let Garratt
stay in the next room." "What I think, Dodo," Celia went on, observing nothing more than
that Dorothea was leaning back in her chair, and likely to be passive, "is that Mr. Casaubon
was spiteful. I never did like him, and James never did. I think the corners of his mouth were
dreadfully spiteful. And now he has behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not require
you to make yourself uncomfortable about him. If he has been taken away, that is a mercy,
and you ought to be grateful. We should not grieve, should we, baby?" said Celia
confidentially to that unconscious centre and poise of the world, who had the most
remarkable fists all complete even to the nails, and hair enough, really, when you took his
cap off, to make – you didn't know what: – in short, he was Bouddha in a Western form.
At this crisis Lydgate was announced, and one of the first things he said was, "I fear you
are not so well as you were, Mrs. Casaubon; have you been agitated? allow me to feel your
pulse." Dorothea's hand was of a marble coldness.
"She wants to go to Lowick, to look over papers," said Celia. "She ought not, ought
she?"
Lydgate did not speak for a few moments. Then he said, looking at Dorothea. "I hardly
know. In my opinion Mrs. Casaubon should do what would give her the most repose of
mind. That repose will not always come from being forbidden to act."
"Thank you;" said Dorothea, exerting herself, "I am sure that is wise. There are so many
things which I ought to attend to. Why should I sit here idle?" Then, with an effort to recall
subjects not connected with her agitation, she added, abruptly, "You know every one in
Middlemarch, I think, Mr. Lydgate. I shall ask you to tell me a great deal. I have serious
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things to do now. I have a living to give away. You know Mr. Tyke and all the – " But
Dorothea's effort was too much for her; she broke off and burst into sobs. Lydgate made her
drink a dose of sal volatile.
"Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes," he said to Sir James, whom he asked to see before
quitting the house. "She wants perfect freedom, I think, more than any other prescription."
His attendance on Dorothea while her brain was excited, had enabled him to form some
true conclusions concerning the trials of her life. He felt sure that she had been suffering
from the strain and conflict of self−repression; and that she was likely now to feel herself
only in another sort of pinfold than that from which she had been released.
Lydgate's advice was all the easier for Sir James to follow when he found that Celia had
already told Dorothea the unpleasant fact about the will. There was no help for it now – no
reason for any further delay in the execution of necessary business. And the next day Sir
James complied at once with her request that he would drive her to Lowick.
"I have no wish to stay there at present," said Dorothea; "I could hardly bear it. I am
much happier at Freshitt with Celia. I shall be able to think better about what should be done
at Lowick by looking at it from a distance. And I should like to be at the Grange a little
while with my uncle, and go about in all the old walks and among the people in the village."
"Not yet, I think. Your uncle is having political company, and you are better out of the
way of such doings," said Sir James, who at that moment thought of the Grange chiefly as a
haunt of young Ladislaw's. But no word passed between him and Dorothea about the
objectionable part of the will; indeed, both of them felt that the mention of it between them
would be impossible. Sir James was shy, even with men, about disagreeable subjects; and
the one thing that Dorothea would have chosen to say, if she had spoken on the matter at all,
was forbidden to her at present because it seemed to be a further exposure of her husband's
injustice. Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what had passed between her and her
husband about Will Ladislaw's moral claim on the property: it would then, she thought, be
apparent to him as it was to her, that her husband's strange indelicate proviso had been
chiefly urged by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and not merely by personal
feelings more difficult to talk about. Also, it must be admitted, Dorothea wished that this
could be known for Will's sake, since her friends seemed to think of him as simply an object
of Mr. Casaubon's charity. Why should he be compared with an Italian carrying white mice?
That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed like a mocking travesty wrought in the
dark by an impish finger.
At Lowick Dorothea searched desk and drawer – searched all her husband's places of
deposit for private writing, but found no paper addressed especially to her, except that
"Synoptical Tabulation," which was probably only the beginning of many intended
directions for her guidance. In carrying out this bequest of labor to Dorothea, as in all else,
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Mr. Casaubon had been slow and hesitating, oppressed in the plan of transmitting his work,
as he had been in executing it, by the sense of moving heavily in a dim and clogging
medium: distrust of Dorothea's competence to arrange what he had prepared was subdued
only by distrust of any other redactor. But he had come at last to create a trust for himself
out of Dorothea's nature: she could do what she resolved to do: and he willingly imagined
her toiling under the fetters of a promise to erect a tomb with his name upon it. (Not that Mr.
Casaubon called the future volumes a tomb; he called them the Key to all Mythologies.) But
the months gained on him and left his plans belated: he had only had time to ask for that
promise by which he sought to keep his cold grasp on Dorothea's life.
The grasp had slipped away. Bound by a pledge given from the depths of her pity, she
would have been capable of undertaking a toil which her judgment whispered was vain for
all uses except that consecration of faithfulness which is a supreme use. But now her
judgment, instead of being controlled by duteous devotion, was made active by the
imbittering discovery that in her past union there had lurked the hidden alienation of secrecy
and suspicion. The living, suffering man was no longer before her to awaken her pity: there
remained only the retrospect of painful subjection to a husband whose thoughts had been
lower than she had believed, whose exorbitant claims for himself had even blinded his
scrupulous care for his own character, and made him defeat his own pride by shocking men
of ordinary honor. As for the property which was the sign of that broken tie, she would have
been glad to be free from it and have nothing more than her original fortune which had been
settled on her, if there had not been duties attached to ownership, which she ought not to
flinch from. About this property many troublous questions insisted on rising: had she not
been right in thinking that the half of it ought to go to Will Ladislaw? – but was it not
impossible now for her to do that act of justice? Mr. Casaubon had taken a cruelly effective
means of hindering her: even with indignation against him in her heart, any act that seemed
a triumphant eluding of his purpose revolted her.
After collecting papers of business which she wished to examine, she locked up again
the desks and drawers – all empty of personal words for her – empty of any sign that in her
husband's lonely brooding his heart had gone out to her in excuse or explanation; and she
went back to Freshitt with the sense that around his last hard demand and his last injurious
assertion of his power, the silence was unbroken.
Dorothea tried now to turn her thoughts towards immediate duties, and one of these was
of a kind which others were determined to remind her of. Lydgate's ear had caught eagerly
her mention of the living, and as soon as he could, he reopened the subject, seeing here a
possibility of making amends for the casting−vote he had once given with an ill−satisfied
conscience. "Instead of telling you anything about Mr. Tyke," he said, "I should like to
speak of another man – Mr. Farebrother, the Vicar of St. Botolph's. His living is a poor one,
and gives him a stinted provision for himself and his family. His mother, aunt, and sister all
live with him, and depend upon him. I believe he has never married because of them. I never
heard such good preaching as his – such plain, easy eloquence. He would have done to
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CHAPTER L. 406
preach at St. Paul's Cross after old Latimer. His talk is just as good about all subjects:
original, simple, clear. I think him a remarkable fellow: he ought to have done more than he
has done."
"Why has he not done more?" said Dorothea, interested now in all who had slipped
below their own intention.
"That's a hard question," said Lydgate. "I find myself that it's uncommonly difficult to
make the right thing work: there are so many strings pulling at once. Farebrother often hints
that he has got into the wrong profession; he wants a wider range than that of a poor
clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him on. He is very fond of Natural
History and various scientific matters, and he is hampered in reconciling these tastes with
his position. He has no money to spare – hardly enough to use; and that has led him into
card−playing – Middlemarch is a great place for whist. He does play for money, and he wins
a good deal. Of course that takes him into company a little beneath him, and makes him
slack about some things; and yet, with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of
the most blameless men I ever knew. He has neither venom nor doubleness in him, and
those often go with a more correct outside."
"I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit," said Dorothea; "I
wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off."
"I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted into plenty: he would be
glad of the time for other things."
"My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man," said Dorothea,
meditatively. She was wishing it were possible to restore the times of primitive zeal, and yet
thinking of Mr. Farebrother with a strong desire to rescue him from his chance−gotten
money.
"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate. "His position is not
quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a parson among parishioners whose lives he has to
try and make better. Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an
impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut the principal figure. I see
something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good deal of his doctrine is a sort of
pinching hard to make people uncomfortably – aware of him. Besides, an apostolic man at
Lowick! – he ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the birds."
"True," said Dorothea. "It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our farmers and
laborers get from their teaching. I have been looking into a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke:
such sermons would be of no use at Lowick – I mean, about imputed righteousness and the
prophecies in the Apocalypse. I have always been thinking of the different ways in which
Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any
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other, I cling to that as the truest – I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and
brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to
condemn too much. But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear him preach."
"Do," said Lydgate; "I trust to the effect of that. He is very much beloved, but he has his
enemies too: there are always people who can't forgive an able man for differing from them.
And that money−winning business is really a blot. You don't, of course, see many
Middlemarch people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a great
friend of Mr. Farebrother's old ladies, and would be glad to sing the Vicar's praises. One of
the old ladies – Miss Noble, the aunt – is a wonderfully quaint picture of self−forgetful
goodness, and Ladislaw gallants her about sometimes. I met them one day in a back street:
you know Ladislaw's look – a sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat; and this little old maid
reaching up to his arm – they looked like a couple dropped out of a romantic comedy. But
the best evidence about Farebrother is to see him and hear him."
Happily Dorothea was in her private sitting−room when this conversation occurred, and
there was no one present to make Lydgate's innocent introduction of Ladislaw painful to her.
As was usual with him in matters of personal gossip, Lydgate had quite forgotten
Rosamond's remark that she thought Will adored Mrs. Casaubon. At that moment he was
only caring for what would recommend the Farebrother family; and he had purposely given
emphasis to the worst that could be said about the Vicar, in order to forestall objections. In
the weeks. since Mr. Casaubon's death he had hardly seen Ladislaw, and he had heard no
rumor to warn him that Mr. Brooke's confidential secretary was a dangerous subject with
Mrs. Casaubon. When he was gone, his picture of Ladislaw lingered in her mind and
disputed the ground with that question of the Lowick living. What was Will Ladislaw
thinking about her? Would he hear of that fact which made her cheeks burn as they never
used to do? And how would he feel when he heard it? – But she could see as well as
possible how he smiled down at the little old maid. An Italian with white mice! – on the
contrary, he was a creature who entered into every one's feelings, and could take the
pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance.
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CHAPTER L. 408
CHAPTER LI.
P
arty is Nature too, and you shall see By force of Logic how they both agree: The
Many in the One, the One in Many; All is not Some, nor Some the same as Any: Genus
holds species, both are great or small; One genus highest, one not high at all; Each species
has its differentia too, This is not That, and He was never You, Though this and that are
AYES, and you and he Are like as one to one, or three to three.
No gossip about Mr. Casaubon's will had yet reached Ladislaw: the air seemed to be
filled with the dissolution of Parliament and the coming election, as the old wakes and fairs
were filled with the rival clatter of itinerant shows; and more private noises were taken little
notice of. The famous "dry election" was at hand, in which the depths of public feeling
might be measured by the low flood−mark of drink. Will Ladislaw was one of the busiest at
this time; and though Dorothea's widowhood was continually in his thought, he was so far
from wishing to be spoken to on the subject, that when Lydgate sought him out to tell him
what had passed about the Lowick living, he answered rather waspishly –
"Why should you bring me into the matter? I never see Mrs. Casaubon, and am not
likely to see her, since she is at Freshitt. I never go there. It is Tory ground, where I and the
`Pioneer' are no more welcome than a poacher and his gun."
The fact was that Will had been made the more susceptible by observing that Mr.
Brooke, instead of wishing him, as before, to come to the Grange oftener than was quite
agreeable to himself, seemed now to contrive that he should go there as little as possible.
This was a shuffling concession of Mr. Brooke's to Sir James Chettam's indignant
remonstrance; and Will, awake to the slightest hint in this direction, concluded that he was
to be kept away from the Grange on Dorothea's account. Her friends, then, regarded him
with some suspicion? Their fears were quite superfluous: they were very much mistaken if
they imagined that he would put himself forward as a needy adventurer trying to win the
favor of a rich woman.
Until now Will had never fully seen the chasm between himself and Dorothea – until
now that he was come to the brink of it, and saw her on the other side. He began, not without
some inward rage, to think of going away from the neighborhood: it would be impossible for
him to show any further interest in Dorothea without subjecting himself to disagreeable
imputations – perhaps even in her mind, which others might try to poison.
"We are forever divided," said Will. "I might as well be at Rome; she would be no
farther from me." But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed
hope. There were plenty of reasons why he should not go – public reasons why he should
not quit his post at this crisis, leaving Mr. Brooke in the lurch when he needed "coaching"
for the election, and when there was so much canvassing, direct and indirect, to be carried
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on. Will could not like to leave his own chessmen in the heat of a game; and any candidate
on the right side, even if his brain and marrow had been as soft as was consistent with a
gentlemanly bearing, might help to turn a majority. To coach Mr. Brooke and keep him
steadily to the idea that he must pledge himself to vote for the actual Reform Bill, instead of
insisting on his independence and power of pulling up in time, was not an easy task. Mr.
Farebrother's prophecy of a fourth candidate "in the bag" had not yet been fulfilled, neither
the Parliamentary Candidate Society nor any other power on the watch to secure a reforming
majority seeing a worthy nodus for interference while there was a second reforming
candidate like Mr. Brooke, who might be returned at his own expense; and the fight lay
entirely between Pinkerton the old Tory member, Bagster the new Whig member returned at
the last election, and Brooke the future independent member, who was to fetter himself for
this occasion only. Mr. Hawley and his party would bend all their forces to the return of
Pinkerton, and Mr. Brooke's success must depend either on plumpers which would leave
Bagster in the rear, or on the new minting of Tory votes into reforming votes. The latter
means, of course, would be preferable.
This prospect of converting votes was a dangerous distraction to Mr. Brooke: his
impression that waverers were likely to be allured by wavering statements, and also the
liability of his mind to stick afresh at opposing arguments as they turned up in his memory,
gave Will Ladislaw much trouble.
"You know there are tactics in these things," said Mr. Brooke; "meeting people
half−way – tempering your ideas – saying, `Well now, there's something in that,' and so on. I
agree with you that this is a peculiar occasion – the country with a will of its own – political
unions – that sort of thing – but we sometimes cut with rather too sharp a knife, Ladislaw.
These ten−pound householders, now: why ten? Draw the line somewhere – yes: but why just
at ten? That's a difficult question, now, if you go into it."
"Of course it is," said Will, impatiently. "But if you are to wait till we get a logical Bill,
you must put yourself forward as a revolutionist, and then Middlemarch would not elect
you, I fancy. As for trimming, this is not a time for trimming."
Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still appeared to him a sort of
Burke with a leaven of Shelley; but after an interval the wisdom of his own methods
reasserted itself, and he was again drawn into using them with much hopefulness. At this
stage of affairs he was in excellent spirits, which even supported him under large advances
of money; for his powers of convincing and persuading had not yet been, tested by anything
more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing other orators, or a dialogue with a
Middlemarch voter, from which he came away with a sense that he was a tactician by
nature, and that it was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing. He was a little
conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief representative in Middlemarch of
that great social power, the retail trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters in the
borough – willing for his own part to supply an equal quality of teas and sugars to reformer
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and anti−reformer, as well as to agree impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of
old that this necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even if there
were no danger in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand, there would be the painful
necessity at last of disappointing respectable people whose names were on his books. He
was accustomed to receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of Tipton; but then, there were
many of Pinkerton's committee whose opinions had a great weight of grocery on their side.
Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as not too "clever in his intellects," was the more
likely to forgive a grocer who gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential in
his back parlor.
"As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light," he said, rattling the small silver in his
pocket, and smiling affably. "Will it support Mrs. Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six
children when I am no more? I put the question FICTIOUSLY, knowing what must be the
answer. Very well, sir. I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am to do when gentlemen
come to me and say, `Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote against us, I shall get my
groceries elsewhere: when I sugar my liquor I like to feel that I am benefiting the country by
maintaining tradesmen of the right color.' Those very words have been spoken to me, sir, in
the very chair where you are now sitting. I don't mean by your honorable self, Mr. Brooke."
"No, no, no – that's narrow, you know. Until my butler complains to me of your goods,
Mr. Mawmsey," said Mr. Brooke, soothingly, "until I hear that you send bad sugars, spices –
that sort of thing – I shall never order him to go elsewhere."
"Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged," said Mr. Mawmsey, feeling that
politics were clearing up a little. "There would be some pleasure in voting for a gentleman
who speaks in that honorable manner."
"Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the right thing to put yourself on
our side. This Reform will touch everybody by−and−by – a thoroughly popular measure – a
sort of A, B, C, you know, that must come first before the rest can follow. I quite agree with
you that you've got to look at the thing in a family light: but public spirit, now. We're all one
family, you know – it's all one cupboard. Such a thing as a vote, now: why, it may help to
make men's fortunes at the Cape – there's no knowing what may be the effect of a vote," Mr.
Brooke ended, with a sense of being a little out at sea, though finding it still enjoyable. But
Mr. Mawmsey answered in a tone of decisive check.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I can't afford that. When I give a vote I must know what I
am doing; I must look to what will be the effects on my till and ledger, speaking
respectfully. Prices, I'll admit, are what nobody can know the merits of; and the sudden falls
after you've bought in currants, which are a goods that will not keep – I've never; myself
seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke to human pride. But as to one family,
there's debtor and creditor, I hope; they're not going to reform that away; else I should vote
for things staying as they are. Few men have less need to cry for change than I have,
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personally speaking – that is, for self and family. I am not one of those who have nothing to
lose: I mean as to respectability both in parish and private business, and noways in respect of
your honorable self and custom, which you was good enough to say you would not
withdraw from me, vote or no vote, while the article sent in was satisfactory."
After this conversation Mr. Mawmsey went up and boasted to his wife that he had been
rather too many for Brooke of Tipton, and that he didn't mind so much now about going to
the poll.
Mr. Brooke on this occasion abstained from boasting of his tactics to Ladislaw, who for
his part was glad enough to persuade himself that he had no concern with any canvassing
except the purely argumentative sort, and that he worked no meaner engine than knowledge.
Mr. Brooke, necessarily, had his agents, who understood the nature of the Middlemarch
voter and the means of enlisting his ignorance on the side of the Bill – which were
remarkably similar to the means of enlisting it on the side against the Bill. Will stopped his
ears. Occasionally Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our eating and apparel, could
hardly go on if our imaginations were too active about processes. There were plenty of
dirty−handed men in the world to do dirty business; and Will protested to himself that his
share in bringing Mr. Brooke through would be quite innocent.
But whether he should succeed in that mode of contributing to the majority on the right
side was very doubtful to him. He had written out various speeches and memoranda for
speeches, but he had begun to perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had the burthen of
remembering any train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of it, and not easily
come back again. To collect documents is one mode of serving your country, and to
remember the contents of a document is another. No! the only way in which Mr. Brooke
could be coerced into thinking of the right arguments at the right time was to be well plied
with them till they took up all the room in his brain. But here there was the difficulty of
finding room, so many things having been taken in beforehand. Mr. Brooke himself
observed that his ideas stood rather in his way when he was speaking.
However, Ladislaw's coaching was forthwith to be put to the test, for before the day of
nomination Mr. Brooke was to explain himself to the worthy electors of Middlemarch from
the balcony of the White Hart, which looked out advantageously at an angle of the
market−place, commanding a large area in front and two converging streets. It was a fine
May morning, and everything seemed hopeful: there was some prospect of an understanding
between Bagster's committee and Brooke's, to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish as a
Liberal lawyer, and such manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity
which almost counterbalanced Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for Pinkerton at the
Green Dragon. Mr. Brooke, conscious of having weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet"
against him, by his reforms as a landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered a
little as he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his buff−colored
waistcoat. But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem
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comfortably remote until the last.
"This looks well, eh?" said Mr. Brooke as the crowd gathered. "I shall have a good
audience, at any rate. I like this, now – this kind of public made up of one's own neighbors,
you know."
The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never thought of
Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached to him than if he had been sent in a
box from London. But they listened without much disturbance to the speakers who
introduced the candidate, one of them – a political personage from Brassing, who came to
tell Middlemarch its duty – spoke so fully, that it was alarming to think what the candidate
could find to say after him. Meanwhile the crowd became denser, and as the political
personage neared the end of his speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change in his
sensations while he still handled his eye−glass, trifled with documents before him, and
exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom the moment of summons was
indifferent.
"I'll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw," he said, with an easy air, to Will, who was
close behind him, and presently handed him the supposed fortifier. It was ill−chosen; for Mr.
Brooke was an abstemious man, and to drink a second glass of sherry quickly at no great
interval from the first was a surprise to his system which tended to scatter his energies
instead of collecting them Pray pity him: so many English gentlemen make themselves
miserable by speechifying on entirely private grounds! whereas Mr. Brooke wished to serve
his country by standing for Parliament – which, indeed, may also be done on private
grounds, but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some speechifying.
It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr. Brooke was at all anxious; this, he
felt sure, would be all right; he should have it quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets
from Pope. Embarking would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might come after was
alarming. "And questions, now," hinted the demon just waking up in his stomach,
"somebody may put questions about the schedules. – Ladislaw," he continued, aloud, "just
hand me the memorandum of the schedules."
When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were quite loud enough
to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings, and other expressions of adverse theory, which
were so moderate that Mr. Standish (decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him,
"This looks dangerous, by God! Hawley has got some deeper plan than this." Still, the
cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate could look more amiable than Mr. Brooke, with
the memorandum in his breast−pocket, his left hand on the rail of the balcony, and his right
trifling with his eye−glass. The striking points in his appearance were his buff waistcoat,
short−clipped blond hair, and neutral physiognomy. He began with some confidence.
"Gentlemen – Electors of Middlemarch!"
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CHAPTER LI. 413
This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it seemed natural.
"I'm uncommonly glad to be here – I was never so proud and happy in my life – never
so happy, you know."
This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for, unhappily, the pat
opening had slipped away – even couplets from Pope may be but "fallings from us,
vanishings," when fear clutches us, and a glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among our
ideas. Ladislaw, who stood at the window behind the speaker, thought, "it's all up now. The
only chance is that, since the best thing won't always do, floundering may answer for once."
Mr. Brooke, meanwhile, having lost other clews, fell back on himself and his qualifications
– always an appropriate graceful subject for a candidate.
"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends – you've known me on the bench a
good while – I've always gone a good deal into public questions – machinery, now, and
machine−breaking – you're many of you concerned with machinery, and I've been going into
that lately. It won't do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on – trade,
manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples – that kind of thing – since Adam Smith,
that must go on. We must look all over the globe: – `Observation with extensive view,' must
look everywhere, `from China to Peru,' as somebody says – Johnson, I think, `The Rambler,'
you know. That is what I have done up to a certain point – not as far as Peru; but I've not
always stayed at home – I saw it wouldn't do. I've been in the Levant, where some of your
Middlemarch goods go – and then, again, in the Baltic. The Baltic, now."
Plying among his recollections in this way, Mr. Brooke might have got along, easily to
himself, and would have come back from the remotest seas without trouble; but a diabolical
procedure had been set up by the enemy. At one and the same moment there had risen above
the shoulders of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards of him, the
effigy of himself: buff−colored waistcoat, eye−glass, and neutral physiognomy, painted on
rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of the cuckoo, a parrot−like,
Punch−voiced echo of his words. Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at
the opposite angles of the converging streets; but they were either blank, or filled by
laughing listeners. The most innocent echo has an impish mockery in it when it follows a
gravely persistent speaker, and this echo was not at all innocent; if it did not follow with the
precision of a natural echo, it had a wicked choice of the words it overtook. By the time it
said, "The Baltic, now," the laugh which had been running through the audience became a
general shout, and but for the sobering effects of party and that great public cause which the
entanglement of things had identified with "Brooke of Tipton," the laugh might have caught
his committee. Mr. Bulstrode asked, reprehensively, what the new police was doing; but a
voice could not well be collared, and an attack on the effigy of the candidate would have
been too equivocal, since Hawley probably meant it to be pelted.
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CHAPTER LI. 414
Mr. Brooke himself was not in a position to be quickly conscious of anything except a
general slipping away of ideas within himself: he had even a little singing in the ears, and he
was the only person who had not yet taken distinct account of the echo or discerned the
image of himself. Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than anxiety
about what we have got to say. Mr. Brooke heard the laughter; but he had expected some
Tory efforts at disturbance, and he was at this moment additionally excited by the tickling,
stinging sense that his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him from the Baltic.
"That reminds me," he went on, thrusting a hand into his side−pocket, with an easy air,
"if I wanted a precedent, you know – but we never want a precedent for the right thing – but
there is Chatham, now; I can't say I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt
– he was not a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know."
"Blast your ideas! we want the Bill," said a loud rough voice from the crowd below.
Immediately the invisible Punch, who had hitherto followed Mr. Brooke, repeated,
"Blast your ideas! we want the Bill." The laugh was louder than ever, and for the first time
Mr. Brooke being himself silent, heard distinctly the mocking echo. But it seemed to ridicule
his interrupter, and in that light was encouraging; so he replied with amenity –
"There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we meet for but to
speak our minds – freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, liberty – that kind of thing?
The Bill, now – you shall have the Bill" – here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his
eye−glass and take the paper from his breast−pocket, with a sense of being practical and
coming to particulars. The invisible Punch followed: –
"You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, and a seat outside
Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence."
Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye−glass fall, and looking
about him confusedly, saw the image of himself, which had come nearer. The next moment
he saw it dolorously bespattered with eggs. His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.
"Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth – all that is very well" – here an unpleasant
egg broke on Mr. Brooke's shoulder, as the echo said, "All that is very well;" then came a
hail of eggs, chiefly aimed at the image, but occasionally hitting the original, as if by
chance. There was a stream of new men pushing among the crowd; whistles, yells,
bellowings, and fifes made all the greater hubbub because there was shouting and struggling
to put them down. No voice would have had wing enough to rise above the uproar, and Mr.
Brooke, disagreeably anointed, stood his ground no longer. The frustration would have been
less exasperating if it had been less gamesome and boyish: a serious assault of which the
newspaper reporter "can aver that it endangered the learned gentleman's ribs," or can
respectfully bear witness to "the soles of that gentleman's boots having been visible above
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CHAPTER LI. 415
the railing," has perhaps more consolations attached to it.
Mr. Brooke re−entered the committee−room, saying, as carelessly as he could, "This is
a little too bad, you know. I should have got the ear of the people by−and−by – but they
didn't give me time. I should have gone into the Bill by−and−by, you know," he added,
glancing at Ladislaw. "However, things will come all right at the nomination."
But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on the contrary, the
committee looked rather grim, and the political personage from Brassing was writing busily,
as if he were brewing new devices.
"It was Bowyer who did it," said Mr. Standish, evasively. "I know it as well as if he had
been advertised. He's uncommonly good at ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well,
by God! Hawley has been having him to dinner lately: there's a fund of talent in Bowyer."
"Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would have invited
him to dine," said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a great deal of inviting for the
good of his country.
"There's not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said Ladislaw,
indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always to turn the scale."
Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his "principal," and he
went to shut himself in his rooms with a half−formed resolve to throw up the "Pioneer" and
Mr. Brooke together. Why should he stay? If the impassable gulf between himself and
Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away and getting into a
thoroughly different position than by staying here and slipping into deserved contempt as an
understrapper of Brooke's. Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do – in
five years, for example: political writing, political speaking, would get a higher value now
public life was going to be wider and more national, and they might give him such
distinction that he would not seem to be asking Dorothea to step down to him. Five years: –
if he could only be sure that she cared for him more than for others; if he could only make
her aware that he stood aloof until he could tell his love without lowering himself – then he
could go away easily, and begin a career which at five−and−twenty seemed probable enough
in the inward order of things, where talent brings fame, and fame everything else which is
delightful. He could speak and he could write; he could master any subject if he chose, and
he meant always to take the side of reason and justice, on which he would carry all his ardor.
Why should he not one day be lifted above the shoulders of the crowd, and feel that he had
won that eminence well? Without doubt he would leave Middlemarch, go to town, and make
himself fit for celebrity by "eating his dinners."
But not immediately: not until some kind of sign had passed between him and
Dorothea. He could not be satisfied until she knew why, even if he were the man she would
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choose to marry, he would not marry her. Hence he must keep his post and bear with Mr.
Brooke a little longer.
But he soon had reason to suspect that Mr. Brooke had anticipated him in the wish to
break up their connection. Deputations without and voices within had concurred in inducing
that philanthropist to take a stronger measure than usual for the good of mankind; namely, to
withdraw in favor of another candidate, to whom he left the advantages of his canvassing
machinery. He himself called this a strong measure, but observed that his health was less
capable of sustaining excitement than he had imagined.
"I have felt uneasy about the chest – it won't do to carry that too far," he said to
Ladislaw in explaining the affair. "I must pull up. Poor Casaubon was a warning, you know.
I've made some heavy advances, but I've dug a channel. It's rather coarse work – this
electioneering, eh, Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it. However, we have dug a channel
with the `Pioneer' – put things in a track, and so on. A more ordinary man than you might
carry it on now – more ordinary, you know."
"Do you wish me to give it up?" said Will, the quick color coming in his face, as he rose
from the writing−table, and took a turn of three steps with his hands in his pockets. "I am
ready to do so whenever you wish it."
"As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest opinion of your powers, you
know. But about the `Pioneer,' I have been consulting a little with some of the men on our
side, and they are inclined to take it into their hands – indemnify me to a certain extent –
carry it on, in fact. And under the circumstances, you might like to give up – might find a
better field. These people might not take that high view of you which I have always taken, as
an alter ego, a right hand – though I always looked forward to your doing something else. I
think of having a run into France. But I'll write you any letters, you know – to Althorpe and
people of that kind. I've met Althorpe."
"I am exceedingly obliged to you," said Ladislaw, proudly. "Since you are going to part
with the `Pioneer,' I need not trouble you about the steps I shall take. I may choose to
continue here for the present."
After Mr. Brooke had left him Will said to himself, "The rest of the family have been
urging him to get rid of me, and he doesn't care now about my going. I shall stay as long as I
like. I shall go of my own movements and not because they are afraid of me."
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CHAPTER LII.
"H
is heart The lowliest duties on itself did lay." – WORDSWORTH.
On that June evening when Mr. Farebrother knew that he was to have the Lowick
living, there was joy in the old fashioned parlor, and even the portraits of the great lawyers
seemed to look on with satisfaction. His mother left her tea and toast untouched, but sat with
her usual pretty primness, only showing her emotion by that flush in the cheeks and
brightness in the eyes which give an old woman a touching momentary identity with her
far−off youthful self, and saying decisively –
"The greatest comfort, Camden, is that you have deserved it."
"When a man gets a good berth, mother, half the deserving must come after," said the
son, brimful of pleasure, and not trying to conceal it. The gladness in his face was of that
active kind which seems to have energy enough not only to flash outwardly, but to light up
busy vision within: one seemed to see thoughts, as well as delight, in his glances.
"Now, aunt," he went on, rubbing his hands and looking at Miss Noble, who was
making tender little beaver−like noises, "There shall be sugar−candy always on the table for
you to steal and give to the children, and you shall have a great many new stockings to make
presents of, and you shall darn your own more than ever!"
Miss Noble nodded at her nephew with a subdued half−frightened laugh, conscious of
having already dropped an additional lump of sugar into her basket on the strength of the
new preferment.
"As for you, Winny" – the Vicar went on – "I shall make no difficulty about your
marrying any Lowick bachelor – Mr. Solomon Featherstone, for example, as soon as I find
you are in love with him."
Miss Winifred, who had been looking at her brother all the while and crying heartily,
which was her way of rejoicing, smiled through her tears and said, "You must set me the
example, Cam: YOU must marry now."
"With all my heart. But who is in love with me? I am a seedy old fellow," said the
Vicar, rising, pushing his chair away and looking down at himself. "What do you say,
mother?"
"You are a handsome man, Camden: though not so fine a figure of a man as your
father," said the old lady.
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"I wish you would marry Miss Garth, brother," said Miss Winifred. "She would make
us so lively at Lowick."
"Very fine! You talk as if young women were tied up to be chosen, like poultry at
market; as if I had only to ask and everybody would have me," said the Vicar, not caring to
specify.
"We don't want everybody," said Miss Winifred. "But YOU would like Miss Garth,
mother, shouldn't you?"
"My son's choice shall be mine," said Mrs. Farebrother, with majestic discretion, "and a
wife would be most welcome, Camden. You will want your whist at home when we go to
Lowick, and Henrietta Noble never was a whist−player." (Mrs. Farebrother always called
her tiny old sister by that magnificent name.)
"I shall do without whist now, mother."
"Why so, Camden? In my time whist was thought an undeniable amusement for a good
churchman," said Mrs. Farebrother, innocent of the meaning that whist had for her son, and
speaking rather sharply, as at some dangerous countenancing of new doctrine.
"I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes," said the Vicar, preferring not
to discuss the virtues of that game.
He had already said to Dorothea, "I don't feel bound to give up St. Botolph's. It is
protest enough against the pluralism they want to reform if I give somebody else most of the
money. The stronger thing is not to give up power, but to use it well."
"I have thought of that," said Dorothea. "So far as self is concerned, I think it would be
easier to give up power and money than to keep them. It seems very unfitting that I should
have this patronage, yet I felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of
me."
"It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power," said Mr.
Farebrother.
His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active when the yoke of
life ceases to gall them. He made no display of humility on the subject, but in his heart he
felt rather ashamed that his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get
benefices were free from.
"I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman," he said to Lydgate,
"but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good a clergyman out of myself as I can.
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That is the well−beneficed point of view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much
simplified," he ended, smiling.
The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. But Duty has a trick of
behaving unexpectedly – something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to
visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.
Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the disguise of Fred Vincy,
now returned from Omnibus College with his bachelor's degree.
"I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother," said Fred, whose fair open face was
propitiating, "but you are the only friend I can consult. I told you everything once before,
and you were so good that I can't help coming to you again."
"Sit down, Fred, I'm ready to hear and do anything I can," said the Vicar, who was busy
packing some small objects for removal, and went on with his work.
"I wanted to tell you – " Fred hesitated an instant and then went on plungingly, "I might
go into the Church now; and really, look where I may, I can't see anything else to do. I don't
like it, but I know it's uncommonly hard on my father to say so, after he has spent a good
deal of money in educating me for it." Fred paused again an instant, and then repeated, "and
I can't see anything else to do."
"I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way with him. He said it was
too late. But you have got over one bridge now: what are your other difficulties?"
"Merely that I don't like it. I don't like divinity, and preaching, and feeling obliged to
look serious. I like riding across country, and doing as other men do. I don't mean that I want
to be a bad fellow in any way; but I've no taste for the sort of thing people expect of a
clergyman. And yet what else am I to do? My father can't spare me any capital, else I might
go into farming. And he has no room for me in his trade. And of course I can't begin to study
for law or physic now, when my father wants me to earn something. It's all very well to say
I'm wrong to go into the Church; but those who say so might as well tell me to go into the
backwoods."
Fred's voice had taken a tone of grumbling remonstrance, and Mr. Farebrother might
have been inclined to smile if his mind had not been too busy in imagining more than Fred
told him.
"Have you any difficulties about doctrines – about the Articles?" he said, trying hard to
think of the question simply for Fred's sake.
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"No; I suppose the Articles are right. I am not prepared with any arguments to disprove
them, and much better, cleverer fellows than I am go in for them entirely. I think it would be
rather ridiculous in me to urge scruples of that sort, as if I were a judge," said Fred, quite
simply.
"I suppose, then, it has occurred to you that you might be a fair parish priest without
being much of a divine?"
"Of course, if I am obliged to be a clergyman, I shall try and do my duty, though I
mayn't like it. Do you think any body ought to blame me?"
"For going into the Church under the circumstances? That depends on your conscience,
Fred – how far you have counted the cost, and seen what your position will require of you. I
can only tell you about myself, that I have always been too lax, and have been uneasy in
consequence."
"But there is another hindrance," said Fred, coloring. "I did not tell you before, though
perhaps I may have said things that made you guess it. There is somebody I am very fond of:
I have loved her ever since we were children."
"Miss Garth, I suppose?" said the Vicar, examining some labels very closely.
"Yes. I shouldn't mind anything if she would have me. And I know I could be a good
fellow then."
"And you think she returns the feeling?"
"She never will say so; and a good while ago she made me promise not to speak to her
about it again. And she has set her mind especially against my being a clergyman; I know
that. But I can't give her up. I do think she cares about me. I saw Mrs. Garth last night, and
she said that Mary was staying at Lowick Rectory with Miss Farebrother."
"Yes, she is very kindly helping my sister. Do you wish to go there?"
"No, I want to ask a great favor of you. I am ashamed to bother you in this way; but
Mary might listen to what you said, if you mentioned the subject to her – I mean about my
going into the Church."
"That is rather a delicate task, my dear Fred. I shall have to presuppose your attachment
to her; and to enter on the subject as you wish me to do, will be asking her to tell me
whether she returns it."
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"That is what I want her to tell you," said Fred, bluntly. "I don't know what to do, unless
I can get at her feeling."
"You mean that you would be guided by that as to your going into the Church?"
"If Mary said she would never have me I might as well go wrong in one way as
another."
"That is nonsense, Fred. Men outlive their love, but they don't outlive the consequences
of their recklessness."
"Not my sort of love: I have never been without loving Mary. If I had to give her up, it
would be like beginning to live on wooden legs."
"Will she not be hurt at my intrusion?"
"No, I feel sure she will not. She respects you more than any one, and she would not put
you off with fun as she does me. Of course I could not have told any one else, or asked any
one else to speak to her, but you. There is no one else who could be such a friend to both of
us." Fred paused a moment, and then said, rather complainingly, "And she ought to
acknowledge that I have worked in order to pass. She ought to believe that I would exert
myself for her sake."
There was a moment's silence before Mr. Farebrother laid down his work, and putting
out his hand to Fred said –
"Very well, my boy. I will do what you wish."
That very day Mr. Farebrother went to Lowick parsonage on the nag which he had just
set up. "Decidedly I am an old stalk," he thought, "the young growths are pushing me aside."
He found Mary in the garden gathering roses and sprinkling the petals on a sheet. The
sun was low, and tall trees sent their shadows across the grassy walks where Mary was
moving without bonnet or parasol. She did not observe Mr. Farebrother's approach along the
grass, and had just stooped down to lecture a small black−and−tan terrier, which would
persist in walking on the sheet and smelling at the rose−leaves as Mary sprinkled them. She
took his fore−paws in one hand, and lifted up the forefinger of the other, while the dog
wrinkled his brows and looked embarrassed. "Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you," Mary was
saying in a grave contralto. "This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody would think
you were a silly young gentleman."
"You are unmerciful to young gentlemen, Miss Garth," said the Vicar, within two yards
of her.
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Mary started up and blushed. "It always answers to reason with Fly," she said,
laughingly.
"But not with young gentlemen?"
"Oh, with some, I suppose; since some of them turn into excellent men."
"I am glad of that admission, because I want at this very moment to interest you in a
young gentleman."
"Not a silly one, I hope," said Mary, beginning to pluck the roses again, and feeling her
heart beat uncomfortably.
"No; though perhaps wisdom is not his strong point, but rather affection and sincerity.
However, wisdom lies more in those two qualities than people are apt to imagine. I hope you
know by those marks what young gentleman I mean."
"Yes, I think I do," said Mary, bravely, her face getting more serious, and her hands
cold; "it must be Fred Vincy."
"He has asked me to consult you about his going into the Church. I hope you will not
think that I consented to take a liberty in promising to do so."
"On the contrary, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, giving up the roses, and folding her
arms, but unable to look up, "whenever you have anything to say to me I feel honored."
"But before I enter on that question, let me just touch a point on which your father took
me into confidence; by the way, it was that very evening on which I once before fulfilled a
mission from Fred, just after he had gone to college. Mr. Garth told me what happened on
the night of Featherstone's death – how you refused to burn the will; and he said that you
had some heart−prickings on that subject, because you had been the innocent means of
hindering Fred from getting his ten thousand pounds. I have kept that in mind, and I have
heard something that may relieve you on that score – may show you that no sin−offering is
demanded from you there.".
Mr. Farebrother paused a moment and looked at Mary. He meant to give Fred his full
advantage, but it would be well, he thought, to clear her mind of any superstitions, such as
women sometimes follow when they do a man the wrong of marrying him as an act of
atonement. Mary's cheeks had begun to burn a little, and she was mute.
"I mean, that your action made no real difference to Fred's lot. I find that the first will
would not have been legally good after the burning of the last; it would not have stood if it
had been disputed, and you may be sure it would have been disputed. So, on that score, you
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CHAPTER LII. 423
may feel your mind free."
"Thank you, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, earnestly. "I am grateful to you for
remembering my feelings."
"Well, now I may go on. Fred, you know, has taken his degree. He has worked his way
so far, and now the question is, what is he to do? That question is so difficult that he is
inclined to follow his father's wishes and enter the Church, though you know better than I do
that he was quite set against that formerly. I have questioned him on the subject, and I
confess I see no insuperable objection to his being a clergyman, as things go. He says that he
could turn his mind to doing his best in that vocation, on one condition. If that condition
were fulfilled I would do my utmost in helping Fred on. After a time – not, of course, at first
– he might be with me as my curate, and he would have so much to do that his stipend
would be nearly what I used to get as vicar. But I repeat that there is a condition without
which all this good cannot come to pass. He has opened his heart to me, Miss Garth, and
asked me to plead for him. The condition lies entirely in your feeling."
Mary looked so much moved, that he said after a moment, "Let us walk a little;" and
when they were walking he added, "To speak quite plainly, Fred will not take any course
which would lessen the chance that you would consent to be his wife; but with that prospect,
he will try his best at anything you approve."
"I cannot possibly say that I will ever be his wife, Mr. Farebrother: but I certainly never
will be his wife if he becomes a clergyman. What you say is most generous and kind; I don't
mean for a moment to correct your judgment. It is only that I have my girlish, mocking way
of looking at things," said Mary, with a returning sparkle of playfulness in her answer which
only made its modesty more charming.
"He wishes me to report exactly what you think," said Mr. Farebrother.
"I could not love a man who is ridiculous," said Mary, not choosing to go deeper. "Fred
has sense and knowledge enough to make him respectable, if he likes, in some good worldly
business, but I can never imagine him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings,
and praying by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a caricature. His being a
clergyman would be only for gentility's sake, and I think there is nothing more contemptible
than such imbecile gentility. I used to think that of Mr. Crowse, with his empty face and neat
umbrella, and mincing little speeches. What right have such men to represent Christianity –
as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly – as if – " Mary checked herself.
She had been carried along as if she had been speaking to Fred instead of Mr. Farebrother.
"Young women are severe: they don't feel the stress of action as men do, though
perhaps I ought to make you an exception there. But you don't put Fred Vincy on so low a
level as that?"
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CHAPTER LII. 424
"No, indeed, he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show it as a clergyman. He
would be a piece of professional affectation."
"Then the answer is quite decided. As a clergyman he could have no hope?"
Mary shook her head.
"But if he braved all the difficulties of getting his bread in some other way – will you
give him the support of hope? May he count on winning you?"
"I think Fred ought not to need telling again what I have already said to him," Mary
answered, with a slight resentment in her manner. "I mean that he ought not to put such
questions until he has done something worthy, instead of saying that he could do it."
Mr. Farebrother was silent for a minute or more, and then, as they turned and paused
under the shadow of a maple at the end of a grassy walk, said, "I understand that you resist
any attempt to fetter you, but either your feeling for Fred Vincy excludes your entertaining
another attachment, or it does not: either he may count on your remaining single until he
shall have earned your hand, or he may in any case be disappointed. Pardon me, Mary – you
know I used to catechise you under that name – but when the state of a woman's affections
touches the happiness of another life – of more lives than one – I think it would be the
nobler course for her to be perfectly direct and open."
Mary in her turn was silent, wondering not at Mr. Farebrother's manner but at his tone,
which had a grave restrained emotion in it. When the strange idea flashed across her that his
words had reference to himself, she was incredulous, and ashamed of entertaining it. She
had never thought that any man could love her except Fred, who had espoused her with the
umbrella ring, when she wore socks and little strapped shoes; still less that she could be of
any importance to Mr. Farebrother, the cleverest man in her narrow circle. She had only
time to feel that all this was hazy and perhaps illusory; but one thing was clear and
determined – her answer.
"Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I have too strong a
feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else. I should never be quite happy if I thought
he was unhappy for the loss of me. It has taken such deep root in me – my gratitude to him
for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we
were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker. I should like
better than anything to see him worthy of every one's respect. But please tell him I will not
promise to marry him till then: I should shame and grieve my father and mother. He is free
to choose some one else."
"Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly," said Mr. Farebrother, putting out his
hand to Mary, "and I shall ride back to Middlemarch forthwith. With this prospect before
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CHAPTER LII. 425
him, we shall get Fred into the right niche somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your
hands. God bless you!"
"Oh, please stay, and let me give you some tea," said Mary. Her eyes filled with tears,
for something indefinable, something like the resolute suppression of a pain in Mr.
Farebrother's manner, made her feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she saw
her father's hands trembling in a moment of trouble.
"No, my dear, no. I must get back."
In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone magnanimously
through a duty much harder than the renunciation of whist, or even than the writing of
penitential meditations.
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CHAPTER LIII.
I
t is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from what outsiders call
inconsistency – putting a dead mechanism of "ifs" and "therefores" for the living myriad of
hidden suckers whereby the belief and the conduct are wrought into mutual sustainment.
Mr. Bulstrode, when he was hoping to acquire a new interest in Lowick, had naturally
had an especial wish that the new clergyman should be one whom he thoroughly approved;
and he believed it to be a chastisement and admonition directed to his own shortcomings and
those of the nation at large, that just about the time when he came in possession of the deeds
which made him the proprietor of Stone Court, Mr. Farebrother "read himself" into the
quaint little church and preached his first sermon to the congregation of farmers, laborers,
and village artisans. It was not that Mr. Bulstrode intended to frequent Lowick Church or to
reside at Stone Court for a good while to come: he had bought the excellent farm and fine
homestead simply as a retreat which he might gradually enlarge as to the land and beautify
as to the dwelling, until it should be conducive to the divine glory that he should enter on it
as a residence, partially withdrawing from his present exertions in the administration of
business, and throwing more conspicuously on the side of Gospel truth the weight of local
landed proprietorship, which Providence might increase by unforeseen occasions of
purchase. A strong leading in this direction seemed to have been given in the surprising
facility of getting Stone Court, when every one had expected that Mr. Rigg Featherstone
would have clung to it as the Garden of Eden. That was what poor old Peter himself had
expected; having often, in imagination, looked up through the sods above him, and,
unobstructed by. perspective, seen his frog−faced legatee enjoying the fine old place to the
perpetual surprise and disappointment of other survivors.
But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbors! We judge from
our own desires, and our neighbors themselves are not always open enough even to throw
out a hint of theirs. The cool and judicious Joshua Rigg had not allowed his parent to
perceive that Stone Court was anything less than the chief good in his estimation, and he had
certainly wished to call it his own. But as Warren Hastings looked at gold and thought of
buying Daylesford, so Joshua Rigg looked at Stone Court and thought of buying gold. He
had a very distinct and intense vision of his chief good, the vigorous greed which he had
inherited having taken a special form by dint of circumstance: and his chief good was to be a
moneychanger. From his earliest employment as an errand−boy in a seaport, he had looked
through the windows of the moneychangers as other boys look through the windows of the
pastry−cooks; the fascination had wrought itself gradually into a deep special passion; he
meant, when he had property, to do many things, one of them being to marry a genteel
young person; but these were all accidents and joys that imagination could dispense with.
The one joy after which his soul thirsted was to have a money−changer's shop on a
much−frequented quay, to have locks all round him of which he held the keys, and to look
sublimely cool as he handled the breeding coins of all nations, while helpless Cupidity
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CHAPTER LIII. 427
looked at him enviously from the other side of an iron lattice. The strength of that passion
had been a power enabling him to master all the knowledge necessary to gratify it. And
when others were thinking that he had settled at Stone Court for life, Joshua himself was
thinking that the moment now was not far off when he should settle on the North Quay with
the best appointments in safes and locks.
Enough. We are concerned with looking at Joshua Rigg's sale of his land from Mr.
Bulstrode's point of view, and he interpreted it as a cheering dispensation conveying perhaps
a sanction to a purpose which he had for some time entertained without external
encouragement; he interpreted it thus, but not too confidently, offering up his thanksgiving
in guarded phraseology. His doubts did not arise from the possible relations of the event to
Joshua Rigg's destiny, which belonged to the unmapped regions not taken under the
providential government, except perhaps in an imperfect colonial way; but they arose from
reflecting that this dispensation too might be a chastisement for himself, as Mr. Farebrother's
induction to the living clearly was.
This was not what Mr. Bulstrode said to any man for the sake of deceiving him: it was
what he said to himself – it was as genuinely his mode of explaining events as any theory of
yours may be, if you happen to disagree with him. For the egoism which enters into our
theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more
robust is our belief.
However, whether for sanction or for chastisement, Mr. Bulstrode, hardly fifteen
months after the death of Peter Featherstone, had become the proprietor of Stone Court, and
what Peter would say "if he were worthy to know," had become an inexhaustible and
consolatory subject of conversation to his disappointed relatives. The tables were now
turned on that dear brother departed, and to contemplate the frustration of his cunning by the
superior cunning of things in general was a cud of delight to Solomon. Mrs. Waule had a
melancholy triumph in the proof that it did not answer to make false Featherstones and cut
off the genuine; and Sister Martha receiving the news in the Chalky Flats said, "Dear, dear!
then the Almighty could have been none so pleased with the almshouses after all."
Affectionate Mrs. Bulstrode was particularly glad of the advantage which her husband's
health was likely to get from the purchase of Stone Court. Few days passed without his
riding thither and looking over some part of the farm with the bailiff, and the evenings were
delicious in that quiet spot, when the new hay−ricks lately set up were sending forth odors to
mingle with the breath of the rich old garden. One evening, while the sun was still above the
horizon and burning in golden lamps among the great walnut boughs, Mr. Bulstrode was
pausing on horseback outside the front gate waiting for Caleb Garth, who had met him by
appointment to give an opinion on a question of stable drainage, and was now advising the
bailiff in the rick−yard.
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Mr. Bulstrode was conscious of being in a good spiritual frame and more than usually
serene, under the influence of his innocent recreation. He was doctrinally convinced that
there was a total absence of merit in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held
without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive
the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction
when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching
proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention. The memory has as many
moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama. At this moment Mr. Bulstrode
felt as if the sunshine were all one with that of far−off evenings when he was a very young
man and used to go out preaching beyond Highbury. And he would willingly have had that
service of exhortation in prospect now. The texts were there still, and so was his own facility
in expounding them. His brief reverie was interrupted by the return of Caleb Garth, who also
was on horseback, and was just shaking his bridle before starting, when he exclaimed –
"Bless my heart! what's this fellow in black coming along the lane? He's like one of
those men one sees about after the races."
Mr. Bulstrode turned his horse and looked along the lane, but made no reply. The comer
was our slight acquaintance Mr. Raffles, whose appearance presented no other change than
such as was due to a suit of black and a crape hat−band. He was within three yards of the
horseman now, and they could see the flash of recognition in his face as he whirled his stick
upward, looking all the while at Mr. Bulstrode, and at last exclaiming: –
"By Jove, Nick, it's you! I couldn't be mistaken, though the five−and−twenty years have
played old Boguy with us both! How are you, eh? you didn't expect to see ME here. Come,
shake us by the hand." To say that Mr. Raffles' manner was rather excited would be only one
mode of saying that it was evening. Caleb Garth could see that there was a moment of
struggle and hesitation in Mr. Bulstrode, but it ended in his putting out his hand coldly to
Raffles and saying –
"I did not indeed expect to see you in this remote country place."
"Well, it belongs to a stepson of mine," said Raffles, adjusting himself in a swaggering
attitude. "I came to see him here before. I'm not so surprised at seeing you, old fellow,
because I picked up a letter – what you may call a providential thing. It's uncommonly
fortunate I met you, though; for I don't care about seeing my stepson: he's not affectionate,
and his poor mother's gone now. To tell the truth, I came out of love to you, Nick: I came to
get your address, for – look here!" Raffles drew a crumpled paper from his pocket.
Almost any other man than Caleb Garth might have been tempted to linger on the spot
for the sake of hearing all he could about a man whose acquaintance with Bulstrode seemed
to imply passages in the banker's life so unlike anything that was known of him in
Middlemarch that they must have the nature of a secret to pique curiosity. But Caleb was
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peculiar: certain human tendencies which are commonly strong were almost absent from his
mind; and one of these was curiosity about personal affairs. Especially if there was anything
discreditable to be found out concerning another man, Caleb preferred not to know it; and if
he had to tell anybody under him that his evil doings were discovered, he was more
embarrassed than the culprit. He now spurred his horse, and saying, "I wish you good
evening, Mr. Bulstrode; I must be getting home," set off at a trot.
"You didn't put your full address to this letter," Raffles continued. "That was not like
the first−rate man of business you used to be. `The Shrubs,' – they may be anywhere: you
live near at hand, eh? – have cut the London concern altogether – perhaps turned country
squire – have a rural mansion to invite me to. Lord, how many years it is ago! The old lady
must have been dead a pretty long while – gone to glory without the pain of knowing how
poor her daughter was, eh? But, by Jove! you're very pale and pasty, Nick. Come, if you're
going home, I'll walk by your side."
Mr. Bulstrode's usual paleness had in fact taken an almost deathly hue. Five minutes
before, the expanse of his life had been submerged in its evening sunshine which shone
backward to its remembered morning: sin seemed to be a question of doctrine and inward
penitence, humiliation an exercise of the closet, the bearing of his deeds a matter of private
vision adjusted solely by spiritual relations and conceptions of the divine purposes. And
now, as if by some hideous magic, this loud red figure had risen before him in
unmanageable solidity – an incorporate past which had not entered into his imagination of
chastisements. But Mr. Bulstrode's thought was busy, and he was not a man to act or speak
rashly.
"I was going home," he said, "but I can defer my ride a little. And you can, if you
please, rest here."
"Thank you," said Raffles, making a grimace. "I don't care now about seeing my
stepson. I'd rather go home with you."
"Your stepson, if Mr. Rigg Featherstone was he, is here no longer. I am master here
now."
Raffles opened wide eyes, and gave a long whistle of surprise, before he said, "Well
then, I've no objection. I've had enough walking from the coach−road. I never was much of a
walker, or rider either. What I like is a smart vehicle and a spirited cob. I was always a little
heavy in the saddle. What a pleasant surprise it must be to you to see me, old fellow!" he
continued, as they turned towards the house. "You don't say so; but you never took your luck
heartily – you were always thinking of improving the occasion – you'd such a gift for
improving your luck."
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Mr. Raffles seemed greatly to enjoy his own wit, and Swung his leg in a swaggering
manner which was rather too much for his companion's judicious patience.
"If I remember rightly," Mr. Bulstrode observed, with chill anger, "our acquaintance
many years ago had not the sort of intimacy which you are now assuming, Mr. Raffles. Any
services you desire of me will be the more readily rendered if you will avoid a tone of
familiarity which did not lie in our former intercourse, and can hardly be warranted by more
than twenty years of separation."
"You don't like being called Nick? Why, I always called you Nick in my heart, and
though lost to sight, to memory dear. By Jove! my feelings have ripened for you like fine old
cognac. I hope you've got some in the house now. Josh filled my flask well the last time."
Mr. Bulstrode had not yet fully learned that even the desire for cognac was not stronger
in Raffles than the desire to torment, and that a hint of annoyance always served him as a
fresh cue. But it was at least clear that further objection was useless, and Mr. Bulstrode, in
giving orders to the housekeeper for the accommodation of the guest, had a resolute air of
quietude.
There was the comfort of thinking that this housekeeper had been in the service of Rigg
also, and might accept the idea that Mr. Bulstrode entertained Raffles merely as a friend of
her former master.
When there was food and drink spread before his visitor in the wainscoted parlor, and
no witness in the room, Mr. Bulstrode said –
"Your habits and mine are so different, Mr. Raffles, that we can hardly enjoy each
other's society. The wisest plan for both of us will therefore be to part as soon as possible.
Since you say that you wished to meet me, you probably considered that you had some
business to transact with me. But under the circumstances I will invite you to remain here
for the night, and I will myself ride over here early to−morrow morning – before breakfast,
in fact, when I can receive any Communication you have to make to me."
"With all my heart," said Raffles; "this is a comfortable place – a little dull for a
continuance; but I can put up with it for a night, with this good liquor and the prospect of
seeing you again in the morning. You're a much better host than my stepson was; but Josh
owed me a bit of a grudge for marrying his mother; and between you and me there was
never anything but kindness."
Mr. Bulstrode, hoping that the peculiar mixture of joviality and sneering in Raffles'
manner was a good deal the effect of drink, had determined to wait till he was quite sober
before he spent more words upon him. But he rode home with a terribly lucid vision of the
difficulty there would be in arranging any result that could be permanently counted on with
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this man. It was inevitable that he should wish to get rid of John Raffles, though his
reappearance could not be regarded as lying outside the divine plan. The spirit of evil might
have sent him to threaten Mr. Bulstrode's subversion as an instrument of good; but the threat
must have been permitted, and was a chastisement of a new kind. It was an hour of anguish
for him very different from the hours in which his struggle had been securely private, and
which had ended with a sense that his secret misdeeds were pardoned and his services
accepted. Those misdeeds even when committed – had they not been half sanctified by the
singleness of his desire to devote himself and all he possessed to the furtherance of the
divine scheme? And was he after all to become a mere stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence? For who would understand the work within him? Who would not, when there was
the pretext of casting disgrace upon him, confound his whole life and the truths he had
espoused, in one heap of obloquy?
In his closest meditations the life−long habit of Mr. Bulstrode's mind clad his most
egoistic terrors in doctrinal references to superhuman ends. But even while we are talking
and meditating about the earth's orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our
movements to is the stable earth and the changing day. And now within all the automatic
succession of theoretic phrases – distinct and inmost as the shiver and the ache of oncoming
fever when we are discussing abstract pain, was the forecast of disgrace in the presence of
his neighbors and of his own wife. For the pain, as well as the public estimate of disgrace,
depends on the amount of previous profession. To men who only aim at escaping felony,
nothing short of the prisoner's dock is disgrace. But Mr. Bulstrode had aimed at being an
eminent Christian.
It was not more than half−past seven in the morning when he again reached Stone
Court. The fine old place never looked more like a delightful home than at that moment; the
great white lilies were in flower, the nasturtiums, their pretty leaves all silvered with dew,
were running away over the low stone wall; the very noises all around had a heart of peace
within them. But everything was spoiled for the owner as he walked on the gravel in front
and awaited the descent of Mr. Raffles, with whom he was condemned to breakfast.
It was not long before they were seated together in the wainscoted parlor over their tea
and toast, which was as much as Raffles cared to take at that early hour. The difference
between his morning and evening self was not so great as his companion had imagined that
it might be; the delight in tormenting was perhaps even the stronger because his spirits were
rather less highly pitched. Certainly his manners seemed more disagreeable by the morning
light.
"As I have little time to spare, Mr. Raffles," said the banker, who could hardly do more
than sip his tea and break his toast without eating it, "I shall be obliged if you will mention
at once the ground on which you wished to meet with me. I presume that you have a home
elsewhere and will be glad to return to it."
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CHAPTER LIII. 432
"Why, if a man has got any heart, doesn't he want to see an old friend, Nick? – I must
call you Nick – we always did call you young Nick when we knew you meant to marry the
old widow. Some said you had a handsome family likeness to old Nick, but that was your
mother's fault, calling you Nicholas. Aren't you glad to see me again? I expected an invite to
stay with you at some pretty place. My own establishment is broken up now my wife's dead.
I've no particular attachment to any spot; I would as soon settle hereabout as anywhere."
"May I ask why you returned from America? I considered that the strong wish you
expressed to go there, when an adequate sum was furnished, was tantamount to an
engagement that you would remain there for life."
"Never knew that a wish to go to a place was the same thing as a wish to stay. But I did
stay a matter of ten years; it didn't suit me to stay any longer. And I'm not going again,
Nick." Here Mr. Raffles winked slowly as he looked at Mr. Bulstrode.
"Do you wish to be settled in any business? What is your calling now?"
"Thank you, my calling is to enjoy myself as much as I can. I don't care about working
any more. If I did anything it would be a little travelling in the tobacco line – or something
of that sort, which takes a man into agreeable company. But not without an independence to
fall back upon. That's what I want: I'm not so strong as I was, Nick, though I've got more
color than you. I want an independence."
"That could be supplied to you, if you would engage to keep at a distance," said Mr.
Bulstrode, perhaps with a little too much eagerness in his undertone.
"That must be as it suits my convenience," said Raffles coolly. "I see no reason why I
shouldn't make a few acquaintances hereabout. I'm not ashamed of myself as company for
anybody. I dropped my portmanteau at the turnpike when I got down – change of linen –
genuine – honor bright – more than fronts and wristbands; and with this suit of mourning,
straps and everything, I should do you credit among the nobs here." Mr. Raffles had pushed
away hit chair and looked down at himself, particularly at his straps His chief intention was
to annoy Bulstrode, but he really thought that his appearance now would produce a good
effect, and that he was not only handsome and witty, but clad in a mourning style which
implied solid connections.
"If you intend to rely on me in any way, Mr. Raffles," said Bulstrode, after a moment's
pause, "you will expect to meet my wishes."
"Ah, to be sure," said Raffles, with a mocking cordiality. "Didn't I always do it? Lord,
you made a pretty thing out of me, and I got but little. I've often thought since, I might have
done better by telling the old woman that I'd found her daughter and her grandchild: it would
have suited my feelings better; I've got a soft place in my heart. But you've buried the old
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CHAPTER LIII. 433
lady by this time, I suppose – it's all one to her now. And you've got your fortune out of that
profitable business which had such a blessing on it. You've taken to being a nob, buying
land, being a country bashaw. Still in the Dissenting line, eh? Still godly? Or taken to the
Church as more genteel?"
This time Mr. Raffles' slow wink and slight protrusion of his tongue was worse than a
nightmare, because it held the certitude that it was not a nightmare, but a waking misery.
Mr. Bulstrode felt a shuddering nausea, and did not speak, but was considering diligently
whether he should not leave Raffles to do as he would, and simply defy him as a slanderer.
The man would soon show himself disreputable enough to make people disbelieve him. "But
not when he tells any ugly−looking truth about YOU," said discerning consciousness. And
again: it seemed no wrong to keep Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode shrank from the
direct falsehood of denying true statements. It was one thing to look back on forgiven sins,
nay, to explain questionable conformity to lax customs, and another to enter deliberately on
the necessity of falsehood.
But since Bulstrode did not speak, Raffles ran on, by way of using time to the utmost.
"I've not had such fine luck as you, by Jove! Things went confoundedly with me in New
York; those Yankees are cool hands, and a man of gentlemanly feelings has no chance with
them. I married when I came back – a nice woman in the tobacco trade – very fond of me –
but the trade was restricted, as we say. She had been settled there a good many years by a
friend; but there was a son too much in the case. Josh and I never hit it off. However, I made
the most of the position, and I've always taken my glass in good company. It's been all on
the square with me; I'm as open as the day. You won't take it ill of me that I didn't look you
up before. I've got a complaint that makes me a little dilatory. I thought you were trading
and praying away in London still, and didn't find you there. But you see I was sent to you,
Nick – perhaps for a blessing to both of us."
Mr. Raffles ended with a jocose snuffle: no man felt his intellect more superior to
religious cant. And if the cunning which calculates on the meanest feelings in men could be,
called intellect, he had his share, for under the blurting rallying tone with which he spoke to
Bulstrode, there was an evident selection of statements, as if they had been so many moves
at chess. Meanwhile Bulstrode had determined on his move, and he said, with gathered
resolution –
"You will do well to reflect, Mr. Raffles, that it is possible for a man to overreach
himself in the effort to secure undue advantage. Although I am not in any way bound to you,
I am willing to supply you with a regular annuity – in quarterly payments – so long as you
fulfil a promise to remain at a distance from this neighborhood. It is in your power to
choose. If you insist on remaining here, even for a short time, you will get nothing from me.
I shall decline to know you."
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CHAPTER LIII. 434
"Ha, ha!" said Raffles, with an affected explosion, "that reminds me of a droll dog of a
thief who declined to know the constable."
"Your allusions are lost on me sir," said Bulstrode, with white heat; "the law has no
hold on me either through your agency or any other."
"You can't understand a joke, my good fellow. I only meant that I should never decline
to know you. But let us be serious. Your quarterly payment won't quite suit me. I like my
freedom."
Here Raffles rose and stalked once or twice up and down the room, swinging his leg,
and assuming an air of masterly meditation. At last he stopped opposite Bulstrode, and said,
"I'll tell you what! Give us a couple of hundreds – come, that's modest – and I'll go away –
honor bright! – pick up my portmanteau and go away. But I shall not give up my Liberty for
a dirty annuity. I shall come and go where I like. Perhaps it may suit me to stay away, and
correspond with a friend; perhaps not. Have you the money with you?"
"No, I have one hundred," said Bulstrode, feeling the immediate riddance too great a
relief to be rejected on the ground of future uncertainties. "I will forward you the other if
you will mention an address."
"No, I'll wait here till you bring it," said Raffles. "I'll take a stroll and have a snack, and
you'll be back by that time."
Mr. Bulstrode's sickly body, shattered by the agitations he had gone through since the
last evening, made him feel abjectly in the power of this loud invulnerable man. At that
moment he snatched at a temporary repose to be won on any terms. He was rising to do what
Raffles suggested, when the latter said, lifting up his finger as if with a sudden recollection –
"I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn't tell you; I'd a tender
conscience about that pretty young woman. I didn't find her, but I found out her husband's
name, and I made a note of it. But hang it, I lost my pocketbook. However, if I heard it, I
should know it again. I've got my faculties as if I was in my prime, but names wear out, by
Jove! Sometimes I'm no better than a confounded tax−paper before the names are filled in.
However, if I hear of her and her family, you shall know, Nick. You'd like to do something
for her, now she's your step−daughter."
"Doubtless," said Mr. Bulstrode, with the usual steady look of his light−gray eyes;
"though that might reduce my power of assisting you."
As he walked out of the room, Raffles winked slowly at his back, and then turned
towards the window to watch the banker riding away – virtually at his command. His lips
first curled with a smile and then opened with a short triumphant laugh.
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CHAPTER LIII. 435
"But what the deuce was the name?" he presently said, half aloud, scratching his head,
and wrinkling his brows horizontally. He had not really cared or thought about this point of
forgetfulness until it occurred to him in his invention of annoyances for Bulstrode.
"It began with L; it was almost all l's I fancy," he went on, with a sense that he was
getting hold of the slippery name. But the hold was too slight, and he soon got tired of this
mental chase; for few men were more impatient of private occupation or more in need of
making themselves continually heard than Mr. Raffles. He preferred using his time in
pleasant conversation with the bailiff and the housekeeper, from whom he gathered as much
as he wanted to know about Mr. Bulstrode's position in Middlemarch.
After all, however, there was a dull space of time which needed relieving with bread
and cheese and ale, and when he was seated alone with these resources in the wainscoted
parlor, he suddenly slapped his knee, and exclaimed, "Ladislaw!" That action of memory
which he had tried to set going, and had abandoned in despair, had suddenly completed itself
without conscious effort – a common experience, agreeable as a completed sneeze, even if
the name remembered is of no value. Raffles immediately took out his pocket−book, and
wrote down the name, not because he expected to use it, but merely for the sake of not being
at a loss if he ever did happen to want it. He was not going to tell Bulstrode: there was no
actual good in telling, and to a mind like that of Mr. Raffles there is always probable good in
a secret.
He was satisfied with his present success, and by three o'clock that day he had taken up
his portmanteau at the turnpike and mounted the coach, relieving Mr. Bulstrode's eyes of an
ugly black spot on the landscape at Stone Court, but not relieving him of the dread that the
black spot might reappear and become inseparable even from the vision of his hearth.
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CHAPTER LIII. 436
CHAPTER LIV.
"N
egli occhi porta la mia donna Amore; Per che si fa gentil eio ch'ella mira: Ov'ella
passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira, E cui saluta fa tremar lo core.
Sicche, bassando il viso, tutto smore, E d'ogni suo difetto allor sospira: Fuggon dinanzi
a lei Superbia ed Ira: Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.
Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile Nasee nel core a chi parlar la sente; Ond' e beato chi
prima la vide. Quel ch'ella par quand' un poco sorride, Non si pub dicer, ne tener a mente, Si
e nuovo miracolo gentile."
– DANTE: la Vita Nuova.
By that delightful morning when the hay−ricks at Stone Court were scenting the air
quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles had been a guest worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had
again taken up her abode at Lowick Manor. After three months Freshitt had become rather
oppressive: to sit like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously at Celia's baby would
not do for many hours in the day, and to remain in that momentous babe's presence with
persistent disregard was a course that could not have been tolerated in a childless sister.
Dorothea would have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a mile if there had been
need, and of loving it the more tenderly for that labor; but to an aunt who does not recognize
her infant nephew as Bouddha, and has nothing to do for him but to admire, his behavior is
apt to appear monotonous, and the interest of watching him exhaustible. This possibility was
quite hidden from Celia, who felt that Dorothea's childless widowhood fell in quite prettily
with the birth of little Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke).
"Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her own – children or
anything!" said Celia to her husband. "And if she had had a baby, it never could have been
such a dear as Arthur. Could it, James?
"Not if it had been like Casaubon," said Sir James, conscious of some indirectness in his
answer, and of holding a strictly private opinion as to the perfections of his first−born.
"No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy," said Celia; "and I think it is very nice for
Dodo to be a widow. She can be just as fond of our baby as if it were her own, and she can
have as many notions of her own as she likes."
"It is a pity she was not a queen," said the devout Sir James.
"But what should we have been then? We must have been something else," said Celia,
objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination. "I like her better as she is."
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CHAPTER LIV. 438
Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her final departure
to Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with disappointment, and in her quiet unemphatic way
shot a needle−arrow of sarcasm.
"What will you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say yourself there is nothing to be done there:
everybody is so clean and well off, it makes you quite melancholy. And here you have been
so happy going all about Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards. And now uncle is
abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way; and I am sure James does
everything you tell him."
"I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all the better," said Dorothea.
"But you will never see him washed," said Celia; "and that is quite the best part of the
day." She was almost pouting: it did seem to her very hard in Dodo to go away from the
baby when she might stay.
"Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose," said Dorothea; "but I want to be
alone now, and in my own home. I wish to know the Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr.
Farebrother about what there is to be done in Middlemarch."
Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all converted into resolute submission.
She had a great yearning to be at Lowick, and was simply determined to go, not feeling
bound to tell all her reasons. But every one around her disapproved. Sir James was much
pained, and offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham for a few months with the
sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that period a man could hardly know what to
propose if Cheltenham were rejected.
The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter in town, wished,
at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to, and invited to accept the office of companion to
Mrs. Casaubon: it was not credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think of living
alone in the house at Lowick. Mrs. Vigo had been reader and secretary to royal personages,
and in point of knowledge and sentiments even Dorothea could have nothing to object to
her.
Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my
dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call
things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and
women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then.
But you must not run into that. I dare say you are a little bored here with our good dowager;
but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow−creatures if you were
always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at
Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you
who wouldn't believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine."
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CHAPTER LIV. 439
"I never called everything by the same name that all the people about me did," said
Dorothea, stoutly.
"But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear," said Mrs. Cadwallader, "and
that is a proof of sanity."
Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her. "No," she said, "I still think that
the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet
think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion."
Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her husband she
remarked, "It will be well for her to marry again as soon as it is proper, if one could get her
among the right people. Of course the Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly a
husband is the best thing to keep her in order. If we were not so poor I would invite Lord
Triton. He will be marquis some day, and there is no denying that she would make a good
marchioness: she looks handsomer than ever in her mourning."
"My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone. Such contrivances are of no use," said
the easy Rector.
"No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and women together? And it
is a shame that her uncle should have run away and shut up the Grange just now. There
ought to be plenty of eligible matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange. Lord Triton is
precisely the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft−headed sort of way.
That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon."
"Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor."
"That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose if she has no variety to
choose from? A woman's choice usually means taking the only man she can get. Mark my
words, Humphrey. If her friends don't exert themselves, there will be a worse business than
the Casaubon business yet."
"For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore point with Sir
James He would be deeply offended if you entered on it to him unnecessarily."
"I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands. "Celia told me
all about the will at the beginning, without any asking of mine."
"Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the young fellow is
going out of the neighborhood."
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CHAPTER LIV. 440
Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant nods, with a very
sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.
Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion. So by the end of
June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and the morning gazed calmly into the
library, shining on the rows of note−books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge
stones, the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with roses entered
silently into the blue−green boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit. At first she
walked into every room, questioning the eighteen months of her married life, and carrying
on her thoughts as if they were a speech to be heard by her husband. Then, she lingered in
the library and could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all the note−books as she
imagined that he would wish to see them, in orderly sequence. The pity which had been the
restraining compelling motive in her life with him still clung about his image, even while
she remonstrated with him in indignant thought and told him that he was unjust. One little
act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as superstitious. The Synoptical Tabulation for the use
of Mrs. Casaubon, she carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope, "I could
not use it. Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul to yours, by working
hopelessly at what I have no belief in – Dorothea?" Then she deposited the paper in her own
desk.
That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because underneath and through
it all there was always the deep longing which had really determined her to come to Lowick.
The longing was to see Will Ladislaw. She did not know any good that could come of their
meeting: she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to him for any
unfairness in his lot. But her soul thirsted to see him. How could it be otherwise? If a
princess in the days of enchantment had seen a four−footed creature from among those
which live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her
with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what would she look
for when the herds passed her? Surely for the gaze which had found her, and which she
would know again. Life would be no better than candle−light tinsel and daylight rubbish if
our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy. It was
true that Dorothea wanted to know the Farebrothers better, and especially to talk to the new
rector, but also true that remembering what Lydgate had told her about Will Ladislaw and
little Miss Noble, she counted on Will's coming to Lowick to see the Farebrother family.
The very first Sunday, BEFORE she entered the church, she saw him as she had seen him
the last time she was there, alone in the clergyman's pew; but WHEN she entered his figure
was gone.
In the week−days when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory, she listened in vain for
some word that they might let fall about Will; but it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother
talked of every one else in the neighborhood and out of it.
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CHAPTER LIV. 441
"Probably some of Mr. Farebrother's Middlemarch hearers may follow him to Lowick
sometimes. Do you not think so?" said Dorothea, rather despising herself for having a secret
motive in asking the question.
"If they are wise they will, Mrs. Casaubon," said the old lady. "I see that you set a right
value on my son's preaching. His grandfather on my side was an excellent clergyman, but
his father was in the law: – most exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for
our never being rich. They say Fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a
good woman and gives to those who merit, which has been the case with you, Mrs.
Casaubon, who have given a living to my son."
Mrs. Farebrother recurred to her knitting with a dignified satisfaction in her neat little
effort at oratory, but this was not what Dorothea wanted to hear. Poor thing! she did not
even know whether Will Ladislaw was still at Middlemarch, and there was no one whom
she dared to ask, unless it were Lydgate. But just now she could not see Lydgate without
sending for him or going to seek him. Perhaps Will Ladislaw, having heard of that strange
ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon, had felt it better that he and she should not meet
again, and perhaps she was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good
reasons against. Still "I do wish it" came at the end of those wise reflections as naturally as a
sob after holding the breath. And the meeting did happen, but in a formal way quite
unexpected by her.
One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seated in her boudoir with a map of the land
attached to the manor and other papers before her, which were to help her in making an
exact statement for herself of her income and affairs. She had not yet applied herself to her
work, but was seated with her hands folded on her lap, looking out along the avenue of limes
to the distant fields. Every leaf was at rest in the sunshine, the familiar scene was
changeless, and seemed to represent the prospect of her life, full of motiveless ease –
motiveless, if her own energy could not seek out reasons for ardent action. The widow's cap
of those times made an oval frame for the face, and had a crown standing up; the dress was
an experiment in the utmost laying on of crape; but this heavy solemnity of clothing made
her face look all the younger, with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, inquiring candor of
her eyes.
Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to say that Mr. Ladislaw was below, and
begged permission to see Madam if it were not too early.
"I will see him," said Dorothea, rising immediately. "Let him be shown into the
drawing−room."
The drawing−room was the most neutral room in the house to her – the one least
associated with the trials of her married life: the damask matched the wood−work, which
was all white and gold; there were two tall mirrors and tables with nothing on them – in
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CHAPTER LIV. 442
brief, it was a room where you had no reason for sitting in one place rather than in another.
It was below the boudoir, and had also a bow−window looking out on the avenue. But when
Pratt showed Will Ladislaw into it the window was open; and a winged visitor, buzzing in
and out now and then without minding the furniture, made the room look less formal and
uninhabited.
"Glad to see you here again, sir," said Pratt, lingering to adjust a blind.
"I am only come to say good−by, Pratt," said Will, who wished even the butler to know
that he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon now she was a rich widow.
"Very sorry to hear it, sir," said Pratt, retiring. Of course, as a servant who was to be
told nothing, he knew the fact of which Ladislaw was still ignorant, and had drawn his
inferences; indeed, had not differed from his betrothed Tantripp when she said, "Your
master was as jealous as a fiend – and no reason. Madam would look higher than Mr.
Ladislaw, else I don't know her. Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's a lord coming who is
to marry her when the mourning's over."
There were not many moments for Will to walk about with his hat in his hand before
Dorothea entered. The meeting was very different from that first meeting in Rome when
Will had been embarrassed and Dorothea calm. This time he felt miserable but determined,
while she was in a state of agitation which could not be hidden. Just outside the door she had
felt that this longed−for meeting was after all too difficult, and when she saw Will
advancing towards her, the deep blush which was rare in her came with painful suddenness.
Neither of them knew how it was, but neither of them spoke. She gave her hand for a
moment, and then they went to sit down near the window, she on one settee and he on
another opposite. Will was peculiarly uneasy: it seemed to him not like Dorothea that the
mere fact of her being a widow should cause such a change in her manner of receiving him;
and he knew of no other condition which could have affected their previous relation to each
other – except that, as his imagination at once told him, her friends might have been
poisoning her mind with their suspicions of him.
"I hope I have not presumed too much in calling," said Will; "I could not bear to leave
the neighborhood and begin a new life without seeing you to say good−by."
"Presumed? Surely not. I should have thought it unkind if you had not wished to see
me," said Dorothea, her habit of speaking with perfect genuineness asserting itself through
all her uncertainty and agitation. "Are you going away immediately?"
"Very soon, I think. I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a barrister, since, they
say, that is the preparation for all public business. There will be a great deal of political work
to be done by−and−by, and I mean to try and do some of it. Other men have managed to win
an honorable position for themselves without family or money."
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"And that will make it all the more honorable," said Dorothea, ardently. "Besides, you
have so many talents. I have heard from my uncle how well you speak in public, so that
every one is sorry when you leave off, and how clearly you can explain things. And you care
that justice should be done to every one. I am so glad. When we were in Rome, I thought
you only cared for poetry and art, and the things that adorn life for us who are well off. But
now I know you think about the rest of the world."
While she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment, and had
become like her former self. She looked at Will with a direct glance, full of delighted
confidence.
"You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here again till I have
made myself of some mark in the world?" said Will, trying hard to reconcile the utmost
pride with the utmost effort to get an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea.
She was not aware how long it was before she answered. She had turned her head and
was looking out of the window on the rose−bushes, which seemed to have in them the
summers of all the years when Will would be away. This was not judicious behavior. But
Dorothea never thought of studying her manners: she thought only of bowing to a sad
necessity which divided her from Will. Those first words of his about his intentions had
seemed to make everything clear to her: he knew, she supposed, all about Mr. Casaubon's
final conduct in relation to him, and it had come to him with the same sort of shock as to
herself. He had never felt more than friendship for her – had never had anything in his mind
to justify what she felt to be her husband's outrage on the feelings of both: and that
friendship he still felt. Something which may be called an inward silent sob had gone on in
Dorothea before she said with a pure voice, just trembling in the last words as if only from
its liquid flexibility –
"Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say. I shall be very happy when I hear that
you have made your value felt. But you must have patience. It will perhaps be a long while."
Will never quite knew how it was that he saved himself from falling down at her feet,
when the "long while" came forth with its gentle tremor. He used to say that the horrible hue
and surface of her crape dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force. He sat still,
however, and only said –
"I shall never hear from you. And you will forget all about me."
"No," said Dorothea, "I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten any one whom I
once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so. And I have a
great deal of space for memory at Lowick, haven't I?" She smiled.
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CHAPTER LIV. 444
"Good God!" Will burst out passionately, rising, with his hat still in his hand, and
walking away to a marble table, where he suddenly turned and leaned his back against it.
The blood had mounted to his face and neck, and he looked almost angry. It had seemed to
him as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other's presence,
while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning. But there was no help for it.
It should never be true of him that in this meeting to which he had come with bitter
resolution he had ended by a confession which might be interpreted into asking for her
fortune. Moreover, it was actually true that he was fearful of the effect which such
confessions might have on Dorothea herself.
She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that there might hate
been an offence in her words. But all the while there was a current of thought in her about
his probable want of money, and the impossibility of her helping him. If her uncle had been
at home, something might have been done through him! It was this preoccupation with the
hardship of Will's wanting money, while she had what ought to have been his share, which
led her to say, seeing that he remained silent and looked away from her –
"I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature which hangs up−stairs – I
mean that beautiful miniature OF your grandmother. I think it is not right for me to keep it,
if you would wish to have it. It is wonderfully like you."
"You are very good," said Will, irritably. "No; I don't mind about it. It is not very
consoling to have one's own likeness. It would be more consoling if others wanted to have
it."
"I thought you would like to cherish her memory – I thought – "Dorothea broke off an
instant, her imagination suddenly warning her away from Aunt Julia's history – "you would
surely like to have the miniature as a family memorial."
"Why should I have that, when I have nothing else! A man with only a portmanteau for
his stowage must keep his memorials in his head."
Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance; it was a little too
exasperating to have his grandmother's portrait offered him at that moment. But to
Dorothea's feeling his words had a peculiar sting. She rose and said with a touch of
indignation as well as hauteur –
"You are much the happier of us two, Mr. Ladislaw, to have nothing."
Will was startled. Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed like a dismissal; and
quitting his leaning posture, he walked a little way towards her. Their eyes met, but with a
strange questioning gravity. Something was keeping their minds aloof, and each was left to
conjecture what was in the other. Will had really never thought of himself as having a claim
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of inheritance on the property which was held by Dorothea, and would have required a
narrative to make him understand her present feeling.
"I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said. "But poverty may be as
bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we most care for."
The words cut Dorothea to the heart, and made her relent. She answered in a tone of sad
fellowship.
"Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that – I mean of the
unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our hands, and makes us silent when we
long to speak. I used to despise women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing
better things. I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up," she ended,
smiling playfully.
"I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it," said Will. He was
standing two yards from her with his mind full of contradictory desires and resolves –
desiring some unmistakable proof that she loved him, and yet dreading the position into
which such a proof might bring him. "The thing one most longs for may be surrounded with
conditions that would be intolerable."
At this moment Pratt entered and said, "Sir James Chettam is in the library, madam."
"Ask Sir James to come in here," said Dorothea, immediately. It was as if the same
electric shock had passed through her and Will. Each of them felt proudly resistant, and
neither looked at the other, while they awaited Sir James's entrance.
After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible to Ladislaw, who
repaid the slightness exactly, and then going towards Dorothea, said –
"I must say good−by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while."
Dorothea put out her hand and said her good−by cordially. The sense that Sir James was
depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him, roused her resolution and dignity−there was
no touch of confusion in her manner. And when Will had left the room, she looked with
such calm self−possession at Sir James, saying, "How is Celia?" that he was obliged to
behave as if nothing had annoyed him. And what would be the use of behaving otherwise?
Indeed, Sir James shrank with so much dislike from the association even in thought of
Dorothea with Ladislaw as her possible lover, that he would himself have wished to avoid
an outward show of displeasure which would have recognized the disagreeable possibility. If
any one had asked him why he shrank in that way, I am not sure that he would at first have
said anything fuller or more precise than "THAT Ladislaw!" – though on reflection he might
have urged that Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's marriage with Will, except under
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a penalty, was enough to cast unfitness over any relation at all between them. His aversion
was all the stronger because he felt himself unable to interfere.
But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by himself. Entering at that moment, he
was an incorporation of the strongest reasons through which Will's pride became a repellent
force, keeping him asunder from Dorothea
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CHAPTER LV.
H
ath she her faults? I would you had them too. They are the fruity must of soundest
wine; Or say, they are regenerating fire Such as hath turned the dense black element Into a
crystal pathway for the sun.
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful
about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the
last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new. We are told that the
oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably
see beyond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come.
To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes with their long full lashes look
out after their rain of tears unsoiled and unwearied as a freshly opened passion−flower, that
morning's parting with Will Ladislaw seemed to be the close of their personal relations. He
was going away into the distance of unknown years, and if ever he came back he would be
another man. The actual state of his mind – his proud resolve to give the lie beforehand to
any suspicion that he would play the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman – lay quite out
of her imagination, and she had interpreted all his behavior easily enough by her supposition
that Mr. Casaubon's codicil seemed to him, as it did to her, a gross and cruel interdict on any
active friendship between them. Their young delight in speaking to each other, and saying
what no one else would care to hear, was forever ended, and become a treasure of the past.
For this very reason she dwelt on it without inward check. That unique happiness too was
dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber she might vent the passionate grief which she
herself wondered at. For the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and kept it
before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardly judged with the grandson
whom her own heart and judgment defended. Can any one who has rejoiced in woman's
tenderness think it a reproach to her that she took the little oval picture in her palm and made
a bed for it there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if that would soothe the creatures who had
suffered unjust condemnation? She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her
briefly, as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings – that it was
Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless
rigor of irresistible day. She only felt that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in
her lot, and her thoughts about the future were the more readily shapen into resolve. Ardent
souls, ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to the fulfilment
of their own visions.
One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of staying all night and seeing
baby washed, Mrs. Cadwallader came to dine, the Rector being gone on a fishing excursion.
It was a warm evening, and even in the delightful drawing−room, where the fine old turf
sloped from the open window towards a lilied pool and well−planted mounds, the heat was
enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls reflect with pity on what Dodo
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must feel in her black dress and close cap. But this was not until some episodes with baby
were over, and had left her mind at leisure. She had seated herself and taken up a fan for
some time before she said, in her quiet guttural –
"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap. I am sure your dress must make you feel ill."
"I am so used to the cap – it has become a sort of shell," said Dorothea, smiling. "I feel
rather bare and exposed when it is off."
"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said Celia, throwing down her fan,
and going to Dorothea. It was a pretty picture to see this little lady in white muslin
unfastening the widow's cap from her more majestic sister, and tossing it on to a chair. Just
as the coils and braids of dark−brown hair had been set free, Sir James entered the room. He
looked at the released head, and said, "Ah!" in a tone of satisfaction.
"It was I who did it, James," said Celia. "Dodo need not make such a slavery of her
mourning; she need not wear that cap any more among her friends."
"My dear Celia," said Lady Chettam, "a widow must wear her mourning at least a year."
"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader, who had some
pleasure in startling her good friend the Dowager. Sir James was annoyed, and leaned
forward to play with Celia's Maltese dog.
"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a tone intended to guard against such
events. "No friend of ours ever committed herself in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was
very painful to Lord Grinsell when she did so. Her first husband was objectionable, which
made it the greater wonder. And severely she was punished for it. They said Captain Beevor
dragged her about by the hair, and held up loaded pistols at her."
"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, who was in a decidedly
wicked mood. "Marriage is always bad then, first or second. Priority is a poor
recommendation in a husband if he has got no other. I would rather have a good second
husband than an indifferent first."
"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam. "I am sure you
would be the last woman to marry again prematurely, if our dear Rector were taken away."
"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy. It is lawful to marry again, I
suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos instead of Christians. Of course if a woman
accepts the wrong man, she must take the consequences, and one who does it twice over
deserves her fate. But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery – the sooner the better."
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CHAPTER LV. 449
"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill−chosen," said Sir James, with a look
of disgust. "Suppose we change it."
"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose the opportunity
of freeing herself from certain oblique references to excellent matches. "If you are speaking
on my behalf, I can assure you that no question can be more indifferent and impersonal to
me than second marriage. It is no more to me than if you talked of women going
fox−hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not, I shall not follow them. Pray let Mrs.
Cadwallader amuse herself on that subject as much as on any other."
"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her stateliest way, "you do not, I
hope, think there was any allusion to you in my mentioning Mrs. Beevor. It was only an
instance that occurred to me. She was step−daughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs.
Teveroy for his second wife. There could be no possible allusion to you."
"Oh no," said Celia. "Nobody chose the subject; it all came out of Dodo's cap. Mrs.
Cadwallader only said what was quite true. A woman could not be married in a widow's cap,
James."
"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "I will not offend again. I will not even refer
to Dido or Zenobia. Only what are we to talk about? I, for my part, object to the discussion
of Human Nature, because that is the nature of rectors' wives."
Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone, Celia said privately to Dorothea,
"Really, Dodo, taking your cap off made you like yourself again in more ways than one.
You spoke up just as you used to do, when anything was said to displease you. But I could
hardly make out whether it was James that you thought wrong, or Mrs. Cadwallader."
"Neither," said Dorothea. "James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he was mistaken in
supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said. I should only mind if there were a law
obliging me to take any piece of blood and beauty that she or anybody else recommended."
"But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be all the better to have blood
and beauty," said Celia, reflecting that Mr. Casaubon had not been richly endowed with
those gifts, and that it would be well to caution Dorothea in time.
"Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life. I shall never marry
again," said Dorothea, touching her sister's chin, and looking at her with indulgent affection.
Celia was nursing her baby, and Dorothea had come to say good−night to her.
"Really – quite?" said Celia. "Not anybody at all – if he were very wonderful indeed?"
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Dorothea shook her head slowly. "Not anybody at all. I have delightful plans. I should
like to take a great deal of land, and drain it, and make a little colony, where everybody
should work, and all the work should be done well. I should know every one of the people
and be their friend. I am going to have great consultations with Mr. Garth: he can tell me
almost everything I want to know."
"Then you WILL be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo?" said Celia. "Perhaps little Arthur
will like plans when he grows up, and then he can help you."
Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was really quite set against
marrying anybody at all, and was going to take to "all sorts of plans," just like what she used
to have. Sir James made no remark. To his secret feeling there was something repulsive in a
woman's second marriage, and no match would prevent him from feeling it a sort of
desecration for Dorothea. He was aware that the world would regard such a sentiment as
preposterous, especially in relation to a woman of one−and−twenty; the practice of "the
world" being to treat of a young widow's second marriage as certain and probably near, and
to smile with meaning if the widow acts accordingly. But if Dorothea did choose to espouse
her solitude, he felt that the resolution would well become her.
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CHAPTER LVI.
"H
ow happy is he born and taught That serveth not another's will; Whose armor is his
honest thought, And simple truth his only skill! . . . . . . . This man is freed from servile
bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall; Lord of himself though not of lands; And having
nothing yet hath all." – SIR HENRY WOTTON.
Dorothea's confidence in Caleb Garth's knowledge, which had begun on her hearing that
he approved of her cottages, had grown fast during her stay at Freshitt, Sir James having
induced her to take rides over the two estates in company with himself and Caleb, who quite
returned her admiration, and told his wife that Mrs. Casaubon had a head for business most
uncommon in a woman. It must be remembered that by "business" Caleb never meant
money transactions, but the skilful application of labor.
"Most uncommon!" repeated Caleb. "She said a thing I often used to think myself when
I was a lad: – `Mr. Garth, I should like to feel, if I lived to be old, that I had improved a great
piece of land and built a great many good cottages, because the work is of a healthy kind
while it is being done, and after it is done, men are the better for it.' Those were the very
words: she sees into things in that way."
"But womanly, I hope," said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs. Casaubon might not
hold the true principle of subordination.
"Oh, you can't think!" said Caleb, shaking his head. "You would like to hear her speak,
Susan. She speaks in such plain words, and a voice like music. Bless me! it reminds me of
bits in the `Messiah' – `and straightway there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host,
praising God and saying;' it has a tone with it that satisfies your ear."
Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear an oratorio that
came within his reach, returning from it with a profound reverence for this mighty structure
of tones, which made him sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much
unutterable language into his outstretched hands.
With this good understanding between them, it was natural that Dorothea asked Mr.
Garth to undertake any business connected with the three farms and the numerous tenements
attached to Lowick Manor; indeed, his expectation of getting work for two was being fast
fulfilled. As he said, "Business breeds." And one form of business which was beginning to
breed just then was the construction of railways. A projected line was to run through Lowick
parish where the cattle had hitherto grazed in a peace unbroken by astonishment; and thus it
happened that the infant struggles of the railway system entered into the affairs of Caleb
Garth, and determined the course of this history with regard to two persons who were dear to
him. The submarine railway may have its difficulties; but the bed of the sea is not divided
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among various landed proprietors with claims for damages not only measurable but
sentimental. In the hundred to which Middlemarch belonged railways were as exciting a
topic as the Reform Bill or the imminent horrors of Cholera, and those who held the most
decided views on the subject were women and landholders. Women both old and young
regarded travelling by steam as presumptuous and dangerous, and argued against it by
saying that nothing should induce them to get into a railway carriage; while proprietors,
differing from each other in their arguments as much as Mr. Solomon Featherstone differed
from Lord Medlicote, were yet unanimous in the opinion that in selling land, whether to the
Enemy of mankind or to a company obliged to purchase, these pernicious agencies must be
made to pay a very high price to landowners for permission to injure mankind.
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
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CHAPTER LVI. 453
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."
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"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 on
horseback, if his mind had not been worried by unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was
to do, with his father on one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary
on the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the working−day world
showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman without capital and generally
unskilled. It was the harder to Fred's disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no
longer rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this pleasant ride to see
after some greyhounds. Even when he had fixed on what he should do, there would be the
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task of telling his father. But it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first,
was the more difficult task: – what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man
(whose friends could not get him an "appointment") which was at once gentlemanly,
lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge? Riding along the lanes by Frick in
this mood, and slackening his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go round
by Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges from one field to
another. Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and on the far side of a field on his left hand
he could see six or seven men in smock−frocks with hay−forks in their hands making an
offensive approach towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while Caleb
Garth and his assistant were hastening across the field to join the threatened group. Fred,
delayed a few moments by having to find the gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the
party in smock−frocks, whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing after
swallowing their mid−day beer, were driving the men in coats before them with their
hay−forks; while Caleb Garth's assistant, a lad of seventeen, who had snatched up the
spirit−level at Caleb's order, had been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless. The
coated men had the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting in front
of the smock−frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw their chase into
confusion. "What do you confounded fools mean?" shouted Fred, pursuing the divided
group in a zigzag, and cutting right and left with his whip. "I'll swear to every one of you
before the magistrate. You've knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I know. You'll
every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you don't mind," said Fred, who afterwards
laughed heartily as he remembered his own phrases.
The laborers had been driven through the gate−way into their hay−field, and Fred had
checked his horse, when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a safe challenging distance,
turned back and shouted a defiance which he did not know to be Homeric.
"Yo're a coward, yo are. Yo git off your horse, young measter, and I'll have a round wi'
ye, I wull. Yo daredn't come on wi'out your hoss an' whip. I'd soon knock the breath out on
ye, I would."
"Wait a minute, and I'll come back presently, and have a round with you all in turn, if
you like," said Fred, who felt confidence in his power of boxing with his dearly beloved
brethren. But just now he wanted to hasten back to Caleb and the prostrate youth.
The lad's ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he was no further
hurt, and Fred placed him on the horse that he might ride to Yoddrell's and be taken care of
there.
"Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can come back for their
traps," said Fred. "The ground is clear now."
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"No, no," said Caleb, "here's a breakage. They'll have to give up for to−day, and it will
be as well. Here, take the things before you on the horse, Tom. They'll see you coming, and
they'll turn back."
"I'm glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth," said Fred, as Tom rode
away. "No knowing what might have happened if the cavalry had not come up in time."
"Ay, ay, it was lucky," said Caleb, speaking rather absently, and looking towards the
spot where he had been at work at the moment of interruption. "But – deuce take it – this is
what comes of men being fools – I'm hindered of my day's work. I can't get along without
somebody to help me with the measuring−chain. However!" He was beginning to move
towards the spot with a look of vexation, as if he had forgotten Fred's presence, but suddenly
he turned round and said quickly, "What have you got to do to−day, young fellow?"
"Nothing, Mr. Garth. I'll help you with pleasure – can I?" said Fred, with a sense that he
should be courting Mary when he was helping her father.
"Well, you mustn't mind stooping and getting hot."
"I don't mind anything. Only I want to go first and have a round with that hulky fellow
who turned to challenge me. It would be a good lesson for him. I shall not be five minutes."
"Nonsense!" said Caleb, with his most peremptory intonation. "I shall go and speak to
the men myself. It's all ignorance. Somebody has been telling them lies. The poor fools don't
know any better."
"I shall go with you, then," said Fred.
"No, no; stay where you are. I don't want your young blood. I can take care of myself."
Caleb was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear of hurting others
and the fear of having to speechify. But he felt it his duty at this moment to try and give a
little harangue. There was a striking mixture in him – which came from his having always
been a hard−working man himself – of rigorous notions about workmen and practical
indulgence towards them. To do a good day's work and to do it well, he held to be part of
their welfare, as it was the chief part of his own happiness; but he had a strong sense of
fellowship with them. When he advanced towards the laborers they had not gone to work
again, but were standing in that form of rural grouping which consists in each turning a
shoulder towards the other, at a distance of two or three yards. They looked rather sulkily at
Caleb, who walked quickly with one hand in his pocket and the other thrust between the
buttons of his waistcoat, and had his every−day mild air when he paused among them.
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"Why, my lads, how's this?" he began, taking as usual to brief phrases, which seemed
pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying under them, like the abundant
roots of a plant that just manages to peep above the water. "How came you to make such a
mistake as this? Somebody has been telling you lies. You thought those men up there
wanted to do mischief."
"Aw!" was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his degree of
unreadiness.
"Nonsense! No such thing! They're looking out to see which way the railroad is to take.
Now, my lads, you can't hinder the railroad: it will be made whether you like it or not. And
if you go fighting against it, you'll get yourselves into trouble. The law gives those men
leave to come here on the land. The owner has nothing to say against it, and if you meddle
with them you'll have to do with the constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs
and Middlemarch jail. And you might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you."
Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have chosen either his
pause or his images better for the occasion.
"But come, you didn't mean any harm. Somebody told you the railroad was a bad thing.
That was a lie. It may do a bit of harm here and there, to this and to that; and so does the sun
in heaven. But the railway's a good thing."
"Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on," said old Timothy Cooper, who had
stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been gone on their spree; – "I'n seen lots
o' things turn up sin' I war a young un – the war an' the peace, and the canells, an' the oald
King George, an' the Regen', an' the new King George, an' the new un as has got a new
ne−ame – an' it's been all aloike to the poor mon. What's the canells been t' him? They'n
brought him neyther me−at nor be−acon, nor wage to lay by, if he didn't save it wi' clemmin'
his own inside. Times ha' got wusser for him sin' I war a young un. An' so it'll be wi' the
railroads. They'll on'y leave the poor mon furder behind. But them are fools as meddle, and
so I told the chaps here. This is the big folks's world, this is. But yo're for the big folks,
Muster Garth, yo are."
Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times – who had his savings
in a stocking−foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was not to be wrought on by any oratory,
having as little of the feudal spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally
unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man. Caleb was in a difficulty
known to any person attempting in dark times and unassisted by miracle to reason with
rustics who are in possession of an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process
of feeling, and can let it fall like a giant's club on your neatly carved argument for a social
benefit which they do not feel. Caleb had no cant at command, even if he could have chosen
to use it; and he had been accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by
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doing his "business" faithfully. He answered –
"If you don't think well of me, Tim, never mind; that's neither here nor there now.
Things may be bad for the poor man – bad they are; but I want the lads here not to do what
will make things worse for themselves. The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won't help
'em to throw it over into the roadside pit, when it's partly their own fodder."
"We war on'y for a bit o' foon," said Hiram, who was beginning to see consequences.
"That war all we war arter."
"Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I'll see that nobody informs against you."
"I'n ne'er meddled, an' I'n no call to promise," said Timothy.
"No, but the rest. Come, I'm as hard at work as any of you to−day, and I can't spare
much time. Say you'll be quiet without the constable."
"Aw, we wooant meddle – they may do as they loike for oos" – were the forms in which
Caleb got his pledges; and then he hastened back to Fred, who had followed him, and
watched him in the gateway.
They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously. His spirits had risen, and he heartily
enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under the hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer
trousers. Was it his successful onset which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping
Mary's father? Something more. The accidents of the morning had helped his frustrated
imagination to shape an employment for himself which had several attractions. I am not sure
that certain fibres in Mr. Garth's mind had not resumed their old vibration towards the very
end which now revealed itself to Fred. For the effective accident is but the touch of fire
where there is oil and tow; and it al ways appeared to Fred that the railway brought the
needed touch. But they went on in silence except when their business demanded speech. At
last, when they had finished and were walking away, Mr. Garth said –
"A young fellow needn't be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?"
"I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.," said Fred. He paused a
moment, and then added, more hesitatingly, "Do you think I am too old to learn your
business, Mr. Garth?"
"My business is of many sorts, my boy," said Mr. Garth, smiling. "A good deal of what
I know can only come from experience: you can't learn it off as you learn things out of a
book. But you are young enough to lay a foundation yet." Caleb pronounced the last
sentence emphatically, but paused in some uncertainty. He had been under the impression
lately that Fred had made up his mind to enter the Church.
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"You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?" said Fred, more eagerly.
"That depends," said Caleb, turning his head on one side and lowering his voice, with
the air of a man who felt himself to be saying something deeply religious. "You must be sure
of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it,
wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and
think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride
in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this and
there's that – if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man
is – I wouldn't give twopence for him" – here Caleb's mouth looked bitter, and he snapped
his fingers – "whether he was the prime minister or the rick−thatcher, if he didn't do well
what he undertook to do."
"I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman," said Fred, meaning to take
a step in argument.
"Then let it alone, my boy," said Caleb, abruptly, "else you'll never be easy. Or, if you
ARE easy, you'll be a poor stick."
"That is very nearly what Mary thinks about it," said Fred, coloring. "I think you must
know what I feel for Mary, Mr. Garth: I hope it does not displease you that I have always
loved her better than any one else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her."
The expression of Caleb's face was visibly softening while Fred spoke. But he swung
his head with a solemn slowness, and said –
"That makes things more serious, Fred, if you want to take Mary's happiness into your
keeping."
"I know that, Mr. Garth," said Fred, eagerly, "and I would do anything for HER. She
says she will never have me if I go into the Church; and I shall be the most miserable devil
in the world if I lose all hope of Mary. Really, if I could get some other profession, business
– anything that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would deserve your good opinion. I
should like to have to do with outdoor things. I know a good deal about land and cattle
already. I used to believe, you know – though you will think me rather foolish for it – that I
should have land of my own. I am sure knowledge of that sort would come easily to me,
especially if I could be under you in any way."
"Softly, my boy," said Caleb, having the image of "Susan" before his eyes. "What have
you said to your father about all this?"
"Nothing, yet; but I must tell him. I am only waiting to know what I can do instead of
entering the Church. I am very sorry to disappoint him, but a man ought to be allowed to
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judge for himself when he is four−and−twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what
it would be right for me to do now? My education was a mistake."
"But hearken to this, Fred," said Caleb. "Are you sure Mary is fond of you, or would
ever have you?"
"I asked Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden me – I didn't know
what else to do," said Fred, apologetically. "And he says that I have every reason to hope, if
I can put myself in an honorable position – I mean, out of the Church I dare say you think it
unwarrantable in me, Mr. Garth, to be troubling you and obtruding my own wishes about
Mary, before I have done anything at all for myself. Of course I have not the least claim –
indeed, I have already a debt to you which will never be discharged, even when I have been,
able to pay it in the shape of money."
"Yes, my boy, you have a claim," said Caleb, with much feeling in his voice. "The
young ones have always a claim on the old to help them forward. I was young myself once
and had to do without much help; but help would have been welcome to me, if it had been
only for the fellow−feeling's sake. But I must consider. Come to me to−morrow at the office,
at nine o'clock. At the office, mind."
Mr. Garth would take no important step without consulting Susan, but it must be
confessed that before he reached home he had taken his resolution. With regard to a large
number of matters about which other men are decided or obstinate, he was the most easily
manageable man in the world. He never knew what meat he would choose, and if Susan had
said that they ought to live in a four−roomed cottage, in order to save, he would have said,
"Let us go," without inquiring into details. But where Caleb's feeling and judgment strongly
pronounced, he was a ruler; and in spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every one
about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he was absolute. He
never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some one else's behalf. On ninety−nine points
Mrs. Garth decided, but on the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to
perform the singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to make herself
subordinate.
"It is come round as I thought, Susan," said Caleb, when they were seated alone in the
evening. He had already narrated the adventure which had brought about Fred's sharing in
his work, but had kept back the further result. "The children ARE fond of each other – I
mean, Fred and Mary."
Mrs. Garth laid her work on her knee, and fixed her penetrating eyes anxiously on her
husband.
"After we'd done our work, Fred poured it all out to me. He can't bear to be a
clergyman, and Mary says she won't have him if he is one; and the lad would like to be
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under me and give his mind to business. And I've determined to take him and make a man of
him."
"Caleb!" said Mrs. Garth, in a deep contralto, expressive of resigned astonishment.
"It's a fine thing to do," said Mr. Garth, settling himself firmly against the back of his
chair, and grasping the elbows. "I shall have trouble with him, but I think I shall carry it
through. The lad loves Mary, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan. It
shapes many a rough fellow."
"Has Mary spoken to you on the subject?" said Mrs Garth, secretly a little hurt that she
had to be informed on it herself.
"Not a word. I asked her about Fred once; I gave her a bit of a warning. But she assured
me she would never marry an idle self−indulgent man – nothing since. But it seems Fred set
on Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden him to speak himself, and Mr.
Farebrother has found out that she is fond of Fred, but says he must not be a clergyman.
Fred's heart is fixed on Mary, that I can see: it gives me a good opinion of the lad – and we
always liked him, Susan."
"It is a pity for Mary, I think," said Mrs. Garth.
"Why – a pity?"
"Because, Caleb, she might have had a man who is worth twenty Fred Vincy's."
"Ah?" said Caleb, with surprise.
"I firmly believe that Mr. Farebrother is attached to her, and meant to make her an offer;
but of course, now that Fred has used him as an envoy, there is an end to that better
prospect." There was a severe precision in Mrs. Garth's utterance. She was vexed and
disappointed, but she was bent on abstaining from useless words.
Caleb was silent a few moments under a conflict of feelings. He looked at the floor and
moved his head and hands in accompaniment to some inward argumentation. At last he said
–
"That would have made me very proud and happy, Susan, and I should have been glad
for your sake. I've always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you. But
you took me, though I was a plain man."
"I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known," said Mrs. Garth, convinced that
SHE would never have loved any one who came short of that mark.
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"Well, perhaps others thought you might have done better. But it would have been
worse for me. And that is what touches me close about Fred. The lad is good at bottom, and
clever enough to do, if he's put in the right way; and he loves and honors my daughter
beyond anything, and she has given him a sort of promise according to what he turns out. I
say, that young man's soul is in my hand; and I'll do the best I can for him, so help me God!
It's my duty, Susan."
Mrs. Garth was not given to tears, but there was a large one rolling down her face
before her husband had finished. It came from the pressure of various feelings, in which
there was much affection and some vexation. She wiped it away quickly, saying –
"Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties in that way,
Caleb."
"That signifies nothing – what other men would think. I've got a clear feeling inside me,
and that I shall follow; and I hope your heart will go with me, Susan, in making everything
as light as can be to Mary, poor child."
Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards his wife. She rose
and kissed him, saying, "God bless you, Caleb! Our children have a good father."
But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression of her words. She
felt sure that her husband's conduct would be misunderstood, and about Fred she was
rational and unhopeful. Which would turn out to have the more foresight in it – her
rationality or Caleb's ardent generosity?
When Fred went to the office the next morning, there was a test to be gone through
which he was not prepared for.
"Now Fred," said Caleb, "you will have some desk−work. I have always done a good
deal of writing myself, but I can't do without help, and as I want you to understand the
accounts and get the values into your head, I mean to do without another clerk. So you must
buckle to. How are you at writing and arithmetic?"
Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought of desk−work; but he
was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink. "I'm not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it
always came easily to me. I think you know my writing."
"Let us see," said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully and handing it, well
dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper. "Copy me a line or two of that valuation, with
the figures at the end."
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At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to write legibly, or with
a hand in the least suitable to a clerk. Fred wrote the lines demanded in a hand as
gentlemanly as that of any viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the
consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes had a blotted solidity and
the letters disdained to keep the line – in short, it was a manuscript of that venerable kind
easy to interpret when you know beforehand what the writer means.
As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression, but when Fred handed
him the paper he gave something like a snarl, and rapped the paper passionately with the
back of his hand. Bad work like this dispelled all Caleb's mildness.
"The deuce!" he exclaimed, snarlingly. "To think that this is a country where a man's
education may cost hundreds and hundreds, and it turns you out this!" Then in a more
pathetic tone, pushing up his spectacles and looking at the unfortunate scribe, "The Lord
have mercy on us, Fred, I can't put up with this!"
"What can I do, Mr. Garth?" said Fred, whose spirits had sunk very low, not only at the
estimate of his handwriting, but at the vision of himself as liable to be ranked with office
clerks.
"Do? Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line. What's the use of
writing at all if nobody can understand it?" asked Caleb, energetically, quite preoccupied
with the bad quality of the work. "Is there so little business in the world that you must be
sending puzzles over the country? But that's the way people are brought up. I should lose no
end of time with the letters some people send me, if Susan did not make them out for me. It's
disgusting." Here Caleb tossed the paper from him.
Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have wondered what was the
drama between the indignant man of business, and the fine−looking young fellow whose
blond complexion was getting rather patchy as he bit his lip with mortification. Fred was
struggling with many thoughts. Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at the
beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had been at a high pitch, and the
downfall was proportionate. He had not thought of desk−work – in fact, like the majority of
young gentlemen, he wanted an occupation which should be free from disagreeables. I
cannot tell what might have been the consequences if he had not distinctly promised himself
that he would go to Lowick to see Mary and tell her that he was engaged to work under her
father. He did not like to disappoint himself there.
"I am very sorry," were all the words that he could muster. But Mr. Garth was already
relenting.
"We must make the best of it, Fred," he began, with a return to his usual quiet tone.
"Every man can learn to write. I taught myself. Go at it with a will, and sit up at night if the
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day−time isn't enough. We'll be patient, my boy. Callum shall go on with the books for a bit,
while you are learning. But now I must be off," said Caleb, rising. "You must let your father
know our agreement. You'll save me Callum's salary, you know, when you can write; and I
can afford to give you eighty pounds for the first year, and more after."
When Fred made the necessary disclosure to his parents, the relative effect on the two
was a surprise which entered very deeply into his memory. He went straight from Mr.
Garth's office to the warehouse, rightly feeling that the most respectful way in which he
could behave to his father was to make the painful communication as gravely and formally
as possible. Moreover, the decision would be more certainly understood to be final, if the
interview took place in his father's gravest hours, which were always those spent in his
private room at the warehouse.
Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he had done and was
resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret that he should be the cause of disappointment
to his father, and taking the blame on his own deficiencies. The regret was genuine, and
inspired Fred with strong, simple words.
Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise without uttering even an exclamation, a silence
which in his impatient temperament was a sign of unusual emotion. He had not been in good
spirits about trade that morning, and the slight bitterness in his lips grew intense as he
listened. When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly a minute, during which Mr.
Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned the key emphatically. Then he looked at his
son steadily, and said –
"So you've made up your mind at last, sir?"
"Yes, father."
"Very well; stick to it. I've no more to say. You've thrown away your education, and
gone down a step in life, when I had given you the means of rising, that's all."
"I am very sorry that we differ, father. I think I can be quite as much of a gentleman at
the work I have undertaken, as if I had been a curate. But I am grateful to you for wishing to
do the best for me."
"Very well; I have no more to say. I wash my hands of you. I only hope, when you have
a son of your own he will make a better return for the pains you spend on him."
This was very cutting to Fred. His father was using that unfair advantage possessed by
us all when we are in a pathetic situation and see our own past as if it were simply part of the
pathos. In reality, Mr. Vincy's wishes about his son had had a great deal of pride,
inconsiderateness, and egoistic folly in them. But still the disappointed father held a strong
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lever; and Fred felt as if he were being banished with a malediction.
"I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?" he said, after rising to go; "I
shall have a sufficient salary to pay for my board, as of course I should wish to do."
"Board be hanged!" said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust at the notion that
Fred's keep would be missed at his table. "Of course your mother will want you to stay. But
I shall keep no horse for you, you understand; and you will pay your own tailor. You will do
with a suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay for 'em."
Fred lingered; there was still something to be said. At last it came.
"I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me the vexation I have caused
you."
Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son, who had advanced
near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly, "Yes, yes, let us say no more."
Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother, but she was
inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her husband had never thought of, the
certainty that Fred would marry Mary Garth, that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a
perpetual infusion of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his beautiful face
and stylish air "beyond anybody else's son in Middlemarch," would be sure to get like that
family in plainness of appearance and carelessness about his clothes. To her it seemed that
there was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred, but she dared not
enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint of it had made him "fly out" at her as he had
never done before. Her temper was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her
happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at Fred made her cry a
little as if he were the subject of some baleful prophecy. Perhaps she was the slower to
recover her usual cheerfulness because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the
sore question with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him. If her
husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged into defence of her
darling. It was the end of the fourth day when Mr. Vincy said to her –
"Come, Lucy, my dear, don't be so down−hearted. You always have spoiled the boy,
and you must go on spoiling him."
"Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy," said the wife, her fair throat and chin
beginning to tremble again, "only his illness."
"Pooh, pooh, never mind! We must expect to have trouble with our children. Don't
make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits."
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"Well, I won't," said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting herself with a little
shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled plumage.
"It won't do to begin making a fuss about one," said Mr. Vincy, wishing to combine a
little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness. "There's Rosamond as well as Fred."
"Yes, poor thing. I'm sure I felt for her being disappointed of her baby; but she got over
it nicely."
"Baby, pooh! I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice, and getting into debt
too, by what I hear. I shall have Rosamond coming to me with a pretty tale one of these
days. But they'll get no money from me, I know. Let HIS family help him. I never did like
that marriage. But it's no use talking. Ring the bell for lemons, and don't look dull any more,
Lucy. I'll drive you and Louisa to Riverston to−morrow."
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CHAPTER LVII.
T
hey numbered scarce eight summers when a name Rose on their souls and stirred
such motions there As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame At penetration of the
quickening air: His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian
Vor, Making the little world their childhood knew Large with a land of mountain lake and
scaur, And larger yet with wonder love belief Toward Walter Scott who living far away Sent
them this wealth of joy and noble grief. The book and they must part, but day by day,
In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.
The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to see that this
was a world in which even a spirited young man must sometimes walk for want of a horse to
carry him) he set out at five o'clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way, wishing to assure
himself that she accepted their new relations willingly.
He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great apple−tree in the
orchard. It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and
pride, had come home for a short holiday – Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in
the world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate Porson, and who was an
incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of object−lesson given to him by the educational
mother. Christy himself, a square−browed, broad−shouldered masculine edition of his
mother not much higher than Fred's shoulder – which made it the harder that he should be
held superior – was always as simple as possible, and thought no more of Fred's
disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe's, wishing that he himself were more of the
same height. He was lying on the ground now by his mother's chair, with his straw hat laid
flat over his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that beloved writer
who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young lives. The volume was
"Ivanhoe," and Jim was in the great archery scene at the tournament, but suffered much
interruption from Ben, who had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making
himself dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to observe his random
shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the active−minded but probably shallow
mongrel, while the grizzled Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on with the dull−eyed
neutrality of extreme old age. Letty herself, showing as to her mouth and pinafore some
slight signs that she had been assisting at the gathering of the cherries which stood in a
coral−heap on the tea−table, was now seated on the grass, listening open−eyed to the
reading.
But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fred Vincy. When,
seating himself on a garden−stool, he said that he was on his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben,
who had thrown down his bow, and snatched up a reluctant half−grown kitten instead,
strode across Fred's outstretched leg, and said "Take me!"
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CHAPTER LVII. 468
"Oh, and me too," said Letty.
"You can't keep up with Fred and me," said Ben.
"Yes, I can. Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty, whose life was much
checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl.
"I shall stay with Christy," observed Jim; as much as to say that he had the advantage of
those simpletons; whereupon Letty put her hand up to her head and looked with jealous
indecision from the one to the other.
"Let us all go and see Mary," said Christy, opening his arms.
"No, my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage. And that old Glasgow
suit of yours would never do. Besides, your father will come home. We must let Fred go
alone. He can tell Mary that you are here, and she will come back to−morrow."
Christy glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fred's beautiful white trousers.
Certainly Fred's tailoring suggested the advantages of an English university, and he had a
graceful way even of looking warm and of pushing his hair back with his handkerchief.
"Children, run away," said Mrs. Garth; "it is too warm to hang about your friends. Take
your brother and show him the rabbits."
The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately. Fred felt that Mrs. Garth
wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he had to say, but he could only begin
by observing –
"How glad you must be to have Christy here!"
"Yes; he has come sooner than I expected. He got down from the coach at nine o'clock,
just after his father went out. I am longing for Caleb to come and hear what wonderful
progress Christy is making. He has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons,
carrying on hard study at the same time. He hopes soon to get a private tutorship and go
abroad."
"He is a great fellow," said Fred, to whom these cheerful truths had a medicinal taste,
"and no trouble to anybody." After a slight pause, he added, "But I fear you will think that I
am going to be a great deal of trouble to Mr. Garth."
"Caleb likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more than any one
would have thought of asking them to do," answered Mrs. Garth. She was knitting, and
could either look at Fred or not, as she chose – always an advantage when one is bent on
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loading speech with salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Garth intended to be duly reserved,
she did wish to say something that Fred might be the better for.
"I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good reason," said Fred,
his spirit rising a little at the perception of something like a disposition to lecture him. "I
happen to have behaved just the worst to the people I can't help wishing for the most from.
But while two men like Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given me up, I don't see
why I should give myself up." Fred thought it might be well to suggest these masculine
examples to Mrs. Garth.
"Assuredly," said she, with gathering emphasis. "A young man for whom two such
elders had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he threw himself away and made
their sacrifices vain."
Fred wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, "I hope it will not be so
with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some encouragement to believe that I may win Mary. Mr.
Garth has told you about that? You were not surprised, I dare say?" Fred ended, innocently
referring only to his own love as probably evident enough.
"Not surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?" returned Mrs. Garth, who
thought it would be well for Fred to be more alive to the fact that Mary's friends could not
possibly have wished this beforehand, whatever the Vincys might suppose. "Yes, I confess I
was surprised."
"She never did give me any – not the least in the world, when I talked to her myself,"
said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary. "But when I asked Mr. Farebrother to speak for me, she
allowed him to tell me there was a hope."
The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not yet discharged
itself. It was a little too provoking even for HER self−control that this blooming youngster
should flourish on the disappointments of sadder and wiser people – making a meal of a
nightingale and never knowing it – and that all the while his family should suppose that hers
was in eager need of this sprig; and her vexation had fermented the more actively because of
its total repression towards her husband. Exemplary wives will sometimes find scapegoats in
this way. She now said with energetic decision, "You made a great mistake, Fred, in asking
Mr. Farebrother to speak for you."
"Did I?" said Fred, reddening instantaneously. He was alarmed, but at a loss to know
what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone, "Mr. Farebrother has always been
such a friend of ours; and Mary, I knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on
himself quite readily."
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CHAPTER LVII. 470
"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom
imagine how much those wishes cost others," said Mrs. Garth She did not mean to go
beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding
of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.
"I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother," said Fred, who
nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning to form themselves.
"Precisely; you cannot conceive," said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as neatly as
possible.
For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and then turning
with a quick movement said almost sharply –
"Do you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with Mary?"
"And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to be surprised,"
returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her and folding her arms. It was an
unwonted sign of emotion in her that she should put her work out of her hands. In fact her
feelings were divided between the satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the sense of
having gone a little too far. Fred took his hat and stick and rose quickly.
"Then you think I am standing in his way, and in Mary's too?" he said, in a tone which
seemed to demand an answer.
Mrs. Garth could not speak immediately. She had brought herself into the unpleasant
position of being called on to say what she really felt, yet what she knew there were strong
reasons for concealing. And to her the consciousness of having exceeded in words was
peculiarly mortifying. Besides, Fred had given out unexpected electricity, and he now
added, "Mr. Garth seemed pleased that Mary should be attached to me. He could not have
known anything of this."
Mrs. Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the fear that Caleb might
think her in the wrong not being easily endurable. She answered, wanting to check
unintended consequences –
"I spoke from inference only. I am not aware that Mary knows anything of the matter."
But she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire silence on a subject which she had
herself unnecessarily mentioned, not being used to stoop in that way; and while she was
hesitating there was already a rush of unintended consequences under the apple−tree where
the tea−things stood. Ben, bouncing across the grass with Brownie at his heels, and seeing
the kitten dragging the knitting by a lengthening line of wool, shouted and clapped his
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CHAPTER LVII. 471
hands; Brownie barked, the kitten, desperate, jumped on the tea−table and upset the milk,
then jumped down again and swept half the cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the
half−knitted sock−top, fitted it over the kitten's head as a new source of madness, while
Letty arriving cried out to her mother against this cruelty – it was a history as full of
sensation as "This is the house that Jack built." Mrs. Garth was obliged to interfere, the other
young ones came up and the tete−a−tete with Fred was ended. He got away as soon as he
could, and Mrs. Garth could only imply some retractation of her severity by saying "God
bless you" when she shook hands with him.
She was unpleasantly conscious that she had been on the verge of speaking as "one of
the foolish women speaketh" – telling first and entreating silence after. But she had not
entreated silence, and to prevent Caleb's blame she determined to blame herself and confess
all to him that very night. It was curious what an awful tribunal the mild Caleb's was to her,
whenever he set it up. But she meant to point out to him that the revelation might do Fred
Vincy a great deal of good.
No doubt it was having a strong effect on him as he walked to Lowick. Fred's light
hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this suggestion that if he
had been out of the way Mary might have made a thoroughly good match. Also he was
piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid lout as to ask that intervention from
Mr. Farebrother. But it was not in a lover's nature – it was not in Fred's, that the new anxiety
raised about Mary's feeling should not surmount every other. Notwithstanding his trust in
Mr. Farebrother's generosity, notwithstanding what Mary had said to him, Fred could not
help feeling that he had a rival: it was a new consciousness, and he objected to it extremely,
not being in the least ready to give up Mary for her good, being ready rather to fight for her
with any man whatsoever. But the fighting with Mr. Farebrother must be of a metaphorical
kind, which was much more difficult to Fred than the muscular. Certainly this experience
was a discipline for Fred hardly less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle's will.
The iron had not entered into his soul, but he had begun to imagine what the sharp edge
would be. It did not once occur to Fred that Mrs. Garth might be mistaken about Mr.
Farebrother, but he suspected that she might be wrong about Mary. Mary had been staying at
the parsonage lately, and her mother might know very little of what had been passing in her
mind.
He did not feel easier when he found her looking cheerful with the three ladies in the
drawing−room. They were in animated discussion on some subject which was dropped when
he entered, and Mary was copying the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet drawers, in a
minute handwriting which she was skilled in. Mr. Farebrother was somewhere in the village,
and the three ladies knew nothing of Fred's peculiar relation to Mary: it was impossible for
either of them to propose that they should walk round the garden, and Fred predicted to
himself that he should have to go away without saying a word to her in private. He told her
first of Christy's arrival and then of his own engagement with her father; and he was
comforted by seeing that this latter news touched her keenly. She said hurriedly, "I am so
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CHAPTER LVII. 472
glad," and then bent over her writing to hinder any one from noticing her face. But here was
a subject which Mrs. Farebrother could not let pass.
"You don't mean, my dear Miss Garth, that you are glad to hear of a young man giving
up the Church for which he was educated: you only mean that things being so, you are glad
that he should be under an excellent man like your father."
"No, really, Mrs. Farebrother, I am glad of both, I fear," said Mary, cleverly getting rid
of one rebellious tear. "I have a dreadfully secular mind. I never liked any clergyman except
the Vicar of Wakefield and Mr. Farebrother."
"Now why, my dear?" said Mrs. Farebrother, pausing on her large wooden
knitting−needles and looking at Mary. "You have always a good reason for your opinions,
but this astonishes me. Of course I put out of the question those who preach new doctrine.
But why should you dislike clergymen?"
"Oh dear," said Mary, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to consider a
moment, "I don't like their neckcloths."
"Why, you don't like Camden's, then," said Miss Winifred, in some anxiety.
"Yes, I do," said Mary. "I don't like the other clergymen's neckcloths, because it is they
who wear them."
"How very puzzling!" said Miss Noble, feeling that her own intellect was probably
deficient.
"My dear, you are joking. You would have better reasons than these for slighting so
respectable a class of men," said Mrs. Farebrother, majestically.
"Miss Garth has such severe notions of what people should be that it is difficult to
satisfy her," said Fred.
"Well, I am glad at least that she makes an exception in favor of my son," said the old
lady.
Mary was wondering at Fred's piqued tone, when Mr. Farebrother came in and had to
hear the news about the engagement under Mr. Garth. At the end he said with quiet
satisfaction, "THAT is right;" and then bent to look at Mary's labels and praise her
handwriting. Fred felt horribly jealous – was glad, of course, that Mr. Farebrother was so
estimable, but wished that he had been ugly and fat as men at forty sometimes are. It was
clear what the end would be, since Mary openly placed Farebrother above everybody, and
these women were all evidently encouraging the affair. He, was feeling sure that he should
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CHAPTER LVII. 473
have no chance of speaking to Mary, when Mr. Farebrother said –
"Fred, help me to carry these drawers back into my study – you have never seen my fine
new study. Pray come too, Miss Garth. I want you to see a stupendous spider I found this
morning."
Mary at once saw the Vicar's intention. He had never since the memorable evening
deviated from his old pastoral kindness towards her, and her momentary wonder and doubt
had quite gone to sleep. Mary was accustomed to think rather rigorously of what was
probable, and if a belief flattered her vanity she felt warned to dismiss it as ridiculous,
having early had much exercise in such dismissals. It was as she had foreseen: when Fred
had been asked to admire the fittings of the study, and she had been asked to admire the
spider, Mr. Farebrother said –
"Wait here a minute or two. I am going to look out an engraving which Fred is tall
enough to hang for me. I shall be back in a few minutes." And then he went out.
Nevertheless, the first word Fred said to Mary was –
"It is of no use, whatever I do, Mary. You are sure to marry Farebrother at last." There
was some rage in his tone.
"What do you mean, Fred?" Mary exclaimed indignantly, blushing deeply, and
surprised out of all her readiness in reply.
"It is impossible that you should not see it all clearly enough – you who see everything."
"I only see that you are behaving very ill, Fred, in speaking so of Mr. Farebrother after
he has pleaded your cause in every way. How can you have taken up such an idea?"
Fred was rather deep, in spite of his irritation. If Mary had really been unsuspicious,
there was no good in telling her what Mrs. Garth−had said.
"It follows as a matter of course," he replied. "When you are continually seeing a man
who beats me in everything, and whom you set up above everybody, I can have no fair
chance."
"You are very ungrateful, Fred," said Mary. "I wish I had never told Mr. Farebrother
that I cared for you in the least."
"No, I am not ungrateful; I should be the happiest fellow in the world if it were not for
this. I told your father everything, and he was very kind; he treated me as if I were his son. I
could go at the work with a will, writing and everything, if it were not for this."
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CHAPTER LVII. 474
"For this? for what?" said Mary, imagining now that something specific must have been
said or done.
"This dreadful certainty that I shall be bowled out by Farebrother." Mary was appeased
by her inclination to laugh.
"Fred," she said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily turned away from
her, "you are too delightfully ridiculous. If you were not such a charming simpleton, what a
temptation this would be to play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that somebody
besides you has made love to me."
"Do you really like me best, Mary?" said Fred, turning eyes full of affection on her, and
trying to take her hand.
"I don't like you at all at this moment," said Mary, retreating, and putting her hands
behind her. "I only said that no mortal ever made love to me besides you. And that is no
argument that a very wise man ever will," she ended, merrily.
"I wish you would tell me that you could not possibly ever think of him," said Fred.
"Never dare to mention this any more to me, Fred," said Mary, getting serious again. "I
don't know whether it is more stupid or ungenerous in you not to see that Mr: Farebrother
has left us together on purpose that we might speak freely. I am disappointed that you should
be so blind to his delicate feeling."
There was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother came back with the
engraving; and Fred had to return to the drawing−room still with a jealous dread in his heart,
but yet with comforting arguments from Mary's words and manner. The result of the
conversation was on the whole more painful to Mary: inevitably her attention had taken a
new attitude, and she saw the possibility of new interpretations. She was in a position in
which she seemed to herself to be slighting Mr. Farebrother, and this, in relation to a man
who is much honored, is always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman. To have a
reason for going home the next day was a relief, for Mary earnestly desired to be always
clear that she loved Fred best. When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through
many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a
cheapening of our lives. And we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we
can over other treasures.
"Fred has lost all his other expectations; he must keep this," Mary said to herself, with a
smile curling her lips. It was impossible to help fleeting visions of another kind – new
dignities and an acknowledged value of which she had often felt the absence. But these
things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and looking sad for the want of her, could
never tempt her deliberate thought.
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CHAPTER LVII. 475
CHAPTER LVIII.
"F
or there can live no hatred in thine eye, Therefore in that I cannot know thy change:
In many's looks the false heart's history Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange:
But Heaven in thy creation did decree That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell:
Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be Thy looks should nothing thence but
sweetness tell." – SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond, she herself had
never had the idea that she should be driven to make the sort of appeal which he foresaw.
She had not yet had any anxiety about ways and means, although her domestic life had been
expensive as well as eventful. Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the embroidered
robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness. This misfortune was attributed entirely to her
having persisted in going out on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to
do so; but it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or rudely told
him that she would do as she liked.
What led her particularly to desire horse−exercise was a visit from Captain Lydgate, the
baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our Tertius of that name as a
vapid fop "parting his hair from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by
Tertius himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper thing to say on
every topic. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly that he had drawn down this visit by
consenting to go to his uncle's on the wedding−tour, and he made himself rather
disagreeable to Rosamond by saying so in private. For to Rosamond this visit was a source
of unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation. She was so intensely conscious of
having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying in the house, that she imagined the
knowledge of what was implied by his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and
when she introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests, she had a placid sense that his rank
penetrated them as if it had been an odor. The satisfaction was enough for the time to melt
away some disappointment in the conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good
birth: it seemed now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above the
Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and visits to and from
Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence for Tertius. Especially as, probably at
the Captain's suggestion, his married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and
stayed two nights on her way from town. Hence it was clearly worth while for Rosamond to
take pains with her music and the careful selection of her lace.
As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on one side, and his
rather heavy utterance, might have been disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had
not a military bearing and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower−like blond
heads as "style." He had, moreover, that sort of high−breeding which consists in being free
from the petty solicitudes of middle−class gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine
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CHAPTER LVIII. 476
charms. Rosamond delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at
Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in flirting with her. The
visit altogether was one of the pleasantest larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps
because he suspected that his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who
would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in polite hospitality,
suppressed his dislike, and only pretended generally not to hear what the gallant officer said,
consigning the task of answering him to Rosamond. For he was not at all a jealous husband,
and preferred leaving a feather−headed young gentleman alone with his wife to bearing him
company.
"I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius," said Rosamond, one
evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to see some brother officers
stationed there. "You really look so absent sometimes – you seem to be seeing through his
head into something behind it, instead of looking at him."
"My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass as that, I
hope," said Lydgate, brusquely. "If he got his head broken, I might look at it with interest,
not before."
"I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so contemptuously," said
Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while she spoke with a mild gravity which had a
touch of disdain in it.
"Ask Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he ever met with.
Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came."
Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the Captain: he
was jealous, and she liked his being jealous.
"It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she answered, "but in my
opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman, and I think you ought not, out of respect
to Sir Godwin, to treat him with neglect."
"No, dear; but we have had dinners for him. And he comes in and goes out as he likes.
He doesn't want me"
"Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention. He may not be a
phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is different; but it would be all the better
for you to talk a little on his subjects. I think his conversation is quite agreeable. And he is
anything but an unprincipled man."
"The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy," said Lydgate, in a
sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not exactly tender, and certainly not merry.
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CHAPTER LVIII. 477
Rosamond was silent and did not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked
good−tempered enough without smiling.
Those words of Lydgate's were like a sad milestone marking how far he had travelled
from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared to be that perfect piece of
womanhood who would reverence her husband's mind after the fashion of an accomplished
mermaid, using her comb and looking−glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his
adored wisdom alone. He had begun to distinguish between that imagined adoration and the
attraction towards a man's talent because it gives him prestige, and is like an order in his
button−hole or an Honorable before his name.
It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she had found the
pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly wearisome; but to most mortals there
is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable – else,
indeed, what would become of social bonds? Captain Lydgate's stupidity was delicately
scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good accent, and was closely related to Sir
Godwin. Rosamond found it quite agreeable and caught many of its phrases.
Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were plenty of
reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when Captain Lydgate, who had
ordered his man with two horses to follow him and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged
her to go out on the gray which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady –
indeed, he had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham. Rosamond went out
the first time without telling her husband, and came back before his return; but the ride had
been so thorough a success, and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that
he was informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go riding again.
On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt – he was utterly confounded that she had
risked herself on a strange horse without referring the matter to his wish. After the first
almost thundering exclamations of astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of
what was coming, he was silent for some moments.
"However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive tone. "You will
not go again, Rosy; that is understood. If it were the quietest, most familiar horse in the
world, there would always be the chance of accident. And you know very well that I wished
you to give up riding the roan on that account."
"But there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius."
"My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Lydgate, in an imploring tone; "surely I am the
person to judge for you. I think it is enough that I say you are not to go again."
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CHAPTER LVIII. 478
Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of her head in the
glass showed no change in its loveliness except a little turning aside of the long neck.
Lydgate had been moving about with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as
if he awaited some assurance.
"I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Rosamond, letting her arms fall with
a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of standing there like a brute. Lydgate had
often fastened the plaits before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed
fingers. He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the tall comb (to such uses do
men come!); and what could he do then but kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all
its delicate curves? But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference.
Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.
"I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer you his horse," he
said, as he moved away.
"I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius," said Rosamond, looking at him
with something more marked than usual in her speech. "It will be treating me as if I were a
child. Promise that you will leave the subject to me."
There did seem to be some truth in her objection. Lydgate said, "Very well," with a
surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his promising Rosamond, and not with
her promising him.
In fact, she had been determined not to promise. Rosamond had that victorious
obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous resistance. What she liked to do was
to her the right thing, and all her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it.
She meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next opportunity of her
husband's absence, not intending that he should know until it was late enough not to signify
to her. The temptation was certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the
gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir Godwin's son, on another
fine horse by her side, and of being met in this position by any one but her husband, was
something as good as her dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection
with the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.
But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being felled on the edge
of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the
loss of her baby. Lydgate could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to
the Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end.
In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain that the ride
had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at home the same symptoms would have
come on and would have ended in the same way, because she had felt something like them
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before.
Lydgate could only say, "Poor, poor darling!" – but he secretly wondered over the
terrible tenacity of this mild creature. There was gathering within him an amazed sense of
his powerlessness over Rosamond. His superior knowledge and mental force, instead of
being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on
every practical question. He had regarded Rosamond's cleverness as precisely of the
receptive kind which became a woman. He was now beginning to find out what that
cleverness was – what was the shape into which it had run as into a close network aloof and
independent. No one quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the
track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's preeminence in
Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable social
effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific
ambition had no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the fortunate
discovery of an ill−smelling oil. And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of
course she believed in her own opinion more than she did in his. Lydgate was astounded to
find in numberless trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding, that
affection did not make her compliant. He had no doubt that the affection was there, and had
no presentiment that he had done anything to repel it. For his own part he said to himself
that he loved her as tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind−to her negations; but –
well! Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in his life as noxious to
him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its
illuminated prey in the clearest of waters.
Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her
father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be invited to Quallingham. She knew
that she was a much more exquisite ornament to the drawing−room there than any daughter
of the family, and in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps
sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see themselves surpassed.
Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she inwardly called his
moodiness – a name which to her covered his thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects
than herself, as well as that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if
they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of weather−glass to his vexation
and foreboding. These latter states of mind had one cause amongst others, which he had
generously but mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should affect her health
and spirits. Between him and her indeed there was that total missing of each other's mental
track, which is too evidently possible even between persons who are continually thinking of
each other. To Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in sacrificing
more than half of his best intent and best power to his tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her
little claims and interruptions without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of
bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the blank unreflecting
surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more impersonal ends of his profession and
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his scientific study, an ardor which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow
worship as sublime, though not in the least knowing why. But his endurance was mingled
with a self−discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we shall confess to make more
than half our bitterness under grievances, wife or husband included. It always remains true
that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us. Lydgate
was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than the lapse of
slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is out of
adjustment to a constant portion of our lives. And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was
constantly pressing not a simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty
degrading care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort.
This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to Rosamond; and
he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered her mind, though certainly no
difficulty could be less mysterious. It was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and
had been easily drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could not
succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was every day getting deeper
into that swamp, which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and
verdure. It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin there – in a condition in which,
spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the
universe in his soul.
Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager want of small
sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who descended a step in order to gain
them. He was now experiencing something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by
the vulgar hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things which might
have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for, though the demand for payment
has become pressing.
How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or knowledge of
prices. When a man in setting up a house and preparing for marriage finds that his furniture
and other initial expenses come to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has
capital to pay for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses, horses
and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds of the practice reckoned
from the old books to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a summer pond and
make hardly five hundred, chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he
minds it or not, he is in debt. Those were less expensive times than our own, and provincial
life was comparatively modest; but the ease with which a medical man who had lately
bought a practice, who thought that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was
supplied without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent for house and
garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts, can be conceived by any one who
does not think these details beneath his consideration. Rosamond, accustomed from her to an
extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the
best of everything – nothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed that "if things were
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done at all, they must be done properly" – he did not see how they were to live otherwise. If
each head of household expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have
probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one had suggested a
saving on a particular article – for example, the substitution of cheap fish for dear – it would
have appeared to him simply a penny−wise, mean notion. Rosamond, even without such an
occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations, and Lydgate, though he
often thought the guests tiresome, did not interfere. This sociability seemed a necessary part
of professional prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable. It is true Lydgate was
constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their small
means; but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkable – is it not rather that we
expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and
never compare them with each other? Expenditure – like ugliness and errors – becomes a
totally new thing when we attach our own personality to it, and measure it by that wide
difference which is manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others. Lydgate
believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man who calculated the
effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a matter of course that he had abundance of
fresh garments – such things were naturally ordered in sheaves. It must be remembered that
he had never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by habit, not by
self−criticism. But the check had come.
Its novelty made it the more irritating. He was amazed, disgusted that conditions so
foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected with the objects he cared to occupy
himself with, should have lain in ambush and clutched him when he was unaware. And there
was not only the actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position he must go
on deepening it. Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing, whose bills had been incurred before
his marriage, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him from
paying, had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves on his
attention. This could hardly have been more galling to any disposition than to Lydgate's,
with his intense pride – his dislike of asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one.
He had scorned even to form conjectures about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters,
and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his father−in−law, even if he
had not been made aware in various indirect ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy's own
affairs were not flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be resented.
Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had never in the former part of his life
occurred to Lydgate that he should need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing
would be to him; but now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather
incur any other hardship. In the mean time he had no money or prospects of money; and his
practice was not getting more lucrative.
No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward trouble during
the last few months, and now that Rosamond was regaining brilliant health, he meditated
taking her entirely into confidence on his difficulties. New conversance with tradesmen's
bills had forced his reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to consider
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from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in goods ordered, and to see
that there must be some change of habits. How could such a change be made without
Rosamond's concurrence? The immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her
was forced upon him.
Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security could
possibly be given by a man in his position, Lydgate had offered the one good security in his
power to the less peremptory creditor, who was a silversmith and jeweller, and who
consented to take on himself the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term.
The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his house, which might make a
creditor easy for a reasonable time about a debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds;
and the silversmith, Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the plate
and any other article which was as good as new. "Any other article" was a phrase delicately
implying jewellery, and more particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds,
which Lydgate had bought as a bridal present.
Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that
it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man like Lydgate, and that the fault of any
troublesome consequences lay in the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time,
which offered no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not proportioned
to their tastes; also, in Lydgate's ridiculous fastidiousness about asking his friends for
money.
However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine morning when he
went to give a final order for plate: in the presence of other jewels enormously expensive,
and as an addition to orders of which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty
pounds for ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond's neck and arms could hardly
appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed. But at this crisis Lydgate's
imagination could not help dwelling on the possibility of letting the amethysts take their
place again among Mr. Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to
Rosamond. Having been roused to discern consequences which he had never been in the
habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this discernment with some of the rigor (by no
means all) that he would have applied in pursuing experiment. He was nerving himself to
this rigor as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must make to
Rosamond.
It was evening when he got home. He was intensely miserable, this strong man of
nine−and−twenty and of many gifts. He was not saying angrily within himself that he had
made a profound mistake; but the mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic
disease, mingling its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every
thought. As he went along the passage to the drawing−room, he heard the piano and singing.
Of course, Ladislaw was there. It was some weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet
he was still at the old post in Middlemarch. Lydgate had no objection in general to
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Ladislaw's coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth free.
When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the key−note, raising their eyes
and looking at him indeed, but not regarding his entrance as an interruption. To a man galled
with his harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people warbling at him,
as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has still pains in store. His face, already
paler than usual, took on a scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a
chair.
The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only three bars to sing,
now turned round.
"How are you, Lydgate?" said Will, coming forward to shake hands.
Lydgate took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak.
"Have you dined, Tertius? I expected you much earlier," said Rosamond, who had
already seen that her husband was in a "horrible humor." She seated herself in her usual
place as she spoke.
"I have dined. I should like some tea, please," said Lydgate, curtly, still scowling and
looking markedly at his legs stretched out before him.
Will was too quick to need more. "I shall be off," he said, reaching his hat.
"Tea is coming," said Rosamond; "pray don't go."
"Yes, Lydgate is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of Lydgate than
Rosamond had, and was not offended by his manner, easily imagining outdoor causes of
annoyance.
"There is the more need for you to stay," said Rosamond, playfully, and in her lightest
accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening."
"Yes, Rosamond, I shall," said Lydgate, in his strong baritone. "I have some serious
business to speak to you about."
No introduction of the business could have been less like that which Lydgate had
intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking.
"There! you see," said Will. "I'm going to the meeting about the Mechanics' Institute.
Good−by;" and he went quickly out of the room.
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Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her place before the
tea−tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him so disagreeable. Lydgate turned his
dark eyes on her and watched her as she delicately handled the tea−service with her taper
fingers, and looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face
disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all people with unpleasant
manners. For the moment he lost the sense of his wound in a sudden speculation about this
new form of feminine impassibility revealing itself in the sylph−like frame which he had
once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness. His mind glancing back to
Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said inwardly, "Would SHE kill me because I
wearied her?" and then, "It is the way with all women." But this power of generalizing
which gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was
immediately thwarted by Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from the behavior of
another woman – from Dorothea's looks and tones of emotion about her husband when
Lydgate began to attend him – from her passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort
that man for whose sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the
yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. These revived impressions succeeded each other
quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the tea was being brewed. He had shut his
eyes in the last instant of reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, "Advise me – think what I
can do – he has been all his life laboring and looking forward. He minds about nothing else
– and I mind about nothing else."
That voice of deep−souled womanhood had remained within him as the enkindling
conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within him (is there not a genius for
feeling nobly which also reigns over human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a
music from which he was falling away – he had really fallen into a momentary doze, when
Rosamond said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea, Tertius," setting it on the small
table by his side, and then moved back to her place without looking at him. Lydgate was too
hasty in attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was sensitive enough, and
took lasting impressions. Her impression now was one of offence and repulsion. But then,
Rosamond had no scowls and had never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one
could justly find fault with her.
Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off each other before; but there were
strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if he had not already begun it by that
abrupt announcement; indeed some of the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on
his account which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his pain in the
prospect of her pain. But he waited till the tray was gone, the candles were lit, and the
evening quiet might be counted on: the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to
return into the old course. He spoke kindly.
"Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently, pushing away
the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near his own.
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Rosamond obeyed. As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent faintly tinted
muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more graceful; as she sat down by him and
laid one hand on the elbow of his chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her
delicate neck and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty which
touches as in spring−time and infancy and all sweet freshness. It touched Lydgate now, and
mingled the early moments of his love for her with all the other memories which were
stirred in this crisis of deep trouble. He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying –
"Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word. Rosamond too
was still under the power of that same past, and her husband was still in part the Lydgate
whose approval had stirred delight. She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid
her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him.
"I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy. But there are things which husband
and wife must think of together. I dare say it has occurred to you already that I am short of
money."
Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck and looked at a vase on the
mantel−piece.
"I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were married, and there
have been expenses since which I have been obliged to meet. The consequence is, there is a
large debt at Brassing – three hundred and eighty pounds – which has been pressing on me a
good while, and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don't pay me the faster
because others want the money. I took pains to keep it from you while you were not well;
but now we must think together about it, and you must help me."
"What can – I – do, Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning her eyes on him again. That little
speech of four words, like so many others in all languages, is capable by varied vocal
inflections of expressing all states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive
argumentative perception, from the completest self−devoting fellowship to the most neutral
aloofness. Rosamond's thin utterance threw into the words "What can – I – do!" as much
neutrality as they could hold. They fell like a mortal chill on Lydgate's roused tenderness.
He did not storm in indignation – he felt too sad a sinking of the heart. And when he spoke
again it was more in the tone of a man who forces himself to fulfil a task.
"It is necessary for you to know, because I have to give security for a time, and a man
must come to make an inventory of the furniture."
Rosamond colored deeply. "Have you not asked papa for money?" she said, as soon as
she could speak.
"No."
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"Then I must ask him!" she said, releasing her hands from Lydgate's, and rising to stand
at two yards' distance from him.
"No, Rosy," said Lydgate, decisively. "It is too late to do that. The inventory will be
begun to−morrow. Remember it is a mere security: it will make no difference: it is a
temporary affair. I insist upon it that your father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him,"
added Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.
This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil expectation as to
what she would do in the way of quiet steady disobedience. The unkindness seemed
unpardonable to her: she was not given to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips
began to tremble and the tears welled up. Perhaps it was not possible for Lydgate, under the
double stress of outward material difficulty and of his own proud resistance to humiliating
consequences, to imagine fully what this sudden trial was to a young creature who had
known nothing but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more
exactly to her taste. But he did wish to spare her as much as he could, and her tears cut him
to the heart. He could not speak again immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing:
she tried to conquer her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her at
the mantel−piece.
"Try not to grieve, darling," said Lydgate, turning his eyes up towards her. That she had
chosen to move away from him in this moment of her trouble made everything harder to say,
but he must absolutely go on. "We must brace ourselves to do what is necessary. It is I who
have been in fault: I ought to have seen that I could not afford−to live in this way. But many
things have told against me in my practice, and it really just now has ebbed to a low point. I
may recover it, but in the mean time we must pull up – we must change our way of living.
We shall weather it. When I have given this security I shall have time to look about me; and
you are so clever that if you turn your mind to managing you will school me into
carefulness. I have been a thoughtless rascal about squaring prices – but come, dear, sit
down and forgive me."
Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who had talons, but who
had Reason too, which often reduces us to meekness. When he had spoken the last words in
an imploring tone, Rosamond returned to the chair by his side. His self−blame gave her
some hope that he would attend to her opinion, and she said –
"Why can you not put off having the inventory made? You can send the men away
to−morrow when they come."
"I shall not send them away," said Lydgate, the peremptoriness rising again. Was it of
any use to explain?
"If we left Middlemarch? there would of course be a sale, and that would do as well."
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"But we are not going to leave Middlemarch."
"I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to do so. Why can we not go to London? Or
near Durham, where your family is known?"
"We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond."
"Your friends would not wish you to be without money. And surely these odious
tradesmen might be made to understand that, and to wait, if you would make proper
representations to them."
"This is idle Rosamond," said Lydgate, angrily. "You must learn to take my judgment
on questions you don't understand. I have made necessary arrangements, and they must be
carried out. As to friends, I have no expectations whatever from them, and shall not ask
them for anything."
Rosamond sat perfectly still. The thought in her mind was that if she had known how
Lydgate would behave, she would never have married him.
"We have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, dear," said Lydgate, trying to be
gentle again. "There are some details that I want to consider with you. Dover says he will
take a good deal of the plate back again, and any of the jewellery we like. He really behaves
very well."
"Are we to go without spoons and forks then?" said Rosamond, whose very lips seemed
to get thinner with the thinness of her utterance. She was determined to make no further
resistance or suggestions.
"Oh no, dear!" said Lydgate. "But look here," he continued, drawing a paper from his
pocket and opening it; "here is Dover's account. See, I have marked a number of articles,
which if we returned them would reduce the amount by thirty pounds. and more. I have not
marked any of the jewellery." Lydgate had really felt this point of the jewellery very bitter to
himself; but he had overcome the feeling by severe argument. He could not propose to
Rosamond that she should return any particular present of his, but he had told himself that
he was bound to put Dover's offer before her, and her inward prompting might make the
affair easy.
"It is useless for me to look, Tertius," said Rosamond, calmly; "you will return what you
please." She would not turn her eyes on the paper, and Lydgate, flushing up to the roots of
his hair, drew it back and let it fall on his knee. Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of
the room, leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering. Was she not coming back? It seemed
that she had no more identified herself with him than if they had been creatures of different
species and opposing interests. He tossed his head and thrust his hands deep into his pockets
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with a sort of vengeance. There was still science – there were still good objects to work for.
He must give a tug still – all the stronger because other satisfactions were going.
But the door opened and Rosamond re−entered. She carried the leather box containing
the amethysts, and a tiny ornamental basket which contained other boxes, and laying them
on the chair where she had been sitting, she said, with perfect propriety in her air –
"This is all the jewellery you ever gave me. You can return what you like of it, and of
the plate also. You will not, of course, expect me to stay at home to−morrow. I shall go to
papa's."
To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would have been more terrible than one of
anger: it had in it a despairing acceptance of the distance she was placing between them.
"And when shall you come back again?" he said, with a bitter edge on his accent.
"Oh, in the evening. Of course I shall not mention the subject to mamma." Rosamond
was convinced that no woman could behave more irreproachably than she was behaving;
and she went to sit down at her work−table. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the
result was that he said, with some of the old emotion in his tone –
"Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in the first trouble
that has come."
"Certainly not," said Rosamond; "I shall do everything it becomes me to do."
"It is not right that the thing should be left to servants, or that I should have to speak to
them about it. And I shall be obliged to go out – I don't know how early. I understand your
shrinking from the humiliation of these money affairs. But, my dear Rosamond, as a
question of pride, which I feel just as much as you can, it is surely better to manage the thing
ourselves, and let the servants see as little of it as possible; and since you are my wife, there
is no hindering your share in my disgraces – if there were disgraces."
Rosamond did not answer immediately, but at last she said, "Very well, I will stay at
home."
"I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy. Take them away again. But I will write out a list
of plate that we may return, and that can be packed up and sent at once."
"The servants will know THAT," said Rosamond, with the slightest touch of sarcasm.
"Well, we must meet some disagreeables as necessities. Where is the ink, I wonder?"
said Lydgate, rising, and throwing the account on the larger table where he meant to write.
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Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after setting it on the table was going to turn
away, when Lydgate, who was standing close by, put his arm round her and drew her
towards him, saying –
"Come, darling, let us make the best of things. It will only be for a time, I hope, that we
shall have to be stingy and particular. Kiss me."
His native warm−heartedness took a great deal of quenching, and it is a part of
manliness for a husband to feel keenly the fact that an inexperienced girl has got into trouble
by marrying him. She received his kiss and returned it faintly, and in this way an appearance
of accord was recovered for the time. But Lydgate could not help looking forward with
dread to the inevitable future discussions about expenditure and the necessity for a complete
change in their way of living.
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CHAPTER LIX.
T
hey said of old the Soul had human shape, But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self,
So wandered forth for airing when it pleased. And see! beside her cherub−face there floats A
pale−lipped form aerial whispering Its promptings in that little shell her ear."
News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen which the bees
carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in search of their
particular nectar. This fine comparison has reference to Fred Vincy, who on that evening at
Lowick Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the ladies on the news which their old
servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Casaubon's strange mention of Mr. Ladislaw
in a codicil to his will made not long before his death. Miss Winifred was astounded to find
that her brother had known the fact before, and observed that Camden was the most
wonderful man for knowing things and not telling them; whereupon Mary Garth said that
the codicil had perhaps got mixed up with the habits of spiders, which Miss Winifred never
would listen to. Mrs. Farebrother considered that the news had something to do with their
having only once seen Mr. Ladislaw at Lowick, and Miss Noble made many small
compassionate mewings.
Fred knew little and cared less about Ladislaw and the Casaubons, and his mind never
recurred to that discussion till one day calling on Rosamond at his mother's request to
deliver a message as he passed, he happened to see Ladislaw going away. Fred and
Rosamond had little to say to each other now that marriage had removed her from collision
with the unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now that he had taken what she held the
stupid and even reprehensible step of giving up the Church to take to such a business as Mr.
Garth's. Hence Fred talked by preference of what he considered indifferent news, and "a
propos of that young Ladislaw" mentioned what he had heard at Lowick Parsonage.
Now Lydgate, like Mr. Farebrother, knew a great deal more than he told, and when he
had once been set thinking about the relation between Will and Dorothea his conjectures had
gone beyond the fact. He imagined that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and
this struck him as much too serious to gossip about. He remembered Will's irritability when
he had mentioned Mrs. Casaubon, and was the more circumspect. On the whole his
surmises, in addition to what he knew of the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance
towards Ladislaw, and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Middlemarch
after he had said that he should go away. It was significant of the separateness be tween
Lydgate's mind and Rosamond's that he had no impulse to speak to her on the subject;
indeed, he did not quite trust her reticence towards Will. And he was right there; though he
had no vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to speak.
When she repeated Fred's news to Lydgate, he said, "Take care you don't drop the
faintest hint to Ladislaw, Rosy. He is likely to fly out as if you insulted him. Of course it is a
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painful affair."
Rosamond turned her neck and patted her hair, looking the image of placid indifference.
But the next time Will came when Lydgate was away, she spoke archly about his not going
to London as he had threatened.
"I know all about it. I have a confidential little bird," said she, showing very pretty airs
of her head over the bit of work held high between her active fingers. "There is a powerful
magnet in this neighborhood."
"To be sure there is. Nobody knows that better than you," said Will, with light gallantry,
but inwardly prepared to be angry.
"It is really the most charming romance: Mr. Casaubon jealous, and foreseeing that
there was no one else whom Mrs. Casaubon would so much like to marry, and no one who
would so much like to marry her as a certain gentleman; and then laying a plan to spoil all
by making her forfeit her property if she did marry that gentleman – and then – and then –
and then – oh, I have no doubt the end will be thoroughly romantic."
"Great God! what do you mean?" said Will, flushing over face and ears, his features
seeming to change as if he had had a violent shake. "Don't joke; tell me what you mean."
"You don't really know?" said Rosamond, no longer playful, and desiring nothing better
than to tell in order that she might evoke effects.
"No!" he returned, impatiently.
"Don't know that Mr. Casaubon has left it in his will that if Mrs. Casaubon marries you
she is to forfeit all her property?"
"How do you know that it is true?" said Will, eagerly.
"My brother Fred heard it from the Farebrothers." Will started up from his chair and
reached his hat.
"I dare say she likes you better than the property," said Rosamond, looking at him from
a distance.
"Pray don't say any more about it," said Will, in a hoarse undertone extremely unlike his
usual light voice. "It is a foul insult to her and to me." Then he sat down absently, looking
before him, but seeing nothing.
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CHAPTER LIX. 492
"Now you are angry with ME," said Rosamond. "It is too bad to bear ME malice. You
ought to be obliged to me for telling you."
"So I am," said Will, abruptly, speaking with that kind of double soul which belongs to
dreamers who answer questions.
"I expect to hear of the marriage," said Rosamond, play. fully.
"Never! You will never hear of the marriage!"
With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to Rosamond, still
with the air of a somnambulist, and went away.
When he was gone, Rosamond left her chair and walked to the other end of the room,
leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and looking out of the window wearily.
She was oppressed by ennui, and by that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is
continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no
deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of impelling action
as well as speech. "There really is nothing to care for much," said poor Rosamond inwardly,
thinking of the family at Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Tertius
when he came home would tease her about expenses. She had already secretly disobeyed
him by asking her father to help them, and he had ended decisively by saying, "I am more
likely to want help myself."
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CHAPTER LIX. 493
CHAPTER LX.
G
ood phrases are surely, and ever were, very commendable. – Justice Shallow.
A few days afterwards – it was already the end of August – there was an occasion which
caused some excitement in Middlemarch: the public, if it chose, was to have the advantage
of buying, under the distinguished auspices of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, the furniture, books,
and pictures which anybody might see by the handbills to be the best in every kind,
belonging to Edwin Larcher, Esq. This was not one of the sales indicating the depression of
trade; on the contrary, it was due to Mr. Larcher's great success in the carrying business,
which warranted his purchase of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high style by
an illustrious Spa physician – furnished indeed with such large framefuls of expensive
flesh−painting in the dining−room, that Mrs. Larcher was nervous until reassured by finding
the subjects to be Scriptural. Hence the fine opportunity to purchasers which was well
pointed out in the handbills of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, whose acquaintance with the history
of art enabled him to state that the hall furniture, to be sold without reserve, comprised a
piece of carving by a contemporary of Gibbons.
At Middlemarch in those times a large sale was regarded as a kind of festival. There
was a table spread with the best cold eatables, as at a superior funeral; and facilities were
offered for that generous−drinking of cheerful glasses which might lead to generous and
cheerful bidding for undesirable articles. Mr. Larcher's sale was the more attractive in the
fine weather because the house stood just at the end of the town, with a garden and stables
attached, in that pleasant issue from Middlemarch called the London Road, which was also
the road to the New Hospital and to Mr. Bulstrode's retired residence, known as the Shrubs.
In short, the auction was as good as a fair, and drew all classes with leisure at command: to
some, who risked making bids in order simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting
at the races. The second day, when the best furniture was to be sold, "everybody" was there;
even Mr. Thesiger, the rector of St. Peter's, had looked in for a short time, wishing to buy the
carved table, and had rubbed elbows with Mr. Bambridge and Mr. Horrock. There was a
wreath of Middlemarch ladies accommodated with seats round the large table in the
dining−room, where Mr. Borthrop Trumbull was mounted with desk and hammer; but the
rows chiefly of masculine faces behind were often varied by incomings and outgoings both
from the door and the large bow−window opening on to the lawn.
"Everybody" that day did not include Mr. Bulstrode, whose health could not well
endure crowds and draughts. But Mrs. Bulstrode had particularly wished to have a certain
picture – a "Supper at Emmaus," attributed in the catalogue to Guido; and at the last moment
before the day of the sale Mr. Bulstrode had called at the office of the "Pioneer," of which he
was now one of the proprietors, to beg of Mr. Ladislaw as a great favor that he would
obligingly use his remarkable knowledge of pictures on behalf of Mrs. Bulstrode, and judge
of the value of this particular painting – "if," added the scrupulously polite banker,
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CHAPTER LX. 494
attendance at the sale would not interfere with the arrangements for your departure, which I
know is imminent."
This proviso might have sounded rather satirically in Will's ear if he had been in a mood
to care about such satire. It referred to an understanding entered into many weeks before
with the proprietors of the paper, that he should be at liberty any day he pleased to hand over
the management to the subeditor whom he had been training; since he wished finally to quit
Middlemarch. But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is
habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve
when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most
incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our
wish could be fulfilled, still – very wonderful things have happened! Will did not confess
this weakness to himself, but he lingered. What was the use of going to London at that time
of the year? The Rugby men who would remember him were not there; and so far as
political writing was concerned, he would rather for a few weeks go on with the "Pioneer."
At the present moment, however, when Mr. Bulstrode was speaking to him, he had both a
strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve not to go till he had once more seen
Dorothea. Hence he replied that he had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and would
be happy to go to the sale.
Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with the thought that
the people who looked at him probably knew a fact tantamount to an accusation against him
as a fellow with low designs which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property. Like
most people who assert their freedom with regard to conventional distinction, he was
prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any one who might hint that he had personal
reasons for that assertion – that there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character
to which he gave the mask of an opinion. When he was under an irritating impression of this
kind he would go about for days with a defiant look, the color changing in his transparent
skin as if he were on the qui vive, watching for something which he had to dart upon.
This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those who had only
seen him in his moods of gentle oddity or of bright enjoyment would have been struck with
a contrast. He was not sorry to have this occasion for appearing in public before the
Middlemarch tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who looked down on him as an
adventurer, and were in a state of brutal ignorance about Dante – who sneered at his Polish
blood, and were themselves of a breed very much in need of crossing. He stood in a
conspicuous place not far from the auctioneer, with a fore−finger in each side−pocket and
his head thrown backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially
welcomed as a connoissURE by Mr. Trumbull, who was enjoying the utmost activity of his
great faculties.
And surely among all men whose vocation requires them to exhibit their powers of
speech, the happiest is a prosperous provincial auctioneer keenly alive to his own jokes and
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CHAPTER LX. 495
sensible of his encyclopedic knowledge. Some saturnine, sour−blooded persons might object
to be constantly insisting on the merits of all articles from boot−jacks to "Berghems;" but
Mr. Borthrop Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins; he was an admirer by nature, and
would have liked to have the universe under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a higher
figure for his recommendation.
Meanwhile Mrs. Larcher's drawing−room furniture was enough for him. When Will
Ladislaw had come in, a second fender, said to have been forgotten in its right place,
suddenly claimed the auctioneer's enthusiasm, which he distributed on the equitable
principle of praising those things most which were most in need of praise. The fender was of
polished steel, with much lancet−shaped open−work and a sharp edge
"Now, ladies," said he, "I shall appeal to you. Here is a fender which at any other sale
would hardly be offered with out reserve, being, as I may say, for quality of steel and
quaintness of design, a kind of thing" – here Mr. Trumbull dropped his voice and became
slightly nasal, trimming his outlines with his left finger – "that might not fall in with
ordinary tastes. Allow me to tell you that by−and−by this style of workmanship will be the
only one in vogue – half−a−crown, you said? thank you – going at half−a−crown, this
characteristic fender; and I have particular information that the antique style is very much
sought after in high quarters. Three shillings – three−and−sixpence – hold it well up, Joseph!
Look, ladies, at the chastity of the design – I have no doubt myself that it was turned out in
the last century! Four shillings, Mr. Mawmsey? – four shillings."
"It's not a thing I would put in MY drawing−room," said Mrs. Mawmsey, audibly, for
the warning of the rash husband. "I wonder AT Mrs. Larcher. Every blessed child's head that
fell against it would be cut in two. The edge is like a knife."
"Quite true," rejoined Mr. Trumbull, quickly, "and most uncommonly useful to have a
fender at hand that will cut, if you have a leather shoe−tie or a bit of string that wants cutting
and no knife at hand: many a man has been left hanging because there was no knife to cut
him down. Gentlemen, here's a fender that if you had the misfortune to hang yourselves
would cut you down in no time – with astonishing celerity – four−and−sixpence – five –
five−and−sixpence – an appropriate thing for a spare bedroom where there was a
four−poster and a guest a little out of his mind – six shillings – thank you, Mr. Clintup –
going at six shillings – going – gone!" The auctioneer's glance, which had been searching
round him with a preternatural susceptibility to all signs of bidding, here dropped on the
paper before him, and his voice too dropped into a tone of indifferent despatch as he said,
"Mr. Clintup. Be handy, Joseph."
"It was worth six shillings to have a fender you could always tell that joke on," said Mr.
Clintup, laughing low and apologetically to his next neighbor. He was a diffident though
distinguished nurseryman, and feared that the audience might regard his bid as a foolish one.
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CHAPTER LX. 496
Meanwhile Joseph had brought a trayful of small articles. "Now, ladies," said Mr.
Trumbull, taking up one of the articles, "this tray contains a very recherchy lot – a collection
of trifles for the drawing−room table – and trifles make the sum OF human things – nothing
more important than trifles – (yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes, by−and−by) – but pass the tray round,
Joseph – these bijoux must be examined, ladies. This I have in my hand is an ingenious
contrivance – a sort of practical rebus, I may call it: here, you see, it looks like an elegant
heart−shaped box, portable – for the pocket; there, again, it becomes like a splendid double
flower – an ornament for the table; and now" – Mr. Trumbull allowed the flower to fall
alarmingly into strings of heart−shaped leaves – "a book of riddles! No less than five
hundred printed in a beautiful red. Gentlemen, if I had less of a conscience, I should not
wish you to bid high for this lot – I have a longing for it myself. What can promote innocent
mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle? – it hinders profane language, and
attaches a man to the society of refined females. This ingenious article itself, without the
elegant domino−box, card−basket, ought alone to give a high price to the lot. Carried in the
pocket it might make an individual welcome in any society. Four shillings, sir? – four
shillings for this remarkable collection of riddles with the et caeteras. Here is a sample:
`How must you spell honey to make it catch lady−birds? Answer – money.' You hear? –
lady−birds – honey money. This is an amusement to sharpen the intellect; it has a sting – it
has what we call satire, and wit without indecency. Four−and−sixpence – five shillings."
The bidding ran on with warming rivalry. Mr. Bowyer was a bidder, and this was too
exasperating. Bowyer couldn't afford it, and only wanted to hinder every other man from
making a figure. The current carried even Mr. Horrock with it, but this committal of himself
to an opinion fell from him with so little sacrifice of his neutral expression, that the bid
might not have been detected as his but for the friendly oaths of Mr. Bambridge, who
wanted to know what Horrock would do with blasted stuff only fit for haberdashers given
over to that state of perdition which the horse−dealer so cordially recognized in the majority
of earthly existences. The lot was finally knocked down at a guinea to Mr. Spilkins, a young
Slender of the neighborhood, who was reckless with his pocket−money and felt his want of
memory for riddles.
"Come, Trumbull, this is too bad – you've been putting some old maid's rubbish into the
sale," murmured Mr. Toller, getting close to the auctioneer. "I want to see how the prints go,
and I must be off soon."
"IMmediately, Mr. Toller. It was only an act of benevolence which your noble heart
would approve. Joseph! quick with the prints – Lot 235. Now, gentlemen, you who are
connoissURES, you are going to have a treat. Here is an engraving of the Duke of
Wellington surrounded by his staff on the Field of Waterloo; and notwithstanding recent
events which have, as it were, enveloped our great Hero in a cloud, I will be bold to say –
for a man in my line must not be blown about by political winds – that a finer subject – of
the modern order, belonging to our own time and epoch – the understanding of man could
hardly conceive: angels might, perhaps, but not men, sirs, not men."
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CHAPTER LX. 497
"Who painted it?" said Mr. Powderell, much impressed.
"It is a proof before the letter, Mr. Powderell – the painter is not known," answered
Trumbull, with a certain gaspingness in his last words, after which he pursed up his lips and
stared round him.
"I'll bid a pound!" said Mr. Powderell, in a tone of resolved emotion, as of a man ready
to put himself in the breach. Whether from awe or pity, nobody raised the price on him.
Next came two Dutch prints which Mr. Toller had been eager for, and after he had
secured them he went away. Other prints, and afterwards some paintings, were sold to
leading Middlemarchers who had come with a special desire for them, and there was a more
active movement of the audience in and out; some, who had bought what they wanted, going
away, others coming in either quite newly or from a temporary visit to the refreshments
which were spread under the marquee on the lawn. It was this marquee that Mr. Bambridge
was bent on buying, and he appeared to like looking inside it frequently, as a foretaste of its
possession. On the last occasion of his return from it he was observed to bring with him a
new companion, a stranger to Mr. Trumbull and every one else, whose appearance,
however, led to the supposition that he might be a relative of the horse−dealer's – also
"given to indulgence." His large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg, made
him a striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused the prejudicial
inference that he was not able to afford himself as much indulgence as he liked.
"Who is it you've picked up, Bam?" said Mr. Horrock, aside.
"Ask him yourself," returned Mr. Bambridge. "He said he'd just turned in from the
road."
Mr. Horrock eyed the stranger, who was leaning back against his stick with one hand,
using his toothpick with the other, and looking about him with a certain restlessness
apparently under the silence imposed on him by circumstances.
At length the "Supper at Emmaus" was brought forward, to Wills immense relief, for he
was getting so tired of the proceedings that he had drawn back a little and leaned his
shoulder against the wall just behind the auctioneer. He now came forward again, and his
eye caught the conspicuous stranger, who, rather to his surprise, was staring at him
markedly. But Will was immediately appealed to by Mr. Trumbull.
"Yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes; this interests you as a connoissURE, I think. It is some
pleasure," the auctioneer went on with a rising fervor, "to have a picture like this to show to
a company of ladies and gentlemen – a picture worth any sum to an individual whose means
were on a level with his judgment. It is a painting of the Italian school – by the celebrated
Guydo, the greatest painter in the world, the chief of the Old Masters, as they are called – I
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CHAPTER LX. 498
take it, because they were up to a thing or two beyond most of us – in possession of secrets
now lost to the bulk of mankind. Let me tell you, gentlemen, I have seen a great many
pictures by the Old Masters, and they are not all up to this mark – some of them are darker
than you might like and not family subjects. But here is a Guydo – the frame alone is worth
pounds – which any lady might be proud to hang up – a suitable thing for what we call a
refectory in a charitable institution, if any gentleman of the Corporation wished to show his
munifiCENCE. Turn it a little, sir? yes. Joseph, turn it a little towards Mr. Ladislaw – Mr.
Ladislaw, having been abroad, understands the merit of these things, you observe."
All eyes were for a moment turned towards Will, who said, coolly, "Five pounds." The
auctioneer burst out in deep remonstrance.
"Ah! Mr. Ladislaw! the frame alone is worth that. Ladies and gentlemen, for the credit
of the town! Suppose it should be discovered hereafter that a gem of art has been amongst us
in this town, and nobody in Middlemarch awake to it. Five guineas – five seven−six – five
ten. Still, ladies, still! It is a gem, and `Full many a gem,' as the poet says, has been allowed
to go at a nominal pride because the public knew no better, because it was offered in circles
where there was – I was going to say a low feeling, but no! – Six pounds – six guineas – a
Guydo of the first order going at six guineas – it is an insult to religion, ladies; it touches us
all as Christians, gentlemen, that a subject like this should go at such a low figure – six
pounds ten – seven – "
The bidding was brisk, and Will continued to share in it, remembering that Mrs.
Bulstrode had a strong wish for the picture, and thinking that he might stretch the price to
twelve pounds. But it was knocked down to him at ten guineas, whereupon he pushed his
way towards the bow−window and went out. He chose to go under the marquee to get a
glass of water, being hot and thirsty: it was empty of other visitors, and he asked the woman
in attendance to fetch him some fresh water; but before she was well gone he was annoyed
to see entering the florid stranger who had stared at him. It struck Will at this moment that
the man might be one of those political parasitic insects of the bloated kind who had once or
twice claimed acquaintance with him as having heard him speak on the Reform question,
and who might think of getting a shilling by news. In this light his person, already rather
heating to behold on a summer's day, appeared the more disagreeable; and Will, half−seated
on the elbow of a garden−chair, turned his eyes carefully away from the comer. But this
signified little to our acquaintance Mr. Raffles, who never hesitated to thrust himself on
unwilling observation, if it suited his purpose to do so. He moved. a step or two till he was
in front of Will, and said with full−mouthed haste, "Excuse me, Mr. Ladislaw – was your
mother's name Sarah Dunkirk?"
Will, starting to his feet, moved backward a step, frowning, and saying with some
fierceness, "Yes, sir, it was. And what is that to you?"
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CHAPTER LX. 499
It was in Will's nature that the first spark it threw out was a direct answer of the
question and a challenge of the consequences. To have said, "What is that to you?" in the
first instance, would have seemed like shuffling – as if he minded who knew anything about
his origin!
Raffles on his side had not the same eagerness for a collision which was implied in
Ladislaw's threatening air. The slim young fellow with his girl's complexion looked like a
tiger−cat ready to spring on him. Under such circumstances Mr. Raffles's pleasure in
annoying his company was kept in abeyance.
"No offence, my good sir, no offence! I only remember your mother – knew her when
she was a girl. But it is your father that you feature, sir. I had the pleasure of seeing your
father too. Parents alive, Mr. Ladislaw?"
"No!" thundered Will, in the same attitude as before.
"Should be glad to do you a service, Mr. Ladislaw – by Jove, I should! Hope to meet
again."
Hereupon Raffles, who had lifted his hat with the last words, turned himself round with
a swing of his leg and walked away. Will looked after him a moment, and could see that he
did not re−enter the auction−room, but appeared to be walking towards the road. For an
instant he thought that he had been foolish not to let the man go on talking; – but no! on the
whole he preferred doing without knowledge from that source.
Later in the evening, however, Raffles overtook him in the street, and appearing either
to have forgotten the roughness of his former reception or to intend avenging it by a
forgiving familiarity, greeted him jovially and walked by his side, remarking at first on the
pleasantness of the town and neighbor hood. Will suspected that the man had been drinking
and was considering how to shake him off when Raffles said –
"I've been abroad myself, Mr. Ladislaw – I've seen the world – used to parley−vous a
little. It was at Boulogne I saw your father – a most uncommon likeness you are of him, by
Jove! mouth – nose – eyes – hair turned off your brow just like his – a little in the foreign
style. John Bull doesn't do much of that. But your father was very ill when I saw him. Lord,
lord! hands you might see through. You were a small youngster then. Did he get well?"
"No," said Will, curtly.
"Ah! Well! I've often wondered what became of your mother. She ran away from her
friends when she was a young lass – a proud−spirited lass, and pretty, by Jove! I knew the
reason why she ran away," said Raffles, winking slowly as he looked sideways at Will.
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CHAPTER LX. 500
"You know nothing dishonorable of her, sir," said Will, turning on him rather savagely.
But Mr. Raffles just now was not sensitive to shades of manner.
"Not a bit!" said he, tossing his head decisively "She was a little too honorable to like
her friends – that was it!" Here Raffles again winked slowly. "Lord bless you, I knew all
about 'em – a little in what you may call the respectable thieving line – the high style of
receiving−house – none of your holes and corners – first−rate. Slap−up shop, high profits
and no mistake. But Lord! Sarah would have known nothing about it – a dashing young lady
she was – fine boarding−school – fit for a lord's wife – only Archie Duncan threw it at her
out of spite, because she would have nothing to do with him. And so she ran away from the
whole concern. I travelled for 'em, sir, in a gentlemanly way – at a high salary. They didn't
mind her running away at first – godly folks, sir, very godly – and she was for the stage. The
son was alive then, and the daughter was at a discount. Hallo! here we are at the Blue Bull.
What do you say, Mr. Ladislaw? – shall we turn in and have a glass?"
"No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage which led into Lowick
Gate, and almost running to get out of Raffles's reach.
He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of the starlit
darkness when it came. He felt as if he had had dirt cast on him amidst shouts of scorn.
There was this to confirm the fellow's statement – that his mother never would tell him the
reason why she had run away from her family.
Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truth about that family to
be the ugliest? His mother had braved hardship in order to separate herself from it. But if
Dorothea's friends had known this story – if the Chettams had known it – they would have
had a fine color to give their suspicions a welcome ground for thinking him unfit to come
near her. However, let them suspect what they pleased, they would find themselves in the
wrong. They would find out that the blood in his veins was as free from the taint of
meanness as theirs.
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CHAPTER LXI.
"I
nconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right, but imputed to man they may
both be true." – Rasselas.
The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey to Brassing on business,
his good wife met him in the entrance−hall and drew him into his private sitting−room.
"Nicholas," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously, "there has been such a
disagreeable man here asking for you – it has made me quite uncomfortable."
"What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain of the answer.
"A red−faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner. He declared
he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be sorry not to see him. He wanted to wait
for you here, but I told him he could see you at the Bank to−morrow morning. Most
impudent he was! – stared at me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives. I don't believe
he would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened to break his chain and come running
round on the gravel – for I was in the garden; so I said, `You'd better go away – the dog is
very fierce, and I can't hold him.' Do you really know anything of such a man?"
"I believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, in his usual subdued voice,
"an unfortunate dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much in days gone by. However, I
presume you will not be troubled by him again. He will probably come to the Bank – to beg,
doubtless."
No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrode had returned
from the town and was dressing for dinner. His wife, not sure that he was come home,
looked into his dressing−room and saw him with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm on
a chest of drawers and staring absently at the ground. He started nervously and looked up as
she entered.
"You look very ill, Nicholas. Is there anything the matter?"
"I have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr. Bulstrode, who was so frequently
ailing that his wife was always ready to believe in this cause of depression.
"Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar."
Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally the affectionate attention
soothed him. Though always polite, it was his habit to receive such services with marital
coolness, as his wife's duty. But to−day, while she was bending over him, he said, "You are
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very good, Harriet," in a tone which had something new in it to her ear; she did not know
exactly what the novelty was, but her woman's solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought
that he might be going to have an illness.
"Has anything worried you?" she said. "Did that man come to you at the Bank?"
"Yes; it was as I had supposed. He is a man who at one time might have done better.
But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature."
"Is he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but for certain reasons she
refrained from adding, "It was very disagreeable to hear him calling himself a friend of
yours." At that moment she would not have liked to say anything which implied her habitual
consciousness that her husband's earlier connections were not quite on a level with her own.
Not that she knew much about them. That her husband had at first been employed in a bank,
that he had afterwards entered into what he called city business and gained a fortune before
he was three−and−thirty, that he had married a widow who was much older than himself – a
Dissenter, and in other ways probably of that disadvantageous quality usually perceptible in
a first wife if inquired into with the dispassionate judgment of a second – was almost as
much as she had cared to learn beyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's narrative
occasionally gave of his early bent towards religion, his inclination to be a preacher, and his
association with missionary and philanthropic efforts. She believed in him as an excellent
man whose piety carried a peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman, whose influence had
turned her own mind toward seriousness, and whose share of perishable good had been the
means of raising her own position. But she also liked to think that it was well in every sense
for Mr. Bulstrode to have won the hand of Harriet Vincy; whose family was undeniable in a
Middlemarch light – a better light surely than any thrown in London thoroughfares or
dissenting chapel−yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted London; and while true
religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrode was convinced that to be saved in
the Church was more respectable. She so much wished to ignore towards others that her
husband had ever been a London Dissenter, that she liked to keep it out of sight even in
talking to him. He was quite aware of this; indeed in some respects he was rather afraid of
this ingenuous wife, whose imitative piety and native worldliness were equally sincere, who
had nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had married out of a thorough inclination still
subsisting. But his fears were such as belong to a man who cares to maintain his recognized
supremacy: the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from every one else who did not
clearly hate him out of enmity to the truth, would be as the beginning of death to him. When
she said –
"Is he quite gone away?"
"Oh, I trust so," he answered, with an effort to throw as much sober unconcern into his
tone as possible!
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But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust. In the interview at the
Bank, Raffles had made it evident that his eagerness to torment was almost as strong in him
as any other greed. He had frankly said that he had turned out of the way to come to
Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether the neighborhood would suit him to
live in. He had certainly had a few debts to pay more than he expected, but the two hundred
pounds were not gone yet: a cool five−and−twenty would suffice him to go away with for
the present. What he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and know all
about the prosperity of a man to whom he was so much attached. By−and−by he might come
back for a longer stay. This time Raffles declined to be "seen off the premises," as he
expressed it – declined to quit Middlemarch under Bulstrode's eyes. He meant to go by
coach the next day – if he chose.
Bulstrode felt himself helpless. Neither threats nor coaxing could avail: he could not
count on any persistent fear nor on any promise. On the contrary, he felt a cold certainty at
his heart that Raffles – unless providence sent death to hinder him – would come back to
Middlemarch before long. And that certainty was a terror.
It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he was in danger
only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his neighbors and the mournful perception of his
wife certain facts of his past life which would render him an object of scorn and an
opprobrium of the religion with which he had diligently associated himself. The terror of
being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that long−unvisited past
which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the life is
bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a
man to own his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a
man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a
repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing
shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only the pleasures of it seeming to
have lost their quality. Night and day, without interruption save of brief sleep which only
wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming
between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look through the window from
a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and
the trees The successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though each
might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept their hold in the consciousness.
Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with an agreeable person, as clever
in figures as he was fluent in speech and fond of theological definition: an eminent though
young member of a Calvinistic dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking
experience in conviction of sin and sense of pardon. Again he heard himself called for as
Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings, speaking on religious platforms, preaching in private
houses. Again he felt himself thinking of the ministry as possibly his vocation, and inclined
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towards missionary labor. That was the happiest time of his life: that was the spot he would
have chosen now to awake in and find the rest a dream. The people among whom Brother
Bulstrode was distinguished were very few, but they were very near to him, and stirred his
satisfaction the more; his power stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its effect the
more intensely. He believed without effort in the peculiar work of grace within him, and in
the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality.
Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotion he had when
he, an orphan educated at a commercial charity−school, was invited to a fine villa belonging
to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest man in the congregation. Soon he became an intimate there,
honored for his piety by the wife, marked out for his ability by the husband, whose wealth
was due to a flourishing city and west−end trade. That was the setting−in of a new current
for his ambition, directing his prospects of "instrumentality" towards the uniting of
distinguished religious gifts with successful business.
By−and−by came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinate partner died,
and nobody seemed to the principal so well fitted to fill the severely felt vacancy as his
young friend Bulstrode, if he would become confidential accountant. The offer was
accepted. The business was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent sort both in extent and
profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode became aware that one source of
magnificent profit was the easy reception of any goods offered, without strict inquiry as to
where they came from. But there was a branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or
dinginess to give suggestions of shame.
He remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were private, and were filled with
arguments; some of these taking the form of prayer. The business was established and had
old roots; is it not one thing to set up a new gin−palace and another to accept an investment
in an old one? The profits made out of lost souls – where can the line be drawn at which
they begin in human transactions? Was it not even God's way of saving His chosen? "Thou
knowest," – the young Bulstrode had said then, as the older Bulstrode was saying now –
"Thou knowest how loose my soul sits from these things – how I view them all as
implements for tilling Thy garden rescued here and there from the wilderness."
Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual experiences were not
wanting which at last made the retention of his position seem a service demanded of him:
the vista of a fortune had already opened itself, and Bulstrode's shrinking remained private.
Mr. Dunkirk had never expected that there would be any shrinking at all: he had never
conceived that trade had anything to do with the scheme of salvation. And it was true that
Bulstrode found himself carrying on two distinct lives; his religious activity could not be
incompatible with his business as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it
incompatible.
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Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the same pleas – indeed, the
years had been perpetually spinning them into intricate thickness, like masses of
spider−web, padding the moral sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager but less
enjoying, his soul had become more saturated with the belief that he did everything for
God's sake, being indifferent to it for his own. And yet – if he could be back in that far−off
spot with his youthful poverty – why, then he would choose to be a missionary.
But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on. There was trouble in the
fine villa at Highbury. Years before, the only daughter had run away, defied her parents, and
gone on the stage; and now the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also.
The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and out of the magnificent trade,
of which she never knew the precise nature, had come to believe in Bulstrode, and
innocently adore him as women often adore their priest or "man−made" minister. It was
natural that after a time marriage should have been thought of between them. But Mrs.
Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter, who had long been regarded as lost
both to God and her parents. It was known that the daughter had married, but she was utterly
gone out of sight. The mother, having lost her boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in a
double sense to reclaim her daughter. If she were found, there would be a channel for
property – perhaps a wide one – in the provision for several grandchildren. Efforts to find
her must be made before Mrs. Dunkirk would marry again. Bulstrode concurred; but after
advertisement as well as other modes of inquiry had been tried, the mother believed that her
daughter was not to be found, and consented to marry without reservation of property.
The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrode knew it, and he was
paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.
That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in the rigid outline with
which acts present themselves onlookers. But for himself at that distant time, and even now
in burning memory, the fact was broken into little sequences, each justified as it came by
reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous. Bulstrode's course up to that time had, he
thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences, appearing to point the way for him to
be the agent in making the best use of a large property and withdrawing it from perversion.
Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness, had come; and
Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's words – "Do you call these bare events? The
Lord pity you!" The events were comparatively small, but the essential condition was there –
namely, that they were in favor of his own ends. It was easy for him to settle what was due
from him to others by inquiring what were God's intentions with regard to himself. Could it
be for God's service that this fortune should in any considerable proportion go to a young
woman and her husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits, and might scatter it
abroad in triviality – people who seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable providences?
Bulstrode had never said to himself beforehand, "The daughter shall not be found" –
nevertheless when the moment came he kept her existence hidden; and when other moments
followed, he soothed the mother with consolation in the probability that the unhappy young
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woman might be no more.
There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action was unrighteous; but how could
he go back? He had mental exercises, called himself nought laid hold on redemption, and
went on in his course of instrumentality. And after five years Death again came to widen his
path, by taking away his wife. He did gradually withdraw his capital, but he did not make
the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the business, which was carried on for thirteen years
afterwards before it finally collapsed. Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred
thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important – a banker, a
Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in trading concerns, in which his
ability was directed to economy in the raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted
Mr. Vincy's silk. And now, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty
years – when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the consciousness – that past
had risen and immersed his thought as if with the terrible irruption of a new sense
overburthening the feeble being.
Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something momentous,
something which entered actively into the struggle of his longings and terrors. There, he
thought, lay an opening towards spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.
The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be coarse
hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world,
but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger
than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires
into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which
shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we
believe in the future perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the
world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant, including
ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the solidarity of mankind.
The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life the ground he
alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been the motive which he had poured out
in his prayers. Who would use money and position better than he meant to use them? Who
could surpass him in self−abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause? And to Mr. Bulstrode
God's cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct: it enforced a
discrimination of God's enemies, who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it
would be as well if possible to keep out of money and consequent influence. Also, profitable
investments in trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most active
devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits in the hands of God's servant.
This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical belief than the use
of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to Englishmen. There is no general doctrine
which is not capable of eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep−seated habit of
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direct fellow−feeling with individual fellow−men.
But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has necessarily a
conscience or standard to which he more or less adapts himself. Bulstrode's standard had
been his serviceableness to God's cause: "I am sinful and nought – a vessel to be consecrated
by use – but use me!" – had been the mould into which he had constrained his immense need
of being something important and predominating. And now had come a moment in which
that mould seemed in danger of being broken and utterly cast away.
What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a stronger
instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext of the scoffer, and a darkening of
that glory? If this were to be the ruling of Providence, he was cast out from the temple as
one who had brought unclean offerings.
He had long poured out utterances of repentance. But today a repentance had come
which was of a bitterer flavor, and a threatening Providence urged him to a kind of
propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal transaction. The divine tribunal had changed
its aspect for him; self−prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring restitution in
his hand. It was really before his God that Bulstrode was about to attempt such restitution as
seemed possible: a great dread had seized his susceptible frame, and the scorching approach
of shame wrought in him a new spiritual need. Night and day, while the resurgent
threatening past was making a conscience within him, he was thinking by what means he
could recover peace and trust – by what sacrifice he could stay the rod. His belief in these
moments of dread was, that if he spontaneously did something right, God would save him
from the consequences of wrong−doing. For religion can only change when the emotions
which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the
savage.
He had seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach, and this was a
temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediate dread, but did not put an end to
the spiritual conflict and the need to win protection. At last he came to a difficult resolve,
and wrote a letter to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for a
private interview at nine o'clock. Will had felt no particular surprise at the request, and
connected it with some new notions about the "Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr.
Bulstrode's private room, he was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker's face,
and was going to say, "Are you ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness, he only
inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with the picture bought for her.
"Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters this evening. I
begged you to come, Mr. Ladislaw, because I have a communication of a very private –
indeed, I will say, of a sacredly confidential nature, which I desire to make to you. Nothing,
I dare say, has been farther from your thoughts than that there had been important ties in the
past which could connect your history with mine."
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Will felt something like an electric shock. He was already in a state of keen
sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject of ties in the past, and his
presentiments were not agreeable. It seemed like the fluctuations of a dream – as if the
action begun by that loud bloated stranger were being carried on by this pale−eyed sickly
looking piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of speech were at this
moment almost as repulsive to him as their remembered contrast. He answered, with a
marked change of color –
"No, indeed, nothing."
"You see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken. But for the urgency
of conscience and the knowledge that I am before the bar of One who seeth not as man
seeth, I should be under no compulsion to make the disclosure which has been my object in
asking you to come here to−night. So far as human laws go, you have no claim on me
whatever."
Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering. Mr. Bulstrode had paused, leaning
his head on his hand, and looking at the floor. But he now fixed his examining glance on
Will and said –
"I am told that your mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she ran away from her
friends to go on the stage. Also, that your father was at one time much emaciated by illness.
May I ask if you can confirm these statements?"
"Yes, they are all true," said Will, struck with the order in which an inquiry had come,
that might have been expected to be preliminary to the banker's previous hints. But Mr.
Bulstrode had to−night followed the order of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the
opportunity for restitution had come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards the
penitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.
"Do you know any particulars of your mother's family?" he continued.
"No; she never liked to speak of them. She was a very generous, honorable woman,"
said Will, almost angrily.
"I do not wish to allege anything against her. Did she never mention her mother to you
at all?"
"I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the reason of her
running away. She said `poor mother' in a pitying tone."
"That mother became my wife," said Bulstrode, and then paused a moment before he
added, "you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I said before, not a legal claim, but one
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which my conscience recognizes. I was enriched by that marriage – a result which would
probably not have taken place – certainly not to the same extent – if your grandmother could
have discovered her daughter. That daughter, I gather, is no longer living!"
"No," said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly within him, that
without quite knowing what he did, he took his hat from the floor and stood up. The impulse
within him was to reject the disclosed connection.
"Pray be seated, Mr. Ladislaw," said Bulstrode, anxiously. "Doubtless you are startled
by the suddenness of this discovery. But I entreat your patience with one who is already
bowed down by inward trial."
Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for this voluntary
self−abasement of an elderly man.
"It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation which befell your
mother. I know that you are without fortune, and I wish to supply you adequately from a
store which would have probably already been yours had your grandmother been certain of
your mother's existence and been able to find her."
Mr. Bulstrode paused. He felt that he was performing a striking piece of scrupulosity in
the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential act in the eyes of God. He had no clew to the
state of Will Ladislaw's mind, smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles, and with its
natural quickness in construction stimulated by the expectation of discoveries which he
would have been glad to conjure back into darkness. Will made no answer for several
moments, till Mr. Bulstrode, who at the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor, now
raised them with an examining glance, which Will met fully, saying –
"I suppose you did know of my mother's existence, and knew where she might have
been found."
Bulstrode shrank – there was a visible quivering in his face and hands. He was totally
unprepared to have his advances met in this way, or to find himself urged into more
revelation than he had beforehand set down as needful. But at that moment he dared not tell
a lie, and he felt suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden with some
confidence before.
"I will not deny that you conjecture rightly," he answered, with a faltering in his tone.
"And I wish to make atonement to you as the one still remaining who has suffered a loss
through me. You enter, I trust, into my purpose, Mr. Ladislaw, which has a reference to
higher than merely human claims, and as I have already said, is entirely independent of any
legal compulsion. I am ready to narrow my own resources and the prospects of my family by
binding myself to allow you five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a
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proportional capital at my death – nay, to do still more, if more should be definitely
necessary to any laudable project on your part." Mr. Bulstrode had gone on to particulars in
the expectation that these would work strongly on Ladislaw, and merge other feelings in
grateful acceptance.
But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting and his fingers in his
side−pockets. He was not in the least touched, and said firmly, –
"Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Bulstrode, I must beg you to answer
a question or two. Were you connected with the business by which that fortune you speak of
was originally made?"
Mr. Bulstrode's thought was, "Raffles has told him." How could he refuse to answer
when he had volunteered what drew forth the question? He answered, "Yes."
"And was that business – or was it not – a thoroughly dishonorable one – nay, one that,
if its nature had been made public, might have ranked those concerned in it with thieves and
convicts?"
Will's tone had a cutting bitterness: he was moved to put his question as nakedly as he
could.
Bulstrode reddened with irrepressible anger. He had been prepared for a scene of
self−abasement, but his intense pride and his habit of supremacy overpowered penitence,
and even dread, when this young man, whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him with
the air of a judge.
"The business was established before I became connected with it, sir; nor is it for you to
institute an inquiry of that kind," he answered, not raising his voice, but speaking with quick
defiantness.
"Yes, it is," said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand. "It is eminently mine to
ask such questions, when I have to decide whether I will have transactions with you and
accept your money. My unblemished honor is important to me. It is important to me to have
no stain on my birth and connections. And now I find there is a stain which I can't help. My
mother felt it, and tried to keep as clear of it as she could, and so will I. You shall keep your
ill−gotten money. If I had any fortune of my own, I would willingly pay it to any one who
could disprove what you have told me. What I have to thank you for is that you kept the
money till now, when I can refuse it. It ought to lie with a man's self that he is a gentleman.
Good−night, sir."
Bulstrode was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness, was out of the room
in an instant, and in another the hall−door had closed behind him. He was too strongly
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possessed with passionate rebellion against this inherited blot which had been thrust on his
knowledge to reflect at present whether he had not been too hard on Bulstrode – too
arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty, who was making efforts at retrieval when time
had rendered them vain.
No third person listening could have thoroughly understood the impetuosity of Will's
repulse or the bitterness of his words. No one but himself then knew how everything
connected with the sentiment of his own dignity had an immediate bearing for him on his
relation to Dorothea and to Mr. Casaubon's treatment of him. And in the rush of impulses by
which he flung back that offer of Bulstrode's there was mingled the sense that it would have
been impossible for him ever to tell Dorothea that he had accepted it.
As for Bulstrode – when Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction, and wept like a
woman. It was the first time he had encountered an open expression of scorn from any man
higher than Raffles; and with that scorn hurrying like venom through his system, there was
no sensibility left to consolations. Rut the relief of weeping had to be checked. His wife and
daughters soon came home from hearing the address of an Oriental missionary, and were
full of regret that papa had not heard, in the first instance, the interesting things which they
tried to repeat to him.
Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed most comfort was, that
Will Ladislaw at least was not likely to publish what had taken place that evening.
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CHAPTER LXII.
"H
e was a squyer of lowe degre, That loved the king's daughter of Hungrie. – Old
Romance.
Will Ladislaw's mind was now wholly bent on seeing Dorothea again, and forthwith
quitting Middlemarch. The morning after his agitating scene with Bulstrode he wrote a brief
letter to her, saying that various causes had detained him in the neighborhood longer than he
had expected, and asking her permission to call again at Lowick at some hour which she
would mention on the earliest possible day, he being anxious to depart, but unwilling to do
so until she had granted him an interview. He left the letter at the office, ordering the
messenger to carry it to Lowick Manor, and wait for an answer.
Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words. His former farewell had
been made in the hearing of Sir James Chettam, and had been announced as final even to the
butler. It is certainly trying to a man's dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a
first farewell has pathos in it, but to come back for a second lends an opening to comedy,
and it was possible even that there might be bitter sneers afloat about Will's motives for
lingering. Still it was on the whole more satisfactory to his feeling to take the directest
means of seeing Dorothea, than to use any device which might give an air of chance to a
meeting of which he wished her to understand that it was what he earnestly sought. When he
had parted from her before, he had been in ignorance of facts which gave a new aspect to the
relation between them, and made a more absolute severance than he had then believed in. He
knew nothing of Dorothea's private fortune, and being little used to reflect on such matters,
took it for granted that according to Mr. Casaubon's arrangement marriage to him, Will
Ladislaw, would mean that she consented to be penniless. That was not what he could wish
for even in his secret heart, or even if she had been ready to meet such hard contrast for his
sake. And then, too, there was the fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother's family,
which if known would be an added reason why Dorothea's friends should look down upon
him as utterly below her. The secret hope that after some years he might come back with the
sense that he had at least a personal value equal to her wealth, seemed now the dreamy
continuation of a dream. This change would surely justify him in asking Dorothea to receive
him once more.
But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive Will's note. In consequence of
a letter from her uncle announcing his intention to be at home in a week, she had driven first
to Freshitt to carry the news, meaning to go on to the Grange to deliver some orders with
which her uncle had intrusted her – thinking, as he said, "a little mental occupation of this
sort good for a widow."
If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk at Freshitt that morning, he
would have felt all his suppositions confirmed as to the readiness of certain people to sneer
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at his lingering in the neighborhood. Sir James, indeed, though much relieved concerning
Dorothea, had been on the watch to learn Ladislaw's movements, and had an instructed
informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in his confidence on this matter. That
Ladislaw had stayed in Middlemarch nearly two months after he had declared that he was
going immediately, was a fact to embitter Sir James's suspicions, or at least to justify his
aversion to a "young fellow" whom he represented to himself as slight, volatile, and likely
enough to show such recklessness as naturally went along with a position unriveted by
family ties or a strict profession. But he had just heard something from Standish which,
while it justified these surmises about Will, offered a means of nullifying all danger with
regard to Dorothea.
Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions
under which the most majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be
acted on in the same incongruous manner. Good Sir James was this morning so far unlike
himself that he was irritably anxious to say something to Dorothea on a subject which he
usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame to them both. He could not use Celia as a
medium, because he did not choose that she should know the kind of gossip he had in his
mind; and before Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how, with his
shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce his communication. Her
unexpected presence brought him to utter hopelessness in his own power of saying anything
unpleasant; but desperation suggested a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled horse
across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs. Cadwallader, who already knew the gossip, and
would think it no compromise of herself to repeat it as often as required.
Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that Mr. Garth, whom she wanted to see,
was expected at the hall within the hour, and she was still talking to Caleb on the gravel
when Sir James, on the watch for the rector's wife, saw her coming and met her with the
needful hints.
"Enough! I understand," – said Mrs. Cadwallader. "You shall be innocent. I am such a
blackamoor that I cannot smirch myself."
"I don't mean that it's of any consequence," said Sir James, disliking that Mrs.
Cadwallader should understand too much. "Only it is desirable that Dorothea should know
there are reasons why she should not receive him again; and I really can't say so to her. It
will come lightly from you."
It came very lightly indeed. When Dorothea quitted Caleb and turned to meet them, it
appeared that Mrs. Cadwallader had stepped across the park by the merest chance in the
world, just to chat with Celia in a matronly way about the baby. And so Mr. Brooke was
coming back? Delightful! – coming back, it was to be hoped, quite cured of Parliamentary
fever and pioneering. Apropos of the "Pioneer" – somebody had prophesied that it would
soon be like a dying dolphin, and turn all colors for want of knowing how to help itself,
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because Mr. Brooke's protege, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or going. Had Sir
James heard that?
The three were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir James, turning aside to whip a
shrub, said he had heard something of that sort.
"All false!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "He is not gone, or going, apparently; the `Pioneer'
keeps its color, and Mr. Orlando Ladislaw is making a sad dark−blue scandal by warbling
continually with your Mr. Lydgate's wife, who they tell me is as pretty as pretty can be. It
seems nobody ever goes into the house without finding this young gentleman lying on the
rug or warbling at the piano. But the people in manufacturing towns are always
disreputable."
"You began by saying that one report was false, Mrs. Cadwallader, and I believe this is
false too," said Dorothea, with indignant energy; "at least, I feel sure it is a
misrepresentation. I will not hear any evil spoken of Mr. Ladislaw; he has already suffered
too much injustice."
Dorothea when thoroughly moved cared little what any one thought of her feelings; and
even if she had been able to reflect, she would have held it petty to keep silence at injurious
words about Will from fear of being herself misunderstood. Her face was flushed and her lip
trembled.
Sir James, glancing at her, repented of his stratagem; but Mrs. Cadwallader, equal to all
occasions, spread the palms of her hands outward and said – "Heaven grant it, my dear! – I
mean that all bad tales about anybody may be false. But it is a pity that young Lydgate
should have married one of these Middlemarch girls. Considering he's a son of somebody,
he might have got a woman with good blood in her veins, and not too young, who would
have put up with his profession. There's Clara Harfager, for instance, whose friends don't
know what to do with her; and she has a portion. Then we might have had her among us.
However! – it's no use being wise for other people. Where is Celia? Pray let us go in."
"I am going on immediately to Tipton," said Dorothea, rather haughtily. "Good−by."
Sir James could say nothing as he accompanied her to the carriage. He was altogether
discontented with the result of a contrivance which had cost him some secret humiliation
beforehand.
Dorothea drove along between the berried hedgerows and the shorn corn−fields, not
seeing or hearing anything around. The tears came and rolled down her cheeks, but she did
not know it. The world, it seemed, was turning ugly and hateful, and there was no place for
her trustfulness. "It is not true – it is not true!" was the voice within her that she listened to;
but all the while a remembrance to which there had always clung a vague uneasiness would
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thrust itself on her attention – the remembrance of that day when she had found Will
Ladislaw with Mrs. Lydgate, and had heard his voice accompanied by the piano.
"He said he would never do anything that I disapproved – I wish I could have told him
that I disapproved of that," said poor Dorothea, inwardly, feeling a strange alternation
between anger with Will and the passionate defence of him. "They all try to blacken him
before me; but I will care for no pain, if he is not to blame. I always believed he was good."
– These were her last thoughts before she felt that the carriage was passing under the
archway of the lodge−gate at the Grange, when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to
her face and began to think of her errands. The coachman begged leave to take out the
horses for half an hour as there was something wrong with a shoe; and Dorothea, having the
sense that she was going to rest, took off her gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning
against a statue in the entrance−hall, and talking to the housekeeper. At last she said –
"I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into the library and write you some
memoranda from my uncle's letter, if you will open the shutters for me."
"The shutters are open, madam," said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea, who had walked
along as she spoke. "Mr. Ladislaw is there, looking for something."
(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had missed in the act
of packing his movables, and did not choose to leave behind.)
Dorothea's heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she was not perceptibly
checked: in truth, the sense that Will was there was for the moment all−satisfying to her, like
the sight of something precious that one has lost. When she reached the door she said to
Mrs. Kell –
"Go in first, and tell him that I am here."
Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far end of the room, to
turn over the sketches and please himself by looking at the memorable piece of art which
had a relation to nature too mysterious for Dorothea. He was smiling at it still, and shaking
the sketches into order with the thought that he might find a letter from her awaiting him at
Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell close to his elbow said –
"Mrs. Casaubon is coming in, sir."
Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea was entering. As Mrs. Kell
closed the door behind her they met: each was looking at the other, and consciousness was
overflowed by something that suppressed utterance. It was not confusion that kept them
silent, for they both felt that parting was near, and there is no shamefacedness in a sad
parting.
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She moved automatically towards her uncle's chair against the writing−table, and Will,
after drawing it out a little for her, went a few paces off and stood opposite to her.
"Pray sit down," said Dorothea, crossing her hands on her lap; "I am very glad you were
here." Will thought that her face looked just as it did when she first shook hands with him in
Rome; for her widow's cap, fixed in her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that
she had lately been shedding tears. But the mixture of anger in her agitation had vanished at
the sight of him; she had been used, when they were face to face, always to feel confidence
and the happy freedom which comes with mutual understanding, and how could other
people's words hinder that effect on a sudden? Let the music which can take possession of
our frame and fill the air with joy for us, sound once more – what does it signify that we
heard it found fault with in its absence?
"I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to−day, asking leave to see you," said Will,
seating himself opposite to her. "I am going away immediately, and I could not go without
speaking to you again."
"I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago – you thought you
were going then," said Dorothea, her voice trembling a little.
"Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which I know now – things which have
altered my feelings about the future. When I saw you before, I was dreaming that I might
come back some day. I don't think I ever shall – now." Will paused here.
"You wished me to know the reasons?" said Dorothea, timidly.
"Yes," said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking away from her
with irritation in his face. "Of course I must wish it. I have been grossly insulted in your
eyes and in the eyes of others. There has been a mean implication against my character. I
wish you to know that under no circumstances would I have lowered myself by – under no
circumstances would I have given men the chance of saying that I sought money under the
pretext of seeking – something else. There was no need of other safeguard against me – the
safeguard of wealth was enough."
Will rose from his chair with the last word and went – he hardly knew where; but it was
to the projecting window nearest him, which had been open as now about the same season a
year ago, when he and Dorothea had stood within it and talked together. Her whole heart
was going out at this moment in sympathy with Will's indignation: she only wanted to
convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to have turned away
from her as if she too had been part of the unfriendly world.
"It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any meanness to you,"
she began. Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead with him, she moved from her chair
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and went in front of him to her old place in the window, saying, "Do you suppose that I ever
disbelieved in you?"
When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the window,
without meeting her glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement following up the previous
anger of his tone. She was ready to say that it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was
helpless; but those strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could explicitly
mention kept her always in dread of saying too much. At this moment she had no belief that
Will would in any case have wanted to marry her, and she feared using words which might
imply such a belief. She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word –
"I am sure no safeguard was ever needed against you."
Will did not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these words of hers
seemed to him cruelly neutral, and he looked pale and miserable after his angry outburst. He
went to the table and fastened up his portfolio, while Dorothea looked at him from the
distance. They were wasting these last moments together in wretched silence. What could he
say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was the passionate love for her
which he forbade himself to utter? What could she say, since she might offer him no help –
since she was forced to keep the money that ought to have been his? – since to−day he
seemed not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?
But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the window again.
"I must go," he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which sometimes accompanies
bitter feeling, as if they had been tired and burned with gazing too close at a light.
"What shall you do in life?" said Dorothea, timidly. "Have your intentions remained just
the same as when we said good−by before?"
"Yes," said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as uninteresting. "I shall
work away at the first thing that offers. I suppose one gets a habit of doing without
happiness or hope."
"Oh, what sad words!" said Dorothea, with a dangerous tendency to sob. Then trying to
smile, she added, "We used to agree that we were alike in speaking too strongly."
"I have not spoken too strongly now," said Will, leaning back against the angle of the
wall. "There are certain things which a man can only go through once in his life; and he
must know some time or other that the best is over with him. This experience has happened
to me while I am very young – that is all. What I care more for than I can ever care for
anything else is absolutely forbidden to me – I don't mean merely by being out of my reach,
but forbidden me, even if it were within my reach, by my own pride and honor – by
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everything I respect myself for. Of course I shall go on living as a man might do who had
seen heaven in a trance."
Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Dorothea to misunderstand this;
indeed he felt that he was contradicting himself and offending against his self−approval in
speaking to her so plainly; but still – it could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her
that he would never woo her. It must be admitted to be a ghostly kind of wooing.
But Dorothea's mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another vision than his.
The thought that she herself might be what Will most cared for did throb through her an
instant, but then came doubt: the memory of the little they had lived through together turned
pale and shrank before the memory which suggested how much fuller might have been the
intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had had constant companionship.
Everything he had said might refer to that other relation, and whatever had passed between
him and herself was thoroughly explained by what she had always regarded as their simple
friendship and the cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband's injurious act. Dorothea
stood silent, with her eyes cast down dreamily, while images crowded upon her which left
the sickening certainty that Will was referring to Mrs. Lydgate. But why sickening? He
wanted her to know that here too his conduct should be above suspicion.
Will was not surprised at her silence. His mind also was tumultuously busy while he
watched her, and he was feeling rather wildly that something must happen to hinder their
parting – some miracle, clearly nothing in their own deliberate speech. Yet, after all, had she
any love for him? – he could not pretend to himself that he would rather believe her to be
without that pain. He could not deny that a secret longing for the assurance that she loved
him was at the root of all his words.
Neither of them knew how long they stood in that way. Dorothea was raising her eyes,
and was about to speak, when the door opened and her footman came to say –
"The horses are ready, madam, whenever you like to start."
"Presently," said Dorothea. Then turning to Will, she said, "I have some memoranda to
write for the housekeeper."
"I must go," said Will, when the door had closed again – advancing towards her. "The
day after to−morrow I shall leave Middlemarch."
"You have acted in every way rightly," said Dorothea, in a low tone, feeling a pressure
at her heart which made it difficult to speak.
She put out her hand, and Will took it for an instant with. out speaking, for her words
had seemed to him cruelly cold and unlike herself. Their eyes met, but there was discontent
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in his, and in hers there was only sadness. He turned away and took his portfolio under his
arm.
"I have never done you injustice. Please remember me," said Dorothea, repressing a
rising sob.
"Why should you say that?" said Will, with irritation. "As if I were not in danger of
forgetting everything else."
He had really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it impelled him to
go away without pause. It was all one flash to Dorothea – his last words – his distant bow to
her as he reached the door – the sense that he was no longer there. She sank into the chair,
and for a few moments sat like a statue, while images and emotions were hurrying upon her.
Joy came first, in spite of the threatening train behind it – joy in the impression that it was
really herself whom Will loved and was renouncing, that there was really no other love less
permissible, more blameworthy, which honor was hurrying him away from. They were
parted all the same, but – Dorothea drew a deep breath and felt her strength return – she
could think of him unrestrainedly. At that moment the parting was easy to bear: the first
sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow. It was as if some hard icy pressure had
melted, and her consciousness had room to expand: her past was come back to her with
larger interpretation. The joy was not the less – perhaps it was the more complete just then –
because of the irrevocable parting; for there was no reproach, no contemptuous wonder to
imagine in any eye or from any lips. He had acted so as to defy reproach, and make wonder
respectful.
Any one watching her might have seen that there was a fortifying thought within her.
Just as when inventive power is working with glad ease some small claim on the attention is
fully met as if it were only a cranny opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for Dorothea to
write her memoranda. She spoke her last words to the housekeeper in cheerful tones, and
when she seated herself in the carriage her eyes were bright and her cheeks blooming under
the dismal bonnet. She threw back the heavy "weepers," and looked before her, wondering
which road Will had taken. It was in her nature to be proud that he was blameless, and
through all her feelings there ran this vein – "I was right to defend him."
The coachman was used to drive his grays at a good pane, Mr. Casaubon being
unenjoying and impatient in everything away from his desk, and wanting to get to the end of
all journeys; and Dorothea was now bowled along quickly. Driving was pleasant, for rain in
the night had laid the dust, and the blue sky looked far off, away from the region of the great
clouds that sailed in masses. The earth looked like a happy place under the vast heavens, and
Dorothea was wishing that she might overtake Will and see him once more.
After a turn of the road, there he was with the portfolio under his arm; but the next
moment she was passing him while he raised his hat, and she felt a pang at being seated
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there in a sort of exaltation, leaving him behind. She could not look back at him. It was as if
a crowd of indifferent objects had thrust them asunder, and forced them along different
paths, taking them farther and farther away from each other, and making it useless to look
back. She could no more make any sign that would seem to say, "Need we part?" than she
could stop the carriage to wait for him. Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon her
against any movement of her thought towards a future that might reverse the decision of this
day!
"I only wish I had known before – I wish he knew – then we could be quite happy in
thinking of each other, though we are forever parted. And if I could but have given him the
money, and made things easier for him!" – were the longings that came back the most
persistently. And yet, so heavily did the world weigh on her in spite of her independent
energy, that with this idea of Will as in need of such help and at a disadvantage with the
world, there came always the vision of that unfittingness of any closer relation between them
which lay in the opinion of every one connected with her. She felt to the full all the
imperativeness of the motives which urged Will's conduct. How could he dream of her
defying the barrier that her husband had placed between them? – how could she ever say to
herself that she would defy it?
Will's certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much more bitterness
in it. Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood, and the sight of
Dorothea driving past him while he felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a
position in a world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted, made his
conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the sustainment of resolve. After
all, he had no assurance that she loved him: could any man pretend that he was simply glad
in such a case to have the suffering all on his own side?
That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next evening he was gone.
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CHAPTER LXIII.
T
hese little things are great to little man. – GOLDSMITH.
"Have you seen much of your scientific phoenix, Lydgate, lately?" said Mr. Toller at
one of his Christmas dinner−parties, speaking to Mr. Farebrother on his right hand.
"Not much, I am sorry to say," answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry Mr. Toller's
banter about his belief in the new medical light. "I am out of the way and he is too busy."
"Is he? I am glad to hear it," said Dr. Minchin, with mingled suavity and surprise.
"He gives a great deal of time to the New Hospital," said Mr. Farebrother, who had his
reasons for continuing the subject: "I hear of that from my neighbor, Mrs. Casaubon, who
goes there often. She says Lydgate is indefatigable, and is making a fine thing of Bulstrode's
institution. He is preparing a new ward in case of the cholera coming to us."
"And preparing theories of treatment to try on the patients, I suppose," said Mr. Toller.
"Come, Toller, be candid," said Mr. Farebrother. "You are too clever not to see the good
of a bold fresh mind in medicine, as well as in everything else; and as to cholera, I fancy,
none of you are very sure what you ought to do. If a man goes a little too far along a new
road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any one else."
"I am sure you and Wrench ought to be obliged to him," said Dr. Minchin, looking
towards Toller, "for he has sent you the cream of Peacock's patients."
"Lydgate has been living at a great rate for a young beginner," said Mr. Harry Toller,
the brewer. "I suppose his relations in the North back him up."
"I hope so," said Mr. Chichely, "else he ought not to have married that nice girl we were
all so fond of. Hang it, one has a grudge against a man who carries off the prettiest girl in the
town."
"Ay, by God! and the best too," said Mr. Standish.
"My friend Vincy didn't half like the marriage, I know that," said Mr. Chichely. "HE
wouldn't do much. How the relations on the other side may have come down I can't say."
There was an emphatic kind of reticence in Mr. Chichely's manner of speaking.
"Oh, I shouldn't think Lydgate ever looked to practice for a living," said Mr. Toller,
with a slight touch of sarcasm, and there the subject was dropped.
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This was not the first time that Mr. Farebrother had heard hints of Lydgate's expenses
being obviously too great to be met by his practice, but he thought it not unlikely that there
were resources or expectations which excused the large outlay at the time of Lydgate's
marriage, and which might hinder any bad consequences from the disappointment in his
practice. One evening, when he took the pains to go to Middlemarch on purpose to have a
chat with Lydgate as of old, he noticed in him an air of excited effort quite unlike his usual
easy way of keeping silence or breaking it with abrupt energy whenever he had anything to
say. Lydgate talked persistently when they were in his work−room, putting arguments for
and against the probability of certain biological views; but he had none of those definite
things to say or to show which give the waymarks of a patient uninterrupted pursuit, such as
he used himself to insist on, saying that "there must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry,"
and that "a man's mind must be continually expanding and shrinking between the whole
human horizon and the horizon of an object−glass." That evening he seemed to be talking
widely for the sake of resisting any personal bearing; and before long they went into the
drawing room, where Lydgate, having asked Rosamond to give them music, sank back in his
chair in silence, but with a strange light in his eyes. "He may have been taking an opiate,"
was a thought that crossed Mr. Farebrother's mind – "tic−douloureux perhaps – or medical
worries."
It did not occur to him that Lydgate's marriage was not delightful: he believed, as the
rest did, that Rosamond was an amiable, docile creature, though he had always thought her
rather uninteresting – a little too much the pattern−card of the finishing−school; and his
mother could not forgive Rosamond because she never seemed to see that Henrietta Noble
was in the room. "However, Lydgate fell in love with her," said the Vicar to himself, "and
she must be to his taste."
Mr. Farebrother was aware that Lydgate was a proud man, but having very little
corresponding fibre in himself, and perhaps too little care about personal dignity, except the
dignity of not being mean or foolish, he could hardly allow enough for the way in which
Lydgate shrank, as from a burn, from the utterance of any word about his private affairs.
And soon after that conversation at Mr. Toller's, the Vicar learned something which made
him watch the more eagerly for an opportunity of indirectly letting Lydgate know that if he
wanted to open himself about any difficulty there was a friendly ear ready.
The opportunity came at Mr. Vincy's, where, on New Year's Day, there was a party, to
which Mr. Farebrother was irresistibly invited, on the plea that he must not forsake his old
friends on the first new year of his being a greater man, and Rector as well as Vicar. And
this party was thoroughly friendly: all the ladies of the Farebrother family were present; the
Vincy children all dined at the table, and Fred had persuaded his mother that if she did not
invite Mary Garth, the Farebrothers would regard it as a slight to themselves, Mary being
their particular friend. Mary came, and Fred was in high spirits, though his enjoyment was
of a checkered kind – triumph that his mother should see Mary's importance with the chief
personages in the party being much streaked with jealousy when Mr. Farebrother sat down
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by her. Fred used to be much more easy about his own accomplishments in the days when
he had not begun to dread being "bowled out by Farebrother," and this terror was still before
him. Mrs. Vincy, in her fullest matronly bloom, looked at Mary's little figure, rough wavy
hair, and visage quite without lilies and roses, and wondered; trying unsuccessfully to fancy
herself caring about Mary's appearance in wedding clothes, or feeling complacency in
grandchildren who would "feature" the Garths. However, the party was a merry one, and
Mary was particularly bright; being glad, for Fred's sake, that his friends were getting kinder
to her, and being also quite willing that they should see how much she was valued by others
whom they must admit to be judges.
Mr. Farebrother noticed that Lydgate seemed bored, and that Mr. Vincy spoke as little
as possible to his son−in−law. Rosamond was perfectly graceful and calm, and only a subtle
observation such as the Vicar had not been roused to bestow on her would have perceived
the total absence of that interest in her husband's presence which a loving wife is sure to
betray, even if etiquette keeps her aloof from him. When Lydgate was taking part in the
conversation, she never looked towards him any more than if she had been a sculptured
Psyche modelled to look another way: and when, after being called out for an hour or two,
he re−entered the room, she seemed unconscious of the fact, which eighteen months before
would have had the effect of a numeral before ciphers. In reality, however, she was intensely
aware of Lydgate's voice and movements; and her pretty good−tempered air of
unconsciousness was a studied negation by which she satisfied her inward opposition to him
without compromise of propriety. When the ladies were in the drawing−room after Lydgate
had been called away from the dessert, Mrs. Farebrother, when Rosamond happened to be
near her, said – "You have to give up a great deal of your husband's society, Mrs. Lydgate."
"Yes, the life of a medical man is very arduous: especially when he is so devoted to his
profession as Mr. Lydgate is," said Rosamond, who was standing, and moved easily away at
the end of this correct little speech.
"It is dreadfully dull for her when there is no company," said Mrs. Vincy, who was
seated at the old lady's side. "I am sure I thought so when Rosamond was ill, and I was
staying with her. You know, Mrs. Farebrother, ours is a cheerful house. I am of a cheerful
disposition myself, and Mr. Vincy always likes something to be going on. That is what
Rosamond has been used to. Very different from a husband out at odd hours, and never
knowing when he will come home, and of a close, proud disposition, I think" – indiscreet
Mrs. Vincy did lower her tone slightly with this parenthesis. "But Rosamond always had an
angel of a temper; her brothers used very often not to please her, but she was never the girl
to show temper; from a baby she was always as good as good, and with a complexion
beyond anything. But my children are all good−tempered, thank God."
This was easily credible to any one looking at Mrs. Vincy as she threw back her broad
cap−strings, and smiled towards her three little girls, aged from seven to eleven. But in that
smiling glance she was obliged to include Mary Garth, whom the three girls had got into a
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corner to make her tell them stories. Mary was just finishing the delicious tale of
Rumpelstiltskin, which she had well by heart, because Letty was never tired of
communicating it to her ignorant elders from a favorite red volume. Louisa, Mrs. Vincy's
darling, now ran to her with wide−eyed serious excitement, crying, "Oh mamma, mamma,
the little man stamped so hard on the floor he couldn't get his leg out again!"
"Bless you, my cherub!" said mamma; "you shall tell me all about it to−morrow. Go
and listen!" and then, as her eyes followed Louisa back towards the attractive corner, she
thought that if Fred wished her to invite Mary again she would make no objection, the
children being so pleased with her.
But presently the corner became still more animated, for Mr. Farebrother came in, and
seating himself behind Louisa, took her on his lap; whereupon the girls all insisted that he
must hear Rumpelstiltskin, and Mary must tell it over again. He insisted too, and Mary,
without fuss, began again in her neat fashion, with precisely the same words as before. Fred,
who had also seated himself near, would have felt unmixed triumph in Mary's effectiveness
if Mr. Farebrother had not been looking at her with evident admiration, while he dramatized
an intense interest in the tale to please the children.
"You will never care any more about my one−eyed giant, Loo," said Fred at the end.
"Yes, I shall. Tell about him now," said Louisa.
"Oh, I dare say; I am quite cut out. Ask Mr. Farebrother."
"Yes," added Mary; "ask Mr. Farebrother to tell you about the ants whose beautiful
house was knocked down by a giant named Tom, and he thought they didn't mind because
he couldn't hear them cry, or see them use their pocket−handkerchiefs."
"Please," said Louisa, looking up at the Vicar.
"No, no, I am a grave old parson. If I try to draw a story out of my bag a sermon comes
instead. Shall I preach you a sermon?" said he, putting on his short−sighted glasses, and
pursing up his lips.
"Yes," said Louisa, falteringly.
"Let me see, then. Against cakes: how cakes are bad things, especially if they are sweet
and have plums in them."
Louisa took the affair rather seriously, and got down from the Vicar's knee to go to
Fred.
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"Ah, I see it will not do to preach on New Year's Day," said Mr. Farebrother, rising and
walking – away. He had discovered of late that Fred had become jealous of him, and also
that he himself was not losing his preference for Mary above all other women.
"A delightful young person is Miss Garth," said Mrs. Farebrother, who had been
watching her son's movements.
"Yes," said Mrs. Vincy, obliged to reply, as the old lady turned to her expectantly. "It is
a pity she is not better−looking."
"I cannot say that," said Mrs. Farebrother, decisively. "I like her countenance. We must
not always ask for beauty, when a good God has seen fit to make an excellent young woman
without it. I put good manners first, and Miss Garth will know how to conduct herself in any
station."
The old lady was a little sharp in her tone, having a prospective reference to Mary's
becoming her daughter−in−law; for there was this inconvenience in Mary's position with
regard to Fred, that it was not suitable to be made public, and hence the three ladies at
Lowick Parsonage were still hoping that Camden would choose Miss Garth.
New visitors entered, and the drawing−room was given up to music and games, while
whist−tables were prepared in the quiet room on the other side of the hall. Mr. Farebrother
played a rubber to satisfy his mother, who regarded her occasional whist as a protest against
scandal and novelty of opinion, in which light even a revoke had its dignity. But at the end
he got Mr. Chichely to take his place, and left the room. As he crossed the hall, Lydgate had
just come in and was taking off his great−coat.
"You are the man I was going to look for," said the Vicar; and instead of entering the
drawing−room, they walked along the hall and stood against the fireplace, where the frosty
air helped to make a glowing bank. "You see, I can leave the whist−table easily enough," he
went on, smiling at Lydgate, "now I don't play for money. I owe that to you, Mrs. Casaubon
says."
"How?" said Lydgate, coldly.
"Ah, you didn't mean me to know it; I call that ungenerous reticence. You should let a
man have the pleasure of feeling that you have done him a good turn. I don't enter into some
people's dislike of being under an obligation: upon my word, I prefer being under an
obligation to everybody for behaving well to me."
"I can't tell what you mean," said Lydgate, "unless it is that I once spoke of you to Mrs.
Casaubon. But I did not think that she would break her promise not to mention that I had
done so," said Lydgate, leaning his back against the corner of the mantel−piece, and
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showing no radiance in his face.
"It was Brooke who let it out, only the other day. He paid me the compliment of saying
that he was very glad I had the living though you had come across his tactics, and had
praised me up as a lien and a Tillotson, and that sort of thing, till Mrs. Casaubon would hear
of no one else."
"Oh, Brooke is such a leaky−minded fool," said Lydgate, contemptuously.
"Well, I was glad of the leakiness then. I don't see why you shouldn't like me to know
that you wished to do me a service, my dear fellow. And you certainly have done me one.
It's rather a strong check to one's self−complacency to find how much of one's right doing
depends on not being in want of money. A man will not be tempted to say the Lord's Prayer
backward to please the devil, if he doesn't want the devil's services. I have no need to hang
on the smiles of chance now."
"I don't see that there's any money−getting without chance," said Lydgate; "if a man
gets it in a profession, it's pretty sure to come by chance."
Mr. Farebrother thought he could account for this speech, in striking contrast with
Lydgate's former way of talking, as the perversity which will often spring from the
moodiness of a man ill at ease in his affairs. He answered in a tone of good−humored
admission –
"Ah, there's enormous patience wanted with the way of the world. But it is the easier for
a man to wait patiently when he has friends who love him, and ask for nothing better than to
help him through, so far as it lies in their power."
"Oh yes," said Lydgate, in a careless tone, changing his attitude and looking at his
watch. "People make much more of their difficulties than they need to do."
He knew as distinctly as possible that this was an offer of help to himself from Mr.
Farebrother, and he could not bear it. So strangely determined are we mortals, that, after
having been long gratified with the sense that he had privately done the Vicar a service, the
suggestion that the Vicar discerned his need of a service in return made him shrink into
unconquerable reticence. Besides, behind all making of such offers what else must come? –
that he should "mention his case," imply that he wanted specific things. At that moment,
suicide seemed easier.
Mr. Farebrother was too keen a man not to know the meaning of that reply, and there
was a certain massiveness in Lydgate's manner and tone, corresponding with his physique,
which if he repelled your advances in the first instance seemed to put persuasive devices out
of question.
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"What time are you?" said the Vicar, devouring his wounded feeling.
"After eleven," said Lydgate. And they went into the drawing−room.
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CHAPTER LXIV.
1s
t Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.
2d Gent. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright
The coming pest with border fortresses,
Or catch your carp with subtle argument.
All force is twain in one: cause is not cause
Unless effect be there; and action's self
Must needs contain a passive. So command
Exists but with obedience."
Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs, he knew that it
would have hardly been in Mr. Farebrother's power to give him the help he immediately
wanted. With the year's bills coming in from his tradesmen, with Dover's threatening hold
on his furniture, and with nothing to depend on but slow dribbling payments from patients
who must not be offended – for the handsome fees he had had from Freshitt Hall and
Lowick Manor had been easily absorbed – nothing less than a thousand pounds would have
freed him from actual embarrassment, and left a residue which, according to the favorite
phrase of hopefulness in such circumstances, would have given him "time to look about
him."
Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year, when fellow−citizens
expect to be paid for the trouble and goods they have smilingly bestowed on their neighbors,
had so tightened the pressure of sordid cares on Lydgate's mind that it was hardly possible
for him to think unbrokenly of any other subject, even the most habitual and soliciting. He
was not an ill−tempered man; his intellectual activity, the ardent kindness of his heart, as
well as his strong frame, would always, under tolerably easy conditions, have kept him
above the petty uncontrolled susceptibilities which make bad temper. But he was now a prey
to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances, but from the second
consciousness underlying those annoyances, of wasted energy and a degrading
preoccupation, which was the reverse of all his former purposes. "THIS is what I am
thinking of; and THAT is what I might have been thinking of," was the bitter incessant
murmur within him, making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.
Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with
the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the
sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's
discontent was much harder to bear: it was the sense that there was a grand existence in
thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being narrowed into the
miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such
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fears. His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the attention of lofty
persons who can know nothing of debt except on a magnificent scale. Doubtless they were
sordid; and for the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by
being free from money−craving, with all its base hopes and temptations, its watching for
death, its hinted requests. its horse−dealer's desire to make bad work pass for good, its
seeking for function which ought to be another's, its compulsion often to long for Luck in
the shape of a wide calamity.
It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck beneath this vile yoke
that he had fallen into a bitter moody state which was continually widening Rosamond's
alienation from him. After the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made many
efforts to draw her into sympathy with him about possible measures for narrowing their
expenses, and with the threatening approach of Christmas his propositions grew more and
more definite. "We two can do with only one servant, and live on very little," he said, "and I
shall manage with one horse." For Lydgate, as we have seen, had begun to reason, with a
more distinct vision, about the expenses of living, and any share of pride he had given to
appearances of that sort was meagre compared with the pride which made him revolt from
exposure as a debtor, or from asking men to help him with their money.
"Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like," said Rosamond; "but I
should have thought it would be very injurious to your position for us to live in a poor way.
You must expect your practice to be lowered."
"My dear Rosamond, it is not a question of choice. We have begun too expensively.
Peacock, you know, lived in a much smaller house than this. It is my fault: I ought to have
known better, and I deserve a thrashing – if there were anybody who had a right to give it
me – for bringing you into the necessity of living in a poorer way than you have been used
to. But we married because we loved each other, I suppose. And that may help us to pull
along till things get better. Come, dear, put down that work and come to me."
He was really in chill gloom about her at that moment, but he dreaded a future without
affection, and was determined to resist the oncoming of division between them. Rosamond
obeyed him, and he took her on his knee, but in her secret soul she was utterly aloof from
him. The poor thing saw only that the world was not ordered to her liking, and Lydgate was
part of that world. But he held her waist with one hand and laid the other gently on both of
hers; for this rather abrupt man had much tenderness in his manners towards women,
seeming to have always present in his imagination the weakness of their frames and the
delicate poise of their health both in body and mind. And he began again to speak
persuasively.
"I find, now I look into things a little, Rosy, that it is wonderful what an amount of
money slips away in our housekeeping. I suppose the servants are careless, and we have had
a great many people coming. But there must be many in our rank who manage with much
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less: they must do with commoner things, I suppose, and look after the scraps. It seems,
money goes but a little way in these matters, for Wrench has everything as plain as possible,
and he has a very large practice."
"Oh, if you think of living as the Wrenches do!" said Rosamond, with a little turn of her
neck. "But I have heard you express your disgust at that way of living."
"Yes, they have bad taste in everything – they make economy look ugly. We needn't do
that. I only meant that they avoid expenses, although Wrench has a capital practice."
"Why should not you have a good practice, Tertius? Mr. Peacock had. You should be
more careful not to offend people, and you should send out medicines as the others do. I am
sure you began well, and you got several good houses. It cannot answer to be eccentric; you
should think what will be generally liked," said Rosamond, in a decided little tone of
admonition.
Lydgate's anger rose: he was prepared to be indulgent towards feminine weakness, but
not towards feminine dictation. The shallowness of a waternixie's soul may have a charm
until she becomes didactic. But he controlled himself, and only said, with a touch of
despotic firmness –
"What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge. That is not the question
between us. It is enough for you to know that our income is likely to be a very narrow one –
hardly four hundred, perhaps less, for a long time to come, and we must try to re−arrange
our lives in accordance with that fact."
Rosamond was silent for a moment or two, looking before her, and then said, "My uncle
Bulstrode ought to allow you a salary for the time you give to the Hospital: it is not right that
you should work for nothing."
"It was understood from the beginning that my services would be gratuitous. That,
again, need not enter into our discussion. I have pointed out what is the only probability,"
said Lydgate, impatiently. Then checking himself, he went on more quietly –
"I think I see one resource which would free us from a good deal of the present
difficulty. I hear that young Ned Plymdale is going to be married to Miss Sophy Toller.
They are rich, and it is not often that a good house is vacant in Middlemarch. I feel sure that
they would be glad to take this house from us with most of our furniture, and they would be
willing to pay handsomely for the lease. I can employ Trumbull to speak to Plymdale about
it."
Rosamond left her husband's knee and walked slowly to the other end of the room;
when she turned round and walked towards him it was evident that the tears had come, and
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that she was biting her under−lip and clasping her hands to keep herself from crying.
Lydgate was wretched – shaken with anger and yet feeling that it would be unmanly to vent
the anger just now.
"I am very sorry, Rosamond; I know this is painful."
"I thought, at least, when I had borne to send the plate back and have that man taking an
inventory of the furniture – I should have thought THAT would suffice."
"I explained it to you at the time, dear. That was only a security and behind that
Security there is a debt. And that debt must be paid within the next few months, else we
shall have our furniture sold. If young Plymdale will take our house and most of our
furniture, we shall be able to pay that debt, and some others too, and we shall be quit of a
place too expensive for us. We might take a smaller house: Trumbull, I know, has a very
decent one to let at thirty pounds a−year, and this is ninety." Lydgate uttered this speech in
the curt hammering way with which we usually try to nail down a vague mind to imperative
facts. Tears rolled silently down Rosamond's cheeks; she just pressed her handkerchief
against them, and stood looking al; the large vase on the mantel−piece. It was a moment of
more intense bitterness than she had ever felt before. At last she said, without hurry and with
careful emphasis –
"I never could have believed that you would like to act in that way."
"Like it?" burst out Lydgate, rising from his chair, thrusting his hands in his pockets and
stalking away from the hearth; "it's not a question of liking. Of course, I don't like it; it's the
only thing I can do." He wheeled round there, and turned towards her.
"I should have thought there were many other means than that," said Rosamond. "Let us
have a sale and leave Middlemarch altogether."
"To do what? What is the use of my leaving my work in Middlemarch to go where I
have none? We should be just as penniless elsewhere as we are here," said Lydgate still
more angrily.
"If we are to be in that position it will be entirely your own doing, Tertius," said
Rosamond, turning round to speak with the fullest conviction. "You will not behave as you
ought to do to your own family. You offended Captain Lydgate. Sir Godwin was very kind
to me when we were at Quallingham, and I am sure if you showed proper regard to him and
told him your affairs, he would do anything for you. But rather than that, you like giving up
our house and furniture to Mr. Ned Plymdale."
There was something like fierceness in Lydgate's eyes, as he answered with new
violence, "Well, then, if you will have it so, I do like it. I admit that I like it better than
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making a fool of myself by going to beg where it's of no use. Understand then, that it is what
I LIKE TO DO."
There was a tone in the last sentence which was equivalent to the clutch of his strong
hand on Rosamond's delicate arm. But for all that, his will was not a whit stronger than hers.
She immediately walked out of the room in silence, but with an intense determination to
hinder what Lydgate liked to do.
He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled he felt that the chief result of the
discussion was a deposit of dread within him at the idea of opening with his wife in future
subjects which might again urge him to violent speech. It was as if a fracture in delicate
crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might mate it fatal. His marriage
would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on loving each other. He had long
ago made up his mind to what he thought was her negative character – her want of
sensibility, which showed itself in disregard both of his specific wishes and of his general
aims. The first great disappointment had been borne: the tender devotedness and docile
adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be taken up on a lower stage of
expectation, as it is by men who have lost their limbs. But the real wife had not only her
claims, she had still a hold on his heart, and it was his intense desire that the hold should
remain strong. In marriage, the certainty, "She will never love me much," is easier to bear
than the fear, "I shall love her no more." Hence, after that outburst, his inward effort was
entirely to excuse her, and to blame the hard circumstances which were partly his fault. He
tried that evening, by petting her, to heal the wound he had made in the morning, and it was
not in Rosamond's nature to be repellent or sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that her
husband loved her and was under control. But this was something quite distinct from loving
HIM. Lydgate would not have chosen soon to recur to the plan of parting with the house; he
was resolved to carry it out, and say as little more about it as possible. But Rosamond herself
touched on it at breakfast by saying, mildly –
"Have you spoken to Trumbull yet?"
"No," said Lydgate, "but I shall call on him as I go by this morning. No time must be
lost." He took Rosamond's question as a sign that she withdrew her inward opposition, and
kissed her head caressingly when he got up to go away.
As soon as it was late enough to make a call, Rosamond went to Mrs. Plymdale, Mr.
Ned's mother, and entered with pretty congratulations into the of the coming marriage. Mrs.
Plymdale's maternal view was, that Rosamond might possibly now have retrospective
glimpses of her own folly; and feeling the advantages to be at present all on the side of her
son, was too kind a woman not to behave graciously.
"Yes, Ned is most happy, I must say. And Sophy Toller is all I could desire in a
daughter−in−law. Of course her father is able to do something handsome for her – that is
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only what would be expected with a brewery like his. And the connection is everything we
should desire. But that is not what I look at. She is such a very nice girl – no airs, no
pretensions, though on a level with the first. I don't mean with the titled aristocracy. I see
very little good in people aiming out of their own sphere. I mean that Sophy is equal to the
best in the town, and she is contented with that."
"I have always thought her very agreeable," said Rosamond.
"I look upon it as a reward for Ned, who never held his head too high, that he should
have got into the very best connection," continued Mrs. Plymdale, her native sharpness
softened by a fervid sense that she was taking a correct view. "And such particular people as
the Tollers are, they might have objected because some of our friends are not theirs. It is
well known that your aunt Bulstrode and I have been intimate from our youth, and Mr.
Plymdale has been always on Mr. Bulstrode's side. And I myself prefer serious opinions. But
the Tollers have welcomed Ned all the same."
"I am sure he is a very deserving, well−principled young man," said Rosamond, with a
neat air of patronage in return for Mrs. Plymdale's wholesome corrections.
"Oh, he has not the style of a captain in the army, or that sort of carriage as if everybody
was beneath him, or that showy kind of talking, and singing, and intellectual talent. But I am
thankful he has not. It is a poor preparation both for here and Hereafter."
"Oh dear, yes; appearances have very little to do with happiness," said Rosamond. "I
think there is every prospect of their being a happy couple. What house will they take?"
"Oh, as for that, they must put up with what they can get. They have been looking at the
house in St. Peter's Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's; it belongs to him, and he is putting it
nicely in repair. I suppose they are not likely to hear of a better. Indeed, I think Ned will
decide the matter to−day."
"I should think it is a nice house; I like St. Peter's Place."
"Well, it is near the Church, and a genteel situation. But the windows are narrow, and it
is all ups and downs. You don't happen to know of any other that would be at liberty?" said
Mrs. Plymdale, fixing her round black eyes on Rosamond with the animation of a sudden
thought in them.
"Oh no; I hear so little of those things."
Rosamond had not foreseen that question and answer in setting out to pay her visit; she
had simply meant to gather any information which would help her to avert the parting with
her own house under circumstances thoroughly disagreeable to her. As to the untruth in her
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reply, she no more reflected on it than she did on the untruth there was in her saying that
appearances had very little to do with happiness. Her object, she was convinced, was
thoroughly justifiable: it was Lydgate whose intention was inexcusable; and there was a plan
in her mind which, when she had carried it out fully, would prove how very false a step it
would have been for him to have descended from his position.
She returned home by Mr. Borthrop Trumbull's office, meaning to call there. It was the
first time in her life that Rosamond had thought of doing anything in the form of business,
but she felt equal to the occasion. That she should be obliged to do what she intensely
disliked, was an idea which turned her quiet tenacity into active invention. Here was a case
in which it could not be enough simply to disobey and be serenely, placidly obstinate: she
must act according to her judgment, and she said to herself that her judgment was right –
"indeed, if it had not been, she would not have wished to act on it."
Mr. Trumbull was in the back−room of his office, and received Rosamond with his
finest manners, not only because he had much sensibility to her charms, but because the
good−natured fibre in him was stirred by his certainty that Lydgate was in difficulties, and
that this uncommonly pretty woman – this young lady with the highest personal attractions –
was likely to feel the pinch of trouble – to find herself involved in circumstances beyond her
control. He begged her to do him the honor to take a seat, and stood before her trimming and
comporting himself with an eager solicitude, which was chiefly benevolent. Rosamond's
first question was, whether her husband had called on Mr. Trumbull that morning, to speak
about disposing of their house.
"Yes, ma'am, yes, he did; he did so," said the good auctioneer, trying to throw
something soothing into his iteration. "I was about to fulfil his order, if possible, this
afternoon. He wished me not to procrastinate."
"I called to tell you not to go any further, Mr. Trumbull; and I beg of you not to mention
what has been said on the subject. Will you oblige me?"
"Certainly I will, Mrs. Lydgate, certainly. Confidence is sacred with me on business or
any other topic. I am then to consider the commission withdrawn?" said Mr. Trumbull,
adjusting the long ends of his blue cravat with both hands, and looking at Rosamond
deferentially.
"Yes, if you please. I find that Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house – the one in St.
Peter's Place next to Mr. Hackbutt's. Mr. Lydgate would be annoyed that his orders should
be fulfilled uselessly. And besides that, there are other circumstances which render the
proposal unnecessary."
"Very good, Mrs. Lydgate, very good. I am at your commands, whenever you require
any service of me," said Mr. Trumbull, who felt pleasure in conjecturing that some new
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resources had been opened. "Rely on me, I beg. The affair shall go no further."
That evening Lydgate was a little comforted by observing that Rosamond was more
lively than she had usually been of late, and even seemed interested in doing what would
please him without being asked. He thought, "If she will be happy and I can rub through,
what does it all signify? It is only a narrow swamp that we have to pass in a long journey. If
I can get my mind clear again, I shall do."
He was so much cheered that he began to search for an account of experiments which
he had long ago meant to look up, and had neglected out of that creeping self−despair which
comes in the train of petty anxieties. He felt again some of the old delightful absorption in a
far−reaching inquiry, while Rosamond played the quiet music which was as helpful to his
meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening lake. It was rather late; he had pushed away
all the books, and was looking at the fire with his hands clasped behind his head in
forgetfulness of everything except the construction of a new controlling experiment, when
Rosamond, who had left the piano and was leaning back in her chair watching him, said –
"Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house already."
Lydgate, startled and jarred, looked up in silence for a moment, like a man who has
been disturbed in his sleep. Then flushing with an unpleasant consciousness, he asked –
"How do you know?"
"I called at Mrs. Plymdale's this morning, and she told me that he had taken the house in
St. Peter's Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's."
Lydgate was silent. He drew his hands from behind his head and pressed them against
the hair which was hanging, as it was apt to do, in a mass on his forehead, while he rested
his elbows on his knees. He was feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had opened a door
out of a suffocating place and had found it walled up; but he also felt sure that Rosamond
was pleased with the cause of his disappointment. He preferred not looking at her and not
speaking, until he had got over the first spasm of vexation. After all, he said in his bitterness,
what can a woman care about so much as house and furniture? a husband without them is an
absurdity. When he looked up and pushed his hair aside, his dark eyes had a miserable blank
non−expectance of sympathy in them, but he only said, coolly –
"Perhaps some one else may turn up. I told Trumbull to be on the look−out if he failed
with Plymdale."
Rosamond made no remark. She trusted to the chance that nothing more would pass
between her husband and the auctioneer until some issue should have justified her
interference; at any rate, she had hindered the event which she immediately dreaded. After a
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pause, she said –
"How much money is it that those disagreeable people want?"
"What disagreeable people?"
"Those who took the list – and the others. I mean, how much money would satisfy them
so that you need not be troubled any more?"
Lydgate surveyed her for a moment, as if he were looking for symptoms, and then said,
"Oh, if I could have got six hundred from Plymdale for furniture and as premium, I might
have managed. I could have paid off Dover, and given enough on account to the others to
make them wait patiently, if we contracted our expenses."
"But I mean how much should you want if we stayed in this house?"
"More than I am likely to get anywhere," said Lydgate, with rather a grating sarcasm in
his tone. It angered him to perceive that Rosamond's mind was wandering over
impracticable wishes instead of facing possible efforts.
"Why should you not mention the sum?" said Rosamond, with a mild indication that she
did not like his manners.
"Well," said Lydgate in a guessing tone, "it would take at least a thousand to set me at
ease. But," he added, incisively, "I have to consider what I shall do without it, not with it."
Rosamond said no more.
But the next day she carried out her plan of writing to Sir Godwin Lydgate. Since the
Captain's visit, she had received a letter from him, and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his
married sister, condoling with her on the loss of her baby, and expressing vaguely the hope
that they should see her again at Quallingham. Lydgate had told her that this politeness
meant nothing; but she was secretly convinced that any backwardness in Lydgate's family
towards him was due to his cold and contemptuous behavior, and she had answered the
letters in her most charming manner, feeling some confidence that a specific invitation
would follow. But there had been total silence. The Captain evidently was not a great
penman, and Rosamond reflected that the sisters might have been abroad. However, the
season was come for thinking of friends at home, and at any rate Sir Godwin, who had
chucked her under the chin, and pronounced her to be like the celebrated beauty, Mrs. Croly,
who had made a conquest of him in 1790, would be touched by any appeal from her, and
would find it pleasant for her sake to behave as he ought to do towards his nephew.
Rosamond was naively convinced of what an old gentleman ought to do to prevent her from
suffering annoyance. And she wrote what she considered the most judicious letter possible –
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CHAPTER LXIV. 538
one which would strike Sir Godwin as a proof of her excellent sense – pointing out how
desirable it was that Tertius should quit such a place as Middlemarch for one more fitted to
his talents, how the unpleasant character of the inhabitants had hindered his professional
success, and how in consequence he was in money difficulties, from which it would require
a thousand pounds thoroughly to extricate him. She did not say that Tertius was unaware of
her intention to write; for she had the idea that his supposed sanction of her letter would be
in accordance with what she did say of his great regard for his uncle Godwin as the relative
who had always been his best friend. Such was the force of Poor Rosamond's tactics now
she applied them to affairs.
This had happened before the party on New Year's Day, and no answer had yet come
from Sir Godwin. But on the morning of that day Lydgate had to learn that Rosamond had
revoked his order to Borthrop Trumbull. Feeling it necessary that she should be gradually
accustomed to the idea of their quitting the house in Lowick Gate, he overcame his
reluctance to speak to her again on the subject, and when they were breakfasting said –
"I shall try to see Trumbull this morning, and tell him to. advertise the house in the
`Pioneer' and the `Trumpet.' If the thing were advertised, some one might be inclined to take
it who would not otherwise have thought of a change. In these country places many people
go on in their old houses when their families are too large for them, for want of knowing
where they can find another. And Trumbull seems to have got no bite at all."
Rosamond knew that the inevitable moment was come. "I ordered Trumbull not to
inquire further," she said, with a careful calmness which was evidently defensive.
Lydgate stared at her in mute amazement. Only half an hour before he had been
fastening up her plaits for her, and talking the "little language" of affection, which
Rosamond, though not returning it, accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image,
now and then miraculously dimpling towards her votary. With such fibres still astir in him,
the shock he received could not at once be distinctly anger; it was confused pain. He laid
down the knife and fork with which he was carving, and throwing himself back in his chair,
said at last, with a cool irony in his tone –
"May I ask when and why you did so?"
"When I knew that the Plymdales had taken a house, I called to tell him not to mention
ours to them; and at the same time I told him not to let the affair go on any further. I knew
that it would be very injurious to you if it were known that you wished to part with your
house and furniture, and I had a very strong objection to it. I think that was reason enough."
"It was of no consequence then that I had told you imperative reasons of another kind;
of no consequence that I had come to a different conclusion, and given an order
accordingly?" said Lydgate, bitingly, the thunder and lightning gathering about his brow and
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CHAPTER LXIV. 539
eyes.
The effect of any one's anger on Rosamond had always been to make her shrink in cold
dislike, and to become all the more calmly correct, in the conviction that she was not the
person to misbehave whatever others might do. She replied –
"I think I had a perfect right to speak on a subject which concerns me at least as much
as you."
"Clearly – you had a right to speak, but only to me. You had no right to contradict my
orders secretly, and treat me as if I were a fool," said Lydgate, in the same tone as before.
Then with some added scorn, "Is it possible to make you understand what the consequences
will be? Is it of any use for me to tell you again why we must try to part with the house?"
"It is not necessary for you to tell me again," said Rosamond, in a voice that fell and
trickled like cold water−drops. "I remembered what you said. You spoke just as violently as
you do now. But that does not alter my opinion that you ought to try every other means
rather than take a step which is so painful to me. And as to advertising the house, I think it
would be perfectly degrading to you."
"And suppose I disregard your opinion as you disregard mine?"
"You can do so, of course. But I think you ought to have told me before we were
married that you would place me in the worst position, rather than give up your own will."
Lydgate did not speak, but tossed his head on one side, and twitched the corners of his
mouth in despair. Rosamond, seeing that he was not looking at her, rose and set his cup of
coffee before him; but he took no notice of it, and went on with an inward drama and
argument, occasionally moving in his seat, resting one arm on the table, and rubbing his
hand against his hair. There was a conflux of emotions and thoughts in him that would not
let him either give thorough way to his anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve.
Rosamond took advantage of his silence.
"When we were married everyone felt that your position was very high. I could not have
imagined then that you would want to sell our furniture, and take a house in Bride Street,
where the rooms are like cages. If we are to live in that way let us at least leave
Middlemarch."
"These would be very strong considerations," said Lydgate, half ironically – still there
was a withered paleness about his lips as he looked at his coffee, and did not drink – "these
would be very strong considerations if I did not happen to be in debt."
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CHAPTER LXIV. 540
"Many persons must have been in debt in the same way, but if they are respectable,
people trust them. I am sure I have heard papa say that the Torbits were in debt, and they
went on very well It cannot be good to act rashly," said Rosamond, with serene wisdom.
Lydgate sat paralyzed by opposing impulses: since no reasoning he could apply to
Rosamond seemed likely to conquer her assent, he wanted to smash and grind some object
on which he could at least produce an impression, or else to tell her brutally that he was
master, and she must obey. But he not only dreaded the effect of such extremities on their
mutual life – he had a growing dread of Rosamond's quiet elusive obstinacy, which would
not allow any assertion of power to be final; and again, she had touched him in a spot of
keenest feeling by implying that she had been deluded with a false vision of happiness in
marrying him. As to saying that he was master, it was not the fact. The very resolution to
which he had wrought himself by dint of logic and honorable pride was beginning to relax
under her torpedo contact. He swallowed half his cup of coffee, and then rose to go.
"I may at least request that you will not go to Trumbull at present – until it has been
seen that there are no other means," said Rosamond. Although she was not subject to much
fear, she felt it safer not to betray that she had written to Sir Godwin. "Promise me that you
will not go to him for a few weeks, or without telling me."
Lydgate gave a short laugh. "I think it is I who should exact a promise that you will do
nothing without telling me," he said, turning his eyes sharply upon her, and then moving to
the door.
"You remember that we are going to dine at papa's," said Rosamond, wishing that he
should turn and make a more thorough concession to her. But he only said "Oh yes,"
impatiently, and went away. She held it to be very odious in him that he did not think the
painful propositions he had had to make to her were enough, without showing so unpleasant
a temper. And when she put the moderate request that he would defer going to Trumbull
again, it was cruel in him not to assure her of what he meant to do. She was convinced of her
having acted in every way for the best; and each grating or angry speech of Lydgate's served
only as an addition to the register of offences in her mind. Poor Rosamond for months had
begun to associate her husband with feelings of disappointment, and the terribly inflexible
relation of marriage had lost its charm of encouraging delightful dreams. It had freed her
from the disagreeables of her father's house, but it had not given her everything that she had
wished and hoped. The Lydgate with whom she had been in love had been a group of airy
conditions for her, most of which had disappeared, while their place had been taken by
every−day details which must be lived through slowly from hour to hour, not floated
through with a rapid selection of favorable aspects. The habits of Lydgate's profession, his
home preoccupation with scientific subjects, which seemed to her almost like a morbid
vampire's taste, his peculiar views of things which had never entered into the dialogue of
courtship – all these continually alienating influences, even without the fact of his having
placed himself at a disadvantage in the town, and without that first shock of revelation about
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CHAPTER LXIV. 541
Dover's debt, would have made his presence dull to her. There was another presence which
ever since the early days of her marriage, until four months ago, had been an agreeable
excitement, but that was gone: Rosamond would not confess to herself how much the
consequent blank had to do with her utter ennui; and it seemed to her (perhaps she was right)
that an invitation to Quallingham, and an opening for Lydgate to settle elsewhere than in
Middlemarch – in London, or somewhere likely to be free from unpleasantness – would
satisfy her quite well, and make her indifferent to the absence of Will Ladislaw, towards
whom she felt some resentment for his exaltation of Mrs. Casaubon.
That was the state of things with Lydgate and Rosamond on the New Year's Day when
they dined at her father's, she looking mildly neutral towards him in remembrance of his
ill−tempered behavior at breakfast, and he carrying a much deeper effect from the inward
conflict in which that morning scene was only one of many epochs. His flushed effort while
talking to Mr. Farebrother – his effort after the cynical pretence that all ways of getting
money are essentially the same, and that chance has an empire which reduces choice to a
fool's illusion – was but the symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response to the old
stimuli of enthusiasm.
What was he to do? He saw even more keenly than Rosamond did the dreariness of
taking her into the small house in Bride Street, where she would have scanty furniture
around her and discontent within: a life of privation and life with Rosamond were two
images which had become more and more irreconcilable ever since the threat of privation
had disclosed itself. But even if his resolves had forced the two images into combination, the
useful preliminaries to that hard change were not visibly within reach. And though he had
not given the promise which his wife had asked for, he did not go again to Trumbull. He
even began to think of taking a rapid journey to the North and seeing Sir Godwin. He had
once believed that nothing would urge him into making an application for money to his
uncle, but he had not then known the full pressure of alternatives yet more disagreeable. He
could not depend on the effect of a letter; it was only in an interview, however disagreeable
this might be to himself, that he could give a thorough explanation and could test the
effectiveness of kinship. No sooner had Lydgate begun to represent this step to himself as
the easiest than there was a reaction of anger that he – he who had long ago determined to
live aloof from such abject calculations, such self−interested anxiety about the inclinations
and the pockets of men with whom he had been proud to have no aims in common – should
have fallen not simply to their level, but to the level of soliciting them.
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CHAPTER LXIV. 542
CHAPTER LXV.
"O
ne of us two must bowen douteless, And, sith a man is more reasonable Than
woman is, ye [men] moste be suffrable. – CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales.
The bias of human nature to be slow in correspondence triumphs even over the present
quickening in the general pace of things: what wonder then that in 1832 old Sir Godwin
Lydgate was slow to write a letter which was of consequence to others rather than to
himself? Nearly three weeks of the new year were gone, and Rosamond, awaiting an answer
to her winning appeal, was every day disappointed. Lydgate, in total ignorance of her
expectations, was seeing the bills come in, and feeling that Dover's use of his advantage over
other creditors was imminent. He had never mentioned to Rosamond his brooding purpose
of going to Quallingham: he did not want to admit what would appear to her a concession to
her wishes after indignant refusal, until the last moment; but he was really expecting to set
off soon. A slice of the railway would enable him to manage the whole journey and back in
four days.
But one morning after Lydgate had gone out, a letter came addressed to him, which
Rosamond saw clearly to be from Sir Godwin. She was full of hope. Perhaps there might be
a particular note to her enclosed; but Lydgate was naturally addressed on the question of
money or other aid, and the fact that he was written to, nay, the very delay in writing at all,
seemed to certify that the answer was thoroughly compliant. She was too much excited by
these thoughts to do anything but light stitching in a warm corner of the dining−room, with
the outside of this momentous letter lying on the table before her. About twelve she heard
her husband's step in the passage, and tripping to open the door, she said in her lightest
tones, "Tertius, come in here – here is a letter for you."
"Ah?" he said, not taking off his hat, but just turning her round within his arm to walk
towards the spot where the letter lay. "My uncle Godwin!" he exclaimed, while Rosamond
reseated herself, and watched him as he opened the letter. She had expected him to be
surprised.
While Lydgate's eyes glanced rapidly over the brief letter, she saw his face, usually of a
pale brown, taking on a dry whiteness; with nostrils and lips quivering he tossed down the
letter before her, and said violently –
"It will be impossible to endure life with you, if you will always be acting secretly –
acting in opposition to me and hiding your actions."
He checked his speech and turned his back on her – then wheeled round and walked
about, sat down, and got up again restlessly, grasping hard the objects deep down in his
pockets. He was afraid of saying something irremediably cruel.
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CHAPTER LXV. 543
Rosamond too had changed color as she read. The letter ran in this way: –
"DEAR TERTIUS, – Don't set your wife to write to me when you have anything to ask.
It is a roundabout wheedling sort of thing which I should not have credited you with. I never
choose to write to a woman on matters of business. As to my supplying you with a thousand
pounds, or only half that sum, I can do nothing of the sort. My own family drains me to the
last penny. With two younger sons and three daughters, I am not likely to have cash to spare.
You seem to have got through your own money pretty quickly, and to have made a mess
where you are; the sooner you go somewhere else the better. But I have nothing to do with
men of your profession, and can't help you there. I did the best I could for you as guardian,
and let you have your own way in taking to medicine. You might have gone into the army or
the Church. Your money would have held out for that, and there would have been a surer
ladder before you. Your uncle Charles has had a grudge against you for not going into his
profession, but not I. I have always wished you well, but you must consider yourself on your
own legs entirely now.
Your affectionate uncle,
Godwin Lydgate."
When Rosamond had finished reading the letter she sat quite still, with her hands folded
before her, restraining any show of her keen disappointment, and intrenching herself in quiet
passivity under her husband's wrath Lydgate paused in his movements, looked at her again,
and said, with biting severity –
"Will this be enough to convince you of the harm you may do by secret meddling? Have
you sense enough to recognize now your incompetence to judge and act for me – to interfere
with your ignorance in affairs which it belongs to me to decide on?"
The words were hard; but this was not the first time that Lydgate had been frustrated by
her. She did not look at him, and made no reply.
"I had nearly resolved on going to Quallingham. It would have cost me pain enough to
do it, yet it might have been of some use. But it has been of no use for me to think of
anything. You have always been counteracting me secretly. You delude me with a false
assent, and then I am at the mercy of your devices. If you mean to resist every wish I
express, say so and defy me. I shall at least know what I am doing then."
It is a terrible moment in young lives when the closeness of love's bond has turned to
this power of galling. In spite of Rosamond's self−control a tear fell silently and rolled over
her lips. She still said nothing; but under that quietude was hidden an intense effect: she was
in such entire disgust with her husband that she wished she had never seen him. Sir
Godwin's rudeness towards her and utter want of feeling ranged him with Dover and all
other creditors – disagreeable people who only thought of themselves, and did not mind how
annoying they were to her. Even her father was unkind, and might have done more for them.
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CHAPTER LXV. 544
In fact there was but one person in Rosamond's world whom she did not regard as
blameworthy, and that was the graceful creature with blond plaits and with little hands
crossed before her, who had never expressed herself unbecomingly, and had always acted
for the best – the best naturally being what she best liked.
Lydgate pausing and looking at her began to feel that half−maddening sense of
helplessness which comes over passionate people when their passion is met by an
innocent−looking silence whose meek victimized air seems to put them in the wrong, and at
last infects even the justest indignation with a doubt of its justice. He needed to recover the
full sense that he was in the right by moderating his words.
"Can you not see, Rosamond," he began again, trying to be simply grave and not bitter,
"that nothing can be so fatal as a want of openness and confidence between us? It has
happened again and again that I have expressed a decided wish, and you have seemed to
assent, yet after that you have secretly disobeyed my wish. In that way I can never know
what I have to trust to. There would be some hope for us if you would admit this. Am I such
an unreasonable, furious brute? Why should you not be open with me?" Still silence.
"Will you only say that you have been mistaken, and that I may depend on your not
acting secretly in future?" said Lydgate, urgently, but with something of request in his tone
which Rosamond was quick to perceive. She spoke with coolness.
"I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in answer to such words as you have
used towards me. I have not been accustomed to language of that kind. You have spoken of
my `secret meddling,' and my `interfering ignorance,' and my `false assent.' I have never
expressed myself in that way to you, and I think that you ought to apologize. You spoke of
its being impossible to live with me. Certainly you have not made my life pleasant to me of
late. I think it was to be expected that I should try to avert some of the hardships which our
marriage has brought on me." Another tear fell as Rosamond ceased speaking, and she
pressed it away as quietly as the first.
Lydgate flung himself into a chair, feeling checkmated. What place was there in her
mind for a remonstrance to lodge in? He laid down his hat, flung an arm over the back of his
chair, and looked down for some moments without speaking. Rosamond had the double
purchase over him of insensibility to the point of justice in his reproach, and of sensibility to
the undeniable hardships now present in her married life. Although her duplicity in the affair
of the house had exceeded what he knew, and had really hindered the Plymdales from
knowing of it, she had no consciousness that her action could rightly be called false. We are
not obliged to identify our own acts according to a strict classification, any more than the
materials of our grocery and clothes. Rosamond felt that she was aggrieved, and that this
was what Lydgate had to recognize.
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CHAPTER LXV. 545
As for him, the need of accommodating himself to her nature, which was inflexible in
proportion to its negations, held him as with pincers. He had begun to have an alarmed
foresight of her irrevocable loss of love for him, and the consequent dreariness of their life.
The ready fulness of his emotions made this dread alternate quickly with the first violent
movements of his anger. It would assuredly have been a vain boast in him to say that he was
her master.
"You have not made my life pleasant to me of late" – "the hardships which our marriage
has brought on me" – these words were stinging his imagination as a pain makes an
exaggerated dream. If he were not only to sink from his highest resolve, but to sink into the
hideous fettering of domestic hate?
"Rosamond," he said, turning his eyes on her with a melancholy look, "you should
allow for a man's words when he is disappointed and provoked. You and I cannot have
opposite interests. I cannot part my happiness from yours. If I am angry with you, it is that
you seem not to see how any concealment divides us. How could I wish to make anything
hard to you either by my words or conduct? When I hurt you, I hurt part of my own life. I
should never be angry with you if you would be quite open with me."
"I have only wished to prevent you from hurrying us into wretchedness without any
necessity," said Rosamond, the tears coming again from a softened feeling now that her
husband had softened. "It is so very hard to be disgraced here among all the people we
know, and to live in such a miserable way. I wish I had died with the baby."
She spoke and wept with that gentleness which makes such words and tears omnipotent
over a loving−hearted man. Lydgate drew his chair near to hers and pressed her delicate
head against his cheek with his powerful tender hand. He only caressed her; he did not say
anything; for what was there to say? He could not promise to shield her from the dreaded
wretchedness, for he could see no sure means of doing so. When he left her to go out again,
he told himself that it was ten times harder for her than for him: he had a life away from
home, and constant appeals to his activity on behalf of others. He wished to excuse
everything in her if he could – but it was inevitable that in that excusing mood he should
think of her as if she were an animal of another and feebler species. Nevertheless she had
mastered him.
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CHAPTER LXV. 546
CHAPTER LXVI.
"'T
is one thing to be tempted, Escalus, Another thing to fall."
– Measure for Measure.
Lydgate certainly had good reason to reflect on the service his practice did him in
counteracting his personal cares. He had no longer free energy enough for spontaneous
research and speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients, the direct external calls on
his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse needed to draw him out of himself.
It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live
respectably and unhappy men to live calmly – it was a perpetual claim on the immediate
fresh application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us
looking back through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a
medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply informed
perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime beneficence than that of
miracle−workers. Some of that twice−blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at
the Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain him
under his anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy.
Mr. Farebrother's suspicion as to the opiate was true, however. Under the first galling
pressure of foreseen difficulties, and the first perception that his marriage, if it were not to
be a yoked loneliness, must be a state of effort to go on loving without too much care about
being loved, he had once or twice tried a dose of opium. But he had no hereditary
constitutional craving after such transient escapes from the hauntings of misery. He was
strong, could drink a great deal of wine, but did not care about it; and when the men round
him were drinking spirits, he took sugar and water, having a contemptuous pity even for the
earliest stages of excitement from drink. It was the same with gambling. He had looked on at
a great deal of gambling in Paris, watching it as if it had been a disease. He was no more
tempted by such winning than he was by drink. He had said to himself that the only winning
he cared for must be attained by a conscious process of high, difficult combination tending
towards a beneficent result. The power he longed for could not be represented by agitated
fingers clutching a heap of coin, or by the half−barbarous, half−idiotic triumph in the eyes of
a man who sweeps within his arms the ventures of twenty chapfallen companions.
But just as he had tried opium, so his thought now began to turn upon gambling – not
with appetite for its excitement, but with a sort of wistful inward gaze after that easy way of
getting money, which implied no asking and brought no responsibility. If he had been in
London or Paris at that time, it is probable that such thoughts, seconded by opportunity,
would have taken him into a gambling−house, no longer to watch the gamblers, but to watch
with them in kindred eagerness. Repugnance would have been surmounted by the immense
need to win, if chance would be kind enough to let him. An incident which happened not
very long after that airy notion of getting aid from his uncle had been excluded, was a strong
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sign of the effect that might have followed any extant opportunity of gambling.
The billiard−room at the Green Dragon was the constant resort of a certain set, most of
whom, like our acquaintance Mr. Bambridge, were regarded as men of pleasure. It was here
that poor Fred Vincy had made part of his memorable debt, having lost money in betting,
and been obliged to borrow of that gay companion. It was generally known in Middlemarch
that a good deal of money was lost and won in this way; and the consequent repute of the
Green Dragon as a place of dissipation naturally heightened in some quarters the temptation
to go there. Probably its regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry, wished that there
were something a little more tremendous to keep to themselves concerning it; but they were
not a closed community, and many decent seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into
the billiard−room to see what was going on. Lydgate, who had the muscular aptitude for
billiards, and was fond of the game, had once or twice in the early days after his arrival in
Middlemarch taken his turn with the cue at the Green Dragon; but afterwards he had no
leisure for the game, and no inclination for the socialities there. One evening, however, he
had occasion to seek Mr. Bambridge at that resort. The horsedealer had engaged to get him a
customer for his remaining good horse, for which Lydgate had determined to substitute a
cheap hack, hoping by this reduction of style to get perhaps twenty pounds; and he cared
now for every small sum, as a help towards feeding the patience of his tradesmen. To run up
to the billiard−room, as he was passing, would save time.
Mr. Bambridge was not yet come, bat would be sure to arrive by−and−by, said his
friend Mr. Horrock; and Lydgate stayed, playing a game for the sake of passing the time.
That evening he had the peculiar light in the eyes and the unusual vivacity which had been
once noticed in him by Mr. Farebrother. The exceptional fact of his presence was much
noticed in the room, where there was a good deal of Middlemarch company; and several
lookers−on, as well as some of the players, were betting with animation. Lydgate was
playing well, and felt confident; the bets were dropping round him, and with a swift glancing
thought of the probable gain which might double the sum he was saving from his horse, he
began to bet on his own play, and won again and again. Mr. Bambridge had come in, but
Lydgate did not notice him. He was not only excited with his play, but visions were
gleaming on him of going the next day to Brassing, where there was gambling on a grander
scale to be had, and where, by one powerful snatch at the devil's bait, he might carry it off
without the hook, and buy his rescue from his daily solicitings.
He was still winning when two new visitors entered. One of them was a young Hawley,
just come from his law studies in town, and the other was Fred Vincy, who had spent several
evenings of late at this old haunt of his. Young Hawley, an accomplished billiard−player,
brought a cool fresh hand to the cue. But Fred Vincy, startled at seeing Lydgate, and
astonished to see him betting with an excited air, stood aside, and kept out of the circle
round the table.
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Fred had been rewarding resolution by a little laxity of late. He had been working
heartily for six months at all outdoor occupations under Mr. Garth, and by dint of severe
practice had nearly mastered the defects of his handwriting, this practice being, perhaps, a
little the less severe that it was often carried on in the evening at Mr. Garth's under the eyes
of Mary. But the last fortnight Mary had been staying at Lowick Parsonage with the ladies
there, during Mr. Farebrother's residence in Middlemarch, where he was carrying out some
parochial plans; and Fred, not seeing anything more agreeable to do, had turned into the
Green Dragon, partly to play at billiards, partly to taste the old flavor of discourse about
horses, sport, and things in general, considered from a point of view which was not
strenuously correct. He had not been out hunting once this season, had had no horse of his
own to ride, and had gone from place to place chiefly with Mr. Garth in his gig, or on the
sober cob which Mr. Garth could lend him. It was a little too bad, Fred began to think, that
he should be kept in the traces with more severity than if he had been a clergyman. "I will
tell you what, Mistress Mary – it will be rather harder work to learn surveying and drawing
plans than it would have been to write sermons," he had said, wishing her to appreciate what
he went through for her sake; "and as to Hercules and Theseus, they were nothing to me.
They had sport, and never learned to write a bookkeeping hand." And now, Mary being out
of the way for a little while, Fred, like any other strong dog who cannot slip his collar, had
pulled up the staple of his chain and made a small escape, not of course meaning to go fast
or far. There could be no reason why he should not play at billiards, but he was determined
not to bet. As to money just now, Fred had in his mind the heroic project of saving almost all
of the eighty pounds that Mr. Garth offered him, and returning it, which he could easily do
by giving up all futile money−spending, since he had a superfluous stock of clothes, and no
expense in his board. In that way he could, in one year, go a good way towards repaying the
ninety pounds of which he had deprived Mrs. Garth, unhappily at a time when she needed
that sum more than she did now. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that on this
evening, which was the fifth of his recent visits to the billiard−room, Fred had, not in his
pocket, but in his mind, the ten pounds which he meant to reserve for himself from his
half−year's salary (having before him the pleasure of carrying thirty to Mrs. Garth when
Mary was likely to be come home again) – he had those ten pounds in his mind as a fund
from which he might risk something, if there were a chance of a good bet. Why? Well, when
sovereigns were flying about, why shouldn't he catch a few? He would never go far along
that road again; but a man likes to assure himself, and men of pleasure generally, what he
could do in the way of mischief if he chose, and that if he abstains from making himself ill,
or beggaring himself, or talking with the utmost looseness which the narrow limits of human
capacity will allow, it is not because he is a spooney. Fred did not enter into formal reasons,
which are a very artificial, inexact way of representing the tingling returns of old habit, and
the caprices of young blood: but there was lurking in him a prophetic sense that evening,
that when he began to play he should also begin to bet – that he should enjoy some
punch−drinking, and in general prepare himself for feeling "rather seedy" in the morning. It
is in such indefinable movements that action often begins.
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But the last thing likely to have entered Fred's expectation was that he should see his
brother−in−law Lydgate – of whom he had never quite dropped the old opinion that he was
a prig, and tremendously conscious of his superiority – looking excited and betting, just as
he himself might have done. Fred felt a shock greater than he could quite account for by the
vague knowledge that Lydgate was in debt, and that his father had refused to help him; and
his own inclination to enter into the play was suddenly checked. It was a strange reversal of
attitudes: Fred's blond face and blue eyes, usually bright and careless, ready to give attention
to anything that held out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarily grave and almost
embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting; while Lydgate, who had habitually an
air of self−possessed strength, and a certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind his
most observant attention, was acting, watching, speaking with that excited narrow
consciousness which reminds one of an animal with fierce eyes and retractile claws.
Lydgate, by betting on his own strokes, had won sixteen pounds; but young Hawley's
arrival had changed the poise of things. He made first−rate strokes himself, and began to bet
against Lydgate's strokes, the strain of whose nerves was thus changed from simple
confidence in his own movements to defying another person's doubt in them. The defiance
was more exciting than the confidence, but it was less sure. He continued to bet on his own
play, but began often to fail. Still he went on, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that
precipitous crevice of play as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there. Fred observed
that Lydgate was losing fast, and found himself in the new situation of puzzling his brains to
think of some device by which, without being offensive, he could withdraw Lydgate's
attention, and perhaps suggest to him a reason for quitting the room. He saw that others were
observing Lydgate's strange unlikeness to himself, and it occurred to him that merely to
touch his elbow and call him aside for a moment might rouse him from his absorption. He
could think of nothing cleverer than the daring improbability of saying that he wanted to see
Rosy, and wished to know if she were at home this evening; and he was going desperately to
carry out this weak device, when a waiter came up to him with a message, saying that Mr.
Farebrother was below, and begged to speak with him.
Fred was surprised, not quite comfortably, but sending word that he would be down
immediately, he went with a new impulse up to Lydgate, said, "Can I speak to you a
moment?" and drew him aside.
"Farebrother has just sent up a message to say that he wants to speak to me. He is
below. I thought you might like to know he was there, if you had anything to say to him."
Fred had simply snatched up this pretext for speaking, because he could not say, "You
are losing confoundedly, and are making everybody stare at you; you had better come
away." But inspiration could hardly have served him better. Lydgate had not before seen that
Fred was present, and his sudden appearance with an announcement of Mr. Farebrother had
the effect of a sharp concussion.
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"No, no," said Lydgate; "I have nothing particular to say to him. But – the game is up –
I must be going – I came in just to see Bambridge."
"Bambridge is over there, but he is making a row – I don't think he's ready for business.
Come down with me to Farebrother. I expect he is going to blow me up, and you will shield
me," said Fred, with some adroitness.
Lydgate felt shame, but could not bear to act as if he felt it, by refusing to see Mr.
Farebrother; and he went down. They merely shook hands, however, and spoke of the frost;
and when all three had turned into the street, the Vicar seemed quite willing to say good−by
to Lydgate. His present purpose was clearly to talk with Fred alone, and he said, kindly, "I
disturbed you, young gentleman, because I have some pressing business with you. Walk
with me to St. Botolph's, will you?"
It was a fine night, the sky thick with stars, and Mr. Farebrother proposed that they
should make a circuit to the old church by the London road. The next thing he said was –
"I thought Lydgate never went to the Green Dragon?"
"So did I," said Fred. "But he said that he went to see Bambridge."
"He was not playing, then?"
Fred had not meant to tell this, but he was obliged now to say, "Yes, he was. But I
suppose it was an accidental thing. I have never seen him there before."
"You have been going often yourself, then, lately?"
"Oh, about five or six times."
"I think you had some good reason for giving up the habit of going there?"
"Yes. You know all about it," said Fred, not liking to be catechised in this way. "I made
a clean breast to you."
"I suppose that gives me a warrant to speak about the matter now. It is understood
between us, is it not? – that we are on a footing of open friendship: I have listened to you,
and you will be willing to listen to me. I may take my turn in talking a little about myself?"
"I am under the deepest obligation to you, Mr. Farebrother," said Fred, in a state of
uncomfortable surmise.
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"I will not affect to deny that you are under some obligation to me. But I am going to
confess to you, Fred, that I have been tempted to reverse all that by keeping silence with you
just now. When somebody said to me, `Young Vincy has taken to being at the billiard−table
every night again – he won't bear the curb long;' I was tempted to do the opposite of what I
am doing – to hold my tongue and wait while you went down the ladder again, betting first
and then – "
"I have not made any bets," said Fred, hastily.
"Glad to hear it. But I say, my prompting was to look on and see you take the wrong
turning, wear out Garth's patience, and lose the best opportunity of your life – the
opportunity which you made some rather difficult effort to secure. You can guess the feeling
which raised that temptation in me – I am sure you know it. I am sure you know that the
satisfaction of your affections stands in the way of mine."
There was a pause. Mr. Farebrother seemed to wait for a recognition of the fact; and the
emotion perceptible in the tones of his fine voice gave solemnity to his words. But no
feeling could quell Fred's alarm.
"I could not be expected to give her up," he said, after a moment's hesitation: it was not
a case for any pretence of generosity.
"Clearly not, when her affection met yours. But relations of this sort, even when they
are of long standing, are always liable to change. I can easily conceive that you might act in
a way to loosen the tie she feels towards you – it must be remembered that she is only
conditionally bound to you – and that in that ease, another man, who may flatter himself that
he has a hold on her regard, might succeed in winning that firm place in her love as well as
respect which you had let slip. I can easily conceive such a result," repeated Mr. Farebrother,
emphatically. "There is a companionship of ready sympathy, which might get the advantage
even over the longest associations." It seemed to Fred that if Mr. Farebrother had had a beak
and talons instead of his very capable tongue, his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel.
He had a horrible conviction that behind all this hypothetic statement there was a knowledge
of some actual change in Mary's feeling.
"Of course I know it might easily be all up with me," he said, in a troubled voice. "If she
is beginning to compare – " He broke off, not liking to betray all he felt, and then said, by
the help of a little bitterness, "But I thought you were friendly to me."
"So I am; that is why we are here. But I have had a strong disposition to be otherwise. I
have said to myself, `If there is a likelihood of that youngster doing himself harm, why
should you interfere? Aren't you worth as much as he is, and don't your sixteen years over
and above his, in which you have gone rather hungry, give you more right to satisfaction
than he has? If there's a chance of his going to the dogs, let him – perhaps you could nohow
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CHAPTER LXVI. 552
hinder it – and do you take the benefit.'"
There was a pause, in which Fred was seized by a most uncomfortable chill. What was
coming next? He dreaded to hear that something had been said to Mary – he felt as if he
were listening to a threat rather than a warning. When the Vicar began again there was a
change in his tone like the encouraging transition to a major key.
"But I had once meant better than that, and I am come back to my old intention. I
thought that I could hardly SECURE MYSELF in it better, Fred, than by telling you just
what had gone on in me. And now, do you understand me? want you to make the happiness
of her life and your own, and if there is any chance that a word of warning from me may
turn aside any risk to the contrary – well, I have uttered it."
There was a drop in the Vicar's voice when he spoke the last words He paused – they
were standing on a patch of green where the road diverged towards St. Botolph's, and he put
out his hand, as if to imply that the conversation was closed. Fred was moved quite newly.
Some one highly susceptible to the contemplation of a fine act has said, that it produces a
sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and makes one feel ready to begin a new
life. A good degree of that effect was just then present in Fred Vincy.
"I will try to be worthy," he said, breaking off before he could say "of you as well as of
her." And meanwhile Mr. Farebrother had gathered the impulse to say something more.
"You must not imagine that I believe there is at present any decline in her preference of
you, Fred. Set your heart at rest, that if you keep right, other things will keep right."
"I shall never forget what you have done," Fred answered. "I can't say anything that
seems worth saying – only I will try that your goodness shall not be thrown away."
"That's enough. Good−by, and God bless you."
In that way they parted. But both of them walked about a long while before they went
out of the starlight. Much of Fred's rumination might be summed up in the words, "It
certainly would have been a fine thing for her to marry Farebrother – but if she loves me
best and I am a good husband?"
Perhaps Mr. Farebrother's might be concentrated into a single shrug and one little
speech. "To think of the part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to
renounce her may be a very good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!"
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CHAPTER LXVI. 553
CHAPTER LXVII.
N
ow is there civil war within the soul: Resolve is thrust from off the sacred throne By
clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand−vizier Makes humble compact, plays the supple part
Of envoy and deft−tongued apologist For hungry rebels.
Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard−room, and brought away no
encouragement to make a raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt unmixed disgust with himself
the next day when he had to pay four or five pounds over and above his gains, and he carried
about with him a most unpleasant vision of the figure he had made, not only rubbing elbows
with the men at the Green Dragon but behaving just as they did. A philosopher fallen to
betting is hardly distinguishable from a Philistine under the same circumstances: the
difference will chiefly be found in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very
disagreeable cud in that way. His reason told him how the affair might have been magnified
into ruin by a slight change of scenery – if it had been a gambling−house that he had turned
into, where chance could be clutched with both hands instead of being picked up with thumb
and fore−finger. Nevertheless, though reason strangled the desire to gamble, there remained
the feeling that, with an assurance of luck to the needful amount, he would have liked to
gamble, rather than take the alternative which was beginning to urge itself as inevitable.
That alternative was to apply to Mr. Bulstrode. Lydgate had so many times boasted both
to himself and others that he was totally independent of Bulstrode, to whose plans he had
lent himself solely because they enabled him to carry out his own ideas of professional work
and public benefit – he had so constantly in their personal intercourse had his pride sustained
by the sense that he was making a good social use of this predominating banker, whose
opinions he thought contemptible and whose motives often seemed to him an absurd mixture
of contradictory impressions – that he had been creating for himself strong ideal obstacles to
the proffering of any considerable request to him on his own account.
Still, early in March his affairs were at that pass in which men begin to say that their
oaths were delivered in ignorance, and to perceive that the act which they had called
impossible to them is becoming manifestly possible. With Dover's ugly security soon to be
put in force, with the proceeds of his practice immediately absorbed in paying back debts,
and with the chance, if the worst were known, of daily supplies being refused on credit,
above all with the vision of Rosamond's hopeless discontent continually haunting him,
Lydgate had begun to see that he should inevitably bend himself to ask help from somebody
or other. At first he had considered whether he should write to Mr. Vincy; but on
questioning Rosamond he found that, as he had suspected, she had already applied twice to
her father, the last time being since the disappointment from Sir Godwin; and papa had said
that Lydgate must look out for himself. "Papa said he had come, with one bad year after
another, to trade more and more on borrowed capital, and had had to give up many
indulgences; he could not spare a single hundred from the charges of his family. He said, let
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CHAPTER LXVII. 554
Lydgate ask Bulstrode: they have always been hand and glove."
Indeed, Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion that if he must end by asking for a
free loan, his relations with Bulstrode, more at least than with any other man, might take the
shape of a claim which was not purely personal. Bulstrode had indirectly helped to cause the
failure of his practice, and had also been highly gratified by getting a medical partner in his
plans: – but who among us ever reduced himself to the sort of dependence in which Lydgate
now stood, without trying to believe that he had claims which diminished the humiliation of
asking? It was true that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of interest in Bulstrode
about the Hospital; but his health had got worse, and showed signs of a deep−seated nervous
affection. In other respects he did not appear to be changed: he had always been highly
polite, but Lydgate had observed in him from the first a marked coldness about his marriage
and other private circumstances, a coldness which he had hitherto preferred to any warmth
of familiarity between them. He deferred the intention from day to day, his habit of acting
on his conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every possible conclusion and its
consequent act. He saw Mr. Bulstrode often, but he did not try to use any occasion for his
private purpose. At one moment he thought, "I will write a letter: I prefer that to any
circuitous talk;" at another he thought, "No; if I were talking to him, I could make a retreat
before any signs of disinclination."
Still the days passed and no letter was written, no special interview sought. In his
shrinking from the humiliation of a dependent attitude towards Bulstrode, he began to
familiarize his imagination with another step even more unlike his remembered self. He
began spontaneously to consider whether it would be possible to carry out that puerile
notion of Rosamond's which had often made him angry, namely, that they should quit
Middlemarch without seeing anything beyond that preface. The question came – "Would
any man buy the practice of me even now, for as little as it is worth? Then the sale might
happen as a necessary preparation for going away."
But against his taking this step, which he still felt to be a contemptible relinquishment
of present work, a guilty turning aside from what was a real and might be a widening
channel for worthy activity, to start again without any justified destination, there was this
obstacle, that the purchaser, if procurable at all, might not be quickly forthcoming. And
afterwards? Rosamond in a poor lodging, though in the largest city or most distant town,
would not find the life that could save her from gloom, and save him from the reproach of
having plunged her into it. For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes, he may
stay a long while there in spite of professional accomplishment. In the British climate there
is no incompatibility between scientific insight and furnished lodgings: the incompatibility is
chiefly between scientific ambition and a wife who objects to that kind of residence.
But in the midst of his hesitation, opportunity came to decide him. A note from Mr.
Bulstrode requested Lydgate to call on him at the Bank. A hypochondriacal tendency had
shown itself in the banker's constitution of late; and a lack of sleep, which was really only a
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CHAPTER LXVII. 555
slight exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic symptom, had been dwelt on by him as a sign of
threatening insanity. He wanted to consult Lydgate without delay on that particular morning,
although he had nothing to tell beyond what he had told before. He listened eagerly to what
Lydgate had to say in dissipation of his fears, though this too was only repetition; and this
moment in which Bulstrode was receiving a medical opinion with a sense of comfort,
seemed to make the communication of a personal need to him easier than it had been in
Lydgate's contemplation beforehand. He had been insisting that it would be well for Mr.
Bulstrode to relax his attention to business.
"One sees how any mental strain, however slight, may affect a delicate frame," said
Lydgate at that stage of the consultation when the remarks tend to pass from the personal to
the general, "by the deep stamp which anxiety will make for a time even on the young and
vigorous. I am naturally very strong; yet I have been thoroughly shaken lately by an
accumulation of trouble."
"I presume that a constitution in the susceptible state in which mine at present is, would
be especially liable to fall a victim to cholera, if it visited our district. And since its
appearance near London, we may well besiege the Mercy−seat for our protection," said Mr.
Bulstrode, not intending to evade Lydgate's allusion, but really preoccupied with alarms
about himself.
"You have at all events taken your share in using good practical precautions for the
town, and that is the best mode of asking for protection," said Lydgate, with a strong distaste
for the broken metaphor and bad logic of the banker's religion, somewhat increased by the
apparent deafness of his sympathy. But his mind had taken up its long−prepared movement
towards getting help, and was not yet arrested. He added, "The town has done well in the
way of cleansing, and finding appliances; and I think that if the cholera should come, even
our enemies will admit that the arrangements in the Hospital are a public good."
"Truly," said Mr. Bulstrode, with some coldness. "With regard to what you say, Mr.
Lydgate, about the relaxation of my mental labor, I have for some time been entertaining a
purpose to that effect – a purpose of a very decided character. I contemplate at least a
temporary withdrawal from the management of much business, whether benevolent or
commercial. Also I think of changing my residence for a time: probably I shall close or let
`The Shrubs,' and take some place near the coast – under advice of course as to salubrity.
That would be a measure which you would recommend?"
"Oh yes," said Lydgate, falling backward in his chair, with ill−repressed impatience
under the banker's pale earnest eyes and intense preoccupation with himself.
"I have for some time felt that I should open this subject with you in relation to our
Hospital," continued Bulstrode. "Under the circumstances I have indicated, of course I must
cease to have any personal share in the management, and it is contrary to my views of
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CHAPTER LXVII. 556
responsibility to continue a large application of means to an institution which I cannot watch
over and to some extent regulate. I shall therefore, in case of my ultimate decision to leave
Middlemarch, consider that I withdraw other support to the New Hospital than that which
will subsist in the fact that I chiefly supplied the expenses of building it, and have
contributed further large sums to its successful working."
Lydgate's thought, when Bulstrode paused according to his wont, was, "He has perhaps
been losing a good deal of money." This was the most plausible explanation of a speech
which had caused rather a startling change in his expectations. He said in reply –
"The loss to the Hospital can hardly be made up, I fear."
"Hardly," returned Bulstrode, in the same deliberate, silvery tone; "except by some
changes of plan. The only person who may be certainly counted on as willing to increase her
contributions is Mrs. Casaubon. I have had an interview with her on the subject, and I have
pointed out to her, as I am about to do to you, that it will be desirable to win a more general
support to the New Hospital by a change of system." Another pause, but Lydgate did not
speak.
"The change I mean is an amalgamation with the Infirmary, so that the New Hospital
shall be regarded as a special addition to the elder institution, having the same directing
board. It will be necessary, also, that the medical management of the two shall be combined.
In this way any difficulty as to the adequate maintenance of our new establishment will be
removed; the benevolent interests of the town will cease to be divided."
Mr. Bulstrode had lowered his eyes from Lydgate's face to the buttons of his coat as he
again paused.
"No doubt that is a good device as to ways and means," said Lydgate, with an edge of
irony in his tone. "But I can't be expected to rejoice in it at once, since one of the first results
will be that the other medical men will upset or interrupt my methods, if it were only
because they are mine."
"I myself, as you know, Mr. Lydgate, highly valued the opportunity of new and
independent procedure which you have diligently employed: the original plan, I confess,
was one which I had much at heart, under submission to the Divine Will. But since
providential indications demand a renunciation from me, I renounce."
Bulstrode showed a rather exasperating ability in this conversation. The broken
metaphor and bad logic of motive which had stirred his hearer's contempt were quite
consistent with a mode of putting the facts which made it difficult for Lydgate to vent his
own indignation and disappointment. After some rapid reflection, he only asked –
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CHAPTER LXVII. 557
"What did Mrs. Casaubon say?"
"That was the further statement which I wished to make to you," said Bulstrode, who
had thoroughly prepared his ministerial explanation. "She is, you are aware, a woman of
most munificent disposition, and happily in possession – not I presume of great wealth, but
of funds which she can well spare. She has informed me that though she has destined the
chief part of those funds to another purpose, she is willing to consider whether she cannot
fully take my place in relation to the Hospital. But she wishes for ample time to mature her
thoughts on the subject, and I have told her that there is no need for haste – that, in fact, my
own plans are not yet absolute."
Lydgate was ready to say, "If Mrs. Casaubon would take your place, there would be
gain, instead of loss." But there was still a weight on his mind which arrested this cheerful
candor. He replied, "I suppose, then, that I may enter into the subject with Mrs. Casaubon."
"Precisely; that is what she expressly desires. Her decision, she says, will much depend
on what you can tell her. But not at present: she is, I believe, just setting out on a journey. I
have her letter here," said Mr. Bulstrode, drawing it out, and reading from it. "`I am
immediately otherwise engaged,' she says. `I am going into Yorkshire with Sir James and
Lady Chettam; and the conclusions I come to about some land which I am to see there may
affect my power of contributing to the Hospital.' Thus, Mr. Lydgate, there is no haste
necessary in this matter; but I wished to apprise you beforehand of what may possibly
occur."
Mr. Bulstrode returned the letter to his side−pocket, and changed his attitude as if his
business were closed. Lydgate, whose renewed hope about the Hospital only made him more
conscious of the facts which poisoned his hope, felt that his effort after help, if made at all,
must be made now and vigorously.
"I am much obliged to you for giving me full notice," he said, with a firm intention in
his tone, yet with an interruptedness in his delivery which showed that he spoke unwillingly.
"The highest object to me is my profession, and I had identified the Hospital with the best
use I can at present make of my profession. But the best use is not always the same with
monetary success. Everything which has made the Hospital unpopular has helped with other
causes – I think they are all connected with my professional zeal – to make me unpopular as
a practitioner. I get chiefly patients who can't pay me. I should like them best, if I had
nobody to pay on my own side." Lydgate waited a little, but Bulstrode only bowed, looking
at him fixedly, and he went on with the same interrupted enunciation – as if he were biting
an objectional leek.
"I have slipped into money difficulties which I can see no way out of, unless some one
who trusts me and my future will advance me a sum without other security. I had very little
fortune left when I came here. I have no prospects of money from my own family. My
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CHAPTER LXVII. 558
expenses, in consequence of my marriage, have been very much greater than I had expected.
The result at this moment is that it would take a thousand pounds to clear me. I mean, to free
me from the risk of having all my goods sold in security of my largest debt – as well as to
pay my other debts – and leave anything to keep us a little beforehand with our small
income. I find that it is out of the question that my wife's father should make such an
advance. That is why I mention my position to – to the only other man who may be held to
have some personal connection with my prosperity or ruin."
Lydgate hated to hear himself. But he had spoken now, and had spoken with
unmistakable directness. Mr. Bulstrode replied without haste, but also without hesitation.
"I am grieved, though, I confess, not surprised by this information, Mr. Lydgate. For my
own part, I regretted your alliance with my brother−in−law's family, which has always been
of prodigal habits, and which has already been much indebted to me for sustainment in its
present position. My advice to you, Mr. Lydgate, would be, that instead of involving
yourself in further obligations, and continuing a doubtful struggle, you should simply
become a bankrupt."
"That would not improve my prospect," said Lydgate, rising and speaking bitterly,
"even if it were a more agreeable thing in itself."
"It is always a trial," said Mr. Bulstrode; "but trial, my dear sir, is our portion here, and
is a needed corrective. I recommend you to weigh the advice I have given."
"Thank you," said Lydgate, not quite knowing what he said. "I have occupied you too
long. Good−day."
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CHAPTER LXVIII.
"W
hat suit of grace hath Virtue to put on If Vice shall wear as good, and do as well? If
Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion Act as fair parts with ends as laudable? Which all this mighty
volume of events The world, the universal map of deeds, Strongly controls, and proves from
all descents, That the directest course still best succeeds. For should not grave and learn'd
Experience That looks with the eyes of all the world beside, And with all ages holds
intelligence, Go safer than Deceit without a guide! – DANIEL: Musophilus.
That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or betrayed in his
conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him by some severe experience which
he had gone through since the epoch of Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized
Will Ladislaw, and when the banker had in vain attempted an act of restitution which might
move Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences.
His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return to Middlemarch before
long, had been justified. On Christmas Eve he had reappeared at The Shrubs. Bulstrode was
at home to receive him, and hinder his communication with the rest of the family, but he
could not altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit from compromising himself and
alarming his wife. Raffles proved more unmanageable than he had shown himself to be in
his former appearances, his chronic state of mental restlessness, the growing effect of
habitual intemperance, quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him. He
insisted on staying in the house, and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of evils, felt that this was
at least not a worse alternative than his going into the town. He kept him in his own room
for the evening and saw him to bed, Raffles all the while amusing himself with the
annoyance he was causing this decent and highly prosperous fellow−sinner, an amusement
which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend's pleasure in entertaining a man
who had been serviceable to him, and who had not had all his earnings. There was a cunning
calculation under this noisy joking – a cool resolve to extract something the handsomer from
Bulstrode as payment for release from this new application of torture. But his cunning had a
little overcast its mark.
Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles could enable him to
imagine. He had told his wife that he was simply taking care of this wretched creature, the
victim of vice, who might otherwise injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of
falsehood, that there was a family tie which bound him to this care, and that there were signs
of mental alienation in Raffles which urged caution. He would himself drive the unfortunate
being away the next morning. In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode
with precautionary information for his daughters and servants, and accounting for his
allowing no one but himself to enter the room even with food and drink. But he sat in an
agony of fear lest Raffles should be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts –
lest Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the door. How could he hinder her,
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how betray his terror by opening the door to detect her? She was a woman of honest direct
habits, and little likely to take so low a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge; but
fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.
In this way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and produced an effect which had not
been in his plan. By showing himself hopelessly unmanageable he had made Bulstrode feel
that a strong defiance was the only resource left. After taking Raffles to bed that night the
banker ordered his closed carriage to be ready at half−past seven the next morning. At six
o'clock he had already been long dressed, and had spent some of his wretchedness in prayer,
pleading his motives for averting the worst evil if in anything he had used falsity and spoken
what was not true before God. For Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie with an intensity
disproportionate to the number of his more indirect misdeeds. But many of these misdeeds
were like the subtle muscular movements which are not taken account of in the
consciousness, though they bring about the end that we fix our mind on and desire. And it is
only what we are vividly conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be seen by
Omniscience.
Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles, who was apparently in a painful
dream. He stood silent, hoping that the presence of the light would serve to waken the
sleeper gradually and gently, for he feared some noise as the consequence of a too sudden
awakening. He had watched for a couple of minutes or more the shudderings and pantings
which seemed likely to end in waking, when Raffles, with a long half−stifled moan, started
up and stared round him in terror, trembling and gasping. But he made no further noise, and
Bulstrode, setting down the candle, awaited his recovery.
It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a cold peremptoriness of manner
which he had not before shown, said, "I came to call you thus early, Mr. Raffles, because I
have ordered the carriage to be ready at half−past seven, and intend myself to conduct you
as far as Ilsely, where you can either take the railway or await a coach." Raffles was about to
speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him imperiously with the words, "Be silent, sir, and hear
what I have to say. I shall supply you with money now, and I will furnish you with a
reasonable sum from time to time, on your application to me by letter; but if you choose to
present yourself here again, if you return to Middlemarch, if you use your tongue in a
manner injurious to me, you will have to live on such fruits as your malice can bring you,
without help from me. Nobody will pay you well for blasting my name: I know the worst
you can do against me, and I shall brave it if you dare to thrust yourself upon me again. Get
up, sir, and do as I order you, without noise, or I will send for a policeman to take you off
my premises, and you may carry your stories into every pothouse in the town, but you shall
have no sixpence from me to pay your expenses there."
Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such nervous energy: he had been
deliberating on this speech and its probable effects through a large part of the night; and
though he did not trust to its ultimately saving him from any return of Raffles, he had
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concluded that it was the best throw he could make. It succeeded in enforcing submission
from the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system at this moment quailed before
Bulstrode's cold, resolute bearing, and he was taken off quietly in the carriage before the
family breakfast time. The servants imagined him to be a poor relation, and were not
surprised that a strict man like their master, who held his head high in the world, should be
ashamed of such a cousin and want to get rid of him. The banker's drive of ten miles with his
hated companion was a dreary beginning of the Christmas day; but at the end of the drive,
Raffles had recovered his spirits, and parted in a contentment for which there was the good
reason that the banker had given him a hundred pounds. Various motives urged Bulstrode to
this open−handedness, but he did not himself inquire closely into all of them. As he had
stood watching Raffles in his uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his mind that the man
had been much shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.
He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve not to be played on any
more; and had tried to penetrate Raffles with the fact that he had shown the risks of bribing
him to be quite equal to the risks of defying him. But when, freed from his repulsive
presence, Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought with him no confidence that he
had secured more than a respite. It was as if he had had a loathsome dream, and could not
shake off its images with their hateful kindred of sensations – as if on all the pleasant
surroundings of his life a dangerous reptile had left his slimy traces.
Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the thoughts he believes
other men to have about him, until that fabric of opinion is threatened with ruin?
Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a deposit of uneasy presentiment
in his wife's mind, because she carefully avoided any allusion to it. He had been used every
day to taste the flavor of supremacy and the tribute of complete deference: and the certainty
that he was watched or measured with a hidden suspicion of his having some discreditable
secret, made his voice totter when he was speaking to edification. Foreseeing, to men of
Bulstrode's anxious temperament, is often worse than seeing; and his imagination
continually heightened the anguish of an imminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his
defiance of Raffles did not keep the man away – and though he prayed for this result he
hardly hoped for it – the disgrace was certain. In vain he said to himself that, if permitted, it
would be a divine visitation, a chastisement, a preparation; he recoiled from the imagined
burning; and he judged that it must be more for the Divine glory that he should escape
dishonor. That recoil had at last urged him to make preparations for quitting Middlemarch.
If evil truth must be reported of him, he would then be at a less scorching distance from the
contempt of his old neighbors; and in a new scene, where his life would not have gathered
the same wide sensibility, the tormentor, if he pursued him, would be less formidable. To
leave the place finally would, he knew, be extremely painful to his wife, and on other
grounds he would have preferred to stay where he had struck root. Hence he made his
preparations at first in a conditional way, wishing to leave on all sides an opening for his
return after brief absence, if any favorable intervention of Providence should dissipate his
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fears. He was preparing to transfer his management of the Bank, and to give up any active
control of other commercial affairs in the neighborhood, on the ground of his failing health,
but without excluding his future resumption of such work. The measure would cause him
some added expense and some diminution of income beyond what he had already undergone
from the general depression of trade; and the Hospital presented itself as a principal object
of outlay on which he could fairly economize.
This was the experience which had determined his conversation with Lydgate. But at
this time his arrangements had most of them gone no farther than a stage at which he could
recall them if they proved to be unnecessary. He continually deferred the final steps; in the
midst of his fears, like many a man who is in danger of shipwreck or of being dashed from
his carriage by runaway horses, he had a clinging impression that something would happen
to hinder the worst, and that to spoil his life by a late transplantation might be over−hasty –
especially since it was difficult to account satisfactorily to his wife for the project of their
indefinite exile from the only place where she would like to live.
Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the management of the farm at Stone
Court in case of his absence; and on this as well as on all other matters connected with any
houses and land he possessed in or about Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth. Like
every one else who had business of that sort, he wanted to get the agent who was more
anxious for his employer's interests than his own. With regard to Stone Court, since
Bulstrode wished to retain his hold on the stock, and to have an arrangement by which he
himself could, if he chose, resume his favorite recreation of superintendence, Caleb had
advised him not to trust to a mere bailiff, but to let the land, stock, and implements yearly,
and take a proportionate share of the proceeds.
"May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms, Mr. Garth?" said Bulstrode. "And
will you mention to me the yearly sum which would repay you for managing these affairs
which we have discussed together?"
"I'll think about it," said Caleb, in his blunt way. "I'll see how I can make it out."
If it had not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy's future, Mr. Garth would not
probably have been glad of any addition to his work, of which his wife was always fearing
an excess for him as he grew older. But on quitting Bulstrode after that conversation, a very
alluring idea occurred to him about this said letting of Stone Court. What if Bulstrode would
agree to his placing Fred Vincy there on the understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be
responsible for the management? It would be an excellent schooling for Fred; he might
make a modest income there, and still have time left to get knowledge by helping in other
business. He mentioned his notion to Mrs. Garth with such evident delight that she could not
bear to chill his pleasure by expressing her constant fear of his undertaking too much.
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"The lad would be as happy as two," he said, throwing himself back in his chair, and
looking radiant, "if I could tell him it was all settled. Think; Susan! His mind had been
running on that place for years before old Featherstone died. And it would be as pretty a turn
of things as could be that he should hold the place in a good industrious way after all – by
his taking to business. For it's likely enough Bulstrode might let him go on, and gradually
buy the stock. He hasn't made up his mind, I can see, whether or not he shall settle
somewhere else as a lasting thing. I never was better pleased with a notion in my life. And
then the children might be married by−and−by, Susan."
"You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until you are sure that Bulstrode would
agree to the plan?" said Mrs. Garth, in a tone of gentle caution. "And as to marriage, Caleb,
we old people need not help to hasten it."
"Oh, I don't know," said Caleb, swinging his head aside. "Marriage is a taming thing.
Fred would want less of my bit and bridle. However, I shall say nothing till I know the
ground I'm treading on. I shall speak to Bulstrode again."
He took his earliest opportunity of doing so. Bulstrode had anything but a warm interest
in his nephew Fred Vincy, but he had a strong wish to secure Mr. Garth's services on many
scattered points of business at which he was sure to be a considerable loser, if they were
under less conscientious management. On that ground he made no objection to Mr. Garth's
proposal; and there was also another reason why he was not sorry to give a consent which
was to benefit one of the Vincy family. It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heard of Lydgate's
debts, had been anxious to know whether her husband could not do something for poor
Rosamond, and had been much troubled on learning from him that Lydgate's affairs were
not easily remediable, and that the wisest plan was to let them "take their course." Mrs.
Bulstrode had then said for the first time, "I think you are always a little hard towards my
family, Nicholas. And I am sure I have no reason to deny any of my relatives. Too worldly
they may be, but no one ever had to say that they were not respectable."
"My dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife's eyes, which were filling
with tears, "I have supplied your brother with a great deal of capital. I cannot be expected to
take care of his married children."
That seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode's remonstrance subsided into pity for poor
Rosamond, whose extravagant education she had always foreseen the fruits of.
But remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that when he had to talk to his wife
fully about his plan of quitting Middlemarch, he should be glad to tell her that he had made
an arrangement which might be for the good of her nephew Fred. At present he had merely
mentioned to her that he thought of shutting up The Shrubs for a few months, and taking a
house on the Southern Coast.
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Hence Mr. Garth got the assurance he desired, namely, that in case of Bulstrode's
departure from Middlemarch for an indefinite time, Fred Vincy should be allowed to have
the tenancy of Stone Court on the terms proposed.
Caleb was so elated with his hope of this "neat turn" being given to things, that if his
self−control had not been braced by a little affectionate wifely scolding, he would have
betrayed everything to Mary, wanting "to give the child comfort." However, he restrained
himself, and kept in strict privacy from Fred certain visits which he was making to Stone
Court, in order to look more thoroughly into the state of the land and stock, and take a
preliminary estimate. He was certainly more eager in these visits than the probable speed of
events required him to be; but he was stimulated by a fatherly delight in occupying his mind
with this bit of probable happiness which he held in store like a hidden birthday gift for Fred
and Mary.
"But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a castle in the air?" said Mrs.
Garth.
"Well, well," replied Caleb; "the castle will tumble about nobody's head."
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CHAPTER LXIX.
"I
f thou hast heard a word, let it die with thee." – Ecclesiasticus.
Mr. Bulstrode was still seated in his manager's room at the Bank, about three o'clock of
the same day on which he had received Lydgate there, when the clerk entered to say that his
horse was waiting, and also that Mr. Garth was outside and begged to speak with him.
"By all means," said Bulstrode; and Caleb entered. "Pray sit down, Mr. Garth,"
continued the banker, in his suavest tone.
"I am glad that you arrived just in time to find me here. I know you count your
minutes."
"Oh," said Caleb, gently, with a slow swing of his head on one side, as he seated
himself and laid his hat on the floor.
He looked at the ground, leaning forward and letting his long fingers droop between his
legs, while each finger moved in succession, as if it were sharing some thought which filled
his large quiet brow.
Mr. Bulstrode, like every one else who knew Caleb, was used to his slowness in
beginning to speak on any topic which he felt to be important, and rather expected that he
was about to recur to the buying of some houses in Blindman's Court, for the sake of pulling
them down, as a sacrifice of property which would be well repaid by the influx of air and
light on that spot. It was by propositions of this kind that Caleb was sometimes troublesome
to his employers; but he had usually found Bulstrode ready to meet him in projects of
improvement, and they had got on well together. When he spoke again, however, it was to
say, in rather a subdued voice –
"I have just come away from Stone Court, Mr. Bulstrode."
"You found nothing wrong there, I hope," said the banker; "I was there myself
yesterday. Abel has done well with the lambs this year."
"Why, yes," said Caleb, looking up gravely, "there is something wrong – a stranger,
who is very ill, I think. He wants a doctor, and I came to tell you of that. His name is
Raffles."
He saw the shock of his words passing through Bulstrode's frame. On this subject the
banker had thought that his fears were too constantly on the watch to be taken by surprise;
but he had been mistaken.
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"Poor wretch!" he said in a compassionate tone, though his lips trembled a little. "Do
you know how he came there?"
"I took him myself," said Caleb, quietly – "took him up in my gig. He had got down
from the coach, and was walking a little beyond the turning from the toll−house, and I
overtook him. He remembered seeing me with you once before, at Stone Court, and he
asked me to take him on. I saw he was ill: it seemed to me the right thing to do, to carry him
under shelter. And now I think you should lose no time in getting advice for him." Caleb
took up his hat from the floor as he ended, and rose slowly from his seat.
"Certainly," said Bulstrode, whose mind was very active at this moment. "Perhaps you
will yourself oblige me, Mr. Garth, by calling at Mr. Lydgate's as you pass – or stay! he may
at this hour probably be at the Hospital. I will first send my man on the horse there with a
note this instant, and then I will myself ride to Stone Court."
Bulstrode quickly wrote a note, and went out himself to give the commission to his
man. When he returned, Caleb was standing as before with one hand on the back of the
chair, holding his hat with the other. In Bulstrode's mind the dominant thought was,
"Perhaps Raffles only spoke to Garth of his illness. Garth may wonder, as he must have
done before, at this disreputable fellow's claiming intimacy with me; but he will know
nothing. And he is friendly to me – I can be of use to him."
He longed for some confirmation of this hopeful conjecture, but to have asked any
question as to what Raffles had said or done would have been to betray fear.
"I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Garth," he said, in his usual tone of politeness.
"My servant will be back in a few minutes, and I shall then go myself to see what can be
done for this unfortunate man. Perhaps you had some other business with me? If so, pray be
seated."
"Thank you," said Caleb, making a slight gesture with his right hand to waive the
invitation. "I wish to say, Mr. Bulstrode, that I must request you to put your business into
some other hands than mine. I am obliged to you for your handsome way of meeting me –
about the letting of Stone Court, and all other business. But I must give it up." A sharp
certainty entered like a stab into Bulstrode's soul.
"This is sudden, Mr. Garth," was all he could say at first.
"It is," said Caleb; "but it is quite fixed. I must give it up."
He spoke with a firmness which was very gentle, and yet he could see that Bulstrode
seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking dried and his eyes swerving away
from the glance which rested on him. Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used
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no pretexts to account for his resolve, even if they would have been of any use.
"You have been led to this, I apprehend, by some slanders concerning me uttered by
that unhappy creature," said Bulstrode, anxious now to know the utmost.
"That is true. I can't deny that I act upon what I heard from him."
"You are a conscientious man, Mr. Garth – a man, I trust, who feels himself accountable
to God. You would not wish to injure me by being too ready to believe a slander," said
Bulstrode, casting about for pleas that might be adapted to his hearer's mind. "That is a poor
reason for giving up a connection which I think I may say will be mutually beneficial."
"I would injure no man if I could help it," said Caleb; "even if I thought God winked at
it. I hope I should have a feeling for my fellow−creature. But, sir – I am obliged to believe
that this Raffles has told me the truth. And I can't be happy in working with you, or profiting
by you. It hurts my mind. I must beg you to seek another agent."
"Very well, Mr. Garth. But I must at least claim to know the worst that he has told you.
I must know what is the foul speech that I am liable to be the victim of," said Bulstrode, a
certain amount of anger beginning to mingle with his humiliation before this quiet man who
renounced his benefits.
"That's needless," said Caleb, waving his hand, bowing his head slightly, and not
swerving from the tone which had in it the merciful intention to spare this pitiable man.
"What he has said to me will never pass from my lips, unless something now unknown
forces it from me. If you led a harmful life for gain, and kept others out of their rights by
deceit, to get the more for yourself, I dare say you repent – you would like to go back, and
can't: that must be a bitter thing" – Caleb paused a moment and shook his head – "it is not
for me to make your life harder to you."
"But you do – you do make it harder to me," said Bulstrode constrained into a genuine,
pleading cry. "You make it harder to me by turning your back on me."
"That I'm forced to do," said Caleb, still more gently, lifting up his hand. "I am sorry. I
don't judge you and say, he is wicked, and I am righteous. God forbid. I don't know
everything. A man may do wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get
his life clear. That's a bad punishment. If it is so with you, – well, I'm very sorry for you. But
I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go on working with you. That's all, Mr. Bulstrode.
Everything else is buried, so far as my will goes. And I wish you good−day."
"One moment, Mr. Garth!" said Bulstrode, hurriedly. "I may trust then to your solemn
assurance that you will not repeat either to man or woman what – even if it have any degree
of truth in it – is yet a malicious representation?" Caleb's wrath was stirred, and he said,
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indignantly –
"Why should I have said it if I didn't mean it? I am in no fear of you. Such tales as that
will never tempt my tongue."
"Excuse me – I am agitated – I am the victim of this abandoned man."
"Stop a bit! you have got to consider whether you didn't help to make him worse, when
you profited by his vices."
"You are wronging me by too readily believing him," said Bulstrode, oppressed, as by a
nightmare, with the inability to deny flatly what Raffles might have said; and yet feeling it
an escape that Caleb had not so stated it to him as to ask for that flat denial.
"No," said Caleb, lifting his hand deprecatingly; "I am ready to believe better, when
better is proved. I rob you of no good chance. As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a
man's sin unless I'm clear it must be done to save the innocent. That is my way of thinking,
Mr. Bulstrode, and what I say, I've no need to swear. I wish you good−day."
Some hours later, when he was at home, Caleb said to his wife, incidentally, that he had
had some little differences with Bulstrode, and that in consequence, he had given up all
notion of taking Stone Court, and indeed had resigned doing further business for him.
"He was disposed to interfere too much, was he?" said Mrs. Garth, imagining that her
husband had been touched on his sensitive point, and not been allowed to do what he
thought right as to materials and modes of work.
"Oh," said Caleb, bowing his head and waving his hand gravely. And Mrs. Garth knew
that this was a sign of his not intending to speak further on the subject.
As for Bulstrode, he had almost immediately mounted his horse and set off for Stone
Court, being anxious to arrive there before Lydgate.
His mind was crowded with images and conjectures, which were a language to his
hopes and fears, just as we hear tones from the vibrations which shake our whole system.
The deep humiliation with which he had winced under Caleb Garth's knowledge of his past
and rejection of his patronage, alternated with and almost gave way to the sense of safety in
the fact that Garth, and no other, had been the man to whom Raffles had spoken. It seemed
to him a sort of earnest that Providence intended his rescue from worse consequences; the
way being thus left open for the hope of secrecy. That Raffles should be afflicted with
illness, that he should have been led to Stone Court rather than elsewhere – Bulstrode's heart
fluttered at the vision of probabilities which these events conjured up. If it should turn out
that he was freed from all danger of disgrace – if he could breathe in perfect liberty – his life
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should be more consecrated than it had ever been before. He mentally lifted up this vow as if
it would urge the result he longed for – he tried to believe in the potency of that prayerful
resolution – its potency to determine death. He knew that he ought to say, "Thy will be
done;" and he said it often. But the intense desire remained that the will of God might be the
death of that hated man.
Yet when he arrived at Stone Court he could not see the change in Raffles without a
shock. But for his pallor and feebleness, Bulstrode would have called the change in him
entirely mental. Instead of his loud tormenting mood, he showed an intense, vague terror,
and seemed to deprecate Bulstrode's anger, because the money was all gone – he had been
robbed – it had half of it been taken from him. He had only come here because he was ill
and somebody was hunting him – somebody was after him he had told nobody anything, he
had kept his mouth shut. Bulstrode, not knowing the significance of these symptoms,
interpreted this new nervous susceptibility into a means of alarming Raffles into true
confessions, and taxed him with falsehood in saying that he had not told anything, since he
had just told the man who took him up in his gig and brought him to Stone Court. Raffles
denied this with solemn adjurations; the fact being that the links of consciousness were
interrupted in him, and that his minute terror−stricken narrative to Caleb Garth had been
delivered under a set of visionary impulses which had dropped back into darkness.
Bulstrode's heart sank again at this sign that he could get no grasp over the wretched
man's mind, and that no word of Raffles could be trusted as to the fact which he most
wanted to know, namely, whether or not he had really kept silence to every one in the
neighborhood except Caleb Garth. The housekeeper had told him without the least constraint
of manner that since Mr. Garth left, Raffles had asked her for beer, and after that had not
spoken, seeming very ill. On that side it might be concluded that there had been no betrayal.
Mrs. Abel thought, like the servants at The Shrubs, that the strange man belonged to the
unpleasant "kin" who are among the troubles of the rich; she had at first referred the kinship
to Mr. Rigg, and where there was property left, the buzzing presence of such large
blue−bottles seemed natural enough. How he could be "kin" to Bulstrode as well was not so
clear, but Mrs. Abel agreed with her husband that there was "no knowing," a proposition
which had a great deal of mental food for her, so that she shook her head over it without
further speculation.
In less than an hour Lydgate arrived. Bulstrode met him outside the wainscoted parlor,
where Raffles was, and said –
"I have called you in, Mr. Lydgate, to an unfortunate man who was once in my
employment, many years ago. Afterwards he went to America, and returned I fear to an idle
dissolute life. Being destitute, he has a claim on me. He was slightly connected with Rigg,
the former owner of this place, and in consequence found his way here. I believe he is
seriously ill: apparently his mind is affected. I feel bound to do the utmost for him."
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Lydgate, who had the remembrance of his last conversation with Bulstrode strongly
upon him, was not disposed to say an unnecessary word to him, and bowed slightly in
answer to this account; but just before entering the room he turned automatically and said,
"What is his name?" – to know names being as much a part of the medical man's
accomplishment as of the practical politician's.
"Raffles, John Raffles," said Bulstrode, who hoped that whatever became of Raffles,
Lydgate would never know any more of him.
When he had thoroughly examined and considered the patient, Lydgate ordered that he
should go to bed, and be kept there in as complete quiet as possible, and then went with
Bulstrode into another room.
"It is a serious case, I apprehend," said the banker, before Lydgate began to speak.
"No – and yes," said Lydgate, half dubiously. "It is difficult to decide as to the possible
effect of long−standing complications; but the man had a robust constitution to begin with. I
should not expect this attack to be fatal, though of course the system is in a ticklish state. He
should be well watched and attended to."
"I will remain here myself," said Bulstrode. "Mrs. Abel and her husband are
inexperienced. I can easily remain here for the night, if you will oblige me by taking a note
for Mrs. Bulstrode."
"I should think that is hardly necessary," said Lydgate. "He seems tame and terrified
enough. He might become more unmanageable. But there is a man here – is there not?"
"I have more than once stayed here a few nights for the sake of seclusion," said
Bulstrode, indifferently; "I am quite disposed to do so now. Mrs. Abel and her husband can
relieve or aid me, if necessary."
"Very well. Then I need give my directions only to you," said Lydgate, not feeling
surprised at a little peculiarity in Bulstrode.
"You think, then, that the case is hopeful?" said Bulstrode, when Lydgate had ended
giving his orders.
"Unless there turn out to be further complications, such as I have not at present detected
– yes," said Lydgate. "He may pass on to a worse stage; but I should not wonder if ho got
better in a few days, by adhering to the treatment I have prescribed. There must be firmness.
Remember, if he calls for liquors of any sort, not to give them to him. In my opinion, men in
his condition are oftener killed by treatment than by the disease. Still, new symptoms may
arise. I shall come again to−morrow morning."
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After waiting for the note to be carried to Mrs. Bulstrode, Lydgate rode away, forming
no conjectures, in the first instance, about the history of Raffles, but rehearsing the whole
argument, which had lately been much stirred by the publication of Dr. Ware's abundant
experience in America, as to the right way of treating cases of alcoholic poisoning such as
this. Lydgate, when abroad, had already been interested in this question: he was strongly
convinced against the prevalent practice of allowing alcohol and persistently administering
large doses of opium; and he had repeatedly acted on this conviction with a favorable result.
"The man is in a diseased state," he thought, "but there's a good deal of wear in him
still. I suppose he is an object of charity to Bulstrode. It is curious what patches of hardness
and tenderness lie side by side in men's dispositions. Bulstrode seems the most
unsympathetic fellow I ever saw about some people, and yet he has taken no end of trouble,
and spent a great deal of money, on benevolent objects. I suppose he has some test by which
he finds out whom Heaven cares for – he has made up his mind that it doesn't care for me."
This streak of bitterness came from a plenteous source, and kept widening in the current
of his thought as he neared Lowick Gate. He had not been there since his first interview with
Bulstrode in the morning, having been found at the Hospital by the banker's messenger; and
for the first time he was returning to his home without the vision of any expedient in the
background which left him a hope of raising money enough to deliver him from the coming
destitution of everything which made his married life tolerable – everything which saved
him and Rosamond from that bare isolation in which they would be forced to recognize how
little of a comfort they could be to each other. It was more bearable to do without tenderness
for himself than to see that his own tenderness could make no amends for the lack of other
things to her. The sufferings of his own pride from humiliations past and to come were keen
enough, yet they were hardly distinguishable to himself from that more acute pain which
dominated them – the pain of foreseeing that Rosamond would come to regard him chiefly
as the cause of disappointment and unhappiness to her. He had never liked the makeshifts of
poverty, and they had never before entered into his prospects for himself; but he was
beginning now to imagine how two creatures who loved each other, and had a stock of
thoughts in common, might laugh over their shabby furniture, and their calculations how far
they could afford butter and eggs. But the glimpse of that poetry seemed as far off from him
as the carelessness of the golden age; in poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough
for luxuries to look small in. He got down from his horse in a very sad mood, and went into
the house, not expecting to be cheered except by his dinner, and reflecting that before the
evening closed it would be wise to tell Rosamond of his application to Bulstrode and its
failure. It would be well not to lose time in preparing her for the worst.
But his dinner waited long for him before he was able to eat it. For on entering he found
that Dover's agent had already put a man in the house, and when he asked where Mrs.
Lydgate was, he was told that she was in her bedroom. He went up and found her stretched
on the bed pale and silent, without an answer even in her face to any word or look of his. He
sat down by the bed and leaning over her said with almost a cry of prayer –
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CHAPTER LXIX. 572
"Forgive me for this misery, my poor Rosamond! Let us only love one another."
She looked at him silently, still with the blank despair on her face; but then the tears
began to fill her blue eyes, and her lip trembled. The strong man had had too much to bear
that day. He let his head fall beside hers and sobbed.
He did not hinder her from going to her father early in the morning – it seemed now that
he ought not to hinder her from doing as she pleased. In half an hour she came back, and
said that papa and mamma wished her to go and stay with them while things were in this
miserable state. Papa said he could do nothing about the debt – if he paid this, there would
be half−a−dozen more. She had better come back home again till Lydgate had got a
comfortable home for her. "Do you object, Tertius?"
"Do as you like," said Lydgate. "But things are not coming to a crisis immediately.
There is no hurry."
"I should not go till to−morrow," said Rosamond; "I shall want to pack my clothes."
"Oh, I would wait a little longer than to−morrow – there is no knowing what may
happen," said Lydgate, with bitter irony. "I may get my neck broken, and that may make
things easier to you."
It was Lydgate's misfortune and Rosamond's too, that his tenderness towards her, which
was both an emotional prompting and a well−considered resolve, was inevitably interrupted
by these outbursts of indignation either ironical or remonstrant. She thought them totally
unwarranted, and the repulsion which this exceptional severity excited in her was in danger
of making the more persistent tenderness unacceptable.
"I see you do not wish me to go," she said, with chill mildness; "why can you not say
so, without that kind of violence? I shall stay until you request me to do otherwise."
Lydgate said no more, but went out on his rounds. He felt bruised and shattered, and
there was a dark line under his eyes which Rosamond had not seen before. She could not
bear to look at him. Tertius had a way of taking things which made them a great deal worse
for her.
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CHAPTER LXIX. 573
CHAPTER LXX.
O
ur deeds still travel with us from afar, And what we have been makes us what we
are."
Bulstrode's first object after Lydgate had left Stone Court was to examine Raffles's
pockets, which he imagined were sure to carry signs in the shape of hotel−bills of the places
he had stopped in, if he had not told the truth in saying that he had come straight from
Liverpool because he was ill and had no money. There were various bills crammed into his
pocketbook, but none of a later date than Christmas at any other place, except one, which
bore date that morning. This was crumpled up with a hand−bill about a horse−fair in one of
his tail−pockets, and represented the cost of three days' stay at an inn at Bilkley, where the
fair was held – a town at least forty miles from Middlemarch. The bill was heavy, and since
Raffles had no luggage with him, it seemed probable that he had left his portmanteau behind
in payment, in order to save money for his travelling fare; for his purse was empty, and he
had only a couple of sixpences and some loose pence in his pockets.
Bulstrode gathered a sense of safety from these indications that Raffles had really kept
at a distance from Middlemarch since his memorable visit at Christmas. At a distance and
among people who were strangers to Bulstrode, what satisfaction could there be to Raffles's
tormenting, self−magnifying vein in telling old scandalous stories about a Middlemarch
banker? And what harm if he did talk? The chief point now was to keep watch over him as
long as there was any danger of that intelligible raving, that unaccountable impulse to tell,
which seemed to have acted towards Caleb Garth; and Bulstrode felt much anxiety lest some
such impulse should come over him at the sight of Lydgate. He sat up alone with him
through the night, only ordering the housekeeper to lie down in her clothes, so as to be ready
when he called her, alleging his own indisposition to sleep, and his anxiety to carry out the
doctor's orders. He did carry them out faithfully, although Raffles was incessantly asking for
brandy, and declaring that he was sinking away – that the earth was sinking away from
under him. He was restless and sleepless, but still quailing and manageable. On the offer of
the food ordered by Lydgate, which he refused, and the denial of other things which he
demanded, he seemed to concentrate all his terror on Bulstrode, imploringly deprecating his
anger, his revenge on him by starvation, and declaring with strong oaths that he had never
told any mortal a word against him. Even this Bulstrode felt that he would not have liked
Lydgate to hear; but a more alarming sign of fitful alternation in his delirium was, that
in−the morning twilight Raffles suddenly seemed to imagine a doctor present, addressing
him and declaring that Bulstrode wanted to starve him to death out of revenge for telling,
when he never had told.
Bulstrode's native imperiousness and strength of determination served him well. This
delicate−looking man, himself nervously perturbed, found the needed stimulus in his
strenuous circumstances, and through that difficult night and morning, while he had the air
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CHAPTER LXX. 574
of an animated corpse returned to movement without warmth, holding the mastery by its
chill impassibility his mind was intensely at work thinking of what he had to guard against
and what would win him security. Whatever prayers he might lift up, whatever statements
he might inwardly make of this man's wretched spiritual condition, and the duty he himself
was under to submit to the punishment divinely appointed for him rather than to wish for
evil to another – through all this effort to condense words into a solid mental state, there
pierced and spread with irresistible vividness the images of the events he desired. And in the
train of those images came their apology. He could not but see the death of Raffles, and see
in it his own deliverance. What was the removal of this wretched creature? He was
impenitent – but were not public criminals impenitent? – yet the law decided on their fate.
Should Providence in this case award death, there was no sin in contemplating death as the
desirable issue – if he kept his hands from hastening it – if he scrupulously did what was
prescribed. Even here there might be a mistake: human prescriptions were fallible things:
Lydgate had said that treatment had hastened death, – why not his own method of treatment?
But of course intention was everything in the question of right and wrong.
And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention separate from his desire. He inwardly
declared that he intended to obey orders. Why should he have got into any argument about
the validity of these orders? It was only the common trick of desire – which avails itself of
any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for itself in all uncertainty about effects, in
every obscurity that looks like the absence of law. Still, he did obey the orders.
His anxieties continually glanced towards Lydgate, and his remembrance of what had
taken place between them the morning before was accompanied with sensibilities which had
not been roused at all during the actual scene. He had then cared but little about Lydgate's
painful impressions with regard to the suggested change in the Hospital, or about the
disposition towards himself which what he held to be his justifiable refusal of a rather
exorbitant request might call forth. He recurred to the scene now with a perception that he
had probably made Lydgate his enemy, and with an awakened desire to propitiate him, or
rather to create in him a strong sense of personal obligation. He regretted that he had not at
once made even an unreasonable money−sacrifice. For in case of unpleasant suspicions, or
even knowledge gathered from the raving of Raffles, Bulstrode would have felt that he had a
defence in Lydgate's mind by having conferred a momentous benefit on him. Bat the regret
had perhaps come too late.
Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man, who had longed for years to
be better than he was – who had taken his selfish passions into discipline and clad them in
severe robes, so that he had walked with them as a devout choir, till now that a terror had
risen among them, and they could chant no longer, but threw out their common cries for
safety.
It was nearly the middle of the day before Lydgate arrived: he had meant to come
earlier, but had been detained, he said; and his shattered looks were noticed by Balstrode.
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CHAPTER LXX. 575
But he immediately threw himself into the consideration of the patient, and inquired strictly
into all that had occurred. Raffles was worse, would take hardly any food, was persistently
wakeful and restlessly raving; but still not violent. Contrary to Bulstrode's alarmed
expectation, he took little notice of Lydgate's presence, and continued to talk or murmur
incoherently.
"What do you think of him?" said Bulstrode, in private.
"The symptoms are worse."
"You are less hopeful?"
"No; I still think he may come round. Are you going to stay here yourself?" said
Lydgate, looking at Bulstrode with an abrupt question, which made him uneasy, though in
reality it was not due to any suspicious conjecture.
"Yes, I think so," said Bulstrode, governing himself and speaking with deliberation.
"Mrs. Bulstrode is advised of the reasons which detain me. Mrs. Abel and her husband are
not experienced enough to be left quite alone, and this kind of responsibility is scarcely
included in their service of me. You have some fresh instructions, I presume."
The chief new instruction that Lydgate had to give was on the administration of
extremely moderate doses of opium, in case of the sleeplessness continuing after several
hours. He had taken the precaution of bringing opium in his pocket, and he gave minute
directions to Bulstrode as to the doses, and the point at which they should cease. He insisted
on the risk of not ceasing; and repeated his order that no alcohol should be given.
"From what I see of the case," he ended, "narcotism is the only thing I should be much
afraid of. He may wear through even without much food. There's a good deal of strength in
him."
"You look ill yourself, Mr. Lydgate – a most unusual, I may say unprecedented thing in
my knowledge of you," said Bulstrode, showing a solicitude as unlike his indifference the
day before, as his present recklessness about his own fatigue was unlike his habitual
self−cherishing anxiety. "I fear you are harassed."
"Yes, I am," said Lydgate, brusquely, holding his hat, and ready to go.
"Something new, I fear," said Bulstrode, inquiringly. "Pray be seated."
"No, thank you," said Lydgate, with some hauteur. "I mentioned to you yesterday what
was the state of my affairs. There is nothing to add, except that the execution has since then
been actually put into my house. One can tell a good deal of trouble in a short sentence. I
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CHAPTER LXX. 576
will say good morning."
"Stay, Mr. Lydgate, stay," said Bulstrode; "I have been reconsidering this subject. I was
yesterday taken by surprise, and saw it superficially. Mrs. Bulstrode is anxious for her niece,
and I myself should grieve at a calamitous change in your position. Claims on me are
numerous, but on reconsideration, I esteem it right that I should incur a small sacrifice rather
than leave you unaided. You said, I think, that a thousand pounds would suffice entirely to
free you from your burthens, and enable you to recover a firm stand?"
"Yes," said Lydgate, a great leap of joy within him surmounting every other feeling;
"that would pay all my debts, and leave me a little on hand. I could set about economizing in
our way of living. And by−and−by my practice might look up."
"If you will wait a moment, Mr. Lydgate, I will draw a cheek to that amount. I am
aware that help, to be effectual in these cases, should be thorough."
While Bulstrode wrote, Lydgate turned to the window thinking of his home – thinking
of his life with its good start saved from frustration, its good purposes still unbroken.
"You can give me a note of hand for this, Mr. Lydgate," said the banker, advancing
towards him with the check. "And by−and−by, I hope, you may be in circumstances
gradually to repay me. Meanwhile, I have pleasure in thinking that you will be released from
further difficulty."
"I am deeply obliged to you," said Lydgate. "You have restored to me the prospect of
working with some happiness and some chance of good."
It appeared to him a very natural movement in Bulstrode that he should have
reconsidered his refusal: it corresponded with the more munificent side of his character. But
as he put his hack into a canter, that he might get the sooner home, and tell the good news to
Rosamond, and get cash at the bank to pay over to Dover's agent, there crossed his mind,
with an unpleasant impression, as from a dark−winged flight of evil augury across his
vision, the thought of that contrast in himself which a few months had brought – that he
should be overjoyed at being under a strong personal obligation – that he should be
overjoyed at getting money for himself from Bulstrode.
The banker felt that he had done something to nullify one cause of uneasiness, and yet
he was scarcely the easier. He did not measure the quantity of diseased motive which had
made him wish for Lydgate's good−will, but the quantity was none the less actively there,
like an irritating agent in his blood. A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of
breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which
tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax
his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his
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CHAPTER LXX. 577
vow. Raffles, recovering quickly, returning to the free use of his odious powers – how could
Bulstrode wish for that? Raffles dead was the image that brought release, and indirectly he
prayed for that way of release, beseeching that, if it were possible, the rest of his days here
below might be freed from the threat of an ignominy which would break him utterly as an
instrument of God's service. Lydgate's opinion was not on the side of promise that this
prayer would be fulfilled; and as the day advanced, Bulstrode felt himself getting irritated at
the persistent life in this man, whom he would fain have seen sinking into the silence of
death imperious will stirred murderous impulses towards this brute life, over which will, by
itself, had no power. He said inwardly that he was getting too much worn; he would not sit
up with the patient to−night, but leave him to Mrs. Abel, who, if necessary, could call her
husband.
At six o'clock, Raffles, having had only fitful perturbed snatches of sleep, from which
he waked with fresh restlessness and perpetual cries that he was sinking away, Bulstrode
began to administer the opium according to Lydgate's directions. At the end of half an hour
or more he called Mrs. Abel and told her that he found himself unfit for further watching. He
must now consign the patient to her care; and he proceeded to repeat to her Lydgate's
directions as to the quantity of each dose. Mrs. Abel had not before known anything of
Lydgate's prescriptions; she had simply prepared and brought whatever Bulstrode ordered,
and had done what he pointed out to her. She began now to ask what else she should do
besides administering the opium.
"Nothing at present, except the offer of the soup or the soda−water: you can come to me
for further directions. Unless there is any important change, I shall not come into the room
again to−night. You will ask your husband for help if necessary. I must go to bed early."
"You've much need, sir, I'm sure," said Mrs. Abel, "and to take something more
strengthening than what you've done.
Bulstrode went−away now without anxiety as to what Raffles might say in his raving,
which had taken on a muttering incoherence not likely to create any dangerous belief. At
any rate he must risk this. He went down into the wainscoted parlor first, and began to
consider whether he would not have his horse saddled and go home by the moonlight, and
give up caring for earthly consequences. Then, he wished that he had begged Lydgate to
come again that evening. Perhaps he might deliver a different opinion, and think that Raffles
was getting into a less hopeful state. Should he send for Lydgate? If Raffles were really
getting worse, and slowly dying, Bulstrode felt that he could go to bed and sleep in gratitude
to Providence. But was he worse? Lydgate might come and simply say that he was going on
as he expected, and predict that he would by−and−by fall into a good sleep, and get well.
What was the use of sending for him? Bulstrode shrank from that result. No ideas or
opinions could hinder him from seeing the one probability to be, that Raffles recovered
would be just the same man as before, with his strength as a tormentor renewed, obliging
him to drag away his wife to spend her years apart from her friends and native place,
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CHAPTER LXX. 578
carrying an alienating suspicion against him in her heart.
He had sat an hour and a half in this conflict by the firelight only, when a sudden
thought made him rise and light the bed−candle, which he had brought down with him. The
thought was, that he had not told Mrs. Abel when the doses of opium must cease.
He took hold of the candlestick, but stood motionless for a long while. She might
already have given him more than Lydgate had prescribed. But it was excusable in him, that
he should forget part of an order, in his present wearied condition. He walked up−stairs,
candle in hand, not knowing whether he should straightway enter his own room and go to
bed, or turn to the patient's room and rectify his omission. He paused in the passage, with his
face turned towards Raffles's room, and he could hear him moaning and murmuring. He was
not asleep, then. Who could know that Lydgate's prescription would not be better disobeyed
than followed, since there was still no sleep?
He turned into his own room. Before he had quite undressed, Mrs. Abel rapped at the
door; he opened it an inch, so that he could hear her speak low.
"If you please, sir, should I have no brandy nor nothing to give the poor creetur? He
feels sinking away, and nothing else will he swaller – and but little strength in it, if he did –
only the opium. And he says more and more he's sinking down through the earth."
To her surprise, Mr. Bulstrode did not answer. A struggle was going on within him.
"I think he must die for want o' support, if he goes on in that way. When I nursed my
poor master, Mr. Robisson, I had to give him port−wine and brandy constant, and a big glass
at a time," added Mrs. Abel, with a touch of remonstrance in her tone.
But again Mr. Bulstrode did not answer immediately, and she continued, "It's not a time
to spare when people are at death's door, nor would you wish it, sir, I'm sure. Else I should
give him our own bottle o' rum as we keep by us. But a sitter−up so as you've been, and
doing everything as laid in your power – "
Here a key was thrust through the inch of doorway, and Mr. Bulstrode said huskily,
"That is the key of the wine−cooler. You will find plenty of brandy there."
Early in the morning – about six – Mr. Bulstrode rose and spent some time in prayer.
Does any one suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid – necessarily goes to the
roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative: who can
represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections? Bulstrode had not yet unravelled
in his thought the confused promptings of the last four−and−twenty hours.
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CHAPTER LXX. 579
He listened in the passage, and could hear hard stertorous breathing. Then he walked
out in the garden, and looked at the early rime on the grass and fresh spring leaves. When he
re−entered the house, he felt startled at the sight of Mrs. Abel.
"How is your patient – asleep, I think?" he said, with an attempt at cheerfulness in his
tone.
"He's gone very deep, sir," said Mrs. Abel. "He went off gradual between three and four
o'clock. Would you please to go and look at him? I thought it no harm to leave him. My
man's gone afield, and the little girl's seeing to the kettles."
Bulstrode went up. At a glance he knew that Raffles was not in the sleep which brings
revival, but in the sleep which streams deeper and deeper into the gulf of death.
He looked round the room and saw a bottle with some brandy in it, and the almost
empty opium phial. He put the phial out of sight, and carried the brandy−bottle down−stairs
with him, locking it again in the wine−cooler.
While breakfasting he considered whether he should ride to Middlemarch at once, or
wait for Lydgate's arrival. He decided to wait, and told Mrs. Abel that she might go about
her work – he could watch in the bed−chamber.
As he sat there and beheld the enemy of his peace going irrevocably into silence, he felt
more at rest than he had done for many months. His conscience was soothed by the
enfolding wing of secrecy, which seemed just then like an angel sent down for his relief. He
drew out his pocket−book to review various memoranda there as to the arrangements he had
projected and partly carried out in the prospect of quitting Middlemarch, and considered
how far he would let them stand or recall them, now that his absence would be brief. Some
economies which he felt desirable might still find a suitable occasion in his temporary
withdrawal from management, and he hoped still that Mrs. Casaubon would take a large
share in the expenses of the Hospital. In that way the moments passed, until a change in the
stertorous breathing was marked enough to draw his attention wholly to the bed, and forced
him to think of the departing life, which had once been subservient to his own – which he
had once been glad to find base enough for him to act on as he would. It was his gladness
then which impelled him now to be glad that the life was at an end.
And who could say that the death of Raffles had been hastened? Who knew what would
have saved him?
Lydgate arrived at half−past ten, in time to witness the final pause of the breath. When
he entered the room Bulstrode observed a sudden expression in his face, which was not so
much surprise as a recognition that he had not judged correctly. He stood by the bed in
silence for some time, with his eyes turned on the dying man, but with that subdued activity
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CHAPTER LXX. 580
of expression which showed that he was carrying on an inward debate.
"When did this change begin?" said he, looking at Bulstrode.
"I did not watch by him last night," said Bulstrode. "I was over−worn, and left him
under Mrs. Abel's care. She said that he sank into sleep between three and four o'clock.
When I came in before eight he was nearly in this condition."
Lydgate did not ask another question, but watched in silence until he said, "It's all over."
This morning Lydgate was in a state of recovered hope and freedom. He had set out on
his work with all his old animation, and felt himself strong enough to bear all the
deficiencies of his married life. And he was conscious that Bulstrode had been a benefactor
to him. But he was uneasy about this case. He had not expected it to terminate as it had
done. Yet he hardly knew how to put a question on the subject to Bulstrode without
appearing to insult him; and if he examined the housekeeper – why, the man was dead.
There seemed to be no use in implying that somebody's ignorance or imprudence had killed
him. And after all, he himself might be wrong.
He and Bulstrode rode back to Middlemarch together, talking of many things – chiefly
cholera and the chances of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords, and the firm resolve of the
political Unions. Nothing was said about Raffles, except that Bulstrode mentioned the
necessity of having a grave for him in Lowick churchyard, and observed that, so far as he
knew, the poor man had no connections, except Rigg, whom he had stated to be unfriendly
towards him.
On returning home Lydgate had a visit from Mr. Farebrother. The Vicar had not been in
the town the day before, but the news that there was an execution in Lydgate's house had got
to Lowick by the evening, having been carried by Mr. Spicer, shoemaker and parish−clerk,
who had it from his brother, the respectable bell−hanger in Lowick Gate. Since that evening
when Lydgate had come down from the billiard room with Fred Vincy, Mr. Farebrother's
thoughts about him had been rather gloomy. Playing at the Green Dragon once or oftener
might have been a trifle in another man; but in Lydgate it was one of several signs that he
was getting unlike his former self. He was beginning to do things for which he had formerly
even an excessive scorn. Whatever certain dissatisfactions in marriage, which some silly
tinklings of gossip had given him hints of, might have to do with this change, Mr.
Farebrother felt sure that it was chiefly connected with the debts which were being more and
more distinctly reported, and he began to fear that any notion of Lydgate's having resources
or friends in the background must be quite illusory. The rebuff he had met with in his first
attempt to win Lydgate's confidence, disinclined him to a second; but this news of the
execution being actually in the house, determined the Vicar to overcome his reluctance.
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Lydgate had just dismissed a poor patient, in whom he was much interested, and he
came forward to put out his hand – with an open cheerfulness which surprised Mr.
Farebrother. Could this too be a proud rejection of sympathy and help? Never mind; the
sympathy and help should be offered.
"How are you, Lydgate? I came to see you because I had heard something which made
me anxious about you," said the Vicar, in the tone of a good brother, only that there was no
reproach in it. They were both seated by this time, and Lydgate answered immediately –
"I think I know what you mean. You had heard that there was an execution in the
house?"
"Yes; is it true?"
"It was true," said Lydgate, with an air of freedom, as if he did not mind talking about
the affair now. "But the danger is over; the debt is paid. I am out of my difficulties now: I
shall be freed from debts, and able, I hope, to start afresh on a better plan."
"I am very thankful to hear it," said the Vicar, falling back in his chair, and speaking
with that low−toned quickness which often follows the removal of a load. "I like that better
than all the news in the `Times.' I confess I came to you with a heavy heart."
"Thank you for coming," said Lydgate, cordially. "I can enjoy the kindness all the more
because I am happier. I have certainly been a good deal crushed. I'm afraid I shall find the
bruises still painful by−and by," he added, smiling rather sadly; "but just now I can only feel
that the torture−screw is off."
Mr. Farebrother was silent for a moment, and then said earnestly, "My dear fellow, let
me ask you one question. Forgive me if I take a liberty."
"I don't believe you will ask anything that ought to offend me."
"Then – this is necessary to set my heart quite at rest – you have not – have you? – in
order to pay your debts, incurred another debt which may harass you worse hereafter?"
"No," said Lydgate, coloring slightly. "There is no reason why I should not tell you –
since the fact is so – that the person to whom I am indebted is Bulstrode. He has made me a
very handsome advance – a thousand pounds – and he can afford to wait for repayment."
"Well, that is generous," said Mr. Farebrother, compelling himself to approve of the
man whom he disliked. His delicate feeling shrank from dwelling even in his thought on the
fact that he had always urged Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode.
He added immediately, "And Bulstrode must naturally feel an interest in your welfare, after
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CHAPTER LXX. 582
you have worked with him in a way which has probably reduced your income instead of
adding to it. I am glad to think that he has acted accordingly."
Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly suppositions. They made more distinct
within him the uneasy consciousness which had shown its first dim stirrings only a few
hours before, that Bulstrode's motives for his sudden beneficence following close upon the
chillest indifference might be merely selfish. He let the kindly suppositions pass. He could
not tell the history of the loan, but it was more vividly present with him than ever, as well as
the fact which the Vicar delicately ignored – that this relation of personal indebtedness to
Bulstrode was what he had once been most resolved to avoid.
He began, instead of answering, to speak of his projected economies, and of his having
come to look at his life from a different point of view.
"I shall set up a surgery," he said. "I really think I made a mistaken effort in that respect.
And if Rosamond will not mind, I shall take an apprentice. I don't like these things, but if
one carries them out faithfully they are not really lowering. I have had a severe galling to
begin with: that will make the small rubs seem easy."
Poor Lydgate! the "if Rosamond will not mind," which had fallen from him
involuntarily as part of his thought, was a significant mark of the yoke he bore. But Mr.
Farebrother, whose hopes entered strongly into the same current with Lydgate's, and who
knew nothing about him that could now raise a melancholy presentiment, left him with
affectionate congratulation.
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXX. 583
CHAPTER LXXI.
C
lown. . . . 'Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed,
you have a delight to sit, have you not? Froth. I have so: because it is an open room, and
good for winter. Clo. Why, very well then: I hope here be truths. – Measure for Measure.
Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was standing at his leisure under
the large archway leading into the yard of the Green Dragon. He was not fond of solitary
contemplation, but he had only just come out of the house, and any human figure standing at
ease under the archway in the early afternoon was as certain to attract companionship as a
pigeon which has found something worth peeking at. In this case there was no material
object to feed upon, but the eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the
shape of gossip. Mr. Hopkins, the meek−mannered draper opposite, was the first to act on
this inward vision, being the more ambitious of a little masculine talk because his customers
were chiefly women. Mr. Bambridge was rather curt to the draper, feeling that Hopkins was
of course glad to talk to HIM, but that he was not going to waste much of his talk on
Hopkins. Soon, however, there was a small cluster of more important listeners, who were
either deposited from the passers−by, or had sauntered to the spot expressly to see if there
were anything going on at the Green Dragon; and Mr. Bambridge was finding it worth his
while to say many impressive things about the fine studs he had been seeing and the
purchases he had made on a journey in the north from which he had just returned.
Gentlemen present were assured that when they could show him anything to cut out a blood
mare, a bay, rising four, which was to be seen at Doncaster if they chose to go and look at it,
Mr. Bambridge would gratify them by being shot "from here to Hereford." Also, a pair of
blacks which he was going to put into the break recalled vividly to his mind a pair which he
had sold to Faulkner in '19, for a hundred guineas, and which Faulkner had sold for a
hundred and sixty two months later – any gent who could disprove this statement being
offered the privilege of calling Mr. Bambridge by a very ugly name until the exercise made
his throat dry.
When the discourse was at this point of animation, came up Mr. Frank Hawley. He was
not a man to compromise his dignity by lounging at the Green Dragon, but happening to
pass along the High Street and seeing Bambridge on the other side, he took some of his long
strides across to ask the horsedealer whether he had found the first−rate gig−horse which he
had engaged to look for. Mr. Hawley was requested to wait until he had seen a gray selected
at Bilkley: if that did not meet his wishes to a hair, Bambridge did not know a horse when he
saw it, which seemed to be the highest conceivable unlikelihood. Mr. Hawley, standing with
his back to the street, was fixing a time for looking at the gray and seeing it tried, when a
horseman passed slowly by.
"Bulstrode!" said two or three voices at once in a low tone, one of them, which was the
draper's, respectfully prefixing the "Mr.;" but nobody having more intention in this
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CHAPTER LXXI. 584
interjectural naming than if they had said "the Riverston coach" when that vehicle appeared
in the distance. Mr. Hawley gave a careless glance round at Bulstrode's back, but as
Bambridge's eyes followed it he made a sarcastic grimace.
"By jingo! that reminds me," he began, lowering his voice a little, "I picked up
something else at Bilkley besides your gig−horse, Mr. Hawley. I picked up a fine story
about Bulstrode. Do you know how he came by his fortune? Any gentleman wanting a bit of
curious information, I can give it him free of expense. If everybody got their deserts,
Bulstrode might have had to say his prayers at Botany Bay."
"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and
pushing a little forward under the archway. If Bulstrode should turn out to be a rascal, Frank
Hawley had a prophetic soul.
"I had it from a party who was an old chum of Bulstrode's. I'll tell you where I first
picked him up," said Bambridge, with a sudden gesture of his fore−finger. "He was at
Larcher's sale, but I knew nothing of him then – he slipped through my fingers – was after
Bulstrode, no doubt. He tells me he can tap Bulstrode to any amount, knows all his secrets.
However, he blabbed to me at Bilkley: he takes a stiff glass. Damme if I think he meant to
turn king's evidence; but he's that sort of bragging fellow, the bragging runs over hedge and
ditch with him, till he'd brag of a spavin as if it 'ud fetch money. A man should know when
to pull up." Mr. Bambridge made this remark with an air of disgust, satisfied that his own
bragging showed a fine sense of the marketable.
"What's the man's name? Where can he be found?" said Mr. Hawley.
"As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the Saracen's Head; but his name is
Raffles."
"Raffles!" exclaimed Mr. Hopkins. "I furnished his funeral yesterday. He was buried at
Lowick. Mr. Bulstrode followed him. A very decent funeral." There was a strong sensation
among the listeners. Mr. Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which "brimstone" was the
mildest word, and Mr. Hawley, knitting his brows and bending his head forward, exclaimed,
"What? – where did the man die?"
"At Stone Court," said the draper. "The housekeeper said he was a relation of the
master's. He came there ill on Friday."
"Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him," interposed Bambridge.
"Did any doctor attend him?" said Mr. Hawley
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CHAPTER LXXI. 585
"Yes. Mr. Lydgate. Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night. He died the third
morning."
"Go on, Bambridge," said Mr. Hawley, insistently. "What did this fellow say about
Bulstrode?"
The group had already become larger, the town−clerk's presence being a guarantee that
something worth listening to was going on there; and Mr. Bambridge delivered his narrative
in the hearing of seven. It was mainly what we know, including the fact about Will
Ladislaw, with some local color and circumstance added: it was what Bulstrode had dreaded
the betrayal of – and hoped to have buried forever with the corpse of Raffles – it was that
haunting ghost of his earlier life which as he rode past the archway of the Green Dragon he
was trusting that Providence had delivered him from. Yes, Providence. He had not confessed
to himself yet that he had done anything in the way of contrivance to this end; he had
accepted what seemed to have been offered. It was impossible to prove that he had done
anything which hastened the departure of that man's soul.
But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like the smell of fire. Mr.
Frank Hawley followed up his information by sending a clerk whom he could trust to Stone
Court on a pretext of inquiring about hay, but really to gather all that could be learned about
Raffles and his illness from Mrs. Abel. In this way it came to his knowledge that Mr. Garth
had carried the man to Stone Court in his gig; and Mr. Hawley in consequence took an
opportunity of seeing Caleb, calling at his office to ask whether he had time to undertake an
arbitration if it were required, and then asking him incidentally about Raffles. Caleb was
betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which he was forced to admit,
that he had given up acting for him within the last week. Mr Hawley drew his inferences,
and feeling convinced that Raffles had told his story to Garth, and that Garth had given up
Bulstrode's affairs in consequence, said so a few hours later to Mr. Toller. The statement
was passed on until it had quite lost the stamp of an inference, and was taken as information
coming straight from Garth, so that even a diligent historian might have concluded Caleb to
be the chief publisher of Bulstrode's misdemeanors.
Mr. Hawley was not slow to perceive that there was no handle for the law either in the
revelations made by Raffles or in the circumstances of his death. He had himself ridden to
Lowick village that he might look at the register and talk over the whole matter with Mr.
Farebrother, who was not more surprised than the lawyer that an ugly secret should have
come to light about Bulstrode, though he had always had justice enough in him to hinder his
antipathy from turning into conclusions. But while they were talking another combination
was silently going forward in Mr. Farebrother's mind, which foreshadowed what was soon to
be loudly spoken of in Middlemarch as a necessary "putting of two and two together." With
the reasons which kept Bulstrode in dread of Raffles there flashed the thought that the dread
might have something to do with his munificence towards his medical man; and though he
resisted the suggestion that it had been consciously accepted in any way as a bribe, he had a
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXI. 586
foreboding that this complication of things might be of malignant effect on Lydgate's
reputation. He perceived that Mr. Hawley knew nothing at present of the sudden relief from
debt, and he himself was careful to glide away from all approaches towards the subject.
"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up the illimitable discussion of
what might have been, though nothing could be legally proven, "it is a strange story. So our
mercurial Ladislaw has a queer genealogy! A high−spirited young lady and a musical Polish
patriot made a likely enough stock for him to spring from, but I should never have suspected
a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker. However, there's no knowing what a mixture will turn out
beforehand. Some sorts of dirt serve to clarify."
"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr. Hawley, mounting his horse. "Any
cursed alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy."
"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley. But he is really a disinterested,
unworldly fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling.
"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley, who had been in the habit of
saying apologetically that Farebrother was such a damned pleasant good−hearted fellow you
would mistake him for a Tory.
Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance on Raffles in any other
light than as a piece of evidence on the side of Bulstrode. But the news that Lydgate had all
at once become able not only to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts
in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it conjectures and comments which
gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears of other persons besides Mr.
Hawley, who were not slow to see a significant relation between this sudden command of
money and Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles. That the money came from
Bulstrode would infallibly have been guessed even if there had been no direct evidence of it;
for it had beforehand entered into the gossip about Lydgate's affairs, that neither his
father−in−law nor his own family would do anything for him, and direct evidence was
furnished not only by a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs. Bulstrode herself, who
mentioned the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who mentioned it to her daughter−in−law of the house
of Toller, who mentioned it generally. The business was felt to be so public and important
that it required dinners to feed it, and many invitations were just then issued and accepted on
the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single
ladies took their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public conviviality,
from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which could not be won from the
question whether the Lords would throw out the Reform Bill.
For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or other was at the bottom of
Bulstrode's liberality to Lydgate. Mr. Hawley indeed, in the first instance, invited a select
party, including the two physicians, with Mr Toller and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold a
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXI. 587
close discussion as to the probabilities of Raffles's illness, reciting to them all the particulars
which had been gathered from Mrs. Abel in connection with Lydgate's certificate, that the
death was due to delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who all stood undisturbedly
on the old paths in relation to this disease, declared that they could see nothing in these
particulars which could be transformed into a positive ground of suspicion. But the moral
grounds of suspicion remained: the strong motives Bulstrode clearly had for wishing to be
rid of Raffles, and the fact that at this critical moment he had given Lydgate the help which
he must for some time have known the need for; the disposition, moreover, to believe that
Bulstrode would be unscrupulous, and the absence of any indisposition to believe that
Lydgate might be as easily bribed as other haughty−minded men when they have found
themselves in want of money. Even if the money had been given merely to make him hold
his tongue about the scandal of Bulstrode's earlier life, the fact threw an odious light on
Lydgate, who had long been sneered at as making himself subservient to the banker for the
sake of working himself into predominance, and discrediting the elder members of his
profession. Hence, in spite of the negative as to any direct sign of guilt in relation to the
death at Stone Court, Mr. Hawley's select party broke up with the sense that the affair had
"an ugly look."
But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough to keep up much
head−shaking and biting innuendo even among substantial professional seniors, had for the
general mind all the superior power of mystery over fact. Everybody liked better to
conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became more
confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible. Even the
more definite scandal concerning Bulstrode's earlier life was, for some minds, melted into
the mass of mystery, as so much lively metal to be poured out in dialogue, and to take such
fantastic shapes as heaven pleased.
This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by Mrs. Dollop, the spirited landlady of
the Tankard in Slaughter Lane, who had often to resist the shallow pragmatism of customers
disposed to think that their reports from the outer world were of equal force with what had
"come up" in her mind. How it had been brought to her she didn't know, but it was there
before her as if it had been scored with the chalk on the chimney−board – " as Bulstrode
should say, his inside was THAT BLACK as if the hairs of his head knowed the thoughts of
his heart, he'd tear 'em up by the roots."
"That's odd," said Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker, with weak eyes and a piping
voice. "Why, I read in the `Trumpet' that was what the Duke of Wellington said when he
turned his coat and went over to the Romans."
"Very like," said Mrs. Dollop. "If one raskill said it, it's more reason why another
should. But hypoCRITE as he's been, and holding things with that high hand, as there was
no parson i' the country good enough for him, he was forced to take Old Harry into his
counsel, and Old Harry's been too many for him."
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXI. 588
"Ay, ay, he's a 'complice you can't send out o' the country," said Mr. Crabbe, the glazier,
who gathered much news and groped among it dimly. "But by what I can make out, there's
them says Bulstrode was for running away, for fear o' being found out, before now."
"He'll be drove away, whether or no," said Mr. Dill, the barber, who had just dropped
in. "I shaved Fletcher, Hawley's clerk, this morning – he's got a bad finger – and he says
they're all of one mind to get rid of Bulstrode. Mr. Thesiger is turned against him, and wants
him out o' the parish. And there's gentlemen in this town says they'd as soon dine with a
fellow from the hulks. `And a deal sooner I would,' says Fletcher; `for what's more against
one's stomach than a man coming and making himself bad company with his religion, and
giving out as the Ten Commandments are not enough for him, and all the while he's worse
than half the men at the tread−mill?' Fletcher said so himself."
"It'll be a bad thing for the town though, if Bulstrode's money goes out of it," said Mr.
Limp, quaveringly.
"Ah, there's better folks spend their money worse," said a firm−voiced dyer, whose
crimson hands looked out of keeping with his good−natured face.
"But he won't keep his money, by what I can make out," said the glazier. "Don't they
say as there's somebody can strip it off him? By what I can understan', they could take every
penny off him, if they went to lawing."
"No such thing!" said the barber, who felt himself a little above his company at
Dollop's, but liked it none the worse. "Fletcher says it's no such thing. He says they might
prove over and over again whose child this young Ladislaw was, and they'd do no more than
if they proved I came out of the Fens – he couldn't touch a penny."
"Look you there now!" said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly. "I thank the Lord he took my
children to Himself, if that's all the law can do for the motherless. Then by that, it's o' no use
who your father and mother is. But as to listening to what one lawyer says without asking
another – I wonder at a man o' your cleverness, Mr. Dill. It's well known there's always two
sides, if no more; else who'd go to law, I should like to know? It's a poor tale, with all the
law as there is up and down, if it's no use proving whose child you are. Fletcher may say that
if he likes, but I say, don't Fletcher ME!"
Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at Mrs. Dollop, as a woman who was
more than a match for the lawyers; being disposed to submit to much twitting from a
landlady who had a long score against him.
"If they come to lawing, and it's all true as folks say, there's more to be looked to nor
money," said the glazier. "There's this poor creetur as is dead and gone; by what I can make
out, he'd seen the day when he was a deal finer gentleman nor Bulstrode."
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXI. 589
"Finer gentleman! I'll warrant him," said Mrs. Dollop; "and a far personabler man, by
what I can hear. As I said when Mr. Baldwin, the tax−gatherer, comes in, a−standing where
you sit, and says, `Bulstrode got all his money as he brought into this town by thieving and
swindling,' – I said, `You don't make me no wiser, Mr. Baldwin: it's set my blood
a−creeping to look at him ever sin' here he came into Slaughter Lane a−wanting to buy the
house over my head: folks don't look the color o' the dough−tub and stare at you as if they
wanted to see into your backbone for nothingk.' That was what I said, and Mr. Baldwin can
bear me witness."
"And in the rights of it too," said Mr. Crabbe. "For by what I can make out, this Raffles,
as they call him, was a lusty, fresh−colored man as you'd wish to see, and the best o'
company – though dead he lies in Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can
understan', there's them knows more than they SHOULD know about how he got there."
"I'll believe you!" said Mrs. Dallop, with a touch of scorn at Mr. Crabbe's apparent
dimness. "When a man's been 'ticed to a lone house, and there's them can pay for hospitals
and nurses for half the country−side choose to be sitters−up night and day, and nobody to
come near but a doctor as is known to stick at nothingk, and as poor as he can hang together,
and after that so flush o' money as he can pay off Mr. Byles the butcher as his bill has been
running on for the best o' joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonth – I don't want
anybody to come and tell me as there's been more going on nor the Prayer−book's got a
service for – I don't want to stand winking and blinking and thinking."
Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed to dominate her
company. There was a chorus of adhesion from the more courageous; but Mr. Limp, after
taking a draught, placed his fiat hands together and pressed them hard between his knees,
looking down at them with blear−eyed contemplation, as if the scorching power of Mrs.
Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they could be brought round
again by further moisture.
"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the Crowner?" said the dyer. "It's been
done many and many's the time. If there's been foul play they might find it out."
"Not they, Mr. Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically."I know what doctors are. They're
a deal too cunning to be found out. And this Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting up
everybody before the breath was well out o' their body – it's plain enough what use he
wanted to make o' looking into respectable people's insides. He knows drugs, you may be
sure, as you can neither smell nor see, neither before they're swallowed nor after. Why, I've
seen drops myself ordered by Doctor Gambit, as is our club doctor and a good charikter, and
has brought more live children into the world nor ever another i' Middlemarch – I say I've
seen drops myself as made no difference whether they was in the glass or out, and yet have
griped you the next day. So I'll leave your own sense to judge. Don't tell me! All I say is, it's
a mercy they didn't take this Doctor Lydgate on to our club. There's many a mother's child
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CHAPTER LXXI. 590
might ha' rued it."
The heads of this discussion at "Dollop's" had been the common theme among all
classes in the town, had been carried to Lowick Parsonage on one side and to Tipton Grange
on the other, had come fully to the ears of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with
sad reference to "poor Harriet" by all Mrs. Bulstrode's friends, before Lydgate knew
distinctly why people were looking strangely at him, and before Bulstrode himself suspected
the betrayal of his secrets. He had not been accustomed to very cordial relations with his
neighbors, and hence he could not miss the signs of cordiality; moreover, he had been taking
journeys on business of various kinds, having now made up his mind that he need not quit
Middlemarch, and feeling able consequently to determine on matters which he had before
left in suspense.
"We will make a journey to Cheltenham in the course of a month or two," he had said to
his wife. "There are great spiritual advantages to be had in that town along with the air and
the waters, and six weeks there will be eminently refreshing to us."
He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and meant that his life henceforth should
be the more devoted because of those later sins which he represented to himself as
hypothetic, praying hypothetically for their pardon: – "if I have herein transgressed." as to
the Hospital, he avoided saying anything further to Lydgate, fearing to manifest a too
sudden change of plans immediately on the death of Raffles. In his secret soul he believed
that Lydgate suspected his orders to have been intentionally disobeyed, and suspecting this
he must also suspect a motive. But nothing had been betrayed to him as to the history of
Raffles, and Bulstrode was anxious not to do anything which would give emphasis to his
undefined suspicions. As to any certainty that a particular method of treatment would either
save or kill, Lydgate himself was constantly arguing against such dogmatism; he had no
right to speak, and he had every motive for being silent. Hence Bulstrode felt himself
providentially secured. The only incident he had strongly winced under had been an
occasional encounter with Caleb Garth, who, however, had raised his hat with mild gravity.
Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen a strong determination was growing
against him.
A meeting was to be held in the Town−Hall on a sanitary question which had risen into
pressing importance by the occurrence of a cholera case in the town. Since the Act of
Parliament, which had been hurriedly passed, authorizing assessments for sanitary measures,
there had been a Board for the superintendence of such measures appointed in Middlemarch,
and much cleansing and preparation had been concurred in by Whigs and Tories. The
question now was, whether a piece of ground outside the town should be secured as a
burial−ground by means of assessment or by private subscription. The meeting was to be
open, and almost everybody of importance in the town was expected to be there.
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXI. 591
Mr. Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just before twelve o'clock he started
from the Bank with the intention of urging the plan of private subscription. Under the
hesitation of his projects, he had for some time kept himself in the background, and he felt
that he should this morning resume his old position as a man of action and influence in the
public affairs of the town where he expected to end his days. Among the various persons
going in the same direction, he saw Lydgate; they joined, talked over the object of the
meeting, and entered it together.
It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier than they. But there were still spaces
left near the head of the large central table, and they made their way thither. Mr. Farebrother
sat opposite, not far from Mr. Hawley; all the medical men were there; Mr. Thesiger was in
the chair, and Mr. Brooke of Tipton was on his right hand.
Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances when he and Bulstrode took their
seats.
After the business had been fully opened by the chairman, who pointed out the
advantages of purchasing by subscription a piece of ground large enough to be ultimately
used as a general cemetery, Mr. Bulstrode, whose rather high−pitched but subdued and
fluent voice the town was used to at meetings of this sort, rose and asked leave to deliver his
opinion. Lydgate could see again the peculiar interchange of glances before Mr. Hawley
started up, and said in his firm resonant voice, "Mr. Chairman, I request that before any one
delivers his opinion on this point I may be permitted to speak on a question of public
feeling, which not only by myself, but by many gentlemen present, is regarded as
preliminary."
Mr. Hawley's mode of speech, even when public decorum repressed his "awful
language," was formidable in its curtness and self−possession. Mr. Thesiger sanctioned the
request, Mr. Bulstrode sat down, and Mr. Hawley continued.
"In what I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking simply on my own behalf: I am
speaking with the concurrence and at the express request of no fewer than eight of my
fellow−townsmen, who are immediately around us. It is our united sentiment that Mr.
Bulstrode should be called upon – and I do now call upon him – to resign public positions
which he holds not simply as a tax−payer, but as a gentleman among gentlemen. There are
practices and there are acts which, owing to circumstances, the law cannot visit, though they
may be worse than many things which are legally punishable. Honest men and gentlemen, if
they don't want the company of people who perpetrate such acts, have got to defend
themselves as they best can, and that is what I and the friends whom I may call my clients in
this affair are determined to do. I don't say that Mr. Bulstrode has been guilty of shameful
acts, but I call upon him either publicly to deny and confute the scandalous statements made
against him by a man now dead, and who died in his house – the statement that he was for
many years engaged in nefarious practices, and that he won his fortune by dishonest
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXI. 592
procedures – or else to withdraw from positions which could only have been allowed him as
a gentleman among gentlemen."
All eyes in the room were turned on Mr. Bulstrode, who, since the first mention of his
name, had been going through a crisis of feeling almost too violent for his delicate frame to
support. Lydgate, who himself was undergoing a shock as from the terrible practical
interpretation of some faint augury, felt, nevertheless, that his own movement of resentful
hatred was checked by that instinct of the Healer which thinks first of bringing rescue or
relief to the sufferer, when he looked at the shrunken misery of Bulstrode's livid face.
The quick vision that his life was after all a failure, that he was a dishonored man, and
must quail before the glance of those towards whom he had habitually assumed the attitude
of a reprover – that God had disowned him before men and left him unscreened to the
triumphant scorn of those who were glad to have their hatred justified – the sense of utter
futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with the life of his accomplice, an
equivocation which now turned venomously upon him with the full−grown fang of a
discovered lie: – all this rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails to kill, and
leaves the ears still open to the returning wave of execration. The sudden sense of exposure
after the re−established sense of safety came – not to the coarse organization of a criminal
but to – the susceptible nerve of a man whose intensest being lay in such mastery and
predominance as the conditions of his life had shaped for him.
But in that intense being lay the strength of reaction. Through all his bodily infirmity
there ran a tenacious nerve of ambitious self−preserving will, which had continually leaped
out like a flame, scattering all doctrinal fears, and which, even while he sat an object of
compassion for the merciful, was beginning to stir and glow under his ashy paleness. Before
the last words were out of Mr. Hawley's mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should answer, and
that his answer would be a retort. He dared not get up and say, "I am not guilty, the whole
story is false" – even if he had dared this, it would have seemed to him, under his present
keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for covering to his nakedness, a frail rag which
would rend at every little strain.
For a few moments there was total silence, while every man in the room was looking at
Bulstrode. He sat perfectly still, leaning hard against the back of his chair; he could not
venture to rise, and when he began to speak he pressed his hands upon the seat on each side
of him. But his voice was perfectly audible, though hoarser than usual, and his words were
distinctly pronounced, though he paused between sentence as if short of breath. He said,
turning first toward Mr. Thesiger, and then looking at Mr. Hawley –
"I protest before you, sir, as a Christian minister, against the sanction of proceedings
towards me which are dictated by virulent hatred. Those who are hostile to me are glad to
believe any libel uttered by a loose tongue against me. And their consciences become strict
against me. Say that the evil−speaking of which I am to be made the victim accuses me of
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CHAPTER LXXI. 593
malpractices – " here Bulstrode's voice rose and took on a more biting accent, till it seemed a
low cry – "who shall be my accuser? Not men whose own lives are unchristian, nay,
scandalous – not men who themselves use low instruments to carry out their ends – whose
profession is a tissue of chicanery – who have been spending their income on their own
sensual enjoyments, while I have been devoting mine to advance the best objects with regard
to this life and the next."
After the word chicanery there was a growing noise, half of murmurs and half of hisses,
while four persons started up at once – Mr. Hawley, Mr. Toller, Mr. Chichely, and Mr.
Hackbutt; but Mr. Hawley's outburst was instantaneous, and left the others behind in silence.
"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to the inspection of my professional
life. As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate your canting palavering Christianity; and as
to the way in which I spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat
offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion and set myself up as a saintly
Killjoy. I affect no niceness of conscience – I have not found any nice standards necessary
yet to measure your actions by, sir. And I again call upon you to enter into satisfactory
explanations concerning the scandals against you, or else to withdraw from posts in which
we at any rate decline you as a colleague. I say, sir, we decline to co−operate with a man
whose character is not cleared from infamous lights cast upon it, not only by reports but by
recent actions."
"Allow me, Mr. Hawley," said the chairman; and Mr. Hawley, still fuming, bowed half
impatiently, and sat down with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
"Mr. Bulstrode, it is not desirable, I think, to prolong the present discussion," said Mr.
Thesiger, turning to the pallid trembling man; "I must so far concur with what has fallen
from Mr. Hawley in expression of a general feeling, as to think it due to your Christian
profession that you should clear yourself, if possible, from unhappy aspersions. I for my part
should be willing to give you full opportunity and hearing. But I must say that your present
attitude is painfully inconsistent with those principles which you have sought to identify
yourself with, and for the honor of which I am bound to care. I recommend you at present,
as your clergyman, and one who hopes for your reinstatement in respect, to quit the room,
and avoid further hindrance to business."
Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his hat from the floor and slowly rose, but
he grasped the corner of the chair so totteringly that Lydgate felt sure there was not strength
enough in him to walk away without support. What could he do? He could not see a man
sink close to him for want of help. He rose and gave his arm to Bulstrode, and in that way
led him out of the room; yet this act, which might have been one of gentle duty and pure
compassion, was at this moment unspeakably bitter to him. It seemed as if he were putting
his sign−manual to that association of himself with Bulstrode, of which he now saw the full
meaning as it must have presented itself to other minds. He now felt the conviction that this
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CHAPTER LXXI. 594
man who was leaning tremblingly on his arm, had given him the thousand pounds as a bribe,
and that somehow the treatment of Raffles had been tampered with from an evil motive. The
inferences were closely linked enough; the town knew of the loan, believed it to be a bribe,
and believed that he took it as a bribe.
Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible clutch of this revelation, was all the
while morally forced to take Mr. Bulstrode to the Bank, send a man off for his carriage, and
wait to accompany him home.
Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched, and fringed off into eager
discussion among various groups concerning this affair of Bulstrode – and Lydgate.
Mr. Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect hints of it, and was very uneasy that
he had "gone a little too far" in countenancing Bulstrode, now got himself fully informed,
and felt some benevolent sadness in talking to Mr. Farebrother about the ugly light in which
Lydgate had come to be regarded. Mr. Farebrother was going to walk back to Lowick.
"Step into my carriage," said Mr. Brooke. "I am going round to see Mrs. Casaubon. She
was to come back from Yorkshire last night. She will like to see me, you know."
So they drove along, Mr. Brooke chatting with good−natured hope that there had not
really been anything black in Lydgate's behavior – a young fellow whom he had seen to be
quite above the common mark, when he brought a letter from his uncle Sir Godwin. Mr.
Farebrother said little: he was deeply mournful: with a keen perception of human weakness,
he could not be confident that under the pressure of humiliating needs Lydgate had not
fallen below himself.
When the carriage drove up to the gate of the Manor, Dorothea was out on the gravel,
and came to greet them.
"Well, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have just come from a meeting – a sanitary
meeting, you know."
"Was Mr. Lydgate there?" said Dorothea, who looked full of health and animation, and
stood with her head bare under the gleaming April lights. "I want to see him and have a great
consultation with him about the Hospital. I have engaged with Mr. Bulstrode to do so."
"Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing bad news – bad news, you
know."
They walked through the garden towards the churchyard gate, Mr. Farebrother wanting
to go on to the parsonage; and Dorothea heard the whole sad story.
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CHAPTER LXXI. 595
She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear twice over the facts and impressions
concerning Lydgate. After a short silence, pausing at the churchyard gate, and addressing
Mr. Farebrother, she said energetically –
"You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of anything base? I will not believe it. Let
us find out the truth and clear him!"
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXI. 596
CHAPTER LXXII.
F
ull souls are double mirrors, making still An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.
Dorothea's impetuous generosity, which would have leaped at once to the vindication of
Lydgate from the suspicion of having accepted money as a bribe, underwent a melancholy
check when she came to consider all the circumstances of the case by the light of Mr.
Farebrother's experience.
"It is a delicate matter to touch," he said. "How can we begin to inquire into it? It must
be either publicly by setting the magistrate and coroner to work, or privately by questioning
Lydgate. As to the first proceeding there is no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would
have adopted it; and as to opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess I should shrink from
it. He would probably take it as a deadly insult. I have more than once experienced the
difficulty of speaking to him on personal matters. And – one should know the truth about his
conduct beforehand, to feel very confident of a good result."
"I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that people are almost
always better than their neighbors think they are," said Dorothea. Some of her intensest
experience in the last two years had set her mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable
construction of others; and for the first time she felt rather discontented with Mr.
Farebrother. She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent faith
in efforts of justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force. Two days
afterwards, he was dining at the Manor with her uncle and the Chettams, and when the
dessert was standing uneaten, the servants were out of the room, and Mr. Brooke was
nodding in a nap, she returned to the subject with renewed vivacity.
"Mr. Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny about him their first
wish must be to justify him. What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each
other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in MY trouble, and
attended me in my illness."
Dorothea's tone and manner were not more energetic than they had been when she was
at the head of her uncle's table nearly three years before, and her experience since had given
her more right to express a decided opinion. But Sir James Chettam was no longer the
diffident and acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious brother−in−law, with a devout
admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should fall under some new
illusion almost as bad as marrying Casaubon. He smiled much less; when he said "Exactly"
it was more often an introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive bachelor
days; and Dorothea found to her surprise that she had to resolve not to be afraid of him – all
the more because he was really her best friend. He disagreed with her now.
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CHAPTER LXXII. 598
"But, Dorothea," he said, remonstrantly, "you can't undertake to manage a man's life for
him in that way. Lydgate must know – at least he will soon come to know how he stands. If
he can clear himself, he will. He must act for himself."
"I think his friends must wait till they find an opportunity," added Mr. Farebrother. "It is
possible – I have often felt so much weakness in myself that I can conceive even a man of
honorable disposition, such as I have always believed Lydgate to be, succumbing to such a
temptation as that of accepting money which was offered more or less indirectly as a bribe
to insure his silence about scandalous facts long gone by. I say, I can conceive this, if he
were under the pressure of hard circumstances – if he had been harassed as I feel sure
Lydgate has been. I would not believe anything worse of him except under stringent proof.
But there is the terrible Nemesis following on some errors, that it is always possible for
those who like it to interpret them into a crime: there is no proof in favor of the man outside
his own consciousness and assertion."
"Oh, how cruel!" said Dorothea, clasping her hands. "And would you not like to be the
one person who believed in that man's innocence, if the rest of the world belied him?
Besides, there is a man's character beforehand to speak for him."
"But, my dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling gently at her ardor,
"character is not cut in marble – it is not something solid and unalterable. It is something
living and changing, and may become diseased as our bodies do."
"Then it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea "I should not be afraid of asking
Mr. Lydgate to tell me the truth, that I might help him. Why should I be afraid? Now that I
am not to have the land, James, I might do as Mr. Bulstrode proposed, and take his place in
providing for the Hospital; and I have to consult Mr. Lydgate, to know thoroughly what are
the prospects of doing good by keeping up the present plans. There is the best opportunity in
the world for me to ask for his confidence; and he would be able to tell me things which
might make all the circumstances clear. Then we would all stand by him and bring him out
of his trouble. People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on
behalf of their nearest neighbors." Dorothea's eyes had a moist brightness in them, and the
changed tones of her voice roused her uncle, who began to listen.
"It is true that a woman may venture on some efforts of sympathy which would hardly
succeed if we men undertook them," said Mr. Farebrother, almost converted by Dorothea's
ardor.
"Surely, a woman is bound to be cautious and listen to those who know the world better
than she does." said Sir James, with his little frown. "Whatever you do in the end, Dorothea,
you should really keep back at present, and not volunteer any meddling with this Bulstrode
business. We don't know yet what may turn up. You must agree with me?" he ended,
looking at Mr. Farebrother.
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CHAPTER LXXII. 599
"I do think it would be better to wait," said the latter.
"Yes, yes, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, not quite knowing at what point the discussion
had arrived, but coming up to it with a contribution which was generally appropriate. "It is
easy to go too far, you know. You must not let your ideas run away with you. And as to
being in a hurry to put money into schemes – it won't do, you know. Garth has drawn me in
uncommonly with repairs, draining, that sort of thing: I'm uncommonly out of pocket with
one thing or another. I must pull up. As for you, Chettam, you are spending a fortune on
those oak fences round your demesne."
Dorothea, submitting uneasily to this discouragement, went with Celia into the library,
which was her usual drawing−room.
"Now, Dodo, do listen to what James says," said Celia, "else you will be getting into a
scrape. You always did, and you always will, when you set about doing as you please. And I
think it is a mercy now after all that you have got James to think for you. He lets you have
your plans, only he hinders you from being taken in. And that is the good of having a
brother instead of a husband. A husband would not let you have your plans."
"As if I wanted a husband!" said Dorothea. "I only want not to have my feelings
checked at every turn." Mrs. Casaubon was still undisciplined enough to burst into angry
tears.
"Now, really, Dodo," said Celia, with rather a deeper guttural than usual, "you ARE
contradictory: first one thing and then another. You used to submit to Mr. Casaubon quite
shamefully: I think you would have given up ever coming to see me if he had asked you."
"Of course I submitted to him, because it was my duty; it was my feeling for him," said
Dorothea, looking through the prism of her tears.
"Then why can't you think it your duty to submit a little to what James wishes?" said
Celia, with a sense of stringency in her argument. "Because he only wishes what is for your
own good. And, of course, men know best about everything, except what women know
better." Dorothea laughed and forgot her tears.
"Well, I mean about babies and those things," explained Celia. "I should not give up to
James when I knew he was wrong, as you used to do to Mr. Casaubon."
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CHAPTER LXXII. 600
CHAPTER LXXIII.
P
ity the laden one; this wandering woe May visit you and me.
When Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode's anxiety by telling her that her husband had
been seized with faintness at the meeting, but that he trusted soon to see him better and
would call again the next day, unless she−sent for him earlier, he went directly home, got on
his horse, and rode three miles out of the town for the sake of being out of reach.
He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under the pain of stings:
he was ready to curse the day on which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that bad
happened to him there seemed a mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which had come
as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make even people who had only vulgar
standards regard his reputation as irrevocably damaged. In such moments a man can hardly
escape being unloving. Lydgate thought of himself as the sufferer, and of others as the
agents who had injured his lot. He had meant everything to turn out differently; and others
had thrust themselves into his life and thwarted his purposes. His marriage seemed an
unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to Rosamond before he had vented himself
in this solitary rage, lest the mere sight of her should exasperate him and make him behave
unwarrantably. There are episodes in most men's lives in which their highest qualities can
only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill their inward vision: Lydgate's
tenderheartedness was present just then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not
as an emotion that swayed him to tenderness. For he was very miserable. Only those who
know the supremacy of the intellectual life – the life which has a seed of ennobling thought
and purpose within it – can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity
into the absorbing soul−wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
How was he to live on without vindicating himself among people who suspected him of
baseness? How could he go silently away from Middlemarch as if he were retreating before
a just condemnation? And yet how was he to set about vindicating himself?
For that scene at the meeting, which he had just witnessed, although it had told him no
particulars, had been enough to make his own situation thoroughly clear to him. Bulstrode
had been in dread of scandalous disclosures on the part of Raffles. Lydgate could now
construct all the probabilities of the case. "He was afraid of some betrayal in my hearing: all
he wanted was to bind me to him by a strong obligation: that was why he passed on a sudden
from hardness to liberality. And he may have tampered with the patient – he may have
disobeyed my orders. I fear he did. But whether he did or not, the world believes that he
somehow or other poisoned the man and that I winked at the crime, if I didn't help in it. And
yet – and yet he may not be guilty of the last offence; and it is just possible that the change
towards me may have been a genuine relenting – the effect of second thoughts such as he
alleged. What we call the `just possible' is sometimes true and the thing we find it easier to
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CHAPTER LXXIII. 601
believe is grossly false. In his last dealings with this man Bulstrode may have kept his hands
pure, in spite of my suspicion to the contrary."
There was a benumbing cruelty in his position. Even if he renounced every other
consideration than that of justifying himself – if he met shrugs, cold glances, and avoidance
as an accusation, and made a public statement of all the facts as he knew them, who would
be convinced? It would be playing the part of a fool to offer his own testimony on behalf of
himself, and say, "I did not take the money as a bribe." The circumstances would always be
stronger than his assertion. And besides, to come forward and tell everything about himself
must include declarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of others
against him. He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's existence when he first
mentioned his pressing need of money to Bulstrode, and that he took the money innocently
as a result of that communication, not knowing that a new motive for the loan might have
arisen on his being called in to this man. And after all, the suspicion of Bulstrode's motives
might be unjust.
But then came the question whether he should have acted in precisely the same way if
he had not taken the money? Certainly, if Raffles had continued alive and susceptible of
further treatment when he arrived, and he had then imagined any disobedience to his orders
on the part of Bulstrode, he would have made a strict inquiry, and if his conjecture had been
verified he would have thrown up the case, in spite of his recent heavy obligation. But if he
had not received any money – if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation of
bankruptcy – would he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding the man
dead? – would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode – would the dubiousness of all
medical treatment and the argument that his own treatment would pass for the wrong with
most members of his profession – have had just the same force or significance with him?
That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness while he was reviewing the facts
and resisting all reproach. If he had been independent, this matter of a patient's treatment and
the distinct rule that he must do or see done that which he believed best for the life
committed to him, would have been the point on which he would have been the sturdiest. As
it was, he had rested in the consideration that disobedience to his orders, however it might
have arisen, could not be considered a crime, that in the dominant opinion obedience to his
orders was just as likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one of etiquette. Whereas,
again and again, in his time of freedom, he had denounced the perversion of pathological
doubt into moral doubt and had said – "the purest experiment in treatment may still be
conscientious: my business is to take care of life, and to do the best I can think of for it.
Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the
very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive." Alas!
the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish
respects.
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXIII. 602
"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question himself as I
do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of rebellion against the oppression of his
lot. "And yet they will all feel warranted in making a wide space between me and them, as if
I were a leper! My practice and my reputation are utterly damned – I can see that. Even if I
could be cleared by valid evidence, it would make little difference to the blessed world here.
I have been set down as tainted and should be cheapened to them all the same."
Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him, that just when
he had been paying off his debts and getting cheerfully on his feet, the townsmen were
avoiding him or looking strangely. at him, and in two instances it came to his knowledge
that patients of his had called in another practitioner. The reasons were too plain now. The
general black−balling had begun.
No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a hopeless misconstruction
easily turned into a dogged resistance. The scowl which occasionally showed itself on his
square brow was not a meaningless accident. Already when he was re−entering the town
after that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain, he was setting his mind on remaining
in Middlemarch in spite of the worst that could be done against him. He would not retreat
before calumny, as if he submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no act of his
should show that he was afraid. It belonged to the generosity as well as defiant force of his
nature that he resolved not to shrink from showing to the full his sense of obligation to
Bulstrode. It was true that the association with this man had been fatal to him – true that if
he had had the thousand pounds still in his hands with all his debts unpaid he would have
returned the money to Bulstrode, and taken beggary rather than the rescue which had been
sullied with the suspicion of a bribe (for, remember, he was one of the proudest among the
sons of men) – nevertheless, he would not turn away from this crushed fellow−mortal whose
aid he had used, and make a pitiful effort to get acquittal for himself by howling against
another. "I shall do as I think right, and explain to nobody. They will try to starve me out,
but – " he was going on with an obstinate resolve, but he was getting near home, and the
thought of Rosamond urged itself again into that chief place from which it had been thrust
by the agonized struggles of wounded honor and pride.
How would Rosamond take it all? Here was another weight of chain to drag, and poor
Lydgate was in a bad mood for bearing her dumb mastery. He had no impulse to tell her the
trouble which must soon be common to them both. He preferred waiting for the incidental
disclosure which events must soon bring about.
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXIII. 603
CHAPTER LXXIV.
"M
ercifully grant that we may grow aged together."
– BOOK OF TOBIT: Marriage Prayer.
In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held a bad opinion
of her husband. No feminine intimate might carry her friendship so far as to make a plain
statement to the wife of the unpleasant fact known or believed about her husband; but when
a woman with her thoughts much at leisure got them suddenly employed on something
grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moral impulses were called into play
which tended to stimulate utterance. Candor was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch
phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not
take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor
never waited to be asked for its opinion. Then, again, there was the love of truth – a wide
phrase, but meaning in this relation, a lively objection to seeing a wife look happier than her
husband's character warranted, or manifest too much satisfaction in her lot – the poor thing
should have some hint given her that if she knew the truth she would have less complacency
in her bonnet, and in light dishes for a supper−party. Stronger than all, there was the regard
for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was likely to be
benefited by remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the accompaniment of pensive staring
at the furniture and a manner implying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind,
from regard to the feelings of her hearer. On the whole, one might say that an ardent charity
was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbor unhappy for her good.
There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial misfortunes would in
different ways be likely to call forth more of this moral activity than Rosamond and her aunt
Bulstrode. Mrs. Bulstrode was not an object of dislike, and had never consciously injured
any human being. Men had always thought her a handsome comfortable woman, and had
reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's hypocrisy that he had chosen a red−blooded
Vincy, instead of a ghastly and melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly
pleasure. When the scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of her – "Ah,
poor woman! She's as honest as the day – SHE never suspected anything wrong in him, you
may depend on it." Women, who were intimate with her, talked together much of "poor
Harriet," imagined what her feelings must be when she came to know everything, and
conjectured how much she had already come to know. There was no spiteful disposition
towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what it would be well
for her to feel and do under the circumstances, which of course kept the imagination
occupied with her character and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now.
With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it was inevitable to associate Rosamond,
whose prospects were under the same blight with her aunt's. Rosamond was more severely
criticised and less pitied, though she too, as one of the good old Vincy family who had
always been known in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage with an
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CHAPTER LXXIV. 604
interloper. The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they lay on the surface: there was
never anything bad to be "found out" concerning them. Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from
any resemblance to her husband. Harriet's faults were her own.
"She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a small party,
"though she has got into the way of putting her religion forward, to conform to her husband;
she has tried to hold her head up above Middlemarch by making it known that she invites
clergymen and heaven−knows−who from Riverston and those places."
"We can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "because few of the best people
in the town cared to associate with Balstrode, and she must have somebody to sit down at
her table."
"Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "I think he must be
sorry now."
"But he was never fond of him in his heart – that every one knows," said Mrs. Tom
Toller. "Mr. Thesiger never goes into extremes. He keeps to the truth in what is evangelical.
It is only clergymen like Mr. Tyke, who want to use Dissenting hymn−books and that low
kind of religion, who ever found Bulstrode to their taste."
"I understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "And well
he may be: they say the Bulstrodes have half kept the Tyke family."
"And of coarse it is a discredit to his doctrines," said Mrs. Sprague, who was elderly,
and old−fashioned in her opinions.
"People will not make a boast of being methodistical in Middlemarch for a good while
to come."
"I think we must not set down people's bad actions to their religion," said falcon−faced
Mrs. Plymdale, who had been listening hitherto.
"Oh, my dear, we are forgetting," said Mrs. Sprague. "We ought not to be talking of this
before you."
"I am sure I have no reason to be partial," said Mrs. Plymdale, coloring. "It's true Mr.
Plymdale has always been on good terms with Mr. Bulstrode, and Harriet Vincy was my
friend long before she married him. But I have always kept my own opinions and told her
where she was wrong, poor thing. Still, in point of religion, I must say, Mr. Bulstrode might
have done what he has, and worse, and yet have been a man of no religion. I don't say that
there has not been a little too much of that – I like moderation myself. But truth is truth. The
men tried at the assizes are not all over−religious, I suppose."
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CHAPTER LXXIV. 605
"Well," said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, "all I can say is, that I think she ought to
separate from him."
"I can't say that," said Mrs. Sprague. "She took him for better or worse, you know."
"But `worse' can never mean finding out that your husband is fit for Newgate," said
Mrs. Hackbutt. "Fancy living with such a man! I should expect to be poisoned."
"Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if such men are to be taken care of
and waited on by good wives," said Mrs. Tom Toller.
"And a good wife poor Harriet has been," said Mrs. Plymdale. "She thinks her husband
the first of men. It's true he has never denied her anything."
"Well, we shall see what she will do," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "I suppose she knows
nothing yet, poor creature. I do hope and trust I shall not see her, for I should be frightened
to death lest I should say anything about her husband. Do you think any hint has reached
her?"
"I should hardly think so," said Mrs. Tom Toller. "We hear that he is ill, and has never
stirred out of the house since the meeting on Thursday; but she was with her girls at church
yesterday, and they had new Tuscan bonnets. Her own had a feather in it. I have never seen
that her religion made any difference in her dress."
"She wears very neat patterns always," said Mrs. Plymdale, a little stung. "And that
feather I know she got dyed a pale lavender on purpose to be consistent. I must say it of
Harriet that she wishes to do right."
"As to her knowing what has happened, it can't be kept from her long," said Mrs.
Hackbutt. "The Vincys know, for Mr. Vincy was at the meeting. It will he a great blow to
him. There is his daughter as well as his sister."
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Sprague. "Nobody supposes that Mr. Lydgate can go on
holding up his head in Middlemarch, things look so black about the thousand pounds he
took just at that man's death. It really makes one shudder."
"Pride must have a fall," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"I am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as I am for her aunt," said Mrs.
Plymdale. "She needed a lesson."
"I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere," said Mrs. Sprague. "That
is what is generally done when there is anything disgraceful in a family."
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"And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet," said Mrs. Plymdale. "If ever a woman
was crushed, she will be. I pity her from my heart. And with all her faults, few women are
better. From a girl she had the neatest ways, and was always good−hearted, and as open as
the day. You might look into her drawers when you would – always the same. And so she
has brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how hard it will be for her to go among
foreigners."
"The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do," said Mrs.
Sprague. "He says Lydgate ought to have kept among the French."
"That would suit HER well enough, I dare say," said Mrs. Plymdale; "there is that kind
of lightness about her. But she got that from her mother; she never got it from her aunt
Bulstrode, who always gave her good advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had
her marry elsewhere."
Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of feeling. There
had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but also a profitable business relation of
the great Plymdale dyeing house with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have
inclined her to desire that the mildest view of his character should be the true one, but on the
other, made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his culpability. Again, the late alliance
of her family with the Tollers had brought her in connection with the best circle, which
gratified her in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views which she
believed to be the best in another sense. The sharp little woman's conscience was somewhat
troubled in the adjustment of these opposing "bests," and of her griefs and satisfactions
under late events, which were likely to humble those who needed humbling, but also to fall
heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred seeing on a background of
prosperity.
Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the oncoming tread of
calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret uneasiness which had always been present
in her since the last visit of Raffles to The Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill to
Stone Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain there and watch over him, she
allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had been employed and aided in
earlier−days, and that this made a tie of benevolence towards him in his degraded
helplessness; and she had been since then innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful
speech about his own health and ability to continue his attention to business. The calm was
disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the meeting, and in spite of
comforting assurances during the next few days, she cried in private from the conviction that
her husband was not suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that afflicted
his mind. He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sit with him, alleging
nervous susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet she suspected that in shutting himself
up in his private room he wanted to be busy with his papers. Something, she felt sure, had
happened. Perhaps it was some great loss of money; and she was kept in the dark. Not
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daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth day after the meeting, when
she had not left home except to go to church –
"Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth. Has anything happened to
Mr. Bulstrode?"
"Some little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively. He felt that it was not for him to
make the painful revelation.
"But what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at him with her large
dark eyes.
"There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms," said Lydgate. "Strong
men can stand it, but it tells on people in proportion to the delicacy of their systems. It is
often impossible to account for the precise moment of an attack – or rather, to say why the
strength gives way at a particular moment."
Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer. There remained in her the belief that
some calamity had befallen her husband, of which she was to be kept in ignorance; and it
was in her nature strongly to object to such concealment. She begged leave for her daughters
to sit with their father, and drove into the town to pay some visits, conjecturing that if
anything were known to have gone wrong in Mr. Bulstrode's affairs, she should see or hear
some sign of it.
She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to Mrs. Hackbutt's
on the other side of the churchyard. Mrs. Hackbutt saw her coming from an up−stairs
window, and remembering her former alarm lest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost
bound in consistency to send word that she was not at home; but against that, there was a
sudden strong desire within her for the excitement of an interview in which she was quite
determined not to make the slightest allusion to what was in her mind.
Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing−room, and Mrs. Hackbutt went to
her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than was usually observable in her,
these being precautions adopted against freedom of speech. She was resolved not to ask how
Mr. Bulstrode was.
"I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week," said Mrs. Bulstrode,
after a few introductory remarks. "But Mr. Bulstrode was taken so ill at the meeting on
Thursday that I have not liked to leave the house."
Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other held against her
chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern on the rug.
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"Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?" persevered Mrs. Bulstrode.
"Yes, he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude. "The land is to be bought by
subscription, I believe."
"Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buried in it," said Mrs.
Bulstrode. "It is an awful visitation. But I always think Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I
suppose it is being used to it from a child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at
better, and especially our end."
"I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch, Mrs.
Bulstrode," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh. "Still, we must learn to resign ourselves,
wherever our lot may be east. Though I am sure there will always be people in this town
who will wish you well."
Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, "if you take my advice you will part from your husband,"
but it seemed clear to her that the poor woman knew nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on
her head, and she herself could do no more than prepare her a little. Mrs. Bulstrode felt
suddenly rather chill and trembling: there was evidently something unusual behind this
speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's; but though she had set out with the desire to be fully informed,
she found herself unable now to pursue her brave purpose, and turning the conversation by
an inquiry about the young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that she was going to
see Mrs. Plymdale. On her way thither she tried to imagine that there might have been some
unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr. Bulstrode and some of his frequent
opponents – perhaps Mr. Hackbutt might have been one of them. That would account for
everything.
But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting explanation
seemed no longer tenable. "Selina" received her with a pathetic affectionateness and a
disposition to give edifying answers on the commonest topics, which could hardly have
reference to an ordinary quarrel of which the most important consequence was a
perturbation of Mr. Bulstrode's health. Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she
would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found to her surprise that
an old friend is not always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there was
the barrier of remembered communication under other circumstances – there was the dislike
of being pitied and informed by one who had been long wont to allow her the superiority.
For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that Mrs. Plymdale let fall about her
resolution never to turn her back on her friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that what had
happened must be some kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her native
directness, "What is it that you have in your mind?" she found herself anxious to get away
before she had heard anything more explicit. She began to have an agitating certainty that
the misfortune was something more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to
the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before, avoided noticing what she
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said about her husband, as they would have avoided noticing a personal blemish.
She said good−by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive to Mr. Vincy's
warehouse. In that short drive her dread gathered so much force from the sense of darkness,
that when she entered the private counting−house where her brother sat at his desk, her
knees trembled and her usually florid face was deathly pale. Something of the same effect
was produced in him by the sight of her: he rose from his seat to meet her, took her by the
hand, and said, with his impulsive rashness –
"God help you, Harriet! you know all."
That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained that
concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion reveals the bias of a nature, and is
prophetic of the ultimate act which will end an intermediate struggle. Without that memory
of Raffles she might still have thought only of monetary ruin, but now along with her
brother's look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some guilt in her husband –
then, under the working of terror came the image of her husband exposed to disgrace – and
then, after an instant of scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with
one leap of her heart she was at his side in mournful but unreproaching fellowship with
shame and isolation. All this went on within her in a mere flash of time – while she sank into
the chair, and raised her eyes to her brother, who stood over her. "I know nothing, Walter.
What is it?" she said, faintly.
He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making her aware that the
scandal went much beyond proof, especially as to the end of Raffles.
"People will talk," he said. "Even if a man has been acquitted by a jury, they'll talk, and
nod and wink – and as far as the world goes, a man might often as well be guilty as not. It's a
breakdown blow, and it damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don't pretend to say what
is the truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of either Bulstrode or Lydgate. You'd
better have been a Vincy all your life, and so had Rosamond." Mrs. Bulstrode made no
reply.
"But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet. People don't blame YOU. And I'll
stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do," said the brother, with rough but
well−meaning affectionateness.
"Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "I feel very weak."
And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am not well, my
dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your papa. Leave me in quiet. I shall take no dinner."
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CHAPTER LXXIV. 610
She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed
consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her.
A new searching light had fallen on her husband's character, and she could not judge him
leniently: the twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated him by virtue of
his concealments came back with particulars that made them seem an odious deceit. He had
married her with that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his
innocence of the worst that was imputed to him. Her honest ostentatious nature made the
sharing of a merited dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal.
But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork,
had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half a
life, and who had unvaryingly cherished her – now that punishment had befallen him it was
not possible to her in any sense to forsake him. There is a forsaking which still sits at the
same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by
unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock it ready to
go down to her unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn
and not reproach. But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to sob out her
farewell to all the gladness and pride of her life. When she had resolved to go down, she
prepared herself by some little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they
were her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that she had begun a new life
in which she embraced humiliation. She took off all her ornaments and put on a plain black
gown, and instead of wearing her much−adorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her
hair down and put on a plain bonnet−cap, which made her look suddenly like an early
Methodist.
Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in saying that she was
not well, had spent the time in an agitation equal to hers. He had looked forward to her
learning the truth from others, and had acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to
him than any confession. But now that he imagined the moment of her knowledge come, he
awaited the result in anguish. His daughters had been obliged to consent to leave him, and
though he had allowed some food to be brought to him, he had not touched it. He felt
himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery. Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with
affection in it again. And if he turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the pressure
of retribution.
It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his wife entered. He
dared not look up at her. He sat with his eyes bent down, and as she went towards him she
thought he looked smaller – he seemed so withered and shrunken. A movement of new
compassion and old tenderness went through her like a great wave, and putting one hand on
his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on his shoulder, she said, solemnly
but kindly –
"Look up, Nicholas."
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CHAPTER LXXIV. 611
He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed for a moment: her
pale face, her changed, mourning dress, the trembling about her mouth, all said, "I know;"
and her hands and eyes rested gently on him. He burst out crying and they cried together,
she sitting at his side. They could not yet speak to each other of the shame which she was
bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought it down on them. His confession was
silent, and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Open−minded as she was, she nevertheless
shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as she
would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, "How much is only slander and
false suspicion?" and he did not say, "I am innocent."
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CHAPTER LXXV.
"L
e sentiment de la faussete' des plaisirs presents, et l'ignorance de la vanite des
plaisirs absents, causent l'inconstance." – PASCAL.
Rosamond had a gleam of returning cheerfulness when the house was freed from the
threatening figure, and when all the disagreeable creditors were paid. But she was not
joyous: her married life had fulfilled none of her hopes, and had been quite spoiled for her
imagination. In this brief interval of calm, Lydgate, remembering that he had often been
stormy in his hours of perturbation, and mindful of the pain Rosamond had had to bear, was
carefully gentle towards her; but he, too, had lost some of his old spirit, and he still felt it
necessary to refer to an economical change in their way of living as a matter of course,
trying to reconcile her to it gradually, and repressing his anger when she answered by
wishing that he would go to live in London. When she did not make this answer, she listened
languidly, and wondered what she had that was worth living for. The hard and contemptuous
words which had fallen from her husband in his anger had deeply offended that vanity which
he had at first called into active enjoyment; and what she regarded as his perverse way of
looking at things, kept up a secret repulsion, which made her receive all his tenderness as a
poor substitute for the happiness he had failed to give her. They were at a disadvantage with
their neighbors, and there was no longer any outlook towards Quallingham – there was no
outlook anywhere except in an occasional letter from Will Ladislaw. She had felt stung and
disappointed by Will's resolution to quit Middlemarch, for in spite of what she knew and
guessed about his admiration for Dorothea, she secretly cherished the belief that he had, or
would necessarily come to have, much more admiration for herself; Rosamond being one of
those women who live much in the idea that each man they meet would have preferred them
if the preference had not been hopeless. Mrs. Casaubon was all very well; but Will's interest
in her dated before he knew Mrs. Lydgate. Rosamond took his way of talking to herself,
which was a mixture of playful fault−finding and hyperbolical gallantry, as the disguise of a
deeper feeling; and in his presence she felt that agreeable titillation of vanity and sense of
romantic drama which Lydgate's presence had no longer the magic to create. She even
fancied – what will not men and women fancy in these matters? – that Will exaggerated his
admiration for Mrs. Casaubon in order to pique herself. In this way poor Rosamond's brain
had been busy before Will's departure. He would have made, she thought, a much more
suitable husband for her than she had found in Lydgate. No notion could have been falser
than this, for Rosamond's discontent in her marriage was due to the conditions of marriage
itself, to its demand for self−suppression and tolerance, and not to the nature of her husband;
but the easy conception of an unreal Better had a sentimental charm which diverted her
ennui. She constructed a little romance which was to vary the flatness of her life: Will
Ladislaw was always to be a bachelor and live near her, always to be at her command, and
have an understood though never fully expressed passion for her, which would be sending
out lambent flames every now and then in interesting scenes. His departure had been a
proportionate disappointment, and had sadly increased her weariness of Middlemarch; but at
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first she had the alternative dream of pleasures in store from her intercourse with the family
at Quallingham. Since then the troubles of her married life had deepened, and the absence of
other relief encouraged her regretful rumination over that thin romance which she had once
fed on. Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague
uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty
love. Will Ladislaw had written chatty letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had
replied: their separation, she felt, was not likely to be final, and the change she now most
longed for was that Lydgate should go to live in London; everything would be agreeable in
London; and she had set to work with quiet determination to win this result, when there
came a sudden, delightful promise which inspirited her.
It came shortly before the memorable meeting at the town−hall, and was nothing less
than a letter from Will Ladislaw to Lydgate, which turned indeed chiefly on his new interest
in plans of colonization, but mentioned incidentally, that he might find it necessary to pay a
visit to Middlemarch within the next few weeks – a very pleasant necessity, he said, almost
as good as holidays to a schoolboy. He hoped there was his old place on the rug, and a great
deal of music in store for him. But he was quite uncertain as to the time. While Lydgate was
reading the letter to Rosamond, her face looked like a reviving flower – it grew prettier and
more blooming. There was nothing unendurable now: the debts were paid, Mr. Ladislaw
was coming, and Lydgate would be persuaded to leave Middlemarch and settle in London,
which was "so different from a provincial town."
That was a bright bit of morning. But soon the sky became black over poor Rosamond.
The presence of a new gloom in her husband, about which he was entirely reserved towards
her – for he dreaded to expose his lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception –
soon received a painfully strange explanation, alien to all her previous notions of what could
affect her happiness. In the new gayety of her spirits, thinking that Lydgate had merely a
worse fit of moodiness than usual, causing him to leave her remarks unanswered, and
evidently to keep out of her way as much as possible, she chose, a few days after the
meeting, and without speaking to him on the subject, to send out notes of invitation for a
small evening party, feeling convinced that this was a judicious step, since people seemed to
have been keeping aloof from them, and wanted restoring to the old habit of intercourse.
When the invitations had been accepted, she would tell Lydgate, and give him a wise
admonition as to how a medical man should behave to his neighbors; for Rosamond had the
gravest little airs possible about other people's duties. But all the invitations were declined,
and the last answer came into Lydgate's hands.
"This is Chichely's scratch. What is he writing to you about?" said Lydgate,
wonderingly, as he handed the note to her. She was obliged to let him see it, and, looking at
her severely, he said –
"Why on earth have you been sending out invitations without telling me, Rosamond? I
beg, I insist that you will not invite any one to this house. I suppose you have been inviting
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others, and they have refused too." She said nothing.
"Do you hear me?" thundered Lydgate.
"Yes, certainly I hear you," said Rosamond, turning her head aside with the movement
of a graceful long−necked bird.
Lydgate tossed his head without any grace and walked out of the room, feeling himself
dangerous. Rosamond's thought was, that he was getting more and more unbearable – not
that there was any new special reason for this peremptoriness His indisposition to tell her
anything in which he was sure beforehand that she would not be interested was growing into
an unreflecting habit, and she was in ignorance of everything connected with the thousand
pounds except that the loan had come from her uncle Bulstrode. Lydgate's odious humors
and their neighbors' apparent avoidance of them had an unaccountable date for her in their
relief from money difficulties. If the invitations had been accepted she would have gone to
invite her mamma and the rest, whom she had seen nothing of for several days; and she now
put on her bonnet to go and inquire what had become of them all, suddenly feeling as if
there were a conspiracy to leave her in isolation with a husband disposed to offend
everybody. It was after the dinner hour, and she found her father and mother seated together
alone in the drawing−room. They greeted her with sad looks, saying "Well, my dear!" and
no more. She had never seen her father look so downcast; and seating herself near him she
said –
"Is there anything the matter, papa?"
He did not answer, but Mrs. Vincy said, "Oh, my dear, have you heard nothing? It won't
be long before it reaches you."
"Is it anything about Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning pale. The idea of trouble
immediately connected itself with what had been unaccountable to her in him.
"Oh, my dear, yes. To think of your marrying into this trouble. Debt was bad enough,
but this will be worse."
"Stay, stay, Lucy," said Mr. Vincy. "Have you heard nothing about your uncle
Bulstrode, Rosamond?"
"No, papa," said the poor thing, feeling as if trouble were not anything she had before
experienced, but some invisible power with an iron grasp that made her soul faint within her.
Her father told her everything, saying at the end, "It's better for you to know, my dear. I
think Lydgate must leave the town. Things have gone against him. I dare say he couldn't
help it. I don't accuse him of any harm," said Mr. Vincy. He had always before been
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disposed to find the utmost fault with Lydgate.
The shock to Rosamond was terrible. It seemed to her that no lot could be so cruelly
hard as hers to have married a man who had become the centre of infamous suspicions. In
many cases it is inevitable that the shame is felt to be the worst part of crime; and it would
have required a great deal of disentangling reflection, such as had never entered into
Rosamond's life, for her in these moments to feel that her trouble was less than if her
husband had been certainly known to have done something criminal. All the shame seemed
to be there. And she had innocently married this man with the belief that he and his family
were a glory to her! She showed her usual reticence to her parents, and only said, that if
Lydgate had done as she wished he would have left Middlemarch long ago.
"She bears it beyond anything," said her mother when she was gone.
"Ah, thank God!" said Mr. Vincy, who was much broken down.
But Rosamond went home with a sense of justified repugnance towards her husband.
What had he really done – how had he really acted? She did not know. Why had he not told
her everything? He did not speak to her on the subject, and of course she could not speak to
him. It came into her mind once that she would ask her father to let her go home again; but
dwelling on that prospect made it seem utter dreariness to her: a married woman gone back
to live with her parents – life seemed to have no meaning for her in such a position: she
could not contemplate herself in it.
The next two days Lydgate observed a change in her, and believed that she had heard
the bad news. Would she speak to him about it, or would she go on forever in the silence
which seemed to imply that she believed him guilty? We must remember that he was in a
morbid state of mind, in which almost all contact was pain. Certainly Rosamond in this case
had equal reason to complain of reserve and want of confidence on his part; but in the
bitterness of his soul he excused himself; – was he not justified in shrinking from the task of
telling her, since now she knew the truth she had no impulse to speak to him? But a
deeper−lying consciousness that he was in fault made him restless, and the silence between
them became intolerable to him; it was as if they were both adrift on one piece of wreck and
looked away from each other.
He thought, "I am a fool. Haven't I given up expecting anything? I have married care,
not help." And that evening he said –
"Rosamond, have you heard anything that distresses you?"
"Yes," she answered, laying down her work, which she had been carrying on with a
languid semi−consciousness, most unlike her usual self.
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"What have you heard?"
"Everything, I suppose. Papa told me."
"That people think me disgraced?"
"Yes," said Rosamond, faintly, beginning to sew again automatically.
There was silence. Lydgate thought, "If she has any trust in me – any notion of what I
am, she ought to speak now and say that she does not believe I have deserved disgrace."
But Rosamond on her side went on moving her fingers languidly. Whatever was to be
said on the subject she expected to come from Tertius. What did she know? And if he were
innocent of any wrong, why did he not do something to clear himself?
This silence of hers brought a new rush of gall to that bitter mood in which Lydgate had
been saying to himself that nobody believed in him – even Farebrother had not come
forward. He had begun to question her with the intent that their conversation should disperse
the chill fog which had gathered between them, but he felt his resolution checked by
despairing resentment. Even this trouble, like the rest, she seemed to regard as if it were hers
alone. He was always to her a being apart, doing what she objected to. He started from his
chair with an angry impulse, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, walked up and down the
room. There was an underlying consciousness all the while that he should have to master
this anger, and tell her everything, and convince her of the facts. For he had almost learned
the lesson that he must bend himself to her nature, and that because she came short in her
sympathy, he must give the more. Soon he recurred to his intention of opening himself: the
occasion must not be lost. If he could bring her to feel with some solemnity that here was a
slander which must be met and not run away from, and that the whole trouble had come out
of his desperate want of money, it would be a moment for urging powerfully on her that they
should be one in the resolve to do with as little money as possible, so that they might
weather the bad time and keep themselves independent. He would mention the definite
measures which he desired to take, and win her to a willing spirit. He was bound to try this –
and what else was there for him to do?
He did not know how long he had been walking uneasily backwards and forwards, but
Rosamond felt that it was long, and wished that he would sit down. She too had begun to
think this an opportunity for urging on Tertius what he ought to do. Whatever might be the
truth about all this misery, there was one dread which asserted itself.
Lydgate at last seated himself, not in his usual chair, but in one nearer to Rosamond,
leaning aside in it towards her, and looking at her gravely before he reopened the sad
subject. He had conquered himself so far, and was about to speak with a sense of solemnity,
as on an occasion which was not to be repeated. He had even opened his lips, when
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Rosamond, letting her hands fall, looked at him and said –
"Surely, Tertius – "
"Well?"
"Surely now at last you have given up the idea of staying in Middlemarch. I cannot go
on living here. Let us go to London. Papa, and every one else, says you had better go.
Whatever misery I have to put up with, it will be easier away from here."
Lydgate felt miserably jarred. Instead of that critical outpouring for which he had
prepared himself with effort, here was the old round to be gone through again. He could not
bear it. With a quick change of countenance he rose and went out of the room.
Perhaps if he had been strong enough to persist in his determination to be the more
because she was less, that evening might have had a better issue. If his energy could have
borne down that check, he might still have wrought on Rosamond's vision and will. We
cannot be sure that any natures, however inflexible or peculiar, will resist this effect from a
more massive being than their own. They may be taken by storm and for the moment
converted, becoming part of the soul which enwraps them in the ardor of its movement. But
poor Lydgate had a throbbing pain within him, and his energy had fallen short of its task.
The beginning of mutual understanding and resolve seemed as far off as ever; nay, it
seemed blocked out by the sense of unsuccessful effort. They lived on from day to day with
their thoughts still apart, Lydgate going about what work he had in a mood of despair, and
Rosamond feeling, with some justification, that he was behaving cruelly. It was of no use to
say anything to Tertius; but when Will Ladislaw came, she was determined to tell him
everything. In spite of her general reticence, she needed some one who would recognize her
wrongs.
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CHAPTER LXXV. 618
CHAPTER LXXVI.
"T
o mercy, pity, peace, and love All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of
delight, Return their thankfulness. . . . . . . For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face;
And Love, the human form divine; And Peace, the human dress.
– WILLIAM BLAKE: Songs of Innocence.
Some days later, Lydgate was riding to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a summons
from Dorothea. The summons had not been unexpected, since it had followed a letter from
Mr. Bulstrode, in which he stated that he had resumed his arrangements for quitting
Middlemarch, and must remind Lydgate of his previous communications about the Hospital,
to the purport of which he still adhered. It had been his duty, before taking further steps, to
reopen the subject with Mrs. Casaubon, who now wished, as before, to discuss the question
with Lydgate. "Your views may possibly have undergone some change," wrote Mr.
Bulstrode; "but, in that case also, it is desirable that you should lay them before her."
Dorothea awaited his arrival with eager interest. Though, in deference to her masculine
advisers, she had refrained from what Sir James had called "interfering in this Bulstrode
business," the hardship of Lydgate's position was continually in her mind, and when
Bulstrode applied to her again about the hospital, she felt that the opportunity was come to
her which she had been hindered from hastening. In her luxurious home, wandering under
the boughs of her own great trees, her thought was going out over the lot of others, and her
emotions were imprisoned. The idea of some active good within her reach, "haunted her like
a passion," and another's need having once come to her as a distinct image, preoccupied her
desire with the yearning to give relief, and made her own ease tasteless. She was full of
confident hope about this interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was said of his
personal reserve; never heeding that she was a very young woman. Nothing could have
seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence on her youth and sex when she was
moved to show her human fellowship.
As she sat waiting in the library, she could do nothing but live through again all the past
scenes which had brought Lydgate into her memories. They all owed their significance to
her marriage and its troubles – but no; there were two occasions in which the image of
Lydgate had come painfully in connection with his wife and some one else. The pain had
been allayed for Dorothea, but it had left in her an awakened conjecture as to what Lydgate's
marriage might be to him, a susceptibility to the slightest hint about Mrs. Lydgate. These
thoughts were like a drama to her, and made her eyes bright, and gave an attitude of
suspense to her whole frame, though she was only looking out from the brown library on to
the turf and the bright green buds which stood in relief against the dark evergreens.
When Lydgate came in, she was almost shocked at the change in his face, which was
strikingly perceptible to her who had not seen him for two months. It was not the change of
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CHAPTER LXXVI. 619
emaciation, but that effect which even young faces will very soon show from the persistent
presence of resentment and despondency. Her cordial look, when she put out her hand to
him, softened his expression, but only with melancholy.
"I have wished very much to see you for a long while, Mr. Lydgate," said Dorothea
when they were seated opposite each other; "but I put off asking you to come until Mr.
Bulstrode applied to me again about the Hospital. I know that the advantage of keeping the
management of it separate from that of the Infirmary depends on you, or, at least, on the
good which you are encouraged to hope for from having it under your control. And I am
sure you will not refuse to tell me exactly what you think."
"You want to decide whether you should give a generous support to the Hospital," said
Lydgate. "I cannot conscientiously advise you to do it in dependence on any activity of
mine. I may be obliged to leave the town."
He spoke curtly, feeling the ache of despair as to his being able to carry out any purpose
that Rosamond had set her mind against.
"Not because there is no one to believe in you?" said Dorothea, pouring out her words
in clearness from a full heart. "I know the unhappy mistakes about you. I knew them from
the first moment to be mistakes. You have never done anything vile. You would not do
anything dishonorable."
It was the first assurance of belief in him that had fallen on Lydgate's ears. He drew a
deep breath, and said, "Thank you." He could say no more: it was something very new and
strange in his life that these few words of trust from a woman should be so much to him.
"I beseech you to tell me how everything was," said Dorothea, fearlessly. "I am sure
that the truth would clear you."
Lydgate started up from his chair and went towards the window, forgetting where he
was. He had so often gone over in his mind the possibility of explaining everything without
aggravating appearances that would tell, perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode, and had so
often decided against it – he had so often said to himself that his assertions would not
change people's impressions – that Dorothea's words sounded like a temptation to do
something which in his soberness he had pronounced to be unreasonable.
"Tell me, pray," said Dorothea, with simple earnestness; "then we can consult together.
It is wicked to let people think evil of any one falsely, when it can be hindered."
Lydgate turned, remembering where he was, and saw Dorothea's face looking up at him
with a sweet trustful gravity. The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent
in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter
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masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.
That influence was beginning to act on Lydgate, who had for many days been seeing all life
as one who is dragged and struggling amid the throng. He sat down again, and felt that he
was recovering his old self in the consciousness that he was with one who believed in it.
"I don't want," he said, "to bear hard on Bulstrode, who has lent me money of which I
was in need – though I would rather have gone without it now. He is hunted down and
miserable, and has only a poor thread of life in him. But I should like to tell you everything.
It will be a comfort to me to speak where belief has gone beforehand, and where I shall not
seem to be offering assertions of my own honesty. You will feel what is fair to another, as
you feel what is fair to me."
"Do trust me," said Dorothea; "I will not repeat anything without your leave. But at the
very least, I could say that you have made all the circumstances clear to me, and that I know
you are not in any way guilty. Mr. Farebrother would believe me, and my uncle, and Sir
James Chettam. Nay, there are persons in Middlemarch to whom I could go; although they
don't know much of me, they would believe me. They would know that I could have no
other motive than truth and justice. I would take any pains to clear you. I have very little to
do. There is nothing better that I can do in the world."
Dorothea's voice, as she made this childlike picture of what she would do, might have
been almost taken as a proof that she could do it effectively. The searching tenderness of her
woman's tones seemed made for a defence against ready accusers. Lydgate did not stay to
think that she was Quixotic: he gave himself up, for the first time in his life, to the exquisite
sense of leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any check of proud reserve. And
he told her everything, from the time when, under the pressure of his difficulties, he
unwillingly made his first application to Bulstrode; gradually, in the relief of speaking,
getting into a more thorough utterance of what had gone on in his mind – entering fully into
the fact that his treatment of the patient was opposed to the dominant practice, into his
doubts at the last, his ideal of medical duty, and his uneasy consciousness that the
acceptance of the money had made some difference in his private inclination and
professional behavior, though not in his fulfilment of any publicly recognized obligation.
"It has come to my knowledge since," he added, "that Hawley sent some one to examine
the housekeeper at Stone Court, and she said that she gave the patient all the opium in the
phial I left, as well as a good deal of brandy. But that would not have been opposed to
ordinary prescriptions, even of first−rate men. The suspicions against me had no hold there:
they are grounded on the knowledge that I took money, that Bulstrode had strong motives
for wishing the man to die, and that he gave me the money as a bribe to concur in some
malpractices or other against the patient – that in any case I accepted a bribe to hold my
tongue. They are just the suspicions that cling the most obstinately, because they lie in
people's inclination and can never be disproved. How my orders came to be disobeyed is a
question to which I don't know the answer. It is still possible that Bulstrode was innocent of
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CHAPTER LXXVI. 621
any criminal intention – even possible that he had nothing to do with the disobedience, and
merely abstained from mentioning it. But all that has nothing to do with the public belief. It
is one of those cases on which a man is condemned on the ground of his character – it is
believed that he has committed a crime in some undefined way, because he had the motive
for doing it; and Bulstrode's character has enveloped me, because I took his money. I am
simply blighted – like a damaged ear of corn – the business is done and can't be undone."
"Oh, it is hard!" said Dorothea. "I understand the difficulty there is in your vindicating
yourself. And that all this should have come to you who had meant to lead a higher life than
the common, and to find out better ways – I cannot bear to rest in this as unchangeable. I
know you meant that. I remember what you said to me when you first spoke to me about the
hospital. There is no sorrow I have thought more about than that – to love what is great, and
try to reach it, and yet to fail."
"Yes," said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found room for the full meaning of his
grief. "I had some ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more
strength and mastery. But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except
oneself."
"Suppose," said Dorothea, meditatively, – "suppose we kept on the Hospital according
to the present plan, and you stayed here though only with the friendship and support of a
few, the evil feeling towards you would gradually die out; there would come opportunities in
which people would be forced to acknowledge that they had been unjust to you, because
they would see that your purposes were pure. You may still win a great fame like the Louis
and Laennec I have heard you speak of, and we shall all be proud of you," she ended, with a
smile.
"That might do if I had my old trust in myself," said Lydgate, mournfully. "Nothing
galls me more than the notion of turning round and running away before this slander,
leaving it unchecked behind me. Still, I can't ask any one to put a great deal of money into a
plan which depends on me."
"It would be quite worth my while," said Dorothea, simply. "Only think. I am very
uncomfortable with my money, because they tell me I have too little for any great scheme of
the sort I like best, and yet I have too much. I don't know what to do. I have seven hundred
a−year of my own fortune, and nineteen hundred a−year that Mr. Casaubon left me, and
between three and four thousand of ready money in the bank. I wished to raise money and
pay it off gradually out of my income which I don't want, to buy land with and found a
village which should be a school of industry; but Sir James and my uncle have convinced
me that the risk would be too great. So you see that what I should most rejoice at would be
to have something good to do with my money: I should like it to make other people's lives
better to them. It makes me very uneasy – coming all to me who don't want it."
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CHAPTER LXXVI. 622
A smile broke through the gloom of Lydgate's face. The childlike grave−eyed
earnestness with which Dorothea said all this was irresistible – blent into an adorable whale
with her ready understanding of high experience. (Of lower experience such as plays a great
part in the world, poor Mrs. Casaubon had a very blurred shortsighted knowledge, little
helped by her imagination.) But she took the smile as encouragement of her plan.
"I think you see now that you spoke too scrupulously," she said, in a tone of persuasion.
"The hospital would be one good; and making your life quite whole and well again would be
another."
Lydgate's smile had died away. "You have the goodness as well as the money to do all
that; if it could be done," he said. "But – "
He hesitated a little while, looking vaguely towards the window; and she sat in silent
expectation. At last he turned towards her and said impetuously –
"Why should I not tell you? – you know what sort of bond marriage is. You will
understand everything."
Dorothea felt her heart beginning to beat faster. Had he that sorrow too? But she feared
to say any word, and he went on immediately.
"It is impossible for me now to do anything – to take any step without considering my
wife's happiness. The thing that I might like to do if I were alone, is become impossible to
me. I can't see her miserable. She married me without knowing what she was going into, and
it might have been better for her if she had not married me."
"I know, I know – you could not give her pain, if you were not obliged to do it," said
Dorothea, with keen memory of her own life.
"And she has set her mind against staying. She wishes to go. The troubles she has had
here have wearied her," said Lydgate, breaking off again, lest he should say too much.
"But when she saw the good that might come of staying – "said Dorothea,
remonstrantly, looking at Lydgate as if he had forgotten the reasons which had just been
considered. He did not speak immediately.
"She would not see it," he said at last, curtly, feeling at first that this statement must do
without explanation. "And, indeed, I have lost all spirit about carrying on my life here." He
paused a moment and then, following the impulse to let Dorothea see deeper into the
difficulty of his life, he said, "The fact is, this trouble has come upon her confusedly. We
have not been able to speak to each other about it. I am not sure what is in her mind about it:
she may fear that I have really done something base. It is my fault; I ought to be more open.
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CHAPTER LXXVI. 623
But I have been suffering cruelly."
"May I go and see her?" said Dorothea, eagerly. "Would she accept my sympathy? I
would tell her that you have not been blamable before any one's judgment but your own. I
would tell her that you shall be cleared in every fair mind. I would cheer her heart. Will you
ask her if I may go to see her? I did see her once."
"I am sure you may," said Lydgate, seizing the proposition with some hope. "She would
feel honored – cheered, I think, by the proof that you at least have some respect for me. I
will not speak to her about your coming – that she may not connect it with my wishes at all.
I know very well that I ought not to have left anything to be told her by others, but – "
He broke off, and there was a moment's silence. Dorothea refrained from saying what
was in her mind – how well she knew that there might be invisible barriers to speech
between husband and wife. This was a point on which even sympathy might make a wound.
She returned to the more outward aspect of Lydgate's position, saying cheerfully –
"And if Mrs. Lydgate knew that there were friends who would believe in you and
support you, she might then be glad that you should stay in your place and recover your
hopes – and do what you meant to do. Perhaps then you would see that it was right to agree
with what I proposed about your continuing at the Hospital. Surely you would, if you still
have faith in it as a means of making your knowledge useful?"
Lydgate did not answer, and she saw that he was debating with himself.
"You need not decide immediately," she said, gently. "A few days hence it will be early
enough for me to send my answer to Mr. Bulstrode."
Lydgate still waited, but at last turned to speak in his most decisive tones.
"No; I prefer that there should be no interval left for wavering. I am no longer sure
enough of myself – I mean of what it would be possible for me to do under the changed
circumstances of my life. It would be dishonorable to let others engage themselves to
anything serious in dependence on me. I might be obliged to go away after all; I see little
chance of anything else. The whole thing is too problematic; I cannot consent to be the cause
of your goodness being wasted. No – let the new Hospital be joined with the old Infirmary,
and everything go on as it might have done if I had never come. I have kept a valuable
register since I have been there; I shall send it to a man who will make use of it," he ended
bitterly. "I can think of nothing for a long while but getting an income."
"It hurts me very much to hear you speak so hopelessly," said Dorothea. "It would be a
happiness to your friends, who believe in your future, in your power to do great things, if
you would let them save you from that. Think how much money I have; it would be like
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CHAPTER LXXVI. 624
taking a burthen from me if you took some of it every year till you got free from this
fettering want of income. Why should not people do these things? It is so difficult to make
shares at all even. This is one way."
"God bless you, Mrs. Casaubon!" said Lydgate, rising as if with the same impulse that
made his words energetic, and resting his arm on the back of the great leather chair he had
been sitting in. "It is good that you should have such feelings. But I am not the man who
ought to allow himself to benefit by them. I have not given guarantees enough. I must not at
least sink into the degradation of being pensioned for work that I never achieved. It is very
clear to me that I must not count on anything else than getting away from Middlemarch as
soon as I can manage it. I should not be able for a long while, at the very best, to get an
income here, and – and it is easier to make necessary changes in a new place. I must do as
other men do, and think what will please the world and bring in money; look for a little
opening in the London crowd, and push myself; set up in a watering−place, or go to some
southern town where there are plenty of idle English, and get myself puffed, – that is the sort
of shell I must creep into and try to keep my soul alive in."
"Now that is not brave," said Dorothea, – "to give up the fight."
"No, it is not brave," said Lydgate, "but if a man is afraid of creeping paralysis?" Then,
in another tone, "Yet you have made a great difference in my courage by believing in me.
Everything seems more bearable since I have talked to you; and if you can clear me in a few
other minds, especially in Farebrother's, I shall be deeply grateful. The point I wish you not
to mention is the fact of disobedience to my orders. That would soon get distorted. After all,
there is no evidence for me but people's opinion of me beforehand. You can only repeat my
own report of myself."
"Mr. Farebrother will believe – others will believe," said Dorothea. "I can say of you
what will make it stupidity to suppose that you would be bribed to do a wickedness."
"I don't know," said Lydgate, with something like a groan in his voice. "I have not taken
a bribe yet. But there is a pale shade of bribery which is sometimes called prosperity. You
will do me another great kindness, then, and come to see my wife?"
"Yes, I will. I remember how pretty she is," said Dorothea, into whose mind every
impression about Rosamond had cut deep. "I hope she will like me."
As Lydgate rode away, he thought, "This young creature has a heart large enough for
the Virgin Mary. She evidently thinks nothing of her own future, and would pledge away
half her income at once, as if she wanted nothing for herself but a chair to sit in from which
she can look down with those clear eyes at the poor mortals who pray to her. She seems to
have what I never saw in any woman before – a fountain of friendship towards men – a man
can make a friend of her. Casaubon must have raised some heroic hallucination in her. I
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CHAPTER LXXVI. 625
wonder if she could have any other sort of passion for a man? Ladislaw? – there was
certainly an unusual feeling between them. And Casaubon must have had a notion of it. Well
– her love might help a man more than her money."
Dorothea on her side had immediately formed a plan of relieving Lydgate from his
obligation to Bulstrode, which she felt sure was a part, though small, of the galling pressure
he had to bear. She sat down at once under the inspiration of their interview, and wrote a
brief note, in which she pleaded that she had more claim than Mr. Bulstrode had to the
satisfaction of providing the money which had been serviceable to Lydgate – that it would
be unkind in Lydgate not to grant her the position of being his helper in this small matter,
the favor being entirely to her who had so little that was plainly marked out for her to do
with her superfluous money. He might call her a creditor or by any other name if it did but
imply that he granted her request. She enclosed a check for a thousand pounds, and
determined to take the letter with her the next day when she went to see Rosamond.
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CHAPTER LXXVI. 626
CHAPTER LXXVII.
"A
nd thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot, To mark the full−fraught man and best
indued With some suspicion." – Henry V.
The next day Lydgate had to go to Brassing, and told Rosamond that he should be away
until the evening. Of late she had never gone beyond her own house and garden, except to
church, and once to see her papa, to whom she said, "If Tertius goes away, you will help us
to move, will you not, papa? I suppose we shall have very little money. I am sure I hope
some one will help us." And Mr. Vincy had said, "Yes, child, I don't mind a hundred or two.
I can see the end of that." With these exceptions she had sat at home in languid melancholy
and suspense, fixing her mind on Will Ladislaw's coming as the one point of hope and
interest, and associating this with some new urgency on Lydgate to make immediate
arrangements for leaving Middlemarch and going to London, till she felt assured that the
coming would be a potent cause of the going, without at all seeing how. This way of
establishing sequences is too common to be fairly regarded as a peculiar folly in Rosamond.
And it is precisely this sort of sequence which causes the greatest shock when it is sundered:
for to see how an effect may be produced is often to see possible missings and checks; but to
see nothing except the desirable cause, and close upon it the desirable effect, rids us of doubt
and makes our minds strongly intuitive. That was the process going on in poor Rosamond,
while she arranged all objects around her with the same nicety as ever, only with more
slowness – or sat down to the piano, meaning to play, and then desisting, yet lingering on
the music stool with her white fingers suspended on the wooden front, and looking before
her in dreamy ennui. Her melancholy had become so marked that Lydgate felt a strange
timidity before it, as a perpetual silent reproach, and the strong man, mastered by his keen
sensibilities towards this fair fragile creature whose life he seemed somehow to have
bruised, shrank from her look, and sometimes started at her approach, fear of her and fear
for her rushing in only the more forcibly after it had been momentarily expelled by
exasperation.
But this morning Rosamond descended from her room upstairs – where she sometimes
sat the whole day when Lydgate was out – equipped for a walk in the town. She had a letter
to post – a letter addressed to Mr. Ladislaw and written with charming discretion, but
intended to hasten his arrival by a hint of trouble. The servant−maid, their sole
house−servant now, noticed her coming down−stairs in her walking dress, and thought
"there never did anybody look so pretty in a bonnet poor thing."
Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was filled with her project of going to Rosamond, and with
the many thoughts, both of the past and the probable future, which gathered round the idea
of that visit. Until yesterday when Lydgate had opened to her a glimpse of some trouble in
his married life, the image of Mrs. Lydgate had always been associated for her with that of
Will Ladislaw. Even in her most uneasy moments – even when she had been agitated by
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CHAPTER LXXVII. 627
Mrs. Cadwallader's painfully graphic report of gossip – her effort, nay, her strongest
impulsive prompting, had been towards the vindication of Will from any sullying surmises;
and when, in her meeting with him afterwards, she had at first interpreted his words as a
probable allusion to a feeling towards Mrs. Lydgate which he was determined to cut himself
off from indulging, she had had a quick, sad, excusing vision of the charm there might be in
his constant opportunities of companionship with that fair creature, who most likely shared
his other tastes as she evidently did his delight in music. But there had followed his parting
words – the few passionate words in which he had implied that she herself was the object of
whom his love held him in dread, that it was his love for her only which he was resolved not
to declare but to carry away into banishment. From the time of that parting, Dorothea,
believing in Will's love for her, believing with a proud delight in his delicate sense of honor
and his determination that no one should impeach him justly, felt her heart quite at rest as to
the regard he might have for Mrs. Lydgate. She was sure that the regard was blameless.
There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism
and consecration: they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us; and
our sins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar of trust. "If
you are not good, none is good" – those little words may give a terrific meaning to
responsibility, may hold a vitriolic intensity for remorse.
Dorothea's nature was of that kind: her own passionate faults lay along the easily
counted open channels of her ardent character; and while she was full of pity for the, visible
mistakes of others, she had not yet any material within her experience for subtle
constructions and suspicions of hidden wrong. But that simplicity of hers, holding up an
ideal for others in her believing conception of them, was one of the great powers of her
womanhood. And it had from the first acted strongly on Will Ladislaw. He felt, when he
parted from her, that the brief words by which he had tried to convey to her his feeling about
herself and the division which her fortune made between them, would only profit by their
brevity when Dorothea had to interpret them: he felt that in her mind he had found his
highest estimate.
And he was right there. In the months since their parting Dorothea had felt a delicious
though sad repose in their relation to each other, as one which was inwardly whole and
without blemish. She had an active force of antagonism within her, when the antagonism
turned on the defence either of plans or persons that she believed in; and the wrongs which
she felt that Will had received from her husband, and the external conditions which to others
were grounds for slighting him, only gave the more tenacity to her affection and admiring
judgment. And now with the disclosures about Bulstrode had come another fact affecting
Will's social position, which roused afresh Dorothea's inward resistance to what was said
about him in that part of her world which lay within park palings.
"Young Ladislaw the grandson of a thieving Jew pawnbroker" was a phrase which had
entered emphatically into the dialogues about the Bulstrode business, at Lowick, Tipton, and
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CHAPTER LXXVII. 628
Freshitt, and was a worse kind of placard on poor Will's back than the "Italian with white
mice." Upright Sir James Chettam was convinced that his own satisfaction was righteous
when he thought with some complacency that here was an added league to that mountainous
distance between Ladislaw and Dorothea, which enabled him to dismiss any anxiety in that
direction as too absurd. And perhaps there had been some pleasure in pointing Mr. Brooke's
attention to this ugly bit of Ladislaw's genealogy, as a fresh candle for him to see his own
folly by. Dorothea had observed the animus with which Will's part in the painful story had
been recalled more than once; but she had uttered no word, being checked now, as she had
not been formerly in speaking of Will, by the consciousness of a deeper relation between
them which must always remain in consecrated secrecy. But her silence shrouded her
resistant emotion into a more thorough glow; and this misfortune in Will's lot which, it
seemed, others were wishing to fling at his back as an opprobrium, only gave something
more of enthusiasm to her clinging thought.
She entertained no visions of their ever coming into nearer union, and yet she had taken
no posture of renunciation. She had accepted her whole relation to Will very simply as part
of her marriage sorrows, and would have thought it very sinful in her to keep up an inward
wail because she was not completely happy, being rather disposed to dwell on the
superfluities of her lot. She could bear that the chief pleasures of her tenderness should lie in
memory, and the idea of marriage came to her solely as a repulsive proposition from some
suitor of whom she at present knew nothing, but whose merits, as seen by her friends, would
be a source of torment to her: – "somebody who will manage your property for you, my
dear," was Mr. Brooke's attractive suggestion of suitable characteristics. "I should like to
manage it myself, if I knew what to do with it," said Dorothea. No – she adhered to her
declaration that she would never be married again, and in the long valley of her life which
looked so flat and empty of waymarks, guidance would come as she walked along the road,
and saw her fellow−passengers by the way.
This habitual state of feeling about Will Ladislaw had been strong. in all her waking
hours since she had proposed to pay a visit to Mrs. Lydgate, making a sort of background
against which she saw Rosamond's figure presented to her without hindrances to her interest
and compassion. There was evidently some mental separation, some barrier to complete
confidence which had arisen between this wife and the husband who had yet made her
happiness a law to him. That was a trouble which no third person must directly touch. But
Dorothea thought with deep pity of the loneliness which must have come upon Rosamond
from the suspicions cast on her husband; and there would surely be help in the manifestation
of respect for Lydgate and sympathy with her.
"I shall talk to her about her husband," thought Dorothea, as she was being driven
towards the town. The clear spring morning, the scent of the moist earth, the fresh leaves
just showing their creased−up wealth of greenery from out their half−opened sheaths,
seemed part of the cheerfulness she was feeling from a long conversation with Mr.
Farebrother, who had joyfully accepted the justifying explanation of Lydgate's conduct. "I
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CHAPTER LXXVII. 629
shall take Mrs. Lydgate good news, and perhaps she will like to talk to me and make a friend
of me."
Dorothea had another errand in Lowick Gate: it was about a new fine−toned bell for the
school−house, and as she had to get out of her carriage very near to Lydgate's, she walked
thither across the street, having told the coachman to wait for some packages. The street
door was open, and the servant was taking the opportunity of looking out at the carriage
which was pausing within sight when it became apparent to her that the lady who "belonged
to it" was coming towards her.
"Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?" said Dorothea.
"I'm not sure, my lady; I'll see, if you'll please to walk in," said Martha, a little confused
on the score of her kitchen apron, but collected enough to be sure that "mum" was not the
right title for this queenly young widow with a carriage and pair. "Will you please to walk
in, and I'll go and see."
"Say that I am Mrs. Casaubon," said Dorothea, as Martha moved forward intending to
show her into the drawing−room and then to go up−stairs to see if Rosamond had returned
from her walk.
They crossed the broader part of the entrance−hall, and turned up the passage which led
to the garden. The drawing−room door was unlatched, and Martha, pushing it without
looking into the room, waited for Mrs. Casaubon to enter and then turned away, the door
having swung open and swung back again without noise.
Dorothea had less of outward vision than usual this morning, being filled with images
of things as they had been and were going to be. She found herself on the other side of the
door without seeing anything remarkable, but immediately she heard a voice speaking in
low tones which startled her as with a sense of dreaming in daylight, and advancing
unconsciously a step or two beyond the projecting slab of a bookcase, she saw, in the
terrible illumination of a certainty which filled up all outlines, something which made her
pause, motionless, without self−possession enough to speak.
Seated with his back towards her on a sofa which stood against the wall on a line with
the door by which she had entered, she saw Will Ladislaw: close by him and turned towards
him with a flushed tearfulness which gave a new brilliancy to her face sat Rosamond, her
bonnet hanging back, while Will leaning towards her clasped both her upraised hands in his
and spoke with low−toned fervor.
Rosamond in her agitated absorption had not noticed the silently advancing figure; but
when Dorothea, after the first immeasurable instant of this vision, moved confusedly
backward and found herself impeded by some piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly
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CHAPTER LXXVII. 630
aware of her presence, and with a spasmodic movement snatched away her hands and rose,
looking at Dorothea who was necessarily arrested. Will Ladislaw, starting up, looked round
also, and meeting Dorothea's eyes with a new lightning in them, seemed changing to marble:
But she immediately turned them away from him to Rosamond and said in a firm voice –
"Excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate, the servant did not know that you were here. I called to
deliver an important letter for Mr. Lydgate, which I wished to put into your own hands."
She laid down the letter on the small table which had checked her retreat, and then
including Rosamond and Will in one distant glance and bow, she went quickly out of the
room, meeting in the passage the surprised Martha, who said she was sorry the mistress was
not at home, and then showed the strange lady out with an inward reflection that grand
people were probably more impatient than others.
Dorothea walked across the street with her most elastic step and was quickly in her
carriage again.
"Drive on to Freshitt Hall," she said to the coachman, and any one looking at her might
have thought that though she was paler than usual she was never animated by a more
self−possessed energy. And that was really her experience. It was as if she had drunk a great
draught of scorn that stimulated her beyond the susceptibility to other feelings. She had seen
something so far below her belief, that her emotions rushed back from it and made an
excited throng without an object. She needed something active to turn her excitement out
upon. She felt power to walk and work for a day, without meat or drink. And she would
carry out the purpose with which she had started in the morning, of going to Freshitt and
Tipton to tell Sir James and her uncle all that she wished them to know about Lydgate,
whose married loneliness under his trial now presented itself to her with new significance,
and made her more ardent in readiness to be his champion. She had never felt anything like
this triumphant power of indignation in the struggle of her married life, in which there had
always been a quickly subduing pang; and she took it as a sign of new strength.
"Dodo, how very bright your eyes are!" said Celia, when Sir James was gone out of the
room. "And you don't see anything you look at, Arthur or anything. You are going to do
something uncomfortable, I know. Is it all about Mr. Lydgate, or has something else
happened?" Celia had been used to watch her sister with expectation.
"Yes, dear, a great many things have happened," said Dodo, in her full tones.
"I wonder what," said Celia, folding her arms cozily and leaning forward upon them.
"Oh, all the troubles of all people on the face of the earth," said Dorothea, lifting her
arms to the back of her head.
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CHAPTER LXXVII. 631
"Dear me, Dodo, are you going to have a scheme for them?" said Celia, a little uneasy
at this Hamlet−like raving.
But Sir James came in again, ready to accompany Dorothea to the Grange, and she
finished her expedition well, not swerving in her resolution until she descended at her own
door.
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CHAPTER LXXVII. 632
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
W
ould it were yesterday and I i' the grave, With her sweet faith above for monument "
Rosamond and Will stood motionless – they did not know how long – he looking
towards the spot where Dorothea had stood, and she looking towards him with doubt. It
seemed an endless time to Rosamond, in whose inmost soul there was hardly so much
annoyance as gratification from what had just happened. Shallow natures dream of an easy
sway over the emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own petty magic to turn the
deepest streams, and confident, by pretty gestures and remarks, of making the thing that is
not as though it were. She knew that Will had received a severe blow, but she had been little
used to imagining other people's states of mind except as a material cut into shape by her
own wishes; and she believed in her own power to soothe or subdue. Even Tertius, that most
perverse of men, was always subdued in the long−run: events had been obstinate, but still
Rosamond would have said now, as she did before her marriage, that she never gave up
what she had set her mind on.
She put out her arm and laid the tips of her fingers on Will's coat−sleeve.
"Don't touch me!" he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash, darting from her, and
changing from pink to white and back again, as if his whole frame were tingling with the
pain of the sting. He wheeled round to the other side of the room and stood opposite to her,
with the tips of his fingers in his pockets and his head thrown back, looking fiercely not at
Rosamond but at a point a few inches away from her.
She was keenly offended, but the Signs she made of this were such as only Lydgate was
used to interpret. She became suddenly quiet and seated herself, untying her hanging bonnet
and laying it down with her shawl. Her little hands which she folded before her were very
cold.
It would have been safer for Will in the first instance to have taken up his hat and gone
away; but he had felt no impulse to do this; on the contrary, he had a horrible inclination to
stay and shatter Rosamond with his anger. It seemed as impossible to bear the fatality she
had drawn down on him without venting his fury as it would be to a panther to bear the
javelin−wound without springing and biting. And yet – how could he tell a woman that he
was ready to curse her? He was fuming under a repressive law which he was forced to
acknowledge: he was dangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the decisive
vibration. In flute−like tones of sarcasm she said –
"You can easily go after Mrs. Casaubon and explain your preference."
"Go after her!" he burst out, with a sharp edge in his voice. "Do you think she would
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CHAPTER LXXVIII. 633
turn to look at me, or value any word I ever uttered to her again at more than a dirty feather?
– Explain! How can a man explain at the expense of a woman?"
"You can tell her what you please," said Rosamond with more tremor.
"Do you suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you? She is not a woman to be
flattered because I made myself despicable – to believe that I must be true to her because I
was a dastard to you."
He began to move about with the restlessness of a wild animal that sees prey but cannot
reach it. Presently he burst out again –
"I had no hope before – not much – of anything better to come. But I had one certainty –
that she believed in me. Whatever people had said or done about me, she believed in me. –
That's gone! She'll never again think me anything but a paltry pretence – too nice to take
heaven except upon flattering conditions, and yet selling myself for any devil's change by
the sly. She'll think of me as an incarnate insult to her, from the first moment we – "
Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something that must not be thrown and
shattered. He found another vent for his rage by snatching up Rosamond's words again, as if
they were reptiles to be throttled and flung off.
"Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I
never had a PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No
other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I
would touch any other woman's living."
Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was almost losing
the sense of her identity, and seemed to be waking into some new terrible existence. She had
no sense of chill resolute repulsion, of reticent self−justification such as she had known
under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into a bewildering
novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash never experienced before. What
another nature felt in opposition to her own was being burnt and bitten into her
consciousness. When Will had ceased to speak she had become an image of sickened
misery: her lips were pale, and her eyes had a tearless dismay in them. If it had been Tertius
who stood opposite to her, that look of misery would have been a pang to him, and he would
have sunk by her side to comfort her, with that strong−armed comfort which, she had often
held very cheap.
Let it be forgiven to Will that he had no such movement of pity. He had felt no bond
beforehand to this woman who had spoiled the ideal treasure of his life, and he held himself
blameless. He knew that he was cruel, but he had no relenting in him yet.
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CHAPTER LXXVIII. 634
After he had done speaking, he still moved about, half in absence of mind, and
Rosamond sat perfectly still. At length Will, seeming to bethink himself, took up his hat, yet
stood some moments irresolute. He had spoken to her in a way that made a phrase of
common politeness difficult to utter; and yet, now that he had come to the point of going
away from her without further speech, he shrank from it as a brutality; he felt checked and
stultified in his anger. He walked towards the mantel−piece and leaned his arm on it, and
waited in silence for – he hardly knew what. The vindictive fire was still burning in him, and
he could utter no word of retractation; but it was nevertheless in his mind that having come
back to this hearth where he had enjoyed a caressing friendship he had found. calamity
seated there – he had had suddenly revealed to him a trouble that lay outside the home as
well as within it. And what seemed a foreboding was pressing upon him as with slow
pincers: – that his life might come to be enslaved by this helpless woman who had thrown
herself upon him in the dreary sadness of her heart. But he was in gloomy rebellion against
the fact that his quick apprehensiveness foreshadowed to him, and when his eyes fell on
Rosamond's blighted face it seemed to him that he was the more pitiable of the two; for pain
must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion.
And so they remained for many minutes, opposite each other, far apart, in silence;
Will's face still possessed by a mute rage, and Rosamond's by a mute misery. The poor thing
had no force to fling out any passion in return; the terrible collapse of the illusion towards
which all her hope had been strained was a stroke which had too thoroughly shaken her: her
little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering in the midst as a lonely bewildered
consciousness.
Will wished that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadow across his own
cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them both in mockery of any attempt at
revived fellowship. But she said nothing, and at last with a desperate effort over himself, he
asked, "Shall I come in and see Lydgate this evening?"
"If you like," Rosamond answered, just audibly.
And then Will went out of the house, Martha never knowing that he had been in.
After he was gone, Rosamond tried to get up from her seat, but fell back fainting. When
she came to herself again, she felt too ill to make the exertion of rising to ring the bell, and
she remained helpless until the girl, surprised at her long absence, thought for the first time
of looking for her in all the down−stairs rooms. Rosamond said that she had felt suddenly
sick and faint, and wanted to be helped up−stairs. When there she threw herself on the bed
with her clothes on, and lay in apparent torpor, as she had done once before on a memorable
day of grief.
Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected, about half−past five, and found her
there. The perception that she was ill threw every other thought into the background. When
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CHAPTER LXXVIII. 635
he felt her pulse, her eyes rested on him with more persistence than they had done for a long
while, as if she felt some content that he was there. He perceived the difference in a
moment, and seating himself by her put his arm gently under her, and bending over her said,
"My poor Rosamond! has something agitated you?" Clinging to him she fell into hysterical
sobbings and cries, and for the next hour he did nothing but soothe and tend her. He
imagined that Dorothea had been to see her, and that all this effect on her nervous system,
which evidently involved some new turning towards himself, was due to the excitement of
the new impressions which that visit had raised.
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CHAPTER LXXVIII. 636
CHAPTER LXXIX.
"N
ow, I saw in my dream, that just as they had ended their talk, they drew nigh to a
very miry slough, that was in the midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall
suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond." – BUNYAN.
When Rosamond was quiet, and Lydgate had left her, hoping that she might soon sleep
under the effect of an anodyne, he went into the drawing−room to fetch a book which he had
left there, meaning to spend the evening in his work−room, and he saw on the table
Dorothea's letter addressed to him. He had not ventured to ask Rosamond if Mrs. Casaubon
had called, but the reading of this letter assured him of the fact, for Dorothea mentioned that
it was to be carried by herself.
When Will Ladislaw came in a little later Lydgate met him with a surprise which made
it clear that he had not been told of the earlier visit, and Will could not say, "Did not Mrs.
Lydgate tell you that I came this morning?"
"Poor Rosamond is ill," Lydgate added immediately on his greeting.
"Not seriously, I hope," said Will.
"No – only a slight nervous shock – the effect of some agitation. She has been
overwrought lately. The truth is, Ladislaw, I am an unlucky devil. We have gone through
several rounds of purgatory since you left, and I have lately got on to a worse ledge of it
than ever. I suppose you are only just come down – you look rather battered – you have not
been long enough in the town to hear anything?"
"I travelled all night and got to the White Hart at eight o'clock this morning. I have been
shutting myself up and resting," said Will, feeling himself a sneak, but seeing no alternative
to this evasion.
And then he heard Lydgate's account of the troubles which Rosamond had already
depicted to him in her way. She had not mentioned the fact of Will's name being connected
with the public story – this detail not immediately affecting her – and he now heard it for the
first time.
"I thought it better to tell you that your name is mixed up with the disclosures," said
Lydgate, who could understand better than most men how Ladislaw might be stung by the
revelation. "You will be sure to hear it as soon as you turn out into the town. I suppose it is
true that Raffles spoke to you."
"Yes," said Will, sardonically. "I shall be fortunate if gossip does not make me the most
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CHAPTER LXXIX. 637
disreputable person in the whole affair. I should think the latest version must be, that I
plotted with Raffles to murder Bulstrode, and ran away from Middlemarch for the purpose."
He was thinking "Here is a new ring in the sound of my name to recommend it in her
hearing; however – what does it signify now?"
But he said nothing of Bulstrode's offer to him. Will was very open and careless about
his personal affairs, but it was among the more exquisite touches in nature's modelling of
him that he had a delicate generosity which warned him into reticence here. He shrank from
saying that he had rejected Bulstrode's money, in the moment when he was learning that it
was Lydgate's misfortune to have accepted it.
Lydgate too was reticent in the midst of his confidence. He made no allusion to
Rosamond's feeling under their trouble, and of Dorothea he only said, "Mrs. Casaubon has
been the one person to come forward and say that she had no belief in any of the suspicions
against me." Observing a change in Will's face, he avoided any further mention of her,
feeling himself too ignorant of their relation to each other not to fear that his words might
have some hidden painful bearing on it. And it occurred to him that Dorothea was the real
cause of the present visit to Middlemarch.
The two men were pitying each other, but it was only Will who guessed the extent of
his companion's trouble. When Lydgate spoke with desperate resignation of going to settle
in London, and said with a faint smile, "We shall have you again, old fellow." Will felt
inexpressibly mournful, and said nothing. Rosamond had that morning entreated him to urge
this step on Lydgate; and it seemed to him as if he were beholding in a magic panorama a
future where he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small solicitations
of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentous
bargain.
We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and
see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement.
Poor Lydgate was inwardly groaning on that margin, and Will was arriving at it. It seemed
to him this evening as if the cruelty of his outburst to Rosamond had made an obligation for
him, and he dreaded the obligation: he dreaded Lydgate's unsuspecting good−will: he
dreaded his own distaste for his spoiled life, which would leave him in motiveless levity.
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXIX. 638
CHAPTER LXXX.
"S
tern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know
we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face; Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most
ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. – WORDSWORTH: Ode to Duty.
When Dorothea had seen Mr. Farebrother in the morning, she had promised to go and
dine at the parsonage on her return from Freshitt. There was a frequent interchange of visits
between her and the Farebrother family, which enabled her to say that she was not at all
lonely at the Manor, and to resist for the present the severe prescription of a lady
companion. When she reached home and remembered her engagement, she was glad of it;
and finding that she had still an hour before she could dress for dinner, she walked straight
to the schoolhouse and entered into a conversation with the master and mistress about the
new bell, giving eager attention to their small details and repetitions, and getting up a
dramatic sense that her life was very busy. She paused on her way back to talk to old Master
Bunney who was putting in some garden−seeds, and discoursed wisely with that rural sage
about the crops that would make the most return on a perch of ground, and the result of sixty
years' experience as to soils – namely, that if your soil was pretty mellow it would do, but if
there came wet, wet, wet to make it all of a mummy, why then –
Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into being rather late, she dressed hastily
and went over to the parsonage rather earlier than was necessary. That house was never dull,
Mr. Farebrother, like another White of Selborne, having continually something new to tell of
his inarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was teaching the boys not to torment; and he
had just set up a pair of beautiful goats to be pets of the village in general, and to walk at
large as sacred animals. The evening went by cheerfully till after tea, Dorothea talking more
than usual and dilating with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of creatures that
converse compendiously with their antennae, and for aught we know may hold reformed
parliaments; when suddenly some inarticulate little sounds were heard which called
everybody's attention.
"Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sister moving about the
furniture−legs distressfully, "what is the matter?"
"I have lost my tortoise−shell lozenge−box. I fear the kitten has rolled it away," said the
tiny old lady, involuntarily coutinuing her beaver−like notes.
"Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up his glasses and looking at
the carpet.
"Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble. "A German box – very pretty, but if it falls
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CHAPTER LXXX. 639
it always spins away as far as it can."
"Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present," said Mr. Farebrother, in a deep tone of comprehension,
getting up and hunting. The box was found at last under a chiffonier, and Miss Noble
grasped it with delight, saying, "it was under a fender the last time."
"That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling at Dorothea,
as he reseated himself.
"If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon," said his mother,
emphatically, – "she is like a dog – she would take their shoes for a pillow and sleep the
better."
"Mr. Ladislaw's shoes, I would," said Henrietta Noble.
Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return. She was surprised and annoyed to find
that her heart was palpitating violently, and that it was quite useless to try after a recovery of
her former animation. Alarmed at herself – fearing some further betrayal of a change so
marked in its occasion, she rose and said in a low voice with undisguised anxiety, "I must
go; I have overtired myself."
Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true; you must have
half−exhausted yourself in talking about Lydgate. That sort of work tells upon one after the
excitement is over."
He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt to speak, even
when he said good−night.
The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helpless within the clutch of
inescapable anguish. Dismissing Tantripp with a few faint words, she locked her door, and
turning away from it towards the vacant room she pressed her hands hard on the top of her
head, and moaned out –
"Oh, I did love him!"
Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly to leave
any power of thought. She could only cry in loud whispers, between her sobs, after her lost
belief which she had planted and kept alive from a very little seed since the days in Rome –
after her lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith to one who, misprized by others, was
worthy in her thought – after her lost woman's pride of reigning in his memory – after her
sweet dim perspective of hope, that along some pathway they should meet with unchanged
recognition and take up the backward years as a yesterday.
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CHAPTER LXXX. 640
In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude have looked on for ages in
the spiritual struggles of man – she besought hardness and coldness and aching weariness to
bring her relief from the mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish: she lay on the bare
floor and let the night grow cold around her; while her grand woman's frame was shaken by
sobs as if she had been a despairing child.
There were two images – two living forms that tore her heart in two, as if it had been
the heart of a mother who seems to see her child divided by the sword, and presses one
bleeding half to her breast while her gaze goes forth in agony towards the half which is
carried away by the lying woman that has never known the mother's pang.
Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within the vibrating bond of mutual
speech, was the bright creature whom she had trusted – who had come to her like the spirit
of morning visiting the dim vault where she sat as the bride of a worn−out life; and now,
with a full consciousness which had never awakened before, she stretched out her arms
towards him and cried with bitter cries that their nearness was a parting vision: she
discovered her passion to herself in the unshrinking utterance of despair.
And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever she moved, was the Will
Ladislaw' who was a changed belief exhausted of hope, a detected illusion – no, a living
man towards whom there could not yet struggle any wail of regretful pity, from the midst of
scorn and indignation and jealous offended pride. The fire of Dorothea's anger was not
easily spent, and it flamed out in fitful returns of spurning reproach. Why had he come
obtruding his life into hers, hers that might have been whole enough without him? Why had
he brought his cheap regard and his lip−born words to her who had nothing paltry to give in
exchange? He knew that he was deluding her – wished, in the very moment of farewell, to
make her believe that he gave her the whole price of her heart, and knew that he had spent it
half before. Why had he not stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing – but only
prayed that they might be less contemptible?
But she lost energy at last even for her loud−whispered cries and moans: she subsided
into helpless sobs, and on the cold floor she sobbed herself to sleep.
In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around her, she awoke –
not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had happened, but with the clearest
consciousness that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm
things around her, and seated
herself in a great chair where she had often watched before. She was vigorous enough to
have borne that hard night without feeling ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but
she had waked to a new condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible
conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting
companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. For now the thoughts came thickly. It was
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CHAPTER LXXX. 641
not in Dorothea's nature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm, to sit in the narrow cell
of her calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousness that only sees another's lot as an
accident of its own.
She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberately again, forcing
herself to dwell on every detail and its possible meaning. Was she alone in that scene? Was
it her event only? She forced herself to think of it as bound up with another woman's life – a
woman towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry some clearness and comfort
into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap of jealous indignation and disgust, when
quitting the hateful room, she had flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken
that visit. She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it seemed to
her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever. But that base prompting which
makes a women more cruel to a rival than to a faithless lover, could have no strength of
recurrence in Dorothea when the dominant spirit of justice within her had once overcome
the tumult and had once shown her the truer measure of things. All the active thought with
which she had before been representing to herself the trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young
marriage union which, like her own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles –
all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power: it asserted itself as
acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let us see as we saw in the day of our
ignorance. She said to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful,
instead of driving her back from effort.
And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose contact with hers laid an
obligation on her as if they had been suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects of
her rescue were not to be sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her. She yearned
towards the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will.
"What should I do – how should I act now, this very day, if I could clutch my own pain, and
compel it to silence, and think of those three?"
It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was light piercing into the
room. She opened her curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with
fields beyond outside the entrance−gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his
back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures moving – perhaps the
shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the
largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance. She was a
part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious
shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.
What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that
she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather
distinctness. She took off the clothes which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard
watching in them, and began to make her toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp, who came
in her dressing−gown.
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CHAPTER LXXX. 642
"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night," burst out Tantripp, looking
first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face, which in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and
pink eyelids of a mater dolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you WILL. Anybody might think now
you had a right to give yourself a little comfort."
"Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling. "I have slept; I am not ill. I shall
be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible. And I want you to bring me my new dress;
and most likely I shall want my new bonnet to−day."
"They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam, and most thankful I shall
be to see you with a couple o' pounds' worth less of crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light
the fire. "There's a reason in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds at the bottom of
your skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet – and if ever anybody looked like an angel, it's
you in a net quilling – is what's consistent for a second year. At least, that's MY thinking,"
ended Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire; "and if anybody was to marry me flattering
himself I should wear those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be deceived by his own
vanity, that's all."
"The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she used to do in the old
Lausanne days, only with a very low voice; "get me the coffee."
She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against it in fatigued
quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering at this strange contrariness in her young
mistress – that just the morning when she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should
have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived before. Tantripp would never
have found the clew to this mystery. Dorothea wished to acknowledge that she had not the
less an active life before her because she had buried a private joy; and the tradition that fresh
garments belonged to all initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that slight
outward help towards calm resolve. For the resolve was not easy.
Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch, having made up
her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably as possible her second attempt to
see and save Rosamond.
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CHAPTER LXXX. 643
CHAPTER LXXXI.
"D
u Erde warst auch diese Nacht bestandig, Und athmest neu erquickt zu meinen
Fussen, Beginnest schon mit Lust mich zu umgeben, Zum regst und ruhrst ein kraftiges
Reschliessen Zum hochsten Dasein immerfort zu streben. – Faust: 2r Theil.
When Dorothea was again at Lydgate's door speaking to Martha, he was in the room
close by with the door ajar, preparing to go out. He heard her voice, and immediately came
to her.
"Do you think that Mrs. Lydgate can receive me this morning?" she said, having
reflected that it would be better to leave out all allusion to her previous visit.
"I have no doubt she will," said Lydgate, suppressing his thought about Dorothea's
looks, which were as much changed as Rosamond's, "if you will be kind enough to come in
and let me tell her that you are here. She has not been very well since you were here
yesterday, but she is better this morning, and I think it is very likely that she will be cheered
by seeing you again."
It was plain that Lydgate, as Dorothea had expected, knew nothing about the
circumstances of her yesterday's visit; nay, he appeared to imagine that she had carried it out
according to her intention. She had prepared a little note asking Rosamond to see her, which
she would have given to the servant if he had not been in the way, but now she was in much
anxiety as to the result of his announcement.
After leading her into the drawing−room, he paused to take a letter from his pocket and
put it into her hands, saying, "I wrote this last night, and was going to carry it to Lowick in
my ride. When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less
unsatisfactory than speech one does not at least HEAR how inadequate the words are."
Dorothea's face brightened. "It is I who have most to thank for, since you have let me
take that place. You HAVE consented?" she said, suddenly doubting.
"Yes, the check is going to Bulstrode to−day."
He said no more, but went up−stairs to Rosamond, who had but lately finished dressing
herself, and sat languidly wondering what she should do next, her habitual industry in small
things, even in the days of her sadness, prompting her to begin some kind of occupation,
which she dragged through slowly or paused in from lack of interest. She looked ill, but had
recovered her usual quietude of manner, and Lydgate had feared to disturb her by any
questions. He had told her of Dorothea's letter containing the check, and afterwards he had
said, "Ladislaw is come, Rosy; he sat with me last night; I dare say he will be here again
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CHAPTER LXXXI. 644
to−day. I thought he looked rather battered and depressed." And Rosamond had made no
reply.
Now, when he came up, he said to her very gently, "Rosy, dear, Mrs. Casaubon is come
to see you again; you would like to see her, would you not?" That she colored and gave
rather a startled movement did not surprise him after the agitation produced by the interview
yesterday – a beneficent agitation, he thought, since it seemed to have made her turn to him
again.
Rosamond dared not say no. She dared not with a tone of her voice touch the facts of
yesterday. Why had Mrs. Casaubon come again? The answer was a blank which Rosamond
could only fill up with dread, for Will Ladislaw's lacerating words had made every thought
of Dorothea a fresh smart to her. Nevertheless, in her new humiliating uncertainty she dared
do nothing but comply. She did not say yes, but she rose and let Lydgate put a light shawl
over her shoulders, while he said, "I am going out immediately." Then something crossed
her mind which prompted her to say, "Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else into the
drawing−room." And Lydgate assented, thinking that he fully understood this wish. He led
her down to the drawing−room door, and then turned away, observing to himself that he was
rather a blundering husband to be dependent for his wife's trust in him on the influence of
another woman.
Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as she walked towards Dorothea, was
inwardly wrapping her soul in cold reserve. Had Mrs. Casaubon come to say anything to her
about Will? If so, it was a liberty that Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself to meet
every word with polite impassibility. Will had bruised her pride too sorely for her to feel any
compunction towards him and Dorothea: her own injury seemed much the greater. Dorothea
was not only the "preferred" woman, but had also a formidable advantage in being Lydgate's
benefactor; and to poor Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed that this Mrs.
Casaubon – this woman who predominated in all things concerning her – must have come
now with the sense of having the advantage, and with animosity prompting her to use it.
Indeed, not Rosamond only, but any one else, knowing the outer facts of the case, and not
the simple inspiration on which Dorothea acted, might well have wondered why she came.
Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful slimness wrapped in her soft white
shawl, the rounded infantine mouth and cheek inevitably suggesting mildness and
innocence, Rosamond paused at three yards' distance from her visitor and bowed. But
Dorothea, who had taken off her gloves, from an impulse which she could never resist when
she wanted a sense of freedom, came forward, and with her face full of a sad yet sweet
openness, put out her hand. Rosamond could not avoid meeting her glance, could not avoid
putting her small hand into Dorothea's, which clasped it with gentle motherliness; and
immediately a doubt of her own prepossessions began to stir within her. Rosamond's eye
was quick for faces; she saw that Mrs. Casaubon's face looked pale and changed since
yesterday, yet gentle, and like the firm softness of her hand. But Dorothea had counted a
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CHAPTER LXXXI. 645
little too much on her own strength: the clearness and intensity of her mental action this
morning were the continuance of a nervous exaltation which made her frame as dangerously
responsive as a bit of finest Venetian crystal; and in looking at Rosamond, she suddenly
found her heart swelling, and was unable to speak – all her effort was required to keep back
tears. She succeeded in that, and the emotion only passed over her face like the spirit of a
sob; but it added to Rosamond's impression that Mrs. Casaubon's state of mind must be
something quite different from what she had imagined.
So they sat down without a word of preface on the two chairs that happened to be
nearest, and happened also to be close together; though Rosamond's notion when she first
bowed was that she should stay a long way off from Mrs. Casaubon. But she ceased thinking
how anything would turn out – merely wondering what would come. And Dorothea began to
speak quite simply, gathering firmness as she went on.
"I had an errand yesterday which I did not finish; that is why I am here again so soon.
You will not think me too troublesome when I tell you that I came to talk to you about the
injustice that has been shown towards Mr. Lydgate. It will cheer you – will it not? – to know
a great deal about him, that he may not like to speak about himself just because it is in his
own vindication and to his own honor. You will like to know that your husband has warm
friends, who have not left off believing in his high character? You will let me speak of this
without thinking that I take a liberty?"
The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow with generous heedlessness above all
the facts which had filled Rosamond's mind as grounds of obstruction and hatred between
her and this woman, came as soothingly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears. Of
course Mrs. Casaubon had the facts in her mind, but she was not going to speak of anything
connected with them. That relief was too great for Rosamond to feel much else at the
moment. She answered prettily, in the new ease of her soul –
"I know you have been very good. I shall like to hear anything you will say to me about
Tertius."
"The day before yesterday," said Dorothea, "when I had asked him to come to Lowick
to give me his opinion on the affairs of the Hospital, he told me everything about his
conduct and feelings in this sad event which has made ignorant people cast suspicions on
him. The reason he told me was because I was very bold and asked him. I believed that he
had never acted dishonorably, and I begged him to tell me the history. He confessed to me
that he had never told it before, not even to you, because he had a great dislike to say, `I was
not wrong,' as if that were proof, when there are guilty people who will say so. The truth is,
he knew nothing of this man Raffles, or that there were any bad secrets about him; and he
thought that Mr. Bulstrode offered him the money because he repented, out of kindness, of
having refused it before. All his anxiety about his patient was to treat him rightly, and he
was a little uncomfortable that the case did not end as he had expected; but he thought then
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CHAPTER LXXXI. 646
and still thinks that there may have been no wrong in it on any one's part. And I have told
Mr. Farebrother, and Mr. Brooke, and Sir James Chettam: they all believe in your husband.
That will cheer you, will it not? That will give you courage?"
Dorothea's face had become animated, and as it beamed on Rosamond very close to her,
she felt something like bashful timidity before a superior, in the presence of this
self−forgetful ardor. She said, with blushing embarrassment, "Thank you: you are very
kind."
"And he felt that he had been so wrong not to pour out everything about this to you. But
you will forgive him. It was because he feels so much more about your happiness than
anything else – he feels his life bound into one with yours, and it hurts him more than
anything, that his misfortunes must hurt you. He could speak to me because I am an
indifferent person. And then I asked him if I might come to see you; because I felt so much
for his trouble and yours. That is why I came yesterday, and why I am come to−day. Trouble
is so hard to bear, is it not? – How can we live and think that any one has trouble – piercing
trouble – and we could help them, and never try?"
Dorothea, completely swayed by the feeling that she was uttering, forgot everything but
that she was speaking from out the heart of her own trial to Rosamond's. The emotion had
wrought itself more and more into her utterance, till the tones might have gone to one's very
marrow, like a low cry from some suffering creature in the darkness. And she had
unconsciously laid her hand again on the little hand that she had pressed before.
Rosamond, with an overmastering pang, as if a wound within her had been probed,
burst into hysterical crying as she had done the day before when she clung to her husband.
Poor Dorothea was feeling a great wave of her own sorrow returning over her – her thought
being drawn to the possible share that Will Ladislaw might have in Rosamond's mental
tumult. She was beginning to fear that she should not be able to suppress herself enough to
the end of this meeting, and while her hand was still resting on Rosamond's lap, though the
hand underneath it was withdrawn, she was struggling against her own rising sobs. She tried
to master herself with the thought that this might be a turning−point in three lives – not in
her own; no, there the irrevocable had happened, but – in those three lives which were
touching hers with the solemn neighborhood of danger and distress. The fragile creature
who was crying close to her – there might still be time to rescue her from the misery of false
incompatible bonds; and this moment was unlike any other: she and Rosamond could never
be together again with the same thrilling consciousness of yesterday within them both. She
felt the relation between them to be peculiar enough to give her a peculiar influence, though
she had no conception that the way in which her own feelings were involved was fully
known to Mrs. Lydgate.
It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea could imagine: she
was under the first great shock that had shattered her dream−world in which she had been
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CHAPTER LXXXI. 647
easily confident of herself and critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation
of feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking aversion and dread, as
one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred towards her, made her soul totter all the
more with a sense that she had been walking in an unknown world which had just broken in
upon her.
When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she withdrew the
handkerchief with which she had been hiding her face, her eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly
as if they had been blue flowers. What was the use of thinking about behavior after this
crying? And Dorothea looked almost as childish, with the neglected trace of a silent tear.
Pride was broken down between these two.
"We were talking about your husband," Dorothea said, with some timidity. "I thought
his looks were sadly changed with suffering the other day. I had not seen him for many
weeks before. He said he had been feeling very lonely in his trial; but I think he would have
borne it all better if he had been able to be quite open with you."
"Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say anything," said Rosamond, imagining that he
had been complaining of her to Dorothea. "He ought not to wonder that I object to speak to
him on painful subjects."
"It was himself he blamed for not speaking," said Dorothea. "What he said of you was,
that he could not be happy in doing anything which made you unhappy – that his marriage
was of course a bond which must affect his choice about everything; and for that reason he
refused my proposal that he should keep his position at the Hospital, because that would
bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not undertake to do anything which would
be painful to you. He could say that to me, because he knows that I had much trial in my
marriage, from my husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him; and he
knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting another who is tied to
us."
Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing over Rosamond's
face. But there was no answer, and she went on, with a gathering tremor, "Marriage is so
unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we
loved some one else better than – than those we were married to, it would be no use" – poor
Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language brokenly – "I mean,
marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I
know it may be very dear – but it murders our marriage – and then the marriage stays with
us like a murder – and everything else is gone. And then our husband – if he loved and
trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in his life – "
Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming too far, and of
speaking as if she herself were perfection addressing error. She was too much preoccupied
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CHAPTER LXXXI. 648
with her own anxiety, to be aware that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the
need to express pitying fellowship rather than rebuke, she put her hands on Rosamond's, and
said with more agitated rapidity, – "I know, I know that the feeling may be very dear – it has
taken hold of us unawares – it is so hard, it may seem like death to part with it – and we are
weak – I am weak – "
The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling to save another,
rushed over Dorothea with conquering force. She stopped in speechless agitation. not crying,
but feeling as if she were being inwardly grappled. Her face had become of a deathlier
paleness, her lips trembled, and she pressed her hands helplessly on the hands that lay under
them.
Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own – hurried along in a new
movement which gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspect – could find no words,
but involuntarily she put her lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then
for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they had been in a shipwreck.
"You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager half−whisper, while she
was still feeling Dorothea's arms round her – urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself
from something that oppressed her as if it were blood guiltiness.
They moved apart, looking at each other.
"When you came in yesterday – it was not as you thought," said Rosamond in the same
tone.
There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea She expected a vindication of
Rosamond herself.
"He was telling me how he loved another woman, that I might know he could never
love me," said Rosamond, getting more and more hurried as she went on. "And now I think
he hates me because – because you mistook him yesterday. He says it is through me that you
will think ill of him – think that he is a false person. But it shall not be through me. He has
never had any love for me – I know he has not – he has always thought slightly of me. He
said yesterday that no other woman existed for him beside you. The blame of what happened
is entirely mine. He said he could never explain to you – because of me. He said you could
never think well of him again. But now I have told you, and he cannot reproach me any
more."
Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses which she had not known before. She
had begun her confession under the subduing influence of Dorothea's emotion; and as she
went on she had gathered the sense that she was repelling Will's reproaches, which were still
like a knife−wound within her.
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CHAPTER LXXXI. 649
The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy. It was a tumult in
which the terrible strain of the night and morning made a resistant pain: – she could only
perceive that this would be joy when she had recovered her power of feeling it. Her
immediate consciousness was one of immense sympathy without cheek; she cared for
Rosamond without struggle now, and responded earnestly to her last words –
"No, he cannot reproach you any more."
With her usual tendency to over−estimate the good in others, she felt a great outgoing of
her heart towards Rosamond, for the generous effort which had redeemed her from
suffering, not counting that the effort was a reflex of her own energy. After they had been
silent a little, she said –
"You are not sorry that I came this morning?"
"No, you have been very good to me," said Rosamond. "I did not think that you would
be so good. I was very unhappy. I am not happy now. Everything is so sad."
"But better days will come. Your husband will be rightly valued. And he depends on
you for comfort. He loves you best. The worst loss would be to lose that – and you have not
lost it," said Dorothea.
She tried to thrust away the too overpowering thought of her own relief, lest she should
fail to win some sign that Rosamond's affection was yearning back towards her husband.
"Tertius did not find fault with me, then?" said Rosamond, understanding now that
Lydgate might have said anything to Mrs. Casaubon, and that she certainly was different
from other women. Perhaps there was a faint taste of jealousy in the question. A smile began
to play over Dorothea's face as she said –
"No, indeed! How could you imagine it?" But here the door opened, and Lydgate
entered.
"I am come back in my quality of doctor," he said. "After I went away, I was haunted by
two pale faces: Mrs. Casaubon looked as much in need of care as you, Rosy. And I thought
that I had not done my duty in leaving you together; so when I had been to Coleman's I came
home again. I noticed that you were walking, Mrs. Casaubon, and the sky has changed – I
think we may have rain. May I send some one to order your carriage to come for you?"
"Oh, no! I am strong: I need the walk," said Dorothea, rising with animation in her face.
"Mrs. Lydgate and I have chatted a great deal, and it is time for me to go. I have always been
accused of being immoderate and saying too much."
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CHAPTER LXXXI. 650
She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet good−by without kiss
or other show of effusion: there had been between them too much serious emotion for them
to use the signs of it superficially.
As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing of Rosamond, but told him of Mr.
Farebrother and the other friends who had listened with belief to his story.
When he came back to Rosamond, she had already thrown herself on the sofa, in
resigned fatigue.
"Well, Rosy," he said, standing over her, and touching her hair, "what do you think of
Mrs. Casaubon now you have seen so much of her?"
"I think she must be better than any one," said Rosamond, "and she is very beautiful. If
you go to talk to her so often, you will be more discontented with me than ever!"
Lydgate laughed at the "so often." "But has she made you any less discontented with
me?"
"I think she has," said Rosamond, looking up in his face. "How heavy your eyes are,
Tertius – and do push your hair back." He lifted up his large white hand to obey her, and felt
thankful for this little mark of interest in him. Poor Rosamond's vagrant fancy had come
back terribly scourged – meek enough to nestle under the old despised shelter. And the
shelter was still there: Lydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with sad resignation. He had
chosen this fragile creature, and had taken the burthen of her life upon his arms. He must
walk as he could, carrying that burthen pitifully.
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXXI. 651
CHAPTER LXXXII.
"M
y grief lies onward and my joy behind." – SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely to stay in banishment unless
they are obliged. When Will Ladislaw exiled himself from Middlemarch he had placed no
stronger obstacle to his return than his own resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier,
but simply a state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other states of mind, and to find
itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite facility. As the months went on, it had
seemed more and more difficult to him to say why he should not run down to Middlemarch
– merely for the sake of hearing something about Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit he
should chance by some strange coincidence to meet with her, there was no reason for him to
be ashamed of having taken an innocent journey which he had beforehand supposed that he
should not take. Since he was hopelessly divided from her, he might surely venture into her
neighborhood; and as to the suspicious friends who kept a dragon watch over her – their
opinions seemed less and less important with time and change of air.
And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, which seemed to make a
journey to Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty. Will had given a disinterested attention
to an intended settlement on a new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to
carry out a good design had set him on debating with himself whether it would not be a
laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode, to urge the application of that money which
had been offered to himself as a means of carrying out a scheme likely to be largely
beneficial. The question seemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance to again
entering into any relation with the banker might have made him dismiss it quickly, if there
had not arisen in his imagination the probability that his judgment might be more safely
determined by a visit to Middlemarch.
That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason for coming down. He had
meant to confide in Lydgate, and discuss the money question with him, and he had meant to
amuse himself for the few evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music and badinage
with fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends at Lowick Parsonage: – if the Parsonage
was close to the Manor, that was no fault of his. He had neglected the Farebrothers before
his departure, from a proud resistance to the possible accusation of indirectly seeking
interviews with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and Will had become very hungry for the
vision of a certain form and the sound of a certain voice. Nothing, had done instead – not the
opera, or the converse of zealous politicians, or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of
his new hand in leading articles.
Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost everything would be
in his familiar little world; fearing, indeed, that there would be no surprises in his visit. But
he had found that humdrum world in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even badinage
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and lyrism had turned explosive; and the first day of this visit had become the most fatal
epoch of his life. The next morning he felt so harassed with the nightmare of consequences –
he dreaded so much the immediate issues before him – that seeing while he breakfasted the
arrival of the Riverston coach, he went out hurriedly and took his place on it, that he might
be relieved, at least for a day, from the necessity of doing or saying anything in
Middlemarch. Will Ladislaw was in one of those tangled crises which are commoner in
experience than one might imagine, from the shallow absoluteness of men's judgments. He
had found Lydgate, for whom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances which
claimed his thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the reason why, in spite of that
claim, it would have been better for Will to have avoided all further intimacy, or even
contact, with Lydgate, was precisely of the kind to make such a course appear impossible.
To a creature of Will's susceptible temperament – without any neutral region of indifference
in his nature, ready to turn everything that befell him into the collisions of a passionate
drama – the revelation that Rosamond had made her happiness in any way dependent on him
was a difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably increased for him.
He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to show the fulness of his relenting: he must go
to her again; the friendship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness was a
power which he dreaded. And all the while there was no more foretaste of enjoyment in the
life before him than if his limbs had been lopped off and he was making his fresh start on
crutches. In the night he had debated whether he should not get on the coach, not for
Riverston, but for London, leaving a note to Lydgate which would give a makeshift reason
for his retreat. But there were strong cords pulling him back from that abrupt departure: the
blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing of that chief hope which had
remained in spite of the acknowledged necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery for
him to resign himself to it and go straightway into a distance which was also despair.
Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach. He came back again
by it while it was still daylight, having made up his mind that he must go to Lydgate's that
evening. The Rubicon, we know, was a very insignificant stream to look at; its significance
lay entirely in certain invisible conditions. Will felt as if he were forced to cross his small
boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it was not empire, but discontented subjection.
But it is given to us sometimes even in our every−day life to witness the saving
influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy of rescue that may lie in a self−subduing act
of fellowship. If Dorothea, after her night's anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond –
why, she perhaps would have been a woman who gained a higher character for discretion,
but it would certainly not have been as well for those three who were on one hearth in
Lydgate's house at half−past seven that evening.
Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received him with a languid
coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous exhaustion, of which he could not
suppose that it had any relation to Will. And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of
work, he innocently apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean backward
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and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the part of a friend who was making
his first appearance and greeting to Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her
feeling since that scene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,
like the painful vision of a double madness. It happened that nothing called Lydgate out of
the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea, and Will came near to fetch it, she placed
a tiny bit of folded paper in his saucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he went back
to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper. What Rosamond had written to him
would probably deepen the painful impressions of the evening. Still, he opened and read it
by his bed−candle. There were only these few words in her neatly flowing hand: –
"I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you. I told her because
she came to see me and was very kind. You will have nothing to reproach me with now. I
shall not have made any difference to you."
The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelt on them with
excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning at the thought of what had occurred
between Dorothea and Rosamond – at the uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her
dignity wounded in having an explanation of his conduct offered to her. There might still
remain in her mind a changed association with him which made an irremediable difference –
a lasting flaw. With active fancy he wrought himself into a state of doubt little more easy
than that of the man who has escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in
the darkness. Until that wretched yesterday – except the moment of vexation long ago in the
very same room and in the very same presence – all their vision, all their thought of each
other, had been as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil
lurked, and no other soul entered. But now – would Dorothea meet him in that world again?
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CHAPTER LXXXIII.
"A
nd now good−morrow to our waking souls Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room, an everywhere." – DR.
DONNE.
On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosamond, she had had two nights of
sound sleep, and had not only lost all traces of fatigue, but felt as if she had a great deal of
superfluous strength – that is to say, more strength than she could manage to concentrate on
any occupation. The day before, she had taken long walks outside the grounds, and had paid
two visits to the Parsonage; but she never in her life told any one the reason why she spent
her time in that fruitless manner, and this morning she was rather angry with herself for her
childish restlessness. To−day was to be spent quite differently. What was there to be done in
the village? Oh dear! nothing. Everybody was well and had flannel; nobody's pig had died;
and it was Saturday morning, when there was a general scrubbing of doors and door−stones,
and when it was useless to go into the school. But there were various subjects that Dorothea
was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved to throw herself energetically into the gravest
of all. She sat down in the library before her particular little heap of books on political
economy and kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light as to the best way of
spending money so as not to injure one's neighbors, or – what comes to the same thing – so
as to do them the most good. Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of
it, would certainly keep her mind steady. Unhappily her mind slipped off it for a whole hour;
and at the end she found herself reading sentences twice over with an intense consciousness
of many things, but not of any one thing contained in the text. This was hopeless. Should she
order the carriage and drive to Tipton? No; for some reason or other she preferred staying at
Lowick. But her vagrant mind must be reduced to order: there was an art in self−discipline;
and she walked round and round the brown library considering by what sort of manoeuvre
she could arrest her wandering thoughts. Perhaps a mere task was the best means –
something to which she must go doggedly. Was there not the geography of Asia Minor, in
which her slackness had often been rebuked by Mr. Casaubon? She went to the cabinet of
maps and unrolled one: this morning she might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia
was not on the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the Chalybes firmly on the
shores of the Euxine. A map was a fine thing to study when you were disposed to think of
something else, being made up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon
them. Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering the names in an
audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime. She looked amusingly girlish after all
her deep experience – nodding her head and marking the names off on her fingers, with a
little pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her hands on each side of her
face and say, "Oh dear! oh dear!"
There was no reason why this should end any more than a merry−go−round; but it was
at last interrupted by the opening of the door and the announcement of Miss Noble.
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The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea's shoulder, was warmly
welcomed, but while her hand was being pressed she made many of her beaver−like noises,
as if she had something difficult to say.
"Do sit down," said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward. "Am I wanted for anything? I
shall be so glad if I can do anything."
"I will not stay," said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her small basket, and holding
some article inside it nervously; "I have left a friend in the churchyard." She lapsed into her
inarticulate sounds, and unconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering. It was
the tortoise−shell lozenge−box, and Dorothea felt the color mounting to her cheeks.
"Mr. Ladislaw," continued the timid little woman. "He fears he has offended you, and
has begged me to ask if you will see him for a few minutes."
Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mind that she could not
receive him in this library, where her husband's prohibition seemed to dwell. She looked
towards the window. Could she go out and meet him in the grounds? The sky was heavy,
and the trees had begun to shiver as at a coming storm. Besides, she shrank from going out
to him.
"Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon," said Miss Noble, pathetically; "else I must go back and
say No, and that will hurt him."
"Yes, I will see him," said Dorothea. "Pray tell him to come."
What else was there to be done? There was nothing that she longed for at that moment
except to see Will: the possibility of seeing him had thrust itself insistently between her and
every other object; and yet she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her – a sense
that she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.
When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood in the middle of
the library with her hands falling clasped before her, making no attempt to compose herself
in an attitude of dignified unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of just then was
her own body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in Will's mind, and of the hard
feelings that others had had about him. How could any duty bind her to hardness?
Resistance to unjust dispraise had mingled with her feeling for him from the very first, and
now in the rebound of her heart after her anguish the resistance was stronger than ever. "If I
love him too much it is because he has been used so ill:" – there was a voice within her
saying this to some imagined audience in the library, when the door was opened, and she
saw Will before her.
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She did not move, and he came towards her with more doubt and timidity in his face
than she had ever seen before. He was in a state of uncertainty which made him afraid lest
some look or word of his should condemn him to a new distance from her; and Dorothea
was afraid of her OWN emotion. She looked as if there were a spell upon her, keeping her
motionless and hindering her from unclasping her hands, while some intense, grave yearning
was imprisoned within her eyes. Seeing that she did not put out her hand as usual, Will
paused a yard from her and said with embarrassment, "I am so grateful to you for seeing
me."
"I wanted to see you," said Dorothea, having no other words at command. It did not
occur to her to sit down, and Will did not give a cheerful interpretation to this queenly way
of receiving him; but he went on to say what he had made up his mind to say.
"I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for coming back so soon. I have been
punished for my impatience. You know – every one knows now – −a painful story about my
parentage. I knew of it before I went away, and I always meant to tell you of it if – if we
ever met again."
There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she unclasped her hands, but
immediately folded them over each other.
"But the affair is matter of gossip now," Will continued. "I wished you to know that
something connected with it – something which happened before I went away, helped to
bring me down here again. At least I thought it excused my coming. It was the idea of
getting Bulstrode to apply some money to a public purpose – some money which he had
thought of giving me. Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode's credit that he privately offered me
compensation for an old injury: he offered to give me a good income to make amends; but I
suppose you know the disagreeable story?"
Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner was gathering some of the defiant
courage with which he always thought of this fact in his destiny. He added, "You know that
it must be altogether painful to me."
"Yes – yes – I know," said Dorothea, hastily.
"I did not choose to accept an income from such a source. I was sure that you would not
think well of me if I did so," said Will. Why should he mind saying anything of that sort to
her now? She knew that he had avowed his love for her. "I felt that" – he broke off,
nevertheless.
"You acted as I should have expected you to act," said Dorothea, her face brightening
and her head becoming a little more erect on its beautiful stem.
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"I did not believe that you would let any circumstance of my birth create a prejudice in
you against me, though it was sure to do so in others," said Will, shaking his head backward
in his old way, and looking with a grave appeal into her eyes.
"If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason for me to cling to you," said
Dorothea, fervidly. "Nothing could have changed me but – "her heart was swelling, and it
was difficult to go on; she made a great effort over herself to say in a low tremulous voice,
"but thinking that you were different – not so good as I had believed you to be."
"You are sure to believe me better than I am in everything but one," said Will, giving
way to his own feeling in the evidence of hers. "I mean, in my truth to you. When I thought
you doubted of that, I didn't care about anything that was left. I thought it was all over with
me, and there was nothing to try for – only things to endure."
"I don't doubt you any longer," said Dorothea, putting out her hand; a vague fear for
him impelling her unutterable affection.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips with something like a sob. But he stood with
his hat and gloves in the other hand, and might have done for the portrait of a Royalist. Still
it was difficult to loose the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed
her, looked and moved away.
"See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed," she said, walking
towards the window, yet speaking and moving with only a dim sense of what she was doing.
Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned against the tall back of a leather chair,
on which he ventured now to lay his hat and gloves, and free himself from the intolerable
durance of formality to which he had been for the first time condemned in Dorothea's
presence. It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that moment leaning on the chair.
He was not much afraid of anything that she might feel now.
They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking at the evergreens which were
being tossed, and were showing the pale underside of their leaves against the blackening
sky. Will never enjoyed the prospect of a storm so much: it delivered him from the necessity
of going away. Leaves and little branches were hurled about, and the thunder was getting
nearer. The light was more and more sombre, but there came a flash of lightning which
made them start and look at each other, and then smile. Dorothea began to say what she had
been thinking of.
"That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have had nothing to try for. If
we had lost our own chief good, other people's good would remain, and that is worth trying
for. Some can be happy. I seemed to see that more clearly than ever, when I was the most
wretched. I can hardly think how I could have borne the trouble, if that feeling had not come
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to me to make strength."
"You have never felt the sort of misery I felt," said Will; "the misery of knowing that
you must despise me."
"But I have felt worse – it was worse to think ill – " Dorothea had begun impetuously,
but broke off.
Will colored. He had the sense that whatever she said was uttered in the vision of a
fatality that kept them apart. He was silent a moment, and then said passionately –
"We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each other without disguise. Since I
must go away – since we must always be divided – you may think of me as one on the brink
of the grave."
While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit each of them up
for the other – and the light seemed to be the terror of a hopeless love. Dorothea darted
instantaneously from the window; Will followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic
movement; and so they stood, with their hands clasped, like two children, looking out on the
storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them, and the rain began to
pour down. Then they turned their faces towards each other, with the memory of his last
words in them, and they did not loose each other's hands.
"There is no hope for me," said Will. "Even if you loved me as well as I love you – even
if I were everything to you – I shall most likely always be very poor: on a sober calculation,
one can count on nothing but a creeping lot. It is impossible for us ever to belong to each
other. It is perhaps base of me to have asked for a word from you. I meant to go away into
silence, but I have not been able to do what I meant."
"Don't be sorry," said Dorothea, in her clear tender tones. "I would rather share all the
trouble of our parting."
Her lips trembled, and so did his. It was never known which lips were the first to move
towards the other lips; but they kissed tremblingly, and then they moved apart.
The rain was dashing against the window−panes as if an angry spirit were within it, and
behind it was the great swoop of the wind; it was one of those moments in which both the
busy and the idle pause with a certain awe.
Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a long low ottoman in the middle of the
room, and with her hands folded over each other on her lap, looked at the drear outer world.
Will stood still an instant looking at her, then seated himself beside her, and laid his hand on
hers, which turned itself upward to be clasped. They sat in that way without looking at each
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CHAPTER LXXXIII. 659
other, until the rain abated and began to fall in stillness. Each had been full of thoughts
which neither of them could begin to utter.
But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to look at Will. With passionate
exclamation, as if some torture screw were threatening him, he started up and said, "It is
impossible!"
He went and leaned on the back of the chair again, and seemed to be battling with his
own anger, while she looked towards him sadly.
"It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that divides people," he burst out again; "it
is more intolerable – to have our life maimed by petty accidents."
"No – don't say that – your life need not be maimed," said Dorothea, gently.
"Yes, it must," said Will, angrily. "It is cruel of you to speak in that way – as if there
were any comfort. You may see beyond the misery of it, but I don't. It is unkind – it is
throwing back my love for you as if it were a trifle, to speak in that way in the face of the
fact. We can never be married."
"Some time – we might," said Dorothea, in a trembling voice.
"When?" said Will, bitterly. "What is the use of counting on any success of mine? It is a
mere toss up whether I shall ever do more than keep myself decently, unless I choose to sell
myself as a mere pen and a mouthpiece. I can see that clearly enough. I could not offer
myself to any woman, even if she had no luxuries to renounce."
There was silence. Dorothea's heart was full of something that she wanted to say, and
yet the words were too difficult. She was wholly possessed by them: at that moment debate
was mute within her. And it was very hard that she could not say what she wanted to say.
Will was looking out of the window angrily. If he would have looked at her and not gone
away from her side, she thought everything would have been easier. At last he turned, still
resting against the chair, and stretching his hand automatically towards his hat, said with a
sort of exasperation, "Good−by."
"Oh, I cannot bear it – my heart will break," said Dorothea, starting from her seat, the
flood of her young passion bearing down all the obstructions which had kept her silent – the
great tears rising and falling in an instant:"I don't mind about poverty – I hate my wealth."
In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms round her, but she drew her head
back and held his away gently that she might go on speaking, her large tear−filled eyes
looking at his very simply, while she said in a sobbing childlike way, "We could live quite
well on my own fortune – it is too much – seven hundred a−year – I want so little – no new
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clothes – and I will learn what everything costs."
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CHAPTER LXXXIV.
"T
hough it be songe of old and yonge, That I sholde be to blame, Theyrs be the charge,
that spoke so large In hurtynge of my name." – The Not−browne Mayde.
It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill: that explains how Mr.
Cadwallader came to be walking on the slope of the lawn near the great conservatory at
Freshitt Hall, holding the "Times" in his hands behind him, while he talked with a
trout−fisher's dispassionateness about the prospects of the country to Sir James Chettam.
Mrs. Cadwallader, the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were sometimes seated on
garden−chairs, sometimes walking to meet little Arthur, who was being drawn in his chariot,
and, as became the infantine Bouddha, was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome
silken fringe.
The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully. Mrs. Cadwallader was strong on
the intended creation of peers: she had it for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone
over to the other side entirely at the instigation of his wife, who had scented peerages in the
air from the very first introduction of the Reform question, and would sign her soul away to
take precedence of her younger sister, who had married a baronet. Lady Chettam thought
that such conduct was very reprehensible, and remembered that Mrs. Truberry's mother was
a Miss Walsingham of Melspring. Celia confessed it was nicer to be "Lady" than "Mrs.,"
and that Dodo never minded about precedence if she could have her own way. Mrs.
Cadwallader held that it was a poor satisfaction to take precedence when everybody about
you knew that you had not a drop of good blood in your veins; and Celia again, stopping to
look at Arthur, said, "It would be very nice, though, if he were a Viscount – and his
lordship's little tooth coming through! He might have been, if James had been an Earl."
"My dear Celia," said the Dowager, "James's title is worth far more than any new
earldom. I never wished his father to be anything else than Sir James."
"Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth," said Celia, comfortably. "But see, here is
my uncle coming."
She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James and Mr. Cadwallader came forward
to make one group with the ladies. Celia had slipped her arm through her uncle's, and he
patted her hand with a rather melancholy "Well, my dear!" As they approached, it was
evident that Mr. Brooke was looking dejected, but this was fully accounted for by the state
of politics; and as he was shaking hands all round without more greeting than a "Well,
you're all here, you know," the Rector said, laughingly –
"Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke; you've got all the
riff−raff of the country on your side."
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"The Bill, eh? ah!" said Mr. Brooke, with a mild distractedness of manner. "Thrown
out, you know, eh? The Lords are going too far, though. They'll have to pull up. Sad news,
you know. I mean, here at home – sad news. But you must not blame me, Chettam."
"What is the matter?" said Sir James. "Not another gamekeeper shot, I hope? It's what I
should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass is let off so easily."
"Gamekeeper? No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house, you know," said Mr.
Brooke, nodding at the Cadwalladers, to show that he included them in his confidence. "As
to poachers like Trapping Bass, you know, Chettam," he continued, as they were entering,
"when you are a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to commit. Severity is all very well, but
it's a great deal easier when you've got somebody to do it for you. You have a soft place in
your heart yourself, you know – you're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort of thing."
Mr. Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation. When he had something
painful to tell, it was usually his way to introduce it among a number of disjointed
particulars, as if it were a medicine that would get a milder flavor by mixing He continued
his chat with Sir James about the poachers until they were all seated, and Mrs. Cadwallader,
impatient of this drivelling, said –
"I'm dying to know the sad news. The gamekeeper is not shot: that is settled. What is it,
then?"
"Well, it's a very trying thing, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "I'm glad you and the
Rector are here; it's a family matter – but you will help us all to bear it, Cadwallader. I've got
to break it to you, my dear." Here Mr. Brooke looked at Celia – "You've no notion what it is,
you know. And, Chettam, it will annoy you uncommonly – but, you see, you have not been
able to hinder it, any more than I have. There's something singular in things: they come
round, you know."
"It must be about Dodo," said Celia, who had been used to think of her sister as the
dangerous part of the family machinery. She had seated herself on a low stool against her
husband's knee.
"For God's sake let us hear what it is!" said Sir James.
"Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's will: it was a sort of will to make
things worse."
"Exactly," said Sir James, hastily. "But WHAT is worse?"
"Dorothea is going to be married again, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards
Celia, who immediately looked up at her husband with a frightened glance, and put her hand
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on his knee. Sir James was almost white with anger, but he did not speak.
"Merciful heaven!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Not to YOUNG Ladislaw?"
Mr. Brooke nodded, saying, "Yes; to Ladislaw," and then fell into a prudential silence.
"You see, Humphrey!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her arm towards her husband.
"Another time you will admit that I have some foresight; or rather you will contradict me
and be just as blind as ever. YOU supposed that the young gentleman was gone out of the
country."
"So he might be, and yet come back," said the Rector, quietly
"When did you learn this?" said Sir James, not liking to hear any one else speak, though
finding it difficult to speak himself.
"Yesterday," said Mr. Brooke, meekly. "I went to Lowick. Dorothea sent for me, you
know. It had come about quite suddenly – neither of them had any idea two days ago – not
any idea, you know. There's something singular in things. But Dorothea is quite determined
– it is no use opposing. I put it strongly to her. I did my duty, Chettam. But she can act as
she likes, you know."
"It would have been better if I had called him out and shot him a year ago," said Sir
James, not from bloody−mindedness, but because he needed something strong to say.
"Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable," said Celia.
"Be reasonable, Chettam. Look at the affair more quietly," said Mr. Cadwallader, sorry
to see his good−natured friend so overmastered by anger.
"That is not so very easy for a man of any dignity – with any sense of right – when the
affair happens to be in his own family," said Sir James, still in his white indignation. "It is
perfectly scandalous. If Ladislaw had had a spark of honor he would have gone out of the
country at once, and never shown his face in it again. However, I am not surprised. The day
after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to be done. But I was not listened to."
"You wanted what was impossible, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke. "You
wanted him shipped off. I told you Ladislaw was not to be done as we liked with: he had his
ideas. He was a remarkable fellow – I always said he was a remarkable fellow."
"Yes," said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, "it is rather a pity you formed that high
opinion of him. We are indebted to that for his being lodged in this neighborhood. We are
indebted to that for seeing a woman like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying him." Sir
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James made little stoppages between his clauses, the words not coming easily. "A man so
marked out by her husband's will, that delicacy ought to have forbidden her from seeing him
again – who takes her out of her proper rank – into poverty – has the meanness to accept
such a sacrifice – has always had an objectionable position – a bad origin – and, I
BELIEVE, is a man of little principle and light character. That is my opinion." Sir James
ended emphatically, turning aside and crossing his leg.
"I pointed everything out to her," said Mr. Brooke, apologetically – "I mean the poverty,
and abandoning her position. I said, `My dear, you don't know what it is to live on seven
hundred a−year, and have no carriage, and that kind of thing, and go amongst people who
don't know who you are.' I put it strongly to her. But I advise you to talk to Dorothea herself.
The fact is, she has a dislike to Casaubon's property. You will hear what she says, you
know."
"No – excuse me – I shall not," said Sir James, with more coolness. "I cannot bear to
see her again; it is too painful. It hurts me too much that a woman like Dorothea should have
done what is wrong."
"Be just, Chettam," said the easy, large−lipped Rector, who objected to all this
unnecessary discomfort. "Mrs. Casaubon may be acting imprudently: she is giving up a
fortune for the sake of a man, and we men have so poor an opinion of each other that we can
hardly call a woman wise who does that. But I think you should not condemn it as a wrong
action, in the strict sense of the word."
"Yes, I do," answered Sir James. "I think that Dorothea commits a wrong action in
marrying Ladislaw."
"My dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to
us," said the Rector, quietly. Like many men who take life easily, he had the knack of saying
a home truth occasionally to those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper. Sir James
took out his handkerchief and began to bite the corner.
"It is very dreadful of Dodo, though," said Celia, wishing to justify her husband. "She
said she NEVER WOULD marry again – not anybody at all."
"I heard her say the same thing myself," said Lady Chettam, majestically, as if this were
royal evidence.
"Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The only
wonder to me is, that any of you are surprised. You did nothing to hinder it. If you would
have had Lord Triton down here to woo her with his philanthropy, he might have carried her
off before the year was over. There was no safety in anything else. Mr. Casaubon had
prepared all this as beautifully as possible. He made himself disagreeable – or it pleased God
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CHAPTER LXXXIV. 665
to make him so – and then he dared her to contradict him. It's the way to make any trumpery
tempting, to ticket it at a high price in that way."
"I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cadwallader," said Sir James, still feeling a
little stung, and turning round in his chair towards the Rector. "He's not a man we can take
into the family. At least, I must speak for myself," he continued, carefully keeping his eyes
off Mr. Brooke. "I suppose others will find his society too pleasant to care about the
propriety of the thing."
"Well, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, good−humoredly, nursing his leg, "I can't
turn my back on Dorothea. I must be a father to her up to a certain point. I said, `My dear, I
won't refuse to give you away.' I had spoken strongly before. But I can cut off the entail, you
know. It will cost money and be troublesome; but I can do it, you know."
Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing his own force of
resolution and propitiating what was just in the Baronet's vexation. He had hit on a more
ingenious mode of parrying than he was aware of. He had touched a motive of which Sir
James was ashamed. The mass of his feeling about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was due
partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion, partly to a jealous repugnance
hardly less in Ladislaw's case than in Casaubon's. He was convinced that the marriage was a
fatal one for Dorothea. But amid that mass ran a vein of which he was too good and
honorable a man to like the avowal even to himself: it was undeniable that the union of the
two estates – Tipton and Freshitt – lying charmingly within a ring−fence, was a prospect that
flattered him for his son and heir. Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed to that
motive, Sir James felt a sudden embarrassment; there was a stoppage in his throat; he even
blushed. He had found more words than usual in the first jet of his anger, but Mr. Brooke's
propitiation was more clogging to his tongue than Mr. Cadwallader's caustic hint.
But Celia was glad to have room for speech after her uncle's suggestion of the marriage
ceremony, and she said, though with as little eagerness of manner as if the question had
turned on an invitation to dinner, "Do you mean that Dodo is going to be married directly,
uncle?"
"In three weeks, you know," said Mr. Brooke, helplessly. "I can do nothing to hinder it,
Cadwallader," he added, turning for a little countenance toward the Rector, who said –
" – I – should not make any fuss about it. If she likes to be poor, that is her affair.
Nobody would have said anything if she had married the young fellow because he was rich.
Plenty of beneficed clergy are poorer than they will be. Here is Elinor," continued the
provoking husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly a thousand a−year – I was a
lout – nobody could see anything in me – my shoes were not the right cut – all the men
wondered how a woman could like me. Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I
hear more harm of him."
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"Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife. "Everything is all one
– that is the beginning and end with you. As if you had not been a Cadwallader! Does any
one suppose that I would have taken such a monster as you by any other name?"
"And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation. "Elinor cannot be
said to have descended below her rank. It is difficult to say what Mr. Ladislaw is, eh,
James?"
Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less respectful than his usual mode of
answering his mother. Celia looked up at him like a thoughtful kitten.
"It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The
Casaubon cuttle−fish fluid to begin with, and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or
dancing−master, was it? – and then an old clo – "
"Nonsense, Elinor," said the Rector, rising. "It is time for us to go."
"After all, he is a pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, rising too, and wishing to make
amends. "He is like the fine old Crichley portraits before the idiots came in."
"I'll go with you," said Mr. Brooke, starting up with alacrity. "You must all come and
dine with me to−morrow, you know – eh, Celia, my dear?"
"You will, James – won't you?" said Celia, taking her husband's hand.
"Oh, of course, if you like," said Sir James, pulling down his waistcoat, but unable yet
to adjust his face good−humoredly. "That is to say, if it is not to meet anybody else.':
"No, no, no," said Mr. Brooke, understanding the condition. "Dorothea would not come,
you know, unless you had been to see her."
When Sir James and Celia were alone, she said, "Do you mind about my having the
carriage to go to, Lowick, James?"
"What, now, directly?" he answered, with some surprise.
"Yes, it is very important," said Celia.
"Remember, Celia, I cannot see her," said Sir James.
"Not if she gave up marrying?"
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CHAPTER LXXXIV. 667
"What is the use of saying that? – however, I'm going to the stables. I'll tell Briggs to
bring the carriage round."
Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least to take a journey to Lowick
in order to influence Dorothea's mind. All through their girlhood she had felt that she could
act on her sister by a word judiciously placed – by opening a little window for the daylight
of her own understanding to enter among the strange colored lamps by which Dodo
habitually saw. And Celia the matron naturally felt more able to advise her childless sister.
How could any one understand Dodo so well as Celia did or love her so tenderly?
Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure at the sight of her sister so soon
after the revelation of her intended marriage. She had prefigured to herself, even with
exaggeration, the disgust of her friends, and she had even feared that Celia might be kept
aloof from her.
"O Kitty, I am delighted to see you!" said Dorothea, putting her hands on Celia's
shoulders, and beaming on her. "I almost thought you would not come to me."
"I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry," said Celia, and they sat down on
two small chairs opposite each other, with their knees touching.
"You know, Dodo, it is very bad," said Celia, in her placid guttural, looking as prettily
free from humors as possible. "You have disappointed us all so. And I can't think that it ever
WILL be – you never can go and live in that way. And then there are all your plans! You
never can have thought of that. James would have taken any trouble for you, and you might
have gone on all your life doing what you liked."
"On the contrary, dear," said Dorothea, "I never could do anything that I liked. I have
never carried out any plan yet."
"Because you always wanted things that wouldn't do. But other plans would have come.
And how can you marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of us ever thought you COULD marry?
It shocks James so dreadfully. And then it is all so different from what you have always
been. You would have Mr. Casaubon because he had such a great soul, and was so and
dismal and learned; and now, to think of marrying Mr. Ladislaw, who has got no estate or
anything. I suppose it is because you must be making yourself uncomfortable in some way
or other."
Dorothea laughed.
"Well, it is very serious, Dodo," said Celia, becoming more impressive. "How will you
live? and you will go away among queer people. And I shall never see you – and you won't
mind about little Arthur – and I thought you always would – "
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CHAPTER LXXXIV. 668
Celia's rare tears had got into her eyes, and the corners of her mouth were agitated.
"Dear Celia," said Dorothea, with tender gravity, "if you don't ever see me, it will not be
my fault."
"Yes, it will," said Celia, with the same touching distortion of her small features. "How
can I come to you or have you with me when James can't bear it? – that is because he thinks
it is not right – he thinks you are so wrong, Dodo. But you always were wrong: only I can't
help loving you. And nobody can think where you will live: where can you go?"
"I am going to London," said Dorothea.
"How can you always live in a street? And you will be so poor. I could give you half my
things, only how can I, when I never see you?"
"Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth. "Take comfort: perhaps James
will forgive me some time."
"But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia, drying her eyes,
and returning to her argument; "then there would be nothing uncomfortable. And you would
not do what nobody thought you could do. James always said you ought to be a queen; but
this is not at all being like a queen. You know what mistakes you have always been making,
Dodo, and this is another. Nobody thinks Mr. Ladislaw a proper husband for you. And you
SAID YOU would never be married again."
"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said Dorothea, "and that I might
have done something better, if I had been better. But this is what I am going to do. I have
promised to marry Mr. Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him."
The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long learned to
recognize. She was silent a few moments, and then said, as if she had dismissed all contest,
"Is he very fond of you, Dodo?"
"I hope so. I am very fond of him."
"That is nice," said Celia, comfortably. "Only I rather you had such a sort of husband as
James is, with a place very near, that I could drive to."
Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative. Presently she said, "I cannot think
how it all came about." Celia thought it would be pleasant to hear the story.
"I dare say not," said−Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin. "If you knew how it came
about, it would not seem wonderful to you."
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CHAPTER LXXXIV. 669
"Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily.
"No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXXIV. 670
CHAPTER LIXXV.
"T
hen went the jury out whose names were Mr. Blindman, Mr. No−good, Mr. Malice,
Mr. Love−lust, Mr. Live−loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High−mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr.
Cruelty, Mr. Hate−light, Mr. Implacable, who every one gave in his private verdict against
him among themselves, and afterwards unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before
the judge. And first among themselves, Mr. Blindman, the foreman, said, I see clearly that
this man is a heretic. Then said Mr. No−good, Away with such a fellow from the earth! Ay,
said Mr. Malice, for I hate the very look of him. Then said Mr. Love−lust, I could never
endure him. Nor I, said Mr. Live−loose; for he would be always condemning my way. Hang
him, hang him, said Mr. Heady. A sorry scrub, said Mr. High−mind. My heart riseth against
him, said Mr. Enmity. He is a rogue, said Mr. Liar. Hanging is too good for him, said Mr.
Cruelty. Let us despatch him out of the way said Mr. Hate−light. Then said Mr. Implacable,
Might I have all the world given me, I could not be reconciled to him; therefore let us
forthwith bring him in guilty of death." – Pilgrim's Progress.
When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions bringing in their
verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful? That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men
have not attained, to know ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd – to be sure that
what we are denounced for is solely the good in us. The pitiable lot is that of the man who
could not call himself a martyr even though he were to persuade himself that the men who
stoned him were but ugly passions incarnate – who knows that he is stoned, not for
professing the Right, but for not being the man he professed to be.
This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he made his
preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end his stricken life in that sad
refuge, the indifference of new faces. The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had
delivered him from one dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a tribunal
before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy. His equivocations with
himself about the death of Raffles had sustained the conception of an Omniscience whom he
prayed to, yet he had a terror upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by
a full confession to his wife: the acts which he had washed and diluted with inward
argument and motive, and for which it seemed comparatively easy to win invisible pardon –
what name would she call them by? That she should ever silently call his acts Murder was
what he could not bear. He felt shrouded by her doubt: he got strength to face her from the
sense that she could not yet feel warranted in pronouncing that worst condemnation on him.
Some time, perhaps – when he was dying – he would tell her all: in the deep shadow of that
time, when she held his hand in the gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling
from his touch. Perhaps: but concealment had been the habit of his life, and the impulse to
confession had no power against the dread of a deeper humiliation.
He was full of timid care for his wife, not only because he deprecated any harshness of
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CHAPTER LIXXV. 671
judgment from her, but because he felt a deep distress at the sight of her suffering. She had
sent her daughters away to board at a school on the coast, that this crisis might be hidden
from them as far as possible. Set free by their absence from the intolerable necessity of
accounting for her grief or of beholding their frightened wonder, she could live
unconstrainedly with the sorrow that was every day streaking her hair with whiteness and
making her eyelids languid.
"Tell me anything that you would like to have me do, Harriet," Bulstrode had said to
her; "I mean with regard to arrangements of property. It is my intention not to sell the land I
possess in this neighborhood, but to leave it to you as a safe provision. If you have any wish
on such subjects, do not conceal it from me."
A few days afterwards, when she had returned from a visit to her brother's, she began to
speak to her husband on a subject which had for some time been in her mind.
"I SHOULD like to do something for my brother's family, Nicholas; and I think we are
bound to make some amends to Rosamond and her husband. Walter says Mr. Lydgate must
leave the town, and his practice is almost good for nothing, and they have very little left to
settle anywhere with. I would rather do without something for ourselves, to make some
amends to my poor brother's family."
Mrs. Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the facts than in the phrase "make some
amends;" knowing that her husband must understand her. He had a particular reason, which
she was not aware of, for wincing under her suggestion. He hesitated before he said –
"It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way you propose, my dear. Mr. Lydgate
has virtually rejected any further service from me. He has returned the thousand pounds
which I lent him. Mrs. Casaubon advanced him the sum for that purpose. Here is his letter."
The letter seemed to cut Mrs. Bulstrode severely. The mention of Mrs. Casaubon's loan
seemed a reflection of that public feeling which held it a matter of course that every one
would avoid a connection with her husband. She was silent for some time; and the tears fell
one after the other, her chin trembling as she wiped them away. Bulstrode, sitting opposite
to her, ached at the sight of that grief−worn face, which two months before had been bright
and blooming. It had aged to keep sad company with his own withered features. Urged into
some effort at comforting her, he said –
"There is another means, Harriet, by which I might do a service to your brother's family,
if you like to act in it. And it would, I think, be beneficial to you: it would be an
advantageous way of managing the land which I mean to be yours."
She looked attentive.
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LIXXV. 672
"Garth once thought of undertaking the management of Stone Court in order to place
your nephew Fred there. The stock was to remain as it is, and they were to pay a certain
share of the profits instead of an ordinary rent. That would be a desirable beginning for the
young man, in conjunction with his employment under Garth. Would it be a satisfaction to
you?"
"Yes, it would," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with some return of energy. "Poor Walter is so
cast down; I would try anything in my power to do him some good before I go away. We
have always been brother and sister."
"You must make the proposal to Garth yourself, Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, not liking
what he had to say, but desiring the end he had in view, for other reasons besides the
consolation of his wife. "You must state to him that the land is virtually yours, and that he
need have no transactions with me. Communications can be made through Standish. I
mention this, because Garth gave up being my agent. I can put into your hands a paper
which he himself drew up, stating conditions; and you can propose his renewed acceptance
of them. I think it is not unlikely that he will accept when you propose the thing for the sake
of your nephew."
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LIXXV. 673
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
"L
e coeur se sature d'amour comme d'un sel divin qui le conserve; de la l'incorruptible
adherence de ceux qui se sont aimes des l'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles amours
prolonges. Il existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est de Daphnis et Chloe que sont faits
Philemon et Baucis. Cette vieillesse la, ressemblance du soir avec l'aurore."
– VICTOR HUGO: L'homme qui rit.
Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about tea−time, opened the parlor−door and
said, "There you are, Caleb. Have you had your dinner?" (Mr. Garth's meals were much
subordinated to "business.")
"Oh yes, a good dinner – cold mutton and I don't know what. Where is Mary?"
"In the garden with Letty, I think."
"Fred is not come yet?"
"No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?" said Mrs. Garth, seeing that
her absent−minded husband was putting on again the hat which he had just taken off.
"No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute."
Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing loftily hung
between two pear−trees. She had a pink kerchief tied over her head, making a little poke to
shade her eyes from the level sunbeams, while she was giving a glorious swing to Letty,
who laughed and screamed wildly.
Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him, pushing back the pink
kerchief and smiling afar off at him with the involuntary smile of loving pleasure.
"I came to look for you, Mary," said Mr. Garth. "Let us−walk about a bit." Mary knew
quite well that her father had something particular to say: his eyebrows made their pathetic
angle, and there was a tender gravity in his voice: these things had been signs to her when
she was Letty's age. She put her arm within his, and they turned by the row of nut−trees.
"It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary," said her father, not looking at
her, but at the end of the stick which he held in his other hand.
"Not a sad while, father – I mean to be merry," said Mary, laughingly. "I have been
single and merry for four−and−twenty years and more: I suppose it will not be quite as long
again as that." Then, after a little pause, she said, more gravely, bending her face before her
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXXVI. 674
father's, "If you are contented with Fred?"
Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head aside wisely.
"Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday. You said he had an uncommon
notion of stock, and a good eye for things."
"Did I?" said Caleb, rather slyly.
"Yes, I put it all down, and the date, anno Domini, and everything," said Mary. "You
like things to be neatly booked. And then his behavior to you, father, is really good; he has a
deep respect for you; and it is impossible to have a better temper than Fred has."
"Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match."
"No, indeed, father. I don't love him because he is a fine match."
"What for, then?"
"Oh, dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like scolding any one else
so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband."
"Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?" said Caleb, returning to his first tone. "There's
no other wish come into it since things have been going on as they have been of late?"
(Caleb meant a great deal in that vague phrase;) "because, better late than never. A woman
must not force her heart – she'll do a man no good by that."
"My feelings have not changed, father," said Mary, calmly. "I shall be constant to Fred
as long as he is constant to me. I don't think either of us could spare the other, or like any
one else better, however much we might admire them. It would make too great a difference
to us – like seeing all the old places altered, and changing the name for everything. We must
wait for each other a long while; but Fred knows that."
Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood still and screwed his stick on the grassy
walk. Then he said, with emotion in his voice, "Well, I've got a bit of news. What do you
think of Fred going to live at Stone Court, and managing the land there?"
"How can that ever be, father?" said Mary, wonderingly.
"He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode. The poor woman has been to me begging
and praying. She wants to do the lad good, and it might be a fine thing for him. With saving,
he might gradually buy the stock, and he has a turn for farming."
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CHAPTER LXXXVI. 675
"Oh, Fred would be so happy! It is too good to believe."
"Ah, but mind you," said Caleb, turning his head warningly, "I must take it on MY
shoulders, and be responsible, and see after everything; and that will grieve your mother a
bit, though she mayn't say so. Fred had need be careful."
"Perhaps it is too much, father," said Mary, checked in her joy. "There would be no
happiness in bringing you any fresh trouble."
"Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it doesn't vex your mother. And then, if you
and Fred get married," here Caleb's voice shook just perceptibly, "he'll be steady and saving;
and you've got your mother's cleverness, and mine too, in a woman's sort of way; and you'll
keep him in order. He'll be coming by−and−by, so I wanted to tell you first, because I think
you'd like to tell HIM by yourselves. After that, I could talk it well over with him, and we
could go into business and the nature of things."
"Oh, you dear good father!" cried Mary, putting her hands round her father's neck, while
he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed. "I wonder if any other girl thinks her father
the best man in the world!"
"Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better."
"Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; "husbands are an inferior class
of men, who require keeping in order."
When they were entering the house with Letty, who had run to join them, Mary saw
Fred at the orchard−gate, and went to meet him.
"What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant youth!" said Mary, as Fred stood still and
raised his hat to her with playful formality. "You are not learning economy."
"Now that is too bad, Mary," said Fred. "Just look at the edges of these coat−cuffs! It is
only by dint of good brushing that I look respectable. I am saving up three suits – one for a
wedding−suit."
"How very droll you will look! – like a gentleman in an old fashion−book."
"Oh no, they will keep two years."
"Two years! be reasonable, Fred," said Mary, turning to walk. "Don't encourage
flattering expectations."
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXXVI. 676
"Why not? One lives on them better than on unflattering ones. If we can't be married in
two years, the truth will be quite bad enough when it comes."
"I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged flattering
expectations, and they did him harm."
"Mary, if you've got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt; I shall go into the
house to Mr. Garth. I am out of spirits. My father is so cut up – home is not like itself. I can't
bear any more bad news."
"Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live at Stone Court, and manage
the farm, and be remarkably prudent, and save money every year till all the stock and
furniture were your own, and you were a distinguished agricultural character, as Mr.
Borthrop Trumbull says – rather stout, I fear, and with the Greek and Latin sadly
weather−worn?"
"You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?" said Fred, coloring slightly
nevertheless.
"That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen, and he never talks
nonsense," said Mary, looking up at Fred now, while he grasped her hand as they walked,
till it rather hurt her; but she would not complain.
"Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could be married
directly."
"Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer our marriage for some
years? That would leave you time to misbehave, and then if I liked some one else better, I
should have an excuse for jilting you."
"Pray don't joke, Mary," said Fred, with strong feeling. "Tell me seriously that all this is
true, and that you are happy because of it – because you love me best."
"It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it – because I love you best," said Mary,
in a tone of obedient recitation.
They lingered on the door−step under the steep−roofed porch, and Fred almost in a
whisper said –
"When we were first engaged, with the umbrella−ring, Mary, you used to – "
The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary's eyes, but the fatal Ben came
running to the door with Brownie yapping behind him, and, bouncing against them, said –
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXXVI. 677
"Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in? – or may I eat your cake?"
Middlemarch
CHAPTER LXXXVI. 678
FINALE.
E
very limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being
long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after−years?
For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may
not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find
their long−waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.
Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as
it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one
among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic –
the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing
years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.
Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm
and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world.
All who have oared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that these two
made no such failure, but achieved a solid mutual happiness. Fred surprised his neighbors in
various ways. He became rather distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic and
practical farmer, and produced a work on the "Cultivation of Green Crops and the Economy
of Cattle−Feeding" which won him high congratulations at agricultural meetings. In
Middlemarch admiration was more reserved: most persons there were inclined to believe
that the merit of Fred's authorship was due to his wife, since they had never expected Fred
Vincy to write on turnips and mangel−wurzel.
But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories of Great Men, taken
from Plutarch," and had it printed and published by Gripp Co., Middlemarch, every one in
the town was willing to give the credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been to
the University, "where the ancients were studied," and might have been a clergyman if he
had chosen.
In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived, and that there
was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since it was always done by somebody
else.
Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady. Some years after his marriage he told
Mary that his happiness was half owing to Farebrother, who gave him a strong pull−up at
the right moment. I cannot say that he was never again misled by his hopefulness: the yield
of crops or the profits of a cattle sale usually fell below his estimate; and he was always
prone to believe that he could make money by the purchase of a horse which turned out
badly – though this, Mary observed, was of course the fault of the horse, not of Fred's
Middlemarch
FINALE. 679
judgment. He kept his love of horsemanship, but he rarely allowed himself a day's hunting;
and when he did so, it was remarkable that he submitted to be laughed at for cowardliness at
the fences, seeming to see Mary and the boys sitting on the five−barred gate, or showing
their curly heads between hedge and ditch.
There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought forth men−children
only; and when Fred wished to have a girl like her, she said, laughingly, "that would be too
great a trial to your mother." Mrs. Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished lustre
of her housekeeping, was much comforted by her perception that two at least of Fred's boys
were real Vincys, and did not "feature the Garths." But Mary secretly rejoiced that the
youngest of the three was very much what her father must have been when he wore a round
jacket, and showed a marvellous nicety of aim in playing at marbles, or in throwing stones
to bring down the mellow pears.
Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well in their teens,
disputed much as to whether nephews or nieces were more desirable; Ben contending that it
was clear girls were good for less than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats,
which showed how little they were meant for; whereupon Letty, who argued much from
books, got angry in replying that God made coats of skins for both Adam and Eve alike –
also it occurred to her that in the East the men too wore petticoats. But this latter argument,
obscuring the majesty of the former, was one too many, for Ben answered contemptuously,
"The more spooneys they!" and immediately appealed to his mother whether boys were not
better than girls. Mrs. Garth pronounced that both were alike naughty, but that boys were
undoubtedly stronger, could run faster, and throw with more precision to a greater distance.
With this oracular sentence Ben was well satisfied, not minding the naughtiness; but Letty
took it ill, her feeling of superiority being stronger than her muscles.
Fred never became rich – his hopefulness had not led him to expect that; but he
gradually saved enough to become owner of the stock and furniture at Stone Court, and the
work which Mr. Garth put into his hands carried him in plenty through those "bad times"
which are always present with farmers. Mary, in her matronly days, became as solid in
figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little formal teaching, so that Mrs. Garth
was alarmed lest they should never be well grounded in grammar and geography.
Nevertheless, they were found quite forward enough when they went to school; perhaps,
because they had liked nothing so well as being with their mother. When Fred was riding
home on winter evenings he had a pleasant vision beforehand of the bright hearth in the
wainscoted parlor, and was sorry for other men who could not have Mary for their wife;
especially for Mr. Farebrother. "He was ten times worthier of you than I was," Fred could
now say to her, magnanimously. "To be sure he was," Mary answered; "and for that reason
he could do better without me. But you – I shudder to think what you would have been – a
curate in debt for horse−hire and cambric pocket−handkerchiefs!"
Middlemarch
FINALE. 680
On inquiry it might possibly be found that Fred and Mary still inhabit Stone Court – that
the creeping plants still cast the foam of their blossoms over the fine stone−wall into the
field where the walnut−trees stand in stately row – and that on sunny days the two lovers
who were first engaged with the umbrella−ring may be seen in white−haired placidity at the
open window from which Mary Garth, in the days of old Peter Featherstone, had often been
ordered to look out for Mr. Lydgate.
Lydgate's hair never became white. He died when he was only fifty, leaving his wife
and children provided for by a heavy insurance on his life. He had gained an excellent
practice, alternating, according to the season, between London and a Continental
bathing−place; having written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal of wealth
on its side. His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he always regarded himself
as a failure: he had not done what he once meant to do. His acquaintances thought him
enviable to have so charming a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion.
Rosamond never committed a second compromising indiscretion. She simply continued to
be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment, disposed to admonish her husband, and
able to frustrate him by stratagem. As the years went on he opposed her less and less,
whence Rosamond concluded that he had learned the value of her opinion; on the other
hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents now that he gained a good income,
and instead of the threatened cage in Bride Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit
for the bird of paradise that she resembled. In brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful
man. But he died prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond afterwards married an elderly
and wealthy physician, who took kindly to her four children. She made a very pretty show
with her daughters, driving out in her carriage, and often spoke of her happiness as "a
reward" – she did not say for what, but probably she meant that it was a reward for her
patience with Tertius, whose temper never became faultless, and to the last occasionally let
slip a bitter speech which was more memorable than the signs he made of his repentance. He
once called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a
plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains. Rosamond had a placid
but strong answer to such speeches. Why then had he chosen her? It was a pity he had not
had Mrs. Ladislaw, whom he was always praising and placing above her. And thus the
conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's side. But it would be unjust not to
tell, that she never uttered a word in depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious
remembrance the generosity which had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of her life.
Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women, feeling that there
was always something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and
known better. Still, she never repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry
Will Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well as sorrow to him if she
had repented. They were bound to each other by a love stronger than any impulses which
could have marred it. No life would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled
with emotion, and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she had not
the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself. Will became an ardent public
Middlemarch
FINALE. 681
man, working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of
immediate good which has been much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to
Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses. Dorothea could have liked nothing
better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick of a struggle
against them, and that she should give him wifely help. Many who knew her, thought it a
pity that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of
another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated
exactly what else that was in her power she ought rather to have done – not even Sir James
Chettam, who went no further than the negative prescription that she ought not to have
married Will Ladislaw.
But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the way in which the
family was made whole again was characteristic of all concerned. Mr. Brooke could not
resist the pleasure of corresponding with Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen
had been remarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal Reform, it ran off into an
invitation to the Grange, which, once written, could not be done away with at less cost than
the sacrifice (hardly to be conceived) of the whole valuable letter. During the months of this
correspondence Mr. Brooke had continually, in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been
presupposing or hinting that the intention of cutting off the entail was still maintained; and
the day on which his pen gave the daring invitation, he went to Freshitt expressly to intimate
that he had a stronger sense than ever of the reasons for taking that energetic step as a
precaution against any mixture of low blood in the heir of the Brookes.
But that morning something exciting had happened at the Hall. A letter had come to
Celia which made her cry silently as she read it; and when Sir James, unused to see her in
tears, asked anxiously what was the matter, she burst out in a wail such as he had never
heard from her before.
"Dorothea has a little boy. And you will not let me go and see her. And I am sure she
wants to see me. And she will not know what to do with the baby – she will do wrong things
with it. And they thought she would die. It is very dreadful! Suppose it had been me and
little Arthur, and Dodo had been hindered from coming to see me! I wish you would be less
unkind, James!"
"Good heavens, Celia!" said Sir James, much wrought upon, "what do you wish? I will
do anything you like. I will take you to town to−morrow if you wish it." And Celia did wish
it.
It was after this that Mr. Brooke came, and meeting the Baronet in the grounds, began to
chat with him in ignorance of the news, which Sir James for some reason did not care to tell
him immediately. But when the entail was touched on in the usual way, he said, "My dear
sir, it is not for me to dictate to you, but for my part I would let that alone. I would let things
remain as they are."
Middlemarch
FINALE. 682
Mr. Brooke felt so much surprised that he did not at once find out how much he was
relieved by the sense that he was not expected to do anything in particular.
Such being the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James should consent to a
reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband. Where women love each other, men learn to
smother their mutual dislike. Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to
have Sir James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing of reciprocal
tolerance which was made quite easy only when Dorothea and Celia were present.
It became an understood thing that Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaw should pay at least two visits
during the year to the Grange, and there came gradually a small row of cousins at Freshitt
who enjoyed playing with the two cousins Visiting Tipton as much as if the blood of these
cousins had been less dubiously mixed.
Mr. Brooke lived to a good old age, and his estate was inherited by Dorothea's son, who
might have represented Middlemarch, but declined, thinking that his opinions had less
chance of being stifled if he remained out of doors.
Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a mistake; and indeed
this remained the tradition concerning it in Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a
younger generation as a fine girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her
father, and in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry his cousin –
young enough to have been his son, with no property, and not well−born. Those who had not
seen anything of Dorothea usually observed that she could not have been "a nice woman,"
else she would not have married either the one or the other.
Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the
mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect
social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the
aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not
greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity
of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in
daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took
shape is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are
preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice
than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible.
Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels
which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was
incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric
acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to
the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Middlemarch
FINALE. 683
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHAPTER XX.
CHAPTER XXI.
CHAPTER XXII.
BOOK III. − WAITING FOR DEATH.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CHAPTER XXV.
CHAPTER XXVI.
CHAPTER XXVII.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHAPTER XXX.
CHAPTER XXXI.
CHAPTER XXXII.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
BOOK IV.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
CHAPTER XXXV.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Middlemarch
Table Of Content 685
CHAPTER LVIII.
CHAPTER LIX.
CHAPTER LX.
CHAPTER LXI.
CHAPTER LXII.
BOOK VII.
CHAPTER LXIII.
CHAPTER LXIV.
CHAPTER LXV.
CHAPTER LXVI.
CHAPTER LXVII.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
CHAPTER LXIX.
CHAPTER LXX.
CHAPTER LXXI.
BOOK VIII. − SUNSET AND SUNRISE.
CHAPTER LXXII.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
CHAPTER LXXV.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
Middlemarch
Table Of Content 687
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