Middlemarch

PRELUDE.

Who 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.

BOOK I.
MISS BROOKE.

CHAPTER I.

Since 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 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 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.

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.”

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.”

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.

“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?

CHAPTER II.

“‘Dime; 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 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 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.”

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.”

“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 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 gum 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!

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.

CHAPTER III.

“Say, 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 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?

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 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 make 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—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.”

“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 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.

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.

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.

CHAPTER IV.

1st 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 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.

“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.

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.

“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.

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.”

“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.

CHAPTER V.

“Hard 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 Aquinas’ 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) 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.

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
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 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 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
tête-à-tête 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.

“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.

CHAPTER VI.

My 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
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 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 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.”

“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 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.

“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 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 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 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.

CHAPTER VII.

“Piacer 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 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 Greek. 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 satisfied with having a wise husband: she wished, poor child,
to be wise herself. Miss Brooke was certainly very naive with all 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 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.

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.

CHAPTER VIII.

“Oh, 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 faces.

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 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. You don’t understand 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?”

“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 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 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 design 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. Perhaps 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 succeeding 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.

CHAPTER IX.

1st 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 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 casts 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.

“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 opening 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.”

“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 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.”

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 eyes 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—

“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, 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.’”

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.

CHAPTER X.

“He 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 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 to 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 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,
Dorothea, for I shall be constrained to 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
herself; 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.

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 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 carry 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.”

“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.”

“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 are?” 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 air. “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.”

“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 back 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 mind 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.

CHAPTER XI.

But 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 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 blondness 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 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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. 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 towards 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 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.”

“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.

CHAPTER XII.

He 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.

“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, muffled, 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.”

“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.”

“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 sitting in the 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 tête-à-tête 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 do 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, 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
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 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 repulsiveness 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.”

“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.”

“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 goûts, 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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,
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 Middlemarch, 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.

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.

BOOK II.
OLD AND YOUNG.

CHAPTER XIII.

1st 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 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 withstood. 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 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 medical
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 medical 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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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 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 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.”

CHAPTER XIV.

“Follows 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.”

“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? I 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. 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.

“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?”

“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.”

“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 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.”

“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 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.

CHAPTER XV.

“Black 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-namèd 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, 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 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 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
came 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 Physicians, 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 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 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 all 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
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 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 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.

No one in Middlemarch 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.

CHAPTER XVI.

“All 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 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.”

“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 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 tête-à-tête, 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—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.”

“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 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 cast 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 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 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 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 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, 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.

CHAPTER XVII.

“The 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, upright, 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!

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 who 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, 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 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 that comes from an uneasy
consciousness seeking to forestall the judgment of others, but simply the
relief of a desire to 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 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.”

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.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

“Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth
Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,
Breathing bad air, run 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. Farebrother 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.”

“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 unlike them in
this—that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge
impartially of their conduct even when it told against him.

“The world has been too 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.

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 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.

“Schön, schön. 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.”

“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 being 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!”

“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.

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 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 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 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 will 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 cognoscenti.”

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.

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 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.

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?

“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 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.

CHAPTER XXI.

“Hire 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.”

“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 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 one 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.”

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.”

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.

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 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.

CHAPTER XXII.

“Nous câusames longtemps; elle était simple et bonne.
Ne sachant pas le mal, elle faisait le bien;
Des richesses du coeur elle me fit l’aumône,
Et tout en écoutant 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.

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
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 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!”

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.

“Schön! 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.”

“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, which 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 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 cases.

“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.”

“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.

“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.”

“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 dull, 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.

“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 course 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.

“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.

BOOK III.
WAITING FOR DEATH.

CHAPTER XXIII.

“Your 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 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; 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, 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 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 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 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?”

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 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.

CHAPTER XXIV.

“The 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 have 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 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 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 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.

“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 cat.

“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.

“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—

“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.

“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.”