book3.xml

<first><A NAME="chap23"></A>
<H2 ALIGN="center">
BOOK III.
</H2>

<BR/>

<H2 ALIGN="center">
WAITING FOR DEATH.
</H2>

<BR/><BR/>

<H3 ALIGN="center">
CHAPTER XXIII.
</H3>

<epigraph>
          <said>Your horses of the Sun,</said> he said,
          <said>And first-rate whip Apollo!
          Whate'er they be, I'll eat my head,
          But I will beat them hollow.</said>
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
<first> 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. </first> The creditor
was Mr. Bambridge, a horse-dealer of the neighborhood, whose company was
much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood to be <said>addicted to
pleasure.</said>  <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> 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.  <second> You will hardly demand
that his confidence should have a basis in external facts;</second> <first> 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. </first> <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> Fred felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle,
that he should have a run of luck, that by dint of <said>swapping</said> 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? </said> 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. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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.</said>
</P>

<P>
<first> 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. </first> <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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 <said>duck
under</said> 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. </said>
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.
</P>

<P>
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. <said who="#MrsV" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> 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 <said>lived in such a small
way.</said>  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.
</P>

<P>
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 <said who="#MrG">sure the lad would turn out well—an open
affectionate fellow, with a good bottom to his character—you might
trust him for anything.</said> 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. <first> I fear he was a bad
disciplinarian. </first>
</P>

<P>
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.  <second> 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,— </second>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">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.</said>
</P>

<P>
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
<said who="#F">Good-by,</said> and returned forthwith to his absorption in a plan for Sir
James Chettam's new farm-buildings.
</P>

<P>
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.
</P>

<P>
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. <said who="#MrF" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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 <said who="#F">go on with that.</said> </said>
<first> 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. </first> <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> 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
<said>judgment</said> 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. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> It was
under strong inward pressure of this kind that Fred had taken the wise
step of depositing the eighty pounds with his mother. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said>
</P>

<P>
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. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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 <said>the vet,</said> and without asking them
anything expressly, he should virtually get the benefit of their
opinion. </said> Before he set out, Fred got the eighty pounds from his mother.
</P>

<P>
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 <said>pleasure</said> 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 <said>gay.</said>
</P>

<P>
In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent unfathomableness which
offered play to the imagination. <second> 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 <emph>the</emph> thing and no other. </second> 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.
</P>

<P>
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.
</P>

<P>
The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective.
<said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said>
</P>

<P>
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. <second> But his range of conversation was limited, and like the fine
old tune, <said> Drops of brandy,</said> gave you after a while a sense of
returning upon itself in a way that might make weak heads dizzy. </second> 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. <second> 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. </second>
In short, Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.
</P>

<P>
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. <second> 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. </second>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Bambridge">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.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Why, you said just now his was worse than mine,</said> said Fred, more
irritable than usual.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Bambridge">I said a lie, then,</said> said Mr. Bambridge, emphatically.  <said who="#Bambridge">There wasn't
a penny to choose between 'em.</said>
</P>

<P>
Fred spurred his horse, and they trotted on a little way.  When they
slackened again, Mr. Bambridge said—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Bambridge">Not but what the roan was a better trotter than yours.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">I'm quite satisfied with his paces, I know,</said> said Fred, who required
all the consciousness of being in gay company to support him; <said who="#F">I say
his trot is an uncommonly clean one, eh, Horrock?</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Horrock looked before him with as complete a neutrality as if he
had been a portrait by a great master.
</P>

<P>
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.
</P>

<P>
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.
<second> 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. </second> <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. <second> 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. </second> </FID who="#F">
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.
<said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> 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. <first> With regard to horses, distrust
was your only clew. </first> <first> 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. </first> 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.
</P>

<P>
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.
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="24"><head>CHAPTER XXIV.</head>

<epigraph>
          <said>The offender's sorrow brings but small relief
          To him who wears the strong offence's cross.</said>
                                        —SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
<first> 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. </first> 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. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> 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.  <said>The theatre of all my actions is fallen,</said> 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.
</P>

<P>
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. <first> We get the fonder
of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends
have. </first> 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; <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> 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 <said>your fine
Mrs. Garth.</said> <said who="#MrsV" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> 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
<said>without looking,</said>—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 <said> education</said> and other good
things ending in <said>tion,</said> 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.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> 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.
</P>

<P>
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 <said>nouns of multitude or
signifying many,</said> 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. <first> In her snowy-frilled cap she reminded
one of that delightful Frenchwoman whom we have all seen marketing,
basket on arm. <first> <second> 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." <second>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Now let us go through that once more,</said> 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.  <said who="#MrsG">Not without regard to
the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea'—tell
me again what that means, Ben.</said>
</P>

<P>
(Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient
paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold her
<said>Lindley Murray</said> above the waves.)
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Oh—it means—you must think what you mean,</said> said Ben, rather
peevishly.  <said who="#Ben">I hate grammar.  What's the use of it?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be
understood,</said> said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision.  <said who="#MrsG">Should you like
to speak as old Job does?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Yes,</said> said Ben, stoutly; <said who="#Ben">it's funnier.  He says, 'Yo goo'—that's
just as good as 'You go.'</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Letty">But he says, 'A ship's in the garden,' instead of 'a sheep,'</said> said
Letty, with an air of superiority.  <said who="#Letty">You might think he meant a ship
off the sea.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">No, you mightn't, if you weren't silly,</said> said Ben.  <said who="#Ben">How could a ship
off the sea come there?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of
grammar,</said> said Mrs. Garth.  <said who="#MrsG">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?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">I shouldn't care, I should leave off,</said> said Ben, with a sense that
this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben,</said> said Mrs. Garth,
accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring.
Having finished her pies, she moved towards the clothes-horse, and
said, <said who="#MrsG">Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday, about
Cincinnatus.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben"> I know! he was a farmer,</said> said Ben.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Letty">Now, Ben, he was a Roman—let <I>me</emph> tell,</said> said Letty, using her elbow
contentiously.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Letty">Yes, but before that—that didn't come first—people wanted him,</said> said
Letty.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first,</said> insisted Ben.
<said who="#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?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Letty">Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,</said>
said Letty, frowning.  <said who="#Letty">Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Letty, I am ashamed of you,</said> said her mother, wringing out the caps
from the tub.  <said who="#MrsG">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.</said>  <said who="#Letty" direct="false" aloud="false"> (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.) </said> <said who="#MrsG">Now,
Ben.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#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—</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lenny"> <said who="#Lenny" direct="false" aloud="false">Dictator, now,</said> said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish
to make her mother repent. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Very well, dictator!</said> said Ben, contemptuously.  <said who="#Ben">But that isn't a
good word: he didn't tell them to write on slates.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that,</said> said Mrs. Garth,
carefully serious.  <said who="#MrsG">Hark, there is a knock at the door!  Run, Letty,
and open it.</said>
</P>

<P>
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.
<said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. </said> He put his arm
round Letty's neck silently, and led her into the kitchen without his
usual jokes and caresses.
</P>

<P>
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—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">You, Fred, so early in the day?  You look quite pale.  Has anything
happened?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">I want to speak to Mr. Garth,</said> said Fred, not yet ready to say
more—<said who="#F"> and to you also,</said> 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.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Caleb will be in again in a few minutes,</said> said Mrs. Garth, who
imagined some trouble between Fred and his father.  <said who="#MrsG">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?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">But we needn't go on about Cincinnatus, need we?</said> said Ben, who had
taken Fred's whip out of his hand, and was trying its efficiency on the
cat.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">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.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Come, old boy, give it me,</said> said Fred, putting out his hand.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Will you let me ride on your horse to-day?</said> said Ben, rendering up the
whip, with an air of not being obliged to do it.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Not to-day—another time.  I am not riding my own horse.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Shall you see Mary to-day?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Yes, I think so,</said> said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Enough, enough, Ben! run away,</said> said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred was
teased.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?</said> 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.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">One—only one.  Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven.  I am not
getting a great income now,</said> said Mrs. Garth, smiling.  <said who="#MrsG">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.</said>
</P>

<P>
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.  <said who="#MrsG" >Young
gentlemen who go to college are rather more costly than that,</said> Mrs.
Garth innocently continued, pulling out the edging on a cap-border.
<said who="#MrsG">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?</said>
</P>

<P>
When they entered the parlor Caleb had thrown down his hat and was
seated at his desk.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">What!  Fred, my boy!</said> he said, in a tone of mild surprise, holding his
pen still undipped; <said who="#MrG">you are here betimes.</said>  But missing the usual
expression of cheerful greeting in Fred's face, he immediately added,
<said who="#MrG">Is there anything up at home?—anything the matter?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">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.</said>
</P>

<P>
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—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">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.</said>
</P>

<P>
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—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money and he
has refused you.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">No,</said> said Fred, biting his lip, and speaking with more difficulty;
<said who="#F">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.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">It has come at an unfortunate time,</said> said Caleb, in his hesitating
way, looking down at the notes and nervously fingering the paper,
<said who="#MrG">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!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">I must give you the ninety-two pounds that I have put by for Alfred's
premium,</said> said Mrs. Garth, gravely and decisively, though a nice ear
might have discerned a slight tremor in some of the words.  <said who="#MrsG">And I have
no doubt that Mary has twenty pounds saved from her salary by this
time.  She will advance it.</said>
</P>

<P>
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. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> 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. <first> 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. <first> But
at this moment he suddenly saw himself as a pitiful rascal who was
robbing two women of their savings. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth—ultimately,</said> he stammered
out.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Yes, ultimately,</said> said Mrs. Garth, who having a special dislike to
fine words on ugly occasions, could not now repress an epigram.  <said who="#MrsG">But
boys cannot well be apprenticed ultimately: they should be apprenticed
at fifteen.</said>  She had never been so little inclined to make excuses for
Fred.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG"> I was the most in the wrong, Susan,</said> said Caleb.  <said who="#MrG">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?</said> he
added, fixing his merciful gray eyes on Fred.  Caleb was too delicate
to specify Mr. Featherstone.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">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.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> Fred turned round and hurried out of the room, conscious that he was
getting rather womanish, and feeling confusedly that his being sorry
was not of much use to the Garths. </said>  They could see him mount, and
quickly pass through the gate.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">I am disappointed in Fred Vincy,</said> said Mrs. Garth.  <said who="#MrsG">I would not have
believed beforehand that he would have drawn you into his debts.  I
knew he was extravagant, but I did not think that he would be so mean
as to hang his risks on his oldest friend, who could the least afford
to lose.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">I was a fool, Susan.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">That you were,</said> said the wife, nodding and smiling.  <said who="#MrsG">But I should not
have gone to publish it in the market-place. Why should you keep such
things from me?  It is just so with your buttons: you let them burst
off without telling me, and go out with your wristband hanging.  If I
had only known I might have been ready with some better plan.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan,</said> said Caleb, looking feelingly at
her.  <said who="#MrG">I can't abide your losing the money you've scraped together for
Alfred.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">It is very well that I <I>had</emph> scraped it together; and it is you who
will have to suffer, for you must teach the boy yourself.  You must
give up your bad habits.  Some men take to drinking, and you have taken
to working without pay.  You must indulge yourself a little less in
that.  And you must ride over to Mary, and ask the child what money she
has.</said>
</P>

<P>
Caleb had pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his
head slowly, and fitting his finger-tips together with much nicety.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Poor Mary!</said> he said.  <said who="#MrG">Susan,</said> he went on in a lowered tone, <said>I'm
afraid she may be fond of Fred.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Oh no!  She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think of her
in any other than a brotherly way.</said>
</P>

<P>
Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up
his chair to the desk, and said, <said who="#MrG">Deuce take the bill—I wish it was
at Hanover!  These things are a sad interruption to business!</said>
</P>

<P>
The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory
expression, and was uttered with a slight snarl easy to imagine.  But
it would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the
word <said>business,</said> the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious
regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in
its gold-fringed linen.
</P>

<P>
Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the
indispensable might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by which
the social body is fed, clothed, and housed.  It had laid hold of his
imagination in boyhood.  The echoes of the great hammer where roof or
keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of the
furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to
him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating
star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the
wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of
muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out,—all these
sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of the
poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers,
a religion without the aid of theology.  His early ambition had been to
have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was
peculiarly dignified by him with the name of <said>business;</said> and though he
had only been a short time under a surveyor, and had been chiefly his
own teacher, he knew more of land, building, and mining than most of
the special men in the county.
</P>

<P>
His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the
categories of more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these
advanced times.  He divided them into <said>business, politics, preaching,
learning, and amusement.</said>  He had nothing to say against the last four;
but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than
his own.  In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he
would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such
close contact with <said>business</said> as to get often honorably decorated with
marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of
the woods and fields. <first> Though he had never regarded himself as other
than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the
subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good
practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of
undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. </first> But there
was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to
him that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number
of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best
land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring
(for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical
intelligence.  But he could not manage finance: he knew values well,
but he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape
of profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he
determined to give up all forms of his beloved <said>business</said> which
required that talent.  He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of
work which he could do without handling capital, and was one of those
precious men within his own district whom everybody would choose to
work for them, because he did his work well, charged very little, and
often declined to charge at all.  It is no wonder, then, that the
Garths were poor, and <said>lived in a small way.</said>  However, they did not
mind it.
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="25"><head>CHAPTER XXV.</head>

<epigraph>
         <said>Love seeketh not itself to please,
            Nor for itself hath any care
          But for another gives its ease
            And builds a heaven in hell's despair.
               .    .    .    .    .    .    .
          Love seeketh only self to please,
            To bind another to its delight,
          Joys in another's loss of ease,
            And builds a hell in heaven's despite.</said>
                            —W. BLAKE: Songs of Experience
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
Fred Vincy wanted to arrive at Stone Court when Mary could not expect
him, and when his uncle was not downstairs: in that case she might be
sitting alone in the wainscoted parlor.  He left his horse in the yard
to avoid making a noise on the gravel in front, and entered the parlor
without other notice than the noise of the door-handle. Mary was in her
usual corner, laughing over Mrs. Piozzi's recollections of Johnson, and
looked up with the fun still in her face.  It gradually faded as she
saw Fred approach her without speaking, and stand before her with his
elbow on the mantel-piece, looking ill.  She too was silent, only
raising her eyes to him inquiringly.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Mary,</said> he began, <said who="#F">I am a good-for-nothing blackguard.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I should think one of those epithets would do at a time,</said> said Mary,
trying to smile, but feeling alarmed.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">I know you will never think well of me any more.  You will think me a
liar.  You will think me dishonest.  You will think I didn't care for
you, or your father and mother.  You always do make the worst of me, I
know.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I cannot deny that I shall think all that of you, Fred, if you give me
good reasons.  But please to tell me at once what you have done.  I
would rather know the painful truth than imagine it.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">I owed money—a hundred and sixty pounds.  I asked your father to put
his name to a bill.  I thought it would not signify to him.  I made
sure of paying the money myself, and I have tried as hard as I could.
And now, I have been so unlucky—a horse has turned out badly—I can
only pay fifty pounds.  And I can't ask my father for the money: he
would not give me a farthing.  And my uncle gave me a hundred a little
while ago.  So what can I do?  And now your father has no ready money
to spare, and your mother will have to pay away her ninety-two pounds
that she has saved, and she says your savings must go too.  You see
what a—</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Oh, poor mother, poor father!</said> said Mary, her eyes filling with tears,
and a little sob rising which she tried to repress.  She looked
straight before her and took no notice of Fred, all the consequences at
home becoming present to her.  He too remained silent for some moments,
feeling more miserable than ever.  <said who="#F">I wouldn't have hurt you for the
world, Mary,</said> he said at last.  <said who="#F">You can never forgive me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">What does it matter whether I forgive you?</said> said Mary, passionately.
<said who="#M">Would that make it any better for my mother to lose the money she has
been earning by lessons for four years, that she might send Alfred to
Mr. Hanmer's? Should you think all that pleasant enough if I forgave
you?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Say what you like, Mary.  I deserve it all.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I don't want to say anything,</said> said Mary, more quietly, <said who="#M">and my anger
is of no use.</said>  She dried her eyes, threw aside her book, rose and
fetched her sewing.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> Fred followed her with his eyes, hoping that they would meet hers, and
in that way find access for his imploring penitence.  But no!  Mary
could easily avoid looking upward. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">I do care about your mother's money going,</said> he said, when she was
seated again and sewing quickly.  <said who="#M"> I wanted to ask you, Mary—don't
you think that Mr. Featherstone—if you were to tell him—tell him, I
mean, about apprenticing Alfred—would advance the money?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">My family is not fond of begging, Fred.  We would rather work for our
money.  Besides, you say that Mr. Featherstone has lately given you a
hundred pounds.  He rarely makes presents; he has never made presents
to us.  I am sure my father will not ask him for anything; and even if
I chose to beg of him, it would be of no use.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">I am so miserable, Mary—if you knew how miserable I am, you would be
sorry for me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">There are other things to be more sorry for than that.  But selfish
people always think their own discomfort of more importance than
anything else in the world.  I see enough of that every day.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">It is hardly fair to call me selfish.  If you knew what things other
young men do, you would think me a good way off the worst.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves
without knowing how they shall pay, must be selfish.  They are always
thinking of what they can get for themselves, and not of what other
people may lose.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when
he meant it.  There is not a better man in the world than your father,
and yet he got into trouble.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred?</said>
said Mary, in a deep tone of indignation.  <said who="#M">He never got into trouble
by thinking of his own idle pleasures, but because he was always
thinking of the work he was doing for other people.  And he has fared
hard, and worked hard to make good everybody's loss.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary.  It
is not generous to believe the worst of a man.  When you have got any
power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better;
but that is what you never do.  However, I'm going,</said> Fred ended,
languidly.  <said who="#F">I shall never speak to you about anything again.  I'm very
sorry for all the trouble I've caused—that's all.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up. <first> There is
often something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary's hard
experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different
from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness. </first> At Fred's last
words she felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother
feels at the imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which
may lose itself and get harm.  And when, looking up, her eyes met his
dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her anger and all
her other anxieties.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Oh, Fred, how ill you look!  Sit down a moment.  Don't go yet.  Let me
tell uncle that you are here.  He has been wondering that he has not
seen you for a whole week.</said>  Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words
that came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying
them in a half-soothing half-beseeching tone, and rising as if to go
away to Mr. Featherstone. Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had
parted and a gleam had come: he moved and stood in her way.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything.  Say you will not think
the worst of me—will not give me up altogether.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you,</said> said Mary, in a
mournful tone.  <said who="#M">As if it were not very painful to me to see you an
idle frivolous creature.  How can you bear to be so contemptible, when
others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be
done—how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is
useful?  And with so much good in your disposition, Fred,—you might
be worth a great deal.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you
love me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be
hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him.  What
will you be when you are forty?  Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose—just as
idle, living in Mrs. Beck's front parlor—fat and shabby, hoping
somebody will invite you to dinner—spending your morning in learning a
comic song—oh no! learning a tune on the flute.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary's lips had begun to curl with a smile as soon as she had asked
that question about Fred's future (young souls are mobile), and before
she ended, her face had its full illumination of fun. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false">  To him it was
like the cessation of an ache that Mary could laugh at him, and with a
passive sort of smile he tried to reach her hand; </said> but she slipped away
quickly towards the door and said, <said who="#M">I shall tell uncle.  You <I>must</emph> see
him for a moment or two.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> Fred secretly felt that his future was guaranteed against the
fulfilment of Mary's sarcastic prophecies, apart from that <said>anything</said>
which he was ready to do if she would define it. He never dared in
Mary's presence to approach the subject of his expectations from Mr.
Featherstone, and she always ignored them, as if everything depended on
himself.  But if ever he actually came into the property, she must
recognize the change in his position. </said>  All this passed through his mind
somewhat languidly, before he went up to see his uncle.  He stayed but
a little while, excusing himself on the ground that he had a cold; and
Mary did not reappear before he left the house.  But as he rode home,
he began to be more conscious of being ill, than of being melancholy.
</P>

<P>
When Caleb Garth arrived at Stone Court soon after dusk, Mary was not
surprised, although he seldom had leisure for paying her a visit, and
was not at all fond of having to talk with Mr. Featherstone.  The old
man, on the other hand, felt himself ill at ease with a brother-in-law
whom he could not annoy, who did not mind about being considered poor,
had nothing to ask of him, and understood all kinds of farming and
mining business better than he did. <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">  But Mary had felt sure that her
parents would want to see her, and if her father had not come, she
would have obtained leave to go home for an hour or two the next day. </said>
After discussing prices during tea with Mr. Featherstone, Caleb rose to
bid him good-by, and said, <said who="#MrG">I want to speak to you, Mary.</said>
</P>

<P>
She took a candle into another large parlor, where there was no fire,
and setting down the feeble light on the dark mahogany table, turned
round to her father, and putting her arms round his neck kissed him
with childish kisses which he delighted in,—the expression of his
large brows softening as the expression of a great beautiful dog
softens when it is caressed. <said who="#MrG" direct="false" aloud="false">  Mary was his favorite child, and whatever
Susan might say, and right as she was on all other subjects, Caleb
thought it natural that Fred or any one else should think Mary more
lovable than other girls. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">I've got something to tell you, my dear,</said> said Caleb in his hesitating
way.  <said who="#MrG">No very good news; but then it might be worse.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">About money, father?  I think I know what it is.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Ay? how can that be?  You see, I've been a bit of a fool again, and
put my name to a bill, and now it comes to paying; and your mother has
got to part with her savings, that's the worst of it, and even they
won't quite make things even.  We wanted a hundred and ten pounds: your
mother has ninety-two, and I have none to spare in the bank; and she
thinks that you have some savings.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Oh yes; I have more than four-and-twenty pounds.  I thought you would
come, father, so I put it in my bag.  See! beautiful white notes and
gold.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary took out the folded money from her reticule and put it into her
father's hand.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Well, but how—we only want eighteen—here, put the rest back,
child,—but how did you know about it?</said> said Caleb, who, in his
unconquerable indifference to money, was beginning to be chiefly
concerned about the relation the affair might have to Mary's affections.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Fred told me this morning.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Ah!  Did he come on purpose?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Yes, I think so.  He was a good deal distressed.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">I'm afraid Fred is not to be trusted, Mary,</said> said the father, with
hesitating tenderness.  <said who="#MrG">He means better than he acts, perhaps.  But I
should think it a pity for any body's happiness to be wrapped up in
him, and so would your mother.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">And so should I, father,</said> said Mary, not looking up, but putting the
back of her father's hand against her cheek.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">I don't want to pry, my dear.  But I was afraid there might be
something between you and Fred, and I wanted to caution you.  You see,
Mary</said> —here Caleb's voice became more tender; he had been pushing his
hat about on the table and looking at it, but finally he turned his
eyes on his daughter—<said who="#MrG"> a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got
to put up with the life her husband makes for her.  Your mother has had
to put up with a good deal because of me.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary turned the back of her father's hand to her lips and smiled at him.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Well, well, nobody's perfect, but </said> —here Mr. Garth shook his head to
help out the inadequacy of words— <said who="#MrG"> what I am thinking of is—what it
must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when he hasn't
got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing
by others than of getting his own toes pinched.  That's the long and
the short of it, Mary.  Young folks may get fond of each other before
they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can
only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear.
However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in
cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father
trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Don't fear for me, father,</said> said Mary, gravely meeting her father's
eyes; <said who="#M">Fred has always been very good to me; he is kind-hearted and
affectionate, and not false, I think, with all his self-indulgence. But
I will never engage myself to one who has no manly independence, and
who goes on loitering away his time on the chance that others will
provide for him.  You and my mother have taught me too much pride for
that.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">That's right—that's right.  Then I am easy,</said> said Mr. Garth, taking
up his hat.  <said who="#MrG">But it's hard to run away with your earnings, eh child.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Father!</said> said Mary, in her deepest tone of remonstrance.  <said who="#M">Take
pocketfuls of love besides to them all at home,</said> was her last word
before he closed the outer door on himself.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">I suppose your father wanted your earnings,</said> said old Mr.
Featherstone, with his usual power of unpleasant surmise, when Mary
returned to him.  <said who="#MrF">He makes but a tight fit, I reckon.  You're of age
now; you ought to be saving for yourself.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir,</said> said
Mary, coldly.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mr. Featherstone grunted: he could not deny that an ordinary sort of
girl like her might be expected to be useful, so he thought of another
rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos. </said>  <said who="#MrF">If Fred Vincy
comes to-morrow, now, don't you keep him chattering: let him come up to
me.</said>
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="26"><head>CHAPTER XXVI.</head>

<P CLASS="intro">
<said>He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction!
would it were otherwise—that I could beat him while
he railed at me.—"—Troilus and Cressida.
</P>

<BR/>

<P>
But Fred did not go to Stone Court the next day, for reasons that were
quite peremptory.  From those visits to unsanitary Houndsley streets in
search of Diamond, he had brought back not only a bad bargain in
horse-flesh, but the further misfortune of some ailment which for a day
or two had deemed mere depression and headache, but which got so much
worse when he returned from his visit to Stone Court that, going into
the dining-room, he threw himself on the sofa, and in answer to his
mother's anxious question, said <said who="#F"> I feel very ill: I think you must
send for Wrench.</said>
</P>

<P>
Wrench came, but did not apprehend anything serious, spoke of a <said>slight
derangement,</said> and did not speak of coming again on the morrow.  He had
a due value for the Vincys' house, but the wariest men are apt to be
dulled by routine, and on worried mornings will sometimes go through
their business with the zest of the daily bell-ringer.  Mr. Wrench was
a small, neat, bilious man, with a well-dressed wig: he had a laborious
practice, an irascible temper, a lymphatic wife and seven children; and
he was already rather late before setting out on a four-miles drive to
meet Dr. Minchin on the other side of Tipton, the decease of Hicks, a
rural practitioner, having increased Middlemarch practice in that
direction.  Great statesmen err, and why not small medical men?  Mr.
Wrench did not neglect sending the usual white parcels, which this time
had black and drastic contents.  Their effect was not alleviating to
poor Fred, who, however, unwilling as he said to believe that he was
<said>in for an illness,</said> rose at his usual easy hour the next morning and
went down-stairs meaning to breakfast, but succeeded in nothing but in
sitting and shivering by the fire.  Mr. Wrench was again sent for, but
was gone on his rounds, and Mrs. Vincy seeing her darling's changed
looks and general misery, began to cry and said she would send for Dr.
Sprague.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Oh, nonsense, mother!  It's nothing,</said> said Fred, putting out his hot
dry hand to her, <said who="#F">I shall soon be all right.  I must have taken cold in
that nasty damp ride.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Mamma!</said> said Rosamond, who was seated near the window (the dining-room
windows looked on that highly respectable street called Lowick Gate),
<said who="#R">there is Mr. Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one.  If I were you I
would call him in.  He has cured Ellen Bulstrode.  They say he cures
every one.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mrs. Vincy sprang to the window and opened it in an instant, thinking
only of Fred and not of medical etiquette. </said>  Lydgate was only two yards
off on the other side of some iron palisading, and turned round at the
sudden sound of the sash, before she called to him.  In two minutes he
was in the room, and Rosamond went out, after waiting just long enough
to show a pretty anxiety conflicting with her sense of what was
becoming.
</P>

<P>
Lydgate had to hear a narrative in which Mrs. Vincy's mind insisted
with remarkable instinct on every point of minor importance, especially
on what Mr. Wrench had said and had not said about coming again. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false">  That
there might be an awkward affair with Wrench, Lydgate saw at once; but
the case was serious enough to make him dismiss that consideration: he
was convinced that Fred was in the pink-skinned stage of typhoid fever,
and that he had taken just the wrong medicines.  He must go to bed
immediately, must have a regular nurse, and various appliances and
precautions must be used, about which Lydgate was particular. </said>  Poor
Mrs. Vincy's terror at these indications of danger found vent in such
words as came most easily.  She thought it <said who="#MrsV">very ill usage on the part
of Mr. Wrench, who had attended their house so many years in preference
to Mr. Peacock, though Mr. Peacock was equally a friend.  Why Mr.
Wrench should neglect her children more than others, she could not for
the life of her understand.  He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher's when
they had the measles, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that he
should.  And if anything should happen—</said>
</P>

<P>
Here poor Mrs. Vincy's spirit quite broke down, and her Niobe throat
and good-humored face were sadly convulsed.  This was in the hall out
of Fred's hearing, but Rosamond had opened the drawing-room door, and
now came forward anxiously. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false">  Lydgate apologized for Mr. Wrench, said
that the symptoms yesterday might have been disguising, and that this
form of fever was very equivocal in its beginnings: he would go
immediately to the druggist's and have a prescription made up in order
to lose no time, but he would write to Mr. Wrench and tell him what had
been done. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">But you must come again—you must go on attending Fred.  I can't have
my boy left to anybody who may come or not.  I bear nobody ill-will,
thank God, and Mr. Wrench saved me in the pleurisy, but he'd better
have let me die—if—if—</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?</said> said Lydgate, really
believing that Wrench was not well prepared to deal wisely with a case
of this kind.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Pray make that arrangement, Mr. Lydgate,</said> said Rosamond, coming to her
mother's aid, and supporting her arm to lead her away.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV" direct="false" aloud="false"> When Mr. Vincy came home he was very angry with Wrench, and did not
care if he never came into his house again. Lydgate should go on now,
whether Wrench liked it or not.  It was no joke to have fever in the
house.  Everybody must be sent to now, not to come to dinner on
Thursday.  And Pritchard needn't get up any wine: brandy was the best
thing against infection. </said> <said who="#MrV">I shall drink brandy,</said> added Mr. Vincy,
emphatically—as much as to say, this was not an occasion for firing
with blank-cartridges. <said who="#MrV">He's an uncommonly unfortunate lad, is Fred.
He'd need have some luck by and by to make up for all this—else I
don't know who'd have an eldest son.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Don't say so, Vincy,</said> said the mother, with a quivering lip, <said who="#MrsV">if you
don't want him to be taken from me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">It will worret you to death, Lucy; <I>that</emph> I can see,</said> said Mr. Vincy,
more mildly.  <said who="#MrV">However, Wrench shall know what I think of the matter.</said>
<said who="MrV" direct="false" aloud="false"> (What Mr. Vincy thought confusedly was, that the fever might somehow
have been hindered if Wrench had shown the proper solicitude about
his—the Mayor's—family.) </said> <said who="#MrV">I'm the last man to give in to the cry
about new doctors, or new parsons either—whether they're Bulstrode's
men or not.  But Wrench shall know what I think, take it as he will.</said>
</P>

<P>
Wrench did not take it at all well.  Lydgate was as polite as he could
be in his offhand way, but politeness in a man who has placed you at a
disadvantage is only an additional exasperation, especially if he
happens to have been an object of dislike beforehand.  Country
practitioners used to be an irritable species, susceptible on the point
of honor; and Mr. Wrench was one of the most irritable among them.  He
did not refuse to meet Lydgate in the evening, but his temper was
somewhat tried on the occasion.  He had to hear Mrs. Vincy say—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Oh, Mr. Wrench, what have I ever done that you should use me so?—  To
go away, and never to come again!  And my boy might have been stretched
a corpse!</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Vincy, who had been keeping up a sharp fire on the enemy Infection,
and was a good deal heated in consequence, started up when he heard
Wrench come in, and went into the hall to let him know what he thought.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">I'll tell you what, Wrench, this is beyond a joke,</said> said the Mayor,
who of late had had to rebuke offenders with an official air, and now
broadened himself by putting his thumbs in his armholes. <said who="#MrV">To let
fever get unawares into a house like this.  There are some things that
ought to be actionable, and are not so— that's my opinion.</said>
</P>

<P>
But irrational reproaches were easier to bear than the sense of being
instructed, or rather the sense that a younger man, like Lydgate,
inwardly considered him in need of instruction, for <said>in point of fact,</said>
Mr. Wrench afterwards said, Lydgate paraded flighty, foreign notions,
which would not wear. <said who="#Wrench" direct="false" aloud="false">  He swallowed his ire for the moment, but he
afterwards wrote to decline further attendance in the case.  The house
might be a good one, but Mr. Wrench was not going to truckle to anybody
on a professional matter.  He reflected, with much probability on his
side, that Lydgate would by-and-by be caught tripping too, and that his
ungentlemanly attempts to discredit the sale of drugs by his
professional brethren, would by-and-by recoil on himself.  He threw out
biting remarks on Lydgate's tricks, worthy only of a quack, to get
himself a factitious reputation with credulous people.  That cant about
cures was never got up by sound practitioners. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false">  This was a point on which Lydgate smarted as much as Wrench could
desire. To be puffed by ignorance was not only humiliating, but
perilous, and not more enviable than the reputation of the
weather-prophet. </said>  He was impatient of the foolish expectations amidst
which all work must be carried on, and likely enough to damage himself
as much as Mr. Wrench could wish, by an unprofessional openness.
</P>

<P>
However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, and
the event was a subject of general conversation in Middlemarch.  Some
said, that the Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy had
threatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused him of poisoning her
son.  Others were of opinion that Mr. Lydgate's passing by was
providential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that
Bulstrode was in the right to bring him forward.  Many people believed
that Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really due to Bulstrode;
and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her
information in misleading fragments caught between the rows of her
knitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was a natural son
of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions of
evangelical laymen.
</P>

<P>
She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother,
who did not fail to tell her son of it, observing—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MFB">I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should be
sorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">Why, mother,</said> said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, <said who="#FB">you
know very well that Lydgate is of a good family in the North.  He never
heard of Bulstrode before he came here.</said>
</P>

<P>
<sai who="#MFB">That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden,</said> said
the old lady, with an air of precision.—<said who="#MFB"> But as to Bulstrode—the
report may be true of some other son.</said>
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="27"><head>CHAPTER XXVII.</head>

<epigraph>
         Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
         We are but mortals, and must sing of man.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
<first> An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly
furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me
this pregnant little fact. </first> <second> Your pier-glass or extensive surface of
polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and
multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a
lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will
seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round
that little sun. </second> <second> It is demonstrable that the scratches are going
everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the
flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with
an exclusive optical selection. </second> These things are a parable.  The
scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now
absent—of Miss Vincy, for example.  Rosamond had a Providence of her
own who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who
seemed to have arranged Fred's illness and Mr. Wrench's mistake in
order to bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity.  It would
have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented to
go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do,
especially since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless.
<said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the children were sent away to a
farmhouse the morning after Fred's illness had declared itself,
Rosamond refused to leave papa and mamma. </said>
</P>

<P>
Poor mamma indeed was an object to touch any creature born of woman;
and Mr. Vincy, who doted on his wife, was more alarmed on her account
than on Fred's. But for his insistence she would have taken no rest:
her brightness was all bedimmed; unconscious of her costume which had
always been so fresh and gay, she was like a sick bird with languid eye
and plumage ruffled, her senses dulled to the sights and sounds that
used most to interest her.  Fred's delirium, in which he seemed to be
wandering out of her reach, tore her heart.  After her first outburst
against Mr. Wrench she went about very quietly: her one low cry was to
Lydgate.  She would follow him out of the room and put her hand on his
arm moaning out, <said who="#MrsV">Save my boy.</said>  Once she pleaded, <said who="#MrsV">He has always been
good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he never had a hard word for his mother,</said>—as
if poor Fred's suffering were an accusation against him.  All the
deepest fibres of the mother's memory were stirred, and the young man
whose voice took a gentler tone when he spoke to her, was one with the
babe whom she had loved, with a love new to her, before he was born.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd"> I have good hope, Mrs. Vincy,</said> Lydgate would say.  <said who="#Lyd">Come down with me
and let us talk about the food.</said>  In that way he led her to the parlor
where Rosamond was, and made a change for her, surprising her into
taking some tea or broth which had been prepared for her.  There was a
constant understanding between him and Rosamond on these matters. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> He
almost always saw her before going to the sickroom, and she appealed to
him as to what she could do for mamma.  Her presence of mind and
adroitness in carrying out his hints were admirable, and it is not
wonderful that the idea of seeing Rosamond began to mingle itself with
his interest in the case.  Especially when the critical stage was
passed, and he began to feel confident of Fred's recovery. </said> In the more
doubtful time, <said who="#Sprague" direct="false" aloud="false"> he had advised calling in Dr. Sprague (who, if he could,
would rather have remained neutral on Wrench's account)</said>; but after two
consultations, the conduct of the case was left to Lydgate, and there
was every reason to make him assiduous.  Morning and evening he was at
Mr. Vincy's, and gradually the visits became cheerful as Fred became
simply feeble, and lay not only in need of the utmost petting but
conscious of it, so that Mrs. Vincy felt as if, after all, the illness
had made a festival for her tenderness.
</P>

<P>
Both father and mother held it an added reason for good spirits, when
old Mr. Featherstone sent messages by Lydgate, saying that Fred must
make haste and get well, as he, Peter Featherstone, could not do
without him, and missed his visits sadly.  The old man himself was
getting bedridden.  Mrs. Vincy told these messages to Fred when he
could listen, and he turned towards her his delicate, pinched face,
from which all the thick blond hair had been cut away, and in which the
eyes seemed to have got larger, yearning for some word about
Mary—wondering what she felt about his illness.  No word passed his
lips; but <said>to hear with eyes belongs to love's rare wit,</said> and the
mother in the fulness of her heart not only divined Fred's longing, but
felt ready for any sacrifice in order to satisfy him.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">If I can only see my boy strong again,</said> she said, in her loving folly;
<said who="#MrsV">and who knows?—perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry
anybody he likes then.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">Not if they won't have me, mother,</said> said Fred.  The illness had made
him childish, and tears came as he spoke.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear,</said> said Mrs. Vincy, secretly
incredulous of any such refusal.
</P>

<P>
She never left Fred's side when her husband was not in the house, and
thus Rosamond was in the unusual position of being much alone.
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate, naturally, never thought of staying long with her, yet it
seemed that the brief impersonal conversations they had together were
creating that peculiar intimacy which consists in shyness.  They were
obliged to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking
could not be carried through as the matter of course which it really
was.  Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness unpleasant and
one day looked down, or anywhere, like an ill-worked puppet. But this
turned out badly: the next day, Rosamond looked down, and the
consequence was that when their eyes met again, both were more
conscious than before.  There was no help for this in science, and as
Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed to be no help for it in
folly. It was therefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered
the house in quarantine, and when the chances of seeing Rosamond alone
were very much reduced. </said>
</P>

<P>
But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the
other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to
be done away with.  Talk about the weather and other well-bred topics
is apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy
unless it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination—which of course need
not mean anything deep or serious.  This was the way in which Rosamond
and Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse
lively again.  Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more
music in the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy's
mayoralty returned.  Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by
Rosamond's side, and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her
captive—meaning, all the while, not to be her captive.  The
preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a
satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee
against danger.  This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and
did not interfere with graver pursuits.  Flirtation, after all, was not
necessarily a singeing process.  Rosamond, for her part, had never
enjoyed the days so much in her life before: she was sure of being
admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish
flirtation from love, either in herself or in another.  She seemed to
be sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts
were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped
would by-and-by be vacant.  She was quite determined, when she was
married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who were not
agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawing-room in
her favorite house with various styles of furniture.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> Certainly her thoughts were much occupied with Lydgate himself; he
seemed to her almost perfect: if he had known his notes so that his
enchantment under her music had been less like an emotional elephant's,
and if he had been able to discriminate better the refinements of her
taste in dress, she could hardly have mentioned a deficiency in him.
How different he was from young Plymdale or Mr. Caius Larcher!  Those
young men had not a notion of French, and could speak on no subject
with striking knowledge, except perhaps the dyeing and carrying trades,
which of course they were ashamed to mention; they were Middlemarch
gentry, elated with their silver-headed whips and satin stocks, but
embarrassed in their manners, and timidly jocose: even Fred was above
them, having at least the accent and manner of a university man.
Whereas Lydgate was always listened to, bore himself with the careless
politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right
clothes on by a certain natural affinity, without ever having to think
about them.  Rosamond was proud when he entered the room, and when he
approached her with a distinguishing smile, she had a delicious sense
that she was the object of enviable homage. </said> If Lydgate had been aware
of all the pride he excited in that delicate bosom, he might have been
just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant
of humoral pathology or fibrous tissue: he held it one of the prettiest
attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's pre-eminence without
too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in.  But Rosamond was not
one of those helpless girls who betray themselves unawares, and whose
behavior is awkwardly driven by their impulses, instead of being
steered by wary grace and propriety. <second> Do you imagine that her rapid
forecast and rumination concerning house-furniture and society were
ever discernible in her conversation, even with her mamma? </second> On the
contrary, she would have expressed the prettiest surprise and
disapprobation if she had heard that another young lady had been
detected in that immodest prematureness—indeed, would probably have
disbelieved in its possibility.  For Rosamond never showed any
unbecoming knowledge, and was always that combination of correct
sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant note-writing, private
album for extracted verse, and perfect blond loveliness, which made the
irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date.  Think no unfair
evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or
mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except as something
necessary which other people would always provide.  She was not in the
habit of devising falsehoods, and if her statements were no direct clew
to fact, why, they were not intended in that light—they were among
her elegant accomplishments, intended to please.  Nature had inspired
many arts in finishing Mrs. Lemon's favorite pupil, who by general
consent (Fred's excepted) was a rare compound of beauty, cleverness,
and amiability.
</P>

<P>
Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was
no constraint now, there was a delightful interchange of influence in
their eyes, and what they said had that superfluity of meaning for
them, which is observable with some sense of flatness by a third
person; still they had no interviews or asides from which a third
person need have been excluded. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was
secure in the belief that they did nothing else.  If a man could not
love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time?
Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great
bores, and Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards:
what was he to do for relaxation?  He was often invited to the
Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and
Mrs. Bulstrode's <I>naive</emph> way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the
nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the
consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a
sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable
seriousness.  The Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the
pleasanter by contrast; besides, it nourished Rosamond—sweet to look
at as a half-opened blush-rose, and adorned with accomplishments for
the refined amusement of man. </said>
</P>

<P>
But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss
Vincy.  One evening he came into the drawing-room rather late, when
several other visitors were there.  The card-table had drawn off the
elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch,
though not one of its leading minds) was in <i>tete-a-tete</i> with Rosamond.
He had brought the last <said>Keepsake,</said> the gorgeous watered-silk
publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he
considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look
over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny
copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic
verses as capital and sentimental stories as interesting.  Rosamond was
gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in
art and literature as a medium for <said who="#NedPlymdale">paying addresses </said>—the very thing
to please a nice girl.  He had also reasons, deep rather than
ostensible, for being satisfied with his own appearance.  To
superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as
if it were being gradually reabsorbed.  And it did indeed cause him
some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were
at that time useful.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#NedPlymdale"> I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you,</said> said Mr. Ned.
He kept the book open at the bewitching portrait, and looked at it
rather languishingly.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Her back is very large; she seems to have sat for that,</said> said
Rosamond, not meaning any satire, but thinking how red young Plymdale's
hands were, and wondering why Lydgate did not come.  She went on with
her tatting all the while.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#NedPlymdale">I did not say she was as beautiful as you are,</said> said Mr. Ned,
venturing to look from the portrait to its rival.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer,</said> said Rosamond, feeling
sure that she should have to reject this young gentleman a second time.
</P>

<P>
But now Lydgate came in; the book was closed before he reached
Rosamond's corner, and as he took his seat with easy confidence on the
other side of her, young Plymdale's jaw fell like a barometer towards
the cheerless side of change.  Rosamond enjoyed not only Lydgate's
presence but its effect: she liked to excite jealousy.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">What a late comer you are!</said> she said, as they shook hands.  <said who="#R">Mamma had
given you up a little while ago.  How do you find Fred?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">As usual; going on well, but slowly.  I want him to go away—to Stone
Court, for example.  But your mamma seems to have some objection.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Poor fellow!</said> said Rosamond, prettily.  <said who="#R">You will see Fred so
changed,</said> she added, turning to the other suitor; <said who="#R">we have looked to
Mr. Lydgate as our guardian angel during this illness.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the <said>Keepsake</said> towards
him and opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed up his
chin, as if in wonderment at human folly.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R"> What are you laughing at so profanely?</said> said Rosamond, with bland
neutrality.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest—the engravings or
the writing here,</said> said Lydgate, in his most convinced tone, while he
turned over the pages quickly, seeming to see all through the book in
no time, and showing his large white hands to much advantage, as
Rosamond thought.  <said who="#Lyd">Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church:
did you ever see such a 'sugared invention'—as the Elizabethans used
to say?  Did any haberdasher ever look so smirking?  Yet I will answer
for it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in the land.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">You are so severe, I am frightened at you,</said> said Rosamond, keeping her
amusement duly moderate.  Poor young Plymdale had lingered with
admiration over this very engraving, and his spirit was stirred.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">There are a great many celebrated people writing in the 'Keepsake,' at
all events,</said> he said, in a tone at once piqued and timid.  <said who="#R">This is the
first time I have heard it called silly.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth,</said>
said Rosamond, looking at Lydgate with a smile.  <said who="#R">I suspect you know
nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L.</said> Rosamond herself was not
without relish for these writers, but she did not readily commit
herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest hint that
anything was not, according to Lydgate, in the very highest taste.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#NedPlymdale">But Sir Walter Scott—I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him,</said> said young
Plymdale, a little cheered by this advantage.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Oh, I read no literature now,</said> said Lydgate, shutting the book, and
pushing it away.  <said who="#Lyd">I read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it
will last me all my life.  I used to know Scott's poems by heart.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I should like to know when you left off,</said> said Rosamond, <said who="#R">because then
I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#NedPlymdale">Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing,</said> said Mr. Ned,
purposely caustic.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">On the contrary,</said> said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with
exasperating confidence at Rosamond.  <said who="#Lyd">It would be worth knowing by the
fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Plymdale" direct="false" aloud="false"> Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that
Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever
been his ill-fortune to meet. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">How rash you are!</said> said Rosamond, inwardly delighted.  <said who="#R">Do you see
that you have given offence?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">What! is it Mr. Plymdale's book?  I am sorry.  I didn't think about
it.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came
here—that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will.  Don't I listen
to her willingly?</said>
</P>

<P>
To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged.
<first> That they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her
mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the
necessary materials being at hand. </first> It is true, Lydgate had the
counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a
shadow cast by other resolves which themselves were capable of
shrinking.  Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of
Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through
watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a
jelly-fish which gets melted without knowing it.
</P>

<P>
That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a
process of maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he
wrote out his daily notes with as much precision as usual.  The
reveries from which it was difficult for him to detach himself were
ideal constructions of something else than Rosamond's virtues, and the
primitive tissue was still his fair unknown. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Moreover, he was
beginning to feel some zest for the growing though half-suppressed feud
between him and the other medical men, which was likely to become more
manifest, now that Bulstrode's method of managing the new hospital was
about to be declared; and there were various inspiriting signs that his
non-acceptance by some of Peacock's patients might be counterbalanced
by the impression he had produced in other quarters. </said> Only a few days
later, when he had happened to overtake Rosamond on the Lowick road and
had got down from his horse to walk by her side until he had quite
protected her from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant on
horseback with a message calling him in to a house of some importance
where Peacock had never attended; and it was the second instance of
this kind.  The servant was Sir James Chettam's, and the house was
Lowick Manor.
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="28"><head>CHAPTER XXVIII.</head>

<epigraph>
        1st Gent.  All times are good to seek your wedded home
                       Bringing a mutual delight.

        2d Gent.                          Why, true.
                       The calendar hath not an evil day
                       For souls made one by love, and even death
                       Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
                       While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
                       No life apart.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon, returning from their wedding journey, arrived at
Lowick Manor in the middle of January. <first> A light snow was falling as
they descended at the door, and in the morning, when Dorothea passed
from her dressing-room into the blue-green boudoir that we know of,
she saw the long avenue of limes lifting their trunks from a white
earth, and spreading white branches against the dun and motionless sky.</first>
The distant flat shrank in uniform whiteness and low-hanging uniformity
of cloud.  The very furniture in the room seemed to have shrunk since
she saw it before: the stag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost in
his ghostly blue-green world; the volumes of polite literature in the
bookcase looked more like immovable imitations of books.  The bright
fire of dry oak-boughs burning on the logs seemed an incongruous
renewal of life and glow—like the figure of Dorothea herself as she
entered carrying the red-leather cases containing the cameos for Celia.
</P>

<P>
She was glowing from her morning toilet as only healthful youth can
glow: there was gem-like brightness on her coiled hair and in her hazel
eyes; there was warm red life in her lips; her throat had a breathing
whiteness above the differing white of the fur which itself seemed to
wind about her neck and cling down her blue-gray pelisse with a
tenderness gathered from her own, a sentient commingled innocence which
kept its loveliness against the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow.
As she laid the cameo-cases on the table in the bow-window, she
unconsciously kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed in looking
out on the still, white enclosure which made her visible world.
</P>

<P>
Mr. Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of palpitation, was in
the library giving audience to his curate Mr. Tucker. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> By-and-by Celia
would come in her quality of bridesmaid as well as sister, and through
the next weeks there would be wedding visits received and given; all in
continuance of that transitional life understood to correspond with the
excitement of bridal felicity, and keeping up the sense of busy
ineffectiveness, as of a dream which the dreamer begins to suspect.
The duties of her married life, contemplated as so great beforehand,
seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white vapor-walled
landscape.  The clear heights where she expected to walk in full
communion had become difficult to see even in her imagination; the
delicious repose of the soul on a complete superior had been shaken
into uneasy effort and alarmed with dim presentiment.  When would the
days begin of that active wifely devotion which was to strengthen her
husband's life and exalt her own?  Never perhaps, as she had
preconceived them; but somehow—still somehow.  In this solemnly
pledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new form
of inspiration and give a new meaning to wifely love.</said>
</P>

<P>
Meanwhile there was the snow and the low arch of dun vapor—there was
the stifling oppression of that gentlewoman's world, where everything
was done for her and none asked for her aid—where the sense of
connection with a manifold pregnant existence had to be kept up
painfully as an inward vision, instead of coming from without in claims
that would have shaped her energies.—  <said who="#D">What shall I do?</said>  <said who="#C">Whatever you
please, my dear:</said> that had been her brief history since she had left
off learning morning lessons and practising silly rhythms on the hated
piano.  Marriage, which was to bring guidance into worthy and
imperative occupation, had not yet freed her from the gentlewoman's
oppressive liberty: it had not even filled her leisure with the
ruminant joy of unchecked tenderness.  Her blooming full-pulsed youth
stood there in a moral imprisonment which made itself one with the
chill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken furniture, the
never-read books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that
seemed to be vanishing from the daylight.
</P>

<P>
In the first minutes when Dorothea looked out she felt nothing but the
dreary oppression; then came a keen remembrance, and turning away from
the window she walked round the room. <first> The ideas and hopes which were
living in her mind when she first saw this room nearly three months
before were present now only as memories: she judged them as we judge
transient and departed things. </first> All existence seemed to beat with a
lower pulse than her own, and her religious faith was a solitary cry,
the struggle out of a nightmare in which every object was withering and
shrinking away from her.  Each remembered thing in the room was
disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wandering
gaze came to the group of miniatures, and there at last she saw
something which had gathered new breath and meaning: it was the
miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt Julia, who had made the unfortunate
marriage—of Will Ladislaw's grandmother. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> Dorothea could fancy that
it was alive now—the delicate woman's face which yet had a headstrong
look, a peculiarity difficult to interpret.  Was it only her friends
who thought her marriage unfortunate? or did she herself find it out to
be a mistake, and taste the salt bitterness of her tears in the
merciful silence of the night?  What breadths of experience Dorothea
seemed to have passed over since she first looked at this miniature!
She felt a new companionship with it, as if it had an ear for her and
could see how she was looking at it.  Here was a woman who had known
some difficulty about marriage.  Nay, the colors deepened, the lips and
chin seemed to get larger, the hair and eyes seemed to be sending out
light, the face was masculine and beamed on her with that full gaze
which tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for the
slightest movement of her eyelid to pass unnoticed and uninterpreted.
The vivid presentation came like a pleasant glow to Dorothea: she felt
herself smiling, and turning from the miniature sat down and looked up
as if she were again talking to a figure in front of her.  But the
smile disappeared as she went on meditating, and at last she said
aloud— </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D"> Oh, it was cruel to speak so!  How sad—how dreadful!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> She rose quickly and went out of the room, hurrying along the corridor,
with the irresistible impulse to go and see her husband and inquire if
she could do anything for him.  Perhaps Mr. Tucker was gone and Mr.
Casaubon was alone in the library.  She felt as if all her morning's
gloom would vanish if she could see her husband glad because of her
presence. </said>
</P>

<P>
But when she reached the head of the dark oak there was Celia coming
up, and below there was Mr. Brooke, exchanging welcomes and
congratulations with Mr. Casaubon.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Dodo!</said> said Celia, in her quiet staccato; then kissed her sister,
whose arms encircled her, and said no more. <first> I think they both cried a
little in a furtive manner, while Dorothea ran down-stairs to greet her
uncle. </first>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">I need not ask how you are, my dear,</said> said Mr. Brooke, after kissing
her forehead.  <said who="#MB">Rome has agreed with you, I see—happiness, frescos,
the antique—that sort of thing.  Well, it's very pleasant to have you
back again, and you understand all about art now, eh?  But Casaubon is
a little pale, I tell him—a little pale, you know.  Studying hard in
his holidays is carrying it rather too far.  I overdid it at one
time</said>—Mr. Brooke still held Dorothea's hand, but had turned his face
to Mr. Casaubon— <said who="#MB"> about topography, ruins, temples—I thought I had a
clew, but I saw it would carry me too far, and nothing might come of
it.  You may go any length in that sort of thing, and nothing may come
of it, you know.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea's eyes also were turned up to her husband's face with some
anxiety at the idea that those who saw him afresh after absence might
be aware of signs which she had not noticed.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Nothing to alarm you, my dear,</said> said Mr. Brooke, observing her
expression.  <said who="#MB">A little English beef and mutton will soon make a
difference.  It was all very well to look pale, sitting for the
portrait of Aquinas, you know—we got your letter just in time.  But
Aquinas, now—he was a little too subtle, wasn't he?  Does anybody read
Aquinas?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">He is not indeed an author adapted to superficial minds,</said> said Mr.
Casaubon, meeting these timely questions with dignified patience.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">You would like coffee in your own room, uncle?</said> said Dorothea, coming
to the rescue.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Yes; and you must go to Celia: she has great news to tell you, you
know.  I leave it all to her.</said>
</P>

<P>
The blue-green boudoir looked much more cheerful when Celia was seated
there in a pelisse exactly like her sister's, surveying the cameos with
a placid satisfaction, while the conversation passed on to other topics.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Do you think it nice to go to Rome on a wedding journey?</said> said Celia,
with her ready delicate blush which Dorothea was used to on the
smallest occasions.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">It would not suit all—not you, dear, for example,</said> said Dorothea,
quietly. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> No one would ever know what she thought of a wedding journey
to Rome. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Mrs. Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going a long journey when
they are married.  She says they get tired to death of each other, and
can't quarrel comfortably, as they would at home.  And Lady Chettam
says she went to Bath.</said>  Celia's color changed again and again—seemed
</P>

<P CLASS="poem">
<said>To come and go with tidings from the heart,<BR/>
As it a running messenger had been."<BR/>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> It must mean more than Celia's blushing usually did. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D"> Celia! has something happened?</said> said Dorothea, in a tone full of
sisterly feeling.  <said who="#D">Have you really any great news to tell me?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">It was because you went away, Dodo.  Then there was nobody but me for
Sir James to talk to,</said> said Celia, with a certain roguishness in her
eyes.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I understand.  It is as I used to hope and believe,</said> said Dorothea,
taking her sister's face between her hands, and looking at her half
anxiously. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> Celia's marriage seemed more serious than it used to do. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">It was only three days ago,</said> said Celia.  <said who="#Celia">And Lady Chettam is very
kind.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">And you are very happy?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Yes.  We are not going to be married yet.  Because every thing is to
be got ready.  And I don't want to be married so very soon, because I
think it is nice to be engaged.  And we shall be married all our lives
after.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I do believe you could not marry better, Kitty.  Sir James is a good,
honorable man,</said> said Dorothea, warmly.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">He has gone on with the cottages, Dodo.  He will tell you about them
when he comes.  Shall you be glad to see him?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Of course I shall.  How can you ask me?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned,</said> said Celia,
regarding Mr. Casaubon's learning as a kind of damp which might in due
time saturate a neighboring body.
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="29"><head>CHAPTER XXIX.</head>

<P CLASS="intro">
<said>I found that no genius in another could please me.  My
unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of
comfort."—GOLDSMITH.
</P>

<BR/>

<P>
One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea—but why
always Dorothea?  Was her point of view the only possible one with
regard to this marriage? <first> I protest against all our interest, all our
effort at understanding being given to the young skins that look
blooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get faded, and will
know the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect. </first>
In spite of the blinking eyes and white moles objectionable to Celia,
and the want of muscular curve which was morally painful to Sir James,
Mr. Casaubon had an intense consciousness within him, and was
spiritually a-hungered like the rest of us.  He had done nothing
exceptional in marrying—nothing but what society sanctions, and
considers an occasion for wreaths and bouquets. <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> It had occurred to him
that he must not any longer defer his intention of matrimony, and he
had reflected that in taking a wife, a man of good position should
expect and carefully choose a blooming young lady—the younger the
better, because more educable and submissive—of a rank equal to his
own, of religious principles, virtuous disposition, and good
understanding.  On such a young lady he would make handsome
settlements, and he would neglect no arrangement for her happiness: in
return, he should receive family pleasures and leave behind him that
copy of himself which seemed so urgently required of a man—to the
sonneteers of the sixteenth century. Times had altered since then, and
no sonneteer had insisted on Mr. Casaubon's leaving a copy of himself;
moreover, he had not yet succeeded in issuing copies of his
mythological key; but he had always intended to acquit himself by
marriage, and the sense that he was fast leaving the years behind him,
that the world was getting dimmer and that he felt lonely, was a reason
to him for losing no more time in overtaking domestic delights before
they too were left behind by the years. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> And when he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even more
than he demanded: she might really be such a helpmate to him as would
enable him to dispense with a hired secretary, an aid which Mr.
Casaubon had never yet employed and had a suspicious dread of.  (Mr.
Casaubon was nervously conscious that he was expected to manifest a
powerful mind.)  Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the
wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the purely
appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her
husband's mind powerful. </said> Whether Providence had taken equal care of
Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could
hardly occur to him. <said who="#MM" direct="false" aloud="false"> Society never made the preposterous demand that a
man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a
charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy.  As
if a man could choose not only his wife but his wife's husband!  Or as
if he were bound to provide charms for his posterity in his own
person! </said> — <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> When Dorothea accepted him with effusion, that was only
natural; and Mr. Casaubon believed that his happiness was going to
begin.  </said>
</P>

<P>
He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life.  To
know intense joy without a strong bodily frame, one must have an
enthusiastic soul.  Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame,
and his soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too
languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it
went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking
of its wings and never flying.  His experience was of that pitiable
kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be
known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough
to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers thread-like in
small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic
scrupulosity.  And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of a
severe self-restraint; he was resolute in being a man of honor
according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognized
opinion.  In conduct these ends had been attained; but the difficulty
of making his Key to all Mythologies unimpeachable weighed like lead
upon his mind; and the pamphlets—or <said>Parerga</said> as he called them—by
which he tested his public and deposited small monumental records of
his march, were far from having been seen in all their significance.
He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painful
doubt as to what was really thought of them by the leading minds of
Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old acquaintance Carp had
been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked in
a small drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet of his
verbal memory.  These were heavy impressions to struggle against, and
brought that melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of all
excessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with his wavering
trust in his own authorship, and the consolations of the Christian hope
in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten
Key to all Mythologies. <first> For my part I am very sorry for him. </first><first> It is an
uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to
enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be
liberated from a small hungry shivering self—never to be fully
possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness
rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a
passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and
uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dim-sighted.</first> <first>Becoming a
dean or even a bishop would make little difference, I fear, to Mr.
Casaubon's uneasiness. </first> <first> Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that
behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our
poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less
under anxious control. </first>
</P>

<P>
<first> To this mental estate mapped out a quarter of a century before, to
sensibilities thus fenced in, Mr. Casaubon had thought of annexing
happiness with a lovely young bride; but even before marriage, as we
have seen, he found himself under a new depression in the consciousness
that the new bliss was not blissful to him.  Inclination yearned back
to its old, easier custom. </first> And the deeper he went in domesticity the
more did the sense of acquitting himself and acting with propriety
predominate over any other satisfaction.  Marriage, like religion and
erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward
requirement, and Edward Casaubon was bent on fulfilling unimpeachably
all requirements.  Even drawing Dorothea into use in his study,
according to his own intention before marriage, was an effort which he
was always tempted to defer, and but for her pleading insistence it
might never have begun.  But she had succeeded in making it a matter of
course that she should take her place at an early hour in the library
and have work either of reading aloud or copying assigned her.  The
work had been easier to define because Mr. Casaubon had adopted an
immediate intention: there was to be a new Parergon, a small monograph
on some lately traced indications concerning the Egyptian mysteries
whereby certain assertions of Warburton's could be corrected.
References were extensive even here, but not altogether shoreless; and
sentences were actually to be written in the shape wherein they would
be scanned by Brasenose and a less formidable posterity. <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> These minor
monumental productions were always exciting to Mr. Casaubon; digestion
was made difficult by the interference of citations, or by the rivalry
of dialectical phrases ringing against each other in his brain.  And
from the first there was to be a Latin dedication about which
everything was uncertain except that it was not to be addressed to
Carp: it was a poisonous regret to Mr. Casaubon that he had once
addressed a dedication to Carp in which he had numbered that member of
the animal kingdom among the <i>viros nullo aevo perituros</i>, a mistake
which would infallibly lay the dedicator open to ridicule in the next
age, and might even be chuckled over by Pike and Tench in the present. </said>
</P>

<P>
<first>Thus Mr. Casaubon was in one of his busiest epochs, and as I began to
say a little while ago, Dorothea joined him early in the library where
he had breakfasted alone. </first> Celia at this time was on a second visit to
Lowick, probably the last before her marriage, and was in the
drawing-room expecting Sir James.
</P>

<P>
Dorothea had learned to read the signs of her husband's mood, and she
saw that the morning had become more foggy there during the last hour.
She was going silently to her desk when he said, in that distant tone
which implied that he was discharging a disagreeable duty—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Dorothea, here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in one
addressed to me.</said>
</P>

<P>
It was a letter of two pages, and she immediately looked at the
signature.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Mr. Ladislaw!  What can he have to say to me?</said> she exclaimed, in a
tone of pleased surprise.  <said who="#D">But,</said> she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon,
<said>I can imagine what he has written to you about.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">You can, if you please, read the letter,</said> said Mr. Casaubon, severely
pointing to it with his pen, and not looking at her.  <said who="#C">But I may as
well say beforehand, that I must decline the proposal it contains to
pay a visit here.  I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval of
complete freedom from such distractions as have been hitherto
inevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory vivacity makes
their presence a fatigue.</said>
</P>

<P>
There had been no clashing of temper between Dorothea and her husband
since that little explosion in Rome, which had left such strong traces
in her mind that it had been easier ever since to quell emotion than to
incur the consequence of venting it. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> But this ill-tempered
anticipation that she could desire visits which might be disagreeable
to her husband, this gratuitous defence of himself against selfish
complaint on her part, was too sharp a sting to be meditated on until
after it had been resented.  Dorothea had thought that she could have
been patient with John Milton, but she had never imagined him behaving
in this way; and for a moment Mr. Casaubon seemed to be stupidly
undiscerning and odiously unjust. </said> Pity, that <said>new-born babe</said> which was
by-and-by to rule many a storm within her, did not <said>stride the blast</said>
on this occasion.  With her first words, uttered in a tone that shook
him, she startled Mr. Casaubon into looking at her, and meeting the
flash of her eyes.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Why do you attribute to me a wish for anything that would annoy you?
You speak to me as if I were something you had to contend against.
Wait at least till I appear to consult my own pleasure apart from
yours.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Dorothea, you are hasty,</said> answered Mr. Casaubon, nervously.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> Decidedly, this woman was too young to be on the formidable level of
wifehood—unless she had been pale and featureless and taken
everything for granted. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositions
about my feeling,</said> said Dorothea, in the same tone.  The fire was not
dissipated yet, and she thought it was ignoble in her husband not to
apologize to her.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">We will, if you please, say no more on this subject, Dorothea.  I have
neither leisure nor energy for this kind of debate.</said>
</P>

<P>
Here Mr. Casaubon dipped his pen and made as if he would return to his
writing, though his hand trembled so much that the words seemed to be
written in an unknown character.  There are answers which, in turning
away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a
discussion coolly waived when you feel that justice is all on your own
side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.
</P>

<P>
<first> Dorothea left Ladislaw's two letters unread on her husband's
writing-table and went to her own place, the scorn and indignation
within her rejecting the reading of these letters, just as we hurl away
any trash towards which we seem to have been suspected of mean
cupidity. </first>  She did not in the least divine the subtle sources of her
husband's bad temper about these letters: she only knew that they had
caused him to offend her.  She began to work at once, and her hand did
not tremble; on the contrary, in writing out the quotations which had
been given to her the day before, she felt that she was forming her
letters beautifully, and it seemed to her that she saw the construction
of the Latin she was copying, and which she was beginning to
understand, more clearly than usual.  In her indignation there was a
sense of superiority, but it went out for the present in firmness of
stroke, and did not compress itself into an inward articulate voice
pronouncing the once <said>affable archangel</said> a poor creature.
</P>

<P>
There had been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea had
not looked away from her own table, when she heard the loud bang of a
book on the floor, and turning quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the library
steps clinging forward as if he were in some bodily distress. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> She
started up and bounded towards him in an instant: he was evidently in
great straits for breath. </said> Jumping on a stool she got close to his
elbow and said with her whole soul melted into tender alarm—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Can you lean on me, dear?</said>
</P>

<P>
He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her,
unable to speak or move, gasping for breath.  When at last he descended
the three steps and fell backward in the large chair which Dorothea had
drawn close to the foot of the ladder, he no longer gasped but seemed
helpless and about to faint.  Dorothea rang the bell violently, and
presently Mr. Casaubon was helped to the couch: he did not faint, and
was gradually reviving, when Sir James Chettam came in, having been met
in the hall with the news that Mr. Casaubon had <said >had a fit in the
library.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">Good God! this is just what might have been expected,</said> was his
immediate thought.  If his prophetic soul had been urged to
particularize, it seemed to him that <said>fits</said> would have been the
definite expression alighted upon. <said who="#JC" direct="false" aloud="false"> He asked his informant, the butler,
whether the doctor had been sent for.  The butler never knew his master
to want the doctor before; but would it not be right to send for a
physician? </said>
</P>

<P>
When Sir James entered the library, however, Mr. Casaubon could make
some signs of his usual politeness, and Dorothea, who in the reaction
from her first terror had been kneeling and sobbing by his side now
rose and herself proposed that some one should ride off for a medical
man.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I recommend you to send for Lydgate,</said> said Sir James.  <said who="#JC">My mother has
called him in, and she has found him uncommonly clever.  She has had a
poor opinion of the physicians since my father's death.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea appealed to her husband, and he made a silent sign of
approval.  So Mr. Lydgate was sent for and he came wonderfully soon,
for the messenger, who was Sir James Chettam's man and knew Mr.
Lydgate, met him leading his horse along the Lowick road and giving his
arm to Miss Vincy.
</P>

<P>
Celia, in the drawing-room, had known nothing of the trouble till Sir
James told her of it.  After Dorothea's account, he no longer
considered the illness a fit, but still something <said who="#JC">of that nature.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia" >Poor dear Dodo—how dreadful!</said> said Celia, feeling as much grieved as
her own perfect happiness would allow.  Her little hands were clasped,
and enclosed by Sir James's as a bud is enfolded by a liberal calyx.
<said who="#Celia">It is very shocking that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but I never did
like him.  And I think he is not half fond enough of Dorothea; and he
ought to be, for I am sure no one else would have had him—do you
think they would?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I always thought it a horrible sacrifice of your sister,</said> said Sir
James.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Yes.  But poor Dodo never did do what other people do, and I think she
never will.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">She is a noble creature,</said> said the loyal-hearted Sir James.  He had
just had a fresh impression of this kind, as he had seen Dorothea
stretching her tender arm under her husband's neck and looking at him
with unspeakable sorrow.  He did not know how much penitence there was
in the sorrow.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Yes,</said> said Celia, thinking it was very well for Sir James to say so,
but <I>he</emph> would not have been comfortable with Dodo.  <said who="#Celia">Shall I go to
her?  Could I help her, do you think?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I think it would be well for you just to go and see her before Lydgate
comes,</said> said Sir James, magnanimously.  <said who="#JC">Only don't stay long.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC" direct="false" aloud="false"> While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had
originally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of
his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference.  If Cadwallader—if every
one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the
marriage might have been hindered.  It was wicked to let a young girl
blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her.
Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his
heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia.  But he had a
chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the
ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to
bitterness; its death had made sweet odors—floating memories that
clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea.  He could remain her
brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness. </said>
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="30"><head>CHAPTER XXX.</head>

<P CLASS="intro">
<said>Qui veut delasser hors de propos, lasse."—PASCAL.
</P>

<BR/>

<P>
Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and
in a few days began to recover his usual condition.  But Lydgate seemed
to think the case worth a great deal of attention.  He not only used
his stethoscope (which had not become a matter of course in practice at
that time), but sat quietly by his patient and watched him. <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> To Mr.
Casaubon's questions about himself, he replied that the source of the
illness was the common error of intellectual men—a too eager and
monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied with moderate
work, and to seek variety of relaxation. </said> <said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mr. Brooke, who sat by on one
occasion, suggested that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader
did, and have a turning-room, make toys, table-legs, and that kind of
thing. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C"> In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second
childhood,</said> said poor Mr. Casaubon, with some bitterness.  <said who="#C">These
things,</said> he added, looking at Lydgate, <said who="#C">would be to me such relaxation
as tow-picking is to prisoners in a house of correction.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I confess,</said> said Lydgate, smiling, <said who="#Lyd">amusement is rather an
unsatisfactory prescription.  It is something like telling people to
keep up their spirits.  Perhaps I had better say, that you must submit
to be mildly bored rather than to go on working.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Yes, yes,</said> said Mr. Brooke.  <said who="#MB">Get Dorothea to play backgammon with you
in the evenings.  And shuttlecock, now—I don't know a finer game than
shuttlecock for the daytime.  I remember it all the fashion.  To be
sure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon.  But you must unbend,
you know.  Why, you might take to some light study: conchology, now: I
always think that must be a light study.  Or get Dorothea to read you
light things, Smollett—'Roderick Random,' 'Humphrey Clinker:'  they
are a little broad, but she may read anything now she's married, you
know.  I remember they made me laugh uncommonly—there's a droll bit
about a postilion's breeches.  We have no such humor now.  I have gone
through all these things, but they might be rather new to you.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said>As new as eating thistles,</said> would have been an answer to represent Mr.
Casaubon's feelings.  But he only bowed resignedly, with due respect to
his wife's uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentioned
had <said who="#C">served as a resource to a certain order of minds.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">You see,</said> said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside
the door, <said who="#MB">Casaubon has been a little narrow: it leaves him rather at a
loss when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe is
something very deep indeed—in the line of research, you know.  I would
never give way to that; I was always versatile.  But a clergyman is
tied a little tight.  If they would make him a bishop, now!—he did a
very good pamphlet for Peel.  He would have more movement then, more
show; he might get a little flesh.  But I recommend you to talk to Mrs.
Casaubon.  She is clever enough for anything, is my niece.  Tell her,
her husband wants liveliness, diversion: put her on amusing tactics.</said>
</P>

<P>
Without Mr. Brooke's advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking to
Dorothea.  She had not been present while her uncle was throwing out
his pleasant suggestions as to the mode in which life at Lowick might
be enlivened, but she was usually by her husband's side, and the
unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face and voice about
whatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was
inclined to watch. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> He said to himself that he was only doing right in
telling her the truth about her husband's probable future, but he
certainly thought also that it would be interesting to talk
confidentially with her.  A medical man likes to make psychological
observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too
easily tempted into momentous prophecy which life and death easily set
at nought.  Lydgate had often been satirical on this gratuitous
prediction, and he meant now to be guarded. </said>
</P>

<P>
He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he
was going away, when Dorothea and Celia appeared, both glowing from
their struggle with the March wind.  When Lydgate begged to speak with
her alone, Dorothea opened the library door which happened to be the
nearest, thinking of nothing at the moment but what he might have to
say about Mr. Casaubon.  It was the first time she had entered this
room since her husband had been taken ill, and the servant had chosen
not to open the shutters.  But there was light enough to read by from
the narrow upper panes of the windows.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">You will not mind this sombre light,</said> said Dorothea, standing in the
middle of the room.  <said who="#D">Since you forbade books, the library has been out
of the question.  But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope.  Is
he not making progress?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected.  Indeed, he is
already nearly in his usual state of health.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">You do not fear that the illness will return?</said> said Dorothea, whose
quick ear had detected some significance in Lydgate's tone.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon,</said> said Lydgate.
<said who="#Lyd">The only point on which I can be confident is that it will be
desirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon's account, lest he should
in any way strain his nervous power.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I beseech you to speak quite plainly,</said> said Dorothea, in an imploring
tone.  <said who="#D">I cannot bear to think that there might be something which I
did not know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me act
differently.</said>  The words came out like a cry: it was evident that they
were the voice of some mental experience which lay not very far off.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Sit down,</said> she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, and
throwing off her bonnet and gloves, with an instinctive discarding of
formality where a great question of destiny was concerned.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">What you say now justifies my own view,</said> said Lydgate.  <said who="#Lyd">I think it is
one's function as a medical man to hinder regrets of that sort as far
as possible.  But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon's case is
precisely of the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce
upon.  He may possibly live for fifteen years or more, without much
worse health than he has had hitherto.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said in a
low voice, <said who="#D">You mean if we are very careful.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Yes—careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against
excessive application.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work,</said> said Dorothea,
with a quick prevision of that wretchedness.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I am aware of that.  The only course is to try by all means, direct
and indirect, to moderate and vary his occupations.  With a happy
concurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger
from that affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the
cause of his late attack.  On the other hand, it is possible that the
disease may develop itself more rapidly: it is one of those cases in
which death is sometimes sudden.  Nothing should be neglected which
might be affected by such an issue.</said>
</P>

<P>
There was silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she had
been turned to marble, though the life within her was so intense that
her mind had never before swept in brief time over an equal range of
scenes and motives.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Help me, pray,</said> she said, at last, in the same low voice as before.
<said who="#D">Tell me what I can do.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">What do you think of foreign travel?  You have been lately in Rome, I
think.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> The memories which made this resource utterly hopeless were a new
current that shook Dorothea out of her pallid immobility. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Oh, that would not do—that would be worse than anything,</said> she said
with a more childlike despondency, while the tears rolled down.
<said>Nothing will be of any use that he does not enjoy.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I wish that I could have spared you this pain,</said> said Lydgate, deeply
touched, yet wondering about her marriage.  Women just like Dorothea
had not entered into his traditions.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">It was right of you to tell me.  I thank you for telling me the truth.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I wish you to understand that I shall not say anything to enlighten
Mr. Casaubon himself.  I think it desirable for him to know nothing
more than that he must not overwork himself, and must observe certain
rules.  Anxiety of any kind would be precisely the most unfavorable
condition for him.</said>
</P>

<P>
Lydgate rose, and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time,
unclasping her cloak and throwing it off as if it stifled her.  He was
bowing and quitting her, when an impulse which if she had been alone
would have turned into a prayer, made her say with a sob in her voice—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Oh, you are a wise man, are you not?  You know all about life and
death.  Advise me.  Think what I can do.  He has been laboring all his
life and looking forward.  He minds about nothing else.—  And I mind
about nothing else—</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false">For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by
this involuntary appeal—this cry from soul to soul, without other
consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same
embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully illuminated life.  But
what could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon again
to-morrow? </said>
</P>

<P>
When he was gone, Dorothea's tears gushed forth, and relieved her
stifling oppression.  Then she dried her eyes, reminded that her
distress must not be betrayed to her husband; and looked round the room
thinking that she must order the servant to attend to it as usual,
since Mr. Casaubon might now at any moment wish to enter.  On his
writing-table there were letters which had lain untouched since the
morning when he was taken ill, and among them, as Dorothea well
remembered, there were young Ladislaw's letters, the one addressed to
her still unopened. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> The associations of these letters had been made
the more painful by that sudden attack of illness which she felt that
the agitation caused by her anger might have helped to bring on: it
would be time enough to read them when they were again thrust upon her,
and she had had no inclination to fetch them from the library.  But now
it occurred to her that they should be put out of her husband's sight:
whatever might have been the sources of his annoyance about them, he
must, if possible, not be annoyed again; and she ran her eyes first
over the letter addressed to him to assure herself whether or not it
would be necessary to write in order to hinder the offensive visit. </said>
</P>

<P>
Will wrote from Rome, and began by saying that his obligations to Mr.
Casaubon were too deep for all thanks not to seem impertinent. It was
plain that if he were not grateful, he must be the poorest-spirited
rascal who had ever found a generous friend. </said> To expand in wordy thanks
would be like saying, <said>I am honest.</said> But Will had come to perceive that
his defects—defects which Mr. Casaubon had himself often pointed
to—needed for their correction that more strenuous position which his
relative's generosity had hitherto prevented from being inevitable.  He
trusted that he should make the best return, if return were possible,
by showing the effectiveness of the education for which he was
indebted, and by ceasing in future to need any diversion towards
himself of funds on which others might have a better claim.  He was
coming to England, to try his fortune, as many other young men were
obliged to do whose only capital was in their brains.  His friend
Naumann had desired him to take charge of the "Dispute"—the picture
painted for Mr. Casaubon, with whose permission, and Mrs. Casaubon's,
Will would convey it to Lowick in person.  A letter addressed to the
Poste Restante in Paris within the fortnight would hinder him, if
necessary, from arriving at an inconvenient moment.  He enclosed a
letter to Mrs. Casaubon in which he continued a discussion about art,
begun with her in Rome.
</P>

<P>
Opening her own letter Dorothea saw that it was a lively continuation
of his remonstrance with her fanatical sympathy and her want of sturdy
neutral delight in things as they were—an outpouring of his young
vivacity which it was impossible to read just now. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> She had immediately
to consider what was to be done about the other letter: there was still
time perhaps to prevent Will from coming to Lowick. </said> Dorothea ended by
giving the letter to her uncle, who was still in the house, and begging
him to let Will know that Mr. Casaubon had been ill, and that his
health would not allow the reception of any visitors.
</P>

<P>
No one more ready than Mr. Brooke to write a letter: his only
difficulty was to write a short one, and his ideas in this case
expanded over the three large pages and the inward foldings.  He had
simply said to Dorothea—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB"> To be sure, I will write, my dear.  He's a very clever young
fellow—this young Ladislaw—I dare say will be a rising young man.
It's a good letter—marks his sense of things, you know.  However, I
will tell him about Casaubon.</said>
</P>

<P>
But the end of Mr. Brooke's pen was a thinking organ, evolving
sentences, especially of a benevolent kind, before the rest of his mind
could well overtake them. <said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> It expressed regrets and proposed remedies,
which, when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously
worded—surprisingly the right thing, and determined a sequel which he
had never before thought of. In this case, his pen found it such a pity
young Ladislaw should not have come into the neighborhood just at
that time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance more
fully, and that they might go over the long-neglected Italian drawings
together—it also felt such an interest in a young man who was starting
in life with a stock of ideas—that by the end of the second page it
had persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite young Ladislaw, since he could not
be received at Lowick, to come to Tipton Grange.  Why not?  They could
find a great many things to do together, and this was a period of
peculiar growth—the political horizon was expanding, and—in short,
Mr. Brooke's pen went off into a little speech which it had lately
reported for that imperfectly edited organ the "Middlemarch Pioneer".
While Mr. Brooke was sealing this letter, he felt elated with an influx
of dim projects:—a young man capable of putting ideas into form, the "Pioneer" purchased to clear the pathway for a new candidate, documents
utilized—who knew what might come of it all?  Since Celia was going to
marry immediately, it would be very pleasant to have a young fellow at
table with him, at least for a time. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> But he went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into the
letter, for she was engaged with her husband, and—in fact, these
things were of no importance to her. </said>
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="31"><head>CHAPTER XXXI.</head>

<epigraph>
        How will you know the pitch of that great bell
        Too large for you to stir?  Let but a flute
        Play 'neath the fine-mixed metal: listen close
        Till the right note flows forth, a silvery rill:
        Then shall the huge bell tremble—then the mass
        With myriad waves concurrent shall respond
        In low soft unison.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
Lydgate that evening spoke to Miss Vincy of Mrs. Casaubon, and laid
some emphasis on the strong feeling she appeared to have for that
formal studious man thirty years older than herself.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Of course she is devoted to her husband,</said> said Rosamond, implying a
notion of necessary sequence which the scientific man regarded as the
prettiest possible for a woman; but she was thinking at the same time
that it was not so very melancholy to be mistress of Lowick Manor with
a husband likely to die soon.  <said who="#R">Do you think her very handsome?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">She certainly is handsome, but I have not thought about it,</said> said
Lydgate.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I suppose it would be unprofessional,</said> said Rosamond, dimpling.  <said who="#Lyd">But
how your practice is spreading!  You were called in before to the
Chettams, I think; and now, the Casaubons.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Yes,</said> said Lydgate, in a tone of compulsory admission.  <said who="#R">But I don't
really like attending such people so well as the poor.  The cases are
more monotonous, and one has to go through more fuss and listen more
deferentially to nonsense.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Not more than in Middlemarch,</said> said Rosamond.  <said who="#R">And at least you go
through wide corridors and have the scent of rose-leaves everywhere.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">That is true, Mademoiselle de Montmorenci,</said> said Lydgate, just bending
his head to the table and lifting with his fourth finger her delicate
handkerchief which lay at the mouth of her reticule, as if to enjoy its
scent, while he looked at her with a smile.
</P>

<P>
But this agreeable holiday freedom with which Lydgate hovered about the
flower of Middlemarch, could not continue indefinitely.  It was not
more possible to find social isolation in that town than elsewhere, and
two people persistently flirting could by no means escape from <said>the
various entanglements, weights, blows, clashings, motions, by which
things severally go on.</said> Whatever Miss Vincy did must be remarked, and
she was perhaps the more conspicuous to admirers and critics because
just now Mrs. Vincy, after some struggle, had gone with Fred to stay a
little while at Stone Court, there being no other way of at once
gratifying old Featherstone and keeping watch against Mary Garth, who
appeared a less tolerable daughter-in-law in proportion as Fred's
illness disappeared.
</P>

<P>
Aunt Bulstrode, for example, came a little oftener into Lowick Gate to
see Rosamond, now she was alone.  For Mrs. Bulstrode had a true
sisterly feeling for her brother; always thinking that he might have
married better, but wishing well to the children.  Now Mrs. Bulstrode
had a long-standing intimacy with Mrs. Plymdale.  They had nearly the
same preferences in silks, patterns for underclothing, china-ware, and
clergymen; they confided their little troubles of health and household
management to each other, and various little points of superiority on
Mrs. Bulstrode's side, namely, more decided seriousness, more
admiration for mind, and a house outside the town, sometimes served to
give color to their conversation without dividing them—well-meaning
women both, knowing very little of their own motives.
</P>

<P>
Mrs. Bulstrode, paying a morning visit to Mrs. Plymdale, happened to
say that she could not stay longer, because she was going to see poor
Rosamond.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">Why do you say 'poor Rosamond'?</said> said Mrs. Plymdale, a round-eyed
sharp little woman, like a tamed falcon.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">She is so pretty, and has been brought up in such thoughtlessness.
The mother, you know, had always that levity about her, which makes me
anxious for the children.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">Well, Harriet, if I am to speak my mind,</said> said Mrs. Plymdale, with
emphasis, <said who="#MrsPlymdale">I must say, anybody would suppose you and Mr. Bulstrode
would be delighted with what has happened, for you have done everything
to put Mr. Lydgate forward.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Selina, what do you mean?</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode, in genuine surprise.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">Not but what I am truly thankful for Ned's sake,</said> said Mrs. Plymdale.
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">He could certainly better afford to keep such a wife than some people
can; but I should wish him to look elsewhere.  Still a mother has
anxieties, and some young men would take to a bad life in consequence.
Besides, if I was obliged to speak, I should say I was not fond of
strangers coming into a town.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">I don't know, Selina,</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode, with a little emphasis in
her turn.  <said who="#MrsB">Mr. Bulstrode was a stranger here at one time.  Abraham and
Moses were strangers in the land, and we are told to entertain
strangers.  And especially,</said> she added, after a slight pause, <said who="#MrsB">when
they are unexceptionable.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">I was not speaking in a religious sense, Harriet.  I spoke as a
mother.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Selina, I am sure you have never heard me say anything against a niece
of mine marrying your son.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">Oh, it is pride in Miss Vincy—I am sure it is nothing else,</said> said
Mrs. Plymdale, who had never before given all her confidence to
<said>Harriet</said> on this subject.  <said who="#MrsPlymdale"> No young man in Middlemarch was good
enough for her: I have heard her mother say as much.  That is not a
Christian spirit, I think.  But now, from all I hear, she has found a
man as proud as herself.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">You don't mean that there is anything between Rosamond and Mr.
Lydgate?</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode, rather mortified at finding out her own
ignorance.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">Is it possible you don't know, Harriet?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Oh, I go about so little; and I am not fond of gossip; I really never
hear any.  You see so many people that I don't see.  Your circle is
rather different from ours.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">Well, but your own niece and Mr. Bulstrode's great favorite—and
yours too, I am sure, Harriet!  I thought, at one time, you meant him
for Kate, when she is a little older.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">I don't believe there can be anything serious at present,</said> said Mrs.
Bulstrode.  <said who="#MrsB">My brother would certainly have told me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsPlymdale">Well, people have different ways, but I understand that nobody can see
Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate together without taking them to be engaged.
However, it is not my business.  Shall I put up the pattern of mittens?</said>
</P>

<P>
After this Mrs. Bulstrode drove to her niece with a mind newly
weighted. <said who="#MrsB" direct="false" aloud="false"> She was herself handsomely dressed, but she noticed with a
little more regret than usual that Rosamond, who was just come in and
met her in walking-dress, was almost as expensively equipped.</said> Mrs.
Bulstrode was a feminine smaller edition of her brother, and had none
of her husband's low-toned pallor.  She had a good honest glance and
used no circumlocution.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">You are alone, I see, my dear,</said> she said, as they entered the
drawing-room together, looking round gravely.  Rosamond felt sure that
her aunt had something particular to say, and they sat down near each
other. <said who="#MrsB" direct="false" aloud="false"> Nevertheless, the quilling inside Rosamond's bonnet was so
charming that it was impossible not to desire the same kind of thing
for Kate, and Mrs. Bulstrode's eyes, which were rather fine, rolled
round that ample quilled circuit, while she spoke. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">I have just heard something about you that has surprised me very much,
Rosamond.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">What is that, aunt?</said>  Rosamond's eyes also were roaming over her
aunt's large embroidered collar.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">I can hardly believe it—that you should be engaged without my knowing
it—without your father's telling me.</said>  Here Mrs. Bulstrode's eyes
finally rested on Rosamond's, who blushed deeply, and said—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I am not engaged, aunt.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">How is it that every one says so, then—that it is the town's talk?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">The town's talk is of very little consequence, I think,</said> said
Rosamond, inwardly gratified.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Oh, my dear, be more thoughtful; don't despise your neighbors so.
Remember you are turned twenty-two now, and you will have no fortune:
your father, I am sure, will not be able to spare you anything.  Mr.
Lydgate is very intellectual and clever; I know there is an attraction
in that.  I like talking to such men myself; and your uncle finds him
very useful.  But the profession is a poor one here.  To be sure, this
life is not everything; but it is seldom a medical man has true
religious views—there is too much pride of intellect.  And you are not
fit to marry a poor man. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R"> Mr. Lydgate is not a poor man, aunt.  He has very high connections.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">He told me himself he was poor.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">That is because he is used to people who have a high style of living.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">My dear Rosamond, <I>you</emph> must not think of living in high style.</said>
</P>

<P>
Rosamond looked down and played with her reticule. <said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false">  She was not a fiery
young lady and had no sharp answers, but she meant to live as she
pleased. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Then it is really true?</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking very earnestly
at her niece.  <said who="#MrsB">You are thinking of Mr. Lydgate—there is some
understanding between you, though your father doesn't know.  Be open,
my dear Rosamond: Mr. Lydgate has really made you an offer?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> Poor Rosamond's feelings were very unpleasant.  She had been quite easy
as to Lydgate's feeling and intention, but now when her aunt put this
question she did not like being unable to say Yes. </said> Her pride was hurt,
but her habitual control of manner helped her.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Pray excuse me, aunt.  I would rather not speak on the subject.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">You would not give your heart to a man without a decided prospect, I
trust, my dear.  And think of the two excellent offers I know of that
you have refused!—and one still within your reach, if you will not
throw it away.  I knew a very great beauty who married badly at last,
by doing so.  Mr. Ned Plymdale is a nice young man—some might think
good-looking; and an only son; and a large business of that kind is
better than a profession.  Not that marrying is everything. I would
have you seek first the kingdom of God.  But a girl should keep her
heart within her own power.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I should never give it to Mr. Ned Plymdale, if it were.  I have
already refused him.  If I loved, I should love at once and without
change,</said> said Rosamond, with a great sense of being a romantic heroine,
and playing the part prettily.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB"> I see how it is, my dear,</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode, in a melancholy voice,
rising to go.  <said who="#MrsB">You have allowed your affections to be engaged without
return.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">No, indeed, aunt,</said> said Rosamond, with emphasis.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Then you are quite confident that Mr. Lydgate has a serious attachment
to you?</said>
</P>

<P>
Rosamond's cheeks by this time were persistently burning, and she felt
much mortification.  She chose to be silent, and her aunt went away all
the more convinced.
</P>

<P>
Mr. Bulstrode in things worldly and indifferent was disposed to do what
his wife bade him, and she now, without telling her reasons, desired
him on the next opportunity to find out in conversation with Mr.
Lydgate whether he had any intention of marrying soon.  The result was
a decided negative.  Mr. Bulstrode, on being cross-questioned, showed
that Lydgate had spoken as no man would who had any attachment that
could issue in matrimony. <said who="#MrsB" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mrs. Bulstrode now felt that she had a
serious duty before her, and she soon managed to arrange a <i>tete-a-tete</i>
with Lydgate, in which she passed from inquiries about Fred Vincy's
health, and expressions of her sincere anxiety for her brother's large
family, to general remarks on the dangers which lay before young people
with regard to their settlement in life.  Young men were often wild and
disappointing, making little return for the money spent on them, and a
girl was exposed to many circumstances which might interfere with her
prospects. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Especially when she has great attractions, and her parents see much
company,</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode. <said who="#MrsB">Gentlemen pay her attention, and engross
her all to themselves, for the mere pleasure of the moment, and that
drives off others.  I think it is a heavy responsibility, Mr. Lydgate,
to interfere with the prospects of any girl.</said> <said who="#MrsB" direct="false" aloud="false"> Here Mrs. Bulstrode fixed
her eyes on him, with an unmistakable purpose of warning, if not of
rebuke. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Clearly,</said> said Lydgate, looking at her—perhaps even staring a little
in return.  <said who="#Lyd">On the other hand, a man must be a great coxcomb to go
about with a notion that he must not pay attention to a young lady lest
she should fall in love with him, or lest others should think she must.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Oh, Mr. Lydgate, you know well what your advantages are.  You know
that our young men here cannot cope with you.  Where you frequent a
house it may militate very much against a girl's making a desirable
settlement in life, and prevent her from accepting offers even if they
are made.</said>
</P>

<P>
Lydgate was less flattered by his advantage over the Middlemarch
Orlandos than he was annoyed by the perception of Mrs. Bulstrode's
meaning.  She felt that she had spoken as impressively as it was
necessary to do, and that in using the superior word <said>militate</said> she had
thrown a noble drapery over a mass of particulars which were still
evident enough.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate was fuming a little, pushed his hair back with one hand, felt
curiously in his waistcoat-pocket with the other, and then stooped to
beckon the tiny black spaniel, which had the insight to decline his
hollow caresses.  It would not have been decent to go away, because he
had been dining with other guests, and had just taken tea. </said> But Mrs.
Bulstrode, having no doubt that she had been understood, turned the
conversation.
</P>

<P>
<first> Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore
palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes. </first>
The next day Mr. Farebrother, parting from Lydgate in the street,
supposed that they should meet at Vincy's in the evening. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate
answered curtly, no—he had work to do—he must give up going out in
the evening. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">What! you are going to get lashed to the mast, eh, and are stopping
your ears?</said> said the Vicar.  <said who="#FB">Well, if you don't mean to be won by the
sirens, you are right to take precautions in time.</said>
</P>

<P>
A few days before, Lydgate would have taken no notice of these words as
anything more than the Vicar's usual way of putting things. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> They
seemed now to convey an innuendo which confirmed the impression that he
had been making a fool of himself and behaving so as to be
misunderstood: not, he believed, by Rosamond herself; she, he felt
sure, took everything as lightly as he intended it.  She had an
exquisite tact and insight in relation to all points of manners; but
the people she lived among were blunderers and busybodies.  However,
the mistake should go no farther. </said> He resolved—and kept his
resolution—that he would not go to Mr. Vincy's except on business.
</P>

<P>
Rosamond became very unhappy.  The uneasiness first stirred by her
aunt's questions grew and grew till at the end of ten days that she had
not seen Lydgate, it grew into terror at the blank that might possibly
come—into foreboding of that ready, fatal sponge which so cheaply
wipes out the hopes of mortals.  The world would have a new dreariness
for her, as a wilderness that a magician's spells had turned for a
little while into a garden.  She felt that she was beginning to know
the pang of disappointed love, and that no other man could be the
occasion of such delightful aerial building as she had been enjoying
for the last six months.  Poor Rosamond lost her appetite and felt as
forlorn as Ariadne—as a charming stage Ariadne left behind with all
her boxes full of costumes and no hope of a coach.
</P>

<P>
There are many wonderful mixtures in the world which are all alike
called love, and claim the privileges of a sublime rage which is an
apology for everything (in literature and the drama).  Happily Rosamond
did not think of committing any desperate act: she plaited her fair
hair as beautifully as usual, and kept herself proudly calm. <said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> Her most
cheerful supposition was that her aunt Bulstrode had interfered in some
way to hinder Lydgate's visits: everything was better than a
spontaneous indifference in him. </said> Any one who imagines ten days too
short a time—not for falling into leanness, lightness, or other
measurable effects of passion, but—for the whole spiritual circuit of
alarmed conjecture and disappointment, is ignorant of what can go on in
the elegant leisure of a young lady's mind.
</P>

<P>
On the eleventh day, however, Lydgate when leaving Stone Court was
requested by Mrs. Vincy to let her husband know that there was a marked
change in Mr. Featherstone's health, and that she wished him to come to
Stone Court on that day.  Now Lydgate might have called at the
warehouse, or might have written a message on a leaf of his pocket-book
and left it at the door. <first> Yet these simple devices apparently did not
occur to him, from which we may conclude that he had no strong
objection to calling at the house at an hour when Mr. Vincy was not at
home, and leaving the message with Miss Vincy. </first> A man may, from various
motives, decline to give his company, but perhaps not even a sage would
be gratified that nobody missed him. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> It would be a graceful, easy way
of piecing on the new habits to the old, to have a few playful words
with Rosamond about his resistance to dissipation, and his firm resolve
to take long fasts even from sweet sounds.  It must be confessed, also,
that momentary speculations as to all the possible grounds for Mrs.
Bulstrode's hints had managed to get woven like slight clinging hairs
into the more substantial web of his thoughts. </said>
</P>

<P>
Miss Vincy was alone, and blushed so deeply when Lydgate came in that
he felt a corresponding embarrassment, and instead of any playfulness,
he began at once to speak of his reason for calling, and to beg her,
almost formally, to deliver the message to her father.  Rosamond, who
at the first moment felt as if her happiness were returning, was keenly
hurt by Lydgate's manner; her blush had departed, and she assented
coldly, without adding an unnecessary word, some trivial chain-work
which she had in her hands enabling her to avoid looking at Lydgate
higher than his chin.  In all failures, the beginning is certainly the
half of the whole.  After sitting two long moments while he moved his
whip and could say nothing, Lydgate rose to go, and Rosamond, made
nervous by her struggle between mortification and the wish not to
betray it, dropped her chain as if startled, and rose too,
mechanically.  Lydgate instantaneously stooped to pick up the chain.
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> When he rose he was very near to a lovely little face set on a fair
long neck which he had been used to see turning about under the most
perfect management of self-contented grace. </said> But as he raised his eyes
now he saw a certain helpless quivering which touched him quite newly,
and made him look at Rosamond with a questioning flash. <said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> At this moment
she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old:
she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do
anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let
them fall over her cheeks, even as they would. </said>
</P>

<P>
That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it
shook flirtation into love.  Remember that the ambitious man who was
looking at those Forget-me-nots under the water was very warm-hearted
and rash.  He did not know where the chain went; an idea had thrilled
through the recesses within him which had a miraculous effect in
raising the power of passionate love lying buried there in no sealed
sepulchre, but under the lightest, easily pierced mould.  His words
were quite abrupt and awkward; but the tone made them sound like an
ardent, appealing avowal.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">What is the matter? you are distressed.  Tell me, pray.</said>
</P>

<P>
Rosamond had never been spoken to in such tones before. <first> I am not sure
that she knew what the words were: but she looked at Lydgate and the
tears fell over her cheeks. </first> There could have been no more complete
answer than that silence, and Lydgate, forgetting everything else,
completely mastered by the outrush of tenderness at the sudden belief
that this sweet young creature depended on him for her joy, actually
put his arms round her, folding her gently and protectingly—he was
used to being gentle with the weak and suffering—and kissed each of
the two large tears.  This was a strange way of arriving at an
understanding, but it was a short way.  Rosamond was not angry, but she
moved backward a little in timid happiness, and Lydgate could now sit
near her and speak less incompletely.  Rosamond had to make her little
confession, and he poured out words of gratitude and tenderness with
impulsive lavishment.  In half an hour he left the house an engaged
man, whose soul was not his own, but the woman's to whom he had bound
himself.
</P>

<P>
He came again in the evening to speak with Mr. Vincy, who, just
returned from Stone Court, was feeling sure that it would not be long
before he heard of Mr. Featherstone's demise.  The felicitous word
<said>demise,</said> which had seasonably occurred to him, had raised his spirits
even above their usual evening pitch. <first> The right word is always a
power, and communicates its definiteness to our action. </first> <said who="#MrV" direct="false" aloud="false"> Considered as
a demise, old Featherstone's death assumed a merely legal aspect, so
that Mr. Vincy could tap his snuff-box over it and be jovial, without
even an intermittent affectation of solemnity; and Mr. Vincy hated both
solemnity and affectation.  Who was ever awe struck about a testator,
or sang a hymn on the title to real property?  Mr. Vincy was inclined
to take a jovial view of all things that evening: he even observed to
Lydgate that Fred had got the family constitution after all, and would
soon be as fine a fellow as ever again; and when his approbation of
Rosamond's engagement was asked for, he gave it with astonishing
facility, passing at once to general remarks on the desirableness of
matrimony for young men and maidens, and apparently deducing from the
whole the appropriateness of a little more punch. </said>
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="32"><head>CHAPTER XXXII.</head>

<epigraph>
        <said>They'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk.</said>
                                    —SHAKESPEARE: Tempest.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
The triumphant confidence of the Mayor founded on Mr. Featherstone's
insistent demand that Fred and his mother should not leave him, was a
feeble emotion compared with all that was agitating the breasts of the
old man's blood-relations, who naturally manifested more their sense of
the family tie and were more visibly numerous now that he had become
bedridden.  Naturally: for when <said>poor Peter</said> had occupied his arm-chair
in the wainscoted parlor, no assiduous beetles for whom the cook
prepares boiling water could have been less welcome on a hearth which
they had reasons for preferring, than those persons whose Featherstone
blood was ill-nourished, not from penuriousness on their part, but from
poverty. <said who="#Solomon" direct="false" aloud="false"> Brother Solomon and Sister Jane were rich, and the family
candor and total abstinence from false politeness with which they were
always received seemed to them no argument that their brother in the
solemn act of making his will would overlook the superior claims of
wealth.  Themselves at least he had never been unnatural enough to
banish from his house, and it seemed hardly eccentric that he should
have kept away Brother Jonah, Sister Martha, and the rest, who had no
shadow of such claims. </said> They knew Peter's maxim, that money was a good
egg, and should be laid in a warm nest.
</P>

<P>
But Brother Jonah, Sister Martha, and all the needy exiles, held a
different point of view. <second> Probabilities are as various as the faces to
be seen at will in fretwork or paper-hangings: every form is there,
from Jupiter to Judy, if you only look with creative inclination. </second> To
the poorer and least favored it seemed likely that since Peter had done
nothing for them in his life, he would remember them at the last.
Jonah argued that men liked to make a surprise of their wills, while
Martha said that nobody need be surprised if he left the best part of
his money to those who least expected it. <said who="#Martha" direct="false" aloud="false"> Also it was not to be
thought but that an own brother <said who="#Martha">lying there</said> with dropsy in his legs
must come to feel that blood was thicker than water, and if he didn't
alter his will, he might have money by him. At any rate some
blood-relations should be on the premises and on the watch against
those who were hardly relations at all.  Such things had been known as
forged wills and disputed wills, which seemed to have the golden-hazy
advantage of somehow enabling non-legatees to live out of them.  Again,
those who were no blood-relations might be caught making away with
things—and poor Peter <said>lying there</said> helpless!  Somebody should be on
the watch. </said> But in this conclusion they were at one with Solomon and
Jane; also, some nephews, nieces, and cousins, arguing with still
greater subtilty as to what might be done by a man able to <said>will away</said>
his property and give himself large treats of oddity, felt in a
handsome sort of way that there was a family interest to be attended
to, and thought of Stone Court as a place which it would be nothing but
right for them to visit. <said who="#Martha" direct="false" aloud="false"> Sister Martha, otherwise Mrs. Cranch, living
with some wheeziness in the Chalky Flats, could not undertake the
journey; but her son, as being poor Peter's own nephew, could represent
her advantageously, and watch lest his uncle Jonah should make an
unfair use of the improbable things which seemed likely to happen. </said> In
fact there was a general sense running in the Featherstone blood that
everybody must watch everybody else, and that it would be well for
everybody else to reflect that the Almighty was watching him.
</P>

<P>
Thus Stone Court continually saw one or other blood-relation alighting
or departing, and Mary Garth had the unpleasant task of carrying their
messages to Mr. Featherstone, who would see none of them, and sent her
down with the still more unpleasant task of telling them so.  As
manager of the household she felt bound to ask them in good provincial
fashion to stay and eat; but she chose to consult Mrs. Vincy on the
point of extra down-stairs consumption now that Mr. Featherstone was
laid up.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Oh, my dear, you must do things handsomely where there's last illness
and a property.  God knows, I don't grudge them every ham in the
house—only, save the best for the funeral.  Have some stuffed veal
always, and a fine cheese in cut.  You must expect to keep open house
in these last illnesses,</said> said liberal Mrs. Vincy, once more of
cheerful note and bright plumage.
</P>

<P>
But some of the visitors alighted and did not depart after the handsome
treating to veal and ham. <first> Brother Jonah, for example (there are such
unpleasant people in most families; perhaps even in the highest
aristocracy there are Brobdingnag specimens, gigantically in debt and
bloated at greater expense)— Brother Jonah, I say, having come down in
the world, was mainly supported by a calling which he was modest enough
not to boast of, though it was much better than swindling either on
exchange or turf, but which did not require his presence at Brassing so
long as he had a good corner to sit in and a supply of food. </first> He chose
the kitchen-corner, partly because he liked it best, and partly because
he did not want to sit with Solomon, concerning whom he had a strong
brotherly opinion.  Seated in a famous arm-chair and in his best suit,
constantly within sight of good cheer, he had a comfortable
consciousness of being on the premises, mingled with fleeting
suggestions of Sunday and the bar at the Green Man; and <said who="#Jonah" direct="false" aloud="false"> he informed
Mary Garth that he should not go out of reach of his brother Peter
while that poor fellow was above ground.  The troublesome ones in a
family are usually either the wits or the idiots. </said> Jonah was the wit
among the Featherstones, and joked with the maid-servants when they
came about the hearth, but seemed to consider Miss Garth a suspicious
character, and followed her with cold eyes.
</P>

<P>
Mary would have borne this one pair of eyes with comparative ease, but
unfortunately there was young Cranch, who, having come all the way from
the Chalky Flats to represent his mother and watch his uncle Jonah,
also felt it his duty to stay and to sit chiefly in the kitchen to give
his uncle company. Young Cranch was not exactly the balancing point
between the wit and the idiot,—verging slightly towards the latter
type, and squinting so as to leave everything in doubt about his
sentiments except that they were not of a forcible character.  When
Mary Garth entered the kitchen and Mr. Jonah Featherstone began to
follow her with his cold detective eyes, young Cranch turning his head
in the same direction seemed to insist on it that she should remark how
he was squinting, as if he did it with design, like the gypsies when
Borrow read the New Testament to them.  This was rather too much for
poor Mary; sometimes it made her bilious, sometimes it upset her
gravity.  One day that she had an opportunity she could not resist
describing the kitchen scene to Fred, who would not be hindered from
immediately going to see it, affecting simply to pass through.  But no
sooner did he face the four eyes than he had to rush through the
nearest door which happened to lead to the dairy, and there under the
high roof and among the pans he gave way to laughter which made a
hollow resonance perfectly audible in the kitchen.  He fled by another
doorway, but Mr. Jonah, who had not before seen Fred's white
complexion, long legs, and pinched delicacy of face, prepared many
sarcasms in which these points of appearance were wittily combined with
the lowest moral attributes.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrJonah">Why, Tom, <I>you</emph> don't wear such gentlemanly trousers—you haven't got
half such fine long legs,</said> said Jonah to his nephew, winking at the
same time, to imply that there was something more in these statements
than their undeniableness. <said who="#Tom" direct="false" aloud="false">  Tom looked at his legs, but left it
uncertain whether he preferred his moral advantages to a more vicious
length of limb and reprehensible gentility of trouser. </said>
</P>

<P>
In the large wainscoted parlor too there were constantly pairs of eyes
on the watch, and own relatives eager to be <said>sitters-up.</said> Many came,
lunched, and departed, but <said who="#Solomon" direct="false" aloud="false"> Brother Solomon and the lady who had been
Jane Featherstone for twenty-five years before she was Mrs. Waule found
it good to be there every day for hours, without other calculable
occupation than that of observing the cunning Mary Garth (who was so
deep that she could be found out in nothing) and giving occasional dry
wrinkly indications of crying—as if capable of torrents in a wetter
season—at the thought that they were not allowed to go into Mr.
Featherstone's room. </said>  For the old man's dislike of his own family
seemed to get stronger as he got less able to amuse himself by saying
biting things to them.  Too languid to sting, he had the more venom
refluent in his blood.
</P>

<P>
Not fully believing the message sent through Mary Garth, they had
presented themselves together within the door of the bedroom, both in
black—Mrs. Waule having a white handkerchief partially unfolded in her
hand—and both with faces in a sort of half-mourning purple; while Mrs.
Vincy with her pink cheeks and pink ribbons flying was actually
administering a cordial to their own brother, and the
light-complexioned Fred, his short hair curling as might be expected in
a gambler's, was lolling at his ease in a large chair.
</P>

<P>
Old Featherstone no sooner caught sight of these funereal figures
appearing in spite of his orders than rage came to strengthen him more
successfully than the cordial.  He was propped up on a bed-rest, and
always had his gold-headed stick lying by him.  He seized it now and
swept it backwards and forwards in as large an area as he could,
apparently to ban these ugly spectres, crying in a hoarse sort of
screech—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">Back, back, Mrs. Waule!  Back, Solomon!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">Oh, Brother.  Peter,</said> Mrs. Waule began—but Solomon put his hand
before her repressingly.  He was a large-cheeked man, nearly seventy,
with small furtive eyes, and was not only of much blander temper but
thought himself much deeper than his brother Peter; indeed not likely
to be deceived in any of his fellow-men, inasmuch as they could not
well be more greedy and deceitful than he suspected them of being.
Even the invisible powers, he thought, were likely to be soothed by a
bland parenthesis here and there—coming from a man of property, who
might have been as impious as others.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">Brother Peter,</said> he said, in a wheedling yet gravely official tone,
<said>It's nothing but right I should speak to you about the Three Crofts
and the Manganese.  The Almighty knows what I've got on my mind—</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">Then he knows more than I want to know,</said> said Peter, laying down his
stick with a show of truce which had a threat in it too, for he
reversed the stick so as to make the gold handle a club in case of
closer fighting, and looked hard at Solomon's bald head.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">There's things you might repent of, Brother, for want of speaking to
me,</said> said Solomon, not advancing, however.  <said who="#Solomon">I could sit up with you
to-night, and Jane with me, willingly, and you might take your own time
to speak, or let me speak.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">Yes, I shall take my own time—you needn't offer me yours,</said> said Peter.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">But you can't take your own time to die in, Brother,</said> began Mrs.
Waule, with her usual woolly tone.  <said who="#MrsWaule">And when you lie speechless you
may be tired of having strangers about you, and you may think of me and
my children"—but here her voice broke under the touching thought which
she was attributing to her speechless brother; the mention of ourselves
being naturally affecting.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF"> No, I shan't,</said> said old Featherstone, contradictiously.  <said who="#MrF">I shan't
think of any of you.  I've made my will, I tell you, I've made my
will.</said>  Here he turned his head towards Mrs. Vincy, and swallowed some
more of his cordial.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">Some people would be ashamed to fill up a place belonging by rights to
others,</said> said Mrs. Waule, turning her narrow eyes in the same direction.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">Oh, sister,</said> said Solomon, with ironical softness, <said who="#Solomon">you and me are not
fine, and handsome, and clever enough: we must be humble and let smart
people push themselves before us.</said>
</P>

<P>
Fred's spirit could not bear this: rising and looking at Mr.
Featherstone, he said, <said who="#MrF">Shall my mother and I leave the room, sir, that
you may be alone with your friends?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">Sit down, I tell you,</said> said old Featherstone, snappishly.  <said who="#MrF">Stop where
you are.  Good-by, Solomon,</said> he added, trying to wield his stick again,
but failing now that he had reversed the handle.  <said who="#MrF">Good-by, Mrs. Waule.
Don't you come again.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">I shall be down-stairs, Brother, whether or no,</said> said Solomon.  <said who="#Solomon">I
shall do my duty, and it remains to be seen what the Almighty will
allow.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">Yes, in property going out of families,</said> said Mrs. Waule, in
continuation,—<said who="#MrsWaule"> and where there's steady young men to carry on.  But I
pity them who are not such, and I pity their mothers.  Good-by, Brother
Peter."
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">Remember, I'm the eldest after you, Brother, and prospered from the
first, just as you did, and have got land already by the name of
Featherstone,</said> said Solomon, relying much on that reflection, as one
which might be suggested in the watches of the night.  <said who="#Solomon">But I bid you
good-by for the present.</said>
</P>

<P>
Their exit was hastened by their seeing old Mr. Featherstone pull his
wig on each side and shut his eyes with his mouth-widening grimace, as
if he were determined to be deaf and blind.
</P>

<P>
None the less they came to Stone Court daily and sat below at the post
of duty, sometimes carrying on a slow dialogue in an undertone in which
the observation and response were so far apart, that any one hearing
them might have imagined himself listening to speaking automata, in
some doubt whether the ingenious mechanism would really work, or wind
itself up for a long time in order to stick and be silent.  Solomon and
Jane would have been sorry to be quick: what that led to might be seen
on the other side of the wall in the person of Brother Jonah.
</P>

<P>
But their watch in the wainscoted parlor was sometimes varied by the
presence of other guests from far or near.  Now that Peter Featherstone
was up-stairs, his property could be discussed with all that local
enlightenment to be found on the spot: some rural and Middlemarch
neighbors expressed much agreement with the family and sympathy with
their interest against the Vincys, and feminine visitors were even
moved to tears, in conversation with Mrs. Waule, when they recalled the
fact that they themselves had been disappointed in times past by
codicils and marriages for spite on the part of ungrateful elderly
gentlemen, who, it might have been supposed, had been spared for
something better.  Such conversation paused suddenly, like an organ
when the bellows are let drop, if Mary Garth came into the room; and
all eyes were turned on her as a possible legatee, or one who might get
access to iron chests.
</P>

<P>
But the younger men who were relatives or connections of the family,
were disposed to admire her in this problematic light, as a girl who
showed much conduct, and who among all the chances that were flying
might turn out to be at least a moderate prize.  Hence she had her
share of compliments and polite attentions.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull" direct="false" aloud="false"> Especially from Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, a distinguished bachelor and
auctioneer of those parts, much concerned in the sale of land and
cattle: a public character, indeed, whose name was seen on widely
distributed placards, and who might reasonably be sorry for those who
did not know of him. </said>  He was second cousin to Peter Featherstone, and
had been treated by him with more amenity than any other relative,
being useful in matters of business; and in that programme of his
funeral which the old man had himself dictated, he had been named as a
Bearer. <said who="#MrTrumbull" direct="false" aloud="false">  There was no odious cupidity in Mr. Borthrop Trumbull—nothing
more than a sincere sense of his own merit, which, he was aware, in
case of rivalry might tell against competitors; so that if Peter
Featherstone, who so far as he, Trumbull, was concerned, had
behaved like as good a soul as ever breathed, should have done anything
handsome by him, all he could say was, that he had never fished and
fawned, but had advised him to the best of his experience, which now
extended over twenty years from the time of his apprenticeship at
fifteen, and was likely to yield a knowledge of no surreptitious kind. </said>
His admiration was far from being confined to himself, but was
accustomed professionally as well as privately to delight in estimating
things at a high rate.  He was an amateur of superior phrases, and
never used poor language without immediately correcting himself—which
was fortunate, as he was rather loud, and given to predominate,
standing or walking about frequently, pulling down his waistcoat with
the air of a man who is very much of his own opinion, trimming himself
rapidly with his fore-finger, and marking each new series in these
movements by a busy play with his large seals.  There was occasionally
a little fierceness in his demeanor, but it was directed chiefly
against false opinion, of which there is so much to correct in the
world that a man of some reading and experience necessarily has his
patience tried.  He felt that the Featherstone family generally was of
limited understanding, but being a man of the world and a public
character, took everything as a matter of course, and even went to
converse with Mr. Jonah and young Cranch in the kitchen, not doubting
that he had impressed the latter greatly by his leading questions
concerning the Chalky Flats.  If anybody had observed that Mr. Borthrop
Trumbull, being an auctioneer, was bound to know the nature of
everything, he would have smiled and trimmed himself silently with the
sense that he came pretty near that.  On the whole, in an auctioneering
way, he was an honorable man, not ashamed of his business, and feeling
that <said>the celebrated Peel, now Sir Robert,</said> if introduced to him, would
not fail to recognize his importance.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">I don't mind if I have a slice of that ham, and a glass of that ale,
Miss Garth, if you will allow me,</said> he said, coming into the parlor at
half-past eleven, after having had the exceptional privilege of seeing
old Featherstone, and standing with his back to the fire between Mrs.
Waule and Solomon.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">It's not necessary for you to go out;—let me ring the bell.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Thank you,</said> said Mary, <said>I have an errand.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">Well, Mr. Trumbull, you're highly favored,</said> said Mrs. Waule.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">What! seeing the old man?</said> said the auctioneer, playing with his seals
dispassionately. <said who="#MrTrumbull">Ah, you see he has relied on me considerably.</said> Here
he pressed his lips together, and frowned meditatively.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">Might anybody ask what their brother has been saying?</said> said Solomon,
in a soft tone of humility, in which he had a sense of luxurious
cunning, he being a rich man and not in need of it.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">Oh yes, anybody may ask,</said> said Mr. Trumbull, with loud and
good-humored though cutting sarcasm.  <said who="#MrTrumbull">Anybody may interrogate.  Any
one may give their remarks an interrogative turn,</said> he continued, his
sonorousness rising with his style.  <said who="#MrTrumbull">This is constantly done by good
speakers, even when they anticipate no answer.  It is what we call a
figure of speech—speech at a high figure, as one may say.</said> The
eloquent auctioneer smiled at his own ingenuity.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">I shouldn't be sorry to hear he'd remembered you, Mr. Trumbull,</said> said
Solomon.  <said who="#Solomon">I never was against the deserving.  It's the undeserving I'm
against.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">Ah, there it is, you see, there it is,</said> said Mr. Trumbull,
significantly.  <said who="#MrTrumbull">It can't be denied that undeserving people have been
legatees, and even residuary legatees.  It is so, with testamentary
dispositions.</said>  Again he pursed up his lips and frowned a little.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">Do you mean to say for certain, Mr. Trumbull, that my brother has left
his land away from our family?</said> said Mrs. Waule, on whom, as an
unhopeful woman, those long words had a depressing effect.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">A man might as well turn his land into charity land at once as leave
it to some people,</said> observed Solomon, his sister's question having
drawn no answer.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">What, Blue-Coat land?</said> said Mrs. Waule, again.  <said who="#MrsWaule">Oh, Mr. Trumbull, you
never can mean to say that.  It would be flying in the face of the
Almighty that's prospered him.</said>
</P>

<P>
While Mrs. Waule was speaking, Mr. Borthrop Trumbull walked away from
the fireplace towards the window, patrolling with his fore-finger round
the inside of his stock, then along his whiskers and the curves of his
hair.  He now walked to Miss Garth's work-table, opened a book which
lay there and read the title aloud with pompous emphasis as if he were
offering it for sale:
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">'Anne of Geierstein' (pronounced Jeersteen) or the 'Maiden of the
Mist, by the author of Waverley.'</said>  Then turning the page, he began
sonorously—<said who="#MrTrumbull"> The course of four centuries has well-nigh elapsed since
the series of events which are related in the following chapters took
place on the Continent.</said>  <said who="#MrTrumbull" direct="false" aloud="false">  He pronounced the last truly admirable word
with the accent on the last syllable, not as unaware of vulgar usage,
but feeling that this novel delivery enhanced the sonorous beauty which
his reading had given to the whole. </said>
</P>

<P>
And now the servant came in with the tray, so that the moments for
answering Mrs. Waule's question had gone by safely, while she and
Solomon, watching Mr. Trumbull's movements, were thinking that high
learning interfered sadly with serious affairs.  Mr. Borthrop Trumbull
really knew nothing about old Featherstone's will; but he could hardly
have been brought to declare any ignorance unless he had been arrested
for misprision of treason.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">I shall take a mere mouthful of ham and a glass of ale,</said> he said,
reassuringly.  <said who="#MrTrumbull">As a man with public business, I take a snack when I
can.  I will back this ham,</said> he added, after swallowing some morsels
with alarming haste, <said who="#MrTrumbull">against any ham in the three kingdoms.  In my
opinion it is better than the hams at Freshitt Hall—and I think I am
a tolerable judge.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule"> Some don't like so much sugar in their hams,</said> said Mrs. Waule.  <said who="#MrsWaule">But
my poor brother would always have sugar.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">If any person demands better, he is at liberty to do so; but, God
bless me, what an aroma!  I should be glad to buy in that quality, I
know.  There is some gratification to a gentleman"—here Mr.
Trumbull's voice conveyed an emotional remonstrance—"in having this
kind of ham set on his table.</said>
</P>

<P>
He pushed aside his plate, poured out his glass of ale and drew his
chair a little forward, profiting by the occasion to look at the inner
side of his legs, which he stroked approvingly—Mr. Trumbull having
all those less frivolous airs and gestures which distinguish the
predominant races of the north.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">You have an interesting work there, I see, Miss Garth,</said> he observed,
when Mary re-entered. <said who="#MrTrumbull">It is by the author of 'Waverley': that is Sir
Walter Scott.  I have bought one of his works myself—a very nice
thing, a very superior publication, entitled 'Ivanhoe.' You will not
get any writer to beat him in a hurry, I think—he will not, in my
opinion, be speedily surpassed.  I have just been reading a portion at
the commencement of 'Anne of Jeersteen.' It commences well.</said>  (Things
never began with Mr. Borthrop Trumbull: they always commenced, both in
private life and on his handbills.) <said who="#MrTrumbull">You are a reader, I see.  Do you
subscribe to our Middlemarch library?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">No,</said> said Mary.  <said who="#M">Mr. Fred Vincy brought this book.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">I am a great bookman myself,</said> returned Mr. Trumbull.  <said who="#MrTrumbull">I have no less
than two hundred volumes in calf, and I flatter myself they are well
selected.  Also pictures by Murillo, Rubens, Teniers, Titian, Vandyck,
and others.  I shall be happy to lend you any work you like to mention,
Miss Garth.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I am much obliged,</said> said Mary, hastening away again, <said who="#M">but I have
little time for reading.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">I should say my brother has done something for <I>her</emph> in his will,</said>
said Mr. Solomon, in a very low undertone, when she had shut the door
behind her, pointing with his head towards the absent Mary.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">His first wife was a poor match for him, though,</said> said Mrs. Waule.
<said who="#MrsWaule">She brought him nothing: and this young woman is only her niece,—and
very proud.  And my brother has always paid her wage.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">A sensible girl though, in my opinion,</said> said Mr. Trumbull, finishing
his ale and starting up with an emphatic adjustment of his waistcoat.
<said who="#MrTrumbull">I have observed her when she has been mixing medicine in drops.  She
minds what she is doing, sir.  That is a great point in a woman, and a
great point for our friend up-stairs, poor dear old soul.  A man whose
life is of any value should think of his wife as a nurse: that is what
I should do, if I married; and I believe I have lived single long
enough not to make a mistake in that line.  Some men must marry to
elevate themselves a little, but when I am in need of that, I hope some
one will tell me so—I hope some individual will apprise me of the
fact.  I wish you good morning, Mrs. Waule.  Good morning, Mr. Solomon.
I trust we shall meet under less melancholy auspices.</said>
</P>

<P>
When Mr. Trumbull had departed with a fine bow, Solomon, leaning
forward, observed to his sister, <said who="#Solomon">You may depend, Jane, my brother has
left that girl a lumping sum.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">Anybody would think so, from the way Mr. Trumbull talks,</said> said Jane.
Then, after a pause, <said who="#MrsWaule">He talks as if my daughters wasn't to be trusted
to give drops.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">Auctioneers talk wild,</said> said Solomon.  <said who="#Solomon">Not but what Trumbull has made
money.</said>
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>

</div><div type="chapter" n="33"><head>CHAPTER XXXIII.</head>

<epigraph>
        <said>Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close;
         And let us all to meditation.</said>
                              —2 Henry VI.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
That night after twelve o'clock Mary Garth relieved the watch in Mr.
Featherstone's room, and sat there alone through the small hours.  She
often chose this task, in which she found some pleasure,
notwithstanding the old man's testiness whenever he demanded her
attentions.  There were intervals in which she could sit perfectly
still, enjoying the outer stillness and the subdued light.  The red
fire with its gently audible movement seemed like a solemn existence
calmly independent of the petty passions, the imbecile desires, the
straining after worthless uncertainties, which were daily moving her
contempt. <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">  Mary was fond of her own thoughts, and could amuse herself
well sitting in twilight with her hands in her lap; for, having early
had strong reason to believe that things were not likely to be arranged
for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time in astonishment and
annoyance at that fact.  And she had already come to take life very
much as a comedy in which she had a proud, nay, a generous resolution
not to act the mean or treacherous part. </said>  Mary might have become
cynical if she had not had parents whom she honored, and a well of
affectionate gratitude within her, which was all the fuller because she
had learned to make no unreasonable claims.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">  She sat to-night revolving, as she was wont, the scenes of the day, her
lips often curling with amusement at the oddities to which her fancy
added fresh drollery: people were so ridiculous with their illusions,
carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque
while everybody else's were transparent, making themselves exceptions
to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they
alone were rosy. </said>  Yet there were some illusions under Mary's eyes which
were not quite comic to her.  She was secretly convinced, though she
had no other grounds than her close observation of old Featherstone's
nature, that in spite of his fondness for having the Vincys about him,
they were as likely to be disappointed as any of the relations whom he
kept at a distance.  She had a good deal of disdain for Mrs. Vincy's
evident alarm lest she and Fred should be alone together, but it did
not hinder her from thinking anxiously of the way in which Fred would
be affected, if it should turn out that his uncle had left him as poor
as ever.  She could make a butt of Fred when he was present, but she
did not enjoy his follies when he was absent.
</P>

<P>
Yet she liked her thoughts: a vigorous young mind not overbalanced by
passion, finds a good in making acquaintance with life, and watches its
own powers with interest.  Mary had plenty of merriment within.
</P>

<P>
Her thought was not veined by any solemnity or pathos about the old man
on the bed: such sentiments are easier to affect than to feel about an
aged creature whose life is not visibly anything but a remnant of
vices. <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">  She had always seen the most disagreeable side of Mr.
Featherstone: he was not proud of her, and she was only useful to him. </said>
<second> To be anxious about a soul that is always snapping at you must be left
to the saints of the earth; and Mary was not one of them. </second> She had
never returned him a harsh word, and had waited on him faithfully: that
was her utmost.  Old Featherstone himself was not in the least anxious
about his soul, and had declined to see Mr. Tucker on the subject.
</P>

<P>
To-night he had not snapped, and for the first hour or two he lay
remarkably still, until at last Mary heard him rattling his bunch of
keys against the tin box which he always kept in the bed beside him.
About three o'clock he said, with remarkable distinctness, <said who="#MrF"> Missy, come
here!</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary obeyed, and found that he had already drawn the tin box from under
the clothes, though he usually asked to have this done for him; and he
had selected the key.  He now unlocked the box, and, drawing from it
another key, looked straight at her with eyes that seemed to have
recovered all their sharpness and said, <said who="#MrF">How many of 'em are in the
house?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">You mean of your own relations, sir,</said> said Mary, well used to the old
man's way of speech.  He nodded slightly and she went on.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Mr. Jonah Featherstone and young Cranch are sleeping here.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF"> Oh ay, they stick, do they? and the rest—they come every day, I'll
warrant—Solomon and Jane, and all the young uns?  They come peeping,
and counting and casting up?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Not all of them every day.  Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule are here every
day, and the others come often.</said>
</P>

<P>
The old man listened with a grimace while she spoke, and then said,
relaxing his face, <said who="#MrF">The more fools they.  You hearken, missy.  It's
three o'clock in the morning, and I've got all my faculties as well as
ever I had in my life.  I know all my property, and where the money's
put out, and everything.  And I've made everything ready to change my
mind, and do as I like at the last.  Do you hear, missy?  I've got my
faculties.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Well, sir?</said> said Mary, quietly.
</P>

<P>
He now lowered his tone with an air of deeper cunning.  <said who="#MrF">I've made two
wills, and I'm going to burn one.  Now you do as I tell you.  This is
the key of my iron chest, in the closet there.  You push well at the
side of the brass plate at the top, till it goes like a bolt: then you
can put the key in the front lock and turn it.  See and do that; and
take out the topmost paper—Last Will and Testament—big printed.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">No, sir,</said> said Mary, in a firm voice, <said who="#M">I cannot do that.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">Not do it?  I tell you, you must,</said> said the old man, his voice
beginning to shake under the shock of this resistance.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I cannot touch your iron chest or your will.  I must refuse to do
anything that might lay me open to suspicion.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">I tell you, I'm in my right mind.  Shan't I do as I like at the last?
I made two wills on purpose.  Take the key, I say.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">No, sir, I will not,</said> said Mary, more resolutely still.  Her repulsion
was getting stronger.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">I tell you, there's no time to lose.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I cannot help that, sir.  I will not let the close of your life soil
the beginning of mine.  I will not touch your iron chest or your will.</said>
She moved to a little distance from the bedside.
</P>

<P>
The old man paused with a blank stare for a little while, holding the
one key erect on the ring; then with an agitated jerk he began to work
with his bony left hand at emptying the tin box before him.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">Missy,</said> he began to say, hurriedly, <said who="#MrF">look here! take the money—the
notes and gold—look here—take it—you shall have it all—do as I
tell you.</said>
</P>

<P>
He made an effort to stretch out the key towards her as far as
possible, and Mary again retreated.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I will not touch your key or your money, sir.  Pray don't ask me to do
it again.  If you do, I must go and call your brother.</said>
</P>

<P>
He let his hand fall, and for the first time in her life Mary saw old
Peter Featherstone begin to cry childishly.  She said, in as gentle a
tone as she could command, <said who="#MrF">Pray put up your money, sir;</said> and then went
away to her seat by the fire, hoping this would help to convince him
that it was useless to say more.  Presently he rallied and said
eagerly—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Look here, then.  Call the young chap.  Call Fred Vincy.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mary's heart began to beat more quickly.  Various ideas rushed through
her mind as to what the burning of a second will might imply.  She had
to make a difficult decision in a hurry. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I will call him, if you will let me call Mr. Jonah and others with
him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">Nobody else, I say.  The young chap.  I shall do as I like.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Wait till broad daylight, sir, when every one is stirring.  Or let me
call Simmons now, to go and fetch the lawyer?  He can be here in less
than two hours.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">Lawyer?  What do I want with the lawyer?  Nobody shall know—I say,
nobody shall know.  I shall do as I like.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Let me call some one else, sir,</said> said Mary, persuasively. <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">  She did not
like her position—alone with the old man, who seemed to show a strange
flaring of nervous energy which enabled him to speak again and again
without falling into his usual cough; yet she desired not to push
unnecessarily the contradiction which agitated him. </said>  <said who="#M">Let me, pray,
call some one else.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">You let me alone, I say.  Look here, missy.  Take the money.  You'll
never have the chance again.  It's pretty nigh two hundred—there's
more in the box, and nobody knows how much there was.  Take it and do
as I tell you.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary, standing by the fire, saw its red light falling on the old man,
propped up on his pillows and bed-rest, with his bony hand holding out
the key, and the money lying on the quilt before him. She never forgot
that vision of a man wanting to do as he liked at the last.  But the
way in which he had put the offer of the money urged her to speak with
harder resolution than ever.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF">It is of no use, sir.  I will not do it.  Put up your money.  I will
not touch your money.  I will do anything else I can to comfort you;
but I will not touch your keys or your money.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF"> Anything else—anything else!</said> said old Featherstone, with hoarse rage,
which, as if in a nightmare, tried to be loud, and yet was only just
audible.  <said who="#MrF">I want nothing else.  You come here—you come here.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary approached him cautiously, knowing him too well.  She saw him
dropping his keys and trying to grasp his stick, while he looked at her
like an aged hyena, the muscles of his face getting distorted with the
effort of his hand.  She paused at a safe distance.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Let me give you some cordial,</said> she said, quietly, <said who="#M">and try to compose
yourself.  You will perhaps go to sleep.  And to-morrow by daylight you
can do as you like.</said>
</P>

<P>
He lifted the stick, in spite of her being beyond his reach, and threw
it with a hard effort which was but impotence.  It fell, slipping over
the foot of the bed. <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">  Mary let it lie, and retreated to her chair by
the fire.  By-and-by she would go to him with the cordial.  Fatigue
would make him passive.  It was getting towards the chillest moment of
the morning, the fire had got low, and she could see through the chink
between the moreen window-curtains the light whitened by the blind.
Having put some wood on the fire and thrown a shawl over her, she sat
down, hoping that Mr. Featherstone might now fall asleep.  If she went
near him the irritation might be kept up.  He had said nothing after
throwing the stick, but she had seen him taking his keys again and
laying his right hand on the money.  He did not put it up, however, and
she thought that he was dropping off to sleep. </said>
</P>

<P>
But Mary herself began to be more agitated by the remembrance of what
she had gone through, than she had been by the reality—questioning
those acts of hers which had come imperatively and excluded all
question in the critical moment.
</P>

<P>
Presently the dry wood sent out a flame which illuminated every
crevice, and Mary saw that the old man was lying quietly with his head
turned a little on one side. <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">  She went towards him with inaudible
steps, and thought that his face looked strangely motionless; but the
next moment the movement of the flame communicating itself to all
objects made her uncertain.  The violent beating of her heart rendered
her perceptions so doubtful that even when she touched him and listened
for his breathing, she could not trust her conclusions. </said>  She went to
the window and gently propped aside the curtain and blind, so that the
still light of the sky fell on the bed.
</P>

<P>
The next moment she ran to the bell and rang it energetically.  In a
very little while there was no longer any doubt that Peter Featherstone
was dead, with his right hand clasping the keys, and his left hand
lying on the heap of notes and gold.
</P>

<BR/><BR/><BR/>