book4.xml

<A NAME="chap34"></A>
<H2 ALIGN="center">
BOOK IV.
</H2>

<BR/>

<H2 ALIGN="center">
THREE LOVE PROBLEMS.
</H2>

<BR/><BR/>

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

<epigraph>

<said>1st Gent. Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws,
               Carry no weight, no force.
2d Gent.                                  But levity
               Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight.
               For power finds its place in lack of power;
               Advance is cession, and the driven ship
               May run aground because the helmsman's thought
               Lacked force to balance opposites.</said>
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
It was on a morning of May that Peter Featherstone was buried.  In the
prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch, May was not always warm and sunny,
and on this particular morning a chill wind was blowing the blossoms
from the surrounding gardens on to the green mounds of Lowick
churchyard.  Swiftly moving clouds only now and then allowed a gleam to
light up any object, whether ugly or beautiful, that happened to stand
within its golden shower.  In the churchyard the objects were
remarkably various, for there was a little country crowd waiting to see
the funeral.  The news had spread that it was to be a <said>big burying;</said>
the old gentleman had left written directions about everything and
meant to have a funeral <said>beyond his betters.</said>  This was true; for old
Featherstone had not been a Harpagon whose passions had all been
devoured by the ever-lean and ever-hungry passion of saving, and who
would drive a bargain with his undertaker beforehand.  He loved money,
but he also loved to spend it in gratifying his peculiar tastes, and
perhaps he loved it best of all as a means of making others feel his
power more or less uncomfortably. <first> If any one will here contend that
there must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstone, I will not
presume to deny this; but I must observe that goodness is of a modest
nature, easily discouraged, and when much privacy, elbowed in early
life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that
it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old
gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments
based on his personal acquaintance. </first> In any case, he had been bent on
having a handsome funeral, and on having persons <said>bid</said> to it who would
rather have stayed at home. <said who="#Martha" direct="false" aloud="false">  He had even desired that female relatives
should follow him to the grave, and poor sister Martha had taken a
difficult journey for this purpose from the Chalky Flats.  She and Jane
would have been altogether cheered (in a tearful manner) by this sign
that a brother who disliked seeing them while he was living had been
prospectively fond of their presence when he should have become a
testator, if the sign had not been made equivocal by being extended to
Mrs. Vincy, whose expense in handsome crape seemed to imply the most
presumptuous hopes, aggravated by a bloom of complexion which told
pretty plainly that she was not a blood-relation, but of that generally
objectionable class called wife's kin. </said>
</P>

<P>
<first> We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the
brood of desire; and poor old Featherstone, who laughed much at the way
in which others cajoled themselves, did not escape the fellowship of
illusion. </first> <said who="#MrF" direct="false" aloud="false"> In writing the programme for his burial he certainly did not
make clear to himself that his pleasure in the little drama of which it
formed a part was confined to anticipation.  In chuckling over the
vexations he could inflict by the rigid clutch of his dead hand, he
inevitably mingled his consciousness with that livid stagnant presence,
and so far as he was preoccupied with a future life, it was with one of
gratification inside his coffin. </said>  Thus old Featherstone was
imaginative, after his fashion.
</P>

<P>
However, the three mourning-coaches were filled according to the
written orders of the deceased.  There were pall-bearers on horseback,
with the richest scarfs and hatbands, and even the under-bearers had
trappings of woe which were of a good well-priced quality.  The black
procession, when dismounted, looked the larger for the smallness of the
churchyard; the heavy human faces and the black draperies shivering in
the wind seemed to tell of a world strangely incongruous with the
lightly dropping blossoms and the gleams of sunshine on the daisies.
The clergyman who met the procession was Mr. Cadwallader—also
according to the request of Peter Featherstone, prompted as usual by
peculiar reasons.  Having a contempt for curates, whom he always called
understrappers, he was resolved to be buried by a beneficed clergyman.
Mr. Casaubon was out of the question, not merely because he declined
duty of this sort, <said who="#MrF" direct="false" aloud="false"> but because Featherstone had an especial dislike to
him as the rector of his own parish, who had a lien on the land in the
shape of tithe, also as the deliverer of morning sermons, which the old
man, being in his pew and not at all sleepy, had been obliged to sit
through with an inward snarl.  He had an objection to a parson stuck up
above his head preaching to him. </said>  But his relations with Mr.
Cadwallader had been of a different kind: the trout-stream which ran
through Mr. Casaubon's land took its course through Featherstone's
also, so that Mr. Cadwallader was a parson who had had to ask a favor
instead of preaching.  Moreover, he was one of the high gentry living
four miles away from Lowick, and was thus exalted to an equal sky with
the sheriff of the county and other dignities vaguely regarded as
necessary to the system of things. <said who="#MrF" direct="false" aloud="false"> <second> There would be a satisfaction in
being buried by Mr. Cadwallader, whose very name offered a fine
opportunity for pronouncing wrongly if you liked. </second> </said>
</P>

<P>
This distinction conferred on the Rector of Tipton and Freshitt was the
reason why Mrs. Cadwallader made one of the group that watched old
Featherstone's funeral from an upper window of the manor.  She was not
fond of visiting that house, but she liked, as she said, to see
collections of strange animals such as there would be at this funeral;
and she had persuaded Sir James and the young Lady Chettam to drive the
Rector and herself to Lowick in order that the visit might be
altogether pleasant.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">I will go anywhere with you, Mrs. Cadwallader,</said> Celia had said; <said>but I
don't like funerals.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must
accommodate your tastes: I did that very early.  When I married
Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the
end very much.  That soon spread to the middle and the beginning,
because I couldn't have the end without them.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#LC">No, to be sure not,</said> said the Dowager Lady Chettam, with stately
emphasis.
</P>

<P>
The upper window from which the funeral could be well seen was in the
room occupied by Mr. Casaubon when he had been forbidden to work; but
he had resumed nearly his habitual style of life now in spite of
warnings and prescriptions, and after politely welcoming Mrs.
Cadwallader had slipped again into the library to chew a cud of erudite
mistake about Cush and Mizraim.
</P>

<P>
But for her visitors Dorothea too might have been shut up in the
library, and would not have witnessed this scene of old Featherstone's
funeral, which, aloof as it seemed to be from the tenor of her life,
always afterwards came back to her at the touch of certain sensitive
points in memory, just as the vision of St. Peter's at Rome was inwoven
with moods of despondency. <first> Scenes which make vital changes in our
neighbors' lot are but the background of our own, yet, like a
particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for
us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of that unity
which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness. </first>
</P>

<P>
The dream-like association of something alien and ill-understood with
the deepest secrets of her experience seemed to mirror that sense of
loneliness which was due to the very ardor of Dorothea's nature.  The
country gentry of old time lived in a rarefied social air: dotted apart
on their stations up the mountain they looked down with imperfect
discrimination on the belts of thicker life below.  And Dorothea was
not at ease in the perspective and chilliness of that height.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">I shall not look any more,</said> said Celia, after the train had entered
the church, placing herself a little behind her husband's elbow so that
she could slyly touch his coat with her cheek.  <said who="#Celia">I dare say Dodo likes
it: she is fond of melancholy things and ugly people.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said>I am fond of knowing something about the people I live among,</said> said
Dorothea, who had been watching everything with the interest of a monk
on his holiday tour.  <said>It seems to me we know nothing of our neighbors,
unless they are cottagers.  One is constantly wondering what sort of
lives other people lead, and how they take things.  I am quite obliged
to Mrs. Cadwallader for coming and calling me out of the library.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Quite right to feel obliged to me,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad">Your rich
Lowick farmers are as curious as any buffaloes or bisons, and I dare
say you don't half see them at church.  They are quite different from
your uncle's tenants or Sir James's—monsters—farmers without
landlords—one can't tell how to class them.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">Most of these followers are not Lowick people,</said> said Sir James; <said who="#JC">I
suppose they are legatees from a distance, or from Middlemarch.
Lovegood tells me the old fellow has left a good deal of money as well
as land.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Think of that now! when so many younger sons can't dine at their own
expense,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad">Ah,</said> turning round at the sound of
the opening door, <said who="#MrsCad">here is Mr. Brooke.  I felt that we were incomplete
before, and here is the explanation.  You are come to see this odd
funeral, of course?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">No, I came to look after Casaubon—to see how he goes on, you know.
And to bring a little news—a little news, my dear,</said> said Mr. Brooke,
nodding at Dorothea as she came towards him.  <said who="#MB">I looked into the
library, and I saw Casaubon over his books.  I told him it wouldn't do:
I said, 'This will never do, you know: think of your wife, Casaubon.'
And he promised me to come up.  I didn't tell him my news: I said, he
must come up.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Ah, now they are coming out of church,</said> Mrs. Cadwallader exclaimed.
<said who="#MrsCad">Dear me, what a wonderfully mixed set!  Mr. Lydgate as doctor, I
suppose.  But that is really a good looking woman, and the fair young
man must be her son.  Who are they, Sir James, do you know?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife and
son,</said> said Sir James, looking interrogatively at Mr. Brooke, who nodded
and said—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Yes, a very decent family—a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to
the manufacturing interest.  You have seen him at my house, you know.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Ah, yes: one of your secret committee,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader,
provokingly.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">A coursing fellow, though,</said> said Sir James, with a fox-hunter's
disgust.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom
weavers in Tipton and Freshitt.  That is how his family look so fair
and sleek,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad"> Those dark, purple-faced people
are an excellent foil.  Dear me, they are like a set of jugs!  Do look
at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above them
in his white surplice.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">It's a solemn thing, though, a funeral,</said> said Mr. Brooke, <said who="#MB">if you take
it in that light, you know.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">But I am not taking it in that light.  I can't wear my solemnity too
often, else it will go to rags.  It was time the old man died, and none
of these people are sorry.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">How piteous!</said> said Dorothea.  <said who="#D">This funeral seems to me the most
dismal thing I ever saw.  It is a blot on the morning. I cannot bear to
think that any one should die and leave no love behind.</said>
</P>

<P>
She was going to say more, but she saw her husband enter and seat
himself a little in the background.  The difference his presence made
to her was not always a happy one: she felt that he often inwardly
objected to her speech.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Positively,</said> exclaimed Mrs. Cadwallader, <said who="#MrsCad">there is a new face come out
from behind that broad man queerer than any of them: a little round
head with bulging eyes—a sort of frog-face—do look.  He must be of
another blood, I think.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Let me see!</said> said Celia, with awakened curiosity, standing behind Mrs.
Cadwallader and leaning forward over her head.  <said who="#Celia">Oh, what an odd face!</said>
Then with a quick change to another sort of surprised expression, she
added, <said who="#Celia">Why, Dodo, you never told me that Mr. Ladislaw was come again!</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea felt a shock of alarm: every one noticed her sudden paleness
as she looked up immediately at her uncle, while Mr. Casaubon looked at
her.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">He came with me, you know; he is my guest—puts up with me at the
Grange,</said> said Mr. Brooke, in his easiest tone, nodding at Dorothea, as
if the announcement were just what she might have expected.  <said who="#MB">And we
have brought the picture at the top of the carriage.  I knew you would
be pleased with the surprise, Casaubon.  There you are to the very
life—as Aquinas, you know.  Quite the right sort of thing.  And you
will hear young Ladislaw talk about it.  He talks uncommonly
well—points out this, that, and the other—knows art and everything of
that kind—companionable, you know—is up with you in any track—what
I've been wanting a long while.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Casaubon bowed with cold politeness, mastering his irritation, but
only so far as to be silent.  He remembered Will's letter quite as well
as Dorothea did; he had noticed that it was not among the letters which
had been reserved for him on his recovery, and secretly concluding that
Dorothea had sent word to Will not to come to Lowick, he had shrunk
with proud sensitiveness from ever recurring to the subject.  He now
inferred that she had asked her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and
she felt it impossible at that moment to enter into any explanation.
</P>

<P>
Mrs. Cadwallader's eyes, diverted from the churchyard, saw a good deal
of dumb show which was not so intelligible to her as she could have
desired, and could not repress the question, <said who="#MrsCad">Who is Mr. Ladislaw?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">A young relative of Mr. Casaubon's,</said> said Sir James, promptly.  His
good-nature often made him quick and clear-seeing in personal matters,
and he had divined from Dorothea's glance at her husband that there was
some alarm in her mind.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">A very nice young fellow—Casaubon has done everything for him,</said>
explained Mr. Brooke.  <said who="#MB">He repays your expense in him, Casaubon,</said> he
went on, nodding encouragingly.  <said who="#MB">I hope he will stay with me a long
while and we shall make something of my documents.  I have plenty of
ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he is just the man to put them
into shape—remembers what the right quotations are, <i>omne tulit
punctum</i>, and that sort of thing—gives subjects a kind of turn.  I
invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon; Dorothea said
you couldn't have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to
write.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle's was about as pleasant
as a grain of sand in the eye to Mr. Casaubon.  It would be altogether
unfitting now to explain that she had not wished her uncle to invite
Will Ladislaw.  She could not in the least make clear to herself the
reasons for her husband's dislike to his presence—a dislike painfully
impressed on her by the scene in the library; but she felt the
unbecomingness of saying anything that might convey a notion of it to
others. </said>  Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly represented those
mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of
us, seeking rather for justification than for self-knowledge. But he
wished to repress outward signs, and only Dorothea could discern the
changes in her husband's face before he observed with more of dignified
bending and sing-song than usual—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you
acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative of
mine.</said>
</P>

<P>
The funeral was ended now, and the churchyard was being cleared.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Celia">Now you can see him, Mrs. Cadwallader,</said> said Celia.  <said who="#Celia">He is just like
a miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt that hangs in Dorothea's
boudoir—quite nice-looking.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">A very pretty sprig,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader, dryly.  <said who="#MrsCad">What is your
nephew to be, Mr. Casaubon?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Pardon me, he is not my nephew.  He is my cousin.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Well, you know,</said> interposed Mr. Brooke, <said who="#MB">he is trying his wings.  He
is just the sort of young fellow to rise.  I should be glad to give him
an opportunity.  He would make a good secretary, now, like Hobbes,
Milton, Swift—that sort of man.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">I understand,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad">One who can write speeches.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">I'll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon?</said> said Mr. Brooke.  <said who="#MB">He wouldn't
come in till I had announced him, you know.  And we'll go down and look
at the picture.  There you are to the life: a deep subtle sort of
thinker with his fore-finger on the page, while Saint Bonaventure or
somebody else, rather fat and florid, is looking up at the Trinity.
Everything is symbolical, you know—the higher style of art: I like
that up to a certain point, but not too far—it's rather straining to
keep up with, you know.  But you are at home in that, Casaubon.  And
your painter's flesh is good—solidity, transparency, everything of
that sort.  I went into that a great deal at one time.  However, I'll
go and fetch Ladislaw.</said>
</P>

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

</div><div type="chapter" n="35"><head>CHAPTER XXXV.</head>

<epigraph>
        <said>Non, je ne comprends pas de plus charmant plaisir
         Que de voir d'heritiers une troupe affligee
         Le maintien interdit, et la mine allongee,
             Lire un long testament ou pales, etonnes
         On leur laisse un bonsoir avec un pied de nez.
         Pour voir au naturel leur tristesse profonde
         Je reviendrais, je crois, expres de l'autre monde.</said>
                             —REGNARD: Le Legataire Universel.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied
species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to
think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were
eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations. <first> (I fear the
part played by the vultures on that occasion would be too painful for
art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously naked about the
gullet, and apparently without rites and ceremonies.) </first>
</P>

<P>
The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed
Peter Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their
minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the
most of.  The long-recognized blood-relations and connections by
marriage made already a goodly number, which, multiplied by
possibilities, presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and
pathetic hopefulness.  Jealousy of the Vincys had created a fellowship
in hostility among all persons of the Featherstone blood, so that in
the absence of any decided indication that one of themselves was to
have more than the rest, the dread lest that long-legged Fred Vincy
should have the land was necessarily dominant, though it left abundant
feeling and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were entertained
towards Mary Garth.  Solomon found time to reflect that Jonah was
undeserving, and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder
sister, held that Martha's children ought not to expect so much as the
young Waules; and Martha, more lax on the subject of primogeniture, was
sorry to think that Jane was so <said>having.</said>  These nearest of kin were
naturally impressed with the unreasonableness of expectations in
cousins and second cousins, and used their arithmetic in reckoning the
large sums that small legacies might mount to, if there were too many
of them.  Two cousins were present to hear the will, and a second
cousin besides Mr. Trumbull.  This second cousin was a Middlemarch
mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates.  The two cousins
were elderly men from Brassing, one of them conscious of claims on the
score of inconvenient expense sustained by him in presents of oysters
and other eatables to his rich cousin Peter; the other entirely
saturnine, leaning his hands and chin on a stick, and conscious of
claims based on no narrow performance but on merit generally: both
blameless citizens of Brassing, who wished that Jonah Featherstone did
not live there.  The wit of a family is usually best received among
strangers.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">Why, Trumbull himself is pretty sure of five hundred—<emph rend="italics">that</emph> you may
depend,—I shouldn't wonder if my brother promised him,</said> said Solomon,
musing aloud with his sisters, the evening before the funeral.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Martha">Dear, dear!</said> said poor sister Martha, whose imagination of hundreds
had been habitually narrowed to the amount of her unpaid rent.
</P>

<P>
But in the morning all the ordinary currents of conjecture were
disturbed by the presence of a strange mourner who had plashed among
them as if from the moon. <said who="#MM" direct="false" aloud="false">  This was the stranger described by Mrs.
Cadwallader as frog-faced: a man perhaps about two or three and thirty,
whose prominent eyes, thin-lipped, downward-curved mouth, and hair
sleekly brushed away from a forehead that sank suddenly above the ridge
of the eyebrows, certainly gave his face a batrachian unchangeableness
of expression.  Here, clearly, was a new legatee; else why was he
bidden as a mourner?  Here were new possibilities, raising a new
uncertainty, which almost checked remark in the mourning-coaches.</said> <first> We
are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed
very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we
have been making up our world entirely without it. </first> No one had seen
this questionable stranger before except Mary Garth, and she knew
nothing more of him than that he had twice been to Stone Court when Mr.
Featherstone was down-stairs, and had sat alone with him for several
hours.  She had found an opportunity of mentioning this to her father,
and perhaps Caleb's were the only eyes, except the lawyer's, which
examined the stranger with more of inquiry than of disgust or
suspicion.  Caleb Garth, having little expectation and less cupidity,
was interested in the verification of his own guesses, and the calmness
with which he half smilingly rubbed his chin and shot intelligent
glances much as if he were valuing a tree, made a fine contrast with
the alarm or scorn visible in other faces when the unknown mourner,
whose name was understood to be Rigg, entered the wainscoted parlor and
took his seat near the door to make part of the audience when the will
should be read.  Just then Mr. Solomon and Mr. Jonah were gone
up-stairs with the lawyer to search for the will; and Mrs. Waule,
seeing two vacant seats between herself and Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, had
the spirit to move next to that great authority, who was handling his
watch-seals and trimming his outlines with a determination not to show
anything so compromising to a man of ability as wonder or surprise.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">I suppose you know everything about what my poor brother's done, Mr.
Trumbull,</said> said Mrs. Waule, in the lowest of her woolly tones, while
she turned her crape-shadowed bonnet towards Mr. Trumbull's ear.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">My good lady, whatever was told me was told in confidence,</said> said the
auctioneer, putting his hand up to screen that secret.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">Them who've made sure of their good-luck may be disappointed yet,</said>
Mrs. Waule continued, finding some relief in this communication.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">Hopes are often delusive,</said> said Mr. Trumbull, still in confidence.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">Ah!</said> said Mrs. Waule, looking across at the Vincys, and then moving
back to the side of her sister Martha.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">It's wonderful how close poor Peter was,</said> she said, in the same
undertones.  <said who="#MrsWaule">We none of us know what he might have had on his mind.  I
only hope and trust he wasn't a worse liver than we think of, Martha.</said>
</P>

<P>
Poor Mrs. Cranch was bulky, and, breathing asthmatically, had the
additional motive for making her remarks unexceptionable and giving
them a general bearing, that even her whispers were loud and liable to
sudden bursts like those of a deranged barrel-organ.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCranch">I never <emph rend="italics">was</emph> covetous, Jane,</said> she replied; <said who="#MrsCranch">but I have six children
and have buried three, and I didn't marry into money.  The eldest, that
sits there, is but nineteen—so I leave you to guess.  And stock always
short, and land most awkward.  But if ever I've begged and prayed; it's
been to God above; though where there's one brother a bachelor and the
other childless after twice marrying—anybody might think!</said>
</P>

<P>
Meanwhile, Mr. Vincy had glanced at the passive face of Mr. Rigg, and
had taken out his snuff-box and tapped it, but had put it again
unopened as an indulgence which, however clarifying to the judgment,
was unsuited to the occasion.  <said who="#MrV">I shouldn't wonder if Featherstone had
better feelings than any of us gave him credit for,</said> he observed, in
the ear of his wife.  <said who="#MrV">This funeral shows a thought about everybody: it
looks well when a man wants to be followed by his friends, and if they
are humble, not to be ashamed of them.  I should be all the better
pleased if he'd left lots of small legacies.  They may be uncommonly
useful to fellows in a small way.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Everything is as handsome as could be, crape and silk and everything,</said>
said Mrs. Vincy, contentedly.
</P>

<P>
<first> But I am sorry to say that Fred was under some difficulty in repressing
a laugh, which would have been more unsuitable than his father's
snuff-box. </first>Fred had overheard Mr. Jonah suggesting something about a
<said>love-child,</said> and with this thought in his mind, the stranger's face,
which happened to be opposite him, affected him too ludicrously.  Mary
Garth, discerning his distress in the twitchings of his mouth, and his
recourse to a cough, came cleverly to his rescue by asking him to
change seats with her, so that he got into a shadowy corner. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false">  Fred was
feeling as good-naturedly as possible towards everybody, including
Rigg; and having some relenting towards all these people who were less
lucky than he was aware of being himself, he would not for the world
have behaved amiss; still, it was particularly easy to laugh. </said>
</P>

<P>
But the entrance of the lawyer and the two brothers drew every one's
attention.  The lawyer was Mr. Standish, and he had come to Stone Court
this morning believing that he knew thoroughly well who would be
pleased and who disappointed before the day was over.  The will he
expected to read was the last of three which he had drawn up for Mr.
Featherstone.  Mr. Standish was not a man who varied his manners: he
behaved with the same deep-voiced, off-hand civility to everybody, as
if he saw no difference in them, and talked chiefly of the hay-crop,
which would be <said>very fine, by God!</said> of the last bulletins concerning
the King, and of the Duke of Clarence, who was a sailor every inch of
him, and just the man to rule over an island like Britain.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrF" direct="false" aloud="false"> Old Featherstone had often reflected as he sat looking at the fire that
Standish would be surprised some day: it is true that if he had done as
he liked at the last, and burnt the will drawn up by another lawyer, he
would not have secured that minor end; still he had had his pleasure in
ruminating on it. </said>  And certainly Mr. Standish was surprised, but not at
all sorry; on the contrary, he rather enjoyed the zest of a little
curiosity in his own mind, which the discovery of a second will added
to the prospective amazement on the part of the Featherstone family.
</P>

<P>
As to the sentiments of Solomon and Jonah, they were held in utter
suspense: it seemed to them that the old will would have a certain
validity, and that there might be such an interlacement of poor Peter's
former and latter intentions as to create endless <said>lawing</said> before
anybody came by their own—an inconvenience which would have at least
the advantage of going all round. Hence the brothers showed a
thoroughly neutral gravity as they re-entered with Mr. Standish; but
Solomon took out his white handkerchief again with a sense that in any
case there would be affecting passages, and crying at funerals, however
dry, was customarily served up in lawn.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false"> Perhaps the person who felt the most throbbing excitement at this
moment was Mary Garth, in the consciousness that it was she who had
virtually determined the production of this second will, which might
have momentous effects on the lot of some persons present.  No soul
except herself knew what had passed on that final night. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Standish">The will I hold in my hand,</said> said Mr. Standish, who, seated at the
table in the middle of the room, took his time about everything,
including the coughs with which he showed a disposition to clear his
voice, <said who="#Standish">was drawn up by myself and executed by our deceased friend on
the 9th of August, 1825.  But I find that there is a subsequent
instrument hitherto unknown to me, bearing date the 20th of July, 1826,
hardly a year later than the previous one.  And there is farther, I
see"—Mr. Standish was cautiously travelling over the document with his
spectacles—"a codicil to this latter will, bearing date March 1, 1828.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Martha">Dear, dear!</said> said sister Martha, not meaning to be audible, but driven
to some articulation under this pressure of dates.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Standish">I shall begin by reading the earlier will,</said> continued Mr. Standish,
<said>since such, as appears by his not having destroyed the document, was
the intention of deceased.</said>
</P>

<P>
The preamble was felt to be rather long, and several besides Solomon
shook their heads pathetically, looking on the ground: all eyes avoided
meeting other eyes, and were chiefly fixed either on the spots in the
table-cloth or on Mr. Standish's bald head; excepting Mary Garth's.
When all the rest were trying to look nowhere in particular, it was
safe for her to look at them.  And at the sound of the first <said>give and
bequeath</said> she could see all complexions changing subtly, as if some
faint vibration were passing through them, save that of Mr. Rigg.  He
sat in unaltered calm, and, in fact, the company, preoccupied with more
important problems, and with the complication of listening to bequests
which might or might not be revoked, had ceased to think of him.  Fred
blushed, and Mr. Vincy found it impossible to do without his snuff-box
in his hand, though he kept it closed.
</P>

<P>
The small bequests came first, and even the recollection that there was
another will and that poor Peter might have thought better of it, could
not quell the rising disgust and indignation.  One likes to be done
well by in every tense, past, present, and future.  And here was Peter
capable five years ago of leaving only two hundred apiece to his own
brothers and sisters, and only a hundred apiece to his own nephews and
nieces: the Garths were not mentioned, but Mrs. Vincy and Rosamond were
each to have a hundred.  Mr. Trumbull was to have the gold-headed cane
and fifty pounds; the other second cousins and the cousins present were
each to have the like handsome sum, which, as the saturnine cousin
observed, was a sort of legacy that left a man nowhere; and there was
much more of such offensive dribbling in favor of persons not
present—problematical, and, it was to be feared, low connections.
<said who="#MM" direct="false" aloud="false"> Altogether, reckoning hastily, here were about three thousand disposed of.
Where then had Peter meant the rest of the money to go—and where the
land? and what was revoked and what not revoked—and was the revocation
for better or for worse? </said>  All emotion must be conditional, and might turn
out to be the wrong thing.  The men were strong enough to bear up and
keep quiet under this confused suspense; some letting their lower lip
fall, others pursing it up, according to the habit of their muscles.
But Jane and Martha sank under the rush of questions, and began to cry;
poor Mrs. Cranch being half moved with the consolation of getting any
hundreds at all without working for them, and half aware that her share
was scanty; whereas Mrs. Waule's mind was entirely flooded with the
sense of being an own sister and getting little, while somebody else
was to have much. <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false">  The general expectation now was that the <said>much</said>
would fall to Fred Vincy, but the Vincys themselves were surprised when
ten thousand pounds in specified investments were declared to be
bequeathed to him:—was the land coming too?  Fred bit his lips: it was
difficult to help smiling, </said> and Mrs. Vincy felt herself the happiest of
women—possible revocation shrinking out of sight in this dazzling
vision.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MM" direct="false" aloud="false"> There was still a residue of personal property as well as the land, but
the whole was left to one person, and that person was—O
possibilities!  O expectations founded on the favor of <said>close</said> old
gentlemen!  O endless vocatives that would still leave expression
slipping helpless from the measurement of mortal folly! </said> —that
residuary legatee was Joshua Rigg, who was also sole executor, and who
was to take thenceforth the name of Featherstone.
</P>

<P>
There was a rustling which seemed like a shudder running round the
room.  Every one stared afresh at Mr. Rigg, who apparently experienced
no surprise.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">A most singular testamentary disposition!</said> exclaimed Mr. Trumbull,
preferring for once that he should be considered ignorant in the past.
<said>But there is a second will—there is a further document.  We have not
yet heard the final wishes of the deceased.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary Garth was feeling that what they had yet to hear were not the
final wishes.  The second will revoked everything except the legacies
to the low persons before mentioned (some alterations in these being
the occasion of the codicil), and the bequest of all the land lying in
Lowick parish with all the stock and household furniture, to Joshua
Rigg.  The residue of the property was to be devoted to the erection
and endowment of almshouses for old men, to be called Featherstone's
Alms-Houses, and to be built on a piece of land near Middlemarch
already bought for the purpose by the testator, he wishing—so the
document declared—to please God Almighty.  Nobody present had a
farthing; but Mr. Trumbull had the gold-headed cane.  It took some time
for the company to recover the power of expression.  Mary dared not
look at Fred.
</P>

<P>
Mr. Vincy was the first to speak—after using his snuff-box
energetically—and he spoke with loud indignation.  <said who="#MrV">The most
unaccountable will I ever heard!  I should say he was not in his right
mind when he made it.  I should say this last will was void,</said> added Mr.
Vincy, feeling that this expression put the thing in the true light.
<said who="#MrV">Eh Standish?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Standish">Our deceased friend always knew what he was about, I think,</said> said Mr.
Standish.  <said who="#Standish">Everything is quite regular.  Here is a letter from
Clemmens of Brassing tied with the will.  He drew it up.  A very
respectable solicitor.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrTrumbull">I never noticed any alienation of mind—any aberration of intellect in
the late Mr. Featherstone,</said> said Borthrop Trumbull, <said who="#MrTrumbull">but I call this
will eccentric.  I was always willingly of service to the old soul; and
he intimated pretty plainly a sense of obligation which would show
itself in his will.  The gold-headed cane is farcical considered as an
acknowledgment to me; but happily I am above mercenary considerations.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">There's nothing very surprising in the matter that I can see,</said> said
Caleb Garth.  <said who="#MrG">Anybody might have had more reason for wondering if the
will had been what you might expect from an open-minded straightforward
man.  For my part, I wish there was no such thing as a will.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Standish">That's a strange sentiment to come from a Christian man, by God!</said> said
the lawyer.  <said who="#Standish"> I should like to know how you will back that up, Garth!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Oh,</said> said Caleb, leaning forward, adjusting his finger-tips with
nicety and looking meditatively on the ground.  It always seemed to him
that words were the hardest part of <said>business.</said>
</P>

<P>
But here Mr. Jonah Featherstone made himself heard.  <said who="#MrJonah">Well, he always
was a fine hypocrite, was my brother Peter.  But this will cuts out
everything.  If I'd known, a wagon and six horses shouldn't have drawn
me from Brassing.  I'll put a white hat and drab coat on to-morrow.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCranch">Dear, dear,</said> wept Mrs. Cranch, <said who="#MrsCranch">and we've been at the expense of
travelling, and that poor lad sitting idle here so long!  It's the
first time I ever heard my brother Peter was so wishful to please God
Almighty; but if I was to be struck helpless I must say it's hard—I
can think no other.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">It'll do him no good where he's gone, that's my belief,</said> said Solomon,
with a bitterness which was remarkably genuine, though his tone could
not help being sly.  <said who="#Solomon">Peter was a bad liver, and almshouses won't cover
it, when he's had the impudence to show it at the last.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsWaule">And all the while had got his own lawful family—brothers and sisters
and nephews and nieces—and has sat in church with 'em whenever he
thought well to come,</said> said Mrs. Waule.  <said who="#MrsWaule">And might have left his
property so respectable, to them that's never been used to extravagance
or unsteadiness in no manner of way—and not so poor but what they
could have saved every penny and made more of it.  And me—the trouble
I've been at, times and times, to come here and be sisterly—and him
with things on his mind all the while that might make anybody's flesh
creep.  But if the Almighty's allowed it, he means to punish him for
it.  Brother Solomon, I shall be going, if you'll drive me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">I've no desire to put my foot on the premises again,</said> said Solomon.
<said who="#Solomon">I've got land of my own and property of my own to will away.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrJonah">It's a poor tale how luck goes in the world,</said> said Jonah.  <said who="#MrJonah">It never
answers to have a bit of spirit in you.  You'd better be a dog in the
manger.  But those above ground might learn a lesson.  One fool's will
is enough in a family.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Solomon">There's more ways than one of being a fool,</said> said Solomon.  <said who="#Solomon">I shan't
leave my money to be poured down the sink, and I shan't leave it to
foundlings from Africay.  I like Featherstones that were brewed such,
and not turned Featherstones with sticking the name on 'em.</said>
</P>

<P>
Solomon addressed these remarks in a loud aside to Mrs. Waule as he
rose to accompany her. <second> Brother Jonah felt himself capable of much more
stinging wit than this, but he reflected that there was no use in
offending the new proprietor of Stone Court, until you were certain
that he was quite without intentions of hospitality towards witty men
whose name he was about to bear. </second>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Joshua Rigg, in fact, appeared to trouble himself little about any
innuendoes, but showed a notable change of manner, walking coolly up to
Mr. Standish and putting business questions with much coolness.  He had
a high chirping voice and a vile accent.  Fred, whom he no longer moved
to laughter, thought him the lowest monster he had ever seen.  But Fred
was feeling rather sick. <said who="#mercer" direct="false" aloud="false">  The Middlemarch mercer waited for an
opportunity of engaging Mr. Rigg in conversation: there was no knowing
how many pairs of legs the new proprietor might require hose for, and
profits were more to be relied on than legacies. Also, the mercer, as
a second cousin, was dispassionate enough to feel curiosity. </said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Vincy, after his one outburst, had remained proudly silent, though
too much preoccupied with unpleasant feelings to think of moving, till
he observed that his wife had gone to Fred's side and was crying
silently while she held her darling's hand.  He rose immediately, and
turning his back on the company while he said to her in an
undertone,—<said who="#MrV"> Don't give way, Lucy; don't make a fool of yourself, my
dear, before these people,</said> he added in his usual loud voice— <said who="#MrV"> Go and
order the phaeton, Fred; I have no time to waste.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mary Garth had before this been getting ready to go home with her
father.  She met Fred in the hall, and now for the first time had the
courage to look at him. He had that withered sort of paleness which
will sometimes come on young faces, and his hand was very cold when she
shook it. <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">  Mary too was agitated; she was conscious that fatally,
without will of her own, she had perhaps made a great difference to
Fred's lot. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Good-by,</said> she said, with affectionate sadness.  <said who="#M">Be brave, Fred.  I do
believe you are better without the money.  What was the good of it to
Mr. Featherstone?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F">That's all very fine,</said> said Fred, pettishly.  <said who="#F">What is a fellow to do?
I must go into the Church now.</said> <said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false">  (He knew that this would vex Mary:
very well; then she must tell him what else he could do.) </said> <said who="#F">And I
thought I should be able to pay your father at once and make everything
right.  And you have not even a hundred pounds left you.  What shall
you do now, Mary?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Take another situation, of course, as soon as I can get one.  My
father has enough to do to keep the rest, without me.  Good-by.</said>
</P>

<P>
In a very short time Stone Court was cleared of well-brewed
Featherstones and other long-accustomed visitors.  Another stranger had
been brought to settle in the neighborhood of Middlemarch, but in the
case of Mr. Rigg Featherstone there was more discontent with immediate
visible consequences than speculation as to the effect which his
presence might have in the future.  No soul was prophetic enough to
have any foreboding as to what might appear on the trial of Joshua Rigg.
</P>

<P>
<first>And here I am naturally led to reflect on the means of elevating a low
subject. </first> Historical parallels are remarkably efficient in this way.
The chief objection to them is, that the diligent narrator may lack
space, or (what is often the same thing) may not be able to think of
them with any degree of particularity, though he may have a
philosophical confidence that if known they would be illustrative.  It
seems an easier and shorter way to dignity, to observe that—since
there never was a true story which could not be told in parables, where
you might put a monkey for a margrave, and vice versa—whatever has
been or is to be narrated by me about low people, may be ennobled by
being considered a parable; so that if any bad habits and ugly
consequences are brought into view, the reader may have the relief of
regarding them as not more than figuratively ungenteel, and may feel
himself virtually in company with persons of some style. <first> Thus while I
tell the truth about loobies, my reader's imagination need not be
entirely excluded from an occupation with lords; and the petty sums
which any bankrupt of high standing would be sorry to retire upon, may
be lifted to the level of high commercial transactions by the
inexpensive addition of proportional ciphers. </first>
</P>

<P>
<second> As to any provincial history in which the agents are all of high moral
rank, that must be of a date long posterior to the first Reform Bill,
and Peter Featherstone, you perceive, was dead and buried some months
before Lord Grey came into office. </second>
</P>

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

</div><div type="chapter" n="36"><head>CHAPTER XXXVI.</head>

<epigraph>
         'Tis strange to see the humors of these men,
         These great aspiring spirits, that should be wise:
           .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
         For being the nature of great spirits to love
         To be where they may be most eminent;
         They, rating of themselves so farre above
         Us in conceit, with whom they do frequent,
         Imagine how we wonder and esteeme
         All that they do or say; which makes them strive
         To make our admiration more extreme,
         Which they suppose they cannot, 'less they give
         Notice of their extreme and highest thoughts.
                                    —DANIEL: Tragedy of Philotas.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
Mr. Vincy went home from the reading of the will with his point of view
considerably changed in relation to many subjects.  He was an
open-minded man, but given to indirect modes of expressing himself:
when he was disappointed in a market for his silk braids, he swore at
the groom; when his brother-in-law Bulstrode had vexed him, he made
cutting remarks on Methodism; and it was now apparent that he regarded
Fred's idleness with a sudden increase of severity, by his throwing an
embroidered cap out of the smoking-room on to the hall-floor.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Well, sir,</said> he observed, when that young gentleman was moving off to
bed, <said who="#MrV">I hope you've made up your mind now to go up next term and pass
your examination.  I've taken my resolution, so I advise you to lose no
time in taking yours.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#F" direct="false" aloud="false"> Fred made no answer: he was too utterly depressed.  Twenty-four hours
ago he had thought that instead of needing to know what he should do,
he should by this time know that he needed to do nothing: that he
should hunt in pink, have a first-rate hunter, ride to cover on a fine
hack, and be generally respected for doing so; moreover, that he should
be able at once to pay Mr. Garth, and that Mary could no longer have
any reason for not marrying him.  And all this was to have come without
study or other inconvenience, purely by the favor of providence in the
shape of an old gentleman's caprice.  But now, at the end of the
twenty-four hours, all those firm expectations were upset.  It was
<said>rather hard lines</said> that while he was smarting under this
disappointment he should be treated as if he could have helped it. </said>  But
he went away silently and his mother pleaded for him.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Don't be hard on the poor boy, Vincy.  He'll turn out well yet, though
that wicked man has deceived him.  I feel as sure as I sit here, Fred
will turn out well—else why was he brought back from the brink of the
grave?  And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the land, to
promise it; and what is promising, if making everybody believe is not
promising?  And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then
took it away again.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Took it away again!</said> said Mr. Vincy, pettishly.  <said who="#MrV">I tell you the lad's
an unlucky lad, Lucy.  And you've always spoiled him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when
he came.  You were as proud as proud,</said> said Mrs. Vincy, easily
recovering her cheerful smile.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Who knows what babies will turn to?  I was fool enough, I dare say,</said>
said the husband—more mildly, however.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">But who has handsomer, better children than ours?  Fred is far beyond
other people's sons: you may hear it in his speech, that he has kept
college company.  And Rosamond—where is there a girl like her?  She
might stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the better for
it.  You see—Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest company and been
everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once.  Not but what I could
have wished Rosamond had not engaged herself.  She might have met
somebody on a visit who would have been a far better match; I mean at
her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby's. There are relations in that family
quite as high as Mr. Lydgate's.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Damn relations!</said> said Mr. Vincy; <said who="#MrV">I've had enough of them.  I don't
want a son-in-law who has got nothing but his relations to recommend
him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Why, my dear,</said> said Mrs. Vincy, <said who="#MrsV">you seemed as pleased as could be
about it.  It's true, I wasn't at home; but Rosamond told me you hadn't
a word to say against the engagement.  And she has begun to buy in the
best linen and cambric for her underclothing.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Not by my will,</said> said Mr. Vincy.  <said who="#MrV">I shall have enough to do this
year, with an idle scamp of a son, without paying for wedding-clothes.
The times are as tight as can be; everybody is being ruined; and I
don't believe Lydgate has got a farthing.  I shan't give my consent to
their marrying.  Let 'em wait, as their elders have done before 'em.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Rosamond will take it hard, Vincy, and you know you never could bear
to cross her.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Yes, I could.  The sooner the engagement's off, the better.  I don't
believe he'll ever make an income, the way he goes on.  He makes
enemies; that's all I hear of his making.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">But he stands very high with Mr. Bulstrode, my dear.  The marriage
would please <emph rend="italics">him</emph>, I should think.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Please the deuce!</said> said Mr. Vincy.  <said who="#MrV">Bulstrode won't pay for their
keep.  And if Lydgate thinks I'm going to give money for them to set up
housekeeping, he's mistaken, that's all.  I expect I shall have to put
down my horses soon.  You'd better tell Rosy what I say.</said>
</P>

<P>
This was a not infrequent procedure with Mr. Vincy—to be rash in
jovial assent, and on becoming subsequently conscious that he had been
rash, to employ others in making the offensive retractation.  However,
Mrs. Vincy, who never willingly opposed her husband, lost no time the
next morning in letting Rosamond know what he had said. <second> Rosamond,
examining some muslin-work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a
certain turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could
teach you that it meant perfect obstinacy. </second>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">What do you say, my dear?</said> said her mother, with affectionate
deference.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Papa does not mean anything of the kind,</said> said Rosamond, quite calmly.
<said who="#R">He has always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved.  And I
shall marry Mr. Lydgate.  It is seven weeks now since papa gave his
consent.  And I hope we shall have Mrs. Bretton's house.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa.  You always do
manage everybody.  But if we ever do go and get damask, Sadler's is the
place—far better than Hopkins's. Mrs. Bretton's is very large, though:
I should love you to have such a house; but it will take a great deal
of furniture—carpeting and everything, besides plate and glass.  And
you hear, your papa says he will give no money.  Do you think Mr.
Lydgate expects it?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma.  Of course he
understands his own affairs.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of
your having a pretty legacy as well as Fred;—and now everything is so
dreadful—there's no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor
boy disappointed as he is.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma.  Fred must leave off
being idle.  I am going up-stairs to take this work to Miss Morgan: she
does the open hemming very well.  Mary Garth might do some work for me
now, I should think.  Her sewing is exquisite; it is the nicest thing I
know about Mary.  I should so like to have all my cambric frilling
double-hemmed. And it takes a long time.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mrs. Vincy's belief that Rosamond could manage her papa was well
founded. <first> Apart from his dinners and his coursing, Mr. Vincy,
blustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a
prime minister: the force of circumstances was easily too much for him,
as it is for most pleasure-loving florid men; and the circumstance
called Rosamond was particularly forcible by means of that mild
persistence which, as we know, enables a white soft living substance to
make its way in spite of opposing rock. </first> <said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> Papa was not a rock: he had no
other fixity than that fixity of alternating impulses sometimes called
habit, and this was altogether unfavorable to his taking the only
decisive line of conduct in relation to his daughter's
engagement—namely, to inquire thoroughly into Lydgate's circumstances,
declare his own inability to furnish money, and forbid alike either a
speedy marriage or an engagement which must be too lengthy. </said>  That seems
very simple and easy in the statement; but a disagreeable resolve
formed in the chill hours of the morning had as many conditions against
it as the early frost, and rarely persisted under the warming
influences of the day. <said who="#MrV" direct="false" aloud="false">  The indirect though emphatic expression of
opinion to which Mr. Vincy was prone suffered much restraint in this
case: Lydgate was a proud man towards whom innuendoes were obviously
unsafe, and throwing his hat on the floor was out of the question. Mr.
Vincy was a little in awe of him, a little vain that he wanted to marry
Rosamond, a little indisposed to raise a question of money in which his
own position was not advantageous, a little afraid of being worsted in
dialogue with a man better educated and more highly bred than himself,
and a little afraid of doing what his daughter would not like. </said> The
part Mr. Vincy preferred playing was that of the generous host whom
nobody criticises.  In the earlier half of the day there was business
to hinder any formal communication of an adverse resolve; in the later
there was dinner, wine, whist, and general satisfaction.  And in the
mean while the hours were each leaving their little deposit and
gradually forming the final reason for inaction, namely, that action
was too late.  The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick
Gate, and a love-making not at all dependent on money-advances from
fathers-in-law, or prospective income from a profession, went on
flourishingly under Mr. Vincy's own eyes.  Young love-making—that
gossamer web!  Even the points it clings to—the things whence its
subtle interlacings are swung—are scarcely perceptible: momentary
touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs,
unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest
tremors.  The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable
joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness,
indefinite trust.  And Lydgate fell to spinning that web from his
inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience supposed to
be finished off with the drama of Laure—in spite too of medicine and
biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes presented in
a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of scientific inquiry,
are observed to be less incompatible with poetic love than a native
dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose.  As for Rosamond,
she was in the water-lily's expanding wonderment at its own fuller
life, and she too was spinning industriously at the mutual web.  All
this went on in the corner of the drawing-room where the piano stood,
and subtle as it was, the light made it a sort of rainbow visible to
many observers besides Mr. Farebrother.  The certainty that Miss Vincy
and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general in Middlemarch without the
aid of formal announcement.
</P>

<P>
Aunt Bulstrode was again stirred to anxiety; but this time she
addressed herself to her brother, going to the warehouse expressly to
avoid Mrs. Vincy's volatility.  His replies were not satisfactory.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Walter, you never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go
on without inquiry into Mr. Lydgate's prospects?</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode,
opening her eyes with wider gravity at her brother, who was in his
peevish warehouse humor.  <said who="#MrsB">Think of this girl brought up in luxury—in
too worldly a way, I am sorry to say—what will she do on a small
income?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Oh, confound it, Harriet! What can I do when men come into the town
without any asking of mine?  Did you shut your house up against
Lydgate?  Bulstrode has pushed him forward more than anybody.  I never
made any fuss about the young fellow.  You should go and talk to your
husband about it, not me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">Well, really, Walter, how can Mr. Bulstrode be to blame?  I am sure he
did not wish for the engagement.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Oh, if Bulstrode had not taken him by the hand, I should never have
invited him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">But you called him in to attend on Fred, and I am sure that was a
mercy,</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode, losing her clew in the intricacies of the
subject.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">I don't know about mercy,</said> said Mr. Vincy, testily.  <said who="#MrV">I know I am
worried more than I like with my family.  I was a good brother to you,
Harriet, before you married Bulstrode, and I must say he doesn't always
show that friendly spirit towards your family that might have been
expected of him.</said>  Mr. Vincy was very little like a Jesuit, but no
accomplished Jesuit could have turned a question more adroitly.
Harriet had to defend her husband instead of blaming her brother, and
the conversation ended at a point as far from the beginning as some
recent sparring between the brothers-in-law at a vestry meeting.
</P>

<P>
Mrs. Bulstrode did not repeat her brother's complaints to her husband,
but in the evening she spoke to him of Lydgate and Rosamond.  He did
not share her warm interest, however; and only spoke with resignation
of the risks attendant on the beginning of medical practice and the
desirability of prudence.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsB">I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl—brought up
as she has been,</said> said Mrs. Bulstrode, wishing to rouse her husband's
feelings.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#B">Truly, my dear,</said> said Mr. Bulstrode, assentingly.  <said who="#B">Those who are not
of this world can do little else to arrest the errors of the
obstinately worldly.  That is what we must accustom ourselves to
recognize with regard to your brother's family.  I could have wished
that Mr. Lydgate had not entered into such a union; but my relations
with him are limited to that use of his gifts for God's purposes which
is taught us by the divine government under each dispensation.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mrs. Bulstrode said no more, attributing some dissatisfaction which she
felt to her own want of spirituality.  She believed that her husband
was one of those men whose memoirs should be written when they died.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> As to Lydgate himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept
all the consequences which he believed himself to foresee with perfect
clearness.  Of course he must be married in a year—perhaps even in
half a year.  This was not what he had intended; but other schemes
would not be hindered: they would simply adjust themselves anew.
Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way.  A house
must be taken instead of the rooms he at present occupied; </said>and Lydgate,
having heard Rosamond speak with admiration of old Mrs. Bretton's house
(situated in Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell vacant after the
old lady's death, and immediately entered into treaty for it.
</P>

<P>
He did this in an episodic way, very much as he gave orders to his
tailor for every requisite of perfect dress, without any notion of
being extravagant. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> On the contrary, he would have despised any
ostentation of expense; his profession had familiarized him with all
grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered hardships.
He would have behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served
in a jug with the handle off, and he would have remembered nothing
about a grand dinner except that a man was there who talked well.  But
it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what
he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and
excellent waiting at table. </said> In warming himself at French social
theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. <first> We may handle even
extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving,
and preference for armorial bearings in our own case, link us
indissolubly with the established order. </first> And Lydgate's tendency was
not towards extreme opinions: he would have liked no barefooted
doctrines, being particular about his boots: he was no radical in
relation to anything but medical reform and the prosecution of
discovery. <first> In the rest of practical life he walked by hereditary
habit; half from that personal pride and unreflecting egoism which I
have already called commonness, and half from that naivete which
belonged to preoccupation with favorite ideas. </first>
</P>

<P>
Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement
which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of
money. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Certainly, being in love and being expected continually by some
one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent
her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which
might serve some <said>plodding fellow of a German</said> to make the great,
imminent discovery.  This was really an argument for not deferring the
marriage too long, as he implied to Mr. Farebrother, </said> one day that the
Vicar came to his room with some pond-products which he wanted to
examine under a better microscope than his own, and, finding Lydgate's
tableful of apparatus and specimens in confusion, said sarcastically—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and
now he brings back chaos.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Yes, at some stages,</said> said Lydgate, lifting his brows and smiling,
while he began to arrange his microscope.  <said who="#Lyd">But a better order will
begin after.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">Soon?</said> said the Vicar.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd"> I hope so, really.  This unsettled state of affairs uses up the time,
and when one has notions in science, every moment is an opportunity.  I
feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to
work steadily.  He has everything at home then—no teasing with
personal speculations—he can get calmness and freedom.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">You are an enviable dog,</said> said the Vicar, <said who="#FB">to have such a
prospect—Rosamond, calmness and freedom, all to your share.  Here am
I with nothing but my pipe and pond-animalcules. Now, are you ready?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate did not mention to the Vicar another reason he had for wishing
to shorten the period of courtship.  It was rather irritating to him,
even with the wine of love in his veins, to be obliged to mingle so
often with the family party at the Vincys', and to enter so much into
Middlemarch gossip, protracted good cheer, whist-playing, and general
futility. <second> He had to be deferential when Mr. Vincy decided questions
with trenchant ignorance, especially as to those liquors which were the
best inward pickle, preserving you from the effects of bad air. </second> Mrs.
Vincy's openness and simplicity were quite unstreaked with suspicion as
to the subtle offence she might give to the taste of her intended
son-in-law; and altogether Lydgate had to confess to himself that he
was descending a little in relation to Rosamond's family.  But that
exquisite creature herself suffered in the same sort of way:—it was
at least one delightful thought that in marrying her, he could give her
a much-needed transplantation. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Dear!</said> he said to her one evening, in his gentlest tone, as he sat
down by her and looked closely at her face—
</P>

<P>
<first> But I must first say that he had found her alone in the drawing-room,
where the great old-fashioned window, almost as large as the side of
the room, was opened to the summer scents of the garden at the back of
the house. </first> Her father and mother were gone to a party, and the rest
were all out with the butterflies.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Dear! your eyelids are red.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Are they?</said> said Rosamond.  <said who="#R">I wonder why.</said>  It was not in her nature
to pour forth wishes or grievances.  They only came forth gracefully on
solicitation.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">As if you could hide it from me!</said> said Lydgate, laying his hand
tenderly on both of hers.  <said who="#Lyd">Don't I see a tiny drop on one of the
lashes?  Things trouble you, and you don't tell me.  That is unloving.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Why should I tell you what you cannot alter?  They are every-day
things:—perhaps they have been a little worse lately.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Family annoyances.  Don't fear speaking.  I guess them.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Papa has been more irritable lately.  Fred makes him angry, and this
morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw his
whole education away, and do something quite beneath him.  And
besides—</said>
</P>

<P>
Rosamond hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush.
Lydgate had never seen her in trouble since the morning of their
engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at
this moment.  He kissed the hesitating lips gently, as if to encourage
them.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement,</said> Rosamond
continued, almost in a whisper; <said who="#R">and he said last night that he should
certainly speak to you and say it must be given up.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Will you give it up?</said> said Lydgate, with quick energy—almost angrily.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I never give up anything that I choose to do,</said> said Rosamond,
recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">God bless you!</said> said Lydgate, kissing her again. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> This constancy of
purpose in the right place was adorable. </said> He went on:—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be
given up.  You are of age, and I claim you as mine.  If anything is
done to make you unhappy,—that is a reason for hastening our marriage.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his,
and the radiance seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine.
<second> Ideal happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you
are invited to step from the labor and discord of the street into a
paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed
to be an affair of a few weeks' waiting, more or less. </second> </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Why should we defer it?</said> he said, with ardent insistence.  <said who="#Lyd">I have
taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready—can it
not?  You will not mind about new clothes.  Those can be bought
afterwards.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R"> What original notions you clever men have!</said> said Rosamond, dimpling
with more thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity.
<said who="#R">This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought
after marriage.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">But you don't mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for
the sake of clothes?</said> said Lydgate, half thinking that Rosamond was
tormenting him prettily, and half fearing that she really shrank from
speedy marriage.  <said who="#Lyd">Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of
happiness even than this—being continually together, independent of
others, and ordering our lives as we will.  Come, dear, tell me how
soon you can be altogether mine.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> There was a serious pleading in Lydgate's tone, as if he felt that she
would be injuring him by any fantastic delays.  Rosamond became serious
too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many
intricacies of lace-edging and hosiery and petticoat-tucking, in order
to give an answer that would at least be approximative. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Six weeks would be ample—say so, Rosamond,</said> insisted Lydgate,
releasing her hands to put his arm gently round her.
</P>

<P>
One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave her
neck a meditative turn, and then said seriously—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared.
Still, mamma could see to those while we were away.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Yes, to be sure.  We must be away a week or so.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Oh, more than that!</said> said Rosamond, earnestly. <said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> She was thinking of
her evening dresses for the visit to Sir Godwin Lydgate's, which she
had long been secretly hoping for as a delightful employment of at
least one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her
introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also a pleasing
though sober kind of rank, when sustained by blood). </said> She looked at her
lover with some wondering remonstrance as she spoke, and he readily
understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet time of double
solitude.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed.  But let us take
a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you may be
suffering.  Six weeks!—I am sure they would be ample.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I could certainly hasten the work,</said> said Rosamond.  <said who="#R">Will you, then,
mention it to papa?—I think it would be better to write to him.</said> <first> She
blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk
forth happily among them in the transcendent evening light: is there
not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half child, in those delicate
petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?</first>
</P>

<P>
He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and
they sat quite still for many minutes which flowed by them like a small
gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it.  Rosamond thought
that no one could be more in love than she was; and <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate thought
that after all his wild mistakes and absurd credulity, he had found
perfect womanhood—felt as if already breathed upon by exquisite wedded
affection such as would be bestowed by an accomplished creature who
venerated his high musings and momentous labors and would never
interfere with them; who would create order in the home and accounts
with still magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and
transform life into romance at any moment; who was instructed to the
true womanly limit and not a hair's-breadth beyond—docile, therefore,
and ready to carry out behests which came from that limit.  It was
plainer now than ever that his notion of remaining much longer a
bachelor had been a mistake: marriage would not be an obstruction but a
furtherance. </said> And happening the next day to accompany a patient to
Brassing, he saw a dinner-service there which struck him as so exactly
the right thing that he bought it at once. <second> It saved time to do these
things just when you thought of them, and Lydgate hated ugly crockery. </second>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> The dinner-service in question was expensive, but that might be in the
nature of dinner-services. Furnishing was necessarily expensive; but
then it had to be done only once. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsV">It must be lovely,</said> said Mrs. Vincy, when Lydgate mentioned his
purchase with some descriptive touches.  <said who="#MrsV">Just what Rosy ought to have.
I trust in heaven it won't be broken!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">One must hire servants who will not break things,</said> said Lydgate.
(Certainly, this was reasoning with an imperfect vision of sequences.
But at that period there was no sort of reasoning which was not more or
less sanctioned by men of science.)
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> Of course it was unnecessary to defer the mention of anything to mamma,
who did not readily take views that were not cheerful, and being a
happy wife herself, had hardly any feeling but pride in her daughter's
marriage. </said> But Rosamond had good reasons for suggesting to Lydgate that
papa should be appealed to in writing.  She prepared for the arrival of
the letter by walking with her papa to the warehouse the next morning,
and telling him on the way that Mr. Lydgate wished to be married soon.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Nonsense, my dear!</said> said Mr. Vincy.  <said who="#MrV">What has he got to marry on?
You'd much better give up the engagement.  I've told you so pretty
plainly before this.  What have you had such an education for, if you
are to go and marry a poor man?  It's a cruel thing for a father to
see.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Mr. Lydgate is not poor, papa.  He bought Mr. Peacock's practice,
which, they say, is worth eight or nine hundred a-year.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">Stuff and nonsense!  What's buying a practice?  He might as well buy
next year's swallows.  It'll all slip through his fingers.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">On the contrary, papa, he will increase the practice.  See how he has
been called in by the Chettams and Casaubons.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">I hope he knows I shan't give anything—with this disappointment about
Fred, and Parliament going to be dissolved, and machine-breaking
everywhere, and an election coming on—</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Dear papa! what can that have to do with my marriage?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrV">A pretty deal to do with it!  We may all be ruined for what I know—the
country's in that state!  Some say it's the end of the world, and
be hanged if I don't think it looks like it!  Anyhow, it's not a time
for me to be drawing money out of my business, and I should wish
Lydgate to know that.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I am sure he expects nothing, papa.  And he has such very high
connections: he is sure to rise in one way or another.  He is engaged
in making scientific discoveries.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Vincy was silent.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I cannot give up my only prospect of happiness, papa. Mr. Lydgate is a
gentleman.  I could never love any one who was not a perfect gentleman.
You would not like me to go into a consumption, as Arabella Hawley did.
And you know that I never change my mind.</said>
</P>

<P>
Again papa was silent.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish.  We shall
never give each other up; and you know that you have always objected to
long courtships and late marriages.</said>
</P>

<P>
There was a little more urgency of this kind, till Mr. Vincy said,
<said who="#MrV">Well, well, child, he must write to me first before I can answer
him,</said>—and Rosamond was certain that she had gained her point.
</P>

<P>
Mr. Vincy's answer consisted chiefly in a demand that Lydgate should
insure his life—a demand immediately conceded.  This was a
delightfully reassuring idea supposing that Lydgate died, but in the
mean time not a self-supporting idea. <said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> However, it seemed to make
everything comfortable about Rosamond's marriage; and the necessary
purchases went on with much spirit.  Not without prudential
considerations, however.  A bride (who is going to visit at a
baronet's) must have a few first-rate pocket-handkerchiefs; but beyond
the absolutely necessary half-dozen, Rosamond contented herself without
the very highest style of embroidery and Valenciennes. </said> <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate also,
finding that his sum of eight hundred pounds had been considerably
reduced since he had come to Middlemarch, restrained his inclination
for some plate of an old pattern which was shown to him when he went
into Kibble's establishment at Brassing to buy forks and spoons.  He
was too proud to act as if he presupposed that Mr. Vincy would advance
money to provide furniture; and though, since it would not be
necessary to pay for everything at once, some bills would be left
standing over, he did not waste time in conjecturing how much his
father-in-law would give in the form of dowry, to make payment easy.
He was not going to do anything extravagant, but the requisite things
must be bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a poor
quality.  All these matters were by the bye.  Lydgate foresaw that
science and his profession were the objects he should alone pursue
enthusiastically; but he could not imagine himself pursuing them in
such a home as Wrench had—the doors all open, the oil-cloth worn, the
children in soiled pinafores, and lunch lingering in the form of bones,
black-handled knives, and willow-pattern. But Wrench had a wretched
lymphatic wife who made a mummy of herself indoors in a large shawl;
and he must have altogether begun with an ill-chosen domestic apparatus. </said>
</P>

<P>
Rosamond, however, was on her side much occupied with conjectures,
though her quick imitative perception warned her against betraying them
too crudely.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R"> I shall like so much to know your family,</said> she said one day, when the
wedding journey was being discussed.  <said who="#R">We might perhaps take a
direction that would allow us to see them as we returned.  Which of
your uncles do you like best?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Oh,—my uncle Godwin, I think.  He is a good-natured old fellow.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy,
were you not?  I should so like to see the old spot and everything you
were used to.  Does he know you are going to be married?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">No,</said> said Lydgate, carelessly, turning in his chair and rubbing his
hair up.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Do send him word of it, you naughty undutiful nephew.  He will perhaps
ask you to take me to Quallingham; and then you could show me about the
grounds, and I could imagine you there when you were a boy.  Remember,
you see me in my home, just as it has been since I was a child.  It is
not fair that I should be so ignorant of yours.  But perhaps you would
be a little ashamed of me.  I forgot that.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate smiled at her tenderly, and really accepted the suggestion that
the proud pleasure of showing so charming a bride was worth some
trouble.  And now he came to think of it, he would like to see the old
spots with Rosamond. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I will write to him, then.  But my cousins are bores.</said>
</P>

<P>
It seemed magnificent to Rosamond to be able to speak so slightingly of
a baronet's family, and she felt much contentment in the prospect of
being able to estimate them contemptuously on her own account.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> But mamma was near spoiling all, a day or two later, </said>by saying—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I hope your uncle Sir Godwin will not look down on Rosy, Mr. Lydgate.
I should think he would do something handsome.  A thousand or two can
be nothing to a baronet.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">Mamma!</said> said Rosamond, blushing deeply; and Lydgate pitied her so much
that he remained silent and went to the other end of the room to
examine a print curiously, as if he had been absent-minded. <said who="#R" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mamma had a
little filial lecture afterwards, and was docile as usual.  But
Rosamond reflected that if any of those high-bred cousins who were
bores, should be induced to visit Middlemarch, they would see many
things in her own family which might shock them.  Hence it seemed
desirable that Lydgate should by-and-by get some first-rate position
elsewhere than in Middlemarch; and this could hardly be difficult in
the case of a man who had a titled uncle and could make discoveries. </said>
<second> Lydgate, you perceive, had talked fervidly to Rosamond of his hopes as
to the highest uses of his life, and had found it delightful to be
listened to by a creature who would bring him the sweet furtherance of
satisfying affection—beauty—repose—such help as our thoughts get
from the summer sky and the flower-fringed meadows. </second>
</P>

<P>
<first> Lydgate relied much on the psychological difference between what for
the sake of variety I will call goose and gander: especially on the
innate submissiveness of the goose as beautifully corresponding to the
strength of the gander. </first>
</P>

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

</div><div type="chapter" n="37"><head>CHAPTER XXXVII.</head>

<epigraph>
        <said>Thrice happy she that is so well assured
         Unto herself and settled so in heart
         That neither will for better be allured
         Ne fears to worse with any chance to start,
         But like a steddy ship doth strongly part
         The raging waves and keeps her course aright;
         Ne aught for tempest doth from it depart,
         Ne aught for fairer weather's false delight.
         Such self-assurance need not fear the spight
         Of grudging foes; ne favour seek of friends;
         But in the stay of her own stedfast might
         Neither to one herself nor other bends.
            Most happy she that most assured doth rest,
            But he most happy who such one loves best.</said>
                                                   —SPENSER.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general election
or the end of the world that was coming on, now that George the Fourth
was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally
depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type of the
uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time.  With the glow-worm
lights of country places, how could men see which were their own
thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures,
of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather
than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies
which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest,
and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors?
Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous
position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given
up the <said>Pioneer</said>—which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in
the van of progress—because it had taken Peel's side about the
Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of
Jesuitry and Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the "Trumpet",
which—since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of
the public mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)—had become
feeble in its blowing.
</P>

<P>
It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the "Pioneer",when
the crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance to
public action on the part of men whose minds had from long experience
acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of judgment as well
as tolerance, dispassionateness as well as energy—in fact, all those
qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the
least disposed to share lodgings.
</P>

<P>
Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely
than usual, and leaving much uncertainty as to its ultimate channel,
was heard to say in Mr. Hawley's office that the article in question
"emanated" from Brooke of Tipton, and that Brooke had secretly bought
the "Pioneer" some months ago.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Hawley">That means mischief, eh?</said> said Mr. Hawley.  <said who="#Hawley">He's got the freak of
being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise.
So much the worse for him.  I've had my eye on him for some time.  He
shall be prettily pumped upon.  He's a damned bad landlord.  What
business has an old county man to come currying favor with a low set of
dark-blue freemen?  As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing
himself.  It would be worth our paying for.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Hackbutt">I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who
can write the highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything
in the London papers.  And he means to take very high ground on Reform.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Hawley">Let Brooke reform his rent-roll. He's a cursed old screw, and the
buildings all over his estate are going to rack.  I suppose this young
fellow is some loose fish from London.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Hackbutt">His name is Ladislaw.  He is said to be of foreign extraction.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Hawley">I know the sort,</said> said Mr. Hawley; <said who="#Hawley">some emissary.  He'll begin with
flourishing about the Rights of Man and end with murdering a wench.
That's the style.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Hackbutt">You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley,</said> said Mr. Hackbutt,
foreseeing some political disagreement with his family lawyer.  <said who="#Hackbutt">I
myself should never favor immoderate views—in fact I take my stand
with Huskisson—but I cannot blind myself to the consideration that the
non-representation of large towns—</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Hawley">Large towns be damned!</said> said Mr. Hawley, impatient of exposition.  <said who="#Hawley">I
know a little too much about Middlemarch elections.  Let 'em quash
every pocket borough to-morrow, and bring in every mushroom town in the
kingdom—they'll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament.
I go upon facts.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Hawley's disgust at the notion of the <said>Pioneer</said> being edited by an
emissary, and of Brooke becoming actively political—as if a tortoise
of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and
become rampant—was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members
of Mr. Brooke's own family. <second> The result had oozed forth gradually, like
the discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of
manufacture which will be permanently under your nostrils without legal
remedy. </second> The "Pioneer" had been secretly bought even before Will
Ladislaw's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in
the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which
did not pay; and in the interval since Mr. Brooke had written his
invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world
at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but had
hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover.
</P>

<P>
The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which
proved greater even than he had anticipated. <said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> For it seemed that Will
was not only at home in all those artistic and literary subjects which
Mr. Brooke had gone into at one time, but that he was strikingly ready
at seizing the points of the political situation, and dealing with them
in that large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to
quotation and general effectiveness of treatment. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know,</said> Mr. Brooke took an
opportunity of saying, for the gratification of Mr. Casaubon.  <said who="#MB">I don't
mean as to anything objectionable—laxities or atheism, or anything of
that kind, you know—Ladislaw's sentiments in every way I am sure are
good—indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night.  But he
has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation—a
fine thing under guidance—under guidance, you know.  I think I shall
be able to put him on the right tack; and I am the more pleased because
he is a relation of yours, Casaubon.</said>
</P>

<P>
If the right tack implied anything more precise than the rest of Mr.
Brooke's speech, Mr. Casaubon silently hoped that it referred to some
occupation at a great distance from Lowick.  He had disliked Will while
he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will
had declined his help. <first> That is the way with us when we have any uneasy
jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the
burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons
for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any
one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves. </first> <first>Having
the scruples of rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of
injuring him—rather we meet all his claims on us by active benefits;
and the drawing of cheques for him, being a superiority which he must
recognize, gives our bitterness a milder infusion. </first> Now Mr. Casaubon
had been deprived of that superiority (as anything more than a
remembrance) in a sudden, capricious manner. <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> His antipathy to Will did
not spring from the common jealousy of a winter-worn husband: it was
something deeper, bred by his lifelong claims and discontents; but
Dorothea, now that she was present—Dorothea, as a young wife who
herself had shown an offensive capability of criticism, necessarily
gave concentration to the uneasiness which had before been vague. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> Will Ladislaw on his side felt that his dislike was flourishing at the
expense of his gratitude, and spent much inward discourse in justifying
the dislike.  Casaubon hated him—he knew that very well; on his first
entrance he could discern a bitterness in the mouth and a venom in the
glance which would almost justify declaring war in spite of past
benefits.  He was much obliged to Casaubon in the past, but really the
act of marrying this wife was a set-off against the obligation.  It was
a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's
self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against
another.  And Casaubon had done a wrong to Dorothea in marrying her.  A
man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to grow
gray crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a
girl into his companionship. </said> <said who="#Lad">It is the most horrible of
virgin-sacrifices,</said> said Will; <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> and he painted to himself what were
Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail.  But
he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her—if he gave
up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know
that she had one slave in the world. </said> Will had—to use Sir Thomas
Browne's phrase—a <said>passionate prodigality</said> of statement both to
himself and others.  The simple truth was that nothing then invited him
so strongly as the presence of Dorothea.
</P>

<P>
Invitations of the formal kind had been wanting, however, for Will had
never been asked to go to Lowick. <said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mr. Brooke, indeed, confident of
doing everything agreeable which Casaubon, poor fellow, was too much
absorbed to think of, had arranged to bring Ladislaw to Lowick several
times (not neglecting meanwhile to introduce him elsewhere on every
opportunity as <said who="#MB"> a young relative of Casaubon's</said>). </said>And though Will had
not seen Dorothea alone, their interviews had been enough to restore
her former sense of young companionship with one who was cleverer than
herself, yet seemed ready to be swayed by her. <first> Poor Dorothea before
her marriage had never found much room in other minds for what she
cared most to say; and she had not, as we know, enjoyed her husband's
superior instruction so much as she had expected. </first> If she spoke with
any keenness of interest to Mr. Casaubon, he heard her with an air of
patience as if she had given a quotation from the Delectus familiar to
him from his tender years, and sometimes mentioned curtly what ancient
sects or personages had held similar ideas, as if there were too much
of that sort in stock already; at other times he would inform her that
she was mistaken, and reassert what her remark had questioned.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> But Will Ladislaw always seemed to see more in what she said than she
herself saw. Dorothea had little vanity, but she had the ardent
woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul.
Hence the mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like a lunette
opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny
air; and this pleasure began to nullify her original alarm at what her
husband might think about the introduction of Will as her uncle's
guest.  On this subject Mr. Casaubon had remained dumb. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> But Will wanted to talk with Dorothea alone, and was impatient of slow
circumstance.  However slight the terrestrial intercourse between Dante
and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura, time changes the proportion of
things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets and
more conversation.  Necessity excused stratagem, but stratagem was
limited by the dread of offending Dorothea. </said> He found out at last that
he wanted to take a particular sketch at Lowick; and one morning when
Mr. Brooke had to drive along the Lowick road on his way to the county
town, Will asked to be set down with his sketch-book and camp-stool at
Lowick, and without announcing himself at the Manor settled himself to
sketch in a position where he must see Dorothea if she came out to
walk—and he knew that she usually walked an hour in the morning.
</P>

<P>
But the stratagem was defeated by the weather.  Clouds gathered with
treacherous quickness, the rain came down, and Will was obliged to take
shelter in the house.  He intended, on the strength of relationship, to
go into the drawing-room and wait there without being announced; and
seeing his old acquaintance the butler in the hall, he said, <said who="#Lad"> Don't
mention that I am here, Pratt; I will wait till luncheon; I know Mr.
Casaubon does not like to be disturbed when he is in the library.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Pratt">Master is out, sir; there's only Mrs. Casaubon in the library.  I'd
better tell her you're here, sir,</said> said Pratt, a red-cheeked man given
to lively converse with Tantripp, and often agreeing with her that it
must be dull for Madam.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">Oh, very well; this confounded rain has hindered me from sketching,</said>
said Will, feeling so happy that he affected indifference with
delightful ease.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> In another minute he was in the library, and Dorothea was meeting him
with her sweet unconstrained smile. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Mr. Casaubon has gone to the Archdeacon's,</said> she said, at once.  <said who="#D">I
don't know whether he will be at home again long before dinner.  He was
uncertain how long he should be.  Did you want to say anything
particular to him?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">No; I came to sketch, but the rain drove me in.  Else I would not have
disturbed you yet.  I supposed that Mr. Casaubon was here, and I know
he dislikes interruption at this hour.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#R">I am indebted to the rain, then.  I am so glad to see you.</said> Dorothea
uttered these common words with the simple sincerity of an unhappy
child, visited at school.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">I really came for the chance of seeing you alone,</said> said Will,
mysteriously forced to be just as simple as she was. <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> He could not stay
to ask himself, why not? </said> <said who="#Lad">I wanted to talk about things, as we did in
Rome.  It always makes a difference when other people are present.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Yes,</said> said Dorothea, in her clear full tone of assent.  <said who="#D">Sit down.</said>
She seated herself on a dark ottoman with the brown books behind her,
looking in her plain dress of some thin woollen-white material, <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> without
a single ornament on her besides her wedding-ring, as if she were under
a vow to be different from all other women;</said> and Will sat down opposite
her at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and
delicate but rather petulant profile, with its defiant curves of lip
and chin.  Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers
which had opened then and there. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false">  Dorothea for the moment forgot her
husband's mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at
her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had
found receptive; for in looking backward through sadness she
exaggerated a past solace. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I have often thought that I should like to talk to you again,</said> she
said, immediately.  <said who="#D">It seems strange to me how many things I said to
you.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">I remember them all,</said> said Will, <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> with the unspeakable content in his
soul of feeling that he was in the presence of a creature worthy to be
perfectly loved. </said> <first> I think his own feelings at that moment were perfect,
for we mortals have our divine moments, when love is satisfied in the
completeness of the beloved object. </first>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I have tried to learn a great deal since we were in Rome,</said> said
Dorothea.  <said who="#D">I can read Latin a little, and I am beginning to understand
just a little Greek.  I can help Mr. Casaubon better now.  I can find
out references for him and save his eyes in many ways.  But it is very
difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way
to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake
them before he is decrepit,</said> said Will, with irrepressible quickness.
But through certain sensibilities Dorothea was as quick as he, and
seeing her face change, he added, immediately, <said who="#Lad">But it is quite true
that the best minds have been sometimes overstrained in working out
their ideas.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">You correct me,</said> said Dorothea.  <said who="#D">I expressed myself ill.  I should
have said that those who have great thoughts get too much worn in
working them out.  I used to feel about that, even when I was a little
girl; and it always seemed to me that the use I should like to make of
my life would be to help some one who did great works, so that his
burthen might be lighter.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea was led on to this bit of autobiography without any sense of
making a revelation. <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> But she had never before said anything to Will
which threw so strong a light on her marriage.  He did not shrug his
shoulders; and for want of that muscular outlet he thought the more
irritably of beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and other emptinesses
ecclesiastically enshrined.  Also he had to take care that his speech
should not betray that thought. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">But you may easily carry the help too far,</said> he said, <said who="#Lad">and get
over-wrought yourself.  Are you not too much shut up?  You already look
paler.  It would be better for Mr. Casaubon to have a secretary; he
could easily get a man who would do half his work for him.  It would
save him more effectually, and you need only help him in lighter ways.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">How can you think of that?</said> said Dorothea, in a tone of earnest
remonstrance.  <said who="#D">I should have no happiness if I did not help him in his
work.  What could I do?  There is no good to be done in Lowick.  The
only thing I desire is to help him more.  And he objects to a
secretary: please not to mention that again.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">Certainly not, now I know your feeling.  But I have heard both Mr.
Brooke and Sir James Chettam express the same wish.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Yes,</said> said Dorothea, <said who="#D">but they don't understand—they want me to be a
great deal on horseback, and have the garden altered and new
conservatories, to fill up my days.  I thought you could understand
that one's mind has other wants,</said> she added, rather
impatiently—<said who="#D"> besides, Mr. Casaubon cannot bear to hear of a secretary.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">My mistake is excusable,</said> said Will.  <said who="#Lad">In old days I used to hear Mr.
Casaubon speak as if he looked forward to having a secretary.  Indeed
he held out the prospect of that office to me.  But I turned out to
be—not good enough for it.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea was trying to extract out of this an excuse for her husband's
evident repulsion, as she said, with a playful smile, <said who="#D">You were not a
steady worker enough.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">No,</said> said Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of
a spirited horse.  And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to
give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory,
he went on, <said who="#Lad">And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any
one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing.  He is
too doubtful—too uncertain of himself.  I may not be good for much,
but he dislikes me because I disagree with him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<first> Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our
tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before
general intentions can be brought to bear. </first> <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> And it was too intolerable
that Casaubon's dislike of him should not be fairly accounted for to
Dorothea.  Yet when he had spoken he was rather uneasy as to the effect
on her. </said>
</P>

<P>
But Dorothea was strangely quiet—not immediately indignant, as she had
been on a like occasion in Rome.  And the cause lay deep. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> She was no
longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting
herself to their clearest perception; and now when she looked steadily
at her husband's failure, still more at his possible consciousness of
failure, she seemed to be looking along the one track where duty became
tenderness.  Will's want of reticence might have been met with more
severity, if he had not already been recommended to her mercy by her
husband's dislike, which must seem hard to her till she saw better
reason for it. </said>
</P>

<P>
She did not answer at once, but after looking down ruminatingly she
said, with some earnestness, <said who="#D">Mr. Casaubon must have overcome his
dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is
admirable.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters.  It was an
abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited
because she made what they called a <i>mesalliance</i>, though there was
nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish
refugee who gave lessons for his bread.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I wish I knew all about her!</said> said Dorothea.  <said who="#D">I wonder how she bore
the change from wealth to poverty: I wonder whether she was happy with
her husband!  Do you know much about them?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">No; only that my grandfather was a patriot—a bright fellow—could
speak many languages—musical—got his bread by teaching all sorts of
things.  They both died rather early.  And I never knew much of my
father, beyond what my mother told me; but he inherited the musical
talents.  I remember his slow walk and his long thin hands; and one day
remains with me when he was lying ill, and I was very hungry, and had
only a little bit of bread.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Ah, what a different life from mine!</said> said Dorothea, with keen
interest, clasping her hands on her lap.  <said who="#D">I have always had too much
of everything.  But tell me how it was—Mr. Casaubon could not have
known about you then.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">No; but my father had made himself known to Mr. Casaubon, and that was
my last hungry day.  My father died soon after, and my mother and I
were well taken care of.  Mr. Casaubon always expressly recognized it
as his duty to take care of us because of the harsh injustice which had
been shown to his mother's sister.  But now I am telling you what is
not new to you.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> In his inmost soul Will was conscious of wishing to tell Dorothea what
was rather new even in his own construction of things—namely, that
Mr. Casaubon had never done more than pay a debt towards him.  Will was
much too good a fellow to be easy under the sense of being ungrateful. </said>
And when gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways
of escaping from its bonds.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">No,</said> answered Dorothea; <said who="#D">Mr. Casaubon has always avoided dwelling on
his own honorable actions.</said>  She did not feel that her husband's
conduct was depreciated; but this notion of what justice had required
in his relations with Will Ladislaw took strong hold on her mind.
After a moment's pause, she added, <said who="#D">He had never told me that he
supported your mother.  Is she still living?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">No; she died by an accident—a fall—four years ago.  It is curious
that my mother, too, ran away from her family, but not for the sake of
her husband.  She never would tell me anything about her family, except
that she forsook them to get her own living—went on the stage, in
fact.  She was a dark-eyed creature, with crisp ringlets, and never
seemed to be getting old.  You see I come of rebellious blood on both
sides,</said> Will ended, smiling brightly at Dorothea, while she was still
looking with serious intentness before her, like a child seeing a drama
for the first time.
</P>

<P>
But her face, too, broke into a smile as she said, <said who="#D">That is your
apology, I suppose, for having yourself been rather rebellious; I mean,
to Mr. Casaubon's wishes.  You must remember that you have not done
what he thought best for you.  And if he dislikes you—you were
speaking of dislike a little while ago—but I should rather say, if he
has shown any painful feelings towards you, you must consider how
sensitive he has become from the wearing effect of study.  Perhaps,</said>
she continued, getting into a pleading tone, <said who="#D">my uncle has not told you
how serious Mr. Casaubon's illness was.  It would be very petty of us
who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from
those who carry a weight of trial.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">You teach me better,</said> said Will.  <said who="#Lad">I will never grumble on that
subject again.</said>  <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> There was a gentleness in his tone which came from the
unutterable contentment of perceiving—what Dorothea was hardly
conscious of—that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity
and loyalty towards her husband.  Will was ready to adore her pity and
loyalty, if she would associate himself with her in manifesting them. </said>
<said who="#Lad">I have really sometimes been a perverse fellow,</said> he went on, <said who="#Lad">but I
will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you would
disapprove.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">That is very good of you,</said> said Dorothea, with another open smile.  <said who="#D">I
shall have a little kingdom then, where I shall give laws.  But you
will soon go away, out of my rule, I imagine.  You will soon be tired
of staying at the Grange.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">That is a point I wanted to mention to you—one of the reasons why I
wished to speak to you alone.  Mr. Brooke proposes that I should stay
in this neighborhood.  He has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers,
and he wishes me to conduct that, and also to help him in other ways.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?</said> said
Dorothea.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and
not settling to anything.  And here is something offered to me.  If you
would not like me to accept it, I will give it up.  Otherwise I would
rather stay in this part of the country than go away.  I belong to
nobody anywhere else.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I should like you to stay very much,</said> said Dorothea, at once, as
simply and readily as she had spoken at Rome. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> There was not the shadow
of a reason in her mind at the moment why she should not say so. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">Then I <emph rend="italics">will</emph> stay,</said> said Ladislaw, shaking his head backward, rising
and going towards the window, as if to see whether the rain had ceased.
</P>

<P>
But the next moment, Dorothea, according to a habit which was getting
continually stronger, began to reflect that her husband felt
differently from herself, and she colored deeply under the double
embarrassment of having expressed what might be in opposition to her
husband's feeling, and of having to suggest this opposition to Will.
His face was not turned towards her, and this made it easier to say—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">But my opinion is of little consequence on such a subject.  I think
you should be guided by Mr. Casaubon.  I spoke without thinking of
anything else than my own feeling, which has nothing to do with the
real question.  But it now occurs to me—perhaps Mr. Casaubon might
see that the proposal was not wise.  Can you not wait now and mention
it to him?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">I can't wait to-day,</said> said Will, inwardly seared by the possibility
that Mr. Casaubon would enter.  <said who="#Lad">The rain is quite over now.  I told
Mr. Brooke not to call for me: I would rather walk the five miles.  I
shall strike across Halsell Common, and see the gleams on the wet
grass.  I like that.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> He approached her to shake hands quite hurriedly, longing but not
daring to say, <said> Don't mention the subject to Mr. Casaubon.</said> No, he
dared not, could not say it.  To ask her to be less simple and direct
would be like breathing on the crystal that you want to see the light
through.  And there was always the other great dread—of himself
becoming dimmed and forever ray-shorn in her eyes. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I wish you could have stayed,</said> said Dorothea, with a touch of
mournfulness, as she rose and put out her hand. <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> She also had her
thought which she did not like to express:—Will certainly ought to
lose no time in consulting Mr. Casaubon's wishes, but for her to urge
this might seem an undue dictation. </said>
</P>

<P>
So they only said "Good-by," and Will quitted the house, striking
across the fields so as not to run any risk of encountering Mr.
Casaubon's carriage, which, however, did not appear at the gate until
four o'clock. <said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> That was an unpropitious hour for coming home: it was too
early to gain the moral support under ennui of dressing his person for
dinner, and too late to undress his mind of the day's frivolous
ceremony and affairs, so as to be prepared for a good plunge into the
serious business of study. </said> On such occasions he usually threw into an
easy-chair in the library, and allowed Dorothea to read the London
papers to him, closing his eyes the while.  To-day, however, he
declined that relief, observing that he had already had too many public
details urged upon him; but he spoke more cheerfully than usual, when
Dorothea asked about his fatigue, and added with that air of formal
effort which never forsook him even when he spoke without his waistcoat
and cravat—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">I have had the gratification of meeting my former acquaintance, Dr.
Spanning, to-day, and of being praised by one who is himself a worthy
recipient of praise.  He spoke very handsomely of my late tractate on
the Egyptian Mysteries,—using, in fact, terms which it would not
become me to repeat.</said>  In uttering the last clause, Mr. Casaubon leaned
over the elbow of his chair, and swayed his head up and down,
apparently as a muscular outlet instead of that recapitulation which
would not have been becoming.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I am very glad you have had that pleasure,</said> said Dorothea, delighted
to see her husband less weary than usual at this hour.  <said who="#D">Before you
came I had been regretting that you happened to be out to-day.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Why so, my dear?</said> said Mr. Casaubon, throwing himself backward again.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Because Mr. Ladislaw has been here; and he has mentioned a proposal of
my uncle's which I should like to know your opinion of.</said> <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> Her husband
she felt was really concerned in this question.  Even with her
ignorance of the world she had a vague impression that the position
offered to Will was out of keeping with his family connections, and
certainly Mr. Casaubon had a claim to be consulted. </said> He did not speak,
but merely bowed.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Dear uncle, you know, has many projects.  It appears that he has
bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers, and he has asked Mr. Ladislaw
to stay in this neighborhood and conduct the paper for him, besides
helping him in other ways.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea looked at her husband while she spoke, but he had at first
blinked and finally closed his eyes, as if to save them; while his lips
became more tense.  <said who="#D">What is your opinion?</said> she added, rather timidly,
after a slight pause.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Did Mr. Ladislaw come on purpose to ask my opinion?</said> said Mr.
Casaubon, opening his eyes narrowly with a knife-edged look at
Dorothea.  She was really uncomfortable on the point he inquired about,
but she only became a little more serious, and her eyes did not swerve.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">No,</said> she answered immediately, <said who="#D">he did not say that he came to ask
your opinion.  But when he mentioned the proposal, he of course
expected me to tell you of it.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Casaubon was silent.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I feared that you might feel some objection.  But certainly a young
man with so much talent might be very useful to my uncle—might help
him to do good in a better way.  And Mr. Ladislaw wishes to have some
fixed occupation.  He has been blamed, he says, for not seeking
something of that kind, and he would like to stay in this neighborhood
because no one cares for him elsewhere.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> Dorothea felt that this was a consideration to soften her husband.
However, he did not speak, and she presently recurred to Dr. Spanning
and the Archdeacon's breakfast.  But there was no longer sunshine on
these subjects. </said>
</P>

<P>
The next morning, without Dorothea's knowledge, Mr. Casaubon despatched
the following letter, beginning <said>Dear Mr. Ladislaw</said> (he had always
before addressed him as <said>Will"):—
</P>

<BR/>

<P CLASS="letter">
"Mrs. Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and
(according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your part been
in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this
neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my
own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and
warrantable in me when that effect is viewed under the influence of
legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me when the same effect is
considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once that
your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly
offensive to me.  That I have some claim to the exercise of a veto
here, would not, I believe, be denied by any reasonable person
cognizant of the relations between us: relations which, though thrown
into the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby annulled in
their character of determining antecedents.  I will not here make
reflections on any person's judgment.  It is enough for me to point out
to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties
which should hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any
wise conspicuous in this vicinity in a status not only much beneath my
own, but associated at best with the sciolism of literary or political
adventurers.  At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from
further reception at my house.
</P>

<P CLASS="closing">
Yours faithfully,<BR/>
    "EDWARD CASAUBON."<BR/>
</P>

<BR/>

<P>
Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was innocently at work towards the further
embitterment of her husband; dwelling, with a sympathy that grew to
agitation, on what Will had told her about his parents and
grandparents.  Any private hours in her day were usually spent in her
blue-green boudoir, and she had come to be very fond of its pallid
quaintness. <first> Nothing had been outwardly altered there; but while the
summer had gradually advanced over the western fields beyond the avenue
of elms, the bare room had gathered within it those memories of an
inward life which fill the air as with a cloud of good or bad angels,
the invisible yet active forms of our spiritual triumphs or our
spiritual falls. </first> She had been so used to struggle for and to find
resolve in looking along the avenue towards the arch of western light
that the vision itself had gained a communicating power.  Even the pale
stag seemed to have reminding glances and to mean mutely, <said> Yes, we
know.</said> And the group of delicately touched miniatures had made an
audience as of beings no longer disturbed about their own earthly lot,
but still humanly interested.  Especially the mysterious "Aunt Julia"
about whom Dorothea had never found it easy to question her husband.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had
gathered round that Aunt Julia who was Will's grandmother; the presence
of that delicate miniature, so like a living face that she knew,
helping to concentrate her feelings.  What a wrong, to cut off the girl
from the family protection and inheritance only because she had chosen
a man who was poor!  Dorothea, early troubling her elders with
questions about the facts around her, had wrought herself into some
independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons why
eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed: those
reasons, impressing her with a certain awe, might be weightier than she
knew, but here was a question of ties which left them uninfringed.
Here was a daughter whose child—even according to the ordinary aping
of aristocratic institutions by people who are no more aristocratic
than retired grocers, and who have no more land to "keep together" than
a lawn and a paddock—would have a prior claim.  Was inheritance a
question of liking or of responsibility? </said> <first> All the energy of Dorothea's
nature went on the side of responsibility—the fulfilment of claims
founded on our own deeds, such as marriage and parentage. </first>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> It was true, she said to herself, that Mr. Casaubon had a debt to the
Ladislaws—that he had to pay back what the Ladislaws had been wronged
of.  And now she began to think of her husband's will, which had been
made at the time of their marriage, leaving the bulk of his property to
her, with proviso in case of her having children.  That ought to be
altered; and no time ought to be lost.  This very question which had
just arisen about Will Ladislaw's occupation, was the occasion for
placing things on a new, right footing.  Her husband, she felt sure,
according to all his previous conduct, would be ready to take the just
view, if she proposed it—she, in whose interest an unfair
concentration of the property had been urged.  His sense of right had
surmounted and would continue to surmount anything that might be called
antipathy.  She suspected that her uncle's scheme was disapproved by
Mr. Casaubon, and this made it seem all the more opportune that a fresh
understanding should be begun, so that instead of Will's starting
penniless and accepting the first function that offered itself, he
should find himself in possession of a rightful income which should be
paid by her husband during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of
the will, should be secured at his death. </said> The vision of all this as
what ought to be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of
daylight, waking her from her previous stupidity and incurious
self-absorbed ignorance about her husband's relation to others.  Will
Ladislaw had refused Mr. Casaubon's future aid on a ground that no
longer appeared right to her; and Mr. Casaubon had never himself seen
fully what was the claim upon him.  <said who="#D">But he will!</said> said Dorothea.  <said who="#D">The
great strength of his character lies here.  And what are we doing with
our money?  We make no use of half of our income.  My own money buys me
nothing but an uneasy conscience.</said>
</P>

<P>
There was a peculiar fascination for Dorothea in this division of
property intended for herself, and always regarded by her as excessive.
<second> She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to others—likely to
tread in the wrong places, as Celia had warned her; yet her blindness
to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by
the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear. </second>
</P>

<P>
The thoughts which had gathered vividness in the solitude of her
boudoir occupied her incessantly through the day on which Mr. Casaubon
had sent his letter to Will.  Everything seemed hindrance to her till
she could find an opportunity of opening her heart to her husband.  To
his preoccupied mind all subjects were to be approached gently, and she
had never since his illness lost from her consciousness the dread of
agitating him.  But when young ardor is set brooding over the
conception of a prompt deed, the deed itself seems to start forth with
independent life, mastering ideal obstacles.  The day passed in a
sombre fashion, not unusual, though Mr. Casaubon was perhaps unusually
silent; but there were hours of the night which might be counted on as
opportunities of conversation; for Dorothea, when aware of her
husband's sleeplessness, had established a habit of rising, lighting a
candle, and reading him to sleep again.  And this night she was from
the beginning sleepless, excited by resolves.  He slept as usual for a
few hours, but she had risen softly and had sat in the darkness for
nearly an hour before he said—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Dorothea, since you are up, will you light a candle?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Do you feel ill, dear?</said> was her first question, as she obeyed him.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">No, not at all; but I shall be obliged, since you are up, if you will
read me a few pages of Lowth.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">May I talk to you a little instead?</said> said Dorothea.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Certainly.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I have been thinking about money all day—that I have always had too
much, and especially the prospect of too much.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C"> These, my dear Dorothea, are providential arrangements.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">But if one has too much in consequence of others being wronged, it
seems to me that the divine voice which tells us to set that wrong
right must be obeyed.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">What, my love, is the bearing of your remark?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">That you have been too liberal in arrangements for me—I mean, with
regard to property; and that makes me unhappy.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">How so?  I have none but comparatively distant connections.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I have been led to think about your aunt Julia, and how she was left
in poverty only because she married a poor man, an act which was not
disgraceful, since he was not unworthy.  It was on that ground, I know,
that you educated Mr. Ladislaw and provided for his mother.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea waited a few moments for some answer that would help her
onward.  None came, and her next words seemed the more forcible to her,
falling clear upon the dark silence.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">But surely we should regard his claim as a much greater one, even to
the half of that property which I know that you have destined for me.
And I think he ought at once to be provided for on that understanding.
It is not right that he should be in the dependence of poverty while we
are rich.  And if there is any objection to the proposal he mentioned,
the giving him his true place and his true share would set aside any
motive for his accepting it.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Mr. Ladislaw has probably been speaking to you on this subject?</said> said
Mr. Casaubon, with a certain biting quickness not habitual to him.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Indeed, no!</said> said Dorothea, earnestly.  <said who="#D">How can you imagine it, since
he has so lately declined everything from you?  I fear you think too
hardly of him, dear.  He only told me a little about his parents and
grandparents, and almost all in answer to my questions.  You are so
good, so just—you have done everything you thought to be right.  But
it seems to me clear that more than that is right; and I must speak
about it, since I am the person who would get what is called benefit by
that 'more' not being done.</said>
</P>

<P>
There was a perceptible pause before Mr. Casaubon replied, not quickly
as before, but with a still more biting emphasis.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Dorothea, my love, this is not the first occasion, but it were well
that it should be the last, on which you have assumed a judgment on
subjects beyond your scope.  Into the question how far conduct,
especially in the matter of alliances, constitutes a forfeiture of
family claims, I do not now enter.  Suffice it, that you are not here
qualified to discriminate.  What I now wish you to understand is, that
I accept no revision, still less dictation within that range of affairs
which I have deliberated upon as distinctly and properly mine.  It is
not for you to interfere between me and Mr. Ladislaw, and still less to
encourage communications from him to you which constitute a criticism
on my procedure.</said>
</P>

<P>
Poor Dorothea, shrouded in the darkness, was in a tumult of conflicting
emotions.  Alarm at the possible effect on himself of her husband's
strongly manifested anger, would have checked any expression of her own
resentment, even if she had been quite free from doubt and compunction
under the consciousness that there might be some justice in his last
insinuation.  Hearing him breathe quickly after he had spoken, she sat
listening, frightened, wretched—with a dumb inward cry for help to
bear this nightmare of a life in which every energy was arrested by
dread.  But nothing else happened, except that they both remained a
long while sleepless, without speaking again.
</P>

<P>
The next day, Mr. Casaubon received the following answer from Will
Ladislaw:—
</P>

<BR/>

<P CLASS="letter">
<said>DEAR MR. CASAUBON,—I have given all due consideration to your letter
of yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual
position.  With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to
me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind
cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should.
Granted that a benefactor's wishes may constitute a claim; there must
always be a reservation as to the quality of those wishes.  They may
possibly clash with more imperative considerations.  Or a benefactor's
veto might impose such a negation on a man's life that the consequent
blank might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous.  I am
merely using strong illustrations.  In the present case I am unable to
take your view of the bearing which my acceptance of occupation—not
enriching certainly, but not dishonorable—will have on your own
position which seems to me too substantial to be affected in that
shadowy manner.  And though I do not believe that any change in our
relations will occur (certainly none has yet occurred) which can
nullify the obligations imposed on me by the past, pardon me for not
seeing that those obligations should restrain me from using the
ordinary freedom of living where I choose, and maintaining myself by
any lawful occupation I may choose.  Regretting that there exists this
difference between us as to a relation in which the conferring of
benefits has been entirely on your side—
</P>

<P CLASS="closing">
I remain, yours with persistent obligation,<BR/>
    WILL LADISLAW."<BR/>
</P>

<BR/>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> <first>Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him
a little?) that no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than
he. </first>  Young Ladislaw, he was sure, meant to defy and annoy him, meant to
win Dorothea's confidence and sow her mind with disrespect, and perhaps
aversion, towards her husband.  Some motive beneath the surface had
been needed to account for Will's sudden change of course in rejecting Mr.
Casaubon's aid and quitting his travels; and this defiant determination
to fix himself in the neighborhood by taking up something so much at
variance with his former choice as Mr. Brooke's Middlemarch projects,
revealed clearly enough that the undeclared motive had relation to
Dorothea.  Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any
doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little
less uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form
opinions about her husband's conduct was accompanied with a disposition
to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said.
His own proud reticence had prevented him from ever being undeceived in
the supposition that Dorothea had originally asked her uncle to invite
Will to his house. </said>
</P>

<P>
And now, on receiving Will's letter, Mr. Casaubon had to consider his
duty.  He would never have been easy to call his action anything else
than duty; but in this case, contending motives thrust him back into
negations.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> Should he apply directly to Mr. Brooke, and demand of that troublesome
gentleman to revoke his proposal?  Or should he consult Sir James
Chettam, and get him to concur in remonstrance against a step which
touched the whole family?  In either case Mr. Casaubon was aware that
failure was just as probable as success.  It was impossible for him to
mention Dorothea's name in the matter, </said> and without some alarming
urgency Mr. Brooke was as likely as not, after meeting all
representations with apparent assent, to wind up by saying, <said who="#MB"> Never
fear, Casaubon!  Depend upon it, young Ladislaw will do you credit.
Depend upon it, I have put my finger on the right thing.</said>  And Mr.
Casaubon shrank nervously from communicating on the subject with Sir
James Chettam, between whom and himself there had never been any
cordiality, and who would immediately think of Dorothea without any
mention of her.
</P>

<P>
Poor Mr. Casaubon was distrustful of everybody's feeling towards him,
especially as a husband. <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> To let any one suppose that he was jealous
would be to admit their (suspected) view of his disadvantages: to let
them know that he did not find marriage particularly blissful would
imply his conversion to their (probably) earlier disapproval.  It would
be as bad as letting Carp, and Brasenose generally, know how backward
he was in organizing the matter for his "Key to all Mythologies." </said> All
through his life Mr. Casaubon had been trying not to admit even to
himself the inward sores of self-doubt and jealousy.  And on the most
delicate of all personal subjects, the habit of proud suspicious
reticence told doubly.
</P>

<P>
Thus Mr. Casaubon remained proudly, bitterly silent.  But he had
forbidden Will to come to Lowick Manor, and he was mentally preparing
other measures of frustration.
</P>

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

</div><div type="chapter" n="38"><head>CHAPTER XXXVIII.</head>

<P CLASS="intro">
<said>C'est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions
humaines; tôt ou tard il devient efficace."—GUIZOT.
</P>

<BR/>

<P>
<said who="#JC" direct="false" aloud="false"> Sir James Chettam could not look with any satisfaction on Mr. Brooke's
new courses; but it was easier to object than to hinder. </said> Sir James
accounted for his having come in alone one day to lunch with the
Cadwalladers by saying—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC"> I can't talk to you as I want, before Celia: it might hurt her.
Indeed, it would not be right.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">I know what you mean—the 'Pioneer' at the Grange!</said> darted in Mrs.
Cadwallader, almost before the last word was off her friend's tongue.
<said who="#MrsCad">It is frightful—this taking to buying whistles and blowing them in
everybody's hearing.  Lying in bed all day and playing at dominoes,
like poor Lord Plessy, would be more private and bearable.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">I see they are beginning to attack our friend Brooke in the
'Trumpet,'</said> said the Rector, lounging back and smiling easily, as he
would have done if he had been attacked himself.  <said who="#MrCad">There are tremendous
sarcasms against a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who
receives his own rents, and makes no returns.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I do wish Brooke would leave that off,</said> said Sir James, with his
little frown of annoyance.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Is he really going to be put in nomination, though?</said> said Mr.
Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrCad">I saw Farebrother yesterday—he's Whiggish himself,
hoists Brougham and Useful Knowledge; that's the worst I know of
him;—and he says that Brooke is getting up a pretty strong party.
Bulstrode, the banker, is his foremost man.  But he thinks Brooke would
come off badly at a nomination.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">Exactly,</said> said Sir James, with earnestness.  <said who="#JC">I have been inquiring
into the thing, for I've never known anything about Middlemarch
politics before—the county being my business.  What Brooke trusts to,
is that they are going to turn out Oliver because he is a Peelite.  But
Hawley tells me that if they send up a Whig at all it is sure to be
Bagster, one of those candidates who come from heaven knows where, but
dead against Ministers, and an experienced Parliamentary man.  Hawley's
rather rough: he forgot that he was speaking to me.  He said if Brooke
wanted a pelting, he could get it cheaper than by going to the
hustings.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">I warned you all of it,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her hands
outward.  <said who="#MrsCad">I said to Humphrey long ago, Mr. Brooke is going to make a
splash in the mud.  And now he has done it.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Well, he might have taken it into his head to marry,</said> said the Rector.
<said who="#MrCad">That would have been a graver mess than a little flirtation with
politics.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">He may do that afterwards,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader—<said who="#MrsCad"> when he has come
out on the other side of the mud with an ague.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">What I care for most is his own dignity,</said> said Sir James.  <said who="#JC">Of course
I care the more because of the family.  But he's getting on in life
now, and I don't like to think of his exposing himself.  They will be
raking up everything against him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">I suppose it's no use trying any persuasion,</said> said the Rector.
<said who="#MrCad">There's such an odd mixture of obstinacy and changeableness in Brooke.
Have you tried him on the subject?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">Well, no,</said> said Sir James; <said who="#JC">I feel a delicacy in appearing to dictate.
But I have been talking to this young Ladislaw that Brooke is making a
factotum of.  Ladislaw seems clever enough for anything.  I thought it
as well to hear what he had to say; and he is against Brooke's standing
this time.  I think he'll turn him round: I think the nomination may be
staved off.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">I know,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader, nodding.  <said who="#MrsCad">The independent member
hasn't got his speeches well enough by heart.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">But this Ladislaw—there again is a vexatious business,</said> said Sir
James.  <said who="#JC">We have had him two or three times to dine at the Hall (you
have met him, by the bye) as Brooke's guest and a relation of
Casaubon's, thinking he was only on a flying visit.  And now I find
he's in everybody's mouth in Middlemarch as the editor of the
'Pioneer.'  There are stories going about him as a quill-driving alien,
a foreign emissary, and what not.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Casaubon won't like that,</said> said the Rector.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">There <emph rend="italics">is</emph> some foreign blood in Ladislaw,</said> returned Sir James.  <said who="#JC">I
hope he won't go into extreme opinions and carry Brooke on.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Oh, he's a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Ladislaw,</said> said Mrs.
Cadwallader, <said who="#MrsCad">with his opera songs and his ready tongue.  A sort of
Byronic hero—an amorous conspirator, it strikes me.  And Thomas
Aquinas is not fond of him.  I could see that, the day the picture was
brought.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I don't like to begin on the subject with Casaubon,</said> said Sir James.
<said who="#JC">He has more right to interfere than I. But it's a disagreeable affair
all round.  What a character for anybody with decent connections to
show himself in!—one of those newspaper fellows!  You have only to
look at Keck, who manages the 'Trumpet.' I saw him the other day with
Hawley.  His writing is sound enough, I believe, but he's such a low
fellow, that I wished he had been on the wrong side.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">What can you expect with these peddling Middlemarch papers?</said> said the
Rector.  <said who="#MrCad">I don't suppose you could get a high style of man anywhere to
be writing up interests he doesn't really care about, and for pay that
hardly keeps him in at elbows.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Brooke should have put a man
who has a sort of connection with the family in a position of that
kind.  For my part, I think Ladislaw is rather a fool for accepting.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">It is Aquinas's fault,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad">Why didn't he use his
interest to get Ladislaw made an <i>attache</i> or sent to India?  That is how
families get rid of troublesome sprigs.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">There is no knowing to what lengths the mischief may go,</said> said Sir
James, anxiously.  <said who="#JC">But if Casaubon says nothing, what can I do?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Oh my dear Sir James,</said> said the Rector, <said who="#MrCad">don't let us make too much of
all this.  It is likely enough to end in mere smoke.  After a month or
two Brooke and this Master Ladislaw will get tired of each other;
Ladislaw will take wing; Brooke will sell the 'Pioneer,' and everything
will settle down again as usual.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">There is one good chance—that he will not like to feel his money
oozing away,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad">If I knew the items of election
expenses I could scare him.  It's no use plying him with wide words
like Expenditure: I wouldn't talk of phlebotomy, I would empty a pot of
leeches upon him.  What we good stingy people don't like, is having our
sixpences sucked away from us.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">And he will not like having things raked up against him,</said> said Sir
James.  <said who="#JC">There is the management of his estate.  They have begun upon
that already.  And it really is painful for me to see.  It is a
nuisance under one's very nose.  I do think one is bound to do the best
for one's land and tenants, especially in these hard times.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Perhaps the 'Trumpet' may rouse him to make a change, and some good
may come of it all,</said> said the Rector.  <said who="#MrCad">I know I should be glad.  I
should hear less grumbling when my tithe is paid.  I don't know what I
should do if there were not a modus in Tipton.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I want him to have a proper man to look after things—I want him to
take on Garth again,</said> said Sir James.  <said who="#JC">He got rid of Garth twelve
years ago, and everything has been going wrong since.  I think of
getting Garth to manage for me—he has made such a capital plan for my
buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark.  But Garth would not
undertake the Tipton estate again unless Brooke left it entirely to
him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">In the right of it too,</said> said the Rector.  <said who="#MrCad">Garth is an independent
fellow: an original, simple-minded fellow.  One day, when he was doing
some valuation for me, he told me point-blank that clergymen seldom
understood anything about business, and did mischief when they meddled;
but he said it as quietly and respectfully as if he had been talking to
me about sailors.  He would make a different parish of Tipton, if
Brooke would let him manage.  I wish, by the help of the 'Trumpet,' you
could bring that round.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">If Dorothea had kept near her uncle, there would have been some
chance,</said> said Sir James.  <said who="#JC">She might have got some power over him in
time, and she was always uneasy about the estate.  She had wonderfully
good notions about such things.  But now Casaubon takes her up
entirely.  Celia complains a good deal.  We can hardly get her to dine
with us, since he had that fit.</said> Sir James ended with a look of pitying
disgust, and Mrs. Cadwallader shrugged her shoulders as much as to say
that <emph rend="italics">she</emph> was not likely to see anything new in that direction.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Poor Casaubon!</said> the Rector said.  <said who="#MrCad">That was a nasty attack.  I thought
he looked shattered the other day at the Archdeacon's.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">In point of fact,</said> resumed Sir James, not choosing to dwell on fits,<said who="#JC">
Brooke doesn't mean badly by his tenants or any one else, but he has
got that way of paring and clipping at expenses.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Come, that's a blessing,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad">That helps him to
find himself in a morning.  He may not know his own opinions, but he
does know his own pocket.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I don't believe a man is in pocket by stinginess on his land,</said> said
Sir James.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Oh, stinginess may be abused like other virtues: it will not do to
keep one's own pigs lean,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader, who had risen to look
out of the window.  <said who="#MrsCad">But talk of an independent politician and he will
appear.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">What!  Brooke?</said> said her husband.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Yes.  Now, you ply him with the 'Trumpet,' Humphrey; and I will put
the leeches on him.  What will you do, Sir James?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">The fact is, I don't like to begin about it with Brooke, in our mutual
position; the whole thing is so unpleasant.  I do wish people would
behave like gentlemen,</said> said the good baronet, feeling that this was a
simple and comprehensive programme for social well-being.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Here you all are, eh?</said> said Mr. Brooke, shuffling round and shaking
hands.  <said who="#MB">I was going up to the Hall by-and-by, Chettam.  But it's
pleasant to find everybody, you know.  Well, what do you think of
things?—going on a little fast!  It was true enough, what Lafitte
said—'Since yesterday, a century has passed away:'—they're in the
next century, you know, on the other side of the water.  Going on
faster than we are.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Why, yes,</said> said the Rector, taking up the newspaper.  <said who="#MrCad">Here is the
'Trumpet' accusing you of lagging behind—did you see?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Eh? no,</said> said Mr. Brooke, dropping his gloves into his hat and hastily
adjusting his eye-glass. But Mr. Cadwallader kept the paper in his
hand, saying, with a smile in his eyes—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Look here! all this is about a landlord not a hundred miles from
Middlemarch, who receives his own rents.  They say he is the most
retrogressive man in the county.  I think you must have taught them
that word in the 'Pioneer.'</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Oh, that is Keck—an illiterate fellow, you know.  Retrogressive, now!
Come, that's capital.  He thinks it means destructive: they want to
make me out a destructive, you know,</said> said Mr. Brooke, with that
cheerfulness which is usually sustained by an adversary's ignorance.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">I think he knows the meaning of the word.  Here is a sharp stroke or
two.  <i>If we had to describe a man who is retrogressive in the most evil
sense of the word—we should say, he is one who would dub himself a
reformer of our constitution, while every interest for which he is
immediately responsible is going to decay: a philanthropist who cannot
bear one rogue to be hanged, but does not mind five honest tenants
being half-starved: a man who shrieks at corruption, and keeps his
farms at rack-rent: who roars himself red at rotten boroughs, and does
not mind if every field on his farms has a rotten gate: a man very
open-hearted to Leeds and Manchester, no doubt; he would give any
number of representatives who will pay for their seats out of their own
pockets: what he objects to giving, is a little return on rent-days to
help a tenant to buy stock, or an outlay on repairs to keep the weather
out at a tenant's barn-door or make his house look a little less like
an Irish cottier's. But we all know the wag's definition of a
philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of
the distance.</i> And so on.  All the rest is to show what sort of
legislator a philanthropist is likely to make,</said> ended the Rector,
throwing down the paper, and clasping his hands at the back of his
head, while he looked at Mr. Brooke with an air of amused neutrality.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Come, that's rather good, you know,</said> said Mr. Brooke, taking up the
paper and trying to bear the attack as easily as his neighbor did, but
coloring and smiling rather nervously; <said who="#MB">that about roaring himself red
at rotten boroughs—I never made a speech about rotten boroughs in my
life.  And as to roaring myself red and that kind of thing—these men
never understand what is good satire.  Satire, you know, should be true
up to a certain point.  I recollect they said that in 'The Edinburgh'
somewhere—it must be true up to a certain point.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC"> Well, that is really a hit about the gates,</said> said Sir James, anxious
to tread carefully.  <said who="#JC">Dagley complained to me the other day that he
hadn't got a decent gate on his farm.  Garth has invented a new pattern
of gate—I wish you would try it.  One ought to use some of one's
timber in that way.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">You go in for fancy farming, you know, Chettam,</said> said Mr. Brooke,
appearing to glance over the columns of the <said>Trumpet.</said>  <said who="#MB">That's your
hobby, and you don't mind the expense.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">I thought the most expensive hobby in the world was standing for
Parliament,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad">They said the last unsuccessful
candidate at Middlemarch—Giles, wasn't his name?—spent ten thousand
pounds and failed because he did not bribe enough.  What a bitter
reflection for a man!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Somebody was saying,</said> said the Rector, laughingly, <said who="#MrCad">that East Retford
was nothing to Middlemarch, for bribery.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Nothing of the kind,</said> said Mr. Brooke.  <said who="#MB"> The Tories bribe, you know:
Hawley and his set bribe with treating, hot codlings, and that sort of
thing; and they bring the voters drunk to the poll.  But they are not
going to have it their own way in future—not in future, you know.
Middlemarch is a little backward, I admit—the freemen are a little
backward.  But we shall educate them—we shall bring them on, you
know.  The best people there are on our side.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm,</said> remarked
Sir James.  <said who="#JC">He says Bulstrode the banker will do you harm.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">And that if you got pelted,</said> interposed Mrs. Cadwallader, <said who="#MrsCad">half the
rotten eggs would mean hatred of your committee-man. Good heavens!
Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions.  And I seem to
remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him fall into
a dust-heap on purpose!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one's coat,</said> said the
Rector.  <said who="#MrCad">I confess that's what I should be afraid of, if we parsons
had to stand at the hustings for preferment.  I should be afraid of
their reckoning up all my fishing days.  Upon my word, I think the
truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">The fact is,</said> said Sir James, <said who="#JC">if a man goes into public life he must
be prepared for the consequences.  He must make himself proof against
calumny.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">My dear Chettam, that is all very fine, you know,</said> said Mr. Brooke.
<said who="#MB">But how will you make yourself proof against calumny?  You should read
history—look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of
thing.  They always happen to the best men, you know.  But what is that
in Horace?—<i>fiat justitia, ruat</i> &#8230; something or other.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">Exactly,</said> said Sir James, with a little more heat than usual.  <said who="#JC">What I
mean by being proof against calumny is being able to point to the fact
as a contradiction.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's
self,</said> said Mrs. Cadwallader.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> But it was Sir James's evident annoyance that most stirred Mr. Brooke. </said>
<said who="#JC">Well, you know, Chettam,</said> he said, rising, taking up his hat and
leaning on his stick, <said who="#JC">you and I have a different system.  You are all
for outlay with your farms.  I don't want to make out that my system is
good under all circumstances—under all circumstances, you know.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">There ought to be a new valuation made from time to time,</said> said Sir
James.  <said who="#JC">Returns are very well occasionally, but I like a fair
valuation.  What do you say, Cadwallader?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">I agree with you.  If I were Brooke, I would choke the 'Trumpet' at
once by getting Garth to make a new valuation of the farms, and giving
him <i>carte blanche</i> about gates and repairs: that's my view of the
political situation,</said> said the Rector, broadening himself by sticking
his thumbs in his armholes, and laughing towards Mr. Brooke.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">That's a showy sort of thing to do, you know,</said> said Mr. Brooke.  <said who="#MB">But
I should like you to tell me of another landlord who has distressed his
tenants for arrears as little as I have.  I let the old tenants stay
on.  I'm uncommonly easy, let me tell you, uncommonly easy.  I have my
own ideas, and I take my stand on them, you know.  A man who does that
is always charged with eccentricity, inconsistency, and that kind of
thing.  When I change my line of action, I shall follow my own ideas.</said>
</P>

<P>
After that, Mr. Brooke remembered that there was a packet which he had
omitted to send off from the Grange, and he bade everybody hurriedly
good-by.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#JC">I didn't want to take a liberty with Brooke,</said> said Sir James; <said who="#JC">I see
he is nettled.  But as to what he says about old tenants, in point of
fact no new tenant would take the farms on the present terms.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrCad">I have a notion that he will be brought round in time,</said> said the
Rector.  <said who="#MrCad">But you were pulling one way, Elinor, and we were pulling
another.  You wanted to frighten him away from expense, and we want to
frighten him into it.  Better let him try to be popular and see that
his character as a landlord stands in his way.  I don't think it
signifies two straws about the 'Pioneer,' or Ladislaw, or Brooke's
speechifying to the Middlemarchers.  But it does signify about the
parishioners in Tipton being comfortable.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsCad">Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack,</said> said Mrs.
Cadwallader.  <said who="#MrsCad">You should have proved to him that he loses money by bad
management, and then we should all have pulled together.  If you put
him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences.  It was
all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.</said>
</P>

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

</div><div type="chapter" n="39"><head>CHAPTER XXXIX.</head>

<epigraph>
        <said>If, as I have, you also doe,
           Vertue attired in woman see,
         And dare love that, and say so too,
           And forget the He and She;

         And if this love, though placed so,
           From prophane men you hide,
         Which will no faith on this bestow,
           Or, if they doe, deride:

         Then you have done a braver thing
           Than all the Worthies did,
         And a braver thence will spring,
           Which is, to keep that hid.</said>
                                 —DR. DONNE.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
<said who="#JC" direct="false" aloud="false"> Sir James Chettam's mind was not fruitful in devices, but his growing
anxiety to <said who="#JC">act on Brooke,</said> once brought close to his constant belief
in Dorothea's capacity for influence, became formative, and issued in a
little plan; namely, to plead Celia's indisposition as a reason for
fetching Dorothea by herself to the Hall, and to leave her at the
Grange with the carriage on the way, after making her fully aware of
the situation concerning the management of the estate. </said>
</P>

<P>
In this way it happened that one day near four o'clock, when Mr. Brooke
and Ladislaw were seated in the library, the door opened and Mrs.
Casaubon was announced.
</P>

<P>
<first> Will, the moment before, had been low in the depths of boredom, and,
obliged to help Mr. Brooke in arranging "documents" about hanging
sheep-stealers, was exemplifying the power our minds have of riding
several horses at once by inwardly arranging measures towards getting a
lodging for himself in Middlemarch and cutting short his constant
residence at the Grange; while there flitted through all these steadier
images a tickling vision of a sheep-stealing epic written with Homeric
particularity. </first> When Mrs. Casaubon was announced he started up as from
an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his finger-ends.  Any one
observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the
adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which
might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed
the message of a magic touch.  And so it had.  For effective magic is
transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those
touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a
man's passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy
in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top
differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels?  Will, too,
was made of very impressible stuff.  The bow of a violin drawn near him
cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him,
and his point of view shifted as easily as his mood. <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> Dorothea's
entrance was the freshness of morning. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Well, my dear, this is pleasant, now,</said> said Mr. Brooke, meeting and
kissing her.  <said who="#MB">You have left Casaubon with his books, I suppose.
That's right.  We must not have you getting too learned for a woman,
you know.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">There is no fear of that, uncle,</said> said Dorothea, turning to Will and
shaking hands with open cheerfulness, while she made no other form of
greeting, but went on answering her uncle.  <said who="#D">I am very slow.  When I
want to be busy with books, I am often playing truant among my
thoughts.  I find it is not so easy to be learned as to plan cottages.</said>
</P>

<P>
She seated herself beside her uncle opposite to Will, and was evidently
preoccupied with something that made her almost unmindful of him. <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> He
was ridiculously disappointed, as if he had imagined that her coming
had anything to do with him. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Why, yes, my dear, it was quite your hobby to draw plans.  But it was
good to break that off a little.  Hobbies are apt to run away with us,
you know; it doesn't do to be run away with.  We must keep the reins.
I have never let myself be run away with; I always pulled up.  That is
what I tell Ladislaw.  He and I are alike, you know: he likes to go
into everything.  We are working at capital punishment.  We shall do a
great deal together, Ladislaw and I.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Yes,</said> said Dorothea, with characteristic directness, <said who="#D">Sir James has
been telling me that he is in hope of seeing a great change made soon
in your management of the estate—that you are thinking of having the
farms valued, and repairs made, and the cottages improved, so that
Tipton may look quite another place.  Oh, how happy!</said>—she went on,
clasping her hands, with a return to that more childlike impetuous
manner, which had been subdued since her marriage.  <said who="#D"> If I were at home
still, I should take to riding again, that I might go about with you
and see all that!  And you are going to engage Mr. Garth, who praised
my cottages, Sir James says.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Chettam is a little hasty, my dear,</said> said Mr. Brooke, coloring
slightly; <said who="#MB">a little hasty, you know.  I never said I should do anything
of the kind.  I never said I should <emph rend="italics">not</emph> do it, you know.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">He only feels confident that you will do it,</said> said Dorothea, in a
voice as clear and unhesitating as that of a young chorister chanting a
credo, <said who="#D">because you mean to enter Parliament as a member who cares for
the improvement of the people, and one of the first things to be made
better is the state of the land and the laborers.  Think of Kit Downes,
uncle, who lives with his wife and seven children in a house with one
sitting room and one bedroom hardly larger than this table!—and those
poor Dagleys, in their tumble-down farmhouse, where they live in the
back kitchen and leave the other rooms to the rats!  That is one reason
why I did not like the pictures here, dear uncle—which you think me
stupid about.  I used to come from the village with all that dirt and
coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in
the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in
what is false, while we don't mind how hard the truth is for the
neighbors outside our walls.  I think we have no right to come forward
and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils
which lie under our own hands.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea had gathered emotion as she went on, and had forgotten
everything except the relief of pouring forth her feelings, unchecked:
an experience once habitual with her, but hardly ever present since her
marriage, which had been a perpetual struggle of energy with fear.  For
the moment, Will's admiration was accompanied with a chilling sense of
remoteness.  A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a
woman so well when he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having
intended greatness for men.  But nature has sometimes made sad
oversights in carrying out her intention; as in the case of good Mr.
Brooke, whose masculine consciousness was at this moment in rather a
stammering condition under the eloquence of his niece.  He could not
immediately find any other mode of expressing himself than that of
rising, fixing his eye-glass, and fingering the papers before him.  At
last he said—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB"> There is something in what you say, my dear, something in what you
say—but not everything—eh, Ladislaw?  You and I don't like our
pictures and statues being found fault with.  Young ladies are a little
ardent, you know—a little one-sided, my dear.  Fine art, poetry, that
kind of thing, elevates a nation—<i>emollit mores</i>—you understand a
little Latin now.  But—eh? what?</said>
</P>

<P>
These interrogatives were addressed to the footman who had come in to
say that the keeper had found one of Dagley's boys with a leveret in
his hand just killed.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">I'll come, I'll come.  I shall let him off easily, you know,</said> said Mr.
Brooke aside to Dorothea, shuffling away very cheerfully.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I hope you feel how right this change is that I—that Sir James wishes
for,</said> said Dorothea to Will, as soon as her uncle was gone.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">I do, now I have heard you speak about it.  I shall not forget what
you have said.  But can you think of something else at this moment?  I
may not have another opportunity of speaking to you about what has
occurred,</said> said Will, rising with a movement of impatience, and holding
the back of his chair with both hands.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Pray tell me what it is,</said> said Dorothea, anxiously, also rising and
going to the open window, where Monk was looking in, panting and
wagging his tail. <first> She leaned her back against the window-frame, and
laid her hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she was not
fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was
always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to
decline their advances. </first>
</P>

<P>
Will followed her only with his eyes and said, <said who="#Lad">I presume you know that
Mr. Casaubon has forbidden me to go to his house.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">No, I did not,</said> said Dorothea, after a moment's pause.  She was
evidently much moved.  <said who="#D">I am very, very sorry,</said> she added, mournfully.
She was thinking of what Will had no knowledge of—the conversation
between her and her husband in the darkness; and she was anew smitten
with hopelessness that she could influence Mr. Casaubon's action.  But
the marked expression of her sorrow convinced Will that it was not all
given to him personally, and that Dorothea had not been visited by the
idea that Mr. Casaubon's dislike and jealousy of him turned upon
herself. <said who="#Lad" direct="false" aloud="false"> He felt an odd mixture of delight and vexation: of delight
that he could dwell and be cherished in her thought as in a pure home,
without suspicion and without stint—of vexation because he was of too
little account with her, was not formidable enough, was treated with an
unhesitating benevolence which did not flatter him.  But his dread of
any change in Dorothea was stronger than his discontent, and he began
to speak again in a tone of mere explanation. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Mr. Casaubon's reason is, his displeasure at my taking a position here
which he considers unsuited to my rank as his cousin.  I have told him
that I cannot give way on this point.  It is a little too hard on me to
expect that my course in life is to be hampered by prejudices which I
think ridiculous.  Obligation may be stretched till it is no better
than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know
its meaning.  I would not have accepted the position if I had not meant
to make it useful and honorable.  I am not bound to regard family
dignity in any other light.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea felt wretched.  She thought her husband altogether in the
wrong, on more grounds than Will had mentioned.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">It is better for us not to speak on the subject,</said> she said, with a
tremulousness not common in her voice, <said who="#D">since you and Mr. Casaubon
disagree.  You intend to remain?</said>  She was looking out on the lawn,
with melancholy meditation.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">Yes; but I shall hardly ever see you now,</said> said Will, in a tone of
almost boyish complaint.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">No,</said> said Dorothea, turning her eyes full upon him, <said who="#D">hardly ever.  But
I shall hear of you.  I shall know what you are doing for my uncle.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">I shall know hardly anything about you,</said> said Will.  <said who="#D"> No one will tell
me anything.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Oh, my life is very simple,</said> said Dorothea, her lips curling with an
exquisite smile, which irradiated her melancholy.  <said who="#D">I am always at
Lowick.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">That is a dreadful imprisonment,</said> said Will, impetuously.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">No, don't think that,</said> said Dorothea.  <said who="#D">I have no longings.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D"> He did not speak, but she replied to some change in his expression. </said> <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false">I
mean, for myself.  Except that I should like not to have so much more
than my share without doing anything for others.  But I have a belief
of my own, and it comforts me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">What is that?</said> said Will, rather jealous of the belief.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know
what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power
against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with
darkness narrower.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">That is a beautiful mysticism—it is a—</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Please not to call it by any name,</said> said Dorothea, putting out her
hands entreatingly.  <said who="#D">You will say it is Persian, or something else
geographical.  It is my life.  I have found it out, and cannot part
with it.  I have always been finding out my religion since I was a
little girl.  I used to pray so much—now I hardly ever pray.  I try
not to have desires merely for myself, because they may not be good for
others, and I have too much already.  I only told you, that you might
know quite well how my days go at Lowick.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">God bless you for telling me!</said> said Will, ardently, and rather
wondering at himself.  They were looking at each other like two fond
children who were talking confidentially of birds.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">What is <emph rend="italics">your</emph> religion?</said> said Dorothea.  <said who="#D">I mean—not what you know
about religion, but the belief that helps you most?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad">To love what is good and beautiful when I see it,</said> said Will.  <said who="#Lad">But I
am a rebel: I don't feel bound, as you do, to submit to what I don't
like.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">But if you like what is good, that comes to the same thing,</said> said
Dorothea, smiling.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lad"> Now you are subtle,</said> said Will.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Yes; Mr. Casaubon often says I am too subtle.  I don't feel as if I
were subtle,</said> said Dorothea, playfully.  <said who="#D">But how long my uncle is!  I
must go and look for him.  I must really go on to the Hall.  Celia is
expecting me.</said>
</P>

<P>
Will offered to tell Mr. Brooke, who presently came and said that he
would step into the carriage and go with Dorothea as far as Dagley's,
to speak about the small delinquent who had been caught with the
leveret.  Dorothea renewed the subject of the estate as they drove
along, but Mr. Brooke, not being taken unawares, got the talk under his
own control.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Chettam, now,</said> he replied; <said who="#MB">he finds fault with me, my dear; but I
should not preserve my game if it were not for Chettam, and he can't
say that that expense is for the sake of the tenants, you know.  It's a
little against my feeling:—poaching, now, if you come to look into
it—I have often thought of getting up the subject.  Not long ago,
Flavell, the Methodist preacher, was brought up for knocking down a
hare that came across his path when he and his wife were walking out
together.  He was pretty quick, and knocked it on the neck.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">That was very brutal, I think,</said> said Dorothea.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Well, now, it seemed rather black to me, I confess, in a Methodist
preacher, you know.  And Johnson said, 'You may judge what a
hypo<emph rend="italics">crite</emph> he is.'  And upon my word, I thought Flavell looked very
little like 'the highest style of man'—as somebody calls the
Christian—Young, the poet Young, I think—you know Young?  Well, now,
Flavell in his shabby black gaiters, pleading that he thought the Lord
had sent him and his wife a good dinner, and he had a right to knock it
down, though not a mighty hunter before the Lord, as Nimrod was—I
assure you it was rather comic: Fielding would have made something of
it—or Scott, now—Scott might have worked it up.  But really, when I
came to think of it, I couldn't help liking that the fellow should have
a bit of hare to say grace over.  It's all a matter of
prejudice—prejudice with the law on its side, you know—about the
stick and the gaiters, and so on.  However, it doesn't do to reason
about things; and law is law.  But I got Johnson to be quiet, and I
hushed the matter up.  I doubt whether Chettam would not have been more
severe, and yet he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the
county.  But here we are at Dagley's.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Brooke got down at a farmyard-gate, and Dorothea drove on. <first> It is
wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we
are blamed for them. </first> <first> Even our own persons in the glass are apt to
change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark on
their less admirable points; and on the other hand it is astonishing
how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never
complain or have nobody to complain for them. </first> <said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> Dagley's homestead never
before looked so dismal to Mr. Brooke as it did today, with his mind
thus sore about the fault-finding of the <said>Trumpet,</said> echoed by Sir James. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine
arts which makes other people's hardships picturesque, might have been
delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End: the old house had
dormer-windows in the dark red roof, two of the chimneys were choked
with ivy, the large porch was blocked up with bundles of sticks, and
half the windows were closed with gray worm-eaten shutters about which
the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall
with hollyhocks peeping over it was a perfect study of highly mingled
subdued color, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on
interesting superstitious grounds) lying against the open back-kitchen
door. <first> The mossy thatch of the cow-shed, the broken gray barn-doors,
the pauper laborers in ragged breeches who had nearly finished
unloading a wagon of corn into the barn ready for early thrashing; the
scanty dairy of cows being tethered for milking and leaving one half of
the shed in brown emptiness; the very pigs and white ducks seeming to
wander about the uneven neglected yard as if in low spirits from
feeding on a too meagre quality of rinsings,—all these objects under
the quiet light of a sky marbled with high clouds would have made a
sort of picture which we have all paused over as a <said>charming bit,</said>
touching other sensibilities than those which are stirred by the
depression of the agricultural interest, with the sad lack of farming
capital, as seen constantly in the newspapers of that time. </first> But these
troublesome associations were just now strongly present to Mr. Brooke,
and spoiled the scene for him. </said> Mr. Dagley himself made a figure in the
landscape, carrying a pitchfork and wearing his milking-hat—a very old
beaver flattened in front. <said who="#Dagley" direct="false" aloud="false"> His coat and breeches were the best he had,
and he would not have been wearing them on this weekday occasion if he
had not been to market and returned later than usual, having given
himself the rare treat of dining at the public table of the Blue Bull.
How he came to fall into this extravagance would perhaps be matter of
wonderment to himself on the morrow; but before dinner something in the
state of the country, a slight pause in the harvest before the Far Dips
were cut, the stories about the new King and the numerous handbills on
the walls, had seemed to warrant a little recklessness.  It was a maxim
about Middlemarch, and regarded as self-evident, that good meat should
have good drink, which last Dagley interpreted as plenty of table ale
well followed up by rum-and-water. </said> These liquors have so far truth in
them that they were not false enough to make poor Dagley seem merry:
they only made his discontent less tongue-tied than usual.  He had also
taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant
dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism, which consisted in
holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse.
He was flushed, and his eyes had a decidedly quarrelsome stare as he
stood still grasping his pitchfork, while the landlord approached with
his easy shuffling walk, one hand in his trouser-pocket and the other
swinging round a thin walking-stick.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Dagley, my good fellow,</said> began Mr. Brooke, conscious that he was going
to be very friendly about the boy.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Dagley">Oh, ay, I'm a good feller, am I?  Thank ye, sir, thank ye,</said> said
Dagley, with a loud snarling irony which made Fag the sheep-dog stir
from his seat and prick his ears; but seeing Monk enter the yard after
some outside loitering, Fag seated himself again in an attitude of
observation.  <said who="#Dagley">I'm glad to hear I'm a good feller.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mr. Brooke reflected that it was market-day, and that his worthy tenant
had probably been dining, but saw no reason why he should not go on,
since he could take the precaution of repeating what he had to say to
Mrs. Dagley. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">Your little lad Jacob has been caught killing a leveret, Dagley: I
have told Johnson to lock him up in the empty stable an hour or two,
just to frighten him, you know.  But he will be brought home by-and-by,
before night: and you'll just look after him, will you, and give him a
reprimand, you know?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Dagley">No, I woon't: I'll be dee'd if I'll leather my boy to please you or
anybody else, not if you was twenty landlords istid o' one, and that a
bad un.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Dagley" direct="false" aloud="false"> Dagley's words were loud enough to summon his wife to the back-kitchen
door—the only entrance ever used, and one always open except in bad
weather—</said> and Mr. Brooke, saying soothingly, <said who="#MB">Well, well, I'll speak to
your wife—I didn't mean beating, you know,</said> turned to walk to the
house.  But Dagley, only the more inclined to <said who="#Dagley">have his say</said> with a
gentleman who walked away from him, followed at once, with Fag
slouching at his heels and sullenly evading some small and probably
charitable advances on the part of Monk.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">How do you do, Mrs. Dagley?</said> said Mr. Brooke, making some haste.  <said who="#MB">I
came to tell you about your boy: I don't want you to give him the
stick, you know.</said>  He was careful to speak quite plainly this time.
</P>

<P>
Overworked Mrs. Dagley—a thin, worn woman, from whose life pleasure
had so entirely vanished that she had not even any Sunday clothes which
could give her satisfaction in preparing for church—had already had a
misunderstanding with her husband since he had come home, and was in
low spirits, expecting the worst.  But her husband was beforehand in
answering.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Dagley">No, nor he woon't hev the stick, whether you want it or no,</said> pursued
Dagley, throwing out his voice, as if he wanted it to hit hard.
<said who="#Dagley">You've got no call to come an' talk about sticks o' these primises, as
you woon't give a stick tow'rt mending.  Go to Middlemarch to ax for
<emph rend="italics">your</emph> charrickter.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsDagley">You'd far better hold your tongue, Dagley,</said> said the wife, <said who="#MrsDagley">and not
kick your own trough over.  When a man as is father of a family has
been an' spent money at market and made himself the worse for liquor,
he's done enough mischief for one day.  But I should like to know what
my boy's done, sir.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Dagley">Niver do you mind what he's done,</said> said Dagley, more fiercely, <said who="#Dagley">it's
my business to speak, an' not yourn.  An' I wull speak, too.  I'll hev
my say—supper or no.  An' what I say is, as I've lived upo' your
ground from my father and grandfather afore me, an' hev dropped our
money into't, an' me an' my children might lie an' rot on the ground
for top-dressin' as we can't find the money to buy, if the King wasn't
to put a stop.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB">My good fellow, you're drunk, you know,</said> said Mr. Brooke,
confidentially but not judiciously.  <said who="#MB">Another day, another day,</said> he
added, turning as if to go.
</P>

<P>
But Dagley immediately fronted him, and Fag at his heels growled low,
as his master's voice grew louder and more insulting, while Monk also
drew close in silent dignified watch. <said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> The laborers on the wagon were
pausing to listen, and it seemed wiser to be quite passive than to
attempt a ridiculous flight pursued by a bawling man. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Dagley">I'm no more drunk nor you are, nor so much,</said> said Dagley.  <said who="#Dagley">I can
carry my liquor, an' I know what I meean.  An' I meean as the King 'ull
put a stop to 't, for them say it as knows it, as there's to be a
Rinform, and them landlords as never done the right thing by their
tenants 'ull be treated i' that way as they'll hev to scuttle off.  An'
there's them i' Middlemarch knows what the Rinform is—an' as knows
who'll hev to scuttle.  Says they, 'I know who <emph rend="italics">your</emph> landlord is.'
An' says I, 'I hope you're the better for knowin' him, I arn't.' Says
they, 'He's a close-fisted un.' 'Ay ay,' says I. 'He's a man for the
Rinform,' says they.  That's what they says.  An' I made out what the
Rinform were—an' it were to send you an' your likes a-scuttlin' an'
wi' pretty strong-smellin' things too.  An' you may do as you like now,
for I'm none afeard on you.  An' you'd better let my boy aloan, an'
look to yoursen, afore the Rinform has got upo' your back.  That's what
I'n got to say,</said> concluded Mr. Dagley, striking his fork into the
ground with a firmness which proved inconvenient as he tried to draw it
up again.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MB" direct="false" aloud="false"> At this last action Monk began to bark loudly, and it was a moment for
Mr. Brooke to escape.  He walked out of the yard as quickly as he
could, in some amazement at the novelty of his situation. <first> He had never
been insulted on his own land before, and had been inclined to regard
himself as a general favorite (we are all apt to do so, when we think
of our own amiability more than of what other people are likely to want
of us). </first>When he had quarrelled with Caleb Garth twelve years before he
had thought that the tenants would be pleased at the landlord's taking
everything into his own hands. </said>
</P>

<P>
Some who follow the narrative of his experience may wonder at the
midnight darkness of Mr. Dagley; but nothing was easier in those times
than for an hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite
somehow of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to
the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who preached more learnedly than
the rector, a landlord who had gone into everything, especially fine
art and social improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only
three miles off.  As to the facility with which mortals escape
knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of
London, and consider what that eligible person for a dinner-party would
have been if he had learned scant skill in "summing" from the
parish-clerk of Tipton, and read a chapter in the Bible with immense
difficulty, because such names as Isaiah or Apollos remained
unmanageable after twice spelling.  Poor Dagley read a few verses
sometimes on a Sunday evening, and the world was at least not darker to
him than it had been before.  Some things he knew thoroughly, namely,
the slovenly habits of farming, and the awkwardness of weather, stock
and crops, at Freeman's End—so called apparently by way of sarcasm,
to imply that a man was free to quit it if he chose, but that there was
no earthly "beyond" open to him.
</P>

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

</div><div type="chapter" n="40"><head>CHAPTER XL.</head>

<epigraph>
        Wise in his daily work was he:
          To fruits of diligence,
        And not to faiths or polity,
          He plied his utmost sense.
        These perfect in their little parts,
          Whose work is all their prize—
        Without them how could laws, or arts,
          Or towered cities rise?
</epigraph>

<P>
<first>In watching effects, if only of an electric battery, it is often
necessary to change our place and examine a particular mixture or group
at some distance from the point where the movement we are interested in
was set up. </first> <first>The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth's
breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were:
father, mother, and five of the children. </first> Mary was just now at home
waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was
getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his
father's disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling
<said>business.</said>
</P>

<P>
The letters had come—nine costly letters, for which the postman had
been paid three and twopence, and Mr. Garth was forgetting his tea and
toast while he read his letters and laid them open one above the other,
sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes screwing up his mouth in
inward debate, but not forgetting to cut off a large red seal unbroken,
which Letty snatched up like an eager terrier.
</P>

<P>
The talk among the rest went on unrestrainedly, for nothing disturbed
Caleb's absorption except shaking the table when he was writing.
</P>

<P>
Two letters of the nine had been for Mary.  After reading them, she had
passed them to her mother, and sat playing with her tea-spoon absently,
till with a sudden recollection she returned to her sewing, which she
had kept on her lap during breakfast.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Oh, don't sew, Mary!</said> said Ben, pulling her arm down.  <said who="#Ben">Make me a
peacock with this bread-crumb.</said> He had been kneading a small mass for
the purpose.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">No, no, Mischief!</said> said Mary, good-humoredly, while she pricked his
hand lightly with her needle.  <said who="#M">Try and mould it yourself: you have
seen me do it often enough.  I must get this sewing done.  It is for
Rosamond Vincy: she is to be married next week, and she can't be
married without this handkerchief.</said>  Mary ended merrily, amused with
the last notion.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Letty">Why can't she, Mary?</said> said Letty, seriously interested in this
mystery, and pushing her head so close to her sister that Mary now
turned the threatening needle towards Letty's nose.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Because this is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be
eleven,</said> said Mary, with a grave air of explanation, so that Letty sank
back with a sense of knowledge.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Have you made up your mind, my dear?</said> said Mrs. Garth, laying the
letters down.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I shall go to the school at York,</said> said Mary.  <said who="#M">I am less unfit to
teach in a school than in a family.  I like to teach classes best.
And, you see, I must teach: there is nothing else to be done.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Teaching seems to me the most delightful work in the world,</said> said Mrs.
Garth, with a touch of rebuke in her tone.  <said who="#MrsG">I could understand your
objection to it if you had not knowledge enough, Mary, or if you
disliked children.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like,
mother,</said> said Mary, rather curtly.  <said who="#M">I am not fond of a schoolroom: I
like the outside world better.  It is a very inconvenient fault of
mine.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Alfred">It must be very stupid to be always in a girls' school,</said> said Alfred.
<said>Such a set of nincompoops, like Mrs. Ballard's pupils walking two and
two.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Jim">And they have no games worth playing at,</said> said Jim.  <said who="#Jim">They can neither
throw nor leap.  I don't wonder at Mary's not liking it.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">What is that Mary doesn't like, eh?</said> said the father, looking over his
spectacles and pausing before he opened his next letter.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Alfred">Being among a lot of nincompoop girls,</said> said Alfred.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Is it the situation you had heard of, Mary?</said> said Caleb, gently,
looking at his daughter.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Yes, father: the school at York.  I have determined to take it.  It is
quite the best.  Thirty-five pounds a-year, and extra pay for teaching
the smallest strummers at the piano.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Poor child!  I wish she could stay at home with us, Susan,</said> said
Caleb, looking plaintively at his wife.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Mary would not be happy without doing her duty,</said> said Mrs. Garth,
magisterially, conscious of having done her own.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Alfred">It wouldn't make me happy to do such a nasty duty as that,</said> said
Alfred—at which Mary and her father laughed silently, but Mrs. Garth
said, gravely—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred, for everything that
you think disagreeable.  And suppose that Mary could help you to go to
Mr. Hanmer's with the money she gets?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Alfred">That seems to me a great shame.  But she's an old brick,</said> said Alfred,
rising from his chair, and pulling Mary's head backward to kiss her.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mary colored and laughed, but could not conceal that the tears were
coming. </said> Caleb, looking on over his spectacles, with the angles of his
eyebrows falling, had an expression of mingled delight and sorrow as he
returned to the opening of his letter; and <said who="#MrsG" direct="false" aloud="false"> even Mrs. Garth, her lips
curling with a calm contentment, allowed that inappropriate language to
pass without correction, </said>although Ben immediately took it up, and sang,
<said who="#Ben">She's an old brick, old brick, old brick!</said> to a cantering measure,
which he beat out with his fist on Mary's arm.
</P>

<P>
But Mrs. Garth's eyes were now drawn towards her husband, who was
already deep in the letter he was reading. <said who="#MrsG" direct="false" aloud="false"> His face had an expression
of grave surprise, which alarmed her a little, but he did not like to
be questioned while he was reading, and she remained anxiously watching
till she saw him </said>suddenly shaken by a little joyous laugh as he turned
back to the beginning of the letter, and looking at her above his
spectacles, said, in a low tone, <said who="#MrG">What do you think, Susan?</said>
</P>

<P>
She went and stood behind him, putting her hand on his shoulder, while
they read the letter together.  It was from Sir James Chettam, offering
to Mr. Garth the management of the family estates at Freshitt and
elsewhere, and adding that Sir James had been requested by Mr. Brooke
of Tipton to ascertain whether Mr. Garth would be disposed at the same
time to resume the agency of the Tipton property.  The Baronet added in
very obliging words that he himself was particularly desirous of seeing
the Freshitt and Tipton estates under the same management, and he hoped
to be able to show that the double agency might be held on terms
agreeable to Mr. Garth, whom he would be glad to see at the Hall at
twelve o'clock on the following day.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">He writes handsomely, doesn't he, Susan?</said> said Caleb, turning his eyes
upward to his wife, who raised her hand from his shoulder to his ear,
while she rested her chin on his head.  <said who="#MrG">Brooke didn't like to ask me
himself, I can see,</said> he continued, laughing silently.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Here is an honor to your father, children,</said> said Mrs. Garth, looking
round at the five pair of eyes, all fixed on the parents.  <said who="#MrsG">He is asked
to take a post again by those who dismissed him long ago.  That shows
that he did his work well, so that they feel the want of him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Ben">Like Cincinnatus—hooray!</said> said Ben, riding on his chair, with a
pleasant confidence that discipline was relaxed.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Letty">Will they come to fetch him, mother?</said> said Letty, thinking of the
Mayor and Corporation in their robes.
</P>

<P>
Mrs. Garth patted Letty's head and smiled, but seeing that her husband
was gathering up his letters and likely soon to be out of reach in that
sanctuary <said>business,</said> she pressed his shoulder and said emphatically—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Now, mind you ask fair pay, Caleb.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Oh yes,</said> said Caleb, in a deep voice of assent, as if it would be
unreasonable to suppose anything else of him.  <said who="#MrG">It'll come to between
four and five hundred, the two together.</said>  Then with a little start of
remembrance he said, <said who="#MrG">Mary, write and give up that school.  Stay and
help your mother.  I'm as pleased as Punch, now I've thought of that.</said>
</P>

<P>
No manner could have been less like that of Punch triumphant than
Caleb's, but his talents did not lie in finding phrases, <said who="#MrG" direct="false" aloud="false"> though he was
very particular about his letter-writing, and regarded his wife as a
treasury of correct language. </said>
</P>

<P>
There was almost an uproar among the children now, and Mary held up the
cambric embroidery towards her mother entreatingly, that it might be
put out of reach while the boys dragged her into a dance.  Mrs. Garth,
in placid joy, began to put the cups and plates together, while Caleb
pushing his chair from the table, as if he were going to move to the
desk, still sat holding his letters in his hand and looking on the
ground meditatively, stretching out the fingers of his left hand,
according to a mute language of his own.  At last he said—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">It's a thousand pities Christy didn't take to business, Susan.  I
shall want help by-and-by. And Alfred must go off to the
engineering—I've made up my mind to that.</said>  He fell into meditation and
finger-rhetoric again for a little while, and then continued: <said who="#MrG">I shall
make Brooke have new agreements with the tenants, and I shall draw up a
rotation of crops.  And I'll lay a wager we can get fine bricks out of
the clay at Bott's corner.  I must look into that: it would cheapen the
repairs.  It's a fine bit of work, Susan!  A man without a family would
be glad to do it for nothing.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Mind you don't, though,</said> said his wife, lifting up her finger.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">No, no; but it's a fine thing to come to a man when he's seen into the
nature of business: to have the chance of getting a bit of the country
into good fettle, as they say, and putting men into the right way with
their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building
done—that those who are living and those who come after will be the
better for.  I'd sooner have it than a fortune.  I hold it the most
honorable work that is.</said>  Here Caleb laid down his letters, thrust his
fingers between the buttons of his waistcoat, and sat upright, but
presently proceeded with some awe in his voice and moving his head
slowly aside—<said who="#MrG"> It's a great gift of God, Susan.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">That it is, Caleb,</said> said his wife, with answering fervor.  <said who="#MrsG">And it
will be a blessing to your children to have had a father who did such
work: a father whose good work remains though his name may be
forgotten.</said>  <said who="#MrsG" direct="false" aloud="false"> She could not say any more to him then about the pay. </said>
</P>

<P>
In the evening, when Caleb, rather tired with his day's work, was
seated in silence with his pocket-book open on his knee, while Mrs.
Garth and Mary were at their sewing, and Letty in a corner was
whispering a dialogue with her doll, Mr. Farebrother came up the
orchard walk, dividing the bright August lights and shadows with the
tufted grass and the apple-tree boughs. <first> We know that he was fond of
his parishioners the Garths, and had thought Mary worth mentioning to
Lydgate. </first> <said who="#FB" direct="false" aloud="false"> He used to the full the clergyman's privilege of disregarding
the Middlemarch discrimination of ranks, and always told his mother
that Mrs. Garth was more of a lady than any matron in the town.</said> <second> Still,
you see, he spent his evenings at the Vincys', where the matron, though
less of a lady, presided over a well-lit drawing-room and whist. </second>  In
those days human intercourse was not determined solely by respect. <said who="#FB" direct="false" aloud="false"> But
the Vicar did heartily respect the Garths </said>, and a visit from him was no
surprise to that family.  Nevertheless he accounted for it even while
he was shaking hands, by saying, <said who="#FB">I come as an envoy, Mrs. Garth: I
have something to say to you and Garth on behalf of Fred Vincy.  The
fact is, poor fellow,</said> he continued, as he seated himself and looked
round with his bright glance at the three who were listening to him,
<said who="#FB">he has taken me into his confidence.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mary's heart beat rather quickly: she wondered how far Fred's
confidence had gone. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">We haven't seen the lad for months,</said> said Caleb.  <said who="#MrG">I couldn't think
what was become of him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">He has been away on a visit,</said> said the Vicar, <said who="#FB">because home was a
little too hot for him, and Lydgate told his mother that the poor
fellow must not begin to study yet.  But yesterday he came and poured
himself out to me.  I am very glad he did, because I have seen him grow
up from a youngster of fourteen, and I am so much at home in the house
that the children are like nephews and nieces to me.  But it is a
difficult case to advise upon.  However, he has asked me to come and
tell you that he is going away, and that he is so miserable about his
debt to you, and his inability to pay, that he can't bear to come
himself even to bid you good by.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Tell him it doesn't signify a farthing,</said> said Caleb, waving his hand.
<said who="#MrG">We've had the pinch and have got over it.  And now I'm going to be as
rich as a Jew.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Which means,</said> said Mrs. Garth, smiling at the Vicar, <said who="#MrsG">that we are
going to have enough to bring up the boys well and to keep Mary at
home.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB"> What is the treasure-trove?</said> said Mr. Farebrother.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">I'm going to be agent for two estates, Freshitt and Tipton; and
perhaps for a pretty little bit of land in Lowick besides: it's all the
same family connection, and employment spreads like water if it's once
set going.  It makes me very happy, Mr. Farebrother"—here Caleb threw
back his head a little, and spread his arms on the elbows of his
chair—"that I've got an opportunity again with the letting of the
land, and carrying out a notion or two with improvements.  It's a most
uncommonly cramping thing, as I've often told Susan, to sit on
horseback and look over the hedges at the wrong thing, and not be able
to put your hand to it to make it right.  What people do who go into
politics I can't think: it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement
over only a few hundred acres.</said>
</P>

<P>
It was seldom that Caleb volunteered so long a speech, but his
happiness had the effect of mountain air: his eyes were bright, and the
words came without effort.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">I congratulate you heartily, Garth,</said> said the Vicar.  <said who="#FB">This is the
best sort of news I could have had to carry to Fred Vincy, for he dwelt
a good deal on the injury he had done you in causing you to part with
money—robbing you of it, he said—which you wanted for other purposes.
I wish Fred were not such an idle dog; he has some very good points,
and his father is a little hard upon him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Where is he going?</said> said Mrs. Garth, rather coldly.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">He means to try again for his degree, and he is going up to study
before term.  I have advised him to do that.  I don't urge him to enter
the Church—on the contrary.  But if he will go and work so as to pass,
that will be some guarantee that he has energy and a will; and he is
quite at sea; he doesn't know what else to do.  So far he will please
his father, and I have promised in the mean time to try and reconcile
Vincy to his son's adopting some other line of life.  Fred says frankly
he is not fit for a clergyman, and I would do anything I could to
hinder a man from the fatal step of choosing the wrong profession.  He
quoted to me what you said, Miss Garth—do you remember it?</said>  (Mr.
Farebrother used to say "Mary" instead of "Miss Garth,"but it was part
of his delicacy to treat her with the more deference because, according
to Mrs. Vincy's phrase, she worked for her bread.)
</P>

<P>
Mary felt uncomfortable, but, determined to take the matter lightly,
answered at once, <said who="#M">I have said so many impertinent things to Fred—we
are such old playfellows.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">You said, according to him, that he would be one of those ridiculous
clergymen who help to make the whole clergy ridiculous.  Really, that
was so cutting that I felt a little cut myself.</said>
</P>

<P>
Caleb laughed.  <said who="#MrG">She gets her tongue from you, Susan,</said> he said, with
some enjoyment.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">Not its flippancy, father,</said> said Mary, quickly, fearing that her
mother would be displeased.  <said who="#M">It is rather too bad of Fred to repeat my
flippant speeches to Mr. Farebrother.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">It was certainly a hasty speech, my dear,</said> said Mrs. Garth, with whom
speaking evil of dignities was a high misdemeanor.  <said who="#MrsG">We should not
value our Vicar the less because there was a ridiculous curate in the
next parish.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">There's something in what she says, though,</said> said Caleb, not disposed
to have Mary's sharpness undervalued.  <said who="#MrG">A bad workman of any sort makes
his fellows mistrusted.  Things hang together,</said> he added, looking on
the floor and moving his feet uneasily with a sense that words were
scantier than thoughts.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">Clearly,</said> said the Vicar, amused.  <said who="#FB">By being contemptible we set men's
minds to the tune of contempt.  I certainly agree with Miss Garth's
view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not.  But as to
Fred Vincy, it is only fair he should be excused a little: old
Featherstone's delusive behavior did help to spoil him.  There was
something quite diabolical in not leaving him a farthing after all.
But Fred has the good taste not to dwell on that.  And what he cares
most about is having offended you, Mrs. Garth; he supposes you will
never think well of him again.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">I have been disappointed in Fred,</said> said Mrs. Garth, with decision.
<said who="#MrsG">But I shall be ready to think well of him again when he gives me good
reason to do so.</said>
</P>

<P>
At this point Mary went out of the room, taking Letty with her.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Oh, we must forgive young people when they're sorry,</said> said Caleb,
watching Mary close the door.  <said who="#MrG">And as you say, Mr. Farebrother, there
was the very devil in that old man.
Now Mary's gone out, I must tell you a thing—it's only known to Susan
and me, and you'll not tell it again.  The old scoundrel wanted Mary to
burn one of the wills the very night he died, when she was sitting up
with him by herself, and he offered her a sum of money that he had in
the box by him if she would do it.  But Mary, you understand, could do
no such thing—would not be handling his iron chest, and so on.  Now,
you see, the will he wanted burnt was this last, so that if Mary had
done what he wanted, Fred Vincy would have had ten thousand pounds.
The old man did turn to him at the last.  That touches poor Mary close;
she couldn't help it—she was in the right to do what she did, but she
feels, as she says, much as if she had knocked down somebody's property
and broken it against her will, when she was rightfully defending
herself.  I feel with her, somehow, and if I could make any amends to
the poor lad, instead of bearing him a grudge for the harm he did us, I
should be glad to do it.  Now, what is your opinion, sir?  Susan
doesn't agree with me; she says—tell what you say, Susan.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Mary could not have acted otherwise, even if she had known what would
be the effect on Fred,</said> said Mrs. Garth, pausing from her work, and
looking at Mr. Farebrother.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">And she was quite ignorant of it.  It seems to me, a loss which falls
on another because we have done right is not to lie upon our
conscience.</said>
</P>

<P>
The Vicar did not answer immediately, and Caleb said, <said who="#MrG">It's the
feeling.  The child feels in that way, and I feel with her.  You don't
mean your horse to tread on a dog when you're backing out of the way;
but it goes through you, when it's done.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">I am sure Mrs. Garth would agree with you there,</said> said Mr.
Farebrother, who for some reason seemed more inclined to ruminate than
to speak.  <said who="#FB">One could hardly say that the feeling you mention about
Fred is wrong—or rather, mistaken—though no man ought to make a claim
on such feeling.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Well, well,</said> said Caleb, <said who="#MrG">it's a secret.  You will not tell Fred.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB"> Certainly not.  But I shall carry the other good news—that you can
afford the loss he caused you.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Farebrother left the house soon after, and seeing Mary in the
orchard with Letty, went to say good-by to her. <said who="#FB" direct="false" aloud="false"> They made a pretty
picture in the western light which brought out the brightness of the
apples on the old scant-leaved boughs—Mary in her lavender gingham and
black ribbons holding a basket, while Letty in her well-worn nankin
picked up the fallen apples.</said> <second> If you want to know more particularly how
Mary looked, ten to one you will see a face like hers in the crowded
street to-morrow, if you are there on the watch: she will not be among
those daughters of Zion who are haughty, and walk with stretched-out
necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go: let all those pass, and fix
your eyes on some small plump brownish person of firm but quiet
carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is
looking at her. </second> If she has a broad face and square brow, well-marked
eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her
glance which her mouth keeps the secret of, and for the rest features
entirely insignificant—take that ordinary but not disagreeable person
for a portrait of Mary Garth. <second> If you made her smile, she would show
you perfect little teeth; if you made her angry, she would not raise
her voice, but would probably say one of the bitterest things you have
ever tasted the flavor of; if you did her a kindness, she would never
forget it. </second> <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mary admired the keen-faced handsome little Vicar in his
well-brushed threadbare clothes more than any man she had had the
opportunity of knowing.  She had never heard him say a foolish thing,
though she knew that he did unwise ones; and perhaps foolish sayings
were more objectionable to her than any of Mr. Farebrother's unwise
doings.  At least, it was remarkable that the actual imperfections of
the Vicar's clerical character never seemed to call forth the same
scorn and dislike which she showed beforehand for the predicted
imperfections of the clerical character sustained by Fred Vincy. </said><first> These
irregularities of judgment, I imagine, are found even in riper minds
than Mary Garth's: our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and
demerit, which none of us ever saw. </first> Will any one guess towards which
of those widely different men Mary had the peculiar woman's
tenderness?—the one she was most inclined to be severe on, or the
contrary?
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">Have you any message for your old playfellow, Miss Garth?</said> said the
Vicar, as he took a fragrant apple from the basket which she held
towards him, and put it in his pocket.  <said who="#FB">Something to soften down that
harsh judgment?  I am going straight to see him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">No,</said> said Mary, shaking her head, and smiling.  <said who="#M">If I were to say that
he would not be ridiculous as a clergyman, I must say that he would be
something worse than ridiculous.  But I am very glad to hear that he is
going away to work.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#FB">On the other hand, I am very glad to hear that <emph rend="italics">you</emph> are not going
away to work.  My mother, I am sure, will be all the happier if you
will come to see her at the vicarage: you know she is fond of having
young people to talk to, and she has a great deal to tell about old
times.  You will really be doing a kindness.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#M">I should like it very much, if I may,</said> said Mary.  <said who="#M">Everything seems
too happy for me all at once.  I thought it would always be part of my
life to long for home, and losing that grievance makes me feel rather
empty: I suppose it served instead of sense to fill up my mind?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Letty">May I go with you, Mary?</said> whispered Letty— <said who="#M" direct="false" aloud="false">a most inconvenient child,
who listened to everything. </said> But she was made exultant by having her
chin pinched and her cheek kissed by Mr. Farebrother—an incident
which she narrated to her mother and father.
</P>

<P>
As the Vicar walked to Lowick, any one watching him closely might have
seen him twice shrug his shoulders. <first> I think that the rare Englishmen
who have this gesture are never of the heavy type—for fear of any
lumbering instance to the contrary, I will say, hardly ever; they have
usually a fine temperament and much tolerance towards the smaller
errors of men (themselves inclusive). </first> <said who="#FB" direct="false" aloud="false">The Vicar was holding an inward
dialogue in which he told himself that there was probably something
more between Fred and Mary Garth than the regard of old playfellows,
and replied with a question whether that bit of womanhood were not a
great deal too choice for that crude young gentleman.  The rejoinder to
this was the first shrug. Then he laughed at himself for being likely
to have felt jealous, as if he had been a man able to marry, which,
added he, it is as clear as any balance-sheet that I am not. </said> Whereupon
followed the second shrug.
</P>

<P>
What could two men, so different from each other, see in this <said who="#M">brown
patch,</said> as Mary called herself?  It was certainly not her plainness
that attracted them (and let all plain young ladies be warned against
the dangerous encouragement given them by Society to confide in their
want of beauty). <first> A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very
wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences:
and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one
loved. </first>
</P>

<P>
When Mr. and Mrs. Garth were sitting alone, Caleb said, <said who="#MrG">Susan, guess
what I'm thinking of.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">The rotation of crops,</said> said Mrs. Garth, smiling at him, above her
knitting, <said who="#MrsG">or else the back-doors of the Tipton cottages.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">No,</said> said Caleb, gravely; <said who="#MrG">I am thinking that I could do a great turn
for Fred Vincy.  Christy's gone, Alfred will be gone soon, and it will
be five years before Jim is ready to take to business.  I shall want
help, and Fred might come in and learn the nature of things and act
under me, and it might be the making of him into a useful man, if he
gives up being a parson.  What do you think?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">I think, there is hardly anything honest that his family would object
to more,</said> said Mrs. Garth, decidedly.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">What care I about their objecting?</said> said Caleb, with a sturdiness
which he was apt to show when he had an opinion.  <said who="#MrG">The lad is of age
and must get his bread.  He has sense enough and quickness enough; he
likes being on the land, and it's my belief that he could learn
business well if he gave his mind to it.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">But would he?  His father and mother wanted him to be a fine
gentleman, and I think he has the same sort of feeling himself.  They
all think us beneath them.  And if the proposal came from you, I am
sure Mrs. Vincy would say that we wanted Fred for Mary.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Life is a poor tale, if it is to be settled by nonsense of that sort,</said>
said Caleb, with disgust.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Yes, but there is a certain pride which is proper, Caleb.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">I call it improper pride to let fools' notions hinder you from doing a
good action.  There's no sort of work,</said> said Caleb, with fervor,
putting out his hand and moving it up and down to mark his emphasis,
<said who="#MrG">that could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say.  You must
have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must
follow.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">I will not oppose any plan you have set your mind on, Caleb,</said> said
Mrs. Garth, who was a firm woman, <said who="#MrsG" direct="false" aloud="false"> but knew that there were some points
on which her mild husband was yet firmer. </said> <said who="#MrsG">Still, it seems to be fixed
that Fred is to go back to college: will it not be better to wait and
see what he will choose to do after that?  It is not easy to keep
people against their will.  And you are not yet quite sure enough of
your own position, or what you will want.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Well, it may be better to wait a bit.  But as to my getting plenty of
work for two, I'm pretty sure of that.  I've always had my hands full
with scattered things, and there's always something fresh turning up.
Why, only yesterday—bless me, I don't think I told you!—it was rather
odd that two men should have been at me on different sides to do the
same bit of valuing.  And who do you think they were?</said> said Caleb,
taking a pinch of snuff and holding it up between his fingers, as if it
were a part of his exposition. <said who="#MrG" direct="false" aloud="false"> He was fond of a pinch when it occurred
to him, but he usually forgot that this indulgence was at his command. </said>
</P>

<P>
His wife held down her knitting and looked attentive.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Why, that Rigg, or Rigg Featherstone, was one.  But Bulstrode was
before him, so I'm going to do it for Bulstrode.  Whether it's mortgage
or purchase they're going for, I can't tell yet.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">Can that man be going to sell the land just left him—which he has
taken the name for?</said> said Mrs. Garth.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Deuce knows,</said> said Caleb, who never referred the knowledge of
discreditable doings to any higher power than the deuce.  <said who="#MrG">But
Bulstrode has long been wanting to get a handsome bit of land under his
fingers—that I know.  And it's a difficult matter to get, in this part
of the country.</said>
</P>

<P>
Caleb scattered his snuff carefully instead of taking it, and then
added, <said who="#MrG">The ins and outs of things are curious.  Here is the land
they've been all along expecting for Fred, which it seems the old man
never meant to leave him a foot of, but left it to this side-slip of a
son that he kept in the dark, and thought of his sticking there and
vexing everybody as well as he could have vexed 'em himself if he could
have kept alive.  I say, it would be curious if it got into Bulstrode's
hands after all.  The old man hated him, and never would bank with him.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrsG">What reason could the miserable creature have for hating a man whom he
had nothing to do with?</said> said Mrs. Garth.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG">Pooh! where's the use of asking for such fellows' reasons?  The soul
of man,</said> said Caleb, with the deep tone and grave shake of the head
which always came when he used this phrase—<said who="#MrG"> The soul of man, when it
gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools,
and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#MrG" direct="false" aloud="false"> It was one of Caleb's quaintnesses, that in his difficulty of finding
speech for his thought, he caught, as it were, snatches of diction
which he associated with various points of view or states of mind; and
whenever he had a feeling of awe, he was haunted by a sense of Biblical
phraseology, though he could hardly have given a strict quotation. </said>
</P>

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

</div><div type="chapter" n="41"><head>CHAPTER XLI.</head>

<epigraph>
         By swaggering could I never thrive,
         For the rain it raineth every day.
                                —Twelfth Night
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
The transactions referred to by Caleb Garth as having gone forward
between Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Joshua Rigg Featherstone concerning the
land attached to Stone Court, had occasioned the interchange of a
letter or two between these personages.
</P>

<P>
Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? <first> If it happens to
have been cut in stone, though it lie face down-most for ages on a
forsaken beach, or <said>rest quietly under the drums and tramplings of many
conquests,</said> it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and
other scandals gossiped about long empires ago:—this world being
apparently a huge whispering-gallery.</first> <first> Such conditions are often
minutely represented in our petty lifetimes. </first> As the stone which has
been kicked by generations of clowns may come by curious little links
of effect under the eyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at
last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink
and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at
last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge
enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe.  To Uriel watching
the progress of planetary history from the sun, the one result would be
just as much of a coincidence as the other.
</P>

<P>
<first> Having made this rather lofty comparison I am less uneasy in calling
attention to the existence of low people by whose interference, however
little we may like it, the course of the world is very much determined.</first>
<first>It would be well, certainly, if we could help to reduce their number,
and something might perhaps be done by not lightly giving occasion to
their existence. </first> Socially speaking, Joshua Rigg would have been
generally pronounced a superfluity.  But those who like Peter
Featherstone never had a copy of themselves demanded, are the very last
to wait for such a request either in prose or verse.  The copy in this
case bore more of outside resemblance to the mother, in whose sex
frog-features, accompanied with fresh-colored cheeks and a well-rounded
figure, are compatible with much charm for a certain order of admirers.
The result is sometimes a frog-faced male, desirable, surely, to no
order of intelligent beings.  Especially when he is suddenly brought
into evidence to frustrate other people's expectations—the very
lowest aspect in which a social superfluity can present himself.
</P>

<P>
But Mr. Rigg Featherstone's low characteristics were all of the sober,
water-drinking kind.  From the earliest to the latest hour of the day
he was always as sleek, neat, and cool as the frog he resembled, and
old Peter had secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more
calculating, and far more imperturbable, than himself. <first> I will add that
his finger-nails were scrupulously attended to, and that he meant to
marry a well-educated young lady (as yet unspecified) whose person was
good, and whose connections, in a solid middle-class way, were
undeniable. </first> Thus his nails and modesty were comparable to those of
most gentlemen; though his ambition had been educated only by the
opportunities of a clerk and accountant in the smaller commercial
houses of a seaport.  He thought the rural Featherstones very simple
absurd people, and they in their turn regarded his "bringing up" in a
seaport town as an exaggeration of the monstrosity that their brother
Peter, and still more Peter's property, should have had such belongings.
</P>

<P>
The garden and gravel approach, as seen from the two windows of the
wainscoted parlor at Stone Court, were never in better trim than now,
when Mr. Rigg Featherstone stood, with his hands behind him, looking
out on these grounds as their master.  But it seemed doubtful whether
he looked out for the sake of contemplation or of turning his back to a
person who stood in the middle of the room, with his legs considerably
apart and his hands in his trouser-pockets: a person in all respects a
contrast to the sleek and cool Rigg. <said who="#Raffles" direct="false" aloud="false"> He was a man obviously on the way
towards sixty, very florid and hairy, with much gray in his bushy
whiskers and thick curly hair, a stoutish body which showed to
disadvantage the somewhat worn joinings of his clothes, and the air of
a swaggerer, who would aim at being noticeable even at a show of
fireworks, regarding his own remarks on any other person's performance
as likely to be more interesting than the performance itself. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Raffles" direct="false" aloud="false"> His name was John Raffles, and he sometimes wrote jocosely W.A.G.
after his signature, observing when he did so, that he was once taught
by Leonard Lamb of Finsbury who wrote B.A. after his name, and that he,
Raffles, originated the witticism of calling that celebrated principal
Ba-Lamb. </said>Such were the appearance and mental flavor of Mr. Raffles,
both of which seemed to have a stale odor of travellers' rooms in the
commercial hotels of that period.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Raffles">Come, now, Josh,</said> he was saying, in a full rumbling tone, <said who="#Raffles">look at it
in this light: here is your poor mother going into the vale of years,
and you could afford something handsome now to make her comfortable.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Rigg">Not while you live.  Nothing would make her comfortable while you
live,</said> returned Rigg, in his cool high voice.  <said who="#Rigg">What I give her, you'll
take.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Raffles">You bear me a grudge, Josh, that I know.  But come, now—as between
man and man—without humbug—a little capital might enable me to make a
first-rate thing of the shop.  The tobacco trade is growing.  I should
cut my own nose off in not doing the best I could at it.  I should
stick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake.  I should always
be on the spot.  And nothing would make your poor mother so happy.
I've pretty well done with my wild oats—turned fifty-five. I want to
settle down in my chimney-corner. And if I once buckled to the tobacco
trade, I could bring an amount of brains and experience to bear on it
that would not be found elsewhere in a hurry.  I don't want to be
bothering you one time after another, but to get things once for all
into the right channel.  Consider that, Josh—as between man and
man—and with your poor mother to be made easy for her life.  I was
always fond of the old woman, by Jove!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Rigg">Have you done?</said> said Mr. Rigg, quietly, without looking away from the
window.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Raffles">Yes, <i>I</i>'ve done,</said> said Raffles, taking hold of his hat which stood
before him on the table, and giving it a sort of oratorical push.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Rigg">Then just listen to me.  The more you say anything, the less I shall
believe it.  The more you want me to do a thing, the more reason I
shall have for never doing it.  Do you think I mean to forget your
kicking me when I was a lad, and eating all the best victual away from
me and my mother?  Do you think I forget your always coming home to
sell and pocket everything, and going off again leaving us in the
lurch?  I should be glad to see you whipped at the cart-tail.  My
mother was a fool to you: she'd no right to give me a father-in-law,
and she's been punished for it.  She shall have her weekly allowance
paid and no more: and that shall be stopped if you dare to come on to
these premises again, or to come into this country after me again.  The
next time you show yourself inside the gates here, you shall be driven
off with the dogs and the wagoner's whip.</said>
</P>

<P>
As Rigg pronounced the last words he turned round and looked at Raffles
with his prominent frozen eyes. <said who="#Raffles" direct="false" aloud="false"> The contrast was as striking as it
could have been eighteen years before, when Rigg was a most unengaging
kickable boy, and Raffles was the rather thick-set Adonis of bar-rooms
and back-parlors. But the advantage now was on the side of Rigg, and
auditors of this conversation might probably have expected that Raffles
would retire with the air of a defeated dog.  Not at all. </said> He made a
grimace which was habitual with him whenever he was <said>out</said> in a game;
then subsided into a laugh, and drew a brandy-flask from his pocket.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Raffles">Come, Josh,</said> he said, in a cajoling tone, <said who="#Raffles">give us a spoonful of
brandy, and a sovereign to pay the way back, and I'll go.  Honor
bright!  I'll go like a bullet, <emph rend="italics">by</emph> Jove!</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Rigg">Mind,</said> said Rigg, drawing out a bunch of keys, <said who="#Rigg">if I ever see you
again, I shan't speak to you.  I don't own you any more than if I saw a
crow; and if you want to own me you'll get nothing by it but a
character for being what you are—a spiteful, brassy, bullying rogue.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Raffles">That's a pity, now, Josh,</said> said Raffles, affecting to scratch his head
and wrinkle his brows upward as if he were nonplussed.  <said who="#Raffles">I'm very fond
of you; <emph rend="italics">by</emph> Jove, I am!  There's nothing I like better than plaguing
you—you're so like your mother, and I must do without it.  But the
brandy and the sovereign's a bargain.</said>
</P>

<P>
He jerked forward the flask and Rigg went to a fine old oaken bureau
with his keys. <said who="#Raffles" direct="false" aloud="false"> But Raffles had reminded himself by his movement with
the flask that it had become dangerously loose from its leather
covering, and catching sight of a folded paper which had fallen within
the fender, </said> he took it up and shoved it under the leather so as to make
the glass firm.
</P>

<P>
By that time Rigg came forward with a brandy-bottle, filled the flask,
and handed Raffles a sovereign, neither looking at him nor speaking to
him.  After locking up the bureau again, he walked to the window and
gazed out as impassibly as he had done at the beginning of the
interview, while Raffles took a small allowance from the flask, screwed
it up, and deposited it in his side-pocket, with provoking slowness,
making a grimace at his stepson's back.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Raffles">Farewell, Josh—and if forever!</said> said Raffles, turning back his head
as he opened the door.
</P>

<P>
Rigg saw him leave the grounds and enter the lane.  The gray day had
turned to a light drizzling rain, which freshened the hedgerows and the
grassy borders of the by-roads, and hastened the laborers who were
loading the last shocks of corn.  Raffles, walking with the uneasy gait
of a town loiterer obliged to do a bit of country journeying on foot,
looked as incongruous amid this moist rural quiet and industry as if he
had been a baboon escaped from a menagerie.  But there were none to
stare at him except the long-weaned calves, and none to show dislike of
his appearance except the little water-rats which rustled away at his
approach.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Raffles" direct="false" aloud="false"> He was fortunate enough when he got on to the highroad to be overtaken
by the stage-coach, which carried him to Brassing; and there he took
the new-made railway, observing to his fellow-passengers that he
considered it pretty well seasoned now it had done for Huskisson. Mr.
Raffles on most occasions kept up the sense of having been educated at
an academy, and being able, if he chose, to pass well everywhere;
indeed, there was not one of his fellow-men whom he did not feel
himself in a position to ridicule and torment, confident of the
entertainment which he thus gave to all the rest of the company. </said>
</P>

<P>
He played this part now with as much spirit as if his journey had been
entirely successful, resorting at frequent intervals to his flask.  The
paper with which he had wedged it was a letter signed <i>Nicholas
Bulstrode</i>, but Raffles was not likely to disturb it from its present
useful position.
</P>

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

</div><div type="chapter" n="42"><head>CHAPTER XLII.</head>

<epigraph>
         How much, methinks, I could despise this man
         Were I not bound in charity against it!
                              —SHAKESPEARE: Henry VIII.
</epigraph>

<BR/>

<P>
One of the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his return
from his wedding-journey was to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a
letter which had requested him to fix a time for his visit.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature of his
illness to Lydgate, nor had he even to Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as
to how far it might be likely to cut short his labors or his life.  On
this point, as on all others, he shrank from pity; and if the suspicion
of being pitied for anything in his lot surmised or known in spite of
himself was embittering, the idea of calling forth a show of compassion
by frankly admitting an alarm or a sorrow was necessarily intolerable
to him. </said> Every proud mind knows something of this experience, and
perhaps it is only to be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough
to make all efforts at isolation seem mean and petty instead of
exalting.
</P>

<P>
But Mr. Casaubon was now brooding over something through which the
question of his health and life haunted his silence with a more
harassing importunity even than through the autumnal unripeness of his
authorship.  It is true that this last might be called his central
ambition; but there are some kinds of authorship in which by far the
largest result is the uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the
consciousness of the author—one knows of the river by a few streaks
amid a long-gathered deposit of uncomfortable mud.  That was the way
with Mr. Casaubon's hard intellectual labors. <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> Their most
characteristic result was not the "Key to all Mythologies," but a
morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he
had not demonstrably merited—a perpetual suspicious conjecture that
the views entertained of him were not to his advantage—a melancholy
absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate
resistance to the confession that he had achieved nothing. </said>
</P>

<P>
Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed
and dried him, was really no security against wounds, least of all
against those which came from Dorothea. <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> And he had begun now to frame
possibilities for the future which were somehow more embittering to him
than anything his mind had dwelt on before. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> Against certain facts he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw's
existence, his defiant stay in the neighborhood of Lowick, and his
flippant state of mind with regard to the possessors of authentic,
well-stamped erudition: against Dorothea's nature, always taking on
some new shape of ardent activity, and even in submission and silence
covering fervid reasons which it was an irritation to think of: against
certain notions and likings which had taken possession of her mind in
relation to subjects that he could not possibly discuss with her.
There was no denying that Dorothea was as virtuous and lovely a young
lady as he could have obtained for a wife; but a young lady turned out
to be something more troublesome than he had conceived.  She nursed
him, she read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous
about his feelings; but there had entered into the husband's mind the
certainty that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like
a penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts—was accompanied with a
power of comparison by which himself and his doings were seen too
luminously as a part of things in general.  His discontent passed
vapor-like through all her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to
that inappreciative world which she had only brought nearer to him. </said>
</P>

<P>
Poor Mr. Casaubon! <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> This suffering was the harder to bear because it
seemed like a betrayal: the young creature who had worshipped him with
perfect trust had quickly turned into the critical wife; and early
instances of criticism and resentment had made an impression which no
tenderness and submission afterwards could remove.  To his suspicious
interpretation Dorothea's silence now was a suppressed rebellion; a
remark from her which he had not in any way anticipated was an
assertion of conscious superiority; her gentle answers had an
irritating cautiousness in them; and when she acquiesced it was a
self-approved effort of forbearance. </said> <first> The tenacity with which he strove
to hide this inward drama made it the more vivid for him; as we hear
with the more keenness what we wish others not to hear. </first>
</P>

<P>
<first>Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think
it quite ordinary. </first> <first> Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot
out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the
blot? </first> <first> I know no speck so troublesome as self. </first> And who, if Mr.
Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents—his suspicions that he
was not any longer adored without criticism—could have denied that
they were founded on good reasons?  On the contrary, there was a strong
reason to be added, which he had not himself taken explicitly into
account—namely, that he was not unmixedly adorable. <first> He suspected
this, however, as he suspected other things, without confessing it, and
like the rest of us, felt how soothing it would have been to have a
companion who would never find it out. </first>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> This sore susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly
prepared before Will Ladislaw had returned to Lowick, and what had
occurred since then had brought Mr. Casaubon's power of suspicious
construction into exasperated activity.  To all the facts which he
knew, he added imaginary facts both present and future which became
more real to him than those because they called up a stronger dislike,
a more predominating bitterness.  Suspicion and jealousy of Will
Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's
impressions, were constantly at their weaving work.  It would be quite
unjust to him to suppose that he could have entered into any coarse
misinterpretation of Dorothea: his own habits of mind and conduct,
quite as much as the open elevation of her nature, saved him from any
such mistake.  What he was jealous of was her opinion, the sway that
might be given to her ardent mind in its judgments, and the future
possibilities to which these might lead her.  As to Will, though until
his last defiant letter he had nothing definite which he would choose
formally to allege against him, he felt himself warranted in believing
that he was capable of any design which could fascinate a rebellious
temper and an undisciplined impulsiveness.  He was quite sure that
Dorothea was the cause of Will's return from Rome, and his
determination to settle in the neighborhood; and he was penetrating
enough to imagine that Dorothea had innocently encouraged this course.
It was as clear as possible that she was ready to be attached to Will
and to be pliant to his suggestions: they had never had a <i>tete-a-tete</i>
without her bringing away from it some new troublesome impression, and
the last interview that Mr. Casaubon was aware of (Dorothea, on
returning from Freshitt Hall, had for the first time been silent about
having seen Will) had led to a scene which roused an angrier feeling
against them both than he had ever known before.  Dorothea's outpouring
of her notions about money, in the darkness of the night, had done
nothing but bring a mixture of more odious foreboding into her
husband's mind. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> And there was the shock lately given to his health always sadly present
with him.  He was certainly much revived; he had recovered all his
usual power of work: the illness might have been mere fatigue, and
there might still be twenty years of achievement before him, which
would justify the thirty years of preparation.  That prospect was made
the sweeter by a flavor of vengeance against the hasty sneers of Carp &amp;
Company; for even when Mr. Casaubon was carrying his taper among the
tombs of the past, those modern figures came athwart the dim light, and
interrupted his diligent exploration.  To convince Carp of his mistake,
so that he would have to eat his own words with a good deal of
indigestion, would be an agreeable accident of triumphant authorship,
which the prospect of living to future ages on earth and to all
eternity in heaven could not exclude from contemplation.  Since, thus,
the prevision of his own unending bliss could not nullify the bitter
savors of irritated jealousy and vindictiveness, it is the less
surprising that the probability of a transient earthly bliss for other
persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a
potently sweetening effect.  If the truth should be that some
undermining disease was at work within him, there might be large
opportunity for some people to be the happier when he was gone; and if
one of those people should be Will Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon objected so
strongly that it seemed as if the annoyance would make part of his
disembodied existence. </said>
</P>

<P>
This is a very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting the
case. <first> The human soul moves in many channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we
know, had a sense of rectitude and an honorable pride in satisfying the
requirements of honor, which compelled him to find other reasons for
his conduct than those of jealousy and vindictiveness.</first> <said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> The way in
which Mr. Casaubon put the case was this: In marrying Dorothea Brooke
I had to care for her well-being in case of my death.  But well-being
is not to be secured by ample, independent possession of property; on
the contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might
expose her to the more danger.  She is ready prey to any man who knows
how to play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic
enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind—a
man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a
personal animosity towards me—I am sure of it—an animosity which is
fed by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has
constantly vented in ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had
heard it.  Even if I live I shall not be without uneasiness as to what
he may attempt through indirect influence.  This man has gained
Dorothea's ear: he has fascinated her attention; he has evidently tried
to impress her mind with the notion that he has claims beyond anything
I have done for him.  If I die—and he is waiting here on the watch for
that—he will persuade her to marry him.  That would be calamity for
her and success for him.  <emph rend="italics">She</emph> would not think it calamity: he would
make her believe anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment
which she inwardly reproaches me for not responding to, and already her
mind is occupied with his fortunes.  He thinks of an easy conquest and
of entering into my nest.  That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be
fatal to Dorothea.  Has he ever persisted in anything except from
contradiction?  In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small
cost.  In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile
echo of Dorothea's vagaries.  When was sciolism ever dissociated from
laxity?  I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to
the utmost the fulfilment of his designs.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C" direct="false" aloud="false"> The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong
measures open to him, but in ruminating on them his mind inevitably
dwelt so much on the probabilities of his own life that the longing to
get the nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his proud
reticence, and had determined him to ask Lydgate's opinion as to the
nature of his illness. </said>
</P>

<P>
He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at
half-past three, and in answer to her anxious question, whether he had
felt ill, replied,— <said who="#C"> No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning
some habitual symptoms.  You need not see him, my dear.  I shall give
orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew-tree Walk, where I shall be
taking my usual exercise.</said>
</P>

<P>
When Lydgate entered the Yew-tree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly
receding with his hands behind him according to his habit, and his head
bent forward.  It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty
limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the
lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the
cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that
last solemn lullaby, a dirge. <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate, conscious of an energetic frame
in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he was likely
soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more
markedly than ever the signs of premature age—the student's bent
shoulders, the emaciated limbs, and the melancholy lines of the mouth. </said>
<said who="#Lyd">Poor fellow,</said> he thought, <said who="#Lyd">some men with his years are like lions; one
can tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Mr. Lydgate,</said> said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably polite air, <said who="#C">I am
exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality.  We will, if you
please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return of unpleasant
symptoms,</said> said Lydgate, filling up a pause.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Not immediately—no.  In order to account for that wish I must
mention—what it were otherwise needless to refer to—that my life, on
all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance
from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its
best years.  In short, I have long had on hand a work which I would
fain leave behind me in such a state, at least, that it might be
committed to the press by—others.  Were I assured that this is the
utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful
circumscription of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and
negative determination of my course.</said>
</P>

<P>
Here Mr. Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust it
between the buttons of his single-breasted coat.  To a mind largely
instructed in the human destiny hardly anything could be more
interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal measured
address, delivered with the usual sing-song and motion of the head.
Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle
of the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the
significance of its life—a significance which is to vanish as the
waters which come and go where no man has need of them?  But there was
nothing to strike others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate,
who had some contempt at hand for futile scholarship, felt a little
amusement mingling with his pity.  He was at present too ill acquainted
with disaster to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is
below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism of the sufferer.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?</said> he said,
wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon's purpose, which seemed to be
clogged by some hesitation.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">I do.  You have not implied to me that the symptoms which—I am bound
to testify—you watched with scrupulous care, were those of a fatal
disease.  But were it so, Mr. Lydgate, I should desire to know the
truth without reservation, and I appeal to you for an exact statement
of your conclusions: I request it as a friendly service.  If you can
tell me that my life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary
casualties, I shall rejoice, on grounds which I have already indicated.
If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to me.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course,</said> said Lydgate; <said who="#Lyd">but the
first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly
uncertain—uncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because
diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on.
In any case, one can hardly increase appreciably the tremendous
uncertainty of life.</said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty
degeneration of the heart, a disease which was first divined and
explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the stethoscope, not so very
many years ago.  A good deal of experience—a more lengthened
observation—is wanting on the subject.  But after what you have said,
it is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is often sudden.
At the same time, no such result can be predicted.  Your condition may
be consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen
years, or even more.  I could add no information to this beyond
anatomical or medical details, which would leave expectation at
precisely the same point.</said> <said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate's instinct was fine enough to tell
him that plain speech, quite free from ostentatious caution, would be
felt by Mr. Casaubon as a tribute of respect. </said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">I thank you, Mr. Lydgate,</said> said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment's pause.
<said who="#C">One thing more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you have
now told me to Mrs. Casaubon?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd">Partly—I mean, as to the possible issues.</said>  Lydgate was going to
explain why he had told Dorothea, but Mr. Casaubon, with an
unmistakable desire to end the conversation, waved his hand slightly,
and said again, <said who="#Lyd">I thank you,</said> proceeding to remark on the rare beauty
of the day.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Lyd" direct="false" aloud="false"> Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him; </said>
and the black figure with hands behind and head bent forward continued
to pace the walk where the dark yew-trees gave him a mute companionship
in melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted
across the isles of sunlight, stole along in silence as in the presence
of a sorrow. <first> Here was a man who now for the first time found himself
looking into the eyes of death—who was passing through one of those
rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace,
which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of
waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the
water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. </first> <first> When the
commonplace "We must all die" transforms itself suddenly into the acute
consciousness "I must die—and soon", then death grapples us, and his
fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as
our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be
like the first. </irst> To Mr. Casaubon now, it was as if he suddenly found
himself on the dark river-brink and heard the plash of the oncoming
oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the summons.  In such an
hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias, but carries it onward
in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward—perhaps
with the divine calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties
of self-assertion.<first> What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his acts will give us a
clew to. </first> He held himself to be, with some private scholarly
reservations, a believing Christian, as to estimates of the present and
hopes of the future. <first> But what we strive to gratify, though we may call
it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which
men drudge up city alleys exists already in their imagination and love. </first>
And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire was not for divine communion and
light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings, poor
man, clung low and mist-like in very shady places.
</P>

<P>
Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had
stepped into the garden, with the impulse to go at once to her husband.
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her
ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to
heighten her dread, as thwarted energy subsides into a shudder; and she
wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him
advancing.  Then she went towards him, and might have represented a
heaven-sent angel coming with a promise that the short hours remaining
should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to
a comprehended grief.  His glance in reply to hers was so chill that
she felt her timidity increased; yet she turned and passed her hand
through his arm. </said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Casaubon kept his hands behind him and allowed her pliant arm to
cling with difficulty against his rigid arm.
</P>

<P>
There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this
unresponsive hardness inflicted on her.  That is a strong word, but not
too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of
joy are forever wasted, until men and women look round with haggard
faces at the devastation their own waste has made, and say, the earth
bears no harvest of sweetness—calling their denial knowledge. <second> You may
ask why, in the name of manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in
that way. </second> <second> Consider that his was a mind which shrank from pity: have
you ever watched in such a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is
pressing it as a grief may be really a source of contentment, either
actual or future, to the being who already offends by pitying? </second>
Besides, he knew little of Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected
that on such an occasion as the present they were comparable in
strength to his own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.
</P>

<P>
Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak.
Mr. Casaubon did not say, "I wish to be alone", but he directed his
steps in silence towards the house, and as they entered by the glass
door on this eastern side, <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered on
the matting, that she might leave her husband quite free. </said> He entered
the library and shut himself in, alone with his sorrow.
</P>

<P>
She went up to her boudoir.  The open bow-window let in the serene
glory of the afternoon lying in the avenue, where the lime-trees cast
long shadows.  But Dorothea knew nothing of the scene.  She threw
herself on a chair, not heeding that she was in the dazzling sun-rays:
if there were discomfort in that, how could she tell that it was not
part of her inward misery?
</P>

<P>
She was in the reaction of a rebellious anger stronger than any she had
felt since her marriage.  Instead of tears there came words:—
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">What have I done—what am I—that he should treat me so?  He never
knows what is in my mind—he never cares.  What is the use of anything
I do?  He wishes he had never married me.</said>
</P>

<P>
She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness.  Like one
who has lost his way and is weary, she sat and saw as in one glance all
the paths of her young hope which she should never find again.  And
just as clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her
husband's solitude—how they walked apart so that she was obliged to
survey him.  If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have
surveyed him—never have said, <said who="#D">Is he worth living for?</said> but would have
felt him simply a part of her own life.  Now she said bitterly, <said who="#D">It is
his fault, not mine.</said>  <said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> In the jar of her whole being, Pity was
overthrown.  Was it her fault that she had believed in him—had
believed in his worthiness?—And what, exactly, was he?—  She was able
enough to estimate him—she who waited on his glances with trembling,
and shut her best soul in prison, paying it only hidden visits, that
she might be petty enough to please him. </said>  In such a crisis as this,
some women begin to hate.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down
again, but would send a message to her husband saying that she was not
well and preferred remaining up-stairs. She had never deliberately
allowed her resentment to govern her in this way before, but she
believed now that she could not see him again without telling him the
truth about her feeling, and she must wait till she could do it without
interruption.  He might wonder and be hurt at her message.  It was good
that he should wonder and be hurt.  Her anger said, as anger is apt to
say, that God was with her—that all heaven, though it were crowded
with spirits watching them, must be on her side.  She had determined to
ring her bell, when there came a rap at the door. </said>
</P>

<P>
Mr. Casaubon had sent to say that he would have his dinner in the
library.  He wished to be quite alone this evening, being much occupied.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">I shall not dine, then, Tantripp.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#Tantripp">Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">No; I am not well.  Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray
do not disturb me again.</said>
</P>

<P>
Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the
evening slowly deepened into night.  But the struggle changed
continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement towards
striking and ends with conquering his desire to strike.  The energy
that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to inspire a
resolved submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself.
<said who="#D" direct="false" aloud="false"> That thought with which Dorothea had gone out to meet her husband—her
conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest of all his
work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long
without rising beside the image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking
at her anger with sad remonstrance.  It cost her a litany of pictured
sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those
sorrows—but the resolved submission did come; and when the house was
still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr. Casaubon
habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside
in the darkness waiting for his coming up-stairs with a light in his
hand.  If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down and
even risk incurring another pang.  She would never again expect
anything else. </said> But she did hear the library door open, and slowly the
light advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the
carpet.  When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face
was more haggard.  He started slightly on seeing her, and she looked up
at him beseechingly, without speaking.
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Dorothea!</said> he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone.  <said who="#C">Were you
waiting for me?</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#D">Yes, I did not like to disturb you.</said>
</P>

<P>
<said who="#C">Come, my dear, come.  You are young, and need not to extend your life
by watching.</said>
</P>

<P>
<first>When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears,
she felt something like the thankfulness that might well up in us if we
had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature. </first> She put her hand into
her husband's, and they went along the broad corridor together.
</P>

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