Middlemarch
by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 1 of 4
Go to Part 3 of 4

Mr. Casaubon blinked furtively at Will. He had a suspicion that he
was being laughed at. But it was not possible to include Dorothea
in the suspicion.

They found Naumann painting industriously, but no model was present;
his pictures were advantageously arranged, and his own plain vivacious
person set off by a dove-colored blouse and a maroon velvet cap,
so that everything was as fortunate as if he had expected the
beautiful young English lady exactly at that time.

The painter in his confident English gave little dissertations on his
finished and unfinished subjects, seeming to observe Mr. Casaubon
as much as he did Dorothea. Will burst in here and there with ardent
words of praise, marking out particular merits in his friend's work;
and Dorothea felt that she was getting quite new notions as to
the significance of Madonnas seated under inexplicable canopied
thrones with the simple country as a background, and of saints
with architectural models in their hands, or knives accidentally
wedged in their skulls. Some things which had seemed monstrous
to her were gathering intelligibility and even a natural meaning:
but all this was apparently a branch of knowledge in which
Mr. Casaubon had not interested himself.

"I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than
have to read it as an enigma; but I should learn to understand
these pictures sooner than yours with the very wide meaning,"
said Dorothea, speaking to Will.

"Don't speak of my painting before Naumann," said Will. "He will
tell you, it is all pfuscherei, which is his most opprobrious word!"

"Is that true?" said Dorothea, turning her sincere eyes on Naumann,
who made a slight grimace and said--

"Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting. His walk must
be belles-lettres. That is wi-ide."

Naumann's pronunciation of the vowel seemed to stretch the
word satirically. Will did not half like it, but managed to laugh:
and Mr. Casaubon, while he felt some disgust at the artist's German
accent, began to entertain a little respect for his judicious severity.

The respect was not diminished when Naumann, after drawing Will
aside for a moment and looking, first at a large canvas, then at
Mr. Casaubon, came forward again and said--

"My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say
that a sketch of your head would be invaluable to me for the
St. Thomas Aquinas in my picture there. It is too much to ask;
but I so seldom see just what I want--the idealistic in the real."

"You astonish me greatly, sir," said Mr. Casaubon, his looks improved
with a glow of delight; "but if my poor physiognomy, which I have
been accustomed to regard as of the commonest order, can be of any
use to you in furnishing some traits for the angelical doctor,
I shall feel honored. That is to say, if the operation will not
be a lengthy one; and if Mrs. Casaubon will not object to the delay."

As for Dorothea, nothing could have pleased her more, unless it
had been a miraculous voice pronouncing Mr. Casaubon the wisest
and worthiest among the sons of men. In that case her tottering
faith would have become firm again.

Naumann's apparatus was at hand in wonderful completeness, and the
sketch went on at once as well as the conversation. Dorothea sat
down and subsided into calm silence, feeling happier than she had
done for a long while before. Every one about her seemed good,
and she said to herself that Rome, if she had only been less ignorant,
would have been full of beauty its sadness would have been winged
with hope. No nature could be less suspicious than hers:
when she was a child she believed in the gratitude of wasps and
the honorable susceptibility of sparrows, and was proportionately
indignant when their baseness was made manifest.

The adroit artist was asking Mr. Casaubon questions about
English polities, which brought long answers, and, Will meanwhile
had perched himself on some steps in the background overlooking all.

Presently Naumann said--"Now if I could lay this by for half
an hour and take it up again--come and look, Ladislaw--I think
it is perfect so far."

Will vented those adjuring interjections which imply that admiration
is too strong for syntax; and Naumann said in a tone of piteous regret--

"Ah--now--if I could but have had more--but you have other engagements--
I could not ask it--or even to come again to-morrow."

"Oh, let us stay!" said Dorothea. "We have nothing to do to-day except
go about, have we?" she added, looking entreatingly at Mr. Casaubon.
"It would be a pity not to make the head as good as possible."

"I am at your service, sir, in the matter," said Mr. Casaubon,
with polite condescension. "Having given up the interior of my
head to idleness, it is as well that the exterior should work
in this way."

"You are unspeakably good--now I am happy!" said Naumann, and then
went on in German to Will, pointing here and there to the sketch
as if he were considering that. Putting it aside for a moment,
he looked round vaguely, as if seeking some occupation for his visitors,
and afterwards turning to Mr. Casaubon, said--

"Perhaps the beautiful bride, the gracious lady, would not be
unwilling to let me fill up the time by trying to make a slight
sketch of her--not, of course, as you see, for that picture--
only as a single study."

Mr. Casaubon, bowing, doubted not that Mrs. Casaubon would oblige him,
and Dorothea said, at once, "Where shall I put myself?"

Naumann was all apologies in asking her to stand, and allow him to
adjust her attitude, to which she submitted without any of the affected
airs and laughs frequently thought necessary on such occasions,
when the painter said, "It is as Santa Clara that I want you to stand--
leaning so, with your cheek against your hand--so--looking at
that stool, please, so!"

Will was divided between the inclination to fall at the Saint's feet
and kiss her robe, and the temptation to knock Naumann down while he
was adjusting her arm. All this was impudence and desecration,
and he repented that he had brought her.

The artist was diligent, and Will recovering himself moved about
and occupied Mr. Casaubon as ingeniously as he could; but he did
not in the end prevent the time from seeming long to that gentleman,
as was clear from his expressing a fear that Mrs. Casaubon would
be tired. Naumann took the hint and said--

"Now, sir, if you can oblige me again; I will release the lady-wife."

So Mr. Casaubon's patience held out further, and when after all it
turned out that the head of Saint Thomas Aquinas would be more perfect
if another sitting could be had, it was granted for the morrow.
On the morrow Santa Clara too was retouched more than once.
The result of all was so far from displeasing to Mr. Casaubon,
that he arranged for the purchase of the picture in which Saint
Thomas Aquinas sat among the doctors of the Church in a disputation
too abstract to be represented, but listened to with more or less
attention by an audience above. The Santa Clara, which was spoken of
in the second place, Naumann declared himself to be dissatisfied with--
he could not, in conscience, engage to make a worthy picture of it;
so about the Santa Clara the arrangement was conditional.

I will not dwell on Naumann's jokes at the expense of Mr. Casaubon
that evening, or on his dithyrambs about Dorothea's charm, in all
which Will joined, but with a difference. No sooner did Naumann
mention any detail of Dorothea's beauty, than Will got exasperated
at his presumption: there was grossness in his choice of the most
ordinary words, and what business had he to talk of her lips?
She was not a woman to be spoken of as other women were. Will could
not say just what he thought, but he became irritable. And yet,
when after some resistance he had consented to take the Casaubons
to his friend's studio, he had been allured by the gratification
of his pride in being the person who could grant Naumann such an
opportunity of studying her loveliness--or rather her divineness,
for the ordinary phrases which might apply to mere bodily prettiness
were not applicable to her. (Certainly all Tipton and its neighborhood,
as well as Dorothea herself, would have been surprised at her beauty
being made so much of. In that part of the world Miss Brooke had
been only a "fine young woman.")

"Oblige me by letting the subject drop, Naumann. Mrs. Casaubon
is not to be talked of as if she were a model," said Will.
Naumann stared at him.

"Schon! I will talk of my Aquinas. The head is not a bad type,
after all. I dare say the great scholastic himself would have been
flattered to have his portrait asked for. Nothing like these
starchy doctors for vanity! It was as I thought: he cared much
less for her portrait than his own."

"He's a cursed white-blooded pedantic coxcomb," said Will,
with gnashing impetuosity. His obligations to Mr. Casaubon were
not known to his hearer, but Will himself was thinking of them,
and wishing that he could discharge them all by a check.

Naumann gave a shrug and said, "It is good they go away soon, my dear.
They are spoiling your fine temper."

All Will's hope and contrivance were now concentrated on seeing
Dorothea when she was alone. He only wanted her to take more
emphatic notice of him; he only wanted to be something more special
in her remembrance than he could yet believe himself likely to be.
He was rather impatient under that open ardent good-will, reach he
saw was her usual state of feeling. The remote worship of a woman
throned out of their reach plays a great part in men's lives,
but in most cases the worshipper longs for some queenly recognition,
some approving sign by which his soul's sovereign may cheer him without
descending from her high place. That was precisely what Will wanted.
But there were plenty of contradictions in his imaginative demands.
It was beautiful to see how Dorothea's eyes turned with wifely
anxiety and beseeching to Mr. Casaubon: she would have lost some
of her halo if she had been without that duteous preoccupation;
and yet at the next moment the husband's sandy absorption of such
nectar was too intolerable; and Will's longing to say damaging things
about him was perhaps not the less tormenting because he felt the
strongest reasons for restraining it.

Will had not been invited to dine the next day. Hence he persuaded
himself that he was bound to call, and that the only eligible time
was the middle of the day, when Mr. Casaubon would not be at home.

Dorothea, who had not been made aware that her former reception of
Will had displeased her husband, had no hesitation about seeing him,
especially as he might be come to pay a farewell visit. When he entered
she was looking at some cameos which she had been buying for Celia.
She greeted Will as if his visit were quite a matter of course,
and said at once, having a cameo bracelet in her hand--

"I am so glad you are come. Perhaps you understand all about cameos,
and can tell me if these are really good. I wished to have you
with us in choosing them, but Mr. Casaubon objected: he thought
there was not time. He will finish his work to-morrow, and we shall
go away in three days. I have been uneasy about these cameos.
Pray sit down and look at them."

"I am not particularly knowing, but there can be no great mistake
about these little Homeric bits: they are exquisitely neat.
And the color is fine: it will just suit you."

"Oh, they are for my sister, who has quite a different complexion.
You saw her with me at Lowick: she is light-haired and very pretty--
at least I think so. We were never so long away from each other in our
lives before. She is a great pet and never was naughty in her life.
I found out before I came away that she wanted me to buy her some cameos,
and I should be sorry for them not to be good--after their kind."  
Dorothea added the last words with a smile.

"You seem not to care about cameos," said Will, seating himself at
some distance from her, and observing her while she closed the oases.

"No, frankly, I don't think them a great object in life," said Dorothea

"I fear you are a heretic about art generally. How is that? I should
have expected you to be very sensitive to the beautiful everywhere."

"I suppose I am dull about many things," said Dorothea, simply.
"I should like to make life beautiful--I mean everybody's life.
And then all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie
outside life and make it no better for the world, pains one.
It spoils my enjoyment of anything when I am made to think that most
people are shut out from it."

"I call that the fanaticism of sympathy," said Will, impetuously.
"You might say the same of landscape, of poetry, of all refinement.
If you carried it out you ought to be miserable in your own goodness,
and turn evil that you might have no advantage over others.
The best piety is to enjoy--when you can. You are doing the most
then to save the earth's character as an agreeable planet.
And enjoyment radiates. It is of no use to try and take care of
all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight--
in art or in anything else. Would you turn all the youth of the
world into a tragic chorus, wailing and moralizing over misery?
I suspect that you have some false belief in the virtues of misery,
and want to make your life a martyrdom."  Will had gone further than
he intended, and checked himself. But Dorothea's thought was not
taking just the same direction as his own, and she answered without any
special emotion--

"Indeed you mistake me. I am not a sad, melancholy creature. I am
never unhappy long together. I am angry and naughty--not like Celia:
I have a great outburst, and then all seems glorious again.
I cannot help believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way.
I should be quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is
so much that I don't know the reason of--so much that seems to me
a consecration of ugliness rather than beauty. The painting and
sculpture may be wonderful, but the feeling is often low and brutal,
and sometimes even ridiculous. Here and there I see what takes me
at once as noble--something that I might compare with the Alban
Mountains or the sunset from the Pincian Hill; but that makes it
the greater pity that there is so little of the best kind among all
that mass of things over which men have toiled so."

"Of course there is always a great deal of poor work: the rarer
things want that soil to grow in."

"Oh dear," said Dorothea, taking up that thought into the chief current
of her anxiety; "I see it must be very difficult to do anything good.
I have often felt since I have been in Rome that most of our
lives would look much uglier and more bungling than the pictures,
if they could be put on the wall."

Dorothea parted her lips again as if she were going to say more,
but changed her mind and paused.

"You are too young--it is an anachronism for you to have such thoughts,"
said Will, energetically, with a quick shake of the head habitual to him.
"You talk as if you had never known any youth. It is monstrous--
as if you had had a vision of Hades in your childhood, like the boy
in the legend. You have been brought up in some of those horrible
notions that choose the sweetest women to devour--like Minotaurs
And now you will go and be shut up in that stone prison at Lowick:
you will be buried alive. It makes me savage to think of it!
I would rather never have seen you than think of you with such
a prospect."

Will again feared that he had gone too far; but the meaning we attach
to words depends on our feeling, and his tone of angry regret had so much
kindness in it for Dorothea's heart, which had always been giving out
ardor and had never been fed with much from the living beings around her,
that she felt a new sense of gratitude and answered with a gentle smile--

"It is very good of you to be anxious about me. It is because you
did not like Lowick yourself: you had set your heart on another
kind of life. But Lowick is my chosen home."

The last sentence was spoken with an almost solemn cadence, and Will
did not know what to say, since it would not be useful for him
to embrace her slippers, and tell her that he would die for her:
it was clear that she required nothing of the sort; and they were
both silent for a moment or two, when Dorothea began again with an
air of saying at last what had been in her mind beforehand.

"I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day.
Perhaps it was half of it your lively way of speaking: I notice
that you like to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate
when I speak hastily."

"What was it?" said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity
quite new in her. "I have a hyperbolical tongue: it catches fire
as it goes. I dare say I shall have to retract."

"I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing German--I mean,
for the subjects that Mr. Casaubon is engaged in. I have been thinking
about it; and it seems to me that with Mr. Casaubon's learning he must
have before him the same materials as German scholars--has he not?"  
Dorothea's timidity was due to an indistinct consciousness that she
was in the strange situation of consulting a third person about
the adequacy of Mr. Casaubon's learning.

"Not exactly the same materials," said Will, thinking that he
would be duly reserved. "He is not an Orientalist, you know.
He does not profess to have more than second-hand knowledge there."

"But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written
a long while ago by scholars who knew nothing about these modern things;
and they are still used. Why should Mr. Casaubon's not be valuable,
like theirs?" said Dorothea, with more remonstrant energy.
She was impelled to have the argument aloud, which she had been
having in her own mind.

"That depends on the line of study taken," said Will, also getting
a tone of rejoinder. "The subject Mr. Casaubon has chosen is as
changing as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new
points of view. Who wants a system on the basis of the four elements,
or a book to refute Paracelsus? Do you not see that it is no use
now to be crawling a little way after men of the last century--
men like Bryant--and correcting their mistakes?--living in a lumber-room
and furbishing up broken-legged theories about Chus and Mizraim?"

"How can you bear to speak so lightly?" said Dorothea, with a look
between sorrow and anger. "If it were as you say, what could
be sadder than so much ardent labor all in vain? I wonder it does
not affect you more painfully, if you really think that a man
like Mr. Casaubon, of so much goodness, power, and learning,
should in any way fail in what has been the labor of his best years."  
She was beginning to be shocked that she had got to such a point
of supposition, and indignant with Will for having led her to it.

"You questioned me about the matter of fact, not of feeling,"
said Will. "But if you wish to punish me for the fact, I submit.
I am not in a position to express my feeling toward Mr. Casaubon:
it would be at best a pensioner's eulogy."

"Pray excuse me," said Dorothea, coloring deeply. "I am aware,
as you say, that I am in fault in having introduced the subject.
Indeed, I am wrong altogether. Failure after long perseverance is
much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called
a failure."

"I quite agree with you," said Will, determined to change the situation--
"so much so that I have made up my mind not to run that risk of
never attaining a failure. Mr. Casaubon's generosity has perhaps
been dangerous to me, and I mean to renounce the liberty it has
given me. I mean to go back to England shortly and work my own way--
depend on nobody else than myself."

"That is fine--I respect that feeling," said Dorothea,
with returning kindness. "But Mr. Casaubon, I am sure, has never
thought of anything in the matter except what was most for your welfare."

"She has obstinacy and pride enough to serve instead of love, now she
has married him," said Will to himself. Aloud he said, rising--

"I shall not see you again."

"Oh, stay till Mr. Casaubon comes," said Dorothea, earnestly. "I am
so glad we met in Rome. I wanted to know you."?

"And I have made you angry," said Will. "I have made you think
ill of me."

"Oh no. My sister tells me I am always angry with people who do
not say just what I like. But I hope I am not given to think ill
of them. In the end I am usually obliged to think ill of myself.
for being so impatient."

"Still, you don't like me; I have made myself an unpleasant thought
to you."

"Not at all," said Dorothea, with the most open kindness.
"I like you very much."

Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have
been of more importance if he had been disliked. He said nothing,
but looked lull, not to say sulky.

"And I am quite interested to see what you will do," Dorothea went
on cheerfully. "I believe devoutly in a natural difference of vocation.
If it were not for that belief, I suppose I should be very narrow--
there are so many things, besides painting, that I am quite
ignorant of. You would hardly believe how little I have taken
in of music and literature, which you know so much of. I wonder
what your vocation will turn out to be: perhaps you will be a poet?"

"That depends. To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern
that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel,
that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on
the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously
into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.
One may have that condition by fits only."

"But you leave out the poems," said Dorothea. "I think they are wanted
to complete the poet. I understand what you mean about knowledge
passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience.
But I am sure I could never produce a poem."

"You ARE a poem--and that is to be the best part of a poet--
what makes up the poet's consciousness in his best moods," said Will,
showing such originality as we all share with the morning and the
spring-time and other endless renewals.

"I am very glad to hear it," said Dorothea, laughing out her words
in a bird-like modulation, and looking at Will with playful gratitude
in her eyes. "What very kind things you say to me!"

"I wish I could ever do anything that would be what you call kind--
that I could ever be of the slightest service to you I fear I shall
never have the opportunity."  Will spoke with fervor.

"Oh yes," said Dorothea, cordially. "It will come; and I shall
remember how well you wish me. I quite hoped that we should be friends
when I first saw you--because of your relationship to Mr. Casaubon."  
There was a certain liquid brightness in her eyes, and Will was
conscious that his own were obeying a law of nature and filling too.
The allusion to Mr. Casaubon would have spoiled all if anything at
that moment could have spoiled the subduing power, the sweet dignity,
of her noble unsuspicious inexperience.

"And there is one thing even now that you can do," said Dorothea, rising
and walking a little way under the strength of a recurring impulse.
"Promise me that you will not again, to any one, speak of that subject--
I mean about Mr. Casaubon's writings--I mean in that kind of way.
It was I who led to it. It was my fault. But promise me."

She had returned from her brief pacing and stood opposite Will,
looking gravely at him.

"Certainly, I will promise you," said Will, reddening however.
If he never said a cutting word about Mr. Casaubon again and left
off receiving favors from him, it would clearly be permissible
to hate him the more. The poet must know how to hate, says Goethe;
and Will was at least ready with that accomplishment. He said that he
must go now without waiting for Mr. Casaubon, whom he would come
to take leave of at the last moment. Dorothea gave him her hand,
and they exchanged a simple "Good-by."

But going out of the porte cochere he met Mr. Casaubon,
and that gentleman, expressing the best wishes for his cousin,
politely waived the pleasure of any further leave-taking on the morrow,
which would be sufficiently crowded with the preparations for departure.

"I have something to tell you about our cousin Mr. Ladislaw,
which I think will heighten your opinion of him," said Dorothea
to her husband in the coarse of the evening. She had mentioned
immediately on his entering that Will had just gone away, and would
come again, but Mr. Casaubon had said, "I met him outside, and we
made our final adieux, I believe," saying this with the air and tone
by which we imply that any subject, whether private or public,
does not interest us enough to wish for a further remark upon it.
So Dorothea had waited.

"What is that, my love?" said Mr Casaubon (he always said "my love"
when his manner was the coldest).

"He has made up his mind to leave off wandering at once, and to give up
his dependence on your generosity. He means soon to go back to England,
and work his own way. I thought you would consider that a good sign,"
said Dorothea, with an appealing look into her husband's neutral face.

"Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would
addict himself?"

"No. But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him
in your generosity. Of course he will write to you about it.
Do you not think better of him for his resolve?"

"I shall await his communication on the subject," said Mr. Casaubon.

"I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did
for him was his own welfare. I remembered your goodness in what you
said about him when I first saw him at Lowick," said Dorothea,
putting her hand on her husband's

"I had a duty towards him," said Mr. Casaubon, laying his other
hand on Dorothea's in conscientious acceptance of her caress,
but with a glance which he could not hinder from being uneasy.
"The young man, I confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me,
nor need we, I think, discuss his future course, which it is not ours
to determine beyond the limits which I have sufficiently indicated."  
Dorothea did not mention Will again.

BOOK III.

WAITING FOR DEATH.

CHAPTER XXIII.

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

Fred Vincy, we have seen. had a debt on his mind, and though no
such immaterial burthen could depress that buoyant-hearted young
gentleman for many hours together, there were circumstances connected
with this debt which made the thought of it unusually importunate.
The creditor was Mr. Bambridge a horse-dealer of the neighborhood,
whose company was much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood
to be "addicted to pleasure."  During the vacations Fred had naturally
required more amusements than he had ready money for, and Mr. Bambridge
had been accommodating enough not only to trust him for the hire
of horses and the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter,
but also to make a small advance by which he might be able to meet some
losses at billiards. The total debt was a hundred and sixty pounds.
Bambridge was in no alarm about his money, being sure that young
Vincy had backers; but he had required something to show for it,
and Fred had at first given a bill with his own signature.
Three months later he had renewed this bill with the signature
of Caleb Garth. On both occasions Fred had felt confident that he
should meet the bill himself, having ample funds at disposal in
his own hopefulness. You will hardly demand that his confidence
should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know,
is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a comfortable
disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or
the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater
mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring
about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste
in costume, and our general preference for the best style of thing.
Fred felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle,
that he should have a run of luck, that by dint of "swapping" he
should gradually metamorphose a horse worth forty pounds into a horse
that would fetch a hundred at any moment--"judgment" being always
equivalent to an unspecified sum in hard cash. And in any case,
even supposing negations which only a morbid distrust could imagine,
Fred had always (at that time) his father's pocket as a last resource,
so that his assets of hopefulness had a sort of gorgeous superfluity
about them. Of what might be the capacity of his father's pocket,
Fred had only a vague notion: was not trade elastic?
And would not the deficiencies of one year be made up for by the
surplus of another? The Vincys lived in an easy profuse way,
not with any new ostentation, but according to the family habits
and traditions, so that the children had no standard of economy,
and the elder ones retained some of their infantine notion
that their father might pay for anything if he would. Mr. Vincy
himself had expensive Middlemarch habits--spent money on coursing,
on his cellar, and on dinner-giving, while mamma had those running
accounts with tradespeople, which give a cheerful sense of getting
everything one wants without any question of payment. But it was
in the nature of fathers, Fred knew, to bully one about expenses:
there was always a little storm over his extravagance if he had
to disclose a debt, and Fred disliked bad weather within doors.
He was too filial to be disrespectful to his father, and he
bore the thunder with the certainty that it was transient;
but in the mean time it was disagreeable to see his mother cry,
and also to be obliged to look sulky instead of having fun;
for Fred was so good-tempered that if he looked glum under scolding,
it was chiefly for propriety's sake. The easier course plainly,
was to renew the bill with a friend's signature. Why not? With the
superfluous securities of hope at his command, there was no reason why
he should not have increased other people's liabilities to any extent,
but for the fact that men whose names were good for anything
were usually pessimists, indisposed to believe that the universal
order of things would necessarily be agreeable to an agreeable
young gentleman.

With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do justice
to their more amiable qualities, forgive their little offenses,
and concerning each in turn, try to arrive at the conclusion that he
will be eager to oblige us, our own eagerness to be obliged being
as communicable as other warmth. Still there is always a certain
number who are dismissed as but moderately eager until the others
have refused; and it happened that Fred checked off all his friends
but one, on the ground that applying to them would be disagreeable;
being implicitly convinced that he at least (whatever might be
maintained about mankind generally) had a right to be free from
anything disagreeable. That he should ever fall into a thoroughly
unpleasant position--wear trousers shrunk with washing, eat cold mutton,
have to walk for want of a horse, or to "duck under" in any sort
of way--was an absurdity irreconcilable with those cheerful
intuitions implanted in him by nature. And Fred winced under the
idea of being looked down upon as wanting funds for small debts.
Thus it came to pass that the friend whom he chose to apply
to was at once the poorest and the kindest--namely, Caleb Garth.

The Garths were very fond of Fred, as he was of them; for when he
and Rosamond were little ones, and the Garths were better off,
the slight connection between the two families through
Mr. Featherstone's double marriage (the first to Mr. Garth's sister,
and the second to Mrs. Vincy's) had led to an acquaintance which
was carried on between the children rather than the parents:
the children drank tea together out of their toy teacups, and spent
whole days together in play. Mary was a little hoyden, and Fred
at six years old thought her the nicest girl in the world making
her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut from an umbrella.
Through all the stages of his education he had kept his affection
for the Garths, and his habit of going to their house as a second
home, though any intercourse between them and the elders of his
family had long ceased. Even when Caleb Garth was prosperous,
the Vincys were on condescending terms with him and his wife,
for there were nice distinctions of rank in Middlemarch; and though
old manufacturers could not any more than dukes be connected
with none but equals, they were conscious of an inherent social
superiority which was defined with great nicety in practice,
though hardly expressible theoretically. Since then Mr. Garth
had failed in the building business, which he had unfortunately
added to his other avocations of surveyor, valuer, and agent,
had conducted that business for a time entirely for the benefit of
his assignees, and had been living narrowly, exerting himself to the
utmost that he might after all pay twenty shillings in the pound.
He had now achieved this, and from all who did not think it
a bad precedent, his honorable exertions had won him due esteem;
but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem,
in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner-service.
Mrs. Vincy had never been at her ease with Mrs. Garth, and frequently
spoke of her as a woman who had had to work for her bread--
meaning that Mrs. Garth had been a teacher before her marriage;
in which case an intimacy with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions
was something like a draper's discrimination of calico trademarks,
or a courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman
who was better off needed that sort of thing. And since Mary had
been keeping Mr. Featherstone's house, Mrs. Vincy's want of liking
for the Garths had been converted into something more positive,
by alarm lest Fred should engage himself to this plain girl,
whose parents "lived in such a small way."  Fred, being aware of this,
never spoke at home of his visits to Mrs. Garth, which had of late
become more frequent, the increasing ardor of his affection
for Mary inclining him the more towards those who belonged to her.

Mr. Garth had a small office in the town, and to this Fred went
with his request. He obtained it without much difficulty,
for a large amount of painful experience had not sufficed to make
Caleb Garth cautious about his own affairs, or distrustful of his
fellow-men when they had not proved themselves untrustworthy;
and he had the highest opinion of Fred, was "sure the lad
would turn out well--an open affectionate fellow, with a good
bottom to his character--you might trust him for anything."  
Such was Caleb's psychological argument. He was one of those
rare men who are rigid to themselves and indulgent to others.
He had a certain shame about his neighbors' errors, and never spoke
of them willingly; hence he was not likely to divert his mind
from the best mode of hardening timber and other ingenious devices
in order to preconceive those errors. If he had to blame any one,
it was necessary for him to move all the papers within his reach,
or describe various diagrams with his stick, or make calculations
with the odd money in his pocket, before he could begin; and he
would rather do other men's work than find fault with their doing.
I fear he was a bad disciplinarian.

When Fred stated the circumstances of his debt, his wish to meet it
without troubling his father, and the certainty that the money would
be forthcoming so as to cause no one any inconvenience, Caleb pushed
his spectacles upward, listened, looked into his favorite's clear
young eyes, and believed him, not distinguishing confidence about
the future from veracity about the past; but he felt that it was an
occasion for a friendly hint as to conduct, and that before giving
his signature he must give a rather strong admonition. Accordingly,
he took the paper and lowered his spectacles, measured the space at
his command, reached his pen and examined it, dipped it in the ink
and examined it again, then pushed the paper a little way from him,
lifted up his spectacles again, showed a deepened depression in the
outer angle of his bushy eyebrows, which gave his face a peculiar
mildness (pardon these details for once--you would have learned to
love them if you had known Caleb Garth), and said in a comfortable tone--

"It was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse's knees?
And then, these exchanges, they don't answer when you have 'cute
jockeys to deal with. You'll be wiser another time, my boy."

Whereupon Caleb drew down his spectacles, and proceeded to write
his signature with the care which he always gave to that performance;
for whatever he did in the way of business he did well.
He contemplated the large well-proportioned letters and final flourish,
with his head a trifle on one side for an instant, then handed it
to Fred, said "Good-by," and returned forthwith to his absorption
in a plan for Sir James Chettam's new farm-buildings.

Either because his interest in this work thrust the incident of
the signature from his memory, or for some reason of which Caleb
was more conscious, Mrs. Garth remained ignorant of the affair.

Since it occurred, a change had come over Fred's sky, which altered his
view of the distance, and was the reason why his uncle Featherstone's
present of money was of importance enough to make his color come
and go, first with a too definite expectation, and afterwards with a
proportionate disappointment. His failure in passing his examination,
had made his accumulation of college debts the more unpardonable
by his father, and there had been an unprecedented storm at home.
Mr. Vincy had sworn that if he had anything more of that sort to put
up with, Fred should turn out and get his living how he could;
and he had never yet quite recovered his good-humored tone to his son,
who had especially enraged him by saying at this stage of things
that he did not want to be a clergyman, and would rather not "go
on with that."  Fred was conscious that he would have been yet more
severely dealt with if his family as well as himself had not secretly
regarded him as Mr. Featherstone's heir; that old gentleman's pride
in him, and apparent fondness for him, serving in the stead of more
exemplary conduct--just as when a youthful nobleman steals jewellery
we call the act kleptomania, speak of it with a philosophical smile,
and never think of his being sent to the house of correction as if he
were a ragged boy who had stolen turnips. In fact, tacit expectations
of what would be done for him by uncle Featherstone determined
the angle at which most people viewed Fred Vincy in Middlemarch;
and in his own consciousness, what uncle Featherstone would do for him
in an emergency, or what he would do simply as an incorporated luck,
formed always an immeasurable depth of aerial perspective. But that
present of bank-notes, once made, was measurable, and being applied
to the amount of the debt, showed a deficit which had still to be
filled up either by Fred's "judgment" or by luck in some other shape.
For that little episode of the alleged borrowing, in which he had
made his father the agent in getting the Bulstrode certificate,
was a new reason against going to his father for money towards meeting
his actual debt. Fred was keen enough to foresee that anger would
confuse distinctions, and that his denial of having borrowed expressly
on the strength of his uncle's will would be taken as a falsehood.
He had gone to his father and told him one vexatious affair,
and he had left another untold: in such cases the complete
revelation always produces the impression of a previous duplicity.
Now Fred piqued himself on keeping clear of lies, and even fibs;
he often shrugged his shoulders and made a significant grimace at
what he called Rosamond's fibs (it is only brothers who can associate
such ideas with a lovely girl); and rather than incur the accusation
of falsehood he would even incur some trouble and self-restraint.
It was under strong inward pressure of this kind that Fred had taken
the wise step of depositing the eighty pounds with his mother.
It was a pity that he had not at once given them to Mr. Garth;
but he meant to make the sum complete with another sixty, and with a
view to this, he had kept twenty pounds in his own pocket as a sort
of seed-corn, which, planted by judgment, and watered by luck,
might yield more than threefold--a very poor rate of multiplication
when the field is a young gentleman's infinite soul, with all the
numerals at command.

Fred was not a gambler: he had not that specific disease in which the
suspension of the whole nervous energy on a chance or risk becomes
as necessary as the dram to the drunkard; he had only the tendency
to that diffusive form of gambling which has no alcoholic intensity,
but is carried on with the healthiest chyle-fed blood, keeping up
a joyous imaginative activity which fashions events according
to desire, and having no fears about its own weather, only sees
the advantage there must be to others in going aboard with it.
Hopefulness has a pleasure in making a throw of any kind,
because the prospect of success is certain; and only a more generous
pleasure in offering as many as possible a share in the stake.
Fred liked play, especially billiards, as he liked hunting or riding
a steeple-chase; and he only liked it the better because he wanted
money and hoped to win. But the twenty pounds' worth of seed-corn
had been planted in vain in the seductive green plot--all of it at
least which had not been dispersed by the roadside--and Fred found
himself close upon the term of payment with no money at command
beyond the eighty pounds which he had deposited with his mother.
The broken-winded horse which he rode represented a present which
had been made to him a long while ago by his uncle Featherstone:
his father always allowed him to keep a horse, Mr. Vincy's own
habits making him regard this as a reasonable demand even for a son
who was rather exasperating. This horse, then, was Fred's property,
and in his anxiety to meet the imminent bill he determined to sacrifice
a possession without which life would certainly be worth little.
He made the resolution with a sense of heroism--heroism forced on him
by the dread of breaking his word to Mr. Garth, by his love for Mary
and awe of her opinion. He would start for Houndsley horse-fair
which was to be held the next morning, and--simply sell his horse,
bringing back the money by coach?--Well, the horse would hardly
fetch more than thirty pounds, and there was no knowing what
might happen; it would be folly to balk himself of luck beforehand.
It was a hundred to one that some good chance would fall in his way;
the longer he thought of it, the less possible it seemed that he
should not have a good chance, and the less reasonable that he should
not equip himself with the powder and shot for bringing it down.
He would ride to Houndsley with Bambridge and with Horrock "the vet,"
and without asking them anything expressly, he should virtually get
the benefit of their opinion. Before he set out, Fred got the eighty
pounds from his mother.

Most of those who saw Fred riding out of Middlemarch in company
with Bambridge and Horrock, on his way of course to Houndsley
horse-fair, thought that young Vincy was pleasure-seeking as usual;
and but for an unwonted consciousness of grave matters on hand,
he himself would have had a sense of dissipation, and of doing
what might be expected of a gay young fellow. Considering that Fred
was not at all coarse, that he rather looked down on the manners
and speech of young men who had not been to the university,
and that he had written stanzas as pastoral and unvoluptuous
as his flute-playing, his attraction towards Bambridge and Horrock
was an interesting fact which even the love of horse-flesh would
not wholly account for without that mysterious influence of Naming
which determinates so much of mortal choice. Under any other name
than "pleasure" the society of Messieurs Bambridge and Horrock must
certainly have been regarded as monotonous; and to arrive with them
at Houndsley on a drizzling afternoon, to get down at the Red Lion
in a street shaded with coal-dust, and dine in a room furnished with
a dirt-enamelled map of the county, a bad portrait of an anonymous
horse in a stable, His Majesty George the Fourth with legs and cravat,
and various leaden spittoons, might have seemed a hard business,
but for the sustaining power of nomenclature which determined
that the pursuit of these things was "gay."

In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent unfathomableness
which offered play to the imagination. Costume, at a glance,
gave him a thrilling association with horses (enough to specify
the hat-brim which took the slightest upward angle just to escape
the suspicion of bending downwards), and nature had given him
a face which by dint of Mongolian eyes, and a nose, mouth, and chin
seeming to follow his hat-brim in a moderate inclination upwards,
gave the effect of a subdued unchangeable sceptical smile,
of all expressions the most tyrannous over a susceptible mind,
and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to create the
reputation of an invincible understanding, an infinite fund of humor--
too dry to flow, and probably in a state of immovable crust,--
and a critical judgment which, if you could ever be fortunate
enough to know it, would be THE thing and no other. It is
a physiognomy seen in all vocations, but perhaps it has never been
more powerful over the youth of England than in a judge of horses.

Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's fetlock,
turned sideways in his saddle, and watched the horse's action for the
space of three minutes, then turned forward, twitched his own bridle,
and remained silent with a profile neither more nor less sceptical
than it had been.

The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective.
A mixture of passions was excited in Fred--a mad desire to thrash
Horrock's opinion into utterance, restrained by anxiety to retain
the advantage of his friendship. There was always the chance that
Horrock might say something quite invaluable at the right moment.

Mr. Bambridge had more open manners, and appeared to give forth
his ideas without economy. He was loud, robust, and was sometimes
spoken of as being "given to indulgence"--chiefly in swearing,
drinking, and beating his wife. Some people who had lost by him
called him a vicious man; but he regarded horse-dealing as the finest
of the arts, and might have argued plausibly that it had nothing
to do with morality. He was undeniably a prosperous man, bore his
drinking better than others bore their moderation, and, on the whole,
flourished like the green bay-tree. But his range of conversation
was limited, and like the fine old tune, "Drops of brandy," gave you
after a while a sense of returning upon itself in a way that might
make weak heads dizzy. But a slight infusion of Mr. Bambridge was
felt to give tone and character to several circles in Middlemarch;
and he was a distinguished figure in the bar and billiard-room
at the Green Dragon. He knew some anecdotes about the heroes
of the turf, and various clever tricks of Marquesses and Viscounts
which seemed to prove that blood asserted its pre-eminence even
among black-legs; but the minute retentiveness of his memory was
chiefly shown about the horses he had himself bought and sold;
the number of miles they would trot you in no time without turning
a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of passionate
asseveration, in which he would assist the imagination of his
hearers by solemnly swearing that they never saw anything like it.
In short, Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.

Fred was subtle, and did not tell his friends that he was going
to Houndsley bent on selling his horse: he wished to get indirectly
at their genuine opinion of its value, not being aware that a
genuine opinion was the last thing likely to be extracted from
such eminent critics. It was not Mr. Bambridge's weakness to be
a gratuitous flatterer. He had never before been so much struck
with the fact that this unfortunate bay was a roarer to a degree
which required the roundest word for perdition to give you any idea of it.

"You made a bad hand at swapping when you went to anybody
but me, Vincy! Why, you never threw your leg across a finer
horse than that chestnut, and you gave him for this brute.
If you set him cantering, he goes on like twenty sawyers.
I never heard but one worse roarer in my life, and that was a roan:
it belonged to Pegwell, the corn-factor; he used to drive him in
his gig seven years ago, and he wanted me to take him, but I said,
`Thank you, Peg, I don't deal in wind-instruments.' That was what
I said. It went the round of the country, that joke did. But,
what the hell! the horse was a penny trumpet to that roarer of yours."

"Why, you said just now his was worse than mine," said Fred,
more irritable than usual.

"I said a lie, then," said Mr. Bambridge, emphatically. "There wasn't
a penny to choose between 'em."

Fred spurred his horse, and they trotted on a little way.
When they slackened again, Mr. Bambridge said--

"Not but what the roan was a better trotter than yours."

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

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

Fred gave up the fallacious hope of getting a genuine opinion;
but on reflection he saw that Bambridge's depreciation and Horrock's
silence were both virtually encouraging, and indicated that they
thought better of the horse than they chose to say.

That very evening, indeed, before the fair had set in, Fred thought
he saw a favorable opening for disposing advantageously of his horse,
but an opening which made him congratulate himself on his
foresight in bringing with him his eighty pounds. A young farmer,
acquainted with Mr. Bambridge, came into the Red Lion, and entered
into conversation about parting with a hunter, which he introduced
at once as Diamond, implying that it was a public character.
For himself he only wanted a useful hack, which would draw upon occasion;
being about to marry and to give up hunting. The hunter was in
a friend's stable at some little distance; there was still time
for gentlemen to see it before dark. The friend's stable had to be
reached through a back street where you might as easily have been
poisoned without expense of drugs as in any grim street of that
unsanitary period. Fred was not fortified against disgust by brandy,
as his companions were, but the hope of having at last seen the horse
that would enable him to make money was exhilarating enough to lead
him over the same ground again the first thing in the morning.
He felt sure that if he did not come to a bargain with the farmer,
Bambridge would; for the stress of circumstances, Fred felt,
was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him with all the
constructive power of suspicion. Bambridge had run down Diamond
in a way that he never would have done (the horse being a friend's)
if he had not thought of buying it; every one who looked at
the animal--even Horrock--was evidently impressed with its merit.
To get all the advantage of being with men of this sort, you must
know how to draw your inferences, and not be a spoon who takes
things literally. The color of the horse was a dappled gray,
and Fred happened to know that Lord Medlicote's man was on the look-out
for just such a horse. After all his running down, Bambridge let
it out in the course of the evening, when the farmer was absent,
that he had seen worse horses go for eighty pounds. Of course he
contradicted himself twenty times over, but when you know what is
likely to be true you can test a man's admissions. And Fred could
not but reckon his own judgment of a horse as worth something.
The farmer had paused over Fred's respectable though broken-winded
steed long enough to show that he thought it worth consideration,
and it seemed probable that he would take it, with five-and-twenty
pounds in addition, as the equivalent of Diamond. In that case Fred,
when he had parted with his new horse for at least eighty pounds,
would be fifty-five pounds in pocket by the transaction, and would
have a hundred and thirty-five pounds towards meeting the bill;
so that the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at
the utmost be twenty-five pounds. By the time he was hurrying
on his clothes in the morning, he saw so clearly the importance
of not losing this rare chance, that if Bambridge and Horrock had
both dissuaded him, he would not have been deluded into a direct
interpretation of their purpose: he would have been aware that those
deep hands held something else than a young fellow's interest.
With regard to horses, distrust was your only clew. But scepticism,
as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come
to a standstill: something we must believe in and do, and whatever
that something may be called, it is virtually our own judgment,
even when it seems like the most slavish reliance on another.
Fred believed in the excellence of his bargain, and even before
the fair had well set in, had got possession of the dappled gray,
at the price of his old horse and thirty pounds in addition--only five
pounds more than he had expected to give.

But he felt a little worried and wearied, perhaps with mental debate,
and without waiting for the further gayeties of the horse-fair, he
set out alone on his fourteen miles' journey, meaning to take it
very quietly and keep his horse fresh.

CHAPTER XXIV.

        "The offender's sorrow brings but small relief
         To him who wears the strong offence's cross."
                                            --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.

I am sorry to say that only the third day after the propitious
events at Houndsley Fred Vincy had fallen into worse spirits than he
had known in his life before. Not that he had been disappointed
as to the possible market for his horse, but that before the bargain
could be concluded with Lord Medlicote's man, this Diamond,
in which hope to the amount of eighty pounds had been invested,
had without the slightest warning exhibited in the stable a most
vicious energy in kicking, had just missed killing the groom,
and had ended in laming himself severely by catching his leg in
a rope that overhung the stable-board. There was no more redress
for this than for the discovery of bad temper after marriage--
which of course old companions were aware of before the ceremony.
For some reason or other, Fred had none of his usual elasticity
under this stroke of ill-fortune: he was simply aware that he
had only fifty pounds, that there was no chance of his getting
any more at present, and that the bill for a hundred and sixty
would be presented in five days. Even if he had applied to his
father on the plea that Mr. Garth should be saved from loss,
Fred felt smartingly that his father would angrily refuse to rescue
Mr. Garth from the consequence of what he would call encouraging
extravagance and deceit. He was so utterly downcast that he could
frame no other project than to go straight to Mr. Garth and tell
him the sad truth, carrying with him the fifty pounds, and getting
that sum at least safely out of his own hands. His father, being at
the warehouse, did not yet know of the accident: when he did,
he would storm about the vicious brute being brought into his stable;
and before meeting that lesser annoyance Fred wanted to get away
with all his courage to face the greater. He took his father's nag,
for he had made up his mind that when he had told Mr. Garth,
he would ride to Stone Court and confess all to Mary. In fact,
it is probable that but for Mary's existence and Fred's love for her,
his conscience would hare been much less active both in previously
urging the debt on his thought and impelling him not to spare
himself after his usual fashion by deferring an unpleasant task,
but to act as directly and simply as he could. Even much stronger
mortals than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the
being they love best. "The theatre of all my actions is fallen,"
said an antique personage when his chief friend was dead; and they
are fortunate who get a theatre where the audience demands their best.
Certainly it would have made a considerable difference to Fred at that
time if Mary Garth had had no decided notions as to what was admirable
in character.

Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house,
which was a little way outside the town--a homely place with an orchard
in front of it, a rambling, old-fashioned, half-timbered building,
which before the town had spread had been a farm-house, but was
now surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen. We get
the fonder of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own,
as our friends have. The Garth family, which was rather a large one,
for Mary had four brothers and one sister, were very fond of their
old house, from which all the best furniture had long been sold.
Fred liked it too, knowing it by heart even to the attic which smelt
deliciously of apples and quinces, and until to-day he had never come
to it without pleasant expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now
with the sense that he should probably have to make his confession before
Mrs. Garth, of whom he was rather more in awe than of her husband.
Not that she was inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies,
as Mary was. In her present matronly age at least, Mrs. Garth
never committed herself by over-hasty speech; having, as she said,
borne the yoke in her youth, and learned self-control. She had that
rare sense which discerns what is unalterable, and submits to it
without murmuring. Adoring her husband's virtues, she had very early
made up her mind to his incapacity of minding his own interests,
and had met the consequences cheerfully. She had been magnanimous
enough to renounce all pride in teapots or children's frilling,
and had never poured any pathetic confidences into the ears
of her feminine neighbors concerning Mr. Garth's want of prudence
and the sums he might have had if he had been like other men.
Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or eccentric,
and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as "your fine Mrs. Garth."  
She was not without her criticism of them in return, being more
accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and--where is
the blameless woman?--apt to be a little severe towards her own sex,
which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate.
On the other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards
the failings of men, and was often heard to say that these
were natural. Also, it must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle
too emphatic in her resistance to what she held to be follies:
the passage from governess into housewife had wrought itself a
little too strongly into her consciousness, and she rarely forgot
that while her grammar and accent were above the town standard,
she wore a plain cap, cooked the family dinner, and darned all
the stockings. She had sometimes taken pupils in a peripatetic fashion,
making them follow her about in the kitchen with their book or slate.
She thought it good for them to see that she could make an excellent
lather while she corrected their blunders "without looking,"--
that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows might know
all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid Zone--that, in short,
she might possess "education" and other good things ending in
"tion," and worthy to be pronounced emphatically, without being
a useless doll. When she made remarks to this edifying effect,
she had a firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not hinder
her face from looking benevolent, and her words which came forth
like a procession were uttered in a fervid agreeable contralto.
Certainly, the exemplary Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her
character sustained her oddities, as a very fine wine sustains
a flavor of skin.

Towards Fred Vincy she had a motherly feeling, and had always been
disposed to excuse his errors, though she would probably not have
excused Mary for engaging herself to him, her daughter being included
in that more rigorous judgment which she applied to her own sex.
But this very fact of her exceptional indulgence towards him made it
the harder to Fred that he must now inevitably sink in her opinion.
And the circumstances of his visit turned out to be still more
unpleasant than he had expected; for Caleb Garth had gone out early
to look at some repairs not far off. Mrs. Garth at certain hours was
always in the kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several
occupations at once there--making her pies at the well-scoured deal
table on one side of that airy room, observing Sally's movements
at the oven and dough-tub through an open door, and giving
lessons to her youngest boy and girl, who were standing opposite
to her at the table with their books and slates before them.
A tub and a clothes-horse at the other end of the kitchen indicated
an intermittent wash of small things also going on.

Mrs. Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling
her pastry--applying her rolling-pin and giving ornamental pinches,
while she expounded with grammatical fervor what were the right
views about the concord of verbs and pronouns with "nouns of
multitude or signifying many," was a sight agreeably amusing.
She was of the same curly-haired, square-faced type as Mary,
but handsomer, with more delicacy of feature, a pale skin,
a solid matronly figure, and a remarkable firmness of glance.
In her snowy-frilled cap she reminded one of that delightful
Frenchwoman whom we have all seen marketing, basket on arm.
Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter would become
like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a dowry--the mother
too often standing behind the daughter like a malignant prophecy--
"Such as I am, she will shortly be."

"Now let us go through that once more," said Mrs. Garth,
pinching an apple-puff which seemed to distract Ben, an energetic
young male with a heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson.
"`Not without regard to the import of the word as conveying unity
or plurality of idea'--tell me again what that means, Ben."

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

"Oh--it means--you must think what you mean," said Ben, rather peevishly.
"I hate grammar. What's the use of it?"

"To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can
be understood," said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision.
"Should you like to speak as old Job does?"

"Yes," said Ben, stoutly; "it's funnier. He says, `Yo goo'--
that's just as good as `You go.'"

"But he says, `A ship's in the garden,' instead of `a sheep,'"
said Letty, with an air of superiority. "You might think he meant
a ship off the sea."

"No, you mightn't, if you weren't silly," said Ben. "How could
a ship off the sea come there?"

"These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part
of grammar," said Mrs. Garth. "That apple-peel is to be eaten by
the pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty.
Job has only to speak about very plain things. How do you think
you would write or speak about anything more difficult, if you
knew no more of grammar than he does? You would use wrong words,
and put words in the wrong places, and instead of making people
understand you, they would turn away from you as a tiresome person.
What would you do then?"

"I shouldn't care, I should leave off," said Ben, with a sense
that this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.

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

"I know! he was a farmer," said Ben.

"Now, Ben, he was a Roman--let ME tell," said Letty, using her
elbow contentiously.

"You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing."

"Yes, but before that--that didn't come first--people wanted him,"
said Letty.

"Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first,"
insisted Ben. "He was a wise man, like my father, and that made
the people want his advice. And he was a brave man, and could fight.
And so could my father--couldn't he, mother?"

"Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,"
said Letty, frowning. "Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak."

"Letty, I am ashamed of you," said her mother, wringing out the
caps from the tub. "When your brother began, you ought to have
waited to see if he could not tell the story. How rude you look,
pushing and frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows!
Cincinnatus, I am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter
behave so."  (Mrs. Garth delivered this awful sentence with much
majesty of enunciation, and Letty felt that between repressed
volubility and general disesteem, that of the Romans inclusive,
life was already a painful affair.) "Now, Ben."

"Well--oh--well--why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they
were all blockheads, and--I can't tell it just how you told it--
but they wanted a man to be captain and king and everything--"

"Dictator, now," said Letty, with injured looks, and not without
a wish to make her mother repent.

"Very well, dictator!" said Ben, contemptuously. "But that isn't
a good word: he didn't tell them to write on slates."

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

The knock was Fred's; and when Letty said that her father was not in
yet, but that her mother was in the kitchen, Fred had no alternative.
He could not depart from his usual practice of going to see
Mrs. Garth in the kitchen if she happened to be at work there.
He put his arm round Letty's neck silently, and led her into
the kitchen without his usual jokes and caresses.

Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise
was not a feeling that she was given to express, and she only said,
quietly continuing her work--

"You, Fred, so early in the day? You look quite pale.
Has anything happened?"

"I want to speak to Mr. Garth," said Fred, not yet ready to say more--
"and to you also," he added, after a little pause, for he had no
doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the bill, and he must
in the end speak of it before her, if not to her solely.

"Caleb will be in again in a few minutes," said Mrs. Garth, who imagined
some trouble between Fred and his father. "He is sure not to be long,
because he has some work at his desk that must be done this morning.
Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my matters here?"

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

"No, go out now. But put that whip down. How very mean of you
to whip poor old Tortoise! Pray take the whip from him, Fred."

"Come, old boy, give it me," said Fred, putting out his hand.

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

"Not to-day--another time. I am not riding my own horse."

"Shall you see Mary to-day?"

"Yes, I think so," said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.

"Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun."

"Enough, enough, Ben! run away," said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred
was teased. . .

"Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?" said Fred,
when the children were gone and it was needful to say something
that would pass the time. He was not yet sure whether he should
wait for Mr. Garth, or use any good opportunity in conversation
to confess to Mrs. Garth herself, give her the money and ride away.

"One--only one. Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven.
I am not getting a great income now," said Mrs. Garth, smiling.
"I am at a low ebb with pupils. But I have saved my little
purse for Alfred's premium: I have ninety-two pounds.
He can go to Mr. Hanmer's now; he is just at the right age."

This did not lead well towards the news that Mr. Garth was on
the brink of losing ninety-two pounds and more. Fred was silent.
"Young gentlemen who go to college are rather more costly than that,"
Mrs. Garth innocently continued, pulling out the edging on a cap-border.
"And Caleb thinks that Alfred will turn out a distinguished engineer:
he wants to give the boy a good chance. There he is! I hear him
coming in. We will go to him in the parlor, shall we?"

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

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

"Yes, Mr. Garth, I am come to tell something that I am afraid will
give you a bad opinion of me. I am come to tell you and Mrs. Garth
that I can't keep my word. I can't find the money to meet the bill
after all. I have been unfortunate; I have only got these fifty
pounds towards the hundred and sixty."

While Fred was speaking, he had taken out the notes and laid them
on the desk before Mr. Garth. He had burst forth at once with the
plain fact, feeling boyishly miserable and without verbal resources.
Mrs. Garth was mutely astonished, and looked at her husband for
an explanation. Caleb blushed, and after a little pause said--

"Oh, I didn't tell you, Susan: I put my name to a bill for Fred;
it was for a hundred and sixty pounds. He made sure he could meet
it himself."

There was an evident change in Mrs. Garth's face, but it was
like a change below the surface of water which remains smooth.
She fixed her eyes on Fred, saying--

"I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money
and he has refused you."

"No," said Fred, biting his lip, and speaking with more difficulty;
"but I know it will be of no use to ask him; and unless it were of use,
I should not like to mention Mr. Garth's name in the matter."

"It has come at an unfortunate time," said Caleb, in his hesitating way,
looking down at the notes and nervously fingering the paper,
"Christmas upon us--I'm rather hard up just now. You see, I have
to cut out everything like a tailor with short measure. What can
we do, Susan? I shall want every farthing we have in the bank.
It's a hundred and ten pounds, the deuce take it!"

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

Mrs. Garth had not again looked at Fred, and was not in the least
calculating what words she should use to cut him the most effectively.
Like the eccentric woman she was, she was at present absorbed in
considering what was to be done, and did not fancy that the end could
be better achieved by bitter remarks or explosions. But she had made
Fred feel for the first time something like the tooth of remorse.
Curiously enough, his pain in the affair beforehand had consisted
almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonorable,
and sink in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied
himself with the inconvenience and possible injury that his breach
might occasion them, for this exercise of the imagination on
other people's needs is not common with hopeful young gentlemen.
Indeed we are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest
motive for not doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings
who would suffer the wrong. But at this moment he suddenly saw
himself as a pitiful rascal who was robbing two women of their savings.

"I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth--ultimately," he stammered out.

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

"I was the most in the wrong, Susan," said Caleb. "Fred made sure
of finding the money. But I'd no business to be fingering bills.
I suppose you have looked all round and tried all honest means?"
he added, fixing his merciful gray eyes on Fred. Caleb was too delicate,
to specify Mr. Featherstone.

"Yes, I have tried everything--I really have. I should have had
a hundred and thirty pounds ready but for a misfortune with a horse
which I was about to sell. My uncle had given me eighty pounds,
and I paid away thirty with my old horse in order to get another which I
was going to sell for eighty or more--I meant to go without a horse--
but now it has turned out vicious and lamed itself. I wish I and the
horses too had been at the devil, before I had brought this on you.
There's no one else I care so much for: you and Mrs. Garth have
always been so kind to me. However, it's no use saying that.
You will always think me a rascal now."

Fred turned round and hurried out of the room, conscious that he
was getting rather womanish, and feeling confusedly that his being
sorry was not of much use to the Garths. They could see him mount,
and quickly pass through the gate.

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

"I was a fool, Susan:"

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

"You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan," said Caleb, looking feelingly
at her. "I can't abide your losing the money you've scraped
together for Alfred."

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

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

"Poor Mary!" he said. "Susan," he went on in a lowered tone,
"I'm afraid she may be fond of Fred."

"Oh no! She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think
of her in any other than a brotherly way."

Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles,
drew up his chair to the desk, and said, "Deuce take the bill--
I wish it was at Hanover! These things are a sad interruption
to business!"

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXV.

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

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

"Mary," he began, "I am a good-for-nothing blackguard."

"I should think one of those epithets would do at a time," said Mary,
trying to smile, but feeling alarmed.

"I know you will never think well of me any more. You will think
me a liar. You will think me dishonest. You will think I didn't
care for you, or your father and mother. You always do make
the worst of me, I know."

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

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

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

"What does it matter whether I forgive you?" said Mary, passionately.
"Would that make it any better for my mother to lose the money
she has been earning by lessons for four years, that she might
send Alfred to Mr. Hanmer's? Should you