Middlemarch
by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
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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 think all that pleasant
enough if I forgave you?"

"Say what you like, Mary. I deserve it all."

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

Fred followed her with his eyes, hoping that they would meet hers,
and in that way find access for his imploring penitence. But no!
Mary could easily avoid looking upward.

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

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

"I am so miserable, Mary--if you knew how miserable I am, you would
be sorry for me."

"There are other things to be more sorry for than that. But selfish
people always think their own discomfort of more importance than
anything else in the world. I see enough of that every day."

"It is hardly fair to call me selfish. If you knew what things
other young men do, you would think me a good way off the worst."

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

"Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay
when he meant it. There is not a better man in the world than
your father, and yet he got into trouble."

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

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

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

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

"Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything. Say you will not think
the worst of me--will not give me up altogether."

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

"I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you
love me."

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

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

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

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

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

"I've got something to tell you, my dear," said Caleb in his
hesitating way. "No very good news; but then it might be worse."

"About money, father? I think I know what it is."

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

"Oh yes; I have more than four-and-twenty pounds. I thought you
would come, father, so I put it in my bag. See! beautiful white
notes and gold."

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

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

"Fred told me this morning."

"Ah! Did he come on purpose?"

"Yes, I think so. He was a good deal distressed."

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

"And so should I, father," said Mary, not looking up, but putting
the back of her father's hand against her cheek.

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

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

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

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

"That's right--that's right. Then I am easy," said Mr. Garth,
taking up his {hat or bet. ????}  But it's hard to run away with
your earnings, eh child."

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

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

"I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir,"
said Mary, coldly.

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

CHAPTER XXVI.

"He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction! would it
were otherwise--that I could beat him while he railed at me.--"
                                    --Troilus and Cressida.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?" said Lydgate,
really believing that Wrench was not well prepared to deal wisely
with a case of this kind.

"Pray make that arrangement, Mr. Lydgate," said Rosamond, coming to
her mother's aid, and supporting her arm to lead her away.

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

"Don't say so, Vincy," said the mother, with a quivering lip,
"if you don't want him to be taken from me."

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

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

"Oh, Mr. Wrench, what have I ever done that you should use me so?--
To go away, and never to come again! And my boy might have been
stretched a corpse!"

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

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

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

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

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

She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother,
who did not fail to tell her son of it, observing--

"I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should
be sorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate."

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

"That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden,"
said the old lady, with an air of precision.--"But as to Bulstrode--
the report may be true of some other son."

CHAPTER XXVII.

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

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

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

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

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

"If I can only see my boy strong again," she said, in her loving folly;
"and who knows?--perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry
anybody he likes then."

"Not if they won't have me, mother," said Fred. The illness had
made him childish, and tears came as he spoke.

"Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy,
secretly incredulous of any such refusal.

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

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

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

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

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

"I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you," said Mr. Ned.
He kept the book open at the bewitching portrait, and looked at it
rather languishingly.

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

"I did not say she was as beautiful as you are," said Mr. Ned,
venturing to look from the portrait to its rival.

"I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer," said Rosamond,
feeling sure that she should have to reject this young gentleman
a second time.

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

"What a late comer you are!" she said, as they shook hands.
"Mamma had given you up a little while ago. How do you find Fred?"

"As usual; going on well, but slowly. I want him to go away--
to Stone Court, for example. But your mamma seems to have
some objection."

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

Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the "Keepsake"
towards him and opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed
up his chill, as if in wonderment at human folly.

"What are you laughing at so profanely?" said Rosamond,
with bland neutrality.

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

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

"There are a great many celebrated people writing in the `Keepsake,'
at all events," he said, in a tone at once piqued and timid.
"This is the first time I have heard it called silly."

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

"But Sir Walter Scott--I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him,"
said young Plymdale, a little cheered by this advantage.

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

"I should like to know when you left off," said Rosamond, "because
then I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know."

"Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing," said Mr. Ned,
purposely caustic.

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

Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking
that Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it
had ever been his ill-fortune to meet.

"How rash you are!" said Rosamond, inwardly delighted. "Do you
see that you have given offence?"

"What! is it Mr. Plymdale's book? I am sorry. I didn't think
about it."

"I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first
came here--that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds."

"Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will. Don't I
listen to her willingly?"

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

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

CHAPTER XXVIII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, it was cruel to speak so! How sad--how dreadful!"

She rose quickly and went out of the room, hurrying along the corridor,
with the irresistible impulse to go and see her husband and inquire
if she could do anything for him. Perhaps Mr. Tucker was gone
and Mr. Casaubon was alone in the library. She felt as if all
her morning's gloom would vanish if she could see her husband
glad because of her presence.

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

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

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

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

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

"He is not indeed an author adapted to superficial minds,"
said Mr. Casaubon, meeting these timely questions with dignified patience.

"You would like coffee in your own room, uncle?" said Dorothea,
coming to the rescue.

"Yes; and you must go to Celia: she has great news to tell you,
you know. I leave it all to her."

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

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

"It would not suit all--not you, dear,
for example," said Dorothea, quietly.
No one would ever know what she thought of a wedding journey to Rome.

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

To come and go with tidings from the heart,
As it a running messenger had been.

It must mean more than Celia's blushing usually did.

"Celia! has something happened?" said Dorothea, in a tone full
of sisterly feeling. "Have you really any great news to tell me?"

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

"I understand. It is as I used to hope and believe," said Dorothea,
taking her sister's face between her hands, and looking at her
half anxiously. Celia's marriage seemed more serious than it used
to do.

"It was only three days ago," said Celia. "And Lady Chettam
is very kind."

"And you are very happy?"

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

"I do believe you could not marry better, Kitty. Sir James is a good,
honorable man," said Dorothea, warmly.

"He has gone on with the cottages, Dodo. He will tell you about
them when he comes. Shall you be glad to see him?"

"Of course I shall. How can you ask me?"

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

CHAPTER XXIX.

"I found that no genius in another could please me. My unfortunate
paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort."--GOLDSMITH.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Dorothea, here is a letter for you, which was enclosed in one
addressed to me."

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

"Mr. Ladislaw! What can he have to say to me?" she exclaimed,
in a tone of pleased surprise. "But," she added, looking at
Mr. Casaubon, "I can imagine what he has written to you about."

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

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

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

"Dorothea, you are hasty," answered Mr. Casaubon, nervously.

Decidedly, this woman was too young to be on the formidable level
of wifehood--unless she had been pale and feature less and taken
everything for granted.

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

"We will, if you please, say no more on this subject, Dorothea.
I have neither leisure nor energy for this kind of debate."

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

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

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

"Can you lean on me, dear?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I always thought it a horrible sacrifice of your sister,"
said Sir James.

"Yes. But poor Dodo never did do what other people do, and I think
she never will."

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

"Yes," said Celia, thinking it was very well for Sir James to say so,
but HE would not have been comfortable with Dodo. "Shall I go
to her? Could I help her, do you think?"

"I think it would be well for you just to go and see her before
Lydgate comes," said Sir James, magnanimously. "Only don't stay long."

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

CHAPTER XXX.

        "Qui veut delasser hors de propos, lasse."--PASCAL.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, much more rapid progress than I at first expected.
Indeed, he is already nearly in his usual state of health."

"You do not fear that the illness will return?" said Dorothea,
whose quick ear had detected some significance in Lydgate's tone.

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

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

"Sit down," she added, placing herself on the nearest chair,
and throwing off her bonnet and gloves, with an instinctive discarding
of formality where a great question of destiny was concerned.

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

Dorothea had turned very pale, and when Lydgate paused she said
in a low voice, "You mean if we are very careful."

"Yes--careful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against
excessive application."

"He would be miserable, if he had to give up his work," said Dorothea,
with a quick prevision of that wretchedness.

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

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

"Help me, pray," she said, at last, in the same low voice as before.
"Tell me what I can do."

"What do you think of foreign travel? You have been lately in Rome,
I think."

The memories which made this resource utterly hopeless were a new
current that shook Dorothea out of her pallid immobility.

"Oh, that would not do--that would be worse than anything," she said
with a more childlike despondency, while the tears rolled down.
"Nothing will be of any use that he does not enjoy."

"I wish that I could have spared you this pain," said Lydgate,
deeply touched, yet wondering about her marriage. Women just like
Dorothea had not entered into his traditions.

"It was right of you to tell me. I thank you for telling me
the truth."

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

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

"Oh, you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life
and death. Advise me. Think what I can do. He has been laboring
all his life and looking forward. He minds about nothing else.--
And I mind about nothing else--"

For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him
by this involuntary appeal--this cry from soul to soul, without other
consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same
embroiled medium, the same troublous fitfully illuminated life.
But what could he say now except that he should see Mr. Casaubon
again to-morrow?

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

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

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

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

"To be sure, I will write, my dear. He's a very clever young fellow--
this young Ladislaw--I dare say will be a rising young man.
It's a good letter--marks his sense of things, you know.
However, I will tell him about Casaubon."

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

But he went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into
the letter, for she was engaged with her husband, and--in fact,
these things were of no importance to her.

CHAPTER XXXI.

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

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

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

"She certainly is handsome, but I have not thought about it,"
said Lydgate.

"I suppose it would be unprofessional," said Rosamond, dimpling.
"But how your practice is spreading! You were called in before
to the Chettams, I think; and now, the Casaubons."

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

"Not more than in Middlemarch," said Rosamond. "And at least you go
through wide corridors and have the scent of rose-leaves everywhere."

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

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

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

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

"Why do you say `poor Rosamond'?" said Mrs. Plymdale, a round-eyed
sharp little woman, like a tamed falcon.

"She is so pretty, and has been brought up in such thoughtlessness.
The mother, you know, had always that levity about her, which makes
me anxious for the children."

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

"Selina, what do you mean?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, in genuine surprise.

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

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

"I was not speaking in a religious sense, Harriet. I spoke
as a mother."

"Selina, I am sure you have never heard me say anything against
a niece of mine marrying your son."

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

"You don't mean that there is anything between Rosamond and Mr. Lydgate?"
said Mrs. Bulstrode, rather mortified at finding out her own ignorance

"Is it possible you don't know, Harriet?"

"Oh, I go about so little; and I am not fond of gossip; I really
never hear any. You see so many people that I don't see.
Your circle is rather different from ours."

"Well, but your own niece and Mr. Bulstrode's great favorite--
and yours too, I am sure, Harriet! I thought, at one time,
you meant him for Kate, when she is a little older."

"I don't believe there can be anything serious at present,"
said Mrs. Bulstrode. "My brother would certainly have told me."

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

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

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

"I have just heard something about you that has surprised me
very much, Rosamond."

"What is that, aunt?"  Rosamond's eyes also were roaming over her
aunt's large embroidered collar.

"I can hardly believe it--that you should be engaged without my
knowing it--without your father's telling me."  Here Mrs. Bulstrode's
eyes finally rested on Rosamond's, who blushed deeply, and said--

"I am not engaged, aunt."

"How is it that every one says so, then--that it is the town's talk?"

"The town's talk is of very little consequence, I think,"
said Rosamond, inwardly gratified.

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

"Mr. Lydgate is not a poor man, aunt. He has very high connections."

"He told me himself he was poor."

"That is because he is used to people who have a high style

"My dear Rosamond, YOU must not think of living in high style."

Rosamond looked down and played with her reticule. She was not
a fiery young lady and had no sharp answers, but she meant to live
as she pleased.

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

Poor Rosamond's feelings were very unpleasant. She had been quite
easy as to Lydgate's feeling and intention, but now when her aunt
put this question she did not like being unable to say Yes.
Her pride was hurt, but her habitual control of manner helped her.

"Pray excuse me, aunt. I would rather not speak on the subject."

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

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

"I see how it is, my dear," said Mrs. Bulstrode, in a melancholy voice,
rising to go. "You have allowed your affections to be engaged
without return."

"No, indeed, aunt," said Rosamond, with emphasis.

"Then you are quite confident that Mr. Lydgate has a serious
attachment to you?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore
palate findeth grit, so an uneasy consciousness heareth innuendoes.
The next day Mr. Farebrother, parting from Lydgate in the street,
supposed that they should meet at Vincy's in the evening.
Lydgate answered curtly, no--he had work to do--he must give up going
out in the evening.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is the matter? you are distressed. Tell me, pray."

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

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

CHAPTER XXXII.

        "They'll take suggestion as a cat laps milk."
                                    --SHAKESPEARE: Tempest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why, Tom, YOU don't wear such gentlemanly trousers--
you haven't got half such fine long legs," said Jonah to his nephew,
winking at the same time, to imply that there was something more in
these statements than their undeniableness. Tom looked at his legs,
but left it uncertain whether he preferred his moral advantages
to a more vicious length of limb and reprehensible gentility of trouser.

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

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

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

"Back, back, Mrs. Waule! Back, Solomon!"

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I shall take my own time--you needn't offer me yours,"
said Peter.

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

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

"Some people would be ashamed to fill up a place belonging by rights to
others," said Mrs. Waule, turning her narrow eyes in the same direction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It's not necessary for you to go out;--let me ring the bell."

"Thank you," said Mary, "I have an errand."

"Well, Mr. Trumbull, you're highly favored," said Mrs. Waule.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A man might as well turn his land into charity land at once as
leave it to some people," observed Solomon, his sister's question
having drawn no answer.

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

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

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

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

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

"Some don't like so much sugar in their hams," said Mrs. Waule.
"But my poor brother would always have sugar."

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

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

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

"No," said Mary. "Mr. Fred Vincy brought this book."

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

"I am much obliged," said Mary, hastening away again, "but I have
little time for reading."

"I should say my brother has done something for HER in his will,"
said Mr. Solomon, in a very low undertone, when she had shut the door
behind her, pointing with his head towards the absent Mary.

"His first wife was a poor match for him, though," said Mrs. Waule.
"She brought him nothing: and this young woman is only her niece,--
and very proud. And my brother has always paid her wage."

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

When Mr. Trumbull had departed with a fine bow, Solomon,
leaning forward, observed to his sister, "You may depend,
Jane, my brother has left that girl a lumping sum."

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

"Auctioneers talk wild," said Solomon. "Not but what Trumbull has
made money."

CHAPTER XXXIII.

        "Close up his eyes and draw the curtain close;
         And let us all to meditation."
                                  --2 Henry VI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You mean of your own relations, sir," said Mary, well used
to the old man's way of speech. He nodded slightly and she went on.

"Mr. Jonah Featherstone and young Cranch are sleeping here."

"Oh ay, they stick, do they? and the rest--they come every day,
I'll warrant--Solomon and Jane, and all the young uns?
They come peeping, and counting and casting up?"

"Not all of them every day. Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule are here
every day, and the others come often."

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

"Well, sir?" said Mary, quietly.

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

"No, sir," said Mary, in a firm voice, "I cannot do that."

"Not do it? I tell you, you must," said the old man, his voice
beginning to shake under the shock of this resistance.

"I cannot touch your iron chest or your will. I must refuse to do
anything that might lay me open to suspicion."

"I tell you, I'm in my right mind. Shan't I do as I like at the last?
I made two wills on purpose. Take the key, I say."

"No, sir, I will not," said Mary, more resolutely still.
Her repulsion was getting stronger.

"I tell you, there's no time to lose."

"I cannot help that, sir. I will not let the close of your life
soil the beginning of mine. I will not touch your iron chest
or your will."  She moved to a little distance from the bedside.

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

"Missy," he began to say, hurriedly, "look here! take the money--
the notes and gold--look here--take it--you shall have it all--
do as I tell you."

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

"I will not touch your key or your money, sir. Pray don't ask me
to do it again. If you do, I must go and call your brother."

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

"Look here, then. Call the young chap. Call Fred Vincy."

Mary's heart began to beat more quickly. Various ideas rushed
through her mind as to what the burning of a second will might imply.
She had to make a difficult decision in a hurry.

"I will call him, if you will let me call Mr. Jonah and others
with him."

"Nobody else, I say. The young chap. I shall do as I like."

"Wait till broad daylight, sir, when every one is stirring.
Or let me call Simmons now, to go and fetch the lawyer? He can be
here in less than two hours."

"Lawyer? What do I want with the lawyer? Nobody shall know--I say,
nobody shall know. I shall do as I like."

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

"You let me alone, I say. Look here, missy. Take the money.
You'll never have the chance again. It's pretty nigh two hundred--
there's more in the box, and nobody knows how much there was.
Take it and do as I tell you."

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

"It is of no use, sir. I will not do it. Put up your money.
I will not touch your money. I will do anything else I can to
comfort you; but I will not touch your keys or your money."

"Anything else anything else!" said old Featherstone, with hoarse
rage, which, as if in a nightmare, tried to be loud, and yet was
only just audible. "I want nothing else. You come here--you come here."

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

"Let me give you some cordial," she said, quietly, "and try to
compose yourself. You will perhaps go to sleep. And to-morrow
by daylight you can do as you like."

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

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

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

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

BOOK IV.

THREE LOVE PROBLEMS.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

        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."

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

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

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

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

"I will go anywhere with you, Mrs. Cadwallader," Celia had said;
"but I don't like funerals."

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

"No, to be sure not," said the Dowager Lady Chettam,
with stately emphasis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife
and son," said Sir James, looking interrogatively at Mr. Brooke,
who nodded and said--

"Yes, a very decent family--a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit
to the manufacturing interest. You have seen him at my house,
you know."

"Ah, yes: one of your secret committee," said Mrs. Cadwallader,
provokingly.

"A coursing fellow, though," said Sir James, with a fox-hunter's disgust.

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

"It's a solemn thing, though, a funeral," said Mr. Brooke, "if you
take it in that light, you know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you
acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative
of mine."

The funeral was ended now, and the churchyard was being cleared.

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

"A very pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, dryly. "What
is your nephew to be, Mr. Casaubon?"

"Pardon me, he is not my nephew. He is my cousin."

"Well, you know," interposed Mr. Brooke, "he is trying his wings.
He is just the sort of young fellow to rise. I should be glad
to give him an opportunity. He would make a good secretary, now,
like Hobbes, Milton, Swift--that sort of man."

"I understand," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "One who can write speeches."

"I'll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon?" said Mr. Brooke.
"He wouldn't come in till I had announced him, you know. And we'll
go down and look at the picture. There you are to the life:
a deep subtle sort of thinker with his fore-finger on the page,
while Saint Bonaventure or somebody else, rather fat and florid,
is looking up at the Trinity. Everything is 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."

CHAPTER XXXV.

        "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."
                             --REGNARD: Le Legataire Universel.

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

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

"Why, Trumbull himself is pretty sure of five hundred--THAT
you may depend,--I shouldn't wonder if my brother promised him,"
said Solomon, musing aloud with his sisters, the evening before
the funeral.

"Dear, dear!" said poor sister Martha, whose imagination of hundreds
had been habitually narrowed to the amount of her unpaid rent.

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

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

"My good lady, whatever was told me was told in confidence,"
said the auctioneer, putting his hand up to screen that secret.

"Them who've made sure of their good-luck may be disappointed yet,"
Mrs. Waule continued, finding some relief in this communication.

"Hopes are often delusive," said Mr. Trumbull, still in confidence.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Waule, looking across at the Vincys, and then
moving back to the side of her sister Martha.

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

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

"I never WAS covetious, Jane," she replied; "but I have six
children and have buried three, and I didn't marry into money.
The eldest, that sits there, is but nineteen--so I leave you to guess.
And stock always short, and land most awkward. But if ever I've
begged and prayed; it's been to God above; though where there's
one brother a bachelor and the other childless after twice marrying--
anybody might think!"

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

"Everything is as handsome as could be, crape and silk and everything,"
said Mrs. Vincy, contentedly.

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

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

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

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

Perhaps the person who felt the most throbbing excitement at this
moment was Mary Garth, in the consciousness that it was she
who had virtually determined the production of this second will,
which might have momentous effects on the lot of some persons present.
No soul except herself knew what had passed on that final night.

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

"Dear, dear!" said sister Martha, not meaning to be audible,
but driven to some articulation under this pressure of dates.

"I shall begin by reading the earlier will," continued Mr. Standish,
"since such, as appears by his not having destroyed the document,
was the intention of deceased."

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

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

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

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

"A most singular testamentary disposition!" exclaimed Mr. Trumbull,
preferring for once that he should be considered ignorant in the past.
"But there is a second will--there is a further document. We have
not yet heard the final wishes of the deceased."

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

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

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

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

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

"That's a strange sentiment to come from a Christian man, by God!"
said the lawyer. "I should like to know how you will back
that up, Garth!"

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

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

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

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

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

"I've no desire to put my foot on the premises again," said Solomon.
"I've got land of my own and property of my own to will away."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Take another situation, of course, as soon as I can get one.
My father has enough to do to keep the rest, without me. Good-by."

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

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVI.

       "'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.

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

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

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

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

"Took it away again!" said Mr. Vincy, pettishly. "I tell you
the lad's an unlucky lad, Lucy. And you've always spoiled him."

"Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him
when he came. You were as proud as proud," said Mrs. Vincy,
easily recovering her cheerful smile.

"Who knows what babies will turn to? I was fool enough, I dare say,"
said the husband--more mildly, however.

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

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

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

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

"Rosamond will take it hard, Vincy, and you know you never could
bear to cross her."

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

"But he stands very high with Mr. Bulstrode, my dear. The marriage
would please HIM, I should think."

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

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

"What do you say, my dear?" said her mother, with affectionate deference.

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

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

"You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma. Of course he
understands his own affairs."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, really, Walter, how can Mr. Bulstrode be to blame?
I am sure he did not wish for the engagement."

"Oh, if Bulstrode had not taken him by the hand, I should never
have invited him."

"But you called him in to attend on Fred, and I am sure that was
a mercy," said Mrs. Bulstrode, losing her clew in the intricacies
of the subject.

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

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

"I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl--
brought up as she has been," said Mrs. Bulstrode, wishing to rouse
her husband's feelings.

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

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

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

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

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

"Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony,
and now he brings back chaos."

"Yes, at some stages," said Lydgate, lifting his brows and smiling,
while he began to arrange his microscope. "But a better order will
begin after."

"Soon?" said the Vicar.

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

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

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

"Dear!" he said to her one evening, in his gentlest tone, as he
sat down by her and looked closely at her face--

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

"Dear! your eyelids are red."

"Are they?" said Rosamond. "I wonder why."  It was not in her
nature to pour forth wishes or grievances. They only came forth
gracefully on solicitation.

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

"Why should I tell you what you cannot alter? They are
every-day things:--perhaps they have been a little worse lately."

"Family annoyances. Don't fear speaking. I guess them."

"Papa has been more irritable lately. Fred makes him angry, and this
morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw
his whole education away, and do something quite beneath him.
And besides--"

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

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

"Will you give it up?" said Lydgate, with quick energy--almost angrily.

"I never give up anything that I choose to do," said Rosamond,
recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.

"God bless you!" said Lydgate, kissing her again. This constancy
of purpose in the right place was adorable. He went on:--

"It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement
must be given up. You are of age, and I claim you as mine.
If anything is done to make you unhappy,--that is a reason for
hastening our marriage."

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

"Why should we defer it?" he said, with ardent insistence.
"I have taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready--
can it not? You will not mind about new clothes. Those can be
bought afterwards."

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

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

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

"Six weeks would be ample--say so, Rosamond," insisted Lydgate,
releasing her hands to put his arm gently round her.

One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave
her neck a meditative turn, and then said seriously--

"There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared.
Still, mamma could see to those while we were away."

"Yes, to be sure. We must be away a week or so."

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

"Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed. But let
us take a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you
may be suffering. Six weeks!--I am sure they would be ample."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mr. Lydgate is not poor, papa. He bought Mr. Peacock's practice,
which, they say, is worth eight or nine hundred a-year."

"Stuff and nonsense! What's buying a practice? He might as well
buy next year's swallows. It'll all slip through his fingers."

"On the contrary, papa, he will increase the practice. See how he
has been called in by the Chettams and Casaubons."

"I hope he knows I shan't give anything--with this disappointment
about Fred, and Parliament going to be dissolved, and machine-breaking
everywhere, and an election coming on--"

"Dear papa! what can that have to do with my marriage?"

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

"I am sure he expects nothing, papa. And he has such very
high connections: he is sure to rise in one way or another.
He is engaged in making scientific discoveries."

Mr. Vincy was silent.

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

Again papa was silent.

"Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish.
We shall never give each other up; and you know that you have always
objected to long courtships and late marriages."

There was a little more urgency of this kind, till Mr. Vincy said,
"Well, well, child, he must write to me first before I car answer him,"--
and Rosamond was certain that she had gained her point.

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

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

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

"Oh,--my uncle Godwin, I think. He is a good-natured old fellow."

"You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy,
were you not? I should so like to see the old spot and everything
you were used to. Does he know you are going to be married?"

"No," said Lydgate, carelessly, turning in his chair and rubbing
his hair up.

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

Lydgate smiled at her tenderly, and really accepted the suggestion
that the proud pleasure of showing so charming a bride was worth
some trouble. And now he came to think of it, he would like to see
the old spots with Rosamond.

"I will write to him, then. But my cousins are bores."

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

But mamma was near spoiling all, a day or two later, by saying--

"I hope your uncle Sir Godwin will not look down on Rosy, Mr. Lydgate.
I should think he would do something handsome. A thousand or two
can be nothing to a baronet."

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

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

CHAPTER XXXVII.

        "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."
                                                   --SPENSER.

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

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

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

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

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

"Let Brooke reform his rent-roll. He's a cursed old screw,
and the buildings all over his estate are going to rack.
I sup pose this young fellow is some loose fish from London."

"His name is Ladislaw. He is said to be of foreign extraction."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, very well; this confounded rain has hindered me from sketching,"
said Will, feeling so happy that he affected indifference with
delightful ease.

In another minute he was in the library, and Dorothea was meeting
him with her sweet unconstrained smile.

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

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

"I am indebted to the rain, then. I am so glad to see you."  
Dorothea uttered these common words with the simple sincerity of an
unhappy child, visited at school.

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

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

"I have often thought that I should like to talk to you again,"
she said, immediately. "It seems strange to me how many things I
said to you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Certainly not, now I know your feeling. But I have heard both
Mr. Brooke and Sir James Chettam express the same wish."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?"
said Dorothea.

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

"I should like you to stay very much," said Dorothea, at once,
as simply and readily as she had spoken at Rome. There was not
the shadow of a reason in her mind at the moment why she should
not say so.

"Then I WILL stay," said Ladislaw, shaking his head backward,
rising and going towards the window, as if to see whether the rain
had ceased.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why so, my dear?" said Mr. Casaubon, throwing himself backward again.

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

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

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

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

"No," she answered immediately, "he did not say that he came to ask
your opinion. But when he mentioned the proposal, he of course
expected me to tell you of it."

Mr. Casaubon was silent.

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

Dorothea felt that this was a consideration to soften her husband.
However, he did not speak, and she presently recurred to Dr. Spanning
and the Archdeacon's breakfast. But there was no longer sunshine
on these subjects.

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

"Mrs. Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you,
and (according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your
part been in some degree entertained, which involves your residence
in