Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably po lite air,
"I am exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality. We will,
if you please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro."

"I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return
of unpleasant symptoms," said Lydgate, filling up a pause.

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

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

"You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?" he said,
wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon's purpose, which seemed to be
clogged by some hesitation.

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

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

Mr. Casaubon winced perceptibly, but bowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What have I done--what am I--that he should treat me so?
He never knows what is in my mind--he never cares. What is the use
of anything I do? He wishes he had never married me."

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

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

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

"I shall not dine, then, Tantripp."

"Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?"

"No; I am not well. Get everything ready in my dressing room,
but pray do not disturb me again."

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

"Dorothea!" he said, with a gentle surprise in his tone. "Were you
waiting for me?"

"Yes, I did not like to disturb you."

"Come, my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your
life by watching."

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

BOOK V.

THE DEAD HAND.

CHAPTER XLIII.

        This figure hath high price: 't was wrought with love
        Ages ago in finest ivory;
        Nought modish in it, pure and noble lines
        Of generous womanhood that fits all time
        That too is costly ware; majolica
        Of deft design, to please a lordly eye:
        The smile, you see, is perfect--wonderful
        As mere Faience! a table ornament
        To suit the richest mounting."

Dorothea seldom left home without her husband, but she did occasionally
drive into Middlemarch alone, on little errands of shopping or charity
such as occur to every lady of any wealth when she lives within three
miles of a town. Two days after that scene in the Yew-tree Walk,
she determined to use such an opportunity in order if possible to
see Lydgate, and learn from him whether her husband had really felt
any depressing change of symptoms which he was concealing from her,
and whether he had insisted on knowing the utmost about himself.
She felt almost guilty in asking for knowledge about him from another,
but the dread of being without it--the dread of that ignorance
which would make her unjust or hard--overcame every scruple.
That there had been some crisis in her husband's mind she was certain:
he had the very next day begun a new method of arranging his notes,
and had associated her quite newly in carrying out his plan.
Poor Dorothea needed to lay up stores of patience.

It was about four o'clock when she drove to Lydgate's house in
Lowick Gate, wishing, in her immediate doubt of finding him at home,
that she had written beforehand. And he was not at home.

"Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?" said Dorothea, who had never, that she
knew of, seen Rosamond, but now remembered the fact of the marriage.
Yes, Mrs. Lydgate was at home.

"I will go in and speak to her, if she will allow me. Will you
ask her if she can see me--see Mrs. Casaubon, for a few minutes?"

When the servant had gone to deliver that message, Dorothea could
hear sounds of music through an open window--a few notes
from a man's voice and then a piano bursting into roulades.
But the roulades broke off suddenly, and then the servant came
back saying that Mrs. Lydgate would be happy to see Mrs. Casaubon.

When the drawing-room door opened and Dorothea entered, there was
a sort of contrast not infrequent in country life when the habits
of the different ranks were less blent than now. Let those who know,
tell us exactly what stuff it was that Dorothea wore in those days
of mild autumn--that thin white woollen stuff soft to the touch
and soft to the eye. It always seemed to have been lately washed,
and to smell of the sweet hedges--was always in the shape of a
pelisse with sleeves hanging all out of the fashion. Yet if she
had entered before a still audience as Imogene or Cato's daughter,
the dress might have seemed right enough: the grace and dignity were
in her limbs and neck; and about her simply parted hair and candid
eyes the large round poke which was then in the fate of women,
seemed no more odd as a head-dress than the gold trencher we call
a halo. By the present audience of two persons, no dramatic heroine
could have been expected with more interest than Mrs. Casaubon.
To Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not mixing with
Middlemarch mortality, whose slightest marks of manner or appearance
were worthy of her study; moreover, Rosamond was not without satisfaction
that Mrs. Casaubon should have an opportunity of studying HER.
What is the use of being exquisite if you are not seen by the best
judges? and since Rosamond had received the highest compliments
at Sir Godwin Lydgate's, she felt quite confident of the impression
she must make on people of good birth. Dorothea put out her hand
with her usual simple kindness, and looked admiringly at Lydgate's
lovely bride--aware that there was a gentleman standing at a distance,
but seeing him merely as a coated figure at a wide angle.
The gentleman was too much occupied with the presence of the one woman
to reflect on the contrast between the two--a contrast that would
certainly have been striking to a calm observer. They were both tall,
and their eyes were on a level; but imagine Rosamond's infantine
blondness and wondrous crown of hair-plaits, with her pale-blue
dress of a fit and fashion so perfect that no dressmaker could look
at it without emotion, a large embroidered collar which it was
to be hoped all beholders would know the price of, her small hands
duly set off with rings, and that controlled self-consciousness
of manner which is the expensive substitute for simplicity.

"Thank you very much for allowing me to interrupt you,"
said Dorothea, immediately. "I am anxious to see Mr. Lydgate,
if possible, before I go home, and I hoped that you might possibly
tell me where I could find him, or even allow me to wait for him,
if you expect him soon."

"He is at the New Hospital," said Rosamond; "I am not sure how soon
he will come home. But I can send for him,"

"Will you let me go and fetch him?" said Will Ladislaw, coming forward.
He had already taken up his hat before Dorothea entered.
She colored with surprise, but put out her hand with a smile
of unmistakable pleasure, saying--

"I did not know it was you: I had no thought of seeing you here."

"May I go to the Hospital and tell Mr. Lydgate that you wish
to see him?" said Will.

"It would be quicker to send the carriage for him," said Dorothea,
"if you will be kind enough to give the message to the coachman."

Will was moving to the door when Dorothea, whose mind had flashed
in an instant over many connected memories, turned quickly and said,
"I will go myself, thank you. I wish to lose no time before getting
home again. I will drive to the Hospital and see Mr. Lydgate there.
Pray excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate. I am very much obliged to you."

Her mind was evidently arrested by some sudden thought, and she
left the room hardly conscious of what was immediately around her--
hardly conscious that Will opened the door for her and offered her his
arm to lead her to the carriage. She took the arm but said nothing.
Will was feeling rather vexed and miserable, and found nothing
to say on his side. He handed her into the carriage in silence,
they said good-by, and Dorothea drove away.

In the five minutes' drive to the Hospital she had time for some
reflections that were quite new to her. Her decision to go, and her
preoccupation in leaving the room, had come from the sudden sense
that there would be a sort of deception in her voluntarily allowing
any further intercourse between herself and Will which she was unable
to mention to her husband, and already her errand in seeking Lydgate
was a matter of concealment. That was all that had been explicitly
in her mind; but she had been urged also by a vague discomfort.
Now that she was alone in her drive, she heard the notes of the man's
voice and the accompanying piano, which she had not noted much
at the time, returning on her inward sense; and she found herself
thinking with some wonder that Will Ladislaw was passing his time
with Mrs. Lydgate in her husband's absence. And then she could
not help remembering that he had passed some time with her under
like circumstances, so why should there be any unfitness in the fact?
But Will was Mr. Casaubon's relative, and one towards whom she was
bound to show kindness. Still there had been signs which perhaps
she ought to have understood as implying that Mr. Casaubon did
not like his cousin's visits during his own absence. "Perhaps I
have been mistaken in many things," said poor Dorothea to herself,
while the tears came rolling and she had to dry them quickly.
She felt confusedly unhappy, and the image of Will which had been
so clear to her before was mysteriously spoiled. But the carriage
stopped at the gate of the Hospital. She was soon walking round
the grass plots with Lydgate, and her feelings recovered the strong
bent which had made her seek for this interview.

Will Ladislaw, meanwhile, was mortified, and knew the reason
of it clearly enough. His chances of meeting Dorothea were rare;
and here for the first time there had come a chance which had set
him at a disadvantage. It was not only, as it had been hitherto,
that she was not supremely occupied with him, but that she had seen
him under circumstances in which he might appear not to be supremely
occupied with her. He felt thrust to a new distance from her,
amongst the circles of Middlemarchers who made no part of her life.
But that was not his fault: of course, since he had taken his lodgings
in the town, he had been making as many acquaintances as he could,
his position requiring that he should know everybody and everything.
Lydgate was really better worth knowing than any one else in
the neighborhood, and he happened to have a wife who was musical
and altogether worth calling upon. Here was the whole history
of the situation in which Diana had descended too unexpectedly on
her worshipper. It was mortifying. Will was conscious that he should
not have been at Middlemarch but for Dorothea; and yet his position
there was threatening to divide him from her with those barriers
of habitual sentiment which are more fatal to the persistence
of mutual interest than all the distance between Rome and Britain.
Prejudices about rank and status were easy enough to defy in the
form of a tyrannical letter from Mr. Casaubon; but prejudices,
like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid and subtle--
solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo,
or as the memory of hyacinths which once scented the darkness.
And Will was of a temperament to feel keenly the presence
of subtleties: a man of clumsier perceptions would not have felt,
as he did, that for the first time some sense of unfitness
in perfect freedom with him had sprung up in Dorothea's mind,
and that their silence, as he conducted her to the carriage,
had had a chill in it. Perhaps Casaubon, in his hatred and jealousy,
had been insisting to Dorothea that Will had slid below her socially.
Confound Casaubon!

Will re-entered the drawing-room, took up his hat, and looking
irritated as he advanced towards Mrs. Lydgate, who had seated
herself at her work-table, said--

"It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted. May I
come another day and just finish about the rendering of `Lungi dal
caro bene'?"

"I shall be happy to be taught," said Rosamond. "But I am sure
you admit that the interruption was a very beautiful one. I quite
envy your acquaintance with Mrs. Casaubon. Is she very clever?
She looks as if she were."

"Really, I never thought about it," said Will, sulkily.

"That is just the answer Tertius gave me, when I first asked him
if she were handsome. What is it that you gentlemen are thinking
of when you are with Mrs. Casaubon?"

"Herself," said Will, not indisposed to provoke the charming
Mrs. Lydgate. "When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks
of her attributes--one is conscious of her presence."

"I shall be jealous when Tertius goes to Lowick," said Rosamond,
dimpling, and speaking with aery lightness. "He will come back
and think nothing of me."

"That does not seem to have been the effect on Lydgate hitherto.
Mrs. Casaubon is too unlike other women for them to be compared
with her."

"You are a devout worshipper, I perceive. You often see her,
I suppose."

"No," said Will, almost pettishly. "Worship is usually a matter
of theory rather than of practice. But I am practising it to excess
just at this moment--I must really tear myself away.

"Pray come again some evening: Mr. Lydgate will like to hear
the music, and I cannot enjoy it so well without him."

When her husband was at home again, Rosamond said, standing in
front of him and holding his coat-collar with both her hands,
"Mr. Ladislaw was here singing with me when Mrs. Casaubon came in.
He seemed vexed. Do you think he disliked her seeing him at our house?
Surely your position is more than equal to his--whatever may be his
relation to the Casaubons."

"No, no; it must be something else if he were really vexed,
Ladislaw is a sort of gypsy; he thinks nothing of leather and prunella."

"Music apart, he is not always very agreeable. Do you like him?"

"Yes: I think he is a good fellow: rather miscellaneous and
bric-a-brac, but likable."

"Do you know, I think he adores Mrs. Casaubon."

"Poor devil!" said Lydgate, smiling and pinching his wife's ears.

Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world,
especially in discovering what when she was in her unmarried girlhood
had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in by-gone costumes--
that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men.
At that time young ladies in the country, even when educated at
Mrs. Lemon's, read little French literature later than Racine,
and public prints had not cast their present magnificent illumination
over the scandals of life. Still, vanity, with a woman's whole
mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints,
especially on such a hint as the possibility of indefinite conquests.
How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage with a
husband as crown-prince by your side--himself in fact a subject--
while the captives look up forever hopeless, losing their rest probably,
and if their appetite too, so much the better! But Rosamond's romance
turned at present chiefly on her crown-prince, and it was enough
to enjoy his assured subjection. When he said, "Poor devil I"
she asked, with playful curiosity--

"Why so?"

"Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids?
He only neglects his work and runs up bills."

"I am sure you do not neglect your work. You are always at the Hospital,
or seeing poor patients, or thinking about some doctor's quarrel;
and then at home you always want to pore over your microscope
and phials. Confess you like those things better than me."

"Haven't you ambition enough to wish that your husband should
be something better than a Middlemarch doctor?" said Lydgate,
letting his hands fall on to his wife's shoulders, and looking
at her with affectionate gravity. "I shall make you learn
my favorite bit from an old poet--

        `Why should our pride make such a stir to be
         And be forgot? What good is like to this,
         To do worthy the writing, and to write
         Worthy the reading and the worlds delight?'

What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing,--and to write out
myself what I have done. A man must work, to do that, my pet."

"Of course, I wish you to make discoveries: no one could more wish
you to attain a high position in some better place than Middlemarch.
You cannot say that I have ever tried to hinder you from working.
But we cannot live like hermits. You are not discontented
with me, Tertius?"

"No, dear, no. I am too entirely contented."

"But what did Mrs. Casaubon want to say to you?"

"Merely to ask about her husband's health. But I think she is
going to be splendid to our New Hospital: I think she will give
us two hundred a-year."

CHAPTER XLIV.

I would not creep along the coast but steer
Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

When Dorothea, walking round the laurel-planted plots of the New
Hospital with Lydgate, had learned from him that there were no signs
of change in Mr. Casaubon's bodily condition beyond the mental
sign of anxiety to know the truth about his illness, she was
silent for a few moments, wondering whether she had said or done
anything to rouse this new anxiety. Lydgate, not willing to let
slip an opportunity of furthering a favorite purpose, ventured to say--

"I don't know whether your or Mr.--Casaubon's attention has been drawn
to the needs of our New Hospital. Circumstances have made it seem
rather egotistic in me to urge the subject; but that is not my fault:
it is because there is a fight being made against it by the other
medical men. I think you are generally interested in such things,
for I remember that when I first had the pleasure of seeing you
at Tipton Grange before your marriage, you were asking me some
questions about the way in which the health of the poor was affected
by their miserable housing."

"Yes, indeed," said Dorothea, brightening. "I shall be quite
grateful to you if you will tell me how I can help to make things
a little better. Everything of that sort has slipped away from me
since I have been married. I mean," she said, after a moment's
hesitation, "that the people in our village are tolerably comfortable,
and my mind has been too much taken up for me to inquire further.
But here--in such a place as Middlemarch--there must be a great
deal to be done."

"There is everything to be done," said Lydgate, with abrupt energy.
"And this Hospital is a capital piece of work, due entirely to
Mr. Bulstrode's exertions, and in a great degree to his money.
But one man can't do everything in a scheme of this sort. Of course
he looked forward to help. And now there's a mean, petty feud
set up against the thing in the town, by certain persons who want
to make it a failure."

"What can be their reasons?" said Dorothea, with naive surprise.

"Chiefly Mr. Bulstrode's unpopularity, to begin with. Half the
town would almost take trouble for the sake of thwarting him.
In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good
to be done unless it is done by their own set. I had no connection
with Bulstrode before I came here. I look at him quite impartially,
and I see that he has some notions--that he has set things on foot--
which I can turn to good public purpose. If a fair number of the better
educated men went to work with the belief that their observations
might contribute to the reform of medical doctrine and practice,
we should soon see a change for the better. That's my point of view.
I hold that by refusing to work with Mr. Bulstrode I should be
turning my back on an opportunity of making my profession more
generally serviceable."

"I quite agree with you," said Dorothea, at once fascinated by
the situation sketched in Lydgate's words. "But what is there
against Mr. Bulstrode? I know that my uncle is friendly with him."

"People don't like his religious tone," said Lydgate, breaking off there.

"That is all the stronger reason for despising such an opposition,"
said Dorothea, looking at the affairs of Middlemarch by the light
of the great persecutions.

"To put the matter quite fairly, they have other objections to him:--
he is masterful and rather unsociable, and he is concerned with trade,
which has complaints of its own that I know nothing about.
But what has that to do with the question whether it would not be
a fine thing to establish here a more valuable hospital than any
they have in the county? The immediate motive to the opposition,
however, is the fact that Bulstrode has put the medical direction
into my hands. Of course I am glad of that. It gives me an
opportunity of doing some good work,--and I am aware that I have
to justify his choice of me. But the consequence is, that the
whole profession in Middlemarch have set themselves tooth and nail
against the Hospital, and not only refuse to cooperate themselves,
but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder subscriptions."

"How very petty!" exclaimed Dorothea, indignantly.

"I suppose one must expect to fight one's way: there is hardly
anything to be done without it. And the ignorance of people about
here is stupendous. I don't lay claim to anything else than having
used some opportunities which have not come within everybody's reach;
but there is no stifling the offence of being young, and a new-comer,
and happening to know something more than the old inhabitants.
Still, if I believe that I can set going a better method of treatment--
if I believe that I can pursue certain observations and inquiries
which may be a lasting benefit to medical practice, I should be
a base truckler if I allowed any consideration of personal comfort
to hinder me. And the course is all the clearer from there being
no salary in question to put my persistence in an equivocal light."

"I am glad you have told me this, Mr. Lydgate," said Dorothea, cordially.
"I feel sure I can help a little. I have some money, and don't know
what to do with it--that is often an uncomfortable thought to me.
I am sure I can spare two hundred a-year for a grand purpose like this.
How happy you must be, to know things that you feel sure will do
great good! I wish I could awake with that knowledge every morning.
There seems to be so much trouble taken that one can hardly see
the good of!"

There was a melancholy cadence in Dorothea's voice as she spoke
these last words. But she presently added, more cheerfully,
"Pray come to Lowick and tell us more of this. I will mention
the subject to Mr. Casaubon. I must hasten home now."

She did mention it that evening, and said that she should like to
subscribe two hundred a-year--she had seven hundred a-year as the
equivalent of her own fortune, settled on her at her marriage.
Mr. Casaubon made no objection beyond a passing remark that the
sum might be disproportionate in relation to other good objects,
but when Dorothea in her ignorance resisted that suggestion,
he acquiesced. He did not care himself about spending money,
and was not reluctant to give it. If he ever felt keenly any question
of money it was through the medium of another passion than the love
of material property.

Dorothea told him that she had seen Lydgate, and recited the gist
of her conversation with him about the Hospital. Mr. Casaubon did
not question her further, but he felt sure that she had wished to know
what had passed between Lydgate and himself "She knows that I know,"
said the ever-restless voice within; but that increase of tacit
knowledge only thrust further off any confidence between them.
He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely
than distrust?

CHAPTER XLV.

It is the humor of many heads to extol the days of their forefathers,
and declaim against the wickedness of times present. Which
notwithstanding they cannot handsomely do, without the borrowed help
and satire of times past; condemning the vices of their own times,
by the expressions of vices in times which they commend, which cannot
but argue the community of vice in both. Horace, therefore, Juvenal,
and Persius, were no prophets, although their lines did seem to indigitate
and point at our times.--SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Pseudodoxia Epidemica.

That opposition to the New Fever Hospital which Lydgate had sketched
to Dorothea was, like other oppositions, to be viewed in many
different lights. He regarded it as a mixture of jealousy and
dunderheaded prejudice. Mr. Bulstrode saw in it not only medical
jealousy but a determination to thwart himself, prompted mainly
by a hatred of that vital religion of which he had striven to be
an effectual lay representative--a hatred which certainly found
pretexts apart from religion such as were only too easy to find
in the entanglements of human action. These might be called the
ministerial views. But oppositions have the illimitable range of
objections at command, which need never stop short at the boundary
of knowledge, but can draw forever on the vasts of ignorance.
What the opposition in Middlemarch said about the New Hospital
and its administration had certainly a great deal of echo in it,
for heaven has taken care that everybody shall not be an originator;
but there were differences which represented every social shade
between the polished moderation of Dr. Minchin and the trenchant
assertion of Mrs. Dollop, the landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane.

Mrs. Dollop became more and more convinced by her own asseveration,
that Dr. Lydgate meant to let the people die in the Hospital,
if not to poison them, for the sake of cutting them up without
saying by your leave or with your leave; for it was a known "fac"
that he had wanted to cut up Mrs. Goby, as respectable a woman
as any in Parley Street, who had money in trust before her marriage--
a poor tale for a doctor, who if he was good for anything should know
what was the matter with you before you died, and not want to pry
into your inside after you were gone. If that was not reason,
Mrs. Dollop wished to know what was; but there was a prevalent feeling
in her audience that her opinion was a bulwark, and that if it were
overthrown there would be no limits to the cutting-up of bodies,
as had been well seen in Burke and Hare with their pitch-plaisters--
such a hanging business as that was not wanted in Middlemarch!

And let it not be supposed that opinion at the Tankard in Slaughter
Lane was unimportant to the medical profession: that old authentic
public-house--the original Tankard, known by the name of Dollop's--
was the resort of a great Benefit Club, which had some months before put
to the vote whether its long-standing medical man, "Doctor Gambit,"
should not be cashiered in favor of "this Doctor Lydgate," who was
capable of performing the most astonishing cures, and rescuing people
altogether given up by other practitioners. But the balance had been
turned against Lydgate by two members, who for some private reasons
held that this power of resuscitating persons as good as dead was an
equivocal recommendation, and might interfere with providential favors.
In the course of the year, however, there had been a change
in the public sentiment, of which the unanimity at Dollop's was an index

A good deal more than a year ago, before anything was known of
Lydgate's skill, the judgments on it had naturally been divided,
depending on a sense of likelihood, situated perhaps in the pit
of the stomach or in the pineal gland, and differing in its verdicts,
but not the less valuable as a guide in the total deficit of evidence.
Patients who had chronic diseases or whose lives had long been
worn threadbare, like old Featherstone's, had been at once inclined
to try him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills,
thought agreeably of opening an account with a new doctor and
sending for him without stint if the children's temper wanted
a dose, occasions when the old practitioners were often crusty;
and all persons thus inclined to employ Lydgate held it likely
that he was clever. Some considered that he might do more than
others "where there was liver;"--at least there would be no harm
in getting a few bottles of "stuff" from him, since if these proved
useless it would still be possible to return to the Purifying Pills,
which kept you alive if they did not remove the yellowness.
But these were people of minor importance. Good Middlemarch families
were of course not going to change their doctor without reason shown;
and everybody who had employed Mr. Peacock did not feel obliged
to accept a new man merely in the character of his successor,
objecting that he was "not likely to be equal to Peacock."

But Lydgate had not been long in the town before there were
particulars enough reported of him to breed much more specific
expectations and to intensify differences into partisanship;
some of the particulars being of that impressive order of which the
significance is entirely hidden, like a statistical amount without
a standard of comparison, but with a note of exclamation at the end.
The cubic feet of oxygen yearly swallowed by a full-grown man--
what a shudder they might have created in some Middlemarch circles!
"Oxygen! nobody knows what that may be--is it any wonder the cholera
has got to Dantzic? And yet there are people who say quarantine is
no good!"

One of the facts quickly rumored was that Lydgate did not dispense drugs.
This was offensive both to the physicians whose exclusive distinction
seemed infringed on, and to the surgeon-apothecaries with whom he
ranged himself; and only a little while before, they might have counted
on having the law on their side against a man who without calling
himself a London-made M.D. dared to ask for pay except as a charge
on drugs. But Lydgate had not been experienced enough to foresee
that his new course would be even more offensive to the laity;
and to Mr. Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market, who,
though not one of his patients, questioned him in an affable manner
on the subject, he was injudicious enough to give a hasty popular
explanation of his reasons, pointing out to Mr. Mawmsey that it
must lower the character of practitioners, and be a constant injury
to the public, if their only mode of getting paid for their work
was by their making out long bills for draughts, boluses, and mixtures.

"It is in that way that hard-working medical men may come to be almost
as mischievous as quacks," said Lydgate, rather thoughtlessly.
"To get their own bread they must overdose the king's lieges;
and that's a bad sort of treason, Mr. Mawmsey--undermines the
constitution in a fatal way."

Mr. Mawmsey was not only an overseer (it was about a question of
outdoor pay that he was having an interview with Lydgate), he was
also asthmatic and had an increasing family: thus, from a medical
point of view, as well as from his own, he was an important man;
indeed, an exceptional grocer, whose hair was arranged in a
flame-like pyramid, and whose retail deference was of the cordial,
encouraging kind--jocosely complimentary, and with a certain
considerate abstinence from letting out the full force of his mind.
It was Mr. Mawmsey's friendly jocoseness in questioning him which
had set the tone of Lydgate's reply. But let the wise be warned
against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the
sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong.

Lydgate smiled as he ended his speech, putting his foot into
the stirrup, and Mr. Mawmsey laughed more than he would have
done if he had known who the king's lieges were, giving his
"Good morning, sir, good-morning, sir," with the air of one who saw
everything clearly enough. But in truth his views were perturbed.
For years he had been paying bills with strictly made items,
so that for every half-crown and eighteen-pence he was certain
something measurable had been delivered. He had done this with
satisfaction, including it among his responsibilities as a husband
and father, and regarding a longer bill than usual as a dignity
worth mentioning. Moreover, in addition to the massive benefit
of the drugs to "self and family," he had enjoyed the pleasure
of forming an acute judgment as to their immediate effects, so as
to give an intelligent statement for the guidance of Mr. Gambit--
a practitioner just a little lower in status than Wrench or Toller,
and especially esteemed as an accoucheur, of whose ability Mr. Mawmsey
had the poorest opinion on all other points, but in doctoring,
he was wont to say in an undertone, he placed Gambit above any of them.

Here were deeper reasons than the superficial talk of a new man,
which appeared still flimsier in the drawing-room over the shop,
when they were recited to Mrs. Mawmsey, a woman accustomed to be
made much of as a fertile mother,--generally under attendance more
or less frequent from Mr. Gambit, and occasionally having attacks
which required Dr. Minchin.

"Does this Mr. Lydgate mean to say there is no use in taking medicine?"
said Mrs. Mawmsey, who was slightly given to drawling. "I should
like him to tell me how I could bear up at Fair time, if I didn't
take strengthening medicine for a month beforehand. Think of what I
have to provide for calling customers, my dear!"--here Mrs. Mawmsey
turned to an intimate female friend who sat by--"a large veal pie--
a stuffed fillet--a round of beef--ham, tongue, et cetera,
et cetera! But what keeps me up best is the pink mixture,
not the brown. I wonder, Mr. Mawmsey, with your experience,
you could have patience to listen. I should have told him at once
that I knew a little better than that."

"No, no, no," said Mr. Mawmsey; "I was not going to tell him
my opinion. Hear everything and judge for yourself is my motto.
But he didn't know who he was talking to. I was not to be turned
on HIS finger. People often pretend to tell me things, when they
might as well say, `Mawmsey, you're a fool.' But I smile at it:
I humor everybody's weak place. If physic had done harm to self
and family, I should have found it out by this time."

The next day Mr. Gambit was told that Lydgate went about saying
physic was of no use.

"Indeed!" said he, lifting his eyebrows with cautious surprise.
(He was a stout husky man with a large ring on his fourth finger.)
"How will he cure his patients, then?"

"That is what I say," returned Mrs. Mawmsey, who habitually gave
weight to her speech by loading her pronouns. "Does HE suppose
that people will pay him only to come and sit with them and go
away again?"

Mrs. Mawmsey had had a great deal of sitting from Mr. Gambit,
including very full accounts of his own habits of body and other affairs;
but of course he knew there was no innuendo in her remark, since his
spare time and personal narrative had never been charged for.
So he replied, humorously--

"Well, Lydgate is a good-looking young fellow, you know."

"Not one that I would employ," said Mrs. Mawmsey. "OTHERS
may do as they please."

Hence Mr. Gambit could go away from the chief grocer's without
fear of rivalry, but not without a sense that Lydgate was one
of those hypocrites who try to discredit others by advertising
their own honesty, and that it might be worth some people's while
to show him up. Mr. Gambit, however, had a satisfactory practice,
much pervaded by the smells of retail trading which suggested
the reduction of cash payments to a balance. And he did not
think it worth his while to show Lydgate up until he knew how.
He had not indeed great resources of education, and had had to work
his own way against a good deal of professional contempt; but he made
none the worse accoucheur for calling the breathing apparatus "longs."

Other medical men felt themselves more capable. Mr. Toller shared the
highest practice in the town and belonged to an old Middlemarch family:
there were Tollers in the law and everything else above the line
of retail trade. Unlike our irascible friend Wrench, he had the
easiest way in the world of taking things which might be supposed
to annoy him, being a well-bred, quietly facetious man, who kept
a good house, was very fond of a little sporting when he could get it,
very friendly with Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr. Bulstrode.
It may seem odd that with such pleasant habits he should hare been
given to the heroic treatment, bleeding and blistering and starving
his patients, with a dispassionate disregard to his personal example;
but the incongruity favored the opinion of his ability among
his patients, who commonly observed that Mr. Toller had lazy manners,
but his treatment was as active as you could desire: no man,
said they, carried more seriousness into his profession: he was
a little slow in coming, but when he came, he DID something.
He was a great favorite in his own circle, and whatever he implied
to any one's disadvantage told doubly from his careless ironical tone.

He naturally got tired of smiling and saying, "Ah!" when he was told
that Mr. Peacock's successor did not mean to dispense medicines;
and Mr. Hackbutt one day mentioning it over the wine at a dinner-party,
Mr. Toller said, laughingly, "Dibbitts will get rid of his
stale drugs, then. I'm fond of little Dibbitts--I'm glad he's in luck."

"I see your meaning, Toller," said Mr. Hackbutt, "and I am entirely
of your opinion. I shall take an opportunity of expressing myself
to that effect. A medical man should be responsible for the
quality of the drugs consumed by his patients. That is the rationale
of the system of charging which has hitherto obtained;
and nothing is more offensive than this ostentation of reform,
where there is no real amelioration."

"Ostentation, Hackbutt?" said Mr. Toller, ironically. "I don't
see that. A man can't very well be ostentatious of what nobody
believes in. There's no reform in the matter: the question is,
whether the profit on the drugs is paid to the medical man by the
druggist or by the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay
under the name of attendance."

"Ah, to be sure; one of your damned new versions of old humbug,"
said Mr. Hawley, passing the decanter to Mr. Wrench.

Mr. Wrench, generally abstemious, often drank wine rather freely
at a party, getting the more irritable in consequence.

"As to humbug, Hawley," he said, "that's a word easy to fling about.
But what I contend against is the way medical men are fouling their
own nest, and setting up a cry about the country as if a general
practitioner who dispenses drugs couldn't be a gentleman. I throw
back the imputation with scorn. I say, the most ungentlemanly trick
a man can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession
with innovations which are a libel on their time-honored procedure.
That is my opinion, and I am ready to maintain it against any one who
contradicts me." Mr. Wrench's voice had become exceedingly sharp.

"I can't oblige you there, Wrench," said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his
hands into his trouser-pockets.

"My dear fellow," said Mr. Toller, striking in pacifically! and
looking at Mr. Wrench, "the physicians have their toes trodden
on more than we have. If you come to dignity it is a question
for Minchin and Sprague."

"Does medical jurisprudence provide nothing against these infringements?"
said Mr. Hackbutt, with a disinterested desire to offer his lights.
"How does the law stand, eh, Hawley?"

"Nothing to be done there," said Mr. Hawley. "I looked into
it for Sprague. You'd only break your nose against a damned
judge's decision."

"Pooh! no need of law," said Mr. Toller. "So far as practice is
concerned the attempt is an absurdity. No patient will like it--
certainly not Peacock's, who have been used to depletion.
Pass the wine."

Mr. Toller's prediction was partly verified. If Mr. and Mrs. Mawmsey,
who had no idea of employing Lydgate, were made uneasy by his supposed
declaration against drugs, it was inevitable that those who called
him in should watch a little anxiously to see whether he did "use
all the means he might use" in the case. Even good Mr. Powderell,
who in his constant charity of interpretation was inclined to
esteem Lydgate the more for what seemed a conscientious pursuit
of a better plan, had his mind disturbed with doubts during his
wife's attack of erysipelas, and could not abstain from mentioning
to Lydgate that Mr. Peacock on a similar occasion had administered
a series of boluses which were not otherwise definable than by their
remarkable effect in bringing Mrs. Powderell round before Michaelmas
from an illness which had begun in a remarkably hot August.
At last, indeed, in the conflict between his desire not to hurt
Lydgate and his anxiety that no "means" should be lacking,
he induced his wife privately to take Widgeon's Purifying Bills,
an esteemed Middlemarch medicine, which arrested every disease
at the fountain by setting to work at once upon the blood.
This co-operative measure was not to be mentioned to Lydgate,
and Mr. Powderell himself had no certain reliance on it,
only hoping that it might be attended with a blessing.

But in this doubtful stage of Lydgate's introduction he was helped
by what we mortals rashly call good fortune. I suppose no doctor ever
came newly to a place without making cures that surprised somebody--
cures which may be called fortune's testimonials, and deserve as
much credit as the ten or printed kind. Various patients got well
while Lydgate was attending them, some even of dangerous illnesses;
and it was remarked that the new doctor with his new ways had at
least the merit of bringing people back from the brink of death.
The trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate,
because it gave precisely the sort of prestige which an incompetent
and unscrupulous man would desire, and was sure to be imputed to him
by the simmering dislike of the other medical men as an encouragement
on his own part of ignorant puffing. But even his proud outspokenness
was checked by the discernment that it was as useless to fight
against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog;
and "good fortune" insisted on using those interpretations.

Mrs. Larcher having just become charitably concerned about alarming
symptoms in her charwoman, when Dr. Minchin called, asked him to see
her then and there, and to give her a certificate for the Infirmary;
whereupon after examination he wrote a statement of the case as one
of tumor, and recommended the bearer Nancy Nash as an out-patient. Nancy,
calling at home on her way to the Infirmary, allowed the stay maker
and his wife, in whose attic she lodged, to read Dr. Minchin's paper,
and by this means became a subject of compassionate conversation
in the neighboring shops of Churchyard Lane as being afflicted with
a tumor at first declared to be as large and hard as a duck's egg,
but later in the day to be about the size of "your fist."
Most hearers agreed that it would have to be cut out, but one had
known of oil and another of "squitchineal" as adequate to soften
and reduce any lump in the body when taken enough of into the inside--
the oil by gradually "soopling," the squitchineal by eating away.

Meanwhile when Nancy presented herself at the Infirmary, it happened
to be one of Lydgate's days there. After questioning and examining her,
Lydgate said to the house-surgeon in an undertone, "It's not tumor:
it's cramp." He ordered her a blister and some steel mixture,
and told her to go home and rest, giving her at the same time a note
to Mrs. Larcher, who, she said, was her best employer, to testify
that she was in need of good food.

But by-and-by Nancy, in her attic, became portentously worse,
the supposed tumor having indeed given way to the blister, but only
wandered to another region with angrier pain. The staymaker's wife
went to fetch Lydgate, and he continued for a fortnight to attend Nancy
in her own home, until under his treatment she got quite well and went
to work again. But the case continued to be described as one of tumor
in Churchyard Lane and other streets--nay, by Mrs. Larcher also;
for when Lydgate's remarkable cure was mentioned to Dr. Minchin,
he naturally did not like to say, "The case was not one of tumor,
and I was mistaken in describing it as such," but answered,
"Indeed! ah! I saw it was a surgical case, not of a fatal kind."
He had been inwardly annoyed, however, when he had asked at the
Infirmary about the woman he had recommended two days before,
to hear from the house-surgeon, a youngster who was not sorry
to vex Minchin with impunity, exactly what had occurred:
he privately pronounced that it was indecent in a general practitioner
to contradict a physician's diagnosis in that open manner,
and afterwards agreed with Wrench that Lydgate was disagreeably
inattentive to etiquette. Lydgate did not make the affair a ground
for valuing himself or (very particularly) despising Minchin,
such rectification of misjudgments often happening among men
of equal qualifications. But report took up this amazing case
of tumor, not clearly distinguished from cancer, and considered
the more awful for being of the wandering sort; till much prejudice
against Lydgate's method as to drugs was overcome by the proof
of his marvellous skill in the speedy restoration of Nancy Nash
after she had been rolling and rolling in agonies from the presence
of a tumor both hard and obstinate, but nevertheless compelled to yield.

How could Lydgate help himself? It is offensive to tell a lady
when she is expressing her amazement at your skill, that she is
altogether mistaken and rather foolish in her amazement. And to have
entered into the nature of diseases would only have added to his
breaches of medical propriety. Thus he had to wince under a promise
of success given by that ignorant praise which misses every valid quality.

In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr. Borthrop Trumbull,
Lydgate was conscious of having shown himself something better than
an every-day doctor, though here too it was an equivocal advantage
that he won. The eloquent auctioneer was seized with pneumonia,
and having been a patient of Mr. Peacock's, sent for Lydgate,
whom he had expressed his intention to patronize. Mr Trumbull was
a robust man, a good subject for trying the expectant theory upon--
watching the course of an interesting disease when left as much
as possible to itself, so that the stages might be noted for future
guidance; and from the air with which he described his sensations
Lydgate surmised that he would like to be taken into his medical
man's confidence, and be represented as a partner in his own cure.
The auctioneer heard, without much surprise, that his was a
constitution which (always with due watching) might be left to itself,
so as to offer a beautiful example of a disease with all its phases
seen in clear delineation, and that he probably had the rare strength
of mind voluntarily to become the test of a rational procedure,
and thus make the disorder of his pulmonary functions a general
benefit to society.

Mr. Trumbull acquiesced at once, and entered strongly into the view
that an illness of his was no ordinary occasion for medical science.

"Never fear, sir; you are not speaking to one who is altogether ignorant
of the vis medicatrix," said he, with his usual superiority
of expression, made rather pathetic by difficulty of breathing.
And he went without shrinking through his abstinence from drugs,
much sustained by application of the thermometer which implied
the importance of his temperature, by the sense that he furnished
objects for the microscope, and by learning many new words which
seemed suited to the dignity of his secretions. For Lydgate
was acute enough to indulge him with a little technical talk.

It may be imagined that Mr. Trumbull rose from his couch with a
disposition to speak of an illness in which he had manifested the
strength of his mind as well as constitution; and he was not backward
in awarding credit to the medical man who had discerned the quality of
patient he had to deal with. The auctioneer was not an ungenerous man,
and liked to give others their due, feeling that he could afford it.
He had caught the words "expectant method," and rang chimes on this
and other learned phrases to accompany the assurance that Lydgate "knew
a thing or two more than the rest of the doctors--was far better versed
in the secrets of his profession than the majority of his compeers."

This had happened before the affair of Fred Vincy's illness had given
to Mr. Wrench's enmity towards Lydgate more definite personal ground.
The new-comer already threatened to be a nuisance in the shape
of rivalry, and was certainly a nuisance in the shape of practical
criticism or reflections on his hard-driven elders, who had had
something else to do than to busy themselves with untried notions.
His practice had spread in one or two quarters, and from the
first the report of his high family had led to his being pretty
generally invited, so that the other medical men had to meet him
at dinner in the best houses; and having to meet a man whom you
dislike is not observed always to end in a mutual attachment.
There was hardly ever so much unanimity among them as in the opinion
that Lydgate was an arrogant young fellow, and yet ready for the
sake of ultimately predominating to show a crawling subservience
to Bulstrode. That Mr. Farebrother, whose name was a chief flag of the
anti-Bulstrode party, always defended Lydgate and made a friend of him,
was referred to Farebrother's unaccountable way of fighting on both sides.

Here was plenty of preparation for the outburst of professional
disgust at the announcement of the laws Mr. Bulstrode was laying
down for the direction of the New Hospital, which were the more
exasperating because there was no present possibility of interfering
with his will and pleasure, everybody except Lord Medlicote
having refused help towards the building, on the ground that they
preferred giving to the Old Infirmary. Mr. Bulstrode met all
the expenses, and had ceased to be sorry that he was purchasing
the right to carry out his notions of improvement without hindrance
from prejudiced coadjutors; but he had had to spend large sums,
and the building had lingered. Caleb Garth had undertaken it,
had failed during its progress, and before the interior fittings
were begun had retired from the management of the business;
and when referring to the Hospital he often said that however
Bulstrode might ring if you tried him, he liked good solid carpentry
and masonry, and had a notion both of drains and chimneys. In fact,
the Hospital had become an object of intense interest to Bulstrode,
and he would willingly have continued to spare a large yearly sum that
he might rule it dictatorially without any Board; but he had another
favorite object which also required money for its accomplishment:
he wished to bay some land in the neighborhood of Middlemarch,
and therefore he wished to get considerable contributions towards
maintaining the Hospital. Meanwhile he framed his plan of management.
The Hospital was to be reserved for fever in all its forms;
Lydgate was to be chief medical superintendent, that he might have free
authority to pursue all comparative investigations which his studies,
particularly in Paris, had shown him the importance of, the other
medical visitors having a consultative influence, but no power to
contravene Lydgate's ultimate decisions; and the general management
was to be lodged exclusively in the hands of five directors associated
with Mr. Bulstrode, who were to have votes in the ratio of their
contributions, the Board itself filling up any vacancy in its numbers,
and no mob of small contributors being admitted to a share of government.

There was an immediate refusal on the part of every medical man
in the town to become a visitor at the Fever Hospital.

"Very well," said Lydgate to Mr. Bulstrode, "we have a capital
house-surgeon and dispenser, a clear-headed, neat-handed fellow;
we'll get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a country practitioner
as any of them, to come over twice a-week, and in case of any
exceptional operation, Protheroe will come from Brassing.
I must work the harder, that's all, and I have given up my post
at the Infirmary. The plan will flourish in spite of them,
and then they'll be glad to come in. Things can't last as they are:
there must be all sorts of reform soon, and then young fellows may
be glad to come and study here." Lydgate was in high spirits.

"I shall not flinch, you may depend upon it, Mr. Lydgate,"
said Mr. Bulstrode. "While I see you carrying out high intentions
with vigor, you shall have my unfailing support. And I have humble
confidence that the blessing which has hitherto attended my efforts
against the spirit of evil in this town will not be withdrawn.
Suitable directors to assist me I have no doubt of securing.
Mr. Brooke of Tipton has already given me his concurrence,
and a pledge to contribute yearly: he has not specified the sum--
probably not a great one. But he will be a useful member of
the board."

A useful member was perhaps to be defined as one who would
originate nothing, and always vote with Mr. Bulstrode.

The medical aversion to Lydgate was hardly disguised now. Neither
Dr. Sprague nor Dr. Minchin said that he disliked Lydgate's knowledge,
or his disposition to improve treatment: what they disliked was
his arrogance, which nobody felt to be altogether deniable. They implied
that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that reckless innovation
for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of the charlatan.

The word charlatan once thrown on the air could not be let drop.
In those days the world was agitated about the wondrous doings of
Mr. St. John Long, "noblemen and gentlemen" attesting his extraction
of a fluid like mercury from the temples of a patient.

Mr. Toller remarked one day, smilingly, to Mrs. Taft, that "Bulstrode
had found a man to suit him in Lydgate; a charlatan in religion
is sure to like other sorts of charlatans."

"Yes, indeed, I can imagine," said Mrs. Taft, keeping the number
of thirty stitches carefully in her mind all the while; "there are
so many of that sort. I remember Mr. Cheshire, with his irons,
trying to make people straight when the Almighty had made them crooked."

"No, no," said Mr. Toller, "Cheshire was all right--all fair
and above board. But there's St. John Long--that's the kind of
fellow we call a charlatan, advertising cures in ways nobody knows
anything about: a fellow who wants to make a noise by pretending
to go deeper than other people. The other day he was pretending
to tap a man's brain and get quicksilver out of it."

"Good gracious! what dreadful trifling with people's constitutions!"
said Mrs. Taft.

After this, it came to be held in various quarters that Lydgate
played even with respectable constitutions for his own purposes,
and how much more likely that in his flighty experimenting he
should make sixes and sevens of hospital patients. Especially it
was to be expected, as the landlady of the Tankard had said,
that he would recklessly cut up their dead bodies. For Lydgate
having attended Mrs. Goby, who died apparently of a heart-disease
not very clearly expressed in the symptoms, too daringly asked
leave of her relatives to open the body, and thus gave an offence
quickly spreading beyond Parley Street, where that lady had long
resided on an income such as made this association of her body
with the victims of Burke and Hare a flagrant insult to her memory.

Affairs were in this stage when Lydgate opened the subject of the
Hospital to Dorothea. We see that be was bearing enmity and silly
misconception with much spirit, aware that they were partly created
by his good share of success.

"They will not drive me away," he said, talking confidentially
in Mr. Farebrother's study. "I have got a good opportunity here,
for the ends I care most about; and I am pretty sure to get
income enough for our wants. By-and-by I shall go on as quietly
as possible: I have no seductions now away from home and work.
And I am more and more convinced that it will be possible to
demonstrate the homogeneous origin of all the tissues. Raspail and
others are on the same track, and I have been losing time."

"I have no power of prophecy there," said Mr. Farebrother,
who had been puffing at his pipe thoughtfully while Lydgate talked;
"but as to the hostility in the town, you'll weather it if you
are prudent."

"How am I to be prudent?" said Lydgate, "I just do what comes
before me to do. I can't help people's ignorance and spite,
any more than Vesalius could. It isn't possible to square one's
conduct to silly conclusions which nobody can foresee."

"Quite true; I didn't mean that. I meant only two things. One is,
keep yourself as separable from Bulstrode as you can: of course,
you can go on doing good work of your own by his help; but don't
get tied. Perhaps it seems like personal feeling in me to say so--
and there's a good deal of that, I own--but personal feeling is not
always in the wrong if you boil it down to the impressions which make
it simply an opinion."

"Bulstrode is nothing to me," said Lydgate, carelessly, "except on
public grounds. As to getting very closely united to him, I am not
fond enough of him for that. But what was the other thing you meant?"
said Lydgate, who was nursing his leg as comfortably as possible,
and feeling in no great need of advice.

"Why, this. Take care--experto crede--take care not to get
hampered about money matters. I know, by a word you let fall one day,
that you don't like my playing at cards so much for money. You are
right enough there. But try and keep clear of wanting small sums
that you haven't got. I am perhaps talking rather superfluously;
but a man likes to assume superiority over himself, by holding up
his bad example and sermonizing on it."

Lydgate took Mr. Farebrother's hints very cordially, though he
would hardly have borne them from another man. He could not help
remembering that he had lately made some debts, but these had
seemed inevitable, and he had no intention now to do more than
keep house in a simple way. The furniture for which he owed
would not want renewing; nor even the stock of wine for a long while.

Many thoughts cheered him at that time--and justly. A man
conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under petty
hostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their
way not without wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints,
invisibly helping. At home, that same evening when he had been
chatting with Mr. Farebrother, he had his long legs stretched
on the sofa, his head thrown back, and his hands clasped behind
it according to his favorite ruminating attitude, while Rosamond
sat at the piano, and played one tune after another, of which her
husband only knew (like the emotional elephant he was!) that they
fell in with his mood as if they had been melodious sea-breezes.

There was something very fine in Lydgate's look just then,
and any one might have been encouraged to bet on his achievement.
In his dark eyes and on his mouth and brow there was that placidity
which comes from the fulness of contemplative thought--the mind
not searching, but beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled
with what is behind it.

Presently Rosamond left the piano and seated herself on a chair
close to the sofa and opposite her husband's face.

"Is that enough music for you, my lord?" she said, folding her hands
before her and putting on a little air of meekness.

"Yes, dear, if you are tired," said Lydgate, gently, turning his
eyes and resting them on her, but not otherwise moving.
Rosamond's presence at that moment was perhaps no more than a spoonful
brought to the lake, and her woman's instinct in this matter was not dull.

"What is absorbing you?" she said, leaning forward and bringing
her face nearer to his.

He moved his hands and placed them gently behind her shoulders.

"I am thinking of a great fellow, who was about as old as I am
three hundred years ago, and had already begun a new era in anatomy."

"I can't guess," said Rosamond, shaking her head. "We used to play
at guessing historical characters at Mrs. Lemon's, but not anatomists."

"I'll tell you. His name was Vesalius. And the only way he could get
to know anatomy as he did, was by going to snatch bodies at night,
from graveyards and places of execution."

"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a look of disgust on her pretty face,
"I am very glad you are not Vesalius. I should have thought he
might find some less horrible way than that."

"No, he couldn't," said Lydgate, going on too earnestly to take
much notice of her answer. "He could only get a complete skeleton
by snatching the whitened bones of a criminal from the gallows,
and burying them, and fetching them away by bits secretly, in the
dead of night."

"I hope he is not one of your great heroes," said Rosamond,
half playfully, half anxiously, "else I shall have you getting up
in the night to go to St. Peter's churchyard. You know how angry
you told me the people were about Mrs. Goby. You have enemies
enough already."

"So had Vesalius, Rosy. No wonder the medical fogies in Middlemarch
are jealous, when some of the greatest doctors living were fierce
upon Vesalius because they had believed in Galen, and he showed
that Galen was wrong. They called him a liar and a poisonous monster.
But the facts of the human frame were on his side; and so he got
the better of them."

"And what happened to him afterwards?" said Rosamond, with some interest.

"Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last. And they did
exasperate him enough at one time to make him burn a good deal
of his work. Then he got shipwrecked just as he was coming from
Jerusalem to take a great chair at Padua. He died rather miserably."

There was a moment's pause before Rosamond said, "Do you know,
Tertius, I often wish you had not been a medical man."

"Nay, Rosy, don't say that," said Lydgate, drawing her closer to him.
"That is like saying you wish you had married another man."

"Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you might easily
have been something else. And your cousins at Quallingham all think
that you have sunk below them in your choice of a profession."

"The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil!" said Lydgate,
with scorn. "It was like their impudence if they said anything
of the sort to you."

"Still," said Rosamond, "I do NOT think it is a nice profession,
dear." We know that she had much quiet perseverance in her opinion.

"It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond," said Lydgate,
gravely. "And to say that you love me without loving the medical man
in me, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach
but don't like its flavor. Don't say that again, dear, it pains me."

"Very well, Doctor Grave-face," said Rosy, dimpling, "I will declare
in future that I dote on skeletons, and body-snatchers, and bits
of things in phials, and quarrels with everybody, that end in your
dying miserably."

"No, no, not so bad as that," said Lydgate, giving up remonstrance
and petting her resignedly.

CHAPTER XLVI.

Pues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos aquello
que podremos.

Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we can get.
--Spanish Proverb.

While Lydgate, safely married and with the Hospital under his command,
felt himself struggling for Medical Reform against Middlemarch,
Middlemarch was becoming more and more conscious of the national
struggle for another kind of Reform.

By the time that Lord John Russell's measure was being debated
in the House of Commons, there was a new political animation
in Middlemarch, and a new definition of parties which might show
a decided change of balance if a new election came. And there
were some who already predicted this event, declaring that a
Reform Bill would never be carried by the actual Parliament.
This was what Will Ladislaw dwelt on to Mr. Brooke as a reason
for congratulation that he had not yet tried his strength at the hustings.

"Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will.
"The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question
of Reform has set in. There is likely to be another election before long,
and by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its head.
What we have to work at now is the `Pioneer' and political meetings."

"Quite right, Ladislaw; we shall make a new thing of opinion here,"
said Mr. Brooke. "Only I want to keep myself independent
about Reform, you know; I don't want to go too far. I want
to take up. Wilberforce's and Romilly's line, you know,
and work at Negro Emancipation, Criminal Law--that kind of thing.
But of course I should support Grey."

"If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared
to take what the situation offers," said Will. "If everybody
pulled for his own bit against everybody else, the whole question
would go to tatters."

"Yes, yes, I agree with you--I quite take that point of view.
I should put it in that light. I should support Grey, you know.
But I don't want to change the balance of the constitution, and I don't
think Grey would."

"But that is what the country wants,"-said Will. "Else there would
be no meaning in political unions or any other movement that knows
what it's about. It wants to have a House of Commons which is not
weighted with nominees of the landed class, but with representatives
of the other interests. And as to contending for a reform short
of that, it is like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has
already begun to thunder."

"That is fine, Ladislaw: that is the way to put it. Write that
down, now. We must begin to get documents about the feeling
of the country, as well as the machine-breaking and general distress."

"As to documents," said Will, "a two-inch card will hold plenty.
A few rows of figures are enough to deduce misery from, and a few
more will show the rate at which the political determination of the
people is growing."

"Good: draw that out a little more at length, Ladislaw. That is
an idea, now: write it out in the `Pioneer.' Put the figures and
deduce the misery, you know; and put the other figures and deduce--
and so on. You have a way of putting things. Burke, now:--when I
think of Burke, I can't help wishing somebody had a pocket-borough
to give you, Ladislaw. You'd never get elected, you know.
And we shall always want talent in the House: reform as we will,
we shall always want talent. That avalanche and the thunder, now,
was really a little like Burke. I want that sort of thing--not ideas,
you know, but a way of putting them."

"Pocket-boroughs would be a fine thing," said Ladislaw, "if they
were always in the right pocket, and there were always a Burke
at hand."

Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison,
even from Mr. Brooke; for it is a little too trying to human flesh
to be conscious of expressing one's self better than others and
never to have it noticed, and in the general dearth of admiration
for the right thing, even a chance bray of applause falling
exactly in time is rather fortifying. Will felt that his literary
refinements were usually beyond the limits of Middlemarch perception;
nevertheless, he was beginning thoroughly to like the work
of which when he began he had said to himself rather languidly,
"Why not?"--and he studied the political situation with as ardent
an interest as he had ever given to poetic metres or mediaevalism.
It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Dorothea was,
and perhaps the want of knowing what else to do, Will would not
at this time have been meditating on the needs of the English
people or criticising English statesmanship: he would probably
have been rambling in Italy sketching plans for several dramas,
trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and finding
it too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures,
leaving off because they were "no good," and observing that, after all,
self-culture was the principal point; while in politics he would
have been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general.
Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take
the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality
of our action is not a matter of indifference.

Ladislaw had now accepted his bit of work, though it was not that
indeterminate loftiest thing which he had once dreamed of as alone
worthy of continuous effort. His nature warmed easily in the presence
of subjects which were visibly mixed with life and action, and the
easily stirred rebellion in him helped the glow of public spirit.
In spite of Mr. Casaubon and the banishment from Lowick, he was
rather happy; getting a great deal of fresh knowledge in a vivid
way and for practical purposes, and making the "Pioneer" celebrated
as far as Brassing (never mind the smallness of the area; the writing
was not worse than much that reaches the four corners of the earth).

Mr. Brooke was occasionally irritating; but Will's impatience was
relieved by the division of his time between visits to the Grange
and retreats to his Middlemarch lodgings, which gave variety
to his life.

"Shift the pegs a little," he said to himself, "and Mr. Brooke
might be in the Cabinet, while I was Under-Secretary. That is
the common order of things: the little waves make the large ones
and are of the same pattern. I am better here than in the sort
of life Mr. Casaubon would have trained me for, where the doing would
be all laid down by a precedent too rigid for me to react upon.
I don't care for prestige or high pay."

As Lydgate had said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying
the sense of belonging to no class; he had a feeling of romance
in his position, and a pleasant consciousness of creating a little
surprise wherever he went. That sort of enjoyment had been disturbed
when he had felt some new distance between himself and Dorothea
in their accidental meeting at Lydgate's, and his irritation had gone
out towards Mr. Casaubon, who had declared beforehand that Will
would lose caste. "I never had any caste," he would have said,
if that prophecy had been uttered to him, and the quick blood
would have come and gone like breath in his transparent skin.
But it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like
its consequences.

Meanwhile, the town opinion about the new editor of the "Pioneer"
was tending to confirm Mr. Casaubon's view. Will's relationship in
that distinguished quarter did not, like Lydgate's high connections,
serve as an advantageous introduction: if it was rumored that young
Ladislaw was Mr. Casaubon's nephew or cousin, it was also rumored
that "Mr. Casaubon would have nothing to do with him."

"Brooke has taken him up," said Mr. Hawley, "because that is what
no man in his senses could have expected. Casaubon has devilish
good reasons, you may be sure, for turning the cold shoulder on
a young fellow whose bringing-up he paid for. Just like Brooke--
one of those fellows who would praise a cat to sell a horse."

And some oddities of Will's, more or less poetical, appeared to support
Mr. Keck, the editor of the "Trumpet," in asserting that Ladislaw,
if the truth were known, was not only a Polish emissary but crack-brained,
which accounted for the preternatural quickness and glibness of his
speech when he got on to a platform--as he did whenever he had
an opportunity, speaking with a facility which cast reflections on
solid Englishmen generally. It was disgusting to Keck to see a strip
of a fellow, with light curls round his head, get up and speechify
by the hour against institutions "which had existed when he was
in his cradle." And in a leading article of the "Trumpet," Keck
characterized Ladislaw's speech at a Reform meeting as "the violence
of an energumen--a miserable effort to shroud in the brilliancy
of fireworks the daring of irresponsible statements and the poverty
of a knowledge which was of the cheapest and most recent description."

"That was a rattling article yesterday, Keck," said Dr. Sprague,
with sarcastic intentions. "But what is an energumen?"

"Oh, a term that came up in the French Revolution," said Keck.

This dangerous aspect of Ladislaw was strangely contrasted with
other habits which became matter of remark. He had a fondness,
half artistic, half affectionate, for little children--the smaller
they were on tolerably active legs, and the funnier their clothing,
the better Will liked to surprise and please them. We know
that in Rome he was given to ramble about among the poor people,
and the taste did not quit him in Middlemarch.

He had somehow picked up a troop of droll children, little hatless
boys with their galligaskins much worn and scant shirting to hang out,
little girls who tossed their hair out of their eyes to look at him,
and guardian brothers at the mature age of seven. This troop he
had led out on gypsy excursions to Halsell Wood at nutting-time,
and since the cold weather had set in he had taken them on a clear
day to gather sticks for a bonfire in the hollow of a hillside,
where he drew out a small feast of gingerbread for them, and improvised
a Punch-and-Judy drama with some private home-made puppets.
Here was one oddity. Another was, that in houses where he
got friendly, he was given to stretch himself at full length on the
rug while he talked, and was apt to be discovered in this attitude
by occasional callers for whom such an irregularity was likely
to confirm the notions of his dangerously mixed blood and general laxity.

But Will's articles and speeches naturally recommended him in
families which the new strictness of party division had marked
off on the side of Reform. He was invited to Mr. Bulstrode's;
but here he could not lie down on the rug, and Mrs. Bulstrode felt
that his mode of talking about Catholic countries, as if there
were any truce with Antichrist, illustrated the usual tendency
to unsoundness in intellectual men.

At Mr. Farebrother's, however, whom the irony of events had brought
on the same side with Bulstrode in the national movement, Will became
a favorite with the ladies; especially with little Miss Noble,
whom it was one of his oddities to escort when he met her in the
street with her little basket, giving her his arm in the eyes of
the town, and insisting on going with her to pay some call where she
distributed her small filchings from her own share of sweet things.

But the house where he visited oftenest and lay most on the rug
was Lydgate's. The two men were not at all alike, but they
agreed none the worse. Lydgate was abrupt but not irritable,
taking little notice of megrims in healthy people; and Ladislaw
did not usually throw away his susceptibilities on those who took
no notice of them. With Rosamond, on the other hand, he pouted and
was wayward--nay, often uncomplimentary, much to her inward surprise;
nevertheless he was gradually becoming necessary to her entertainment
by his companionship in her music, his varied talk, and his
freedom from the grave preoccupation which, with all her husband's
tenderness and indulgence, often made his manners unsatisfactory
to her, and confirmed her dislike of the medical profession.

Lydgate, inclined to be sarcastic on the superstitious faith of the people
in the efficacy of "the bill," while nobody cared about the low state
of pathology, sometimes assailed Will with troublesome questions.
One evening in March, Rosamond in her cherry-colored dress with
swansdown trimming about the throat sat at the tea-table; Lydgate,
lately come in tired from his outdoor work, was seated sideways
on an easy-chair by the fire with one leg over the elbow, his brow
looking a little troubled as his eyes rambled over the columns of
the "Pioneer," while Rosamond, having noticed that he was perturbed,
avoided looking at him, and inwardly thanked heaven that she herself
had not a moody disposition. Will Ladislaw was stretched on the rug
contemplating the curtain-pole abstractedly, and humming very low
the notes of "When first I saw thy face;" while the house spaniel,
also stretched out with small choice of room, looked from between
his paws at the usurper of the rug with silent but strong objection.

Rosamond bringing Lydgate his cup of tea, he threw down the paper,
and said to Will, who had started up and gone to the table--

"It's no use your puffing Brooke as a reforming landlord, Ladislaw:
they only pick the more holes in his coat in the `Trumpet.'"

"No matter; those who read the `Pioneer' don't read the `Trumpet,'"
said Will, swallowing his tea and walking about. "Do you suppose the
public reads with a view to its own conversion? We should have a witches'
brewing with a vengeance then--`Mingle, mingle, mingle, mingle, You
that mingle may'--and nobody would know which side he was going to take."

"Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected
if the opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him
would bring another member out of the bag at the right moment."

"There's no harm in trying. It's good to have resident members."

"Why?" said Lydgate, who was much given to use that inconvenient
word in a curt tone.

"They represent the local stupidity better," said Will,
laughing, and shaking his curls; "and they are kept
on their best behavior in the neighborhood. Brooke is
not a bad fellow, but he has done some good things on
his estate that he never would have done but for this Parliamentary bite."

"He's not fitted to be a public man," said Lydgate,
with contemptuous decision. "He would disappoint everybody
who counted on him: I can see that at the Hospital.
Only, there Bulstrode holds the reins and drives him."

"That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will.
"He's good enough for the occasion: when the people have made up
their mind as they are making it up now, they don't want a man--
they only want a vote."

"That is the way with you political writers, Ladislaw--crying up
a measure as if it were a universal cure, and crying up men
who are a part of the very disease that wants curing."

"Why not? Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land
without knowing it," said Will, who could find reasons impromptu,
when he had not thought of a question beforehand.

"That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration
of hopes about this particular measure, helping the cry to swallow
it whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing
but to carry it. You go against rottenness, and there is nothing
more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can
be cured by a political hocus-pocus."

"That's very fine, my dear fellow. But your cure must begin somewhere,
and put it that a thousand things which debase a population can
never be reformed without this particular reform to begin with.
Look what Stanley said the other day--that the House had been
tinkering long enough at small questions of bribery, inquiring whether
this or that voter has had a guinea when everybody knows that the
seats have been sold wholesale. Wait for wisdom and conscience
in public agents--fiddlestick! The only conscience we can trust
to is the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom
that will work is the wisdom of balancing claims. That's my text--
which side is injured? I support the man who supports their claims;
not the virtuous upholder of the wrong."

"That general talk about a particular case is mere question
begging, Ladislaw. When I say, I go in for the dose that cures,
it doesn't follow that I go in for opium in a given case of gout."

"I am not begging the question we are upon--whether we are
to try for nothing till we find immaculate men to work with.
Should you go on that plan? If there were one man who would carry
you a medical reform and another who would oppose it, should you
inquire which had the better motives or even the better brains?"

"Oh, of course," said Lydgate, seeing himself checkmated by a move
which he had often used himself, "if one did not work with such men
as are at hand, things must come to a dead-lock. Suppose the worst
opinion in the town about Bulstrode were a true one, that would
not make it less true that he has the sense and the resolution
to do what I think ought to be done in the matters I know and care
most about; but that is the only ground on which I go with him,"
Lydgate added rather proudly, bearing in mind Mr. Farebrother's remarks.
"He is nothing to me otherwise; I would not cry him up on any
personal ground--I would keep clear of that."

"Do you mean that I cry up Brooke on any personal ground?" said Will
Ladislaw, nettled, and turning sharp round. For the first time he felt
offended with Lydgate; not the less so, perhaps, because he would have
declined any close inquiry into the growth of his relation to Mr. Brooke.

"Not at all," said Lydgate, "I was simply explaining my own action.
I meant that a man may work for a special end with others whose
motives and general course are equivocal, if he is quite sure
of his personal independence, and that he is not working for his
private interest--either place or money."

"Then, why don't you extend your liberality to others?" said Will,
still nettled. "My personal independence is as important to me as yours
is to you. You have no more reason to imagine that I have personal
expectations from Brooke, than I have to imagine that you have personal
expectations from Bulstrode. Motives are points of honor, I suppose--
nobody can prove them. But as to money and place in the world."
Will ended, tossing back his head, "I think it is pretty clear
that I am not determined by considerations of that sort."

"You quite mistake me, Ladislaw," said Lydgate, surprised. He had
been preoccupied with his own vindication, and had been blind
to what Ladislaw might infer on his own account. "I beg your
pardon for unintentionally annoying you. In fact, I should rather
attribute to you a romantic disregard of your own worldly interests.
On the political question, I referred simply to intellectual bias."

"How very unpleasant you both are this evening!" said Rosamond.
"I cannot conceive why money should have been referred to.
Polities and Medicine are sufficiently disagreeable to quarrel upon.
You can both of you go on quarrelling with all the world and with each
other on those two topics."

Rosamond looked mildly neutral as she said this, rising to ring
the bell, and then crossing to her work-table.

"Poor Rosy!" said Lydgate, putting out his hand to her as she
was passing him. "Disputation is not amusing to cherubs.
Have some music. Ask Ladislaw to sing with you."

When Will was gone Rosamond said to her husband, "What put you
out of temper this evening, Tertius?"

"Me? It was Ladislaw who was out of temper. He is like a bit
of tinder."

"But I mean, before that. Something had vexed you before you came in,
you looked cross. And that made you begin to dispute with Mr. Ladislaw.
You hurt me very much when you look so, Tertius."

"Do I? Then I am a brute," said Lydgate, caressing her penitently.

"What vexed you?"

"Oh, outdoor things--business." It was really a letter insisting
on the payment of a bill for furniture. But Rosamond was expecting
to have a baby, and Lydgate wished to save her from any perturbation.

CHAPTER XLVII.

        Was never true love loved in vain,
        For truest love is highest gain.
        No art can make it: it must spring
        Where elements are fostering.
            So in heaven's spot and hour
            Springs the little native flower,
            Downward root and upward eye,
            Shapen by the earth and sky.

It happened to be on a Saturday evening that Will Ladislaw had that
little discussion with Lydgate. Its effect when he went to his own
rooms was to make him sit up half the night, thinking over again,
under a new irritation, all that he had before thought of his having
settled in Middlemarch and harnessed himself with Mr. Brooke.
Hesitations before he had taken the step had since turned into
susceptibility to every hint that he would have been wiser not
to take it; and hence came his heat towards Lydgate--a heat which
still kept him restless. Was he not making a fool of himself?--
and at a time when he was more than ever conscious of being something
better than a fool? And for what end?

Well, for no definite end. True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities:
there is no human being who having both passions and thoughts does
not think in consequence of his passions--does not find images rising
in his mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread.
But this, which happens to us all, happens to some with a wide difference;
and Will was not one of those whose wit "keeps the roadway:"
he had his bypaths where there were little joys of his own choosing,
such as gentlemen cantering on the highroad might have thought
rather idiotic. The way in which he made a sort of happiness for
himself out of his feeling for Dorothea was an example of this.
It may seem strange, but it is the fact, that the ordinary vulgar
vision of which Mr. Casaubon suspected him--namely, that Dorothea
might become a widow, and that the interest he had established
in her mind might turn into acceptance of him as a husband--
had no tempting, arresting power over him; he did not live
in the scenery of such an event, and follow it out, as we all do
with that imagined "otherwise" which is our practical heaven.
It was not only that he was unwilling to entertain thoughts which
could be accused of baseness, and was already uneasy in the sense
that he had to justify himself from the charge of ingratitude--
the latent consciousness of many other barriers between himself
and Dorothea besides the existence of her husband, had helped
to turn away his imagination from speculating on what might befall
Mr. Casaubon. And there were yet other reasons. Will, we know,
could not bear the thought of any flaw appearing in his crystal:
he was at once exasperated and delighted by the calm freedom
with which Dorothea looked at him and spoke to him, and there
was something so exquisite in thinking of her just as she was,
that he could not long for a change which must somehow change her.
Do we not shun the street version of a fine melody?--or shrink from
the news that the rarity--some bit of chiselling or engraving perhaps--
which we have dwelt on even with exultation in the trouble it has
cost us to snatch glimpses of it, is really not an uncommon thing,
and may be obtained as an every-day possession? Our good depends
on the quality and breadth of our emotion; and to Will, a creature
who cared little for what are called the solid things of life and
greatly for its subtler influences, to have within him such a feeling
as he had towards Dorothea, was like the inheritance of a fortune.
What others might have called the futility of his passion, made an
additional delight for his imagination: he was conscious of a
generous movement, and of verifying in his own experience that higher
love-poetry which had charmed his fancy. Dorothea, he said to himself,
was forever enthroned in his soul: no other woman could sit higher
than her footstool; and if he could have written out in immortal
syllables the effect she wrought within him, he might have boasted
after the example of old Drayton, that,--

"Queens hereafter might be glad to live
Upon the alms of her superfluous praise."

But this result was questionable. And what else could he do
for Dorothea? What was his devotion worth to her? It was impossible
to tell. He would not go out of her reach. He saw no creature among
her friends to whom he could believe that she spoke with the same simple
confidence as to him. She had once said that she would like him to stay;
and stay he would, whatever fire-breathing dragons might hiss around her.

This had always been the conclusion of Will's hesitations.
But he was not without contradictoriness and rebellion even towards
his own resolve. He had often got irritated, as he was on this
particular night, by some outside demonstration that his public
exertions with Mr. Brooke as a chief could not seem as heroic
as he would like them to be, and this was always associated with
the other ground of irritation--that notwithstanding his sacrifice
of dignity for Dorothea's sake, he could hardly ever see her.
Whereupon, not being able to contradict these unpleasant facts,
he contradicted his own strongest bias and said, "I am a fool."

Nevertheless, since the inward debate necessarily turned on Dorothea,
he ended, as he had done before, only by getting a livelier sense
of what her presence would be to him; and suddenly reflecting that
the morrow would be Sunday, he determined to go to Lowick Church
and see her. He slept upon that idea, but when he was dressing
in the rational morning light, Objection said--

"That will be a virtual defiance of Mr. Casaubon's prohibition
to visit Lowick, and Dorothea will be displeased."

"Nonsense!" argued Inclination, "it would be too monstrous
for him to hinder me from going out to a pretty country church
on a spring morning. And Dorothea will be glad."

"It will be clear to Mr. Casaubon that you have come either to annoy
him or to see Dorothea."

"It is not true that I go to annoy him, and why should I not go
to see Dorothea? Is he to have everything to himself and be
always comfortable? Let him smart a little, as other people are
obliged to do. I have always liked the quaintness of the church and
congregation; besides, I know the Tuckers: I shall go into their pew."

Having silenced Objection by force of unreason, Will walked to
Lowick as if he had been on the way to Paradise, crossing Halsell
Common and skirting the wood, where the sunlight fell broadly under
the budding boughs, bringing out the beauties of moss and lichen,
and fresh green growths piercing the brown. Everything seemed to know
that it was Sunday, and to approve of his going to Lowick Church.
Will easily felt happy when nothing crossed his humor, and by this
time the thought of vexing Mr. Casaubon had become rather amusing
to him, making his face break into its merry smile, pleasant to see
as the breaking of sunshine on the water--though the occasion was
not exemplary. But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves
that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind
causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites
in ourselves. Will went along with a small book under his arm and
a hand in each side-pocket, never reading, but chanting a little,
as he made scenes of what would happen in church and coming out.
He was experimenting in tunes to suit some words of his own,
sometimes trying a ready-made melody, sometimes improvising.
The words were not exactly a hymn, but they certainly fitted his
Sunday experience:--

        "O me, O me, what frugal cheer
           My love doth feed upon!
         A touch, a ray, that is not here,
           A shadow that is gone:

        "A dream of breath that might be near,
           An inly-echoed tone,
         The thought that one may think me dear,
           The place where one was known,

        "The tremor of a banished fear,
           An ill that was not done--
         O me, O me, what frugal cheer
           My love doth feed upon!"

Sometimes, when he took off his hat, shaking his head backward,
and showing his delicate throat as he sang, he looked like an incarnation
of the spring whose spirit filled the air--a bright creature,
abundant in uncertain promises.

The bells were still ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went into
the curate's pew before any one else arrived there. But he was still
left alone in it when the congregation had assembled. The curate's
pew was opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel,
and Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not come while he
looked round at the group of rural faces which made the congregation
from year to year within the white-washed walls and dark old pews,
hardly with more change than we see in the boughs of a tree
which breaks here and there with age, but yet has young shoots.
Mr. Rigg's frog-face was something alien and unaccountable,
but notwithstanding this shock to the order of things, there were
still the Waules and the rural stock of the Powderells in their
pews side by side; brother Samuel's cheek had the same purple
round as ever, and the three generations of decent cottagers
came as of old with a sense of duty to their betters generally--
the smaller children regarding Mr. Casaubon, who wore the black gown
and mounted to the highest box, as probably the chief of all betters,
and the one most awful if offended. Even in 1831 Lowick was
at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor
of the Sunday sermon. The congregation had been used to seeing
Will at church in former days, and no one took much note of him
except the choir, who expected him to make a figure in the singing.

Dorothea did at last appear on this quaint background, walking up
the short aisle in her white beaver bonnet and gray cloak--the same
she had worn in the Vatican. Her face being, from her entrance,
towards the chancel, even her shortsighted eyes soon discerned Will,
but there was no outward show of her feeling except a slight
paleness and a grave bow as she passed him. To his own surprise
Will felt suddenly uncomfortable, and dared not look at her after
they had bowed to each other. Two minutes later, when Mr. Casaubon
came out of the vestry, and, entering the pew, seated himself
in face of Dorothea, Will felt his paralysis more complete.
He could look nowhere except at the choir in the little gallery
over the vestry-door: Dorothea was perhaps pained, and he had made
a wretched blunder. It was no longer amusing to vex Mr. Casaubon,
who had the advantage probably of watching him and seeing that he
dared not turn his head. Why had he not imagined this beforehand?--
but he could not expect that he should sit in that square
pew alone, unrelieved by any Tuckers, who had apparently departed
from Lowick altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk.
Still he called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it would
be impossible for him to look towards Dorothea--nay, that she
might feel his coming an impertinence. There was no delivering
himself from his cage, however; and Will found his places and looked
at his book as if he had been a school-mistress, feeling that
the morning service had never been so immeasurably long before,
that he was utterly ridiculous, out of temper, and miserable.
This was what a man got by worshipping the sight of a woman!
The clerk observed with surprise that Mr. Ladislaw did not join in
the tune of Hanover, and reflected that he might have a cold.

Mr. Casaubon did not preach that morning, and there was no change
in Will's situation until the blessing had been pronounced and
every one rose. It was the fashion at Lowick for "the betters"
to go out first. With a sudden determination to break the spell
that was upon him, Will looked straight at Mr. Casaubon. But that
gentleman's eyes were on the button of the pew-door, which he opened,
allowing Dorothea to pass, and following her immediately without
raising his eyelids. Will's glance had caught Dorothea's as she
turned out of the pew, and again she bowed, but this time with a
look of agitation, as if she were repressing tears. Will walked
out after them, but they went on towards the little gate leading
out of the churchyard into the shrubbery, never looking round.

It was impossible for him to follow them, and he could only walk
back sadly at mid-day along the same road which he had trodden
hopefully in the morning. The lights were all changed for him
both without and within.

CHAPTER XLVIII

        Surely the golden hours are turning gray
        And dance no more, and vainly strive to run:
        I see their white locks streaming in the wind--
        Each face is haggard as it looks at me,
        Slow turning in the constant clasping round
        Storm-driven.

Dorothea's distress when she was leaving the church came chiefly
from the perception that Mr. Casaubon was determined not to speak
to his cousin, and that Will's presence at church had served
to mark more strongly the alienation between them. Will's coming
seemed to her quite excusable, nay, she thought it an amiable
movement in him towards a reconciliation which she herself had been
constantly wishing for. He had probably imagined, as she had,
that if Mr. Casaubon and he could meet easily, they would shake
hands and friendly intercourse might return. But now Dorothea felt
quite robbed of that hope. Will was banished further than ever,
for Mr. Casaubon must have been newly embittered by this thrusting
upon him of a presence which he refused to recognize.

He had not been very well that morning, suffering from some
difficulty in breathing, and had not preached in consequence;
she was not surprised, therefore, that he was nearly silent
at luncheon, still less that he made no allusion to Will Ladislaw.
For her own part she felt that she could never again introduce
that subject. They usually spent apart the hours between luncheon
and dinner on a Sunday; Mr. Casaubon in the library dozing chiefly,
and Dorothea in her boudoir, where she was wont to occupy
herself with some of her favorite books. There was a little
heap of them on the table in the bow-window--of various sorts,
from Herodotus, which she was learning to read with Mr. Casaubon,
to her old companion Pascal, and Keble's "Christian Year."
But to-day opened one after another, and could read none of them.
Everything seemed dreary: the portents before the birth of Cyrus--
Jewish antiquities--oh dear!--devout epigrams--the sacred chime
of favorite hymns--all alike were as flat as tunes beaten on wood:
even the spring flowers and the grass had a dull shiver in them
under the afternoon clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the
sustaining thoughts which had become habits seemed to have in them
the weariness of long future days in which she would still live
with them for her sole companions. It was another or rather a
fuller sort of companionship that poor Dorothea was hungering for,
and the hunger had grown from the perpetual effort demanded by her
married life. She was always trying to be what her husband wished,
and never able to repose on his delight in what she was. The thing
that she liked, that she spontaneously cared to have, seemed to be
always excluded from her life; for if it was only granted and not
shared by her husband it might as well have been denied. About Will
Ladislaw there had been a difference between them from the first,
and it had ended, since Mr. Casaubon had so severely repulsed
Dorothea's strong feeling about his claims on the family property,
by her being convinced that she was in the right and her husband
in the wrong, but that she was helpless. This afternoon the
helplessness was more wretchedly benumbing than ever: she longed
for objects who could be dear to her, and to whom she could be dear.
She longed for work which would be directly beneficent like the
sunshine and the rain, and now it appeared that she was to live
more and more in a virtual tomb, where there was the apparatus
of a ghastly labor producing what would never see the light.
Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and seen Will Ladislaw
receding into the distant world of warm activity and fellowship--
turning his face towards her as he went.

Books were of no use. Thinking was of no use. It was Sunday, and she
could not have the carriage to go to Celia, who had lately had a baby.
There was no refuge now from spiritual emptiness and discontent,
and Dorothea had to bear her bad mood, as she would have borne
a headache.

After dinner, at the hour when she usually began to read aloud,
Mr. Casaubon proposed that they should go into the library, where,
he said, he had ordered a fire and lights. He seemed to have revived,
and to be thinking intently.

In the library Dorothea observed that he had newly arranged a row
of his note-books on a table, and now he took up and put into her hand
a well-known volume, which was a table of contents to all the others.

"You will oblige me, my dear," he said, seating himself, "if instead
of other reading this evening, you will go through this aloud,
pencil in hand, and at each point where I say `mark,' will make a
cross with your pencil. This is the first step in a sifting process
which I have long had in view, and as we go on I shall be able
to indicate to you certain principles of selection whereby you will,
I trust, have an intelligent participation in my purpose."

This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his
memorable interview with Lydgate, that Mr. Casaubon's original
reluctance to let Dorothea work with him had given place to the
contrary disposition, namely, to demand much interest and labor from her.

After she had read and marked for two hours, he said, "We will
take the volume up-stairs--and the pencil, if you please--
and in case of reading in the night, we can pursue this task.
It is not wearisome to you, I trust, Dorothea?"

"I prefer always reading what you like best to hear," said Dorothea,
who told the simple truth; for what she dreaded was to exert herself
in reading or anything else which left him as joyless as ever.

It was a proof of the force with which certain characteristics
in Dorothea impressed those around her, that her husband,
with all his jealousy and suspicion, had gathered implicit trust
in the integrity of her promises, and her power of devoting herself
to her idea of the right and best. Of late he had begun to feel
that these qualities were a peculiar possession for himself,
and he wanted to engross them.

The reading in the night did come. Dorothea in her young weariness
had slept soon and fast: she was awakened by a sense of light,
which seemed to her at first like a sudden vision of sunset after
she had climbed a steep hill: she opened her eyes and saw her
husband wrapped in his warm gown seating himself in the arm-chair
near the fire-place where the embers were still glowing.
He had lit two candles, expecting that Dorothea would awake,
but not liking to rouse her by more direct means.

"Are you ill, Edward?" she said, rising immediately.

"I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture. I will sit here
for a time." She threw wood on the fire, wrapped herself up,
and said, "You would like me to read to you?"

"You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon,
with a shade more meekness than usual in his polite manner.
"I am wakeful: my mind is remarkably lucid."

"I fear that the excitement may be too great for you," said Dorothea,
remembering Lydgate's cautions.

"No, I am not conscious of undue excitement. Thought is easy."
Dorothea dared not insist, and she read for an hour or more on
the same plan as she had done in the evening, but getting over
the pages with more quickness. Mr. Casaubon's mind was more alert,
and he seemed to anticipate what was coming after a very slight
verbal indication, saying, "That will do--mark that"--or "Pass
on to the next head--I omit the second excursus on Crete."
Dorothea was amazed to think of the bird-like speed with which his
mind was surveying the ground where it had been creeping for years.
At last he said--

"Close the book now, my dear. We will resume our work to-morrow.
I have deferred it too long, and would gladly see it completed.
But you observe that the principle on which my selection is made,
is to give adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each
of the theses enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched.
You have perceived that distinctly, Dorothea?"

"Yes," said Dorothea, rather tremulously. She felt sick at heart.

"And now I think that I can take some repose," said Mr. Casaubon.
He laid down again and begged her to put out the lights. When she
had lain down too, and there was a darkness only broken by a dull
glow on the hearth, he said--

"Before I sleep, I have a request to make, Dorothea."

"What is it?" said Dorothea, with dread in her mind.

"It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case
of my death, you will carry out my wishes: whether you will avoid
doing what I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I
should desire."

Dorothea was not taken by surprise: many incidents had been leading
her to the conjecture of some intention on her husband's part
which might make a new yoke for her. She did not answer immediately.

"You refuse?" said Mr. Casaubon, with more edge in his tone.

"No, I do not yet refuse," said Dorothea, in a clear voice, the need
of freedom asserting itself within her; "but it is too solemn--
I think it is not right--to make a promise when I am ignorant
what it will bind me to. Whatever affection prompted I would do
without promising."

"But you would use your own judgment: I ask you to obey mine;
you refuse."

"No, dear, no!" said Dorothea, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears.
"But may I wait and reflect a little while? I desire with my whole soul
to do what will comfort you; but I cannot give any pledge suddenly--
still less a pledge to do I know not what."

"You cannot then confide in the nature of my wishes?"

"Grant me till to-morrow," said Dorothea, beseechingly.

"Till to-morrow then," said Mr. Casaubon.

Soon she could hear that he was sleeping, but there was no more
sleep for her. While she constrained herself to lie still lest she
should disturb him, her mind was carrying on a conflict in which
imagination ranged its forces first on one side and then on the other.
She had no presentiment that the power which her husband wished
to establish over her future action had relation to anything else
than his work. But it was clear enough to her that he would expect
her to devote herself to sifting those mixed heaps of material,
which were to be the doubtful illustration of principles still
more doubtful. The poor child had become altogether unbelieving
as to the trustworthiness of that Key which had made the ambition
and the labor of her husband's life. It was not wonderful that,
in spite of her small instruction, her judgment in this matter was
truer than his: for she looked with unbiassed comparison and
healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked all his egoism.
And now she pictured to herself the days, and months, and years which
she must spend in sorting what might be called shattered mummies,
and fragments of a tradition which was itself a mosaic wrought from
crushed ruins--sorting them as food for a theory which was already
withered in the birth like an elfin child. Doubtless a vigorous
error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth a-breathing:
the quest of gold being at the same time a questioning of substances,
the body of chemistry is prepared for its soul, and Lavoisier is born.
But Mr. Casaubon's theory of the elements which made the seed of all
tradition was not likely to bruise itself unawares against discoveries:
it floated among flexible conjectures no more solid than those
etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in sound until
it was shown that likeness in sound made them impossible: it was
a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity
of forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate
notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free from interruption as a
plan for threading the stars together. And Dorothea had so often
had to check her weariness and impatience over this questionable
riddle-guessing, as it revealed itself to her instead of the
fellowship in high knowledge which was to make life worthier!
She could understand well enough now why her husband had come
to cling to her, as possibly the only hope left that his labors
would ever take a shape in which they could be given to the world.
At first it had seemed that he wished to keep even her aloof from
any close knowledge of what he was doing; but gradually the terrible
stringency of human need--the prospect of a too speedy death--

And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her
husband's past--nay, to his present hard struggle with a lot which had
grown out of that past: the lonely labor, the ambition breathing
hardly under the pressure of self-distrust; the goal receding,
and the heavier limbs; and now at last the sword visibly trembling
above him! And had she not wished to marry him that she might help
him in his life's labor?--But she had thought the work was to be
something greater, which she could serve in devoutly for its own sake.
Was it right, even to soothe his grief--would it be possible,
even if she promised--to work as in a treadmill fruitlessly?

And yet, could she deny him? Could she say, "I refuse to content
this pining hunger?" It would be refusing to do for him dead,
what she was almost sure to do for him living. If he lived
as Lydgate had said he might, for fifteen years or more, her life
would certainly be spent in helping him and obeying him.

Still, there was a deep difference between that devotion to the
living and that indefinite promise of devotion to the dead.
While he lived, he could claim nothing that she would not still
be free to remonstrate against, and even to refuse. But--
the thought passed through her mind more than once, though she
could not believe in it--might he not mean to demand something
more from her than she had been able to imagine, since he wanted
her pledge to carry out his wishes without telling her exactly
what they were? No; his heart was bound up in his work only:
that was the end for which his failing life was to be eked out by hers.

And now, if she were to say, "No! if you die, I will put no finger
to your work"--it seemed as if she would be crushing that bruised heart.

For four hours Dorothea lay in this conflict, till she felt ill
and bewildered, unable to resolve, praying mutely. Helpless as a
child which has sobbed and sought too long, she fell into a late
morning sleep, and when she waked Mr. Casaubon was already up.
Tantripp told her that he had read prayers, breakfasted, and was
in the library.

"I never saw you look so pale, madam," said Tantripp, a solid-figured
woman who had been with the sisters at Lausanne.

"Was I ever high-colored, Tantripp?" said Dorothea, smiling faintly.

"Well, not to say high-colored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose.
But always smelling those leather books, what can be expected?
Do rest a little this morning, madam. Let me say you are ill and not
able to go into that close library."

"Oh no, no! let me make haste," said Dorothea. "Mr. Casaubon wants
me particularly."

When she went down she felt sure that she should promise to fulfil
his wishes; but that would be later in the day--not yet.

As Dorothea entered the library, Mr. Casaubon turned round from
the table where he had been placing some books, and said--

"I was waiting for your appearance, my dear. I had hoped
to set to work at once this morning, but I find myself under
some indisposition, probably from too much excitement yesterday.
I am going now to take a turn in the shrubbery, since the air is milder."

"I am glad to hear that," said Dorothea. "Your mind, I feared,
was too active last night."

"I would fain have it set at rest on the point
I last spoke of, Dorothea. You can now, I hope, give me an answer."

"May I come out to you in the garden presently?" said Dorothea,
winning a little breathing space in that way.

"I shall be in the Yew-tree Walk for the next half-hour,"
said Mr. Casaubon, and then he left her.

Dorothea, feeling very weary, rang and asked Tantripp to bring
her some wraps. She had been sitting still for a few minutes,
but not in any renewal of the former conflict: she simply felt
that she was going to say "Yes" to her own doom: she was too weak,
too full of dread at the thought of inflicting a keen-edged blow
on her husband, to do anything but submit completely. She sat still
and let Tantripp put on her bonnet and shawl, a passivity which was
unusual with her, for she liked to wait on herself.

"God bless you, madam!" said Tantripp, with an irrepressible movement
of love towards the beautiful, gentle creature for whom she felt
unable to do anything more, now that she had finished tying the bonnet.

This was too much for Dorothea's highly-strung feeling, and she
burst into tears, sobbing against Tantripp's arm. But soon she
checked herself, dried her eyes, and went out at the glass door
into the shrubbery.

"I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for
your master," said Tantripp to Pratt, the butler, finding him in the
breakfast-room. She had been at Rome, and visited the antiquities,
as we know; and she always declined to call Mr. Casaubon anything
but "your master," when speaking to the other servants.

Pratt laughed. He liked his master very well, but he liked
Tantripp better.

When Dorothea was out on the gravel walks, she lingered among the
nearer clumps of trees, hesitating, as she had done once before,
though from a different cause. Then she had feared lest her effort
at fellowship should be unwelcome; now she dreaded going to the spot
where she foresaw that she must bind herself to a fellowship from
which she shrank. Neither law nor the world's opinion compelled
her to this--only her husband's nature and her own compassion,
only the ideal and not the real yoke of marriage. She saw clearly
enough the whole situation, yet she was fettered: she could not
smite the stricken soul that entreated hers. If that were weakness,
Dorothea was weak. But the half-hour was passing, and she must not
delay longer. When she entered the Yew-tree Walk she could not see
her husband; but the walk had bends, and she went, expecting to catch
sight of his figure wrapped in a blue cloak, which, with a warm
velvet cap, was his outer garment on chill days for the garden.
It occurred to her that he might be resting in the summer-house,
towards which the path diverged a little. Turning the angle,
she could see him seated on the bench, close to a stone table.
His arms were resting on the table, and his brow was bowed down on them,
the blue cloak being dragged forward and screening his face on
each side.

"He exhausted himself last night," Dorothea said to herself,
thinking at first that he was asleep, and that the summer-house was
too damp a place to rest in. But then she remembered that of late
she had seen him take that attitude when she was reading to him,
as if he found it easier than any other; and that he would
sometimes speak, as well as listen, with his face down in that way.
She went into the summerhouse and said, "I am come, Edward; I am ready."

He took no notice, and she thought that he must be fast asleep.
She laid her hand on his shoulder, and repeated, "I am ready!"
Still he was motionless; and with a sudden confused fear, she leaned
down to him, took off his velvet cap, and leaned her cheek close to
his head, crying in a distressed tone--

"Wake, dear, wake! Listen to me. I am come to answer."
But Dorothea never gave her answer.

Later in the day, Lydgate was seated by her bedside, and she was
talking deliriously, thinking aloud, and recalling what had gone
through her mind the night before. She knew him, and called him
by his name, but appeared to think it right that she should explain
everything to him; and again, and again, begged him to explain
everything to her husband.

"Tell him I shall go to him soon: I am ready to promise.
Only, thinking about it was so dreadful--it has made me ill.
Not very ill. I shall soon be better. Go and tell him."

But the silence in her husband's ear was never more to be broken.

CHAPTER XLIX.

        A task too strong for wizard spells
        This squire had brought about;
        'T is easy dropping stones in wells,
        But who shall get them out?"

"I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this," said Sir
James Chettam, with a little frown on his brow, and an expression
of intense disgust about his mouth.

He was standing on the hearth-rug in the library at Lowick Grange,
and speaking to Mr. Brooke. It was the day after Mr. Casaubon had
been buried, and Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room.

"That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix,
and she likes to go into these things--property, land, that kind
of thing. She has her notions, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
sticking his eye-glasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a
folded paper which he held in his hand; "and she would like to act--
depend upon it, as an executrix Dorothea would want to act. And she
was twenty-one last December, you know. I can hinder nothing."

Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then
lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, "I will
tell you what we can do. Until Dorothea is well, all business must
be kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must
come to us. Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing
in the world for her, and will pass away the time. And meanwhile you
must get rid of Ladislaw: you must send him out of the country."
Here Sir James's look of disgust returned in all its intensity.

Mr. Brooke put his hands behind him, walked to the window
and straightened his back with a little shake before he replied.

"That is easily said, Chettam, easily said, you know."

"My dear sir," persisted Sir James, restraining his indignation
within respectful forms, "it was you who brought him here, and you
who keep him here--I mean by the occupation you give him."

"Yes, but I can't dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons,
my dear Chettam. Ladislaw has been invaluable, most satisfactory.
I consider that I have done this part of the country a service by
bringing him--by bringing him, you know." Mr. Brooke ended with a nod,
turning round to give it.

"It's a pity this part of the country didn't do without him,
that's all I have to say about it. At any rate, as Dorothea's
brother-in-law, I feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being
kept here by any action on the part of her friends. You admit,
I hope, that I have a right to speak about what concerns the dignity
of my wife's sister?"

Sir James was getting warm.

"Of course, my dear Chettam, of course. But you and I have
different ideas--different--"

"Not about this action of Casaubon's, I should hope," interrupted
Sir James. "I say that he has most unfairly compromised Dorothea.
I say that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action
than this--a codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time
of his marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family--
a positive insult to Dorothea!"

"Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw.
Ladislaw has told me the reason--dislike of the bent he took, you know--
Ladislaw didn't think much of Casaubon's notions, Thoth and Dagon--
that sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn't like the
independent position Ladislaw had taken up. I saw the letters
between them, you know. Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books--
he didn't know the world."

"It's all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it,"
said Sir James. "But I believe Casaubon was only jealous of him
on Dorothea's account, and the world will suppose that she
gave him some reason; and that is what makes it so abominable--
coupling her name with this young fellow's."

"My dear Chettam, it won't lead to anything, you know,"
said Mr. Brooke, seating himself and sticking on his eye-
glass again. "It's all of a piece with Casaubon's oddity.
This paper, now, `Synoptical Tabulation' and so on, `for the use
of Mrs. Casaubon,' it was locked up in the desk with the will.
I suppose he meant Dorothea to publish his researches, eh? and
she'll do it, you know; she has gone into his studies uncommonly."

"My dear sir," said Sir James, impatiently, "that is neither
here nor there. The question is, whether you don't see with me
the propriety of sending young Ladislaw away?"

"Well, no, not the urgency of the thing. By-and-by, perhaps,
it may come round. As to gossip, you know, sending him away won't
hinder gossip. People say what they like to say, not what they
have chapter and verse for," said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about
the truths that lay on the side of his own wishes. "I might get rid
of Ladislaw up to a certain point--take away the `Pioneer' from him,
and that sort of thing; but I couldn't send him out of the country
if he didn't choose to go--didn't choose, you know."

Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing
the nature of last year's weather, and nodding at the end with his
usual amenity, was an exasperating form of obstinacy.

"Good God!" said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed,
"let us get him a post; let us spend money on him. If he could go
in the suite of some Colonial Governor! Grampus might take him--
and I could write to Fulke about it."

"But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear fellow;
Ladislaw has his ideas. It's my opinion that if he were to part
from me to-morrow, you'd only hear the more of him in the country.
With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are
few men who could come up to him as an agitator--an agitator,
you know."

"Agitator!" said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that
the syllables of this word properly repeated were a sufficient
exposure of its hatefulness.

"But be reasonable, Chettam. Dorothea, now. As you say,
she had better go to Celia as soon as possible. She can stay under
your roof, and in the mean time things may come round quietly.
Don't let us be firing off our guns in a hurry, you know.
Standish will keep our counsel, and the news will be old before
it's known. Twenty things may happen to carry off Ladislaw--
without my doing anything, you know."

"Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?"

"Decline, Chettam?--no--I didn't say decline. But I really don't
see what I could do. Ladislaw is a gentleman."

"I am glad to hear It!" said Sir James, his irritation making him
forget himself a little. "I am sure Casaubon was not."

"Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder
her from marrying again at all, you know."

"I don't know that," said Sir James. "It would have been
less indelicate."

"One of poor Casaubon's freaks! That attack upset his brain a little.
It all goes for nothing. She doesn't WANT to marry Ladislaw."

"But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did.
I don't believe anything of the sort about Dorothea," said Sir James--
then frowningly, "but I suspect Ladislaw. I tell you frankly,
I suspect Ladislaw."

"I couldn't take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam. In fact,
if it were possible to pack him off--send him to Norfolk Island--
that sort of thing--it would look all the worse for Dorothea to
those who knew about it. It would seem as if we distrusted her--
distrusted her, you know."

That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend
to soothe Sir James. He put out his hand to reach his hat,
implying that he did not mean to contend further, and said,
still with some heat--

"Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once,
because her friends were too careless. I shall do what I can,
as her brother, to protect her now."

"You can't do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible,
Chettam. I approve that plan altogether," said Mr. Brooke, well pleased
that he had won the argument. It would have been highly inconvenient
to him to part with Ladislaw at that time, when a dissolution might
happen any day, and electors were to be convinced of the course by
which the interests of the country would be best served. Mr. Brooke
sincerely believed that this end could be secured by his own return
to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the nation.

CHAPTER L.

        "`This Loller here wol precilen us somewhat.'
         `Nay by my father's soule! that schal he nat,'
          Sayde the Schipman, `here schal he not preche,
          We schal no gospel glosen here ne teche.
          We leven all in the gret God,' quod he.
          He wolden sowen some diffcultee."
                                 Canterbury Tales.

Dorothea had been safe at Freshitt Hall nearly a week before she had asked
any dangerous questions. Every morning now she sat with Celia in the
prettiest of up-stairs sitting-rooms, opening into a small conservatory--
Celia all in white and lavender like a bunch of mixed violets,
watching the remarkable acts of the baby, which were so dubious
to her inexperienced mind that all conversation was interrupted
by appeals for their interpretation made to the oracular nurse.
Dorothea sat by in her widow's dress, with an expression which rather
provoked Celia, as being much too sad; for not only was baby quite well,
but really when a husband had been so dull and troublesome while
he lived, and besides that had--well, well! Sir James, of course,
had told Celia everything, with a strong representation how important
it was that Dorothea should not know it sooner than was inevitable.

But Mr. Brooke had been right in predicting that Dorothea would not
long remain passive where action had been assigned to her; she knew
the purport of her husband's will made at the time of their marriage,
and her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her position,
was silently occupied with what she ought to do as the owner
of Lowick Manor with the patronage of the living attached to it.

One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit, though with an unusual
alacrity in his manner which he accounted for by saying that it
was now pretty certain Parliament would be dissolved forthwith,
Dorothea said--

"Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have
the living at Lowick. After Mr. Tucker had been provided for,
I never heard my husband say that he had any clergyman in his
mind as a successor to himself. I think I ought to have the
keys now and go to Lowick to examine all my husband's papers.
There may be something that would throw light on his wishes."

"No hurry, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, quietly. "By-and-by, you know,
you can go, if you like. But I cast my eyes over things in the
desks and drawers--there was nothing--nothing but deep subjects,
you know--besides the will. Everything can be done by-and-by. As
to the living, I have had an application for interest already--
I should say rather good. Mr. Tyke has been strongly recommended
to me--I had something to do with getting him an appointment before.
An apostolic man, I believe--the sort of thing that would suit you,
my dear."

"I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge
for myself, if Mr. Casaubon has not left any expression of his wishes.
He has perhaps made some addition to his will--there may be some
instructions for me," said Dorothea, who had all the while had this
conjecture in her mind with relation to her husband's work.

"Nothing about the rectory, my dear--nothing," said Mr. Brooke,
rising to go away, and putting out his hand to his nieces:
"nor about his researches, you know. Nothing in the will."

Dorothea's lip quivered.

"Come, you must not think of these things yet, my dear.
By-and-by, you know."

"I am quite well now, uncle; I wish to exert myself."

"Well, well, we shall see. But I must run away now--I have no end
of work now--it's a crisis--a political crisis, you know. And here
is Celia and her little man--you are an aunt, you know, now, and I
am a sort of grandfather," said Mr. Brooke, with placid hurry,
anxious to get away and tell Chettam that it would not be his
(Mr. Brooke's) fault if Dorothea insisted on looking into everything.

Dorothea sank back in her chair when her uncle had left the room,
and cast her eyes down meditatively on her crossed hands.

"Look, Dodo! look at him! Did you ever see anything like that?"
said Celia, in her comfortable staccato.

"What, Kitty?" said Dorothea, lifting her eyes rather absently.

"What? why, his upper lip; see how he is drawing it down,
as if he meant to make a face. Isn't it wonderful! He may have
his little thoughts. I wish nurse were here. Do look at him."

A large tear which had been for some time gathering, rolled down
Dorothea's cheek as she looked up and tried to smile.

"Don't be sad, Dodo; kiss baby. What are you brooding over so?
I am sure you did everything, and a great deal too much. You should
be happy now."

"I wonder if Sir James would drive me to Lowick. I want to look
over everything--to see if there were any words written for me."

"You are not to go till Mr. Lydgate says you may go. And he
has not said so yet (here you are, nurse; take baby and walk
up and down the gallery). Besides, you have got a wrong notion
in your head as usual, Dodo--I can see that: it vexes me."

"Where am I wrong, Kitty?" said Dorothea, quite meekly. She was
almost ready now to think Celia wiser than herself, and was really
wondering with some fear what her wrong notion was. Celia felt
her advantage, and was determined to use it. None of them knew Dodo
as well as she did, or knew how to manage her. Since Celia's
baby was born, she had had a new sense of her mental solidity
and calm wisdom. It seemed clear that where there was a baby,
things were right enough, and that error, in general, was a mere
lack of that central poising force.

"I can see what you are thinking of as well as can be, Dodo,"
said Celia. "You are wanting to find out if there is anything
uncomfortable for you to do now, only because Mr. Casaubon wished it.
As if you had not been uncomfortable enough before. And he doesn't
deserve it, and you will find that out. He has behaved very badly.
James is as angry with him as can be. And I had better tell you,
to prepare you."

"Celia," said Dorothea, entreatingly, "you distress me.
Tell me at once what you mean." It glanced through her mind that'
Mr. Casaubon had left the property away from her--which would not
be so very distressing.

"Why, he has made a codicil to his will, to say the property was
all to go away from you if you married--I mean--"

"That is of no consequence," said Dorothea, breaking in impetuously.

"But if you married Mr. Ladislaw, not anybody else," Celia went
on with persevering quietude. "Of course that is of no consequence
in one way--you never WOULD marry Mr. Ladislaw; but that only
makes it worse of Mr. Casaubon."

The blood rushed to Dorothea's face and neck painfully. But Celia
was administering what she thought a sobering dose of fact.
It was taking up notions that had done Dodo's health so much harm.
So she went on in her neutral tone, as if she had been remarking on
baby's robes.

"James says so. He says it is abominable, and not like a gentleman.
And there never was a better judge than James. It is as if
Mr. Casaubon wanted to make people believe that you would wish
to marry Mr. Ladislaw--which is ridiculous. Only James says it
was to hinder Mr. Ladislaw from wanting to marry you for your money--
just as if he ever would think of making you an offer. Mrs. Cadwallader
said you might as well marry an Italian with white mice! But I
must just go and look at baby," Celia added, without the least
change of tone, throwing a light shawl over her, and tripping away.

Dorothea by this time had turned cold again, and now threw herself
back helplessly in her chair. She might have compared her experience
at that moment to the vague, alarmed consciousness that her life
was taking on a new form that she was undergoing a metamorphosis in
which memory would not adjust itself to the stirring of new organs.
Everything was changing its aspect: her husband's conduct,
her own duteous feeling towards him, every struggle between them--
and yet more, her whole relation to Will Ladislaw. Her world
was in a state of convulsive change; the only thing she could say
distinctly to herself was, that she must wait and think anew.
One change terrified her as if it had been a sin; it was a
violent shock of repulsion from her departed husband, who had had
hidden thoughts, perhaps perverting everything she said and did.
Then again she was conscious of another change which also made
her tremulous; it was a sudden strange yearning of heart towards
Will Ladislaw. It had never before entered her mind that he could,
under any circumstances, be her lover: conceive the effect of the
sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that light--
that perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a possibility,--
and this with the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting conditions,
and questions not soon to be solved.

It seemed a long while--she did not know how long--before she heard
Celia saying, "That will do, nurse; he will be quiet on my lap now.
You can go to lunch, and let Garratt stay in the next room."
"What I think, Dodo," Celia went on, observing nothing more than that
Dorothea was leaning back in her chair, and likely to be passive,
"is that Mr. Casaubon was spiteful. I never did like him, and James
never did. I think the corners of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful.
And now he has behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not
require you to make yourself uncomfortable about him. If he has
been taken away, that is a mercy, and you ought to be grateful.
We should not grieve, should we, baby?" said Celia confidentially
to that unconscious centre and poise of the world, who had the most
remarkable fists all complete even to the nails, and hair enough,
really, when you took his cap off, to make--you didn't know what:--
in short, he was Bouddha in a Western form.

At this crisis Lydgate was announced, and one of the first things he
said was, "I fear you are not so well as you were, Mrs. Casaubon;
have you been agitated? allow me to feel your pulse." Dorothea's hand
was of a marble coldness.

"She wants to go to Lowick, to look over papers," said Celia.
"She ought not, ought she?"

Lydgate did not speak for a few moments. Then he said,
looking at Dorothea. "I hardly know. In my opinion Mrs. Casaubon
should do what would give her the most repose of mind.
That repose will not always come from being forbidden to act."

"Thank you;" said Dorothea, exerting herself, "I am sure that is wise.
There are so many things which I ought to attend to. Why should I sit
here idle?" Then, with an effort to recall subjects not connected with
her agitation, she added, abruptly, "You know every one in Middlemarch,
I think, Mr. Lydgate. I shall ask you to tell me a great deal.
I have serious things to do now. I have a living to give away.
You know Mr. Tyke and all the--" But Dorothea's effort was too much
for her; she broke off and burst into sobs. Lydgate made her drink
a dose of sal volatile.

"Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes," he said to Sir James, whom he
asked to see before quitting the house. "She wants perfect freedom,
I think, more than any other prescription."

His attendance on Dorothea while her brain was excited, had enabled
him to form some true conclusions concerning the trials of her life.
He felt sure that she had been suffering from the strain and
conflict of self-repression; and that she was likely now to feel
herself only in another sort of pinfold than that from which she
had been released.

Lydgate's advice was all the easier for Sir James to follow
when he found that Celia had already told Dorothea the unpleasant
fact about the will. There was no help for it now--no reason
for any further delay in the execution of necessary business.
And the next day Sir James complied at once with her request
that he would drive her to Lowick.

"I have no wish to stay there at present," said Dorothea;
"I could hardly bear it. I am much happier at Freshitt with Celia.
I shall be able to think better about what should be done at Lowick
by looking at it from a distance. And I should like to be at the
Grange a little while with my uncle, and go about in all the old
walks and among the people in the village."

"Not yet, I think. Your uncle is having political company,
and you are better out of the way of such doings," said Sir James,
who at that moment thought of the Grange chiefly as a haunt
of young Ladislaw's. But no word passed between him and Dorothea
about the objectionable part of the will; indeed, both of them
felt that the mention of it between them would be impossible.
Sir James was shy, even with men, about disagreeable subjects;
and the one thing that Dorothea would have chosen to say, if she
had spoken on the matter at all, was forbidden to her at present
because it seemed to be a further exposure of her husband's injustice.
Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what had passed between her
and her husband about Will Ladislaw's moral claim on the property:
it would then, she thought, be apparent to him as it was to her,
that her husband's strange indelicate proviso had been chiefly urged
by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and not merely
by personal feelings more difficult to talk about. Also, it must
be admitted, Dorothea wished that this could be known for Will's sake,
since her friends seemed to think of him as simply an object of
Mr. Casaubon's charity. Why should he be compared with an Italian
carrying white mice? That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed
like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger.

At Lowick Dorothea searched desk and drawer--searched all her
husband's places of deposit for private writing, but found no paper
addressed especially to her, except that "Synoptical Tabulation,"
which was probably only the beginning of many intended directions
for her guidance. In carrying out this bequest of labor to Dorothea,
as in all else, Mr. Casaubon had been slow and hesitating, oppressed in
the plan of transmitting his work, as he had been in executing it,
by the sense of moving heavily in a dim and clogging medium:
distrust of Dorothea's competence to arrange what he had prepared
was subdued only by distrust of any other redactor. But he had come
at last to create a trust for himself out of Dorothea's nature:
she could do what she resolved to do: and he willingly imagined her
toiling under the fetters of a promise to erect a tomb with his name
upon it. (Not that Mr. Casaubon called the future volumes a tomb;
he called them the Key to all Mythologies.) But the months gained
on him and left his plans belated: he had only had time to ask
for that promise by which he sought to keep his cold grasp on
Dorothea's life.

The grasp had slipped away. Bound by a pledge given from the
depths of her pity, she would have been capable of undertaking
a toil which her judgment whispered was vain for all uses except
that consecration of faithfulness which is a supreme use. But now
her judgment, instead of being controlled by duteous devotion,
was made active by the imbittering discovery that in her past union
there had lurked the hidden alienation of secrecy and suspicion.
The living, suffering man was no longer before her to awaken
her pity: there remained only the retrospect of painful subjection
to a husband whose thoughts had been lower than she had believed,
whose exorbitant claims for himself had even blinded his scrupulous
care for his own character, and made him defeat his own pride by
shocking men of ordinary honor. As for the property which was the
sign of that broken tie, she would have been glad to be free from
it and have nothing more than her original fortune which had been
settled on her, if there had not been duties attached to ownership,
which she ought not to flinch from. About this property many
troublous questions insisted on rising: had she not been right
in thinking that the half of it ought to go to Will Ladislaw?--
but was it not impossible now for her to do that act of justice?
Mr. Casaubon had taken a cruelly effective means of hindering her:
even with indignation against him in her heart, any act that seemed a
triumphant eluding of his purpose revolted her.

After collecting papers of business which she wished to examine,
she locked up again the desks and drawers--all empty of personal
words for her--empty of any sign that in her husband's lonely
brooding his heart had gone out to her in excuse or explanation;
and she went back to Freshitt with the sense that around his last hard
demand and his last injurious assertion of his power, the silence
was unbroken.

Dorothea tried now to turn her thoughts towards immediate duties,
and one of these was of a kind which others were determined to remind
her of. Lydgate's ear had caught eagerly her mention of the living,
and as soon as he could, he reopened the subject, seeing here a
possibility of making amends for the casting-vote he had once given
with an ill-satisfied conscience. "Instead of telling you anything
about Mr. Tyke," he said, "I should like to speak of another man--
Mr. Farebrother, the Vicar of St. Botolph's. His living is a poor one,
and gives him a stinted provision for himself and his family.
His mother, aunt, and sister all live with him, and depend upon him.
I believe he has never married because of them. I never heard
such good preaching as his--such plain, easy eloquence. He would
have done to preach at St. Paul's Cross after old Latimer. His talk
is just as good about all subjects: original, simple, clear.
I think him a remarkable fellow: he ought to have done more than he
has done."

"Why has he not done more?" said Dorothea, interested now in all
who had slipped below their own intention.

"That's a hard question," said Lydgate. "I find myself that it's
uncommonly difficult to make the right thing work: there are so many
strings pulling at once. Farebrother often hints that he has got
into the wrong profession; he wants a wider range than that of a
poor clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him on.
He is very fond of Natural History and various scientific matters,
and he is hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position.
He has no money to spare--hardly enough to use; and that has led
him into card-playing--Middlemarch is a great place for whist.
He does play for money, and he wins a good deal. Of course that
takes him into company a little beneath him, and makes him slack
about some things; and yet, with all that, looking at him as a whole,
I think he is one of the most blameless men I ever knew. He has
neither venom nor doubleness in him, and those often go with a more
correct outside."

"I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit,"
said Dorothea; "I wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off."

"I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted
into plenty: he would be glad of the time for other things."

"My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man,"
said Dorothea, meditatively. She was wishing it were possible to restore
the times of primitive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr. Farebrother
with a strong desire to rescue him from his chance-gotten money.

"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate.
"His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a
parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better.
Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now,
is an impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut
the principal figure. I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at
the Hospital: a good deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard
to make people uncomfortably--aware of him. Besides, an apostolic
man at Lowick!--he ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it
is needful to preach to the birds."

"True," said Dorothea. "It is hard to imagine what sort of notions
our farmers and laborers get from their teaching. I have been
looking into a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would
be of no use at Lowick--I mean, about imputed righteousness and
the prophecies in the Apocalypse. I have always been thinking
of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever
I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other,
I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes in the most
good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it.
It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.
But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear him preach."

"Do," said Lydgate; "I trust to the effect of that. He is very
much beloved, but he has his enemies too: there are always
people who can't forgive an able man for differing from them.
And that money-winning business is really a blot. You don't,
of course, see many Middlemarch people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is
constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a great friend of Mr. Farebrother's
old ladies, and would be glad to sing the Vicar's praises.
One of the old ladies--Miss Noble, the aunt--is a wonderfully
quaint picture of self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw gallants
her about sometimes. I met them one day in a back street:
you know Ladislaw's look--a sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat;
and this little old maid reaching up to his arm--they looked
like a couple dropped out of a romantic comedy. But the best
evidence about Farebrother is to see him and hear him."

Happily Dorothea was in her private sitting-room when this
conversation occurred, and there was no one present to make Lydgate's
innocent introduction of Ladislaw painful to her. As was usual
with him in matters of personal gossip, Lydgate had quite forgotten
Rosamond's remark that she thought Will adored Mrs. Casaubon.
At that moment he was only caring for what would recommend the
Farebrother family; and he had purposely given emphasis to the worst
that could be said about the Vicar, in order to forestall objections.
In the weeks. since Mr. Casaubon's death he had hardly seen
Ladislaw, and he had heard no rumor to warn him that Mr. Brooke's
confidential secretary was a dangerous subject with Mrs. Casaubon.
When he was gone, his picture of Ladislaw lingered in her mind
and disputed the ground with that question of the Lowick living.
What was Will Ladislaw thinking about her? Would he hear of
that fact which made her cheeks burn as they never used to do?
And how would he feel when he heard it?--But she could see
as well as possible how he smiled down at the little old maid.
An Italian with white mice!--on the contrary, he was a creature
who entered into every one's feelings, and could take the pressure
of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance.

CHAPTER LI.

        Party is Nature too, and you shall see
        By force of Logic how they both agree:
        The Many in the One, the One in Many;
        All is not Some, nor Some the same as Any:
        Genus holds species, both are great or small;
        One genus highest, one not high at all;
        Each species has its differentia too,
        This is not That, and He was never You,
        Though this and that are AYES, and you and he
        Are like as one to one, or three to three.

No gossip about Mr. Casaubon's will had yet reached Ladislaw:
the air seemed to be filled with the dissolution of Parliament
and the coming election, as the old wakes and fairs were filled
with the rival clatter of itinerant shows; and more private noises
were taken little notice of. The famous "dry election" was at hand,
in which the depths of public feeling might be measured by the low
flood-mark of drink. Will Ladislaw was one of the busiest at this time;
and though Dorothea's widowhood was continually in his thought,
he was so far from wishing to be spoken to on the subject,
that when Lydgate sought him out to tell him what had passed about
the Lowick living, he answered rather waspishly--

"Why should you bring me into the matter? I never see Mrs. Casaubon,
and am not likely to see her, since she is at Freshitt.
I never go there. It is Tory ground, where I and the `Pioneer'
are no more welcome than a poacher and his gun."

The fact was that Will had been made the more susceptible by
observing that Mr. Brooke, instead of wishing him, as before,
to come to the Grange oftener than was quite agreeable to himself,
seemed now to contrive that he should go there as little as possible.
This was a shuffling concession of Mr. Brooke's to Sir James
Chettam's indignant remonstrance; and Will, awake to the slightest
hint in this direction, concluded that he was to be kept away from
the Grange on Dorothea's account. Her friends, then, regarded him
with some suspicion? Their fears were quite superfluous: they were
very much mistaken if they imagined that he would put himself
forward as a needy adventurer trying to win the favor of a rich woman.

Until now Will had never fully seen the chasm between himself
and Dorothea--until now that he was come to the brink of it, and saw
her on the other side. He began, not without some inward rage,
to think of going away from the neighborhood: it would be impossible
for him to show any further interest in Dorothea without subjecting
himself to disagreeable imputations--perhaps even in her mind,
which others might try to poison.

"We are forever divided," said Will. "I might as well be at Rome;
she would be no farther from me." But what we call our despair
is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope. There were
plenty of reasons why he should not go--public reasons why he
should not quit his post at this crisis, leaving Mr. Brooke in the
lurch when he needed "coaching" for the election, and when there
was so much canvassing, direct and indirect, to be carried on.
Will could not like to leave his own chessmen in the heat of a game;
and any candidate on the right side, even if his brain and marrow
had been as soft as was consistent with a gentlemanly bearing,
might help to turn a majority. To coach Mr. Brooke and keep him
steadily to the idea that he must pledge himself to vote for the actual
Reform Bill, instead of insisting on his independence and power
of pulling up in time, was not an easy task. Mr. Farebrother's
prophecy of a fourth candidate "in the bag" had not yet been fulfilled,
neither the Parliamentary Candidate Society nor any other power
on the watch to secure a reforming majority seeing a worthy nodus
for interference while there was a second reforming candidate
like Mr. Brooke, who might be returned at his own expense;
and the fight lay entirely between Pinkerton the old Tory member,
Bagster the new Whig member returned at the last election, and Brooke
the future independent member, who was to fetter himself for this
occasion only. Mr. Hawley and his party would bend all their
forces to the return of Pinkerton, and Mr. Brooke's success must
depend either on plumpers which would leave Bagster in the rear,
or on the new minting of Tory votes into reforming votes.
The latter means, of course, would be preferable.

This prospect of converting votes was a dangerous distraction to
Mr. Brooke: his impression that waverers were likely to be allured
by wavering statements, and also the liability of his mind to stick
afresh at opposing arguments as they turned up in his memory,
gave Will Ladislaw much trouble.

"You know there are tactics in these things," said Mr. Brooke;
"meeting people half-way--tempering your ideas--saying, `Well now,
there's something in that,' and so on. I agree with you that this
is a peculiar occasion--the country with a will of its own--
political unions--that sort of thing--but we sometimes cut with rather
too sharp a knife, Ladislaw. These ten-pound householders, now:
why ten? Draw the line somewhere--yes: but why just at ten?
That's a difficult question, now, if you go into it."

"Of course it is," said Will, impatiently. "But if you are to wait
till we get a logical Bill, you must put yourself forward as
a revolutionist, and then Middlemarch would not elect you, I fancy.
As for trimming, this is not a time for trimming."

Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still
appeared to him a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley; but after
an interval the wisdom of his own methods reasserted itself,
and he was again drawn into using them with much hopefulness.
At this stage of affairs he was in excellent spirits, which even
supported him under large advances of money; for his powers
of convincing and persuading had not yet been, tested by anything
more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing other orators,
or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which he came away
with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it
was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing.
He was a little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey,
a chief representative in Middlemarch of that great social power,
the retail trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters
in the borough--willing for his own part to supply an equal quality
of teas and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as well as to agree
impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old that
this necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town;
for even if there were no danger in holding out hopes to all
parties beforehand, there would be the painful necessity at last
of disappointing respectable people whose names were on his books.
He was accustomed to receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of Tipton;
but then, there were many of Pinkerton's committee whose opinions
had a great weight of grocery on their side. Mr. Mawmsey thinking
that Mr. Brooke, as not too "clever in his intellects," was the more
likely to forgive a grocer who gave a hostile vote under pressure,
had become confidential in his back parlor.

"As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light," he said, rattling the
small silver in his pocket, and smiling affably. "Will it support
Mrs. Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children when I am no more?
I put the question FICTIOUSLY, knowing what must be the answer.
Very well, sir. I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am
to do when gentlemen come to me and say, `Do as you like, Mawmsey;
but if you vote against us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere:
when I sugar my liquor I like to feel that I am benefiting the country
by maintaining tradesmen of the right color.' Those very words have
been spoken to me, sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting.
I don't mean by your honorable self, Mr. Brooke."

"No, no, no--that's narrow, you know. Until my butler complains
to me of your goods, Mr. Mawmsey," said Mr. Brooke, soothingly,
"until I hear that you send bad sugars, spices--that sort of thing--
I shall never order him to go elsewhere."

"Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged," said Mr. Mawmsey,
feeling that politics were clearing up a little. "There would be some
pleasure in voting for a gentleman who speaks in that honorable manner."

"Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the right thing to put
yourself on our side. This Reform will touch everybody by-and-by--
a thoroughly popular measure--a sort of A, B, C, you know,
that must come first before the rest can follow. I quite agree
with you that you've got to look at the thing in a family light:
but public spirit, now. We're all one family, you know--
it's all one cupboard. Such a thing as a vote, now: why, it may
help to make men's fortunes at the Cape--there's no knowing
what may be the effect of a vote," Mr. Brooke ended, with a sense
of being a little out at sea, though finding it still enjoyable.
But Mr. Mawmsey answered in a tone of decisive check.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I can't afford that. When I give a vote
I must know what I am doing; I must look to what will be the effects
on my till and ledger, speaking respectfully. Prices, I'll admit,
are what nobody can know the merits of; and the sudden falls after
you've bought in currants, which are a goods that will not keep--
I've never; myself seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke
to human pride. But as to one family, there's debtor and creditor,
I hope; they're not going to reform that away; else I should vote
for things staying as they are. Few men have less need to cry
for change than I have, personally speaking--that is, for self
and family. I am not one of those who have nothing to lose:
I mean as to respectability both in parish and private business,
and noways in respect of your honorable self and custom, which you
was good enough to say you would not withdraw from me, vote or no vote,
while the article sent in was satisfactory."

After this conversation Mr. Mawmsey went up and boasted to his wife
that he had been rather too many for Brooke of Tipton, and that he
didn't mind so much now about going to the poll.

Mr. Brooke on this occasion abstained from boasting of his tactics
to Ladislaw, who for his part was glad enough to persuade himself
that he had no concern with any canvassing except the purely
argumentative sort, and that he worked no meaner engine than knowledge.
Mr. Brooke, necessarily, had his agents, who understood the nature
of the Middlemarch voter and the means of enlisting his ignorance
on the side of the Bill--which were remarkably similar to the means
of enlisting it on the side against the Bill. Will stopped his ears.
Occasionally Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our
eating and apparel, could hardly go on if our imaginations were
too active about processes. There were plenty of dirty-handed men
in the world to do dirty business; and Will protested to himself
that his share in bringing Mr. Brooke through would be quite innocent.

But whether he should succeed in that mode of contributing
to the majority on the right side was very doubtful to him.
He had written out various speeches and memoranda for speeches,
but he had begun to perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had
the burthen of remembering any train of thought, would let it drop,
run away in search of it, and not easily come back again. To collect
documents is one mode of serving your country, and to remember
the contents of a document is another. No! the only way in which
Mr. Brooke could be coerced into thinking of the right arguments
at the right time was to be well plied with them till they took
up all the room in his brain. But here there was the difficulty
of finding room, so many things having been taken in beforehand.
Mr. Brooke himself observed that his ideas stood rather in his way
when he was speaking.

However, Ladislaw's coaching was forthwith to be put to the test,
for before the day of nomination Mr. Brooke was to explain himself to
the worthy electors of Middlemarch from the balcony of the White Hart,
which looked out advantageously at an angle of the market-place,
commanding a large area in front and two converging streets.
It was a fine May morning, and everything seemed hopeful:
there was some prospect of an understanding between Bagster's
committee and Brooke's, to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish
as a Liberal lawyer, and such manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale and
Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which almost counterbalanced Mr. Hawley
and his associates who sat for Pinkerton at the Green Dragon.
Mr. Brooke, conscious of having weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet"
against him, by his reforms as a landlord in the last half year,
and hearing himself cheered a little as he drove into the town,
felt his heart tolerably light under his buff-colored waistcoat.
But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments
seem comfortably remote until the last.

"This looks well, eh?" said Mr. Brooke as the crowd gathered.
"I shall have a good audience, at any rate. I like this, now--
this kind of public made up of one's own neighbors, you know."

The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never
thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached
to him than if he had been sent in a box from London. But they
listened without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced
the candidate, one of them--a political personage from Brassing,
who came to tell Middlemarch its duty--spoke so fully, that it was
alarming to think what the candidate could find to say after him.
Meanwhile the crowd became denser, and as the political personage
neared the end of his speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change
in his sensations while he still handled his eye-glass, trifled
with documents before him, and exchanged remarks with his committee,
as a man to whom the moment of summons was indifferent.

"I'll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw," he said, with an
easy air, to Will, who was close behind him, and presently handed
him the supposed fortifier. It was ill-chosen; for Mr. Brooke
was an abstemious man, and to drink a second glass of sherry
quickly at no great interval from the first was a surprise
to his system which tended to scatter his energies instead of
collecting them Pray pity him: so many English gentlemen make
themselves miserable by speechifying on entirely private grounds!
whereas Mr. Brooke wished to serve his country by standing
for Parliament--which, indeed, may also be done on private grounds,
but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some speechifying.

It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr. Brooke was at
all anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all right; he should have
it quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope.
Embarking would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might
come after was alarming. "And questions, now," hinted the demon
just waking up in his stomach, "somebody may put questions
about the schedules.--Ladislaw," he continued, aloud, "just hand
me the memorandum of the schedules."

When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were
quite loud enough to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings,
and other expressions of adverse theory, which were so moderate that
Mr. Standish (decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him,
"This looks dangerous, by God! Hawley has got some deeper plan
than this." Still, the cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate
could look more amiable than Mr. Brooke, with the memorandum
in his breast-pocket, his left hand on the rail of the balcony,
and his right trifling with his eye-glass. The striking points
in his appearance were his buff waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair,
and neutral physiognomy. He began with some confidence.

"Gentlemen--Electors of Middlemarch!"

This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it
seemed natural.

"I'm uncommonly glad to be here--I was never so proud and happy
in my life--never so happy, you know."

This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing;
for, unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away--even couplets
from Pope may be but "fallings from us, vanishings," when fear
clutches us, and a glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among
our ideas. Ladislaw, who stood at the window behind the speaker,
thought, "it's all up now. The only chance is that, since the best
thing won't always do, floundering may answer for once." Mr. Brooke,
meanwhile, having lost other clews, fell back on himself and his
qualifications--always an appropriate graceful subject for a candidate.

"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends--you've known
me on the bench a good while--I've always gone a good deal into
public questions--machinery, now, and machine-breaking--you're many
of you concerned with machinery, and I've been going into that lately.
It won't do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on--
trade, manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples--that kind
of thing--since Adam Smith, that must go on. We must look all over
the globe:--`Observation with extensive view,' must look everywhere,
`from China to Peru,' as somebody says--Johnson, I think, `The Rambler,'
you know. That is what I have done up to a certain point--not as far
as Peru; but I've not always stayed at home--I saw it wouldn't do.
I've been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go--
and then, again, in the Baltic. The Baltic, now."

Plying among his recollections in this way, Mr. Brooke might have
got along, easily to himself, and would have come back from the
remotest seas without trouble; but a diabolical procedure had been set
up by the enemy. At one and the same moment there had risen above
the shoulders of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within
ten yards of him, the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat,
eye-glass, and neutral physiognomy, painted on rag; and there
had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of the cuckoo,
a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of his words. Everybody looked
up at the open windows in the houses at the opposite angles
of the converging streets; but they were either blank, or filled
by laughing listeners. The most innocent echo has an impish mockery
in it when it follows a gravely persistent speaker, and this echo
was not at all innocent; if it did not follow with the precision
of a natural echo, it had a wicked choice of the words it overtook.
By the time it said, "The Baltic, now," the laugh which had been
running through the audience became a general shout, and but for
the sobering effects of party and that great public cause which
the entanglement of things had identified with "Brooke of Tipton,"
the laugh might have caught his committee. Mr. Bulstrode asked,
reprehensively, what the new police was doing; but a voice could not
well be collared, and an attack on the effigy of the candidate would
have been too equivocal, since Hawley probably meant it to be pelted.

Mr. Brooke himself was not in a position to be quickly conscious
of anything except a general slipping away of ideas within himself:
he had even a little singing in the ears, and he was the only person
who had not yet taken distinct account of the echo or discerned the
image of himself. Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly
captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. Mr. Brooke heard
the laughter; but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance,
and he was at this moment additionally excited by the tickling,
stinging sense that his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him
from the Baltic.

"That reminds me," he went on, thrusting a hand into his side-pocket,
with an easy air, "if I wanted a precedent, you know--but we never want
a precedent for the right thing--but there is Chatham, now; I can't
say I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt--
he was not a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know."

"Blast your ideas! we want the Bill," said a loud rough voice
from the crowd below.

Immediately the invisible Punch, who had hitherto followed
Mr. Brooke, repeated, "Blast your ideas! we want the Bill."
The laugh was louder than ever, and for the first time Mr. Brooke
being himself silent, heard distinctly the mocking echo. But it
seemed to ridicule his interrupter, and in that light was encouraging;
so he replied with amenity--

"There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we
meet for but to speak our minds--freedom of opinion, freedom of
the press, liberty--that kind of thing? The Bill, now--you shall have
the Bill"--here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his eye-glass
and take the paper from his breast-pocket, with a sense of being
practical and coming to particulars. The invisible Punch followed:--

"You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest,
and a seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds,
seven shillings, and fourpence."

Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye-glass
fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw the image of himself,
which had come nearer. The next moment he saw it dolorously
bespattered with eggs. His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.

"Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth--all that is very
well"--here an unpleasant egg broke on Mr. Brooke's shoulder,
as the echo said, "All that is very well;" then came a hail of eggs,
chiefly aimed at the image, but occasionally hitting the original,
as if by chance. There was a stream of new men pushing among
the crowd; whistles, yells, bellowings, and fifes made all the greater
hubbub because there was shouting and struggling to put them down.
No voice would have had wing enough to rise above the uproar,
and Mr. Brooke, disagreeably anointed, stood his ground no longer.
The frustration would have been less exasperating if it had been
less gamesome and boyish: a serious assault of which the newspaper
reporter "can aver that it endangered the learned gentleman's ribs,"
or can respectfully bear witness to "the soles of that gentleman's boots
having been visible above the railing," has perhaps more consolations
attached to it.

Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room, saying, as carelessly
as he could, "This is a little too bad, you know. I should have got
the ear of the people by-and-by--but they didn't give me time.
I should have gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know," he added,
glancing at Ladislaw. "However, things will come all right at
the nomination."

But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right;
on the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political
personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing
new devices.

"It was Bowyer who did it," said Mr. Standish, evasively. "I know
it as well as if he had been advertised. He's uncommonly good
at ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God! Hawley has
been having him to dinner lately: there's a fund of talent in Bowyer."

"Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I
would have invited him to dine," said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone
through a great deal of inviting for the good of his country.

"There's not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer,"
said Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows
were always to turn the scale."

Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his
"principal," and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a half-formed
resolve to throw up the "Pioneer" and Mr. Brooke together.
Why should he stay? If the impassable gulf between himself and
Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going
away and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying
here and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of
Brooke's. Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do--
in five years, for example: political writing, political speaking,
would get a higher value now public life was going to be wider and
more national, and they might give him such distinction that he would
not seem to be asking Dorothea to step down to him. Five years:--
if he could only be sure that she cared for him more than for others;
if he could only make her aware that he stood aloof until he could
tell his love without lowering himself--then he could go away easily,
and begin a career which at five-and-twenty seemed probable enough
in the inward order of things, where talent brings fame, and fame
everything else which is delightful. He could speak and he could write;
he could master any subject if he chose, and he meant always to take
the side of reason and justice, on which he would carry all his ardor.
Why should he not one day be lifted above the shoulders of the crowd,
and feel that he had won that eminence well? Without doubt he would
leave Middlemarch, go to town, and make himself fit for celebrity
by "eating his dinners."

But not immediately: not until some kind of sign had passed between
him and Dorothea. He could not be satisfied until she knew why,
even if he were the man she would choose to marry, he would not
marry her. Hence he must keep his post and bear with Mr. Brooke
a little longer.

But he soon had reason to suspect that Mr. Brooke had
anticipated him in the wish to break up their connection.
Deputations without and voices within had concurred in inducing
that philanthropist to take a stronger measure than usual for the
good of mankind; namely, to withdraw in favor of another candidate,
to whom he left the advantages of his canvassing machinery.
He himself called this a strong measure, but observed that
his health was less capable of sustaining excitement than he had imagined.

"I have felt uneasy about the chest--it won't do to carry that too far,"
he said to Ladislaw in explaining the affair. "I must pull up.
Poor Casaubon was a warning, you know. I've made some heavy advances,
but I've dug a channel. It's rather coarse work--this electioneering,
eh, Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it. However, we have dug
a channel with the `Pioneer'--put things in a track, and so on.
A more ordinary man than you might carry it on now--more ordinary,
you know."

"Do you wish me to give it up?" said Will, the quick color coming
in his face, as he rose from the writing-table, and took a turn
of three steps with his hands in his pockets. "I am ready to do
so whenever you wish it."

"As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest opinion of
your powers, you know. But about the `Pioneer,' I have been consulting
a little with some of the men on our side, and they are inclined to take
it into their hands--indemnify me to a certain extent--carry it on,
in fact. And under the circumstances, you might like to give up--
might find a better field. These people might not take that high view
of you which I have always taken, as an alter ego, a right hand--
though I always looked forward to your doing something else.
I think of having a run into France. But I'll write you any letters,
you know--to Althorpe and people of that kind. I've met Althorpe."

"I am exceedingly obliged to you," said Ladislaw, proudly. "Since you
are going to part with the `Pioneer,' I need not trouble you about
the steps I shall take. I may choose to continue here for the present."

After Mr. Brooke had left him Will said to himself, "The rest
of the family have been urging him to get rid of me, and he
doesn't care now about my going. I shall stay as long as I like.
I shall go of my own movements and not because they are afraid
of me."

CHAPTER LII.

                                     "His heart
        The lowliest duties on itself did lay."
                                        --WORDSWORTH.

On that June evening when Mr. Farebrother knew that he was to have
the Lowick living, there was joy in the old fashioned parlor,
and even the portraits of the great lawyers seemed to look on
with satisfaction. His mother left her tea and toast untouched,
but sat with her usual pretty primness, only showing her emotion by
that flush in the cheeks and brightness in the eyes which give an old
woman a touching momentary identity with her far-off youthful self,
and saying decisively--

"The greatest comfort, Camden, is that you have deserved it."

"When a man gets a good berth, mother, half the deserving must
come after," said the son, brimful of pleasure, and not trying
to conceal it. The gladness in his face was of that active kind
which seems to have energy enough not only to flash outwardly,
but to light up busy vision within: one seemed to see thoughts,
as well as delight, in his glances.

"Now, aunt," he went on, rubbing his hands and looking at Miss Noble,
who was making tender little beaver-like noises, "There shall
be sugar-candy always on the table for you to steal and give
to the children, and you shall have a great many new stockings
to make presents of, and you shall darn your own more than ever!"

Miss Noble nodded at her nephew with a subdued half-frightened laugh,
conscious of having already dropped an additional lump of sugar
into her basket on the strength of the new preferment.

"As for you, Winny"--the Vicar went on--"I shall make no difficulty
about your marrying any Lowick bachelor--Mr. Solomon Featherstone,
for example, as soon as I find you are in love with him."

Miss Winifred, who had been looking at her brother all the while
and crying heartily, which was her way of rejoicing, smiled through
her tears and said, "You must set me the example, Cam: YOU
must marry now."

"With all my heart. But who is in love with me? I am a seedy
old fellow," said the Vicar, rising, pushing his chair away
and looking down at himself. "What do you say, mother?"

"You are a handsome man, Camden: though not so fine a figure
of a man as your father," said the old lady.

"I wish you would marry Miss Garth, brother," said Miss Winifred.
"She would make us so lively at Lowick."

"Very fine! You talk as if young women were tied up to be chosen,
like poultry at market; as if I had only to ask and everybody would
have me," said the Vicar, not caring to specify.

"We don't want everybody," said Miss Winifred. "But YOU would
like Miss Garth, mother, shouldn't you?"

"My son's choice shall be mine," said Mrs. Farebrother,
with majestic discretion, "and a wife would be most welcome,
Camden. You will want your whist at home when we go to Lowick,
and Henrietta Noble never was a whist-player." (Mrs. Farebrother
always called her tiny old sister by that magnificent name.)

"I shall do without whist now, mother."

"Why so, Camden? In my time whist was thought an undeniable
amusement for a good churchman," said Mrs. Farebrother, innocent of
the meaning that whist had for her son, and speaking rather sharply,
as at some dangerous countenancing of new doctrine.

"I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes,"
said the Vicar, preferring not to discuss the virtues of that game.

He had already said to Dorothea, "I don't feel bound to give
up St. Botolph's. It is protest enough against the pluralism
they want to reform if I give somebody else most of the money.
The stronger thing is not to give up power, but to use it well."

"I have thought of that," said Dorothea. "So far as self is concerned,
I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep them.
It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I
felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead
of me."

"It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power,"
said Mr. Farebrother.

His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active
when the yoke of life ceases to gall them. He made no display
of humility on the subject, but in his heart he felt rather ashamed
that his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get
benefices were free from.

"I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman,"
he said to Lydgate, "but perhaps it will be better to try and
make as good a clergyman out of myself as I can. That is the
well-beneficed point of view, you perceive, from which difficulties
are much simplified," he ended, smiling.

The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy.
But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly--something like a heavy
friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg
within our gates.

Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under
the disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from Omnibus College
with his bachelor's degree.

"I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother," said Fred,
whose fair open face was propitiating, "but you are the only
friend I can consult. I told you everything once before,
and you were so good that I can't help coming to you again."

"Sit down, Fred, I'm ready to hear and do anything I can,"
said the Vicar, who was busy packing some small objects for removal,
and went on with his work.

"I wanted to tell you--" Fred hesitated an instant and then went
on plungingly, "I might go into the Church now; and really,
look where I may, I can't see anything else to do. I don't
like it, but I know it's uncommonly hard on my father to say so,
after he has spent a good deal of money in educating me for it."
Fred paused again an instant, and then repeated, "and I can't see
anything else to do."

"I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way
with him. He said it was too late. But you have got over one
bridge now: what are your other difficulties?"

"Merely that I don't like it. I don't like divinity, and preaching,
and feeling obliged to look serious. I like riding across country,
and doing as other men do. I don't mean that I want to be a bad
fellow in any way; but I've no taste for the sort of thing
people expect of a clergyman. And yet what else am I to do?
My father can't spare me any capital, else I might go into farming.
And he has no room for me in his trade. And of course I can't
begin to study for law or physic now, when my father wants me
to earn something. It's all very well to say I'm wrong to go into
the Church; but those who say so might as well tell me to go into
the backwoods."

Fred's voice had taken a tone of grumbling remonstrance,
and Mr. Farebrother might have been inclined to smile
if his mind had not been too busy in imagining more than Fred told him.

"Have you any difficulties about doctrines--about the Articles?"
he said, trying hard to think of the question simply for Fred's sake.

"No; I suppose the Articles are right. I am not prepared with any
arguments to disprove them, and much better, cleverer fellows than I
am go in for them entirely. I think it would be rather ridiculous
in me to urge scruples of that sort, as if I were a judge,"
said Fred, quite simply.

"I suppose, then, it has occurred to you that you might be a fair
parish priest without being much of a divine?"

"Of course, if I am obliged to be a clergyman, I shall try and do
my duty, though I mayn't like it. Do you think any body ought
to blame me?"

"For going into the Church under the circumstances? That depends
on your conscience, Fred--how far you have counted the cost,
and seen what your position will require of you. I can only tell
you about myself, that I have always been too lax, and have been
uneasy in consequence."

"But there is another hindrance," said Fred, coloring. "I did
not tell you before, though perhaps I may have said things
that made you guess it. There is somebody I am very fond of:
I have loved her ever since we were children."

"Miss Garth, I suppose?" said the Vicar, examining some labels
very closely.

"Yes. I shouldn't mind anything if she would have me. And I know
I could be a good fellow then."

"And you think she returns the feeling?"

"She never will say so; and a good while ago she made me promise not
to speak to her about it again. And she has set her mind especially
against my being a clergyman; I know that. But I can't give her up.
I do think she cares about me. I saw Mrs. Garth last night, and she
said that Mary was staying at Lowick Rectory with Miss Farebrother."

"Yes, she is very kindly helping my sister. Do you wish to go there?"

"No, I want to ask a great favor of you. I am ashamed to bother
you in this way; but Mary might listen to what you said, if you
mentioned the subject to her--I mean about my going into the Church."

"That is rather a delicate task, my dear Fred. I shall have to
presuppose your attachment to her; and to enter on the subject as you
wish me to do, will be asking her to tell me whether she returns it."

"That is what I want her to tell you," said Fred, bluntly. "I don't
know what to do, unless I can get at her feeling."

"You mean that you would be guided by that as to your going into
the Church?"

"If Mary said she would never have me I might as well go wrong
in one way as another."

"That is nonsense, Fred. Men outlive their love, but they don't
outlive the consequences of their recklessness."

"Not my sort of love: I have never been without loving Mary.
If I had to give her up, it would be like beginning to live on
wooden legs."

"Will she not be hurt at my intrusion?"

"No, I feel sure she will not. She respects you more than any one,
and she would not put you off with fun as she does me. Of course I
could not have told any one else, or asked any one else to speak to her,
but you. There is no one else who could be such a friend to both
of us." Fred paused a moment, and then said, rather complainingly,
"And she ought to acknowledge that I have worked in order to pass.
She ought to believe that I would exert myself for her sake."

There was a moment's silence before Mr. Farebrother laid down his work,
and putting out his hand to Fred said--

"Very well, my boy. I will do what you wish."

That very day Mr. Farebrother went to Lowick parsonage on the nag
which he had just set up. "Decidedly I am an old stalk," he thought,
"the young growths are pushing me aside."

He found Mary in the garden gathering roses and sprinkling the petals
on a sheet. The sun was low, and tall trees sent their shadows across
the grassy walks where Mary was moving without bonnet or parasol.
She did not observe Mr. Farebrother's approach along the grass,
and had just stooped down to lecture a small black-and-tan terrier,
which would persist in walking on the sheet and smelling at the
rose-leaves as Mary sprinkled them. She took his fore-paws in one hand,
and lifted up the forefinger of the other, while the dog wrinkled
his brows and looked embarrassed. "Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you,"
Mary was saying in a grave contralto. "This is not becoming in a
sensible dog; anybody would think you were a silly young gentleman."

"You are unmerciful to young gentlemen, Miss Garth," said the Vicar,
within two yards of her.

Mary started up and blushed. "It always answers to reason with Fly,"
she said, laughingly.

"But not with young gentlemen?"

"Oh, with some, I suppose; since some of them turn into excellent men."

"I am glad of that admission, because I want at this very moment
to interest you in a young gentleman."

"Not a silly one, I hope," said Mary, beginning to pluck
the roses again, and feeling her heart beat uncomfortably.

"No; though perhaps wisdom is not his strong point,
but rather affection and sincerity. However, wisdom lies
more in those two qualities than people are apt to imagine.
I hope you know by those marks what young gentleman I mean."

"Yes, I think I do," said Mary, bravely, her face getting more serious,
and her hands cold; "it must be Fred Vincy."

"He has asked me to consult you about his going into the Church.
I hope you will not think that I consented to take a liberty in
promising to do so."

"On the contrary, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, giving up the roses,
and folding her arms, but unable to look up, "whenever you have
anything to say to me I feel honored."

"But before I enter on that question, let me just touch a point on
which your father took me into confidence; by the way, it was that
very evening on which I once before fulfilled a mission from Fred,
just after he had gone to college. Mr. Garth told me what happened
on the night of Featherstone's death--how you refused to burn the will;
and he said that you had some heart-prickings on that subject,
because you had been the innocent means of hindering Fred from
getting his ten thousand pounds. I have kept that in mind,
and I have heard something that may relieve you on that score--
may show you that no sin-offering is demanded from you there.".

Mr. Farebrother paused a moment and looked at Mary. He meant
to give Fred his full advantage, but it would be well, he thought,
to clear her mind of any superstitions, such as women sometimes follow
when they do a man the wrong of marrying him as an act of atonement.
Mary's cheeks had begun to burn a little, and she was mute.

"I mean, that your action made no real difference to Fred's lot.
I find that the first will would not have been legally good after the
burning of the last; it would not have stood if it had been disputed,
and you may be sure it would have been disputed. So, on that score,
you may feel your mind free."

"Thank you, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, earnestly. "I am grateful
to you for remembering my feelings."

"Well, now I may go on. Fred, you know, has taken his degree.
He has worked his way so far, and now the question is, what is
he to do? That question is so difficult that he is inclined to
follow his father's wishes and enter the Church, though you know
better than I do that he was quite set against that formerly.
I have questioned him on the subject, and I confess I see no
insuperable objection to his being a clergyman, as things go.
He says that he could turn his mind to doing his best in that vocation,
on one condition. If that condition were fulfilled I would do my
utmost in helping Fred on. After a time--not, of course, at first--
he might be with me as my curate, and he would have so much to do
that his stipend would be nearly what I used to get as vicar.
But I repeat that there is a condition without which all this good
cannot come to pass. He has opened his heart to me, Miss Garth,
and asked me to plead for him. The condition lies entirely in
your feeling."

Mary looked so much moved, that he said after a moment, "Let us
walk a little;" and when they were walking he added, "To speak
quite plainly, Fred will not take any course which would lessen the
chance that you would consent to be his wife; but with that prospect,
he will try his best at anything you approve."

"I cannot possibly say that I will ever be his wife, Mr. Farebrother:
but I certainly never will be his wife if he becomes a clergyman.
What you say is most generous and kind; I don't mean for a moment
to correct your judgment. It is only that I have my girlish,
mocking way of looking at things," said Mary, with a returning
sparkle of playfulness in her answer which only made its modesty
more charming.

"He wishes me to report exactly what you think," said Mr. Farebrother.

"I could not love a man who is ridiculous," said Mary, not choosing to
go deeper. "Fred has sense and knowledge enough to make him respectable,
if he likes, in some good worldly business, but I can never imagine
him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings, and praying
by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a caricature.
His being a clergyman would be only for gentility's sake, and I think
there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile gentility.
I used to think that of Mr. Crowse, with his empty face and neat
umbrella, and mincing little speeches. What right have such men
to represent Christianity--as if it were an institution for getting up
idiots genteelly--as if--" Mary checked herself. She had been carried
along as if she had been speaking to Fred instead of Mr. Farebrother.

"Young women are severe: they don't feel the stress of action
as men do, though perhaps I ought to make you an exception there.
But you don't put Fred Vincy on so low a level as that?"

"No, indeed, he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show
it as a clergyman. He would be a piece of professional affectation."

"Then the answer is quite decided. As a clergyman he could have
no hope?"

Mary shook her head.

"But if he braved all the difficulties of getting his bread
in some other way--will you give him the support of hope?
May he count on winning you?"

"I think Fred ought not to need telling again what I have already
said to him," Mary answered, with a slight resentment in her manner.
"I mean that he ought not to put such questions until he has done
something worthy, instead of saying that he could do it."

Mr. Farebrother was silent for a minute or more, and then, as they
turned and paused under the shadow of a maple at the end of a grassy
walk, said, "I understand that you resist any attempt to fetter you,
but either your feeling for Fred Vincy excludes your entertaining
another attachment, or it does not: either he may count on your
remaining single until he shall have earned your hand, or he may in any
case be disappointed. Pardon me, Mary--you know I used to catechise
you under that name--but when the state of a woman's affections
touches the happiness of another life--of more lives than one--I think
it would be the nobler course for her to be perfectly direct and open."

Mary in her turn was silent, wondering not at Mr. Farebrother's
manner but at his tone, which had a grave restrained emotion in it.
When the strange idea flashed across her that his words had reference
to himself, she was incredulous, and ashamed of entertaining it.
She had never thought that any man could love her except Fred,
who had espoused her with the umbrella ring, when she wore socks
and little strapped shoes; still less that she could be of any
importance to Mr. Farebrother, the cleverest man in her narrow circle.
She had only time to feel that all this was hazy and perhaps illusory;
but one thing was clear and determined--her answer.

"Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you
that I have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any
one else. I should never be quite happy if I thought he was
unhappy for the loss of me. It has taken such deep root in me--
my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much
if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot
imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker. I should like
better than anything to see him worthy of every one's respect.
But please tell him I will not promise to marry him till then:
I should shame and grieve my father and mother. He is free to choose
some one else."

"Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly,"
said Mr. Farebrother, putting out his hand to Mary,
"and I shall ride back to Middlemarch forthwith. With this
prospect before him, we shall get Fred into the right niche
somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your hands. God bless you!"

"Oh, please stay, and let me give you some tea," said Mary.
Her eyes filled with tears, for something indefinable, something like
the resolute suppression of a pain in Mr. Farebrother's manner,
made her feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she saw
her father's hands trembling in a moment of trouble.

"No, my dear, no. I must get back."

In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone
magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation
of whist, or even than the writing of penitential meditations.

CHAPTER LIII.

It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from what
outsiders call inconsistency--putting a dead mechanism of "ifs"
and "therefores" for the living myriad of hidden suckers whereby
the belief and the conduct are wrought into mutual sustainment.

Mr. Bulstrode, when he was hoping to acquire a new interest in Lowick,
had naturally had an especial wish that the new clergyman should be one
whom he thoroughly approved; and he believed it to be a chastisement
and admonition directed to his own shortcomings and those of the nation
at large, that just about the time when he came in possession of the
deeds which made him the proprietor of Stone Court, Mr. Farebrother
"read himself" into the quaint little church and preached his first
sermon to the congregation of farmers, laborers, and village artisans.
It was not that Mr. Bulstrode intended to frequent Lowick Church
or to reside at Stone Court for a good while to come: he had
bought the excellent farm and fine homestead simply as a retreat
which he might gradually enlarge as to the land and beautify as
to the dwelling, until it should be conducive to the divine glory
that he should enter on it as a residence, partially withdrawing
from his present exertions in the administration of business,
and throwing more conspicuously on the side of Gospel truth the weight
of local landed proprietorship, which Providence might increase by
unforeseen occasions of purchase. A strong leading in this direction
seemed to have been given in the surprising facility of getting
Stone Court, when every one had expected that Mr. Rigg Featherstone
would have clung to it as the Garden of Eden. That was what poor
old Peter himself had expected; having often, in imagination,
looked up through the sods above him, and, unobstructed by.
perspective, seen his frog-faced legatee enjoying the fine
old place to the perpetual surprise and disappointment of other survivors.

But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbors!
We judge from our own desires, and our neighbors themselves
are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.
The cool and judicious Joshua Rigg had not allowed his parent
to perceive that Stone Court was anything less than the chief good
in his estimation, and he had certainly wished to call it his own.
But as Warren Hastings looked at gold and thought of buying Daylesford,
so Joshua Rigg looked at Stone Court and thought of buying gold.
He had a very distinct and intense vision of his chief good,
the vigorous greed which he had inherited having taken a special form
by dint of circumstance: and his chief good was to be a moneychanger.
From his earliest employment as an errand-boy in a seaport,
he had looked through the windows of the moneychangers as other
boys look through the windows of the pastry-cooks; the fascination
had wrought itself gradually into a deep special passion; he meant,
when he had property, to do many things, one of them being to marry
a genteel young person; but these were all accidents and joys that
imagination could dispense with. The one joy after which his soul
thirsted was to have a money-changer's shop on a much-frequented quay,
to have locks all round him of which he held the keys, and to look
sublimely cool as he handled the breeding coins of all nations,
while helpless Cupidity looked at him enviously from the other side
of an iron lattice. The strength of that passion had been a power
enabling him to master all the knowledge necessary to gratify it.
And when others were thinking that he had settled at Stone Court for life,
Joshua himself was thinking that the moment now was not far off when he
should settle on the North Quay with the best appointments in safes
and locks.

Enough. We are concerned with looking at Joshua Rigg's sale of his
land from Mr. Bulstrode's point of view, and he interpreted it
as a cheering dispensation conveying perhaps a sanction to a purpose
which he had for some time entertained without external encouragement;
he interpreted it thus, but not too confidently, offering up his
thanksgiving in guarded phraseology. His doubts did not arise from the
possible relations of the event to Joshua Rigg's destiny, which belonged
to the unmapped regions not taken under the providential government,
except perhaps in an imperfect colonial way; but they arose from
reflecting that this dispensation too might be a chastisement
for himself, as Mr. Farebrother's induction to the living clearly was.

This was not what Mr. Bulstrode said to any man for the sake of
deceiving him: it was what he said to himself--it was as genuinely
his mode of explaining events as any theory of yours may be,
if you happen to disagree with him. For the egoism which enters
into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more
our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

However, whether for sanction or for chastisement, Mr. Bulstrode,
hardly fifteen months after the death of Peter Featherstone,
had become the proprietor of Stone Court, and what Peter would
say "if he were worthy to know," had become an inexhaustible and
consolatory subject of conversation to his disappointed relatives.
The tables were now turned on that dear brother departed,
and to contemplate the frustration of his cunning by the superior
cunning of things in general was a cud of delight to Solomon.
Mrs. Waule had a melancholy triumph in the proof that it did
not answer to make false Featherstones and cut off the genuine;
and Sister Martha receiving the news in the Chalky Flats said,
"Dear, dear! then the Almighty could have been none so pleased
with the almshouses after all."

Affectionate Mrs. Bulstrode was particularly glad of the advantage
which her husband's health was likely to get from the purchase of
Stone Court. Few days passed without his riding thither and looking
over some part of the farm with the bailiff, and the evenings were
delicious in that quiet spot, when the new hay-ricks lately set up were
sending forth odors to mingle with the breath of the rich old garden.
One evening, while the sun was still above the horizon and burning
in golden lamps among the great walnut boughs, Mr. Bulstrode was
pausing on horseback outside the front gate waiting for Caleb Garth,
who had met him by appointment to give an opinion on a question
of stable drainage, and was now advising the bailiff in the rick-yard.

Mr. Bulstrode was conscious of being in a good spiritual frame and more
than usually serene, under the influence of his innocent recreation.
He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit
in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain
when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory
and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may
be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning
is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching
proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention.
The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery
like a diorama. At this moment Mr. Bulstrode felt as if the
sunshine were all one with that of far-off evenings when he was
a very young man and used to go out preaching beyond Highbury.
And he would willingly have had that service of exhortation
in prospect now. The texts were there still, and so was his own
facility in expounding them. His brief reverie was interrupted
by the return of Caleb Garth, who also was on horseback,
and was just shaking his bridle before starting, when he exclaimed--

"Bless my heart! what's this fellow in black coming along the lane?
He's like one of those men one sees about after the races."

Mr. Bulstrode turned his horse and looked along the lane, but made
no reply. The comer was our slight acquaintance Mr. Raffles,
whose appearance presented no other change than such as was due
to a suit of black and a crape hat-band. He was within three yards
of the horseman now, and they could see the flash of recognition
in his face as he whirled his stick upward, looking all the while
at Mr. Bulstrode, and at last exclaiming:--

"By Jove, Nick, it's you! I couldn't be mistaken, though the
five-and-twenty years have played old Boguy with us both! How are you,
eh? you didn't expect to see ME here. Come, shake us by the hand."
To say that Mr. Raffles' manner was rather excited would be only
one mode of saying that it was evening. Caleb Garth could see
that there was a moment of struggle and hesitation in Mr. Bulstrode,
but it ended in his putting out his hand coldly to Raffles and saying--

"I did not indeed expect to see you in this remote country place."

"Well, it belongs to a stepson of mine," said Raffles, adjusting himself
in a swaggering attitude. "I came to see him here before. I'm not
so surprised at seeing you, old fellow, because I picked up a letter--
what you may call a providential thing. It's uncommonly fortunate
I met you, though; for I don't care about seeing my stepson:
he's not affectionate, and his poor mother's gone now. To tell
the truth, I came out of love to you, Nick: I came to get your
address, for--look here!" Raffles drew a crumpled paper from his pocket.

Almost any other man than Caleb Garth might have been tempted to
linger on the spot for the sake of hearing all he could about a man
whose acquaintance with Bulstrode seemed to imply passages in the
banker's life so unlike anything that was known of him in Middlemarch
that they must have the nature of a secret to pique curiosity.
But Caleb was peculiar: certain human tendencies which are commonly
strong were almost absent from his mind; and one of these was
curiosity about personal affairs. Especially if there was anything
discreditable to be found out concerning another man, Caleb preferred
not to know it; and if he had to tell anybody under him that his evil
doings were discovered, he was more embarrassed than the culprit.
He now spurred his horse, and saying, "I wish you good evening,
Mr. Bulstrode; I must be getting home," set off at a trot.

"You didn't put your full address to this letter," Raffles continued.
"That was not like the first-rate man of business you used to be.
`The Shrubs,'--they may be anywhere: you live near at hand, eh?--
have cut the London concern altogether--perhaps turned country squire--
have a rural mansion to invite me to. Lord, how many years it is ago!
The old lady must have been dead a pretty long while--gone to glory
without the pain of knowing how poor her daughter was, eh? But, by Jove!
you're very pale and pasty, Nick. Come, if you're going home,
I'll walk by your side."

Mr. Bulstrode's usual paleness had in fact taken an almost deathly hue.
Five minutes before, the expanse of his life had been submerged in its
evening sunshine which shone backward to its remembered morning:
sin seemed to be a question of doctrine and inward penitence,
humiliation an exercise of the closet, the bearing of his deeds a matter
of private vision adjusted solely by spiritual relations and conceptions
of the divine purposes. And now, as if by some hideous magic,
this loud red figure had risen before him in unmanageable solidity--
an incorporate past which had not entered into his imagination
of chastisements. But Mr. Bulstrode's thought was busy, and he
was not a man to act or speak rashly.

"I was going home," he said, "but I can defer my ride a little.
And you can, if you please, rest here."

"Thank you," said Raffles, making a grimace. "I don't care now
about seeing my stepson. I'd rather go home with you."

"Your stepson, if Mr. Rigg Featherstone was he, is here no longer.
I am master here now."

Raffles opened wide eyes, and gave a long whistle of surprise,
before he said, "Well then, I've no objection. I've had enough walking
from the coach-road. I never was much of a walker, or rider either.
What I like is a smart vehicle and a spirited cob. I was always
a little heavy in the saddle. What a pleasant surprise it must be
to you to see me, old fellow!" he continued, as they turned towards
the house. "You don't say so; but you never took your luck heartily--
you were always thinking of improving the occasion--you'd such a gift
for improving your luck."

Mr. Raffles seemed greatly to enjoy his own wit, and Swung his leg
in a swaggering manner which was rather too much for his companion's
judicious patience.

"If I remember rightly," Mr. Bulstrode observed, with chill anger,
"our acquaintance many years ago had not the sort of intimacy
which you are now assuming, Mr. Raffles. Any services you desire
of me will be the more readily rendered if you will avoid a tone
of familiarity which did not lie in our former intercourse, and can
hardly be warranted by more than twenty years of separation."

"You don't like being called Nick? Why, I always called you
Nick in my heart, and though lost to sight, to memory dear.
By Jove! my feelings have ripened for you like fine old cognac.
I hope you've got some in the house now. Josh filled my flask well
the last time."

Mr. Bulstrode had not yet fully learned that even the desire
for cognac was not stronger in Raffles than the desire to torment,
and that a hint of annoyance always served him as a fresh cue.
But it was at least clear that further objection was useless,
and Mr. Bulstrode, in giving orders to the housekeeper for the
accommodation of the guest, had a resolute air of quietude.

There was the comfort of thinking that this housekeeper had been in
the service of Rigg also, and might accept the idea that Mr. Bulstrode
entertained Raffles merely as a friend of her former master.

When there was food and drink spread before his visitor in the
wainscoted parlor, and no witness in the room, Mr. Bulstrode said--

"Your habits and mine are so different, Mr. Raffles, that we can
hardly enjoy each other's society. The wisest plan for both of us
will therefore be to part as soon as possible. Since you say
that you wished to meet me, you probably considered that you had
some business to transact with me. But under the circumstances I
will invite you to remain here for the night, and I will myself
ride over here early to-morrow morning--before breakfast, in fact,
when I can receive any Communication you have to make to me."

"With all my heart," said Raffles; "this is a comfortable place--
a little dull for a continuance; but I can put up with it for
a night, with this good liquor and the prospect of seeing you again
in the morning. You're a much better host than my stepson was;
but Josh owed me a bit of a grudge for marrying his mother;
and between you and me there was never anything but kindness."

Mr. Bulstrode, hoping that the peculiar mixture of joviality
and sneering in Raffles' manner was a good deal the effect
of drink, had determined to wait till he was quite sober before
he spent more words upon him. But he rode home with a terribly
lucid vision of the difficulty there would be in arranging
any result that could be permanently counted on with this man.
It was inevitable that he should wish to get rid of John Raffles,
though his reappearance could not be regarded as lying outside
the divine plan. The spirit of evil might have sent him to threaten
Mr. Bulstrode's subversion as an instrument of good; but the threat
must have been permitted, and was a chastisement of a new kind.
It was an hour of anguish for him very different from the hours
in which his struggle had been securely private, and which had
ended with a sense that his secret misdeeds were pardoned and his
services accepted. Those misdeeds even when committed--had they
not been half sanctified by the singleness of his desire to devote
himself and all he possessed to the furtherance of the divine scheme?
And was he after all to become a mere stone of stumbling and a
rock of offence? For who would understand the work within him?
Who would not, when there was the pretext of casting disgrace
upon him, confound his whole life and the truths he had espoused,
in one heap of obloquy?

In his closest meditations the life-long habit of Mr. Bulstrode's
mind clad his most egoistic terrors in doctrinal references
to superhuman ends. But even while we are talking and meditating
about the earth's orbit and the solar system, what we feel and
adjust our movements to is the stable earth and the changing day.
And now within all the automatic succession of theoretic phrases--
distinct and inmost as the shiver and the ache of oncoming fever
when we are discussing abstract pain, was the forecast of disgrace
in the presence of his neighbors and of his own wife. For the pain,
as well as the public estimate of disgrace, depends on the amount
of previous profession. To men who only aim at escaping felony,
nothing short of the prisoner's dock is disgrace. But Mr. Bulstrode
had aimed at being an eminent Christian.

It was not more than half-past seven in the morning when he again
reached Stone Court. The fine old place never looked more like a
delightful home than at that moment; the great white lilies were
in flower, the nasturtiums, their pretty leaves all silvered with dew,
were running away over the low stone wall; the very noises all
around had a heart of peace within them. But everything was spoiled
for the owner as he walked on the gravel in front and awaited
the descent of Mr. Raffles, with whom he was condemned to breakfast.

It was not long before they were seated together in the wainscoted
parlor over their tea and toast, which was as much as Raffles cared
to take at that early hour. The difference between his morning
and evening self was not so great as his companion had imagined
that it might be; the delight in tormenting was perhaps even the
stronger because his spirits were rather less highly pitched.
Certainly his manners seemed more disagreeable by the morning light.

"As I have little time to spare, Mr. Raffles," said the banker,
who could hardly do more than sip his tea and break his toast
without eating it, "I shall be obliged if you will mention at once
the ground on which you wished to meet with me. I presume that you
have a home elsewhere and will be glad to return to it."

"Why, if a man has got any heart, doesn't he want to see an
old friend, Nick?--I must call you Nick--we always did call you
young Nick when we knew you meant to marry the old widow. Some said
you had a handsome family likeness to old Nick, but that was your
mother's fault, calling you Nicholas. Aren't you glad to see me again?
I expected an invite to stay with you at some pretty place. My own
establishment is broken up now my wife's dead. I've no particular
attachment to any spot; I would as soon settle hereabout as anywhere."

"May I ask why you returned from America? I considered that the strong
wish you expressed to go there, when an adequate sum was furnished,
was tantamount to an engagement that you would remain there for life."

"Never knew that a wish to go to a place was the same thing as a
wish to stay. But I did stay a matter of ten years; it didn't
suit me to stay any longer. And I'm not going again, Nick."
Here Mr. Raffles winked slowly as he looked at Mr. Bulstrode.

"Do you wish to be settled in any business? What is your calling now?"

"Thank you, my calling is to enjoy myself as much as I can.
I don't care about working any more. If I did anything it would be
a little travelling in the tobacco line--or something of that sort,
which takes a man into agreeable company. But not without
an independence to fall back upon. That's what I want: I'm not
so strong as I was, Nick, though I've got more color than you.
I want an independence."

"That could be supplied to you, if you would engage to keep at
a distance," said Mr. Bulstrode, perhaps with a little too much
eagerness in his undertone.

"That must be as it suits my convenience," said Raffles coolly. "I see
no reason why I shouldn't make a few acquaintances hereabout. I'm not
ashamed of myself as company for anybody. I dropped my portmanteau at
the turnpike when I got down--change of linen--genuine--honor bright--
more than fronts and wristbands; and with this suit of mourning,
straps and everything, I should do you credit among the nobs here."
Mr. Raffles had pushed away hit chair and looked down at himself,
particularly at his straps His chief intention was to annoy Bulstrode,
but he really thought that his appearance now would produce
a good effect, and that he was not only handsome and witty,
but clad in a mourning style which implied solid connections.

"If you intend to rely on me in any way, Mr. Raffles," said Bulstrode,
after a moment's pause, "you will expect to meet my wishes."

"Ah, to be sure," said Raffles, with a mocking cordiality.
"Didn't I always do it? Lord, you made a pretty thing out of me,
and I got but little. I've often thought since, I might have done
better by telling the old woman that I'd found her daughter and
her grandchild: it would have suited my feelings better; I've got
a soft place in my heart. But you've buried the old lady by this time,
I suppose--it's all one to her now. And you've got your fortune
out of that profitable business which had such a blessing on it.
You've taken to being a nob, buying land, being a country bashaw.
Still in the Dissenting line, eh? Still godly? Or taken to the Church
as more genteel?"

This time Mr. Raffles' slow wink and slight protrusion of his
tongue was worse than a nightmare, because it held the certitude
that it was not a nightmare, but a waking misery. Mr. Bulstrode
felt a shuddering nausea, and did not speak, but was considering
diligently whether he should not leave Raffles to do as he would,
and simply defy him as a slanderer. The man would soon show
himself disreputable enough to make people disbelieve him.
"But not when he tells any ugly-looking truth about YOU,"
said discerning consciousness. And again: it seemed no wrong to keep
Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode shrank from the direct
falsehood of denying true statements. It was one thing to look back on
forgiven sins, nay, to explain questionable conformity to lax customs,
and another to enter deliberately on the necessity of falsehood.

But since Bulstrode did not speak, Raffles ran on, by way of using
time to the utmost.

"I've not had such fine luck as you, by Jove! Things went
confoundedly with me in New York; those Yankees are cool hands,
and a man of gentlemanly feelings has no chance with them. I married
when I came back--a nice woman in the tobacco trade--very fond of me--
but the trade was restricted, as we say. She had been settled
there a good many years by a friend; but there was a son too much
in the case. Josh and I never hit it off. However, I made the most
of the position, and I've always taken my glass in good company.
It's been all on the square with me; I'm as open as the day.
You won't take it ill of me that I didn't look you up before.
I've got a complaint that makes me a little dilatory. I thought you were
trading and praying away in London still, and didn't find you there.
But you see I was sent to you, Nick--perhaps for a blessing to both
of us."

Mr. Raffles ended with a jocose snuffle: no man felt his intellect
more superior to religious cant. And if the cunning which calculates
on the meanest feelings in men could be, called intellect, he had
his share, for under the blurting rallying tone with which he
spoke to Bulstrode, there was an evident selection of statements,
as if they had been so many moves at chess. Meanwhile Bulstrode
had determined on his move, and he said, with gathered resolution--

"You will do well to reflect, Mr. Raffles, that it is possible for a
man to overreach himself in the effort to secure undue advantage.
Although I am not in any way bound to you, I am willing to supply
you with a regular annuity--in quarterly payments--so long as you
fulfil a promise to remain at a distance from this neighborhood.
It is in your power to choose. If you insist on remaining here,
even for a short time, you will get nothing from me. I shall decline
to know you."

"Ha, ha!" said Raffles, with an affected explosion, "that reminds
me of a droll dog of a thief who declined to know the constable."

"Your allusions are lost on me sir," said Bulstrode, with white heat;
"the law has no hold on me either through your agency or any other."

"You can't understand a joke, my good fellow. I only meant
that I should never decline to know you. But let us be serious.
Your quarterly payment won't quite suit me. I like my freedom."

Here Raffles rose and stalked once or twice up and down the room,
swinging his leg, and assuming an air of masterly meditation.
At last he stopped opposite Bulstrode, and said, "I'll tell
you what! Give us a couple of hundreds--come, that's modest--
and I'll go away--honor bright!--pick up my portmanteau and go away.
But I shall not give up my Liberty for a dirty annuity. I shall
come and go where I like. Perhaps it may suit me to stay away,
and correspond with a friend; perhaps not. Have you the money
with you?"

"No, I have one hundred," said Bulstrode, feeling the immediate riddance
too great a relief to be rejected on the ground of future uncertainties.
"I will forward you the other if you will mention an address."

"No, I'll wait here till you bring it," said Raffles. "I'll take
a stroll and have a snack, and you'll be back by that time."

Mr. Bulstrode's sickly body, shattered by the agitations he
had gone through since the last evening, made him feel abjectly
in the power of this loud invulnerable man. At that moment
he snatched at a temporary repose to be won on any terms.
He was rising to do what Raffles suggested, when the latter said,
lifting up his finger as if with a sudden recollection--

"I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn't
tell you; I'd a tender conscience about that pretty young woman.
I didn't find her, but I found out her husband's name, and I made
a note of it. But hang it, I lost my pocketbook. However, if I
heard it, I should know it again. I've got my faculties as if I
was in my prime, but names wear out, by Jove! Sometimes I'm no
better than a confounded tax-paper before the names are filled in.
However, if I hear of her and her family, you shall know, Nick.
You'd like to do something for her, now she's your step-daughter."

"Doubtless," said Mr. Bulstrode, with the usual steady look of his
light-gray eyes; "though that might reduce my power of assisting you."

As he walked out of the room, Raffles winked slowly at his back,
and then turned towards the window to watch the banker riding away--
virtually at his command. His lips first curled with a smile and then
opened with a short triumphant laugh.

"But what the deuce was the name?" he presently said, half aloud,
scratching his head, and wrinkling his brows horizontally. He had
not really cared or thought about this point of forgetfulness until
it occurred to him in his invention of annoyances for Bulstrode.

"It began with L; it was almost all l's I fancy," he went on,
with a sense that he was getting hold of the slippery name.
But the hold was too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental chase;
for few men were more impatient of private occupation or more
in need of making themselves continually heard than Mr. Raffles.
He preferred using his time in pleasant conversation with the bailiff
and the housekeeper, from whom he gathered as much as he wanted to
know about Mr. Bulstrode's position in Middlemarch.

After all, however, there was a dull space of time which needed relieving
with bread and cheese and ale, and when he was seated alone with these
resources in the wainscoted parlor, he suddenly slapped his knee,
and exclaimed, "Ladislaw!" That action of memory which he had tried
to set going, and had abandoned in despair, had suddenly completed
itself without conscious effort--a common experience, agreeable as
a completed sneeze, even if the name remembered is of no value.
Raffles immediately took out his pocket-book, and wrote down the name,
not because he expected to use it, but merely for the sake of not
being at a loss if he ever did happen to want it. He was not going
to tell Bulstrode: there was no actual good in telling, and to
a mind like that of Mr. Raffles there is always probable good in a secret.

He was satisfied with his present success, and by three o'clock that day
he had taken up his portmanteau at the turnpike and mounted the coach,
relieving Mr. Bulstrode's eyes of an ugly black spot on the landscape
at Stone Court, but not relieving him of the dread that the black spot
might reappear and become inseparable even from the vision of his hearth.

BOOK VI.

THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE.

CHAPTER LIV.

        "Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;
             Per che si fa gentil eio ch'ella mira:
             Ov'ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,
             E cui saluta fa tremar lo core.

         Sicche, bassando il viso, tutto smore,
             E d'ogni suo difetto allor sospira:
             Fuggon dinanzi a lei Superbia ed Ira:
             Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.

         Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
             Nasee nel core a chi parlar la sente;
             Ond' e beato chi prima la vide.
         Quel ch'ella par quand' un poco sorride,
             Non si pub dicer, ne tener a mente,
             Si e nuovo miracolo gentile."
                            --DANTE: la Vita Nuova.

By that delightful morning when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were
scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles had been
a guest worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had again taken up
her abode at Lowick Manor. After three months Freshitt had become
rather oppressive: to sit like a model for Saint Catherine looking
rapturously at Celia's baby would not do for many hours in the day,
and to remain in that momentous babe's presence with persistent
disregard was a course that could not have been tolerated in a
childless sister. Dorothea would have been capable of carrying
baby joyfully for a mile if there had been need, and of loving
it the more tenderly for that labor; but to an aunt who does not
recognize her infant nephew as Bouddha, and has nothing to do for him but
to admire, his behavior is apt to appear monotonous, and the interest
of watching him exhaustible. This possibility was quite hidden
from Celia, who felt that Dorothea's childless widowhood fell in quite
prettily with the birth of little Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke).

"Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her own--
children or anything!" said Celia to her husband. "And if she
had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur.
Could it, James?

"Not if it had been like Casaubon," said Sir James, conscious of
some indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private
opinion as to the perfections of his first-born.

"No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy," said Celia; "and I think
it is very nice for Dodo to be a widow. She can be just as fond
of our baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions
of her own as she likes."

"It is a pity she was not a queen," said the devout Sir James.

"But what should we have been then? We must have been something else,"
said Celia, objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination.
"I like her better as she is."

Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her final
departure to Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with disappointment,
and in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of sarcasm.

"What will you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say yourself there is
nothing to be done there: everybody is so clean and well off,
it makes you quite melancholy. And here you have been so happy
going all about Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards.
And now uncle is abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way;
and I am sure James does everything you tell him."

"I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all
the better," said Dorothea.

"But you will never see him washed," said Celia; "and that is quite
the best part of the day." She was almost pouting: it did seem
to her very hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay.

"Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose,"
said Dorothea; "but I want to be alone now, and in my own home.
I wish to know the Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother
about what there is to be done in Middlemarch."

Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all converted into
resolute submission. She had a great yearning to be at Lowick,
and was simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all
her reasons. But every one around her disapproved. Sir James was
much pained, and offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham
for a few months with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle:
at that period a man could hardly know what to propose if Cheltenham
were rejected.

The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter
in town, wished, at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to,
and invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon:
it was not credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think
of living alone in the house at Lowick. Mrs. Vigo had been reader
and secretary to royal personages, and in point of knowledge and
sentiments even Dorothea could have nothing to object to her.

Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in
that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got
to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same
names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons
and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad:
they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that.
I dare say you are a little bored here with our good dowager;
but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures
if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely.
Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself
ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't
believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine."

"I never called everything by the same name that all the people
about me did," said Dorothea, stoutly.

"But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear,"
said Mrs. Cadwallader, "and that is a proof of sanity."

Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her.
"No," she said, "I still think that the greater part of the world
is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet
think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come
round from its opinion."

Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her
husband she remarked, "It will be well for her to marry again as soon
as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people.
Of course the Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly
a husband is the best thing to keep her in order. If we were not
so poor I would invite Lord Triton. He will be marquis some day,
and there is no denying that she would make a good marchioness:
she looks handsomer than ever in her mourning."

"My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone. Such contrivances
are of no use," said the easy Rector.

"No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and
women together? And it is a shame that her uncle should have run
away and shut up the Grange just now. There ought to be plenty
of eligible matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange. Lord Triton
is precisely the man: full of plans for making the people happy
in a soft-headed sort of way. That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon."

"Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor."

"That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose
if she has no variety to choose from? A woman's choice usually
means taking the only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey.
If her friends don't exert themselves, there will be a worse
business than the Casaubon business yet."

"For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a
very sore point with Sir James He would be deeply offended if you
entered on it to him unnecessarily."

"I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands.
"Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any
asking of mine."

"Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand
that the young fellow is going out of the neighborhood."

Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three
significant nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.

Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion.
So by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor,
and the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows
of note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge
stones, the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening
laden with roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir
where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit. At first she walked into
every room, questioning the eighteen months of her married life,
and carrying on her thoughts as if they were a speech to be heard
by her husband. Then, she lingered in the library and could not
be at rest till she had carefully ranged all the note-books as she
imagined that he would wish to see them, in orderly sequence.
The pity which had been the restraining compelling motive in her life
with him still clung about his image, even while she remonstrated
with him in indignant thought and told him that he was unjust.
One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as superstitious.
The Synoptical Tabulation for the use of Mrs. Casaubon, she
carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope,
"I could not use it. Do you not see now that I could not submit
my soul to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief
in--Dorothea?" Then she deposited the paper in her own desk.

That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because underneath
and through it all there was always the deep longing which had really
determined her to come to Lowick. The longing was to see Will Ladislaw.
She did not know any good that could come of their meeting:
she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to him
for any unfairness in his lot. But her soul thirsted to see him.
How could it be otherwise? If a princess in the days of enchantment
had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds
come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her
with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying,
what would she look for when the herds passed her? Surely for
the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again.
Life would be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight
rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues
of longing and constancy. It was true that Dorothea wanted to know
the Farebrothers better, and especially to talk to the new rector,
but also true that remembering what Lydgate had told her about
Will Ladislaw and little Miss Noble, she counted on Will's coming
to Lowick to see the Farebrother family. The very first Sunday,
BEFORE she entered the church, she saw him as she had seen
him the last time she was there, alone in the clergyman's pew;
but WHEN she entered his figure was gone.

In the week-days when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory,
she listened in vain for some word that they might let fall about Will;
but it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother talked of every one else
in the neighborhood and out of it.

"Probably some of Mr. Farebrother's Middlemarch hearers may follow
him to Lowick sometimes. Do you not think so?" said Dorothea,
rather despising herself for having a secret motive in asking
the question.

"If they are wise they will, Mrs. Casaubon," said the old lady.
"I see that you set a right value on my son's preaching. His grandfather
on my side was an excellent clergyman, but his father was in the law:--
most exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our
never being rich. They say Fortune is a woman and capricious.
But sometimes she is a good woman and gives to those who merit,
which has been the case with you, Mrs. Casaubon, who have given a
living to my son."

Mrs. Farebrother recurred to her knitting with a dignified satisfaction
in her neat little effort at oratory, but this was not what Dorothea
wanted to hear. Poor thing! she did not even know whether Will Ladislaw
was still at Middlemarch, and there was no one whom she dared to ask,
unless it were Lydgate. But just now she could not see Lydgate
without sending for him or going to seek him. Perhaps Will Ladislaw,
having heard of that strange ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon,
had felt it better that he and she should not meet again, and perhaps
she was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good
reasons against. Still "I do wish it" came at the end of those
wise reflections as naturally as a sob after holding the breath.
And the meeting did happen, but in a formal way quite unexpected by her.

One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seated in her boudoir with a
map of the land attached to the manor and other papers before her,
which were to help her in making an exact statement for herself
of her income and affairs. She had not yet applied herself
to her work, but was seated with her hands folded on her lap,
looking out along the avenue of limes to the distant fields.
Every leaf was at rest in the sunshine, the familiar scene
was changeless, and seemed to represent the prospect of her life,
full of motiveless ease--motiveless, if her own energy could not
seek out reasons for ardent action. The widow's cap of those times
made an oval frame for the face, and had a crown standing up;
the dress was an experiment in the utmost laying on of crape;
but this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the younger,
with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, inquiring candor of her eyes.

Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to say that Mr. Ladislaw
was below, and begged permission to see Madam if it were not too early.

"I will see him," said Dorothea, rising immediately. "Let him
be shown into the drawing-room."

The drawing-room was the most neutral room in the house to her--
the one least associated with the trials of her married life:
the damask matched the wood-work, which was all white and gold;
there were two tall mirrors and tables with nothing on them--
in brief, it was a room where you had no reason for sitting in one
place rather than in another. It was below the boudoir, and had
also a bow-window looking out on the avenue. But when Pratt showed
Will Ladislaw into it the window was open; and a winged visitor,
buzzing in and out now and then without minding the furniture,
made the room look less formal and uninhabited.

"Glad to see you here again, sir," said Pratt, lingering to adjust
a blind.

"I am only come to say good-by, Pratt," said Will, who wished even
the butler to know that he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon
now she was a rich widow.

"Very sorry to hear it, sir," said Pratt, retiring. Of course,
as a servant who was to be told nothing, he knew the fact of
which Ladislaw was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences;
indeed, had not differed from his betrothed Tantripp when she said,
"Your master was as jealous as a fiend--and no reason.
Madam would look higher than Mr. Ladislaw, else I don't know her.
Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's a lord coming who is to marry
her when the mourning's over."

There were not many moments for Will to walk about with his hat
in his hand before Dorothea entered. The meeting was very different
from that first meeting in Rome when Will had been embarrassed
and Dorothea calm. This time he felt miserable but determined,
while she was in a state of agitation which could not be hidden.
Just outside the door she had felt that this longed-for meeting was
after all too difficult, and when she saw Will advancing towards her,
the deep blush which was rare in her came with painful suddenness.
Neither of them knew how it was, but neither of them spoke.
She gave her hand for a moment, and then they went to sit down
near the window, she on one settee and he on another opposite.
Will was peculiarly uneasy: it seemed to him not like Dorothea
that the mere fact of her being a widow should cause such a change
in her manner of receiving him; and he knew of no other condition
which could have affected their previous relation to each other--
except that, as his imagination at once told him, her friends
might have been poisoning her mind with their suspicions
of him.

"I hope I have not presumed too much in calling," said Will;
"I could not bear to leave the neighborhood and begin a new life
without seeing you to say good-by."

"Presumed? Surely not. I should have thought it unkind if you
had not wished to see me," said Dorothea, her habit of speaking
with perfect genuineness asserting itself through all her uncertainty
and agitation. "Are you going away immediately?"

"Very soon, I think. I intend to go to town and eat my dinners
as a barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all
public business. There will be a great deal of political work
to be done by-and-by, and I mean to try and do some of it.
Other men have managed to win an honorable position for themselves
without family or money."

"And that will make it all the more honorable," said Dorothea,
ardently. "Besides, you have so many talents. I have heard from
my uncle how well you speak in public, so that every one is sorry
when you leave off, and how clearly you can explain things.
And you care that justice should be done to every one. I am so glad.
When we were in Rome, I thought you only cared for poetry and art,
and the things that adorn life for us who are well off.
But now I know you think about the rest of the world."

While she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment,
and had become like her former self. She looked at Will with a
direct glance, full of delighted confidence.

"You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming
here again till I have made myself of some mark in the world?"
said Will, trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost
effort to get an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea.

She was not aware how long it was before she answered. She had
turned her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-bushes,
which seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will
would be away. This was not judicious behavior. But Dorothea never
thought of studying her manners: she thought only of bowing to a sad
necessity which divided her from Will. Those first words of his
about his intentions had seemed to make everything clear to her:
he knew, she supposed, all about Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in
relation to him, and it had come to him with the same sort of shock
as to herself. He had never felt more than friendship for her--
had never had anything in his mind to justify what she felt to be
her husband's outrage on the feelings of both: and that friendship
he still felt. Something which may be called an inward silent
sob had gone on in Dorothea before she said with a pure voice,
just trembling in the last words as if only from its liquid flexibility--

"Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say. I shall be
very happy when I hear that you have made your value felt.
But you must have patience. It will perhaps be a long while."

Will never quite knew how it was that he saved himself from falling
down at her feet, when the "long while" came forth with its
gentle tremor. He used to say that the horrible hue and surface
of her crape dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force.
He sat still, however, and only said--

"I shall never hear from you. And you will forget all about me."

"No," said Dorothea, "I shall never forget you. I have never
forgotten any one whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded,
and seems not likely to be so. And I have a great deal of space
for memory at Lowick, haven't I?" She smiled.

"Good God!" Will burst out passionately, rising, with his hat still
in his hand, and walking away to a marble table, where he suddenly
turned and leaned his back against it. The blood had mounted to his
face and neck, and he looked almost angry. It had seemed to him
as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each
other's presence, while their hearts were conscious and their eyes
were yearning. But there was no help for it. It should never be true
of him that in this meeting to which he had come with bitter resolution
he had ended by a confession which might be interpreted into asking
for her fortune. Moreover, it was actually true that he was fearful
of the effect which such confessions might have on Dorothea herself.

She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that
there might hate been an offence in her words. But all the while
there was a current of thought in her about his probable want
of money, and the impossibility of her helping him. If her uncle
had been at home, something might have been done through him!
It was this preoccupation with the hardship of Will's wanting money,
while she had what ought to have been his share, which led her to say,
seeing that he remained silent and looked away from her--

"I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature
which hangs up-stairs--I mean that beautiful miniature OF
your grandmother. I think it is not right for me to keep it,
if you would wish to have it. It is wonderfully like you."

"You are very good," said Will, irritably. "No; I don't mind
about it. It is not very consoling to have one's own likeness.
It would be more consoling if others wanted to have it."

"I thought you would like to cherish her memory--I thought--
"Dorothea broke off an instant, her imagination suddenly warning
her away from Aunt Julia's history--"you would surely like to have
the miniature as a family memorial."

"Why should I have that, when I have nothing else! A man with only
a portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his head."

Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance;
it was a little too exasperating to have his grandmother's portrait
offered him at that moment. But to Dorothea's feeling his words
had a peculiar sting. She rose and said with a touch of indignation
as well as hauteur--

"You are much the happier of us two, Mr. Ladislaw, to have nothing."

Will was startled. Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed
like a dismissal; and quitting his leaning posture, he walked
a little way towards her. Their eyes met, but with a strange
questioning gravity. Something was keeping their minds aloof,
and each was left to conjecture what was in the other. Will had
really never thought of himself as having a claim of inheritance
on the property which was held by Dorothea, and would have required
a narrative to make him understand her present feeling.

"I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said.
"But poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we
most care for."

The words cut Dorothea to the heart, and made her relent.
She answered in a tone of sad fellowship.

"Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that--
I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our hands,
and makes us silent when we long to speak. I used to despise women
a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things.
I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up,"
she ended, smiling playfully.

"I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it,"
said Will. He was standing two yards from her with his mind full
of contradictory desires and resolves--desiring some unmistakable
proof that she loved him, and yet dreading the position into which
such a proof might bring him. "The thing one most longs for may
be surrounded with conditions that would be intolerable."

At this moment Pratt entered and said, "Sir James Chettam
is in the library, madam."

"Ask Sir James to come in here," said Dorothea, immediately. It was
as if the same electric shock had passed through her and Will.
Each of them felt proudly resistant, and neither looked at the other,
while they awaited Sir James's entrance.

After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible
to Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness exactly, and then going
towards Dorothea, said--

"I must say good-by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while."

Dorothea put out her hand and said her good-by cordially. The sense
that Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him,
roused her resolution and dignity-there was no touch of confusion
in her manner. And when Will had left the room, she looked with
such calm self-possession at Sir James, saying, "How is Celia?"
that he was obliged to behave as if nothing had annoyed him.
And what would be the use of behaving otherwise? Indeed, Sir James
shrank with so much dislike from the association even in thought
of Dorothea with Ladislaw as her possible lover, that he would himself
have wished to avoid an outward show of displeasure which would
have recognized the disagreeable possibility. If any one had asked
him why he shrank in that way, I am not sure that he would at first
have said anything fuller or more precise than "THAT Ladislaw!"--
though on reflection he might have urged that Mr. Casaubon's codicil,
barring Dorothea's marriage with Will, except under a penalty,
was enough to cast unfitness over any relation at all between them.
His aversion was all the stronger because he felt himself unable
to interfere.

But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by himself. Entering
at that moment, he was an incorporation of the strongest reasons
through which Will's pride became a repellent force, keeping him
asunder from Dorothea

CHAPTER LV.

        Hath she her faults? I would you had them too.
        They are the fruity must of soundest wine;
        Or say, they are regenerating fire
        Such as hath turned the dense black element
        Into a crystal pathway for the sun.

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense
that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth
to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of
their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.
We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be
agitated by the earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock,
and reflect that there are plenty more to come.

To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes with their long
full lashes look out after their rain of tears unsoiled and unwearied
as a freshly opened passion-flower, that morning's parting with Will
Ladislaw seemed to be the close of their personal relations.
He was going away into the distance of unknown years, and if ever he
came back he would be another man. The actual state of his mind--
his proud resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicion
that he would play the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman--
lay quite out of her imagination, and she had interpreted all his
behavior easily enough by her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil
seemed to him, as it did to her, a gross and cruel interdict on
any active friendship between them. Their young delight in speaking
to each other, and saying what no one else would care to hear,
was forever ended, and become a treasure of the past. For this
very reason she dwelt on it without inward check. That unique
happiness too was dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber she
might vent the passionate grief which she herself wondered at.
For the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and kept
it before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardly
judged with the grandson whom her own heart and judgment defended.
Can any one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a reproach
to her that she took the little oval picture in her palm and made
a bed for it there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if that would
soothe the creatures who had suffered unjust condemnation?
She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly,
as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings--
that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image
was banished by the blameless rigor of irresistible day. She only
felt that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot,
and her thoughts about the future were the more readily shapen
into resolve. Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives,
are apt to commit themselves to the fulfilment of their own visions.

One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of staying
all night and seeing baby washed, Mrs. Cadwallader came to dine,
the Rector being gone on a fishing excursion. It was a warm evening,
and even in the delightful drawing-room, where the fine old turf sloped
from the open window towards a lilied pool and well-planted mounds,
the heat was enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls
reflect with pity on what Dodo must feel in her black dress and
close cap. But this was not until some episodes with baby were over,
and had left her mind at leisure. She had seated herself and taken
up a fan for some time before she said, in her quiet guttural--

"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap. I am sure your dress must make
you feel ill."

"I am so used to the cap--it has become a sort of shell,"
said Dorothea, smiling. "I feel rather bare and exposed when it
is off."

"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said Celia,
throwing down her fan, and going to Dorothea. It was a pretty picture
to see this little lady in white muslin unfastening the widow's
cap from her more majestic sister, and tossing it on to a chair.
Just as the coils and braids of dark-brown hair had been set free,
Sir James entered the room. He looked at the released head, and said,
"Ah!" in a tone of satisfaction.

"It was I who did it, James," said Celia. "Dodo need not make
such a slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap any
more among her friends."

"My dear Celia," said Lady Chettam, "a widow must wear her
mourning at least a year."

"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader,
who had some pleasure in startling her good friend the Dowager.
Sir James was annoyed, and leaned forward to play with Celia's
Maltese dog.

"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a tone intended
to guard against such events. "No friend of ours ever committed
herself in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was very painful to
Lord Grinsell when she did so. Her first husband was objectionable,
which made it the greater wonder. And severely she was punished
for it. They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair,
and held up loaded pistols at her."

"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, who was in a
decidedly wicked mood. "Marriage is always bad then, first or second.
Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other.
I would rather have a good second husband than an indifferent first."

"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam.
"I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely,
if our dear Rector were taken away."

"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy. It is
lawful to marry again, I suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos
instead of Christians. Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man,
she must take the consequences, and one who does it twice over
deserves her fate. But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery--
the sooner the better."

"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen,"
said Sir James, with a look of disgust. "Suppose we change it."

"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose
the opportunity of freeing herself from certain oblique references
to excellent matches. "If you are speaking on my behalf, I can
assure you that no question can be more indifferent and impersonal
to me than second marriage. It is no more to me than if you talked
of women going fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not,
I shall not follow them. Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader amuse herself
on that subject as much as on any other."

"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her stateliest way,
"you do not, I hope, think there was any allusion to you in my
mentioning Mrs. Beevor. It was only an instance that occurred to me.
She was step-daughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroy
for his second wife. There could be no possible allusion to you."

"Oh no," said Celia. "Nobody chose the subject; it all came out
of Dodo's cap. Mrs. Cadwallader only said what was quite true.
A woman could not be married in a widow's cap, James."

"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "I will not offend again.
I will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia. Only what are we to
talk about? I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature,
because that is the nature of rectors' wives."

Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone, Celia said
privately to Dorothea, "Really, Dodo, taking your cap off made
you like yourself again in more ways than one. You spoke up just
as you used to do, when anything was said to displease you. But I
could hardly make out whether it was James that you thought wrong,
or Mrs. Cadwallader."

"Neither," said Dorothea. "James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he
was mistaken in supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said.
I should only mind if there were a law obliging me to take any piece
of blood and beauty that she or anybody else recommended."

"But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be all the better
to have blood and beauty," said Celia, reflecting that Mr. Casaubon
had not been richly endowed with those gifts, and that it would
be well to caution Dorothea in time.

"Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life.
I shall never marry again," said Dorothea, touching her sister's chin,
and looking at her with indulgent affection. Celia was nursing
her baby, and Dorothea had come to say good-night to her.

"Really--quite?" said Celia. "Not anybody at all--if he were
very wonderful indeed?"

Dorothea shook her head slowly. "Not anybody at all. I have
delightful plans. I should like to take a great deal of land,
and drain it, and make a little colony, where everybody should work,
and all the work should be done well. I should know every one of the
people and be their friend. I am going to have great consultations
with Mr. Garth: he can tell me almost everything I want to know."

"Then you WILL be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo?" said Celia.
"Perhaps little Arthur will like plans when he grows up, and then he
can help you."

Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was really
quite set against marrying anybody at all, and was going to take
to "all sorts of plans," just like what she used to have.
Sir James made no remark. To his secret feeling there was something
repulsive in a woman's second marriage, and no match would prevent
him from feeling it a sort of desecration for Dorothea. He was
aware that the world would regard such a sentiment as preposterous,
especially in relation to a woman of one-and-twenty; the practice
of "the world" being to treat of a young widow's second marriage
as certain and probably near, and to smile with meaning if the widow
acts accordingly. But if Dorothea did choose to espouse her solitude,
he felt that the resolution would well become her.

CHAPTER LVI.

        "How happy is he born and taught
         That serveth not another's will;
         Whose armor is his honest thought,
         And simple truth his only skill!
            . . . . . . .
         This man is freed from servile bands
         Of hope to rise or fear to fall;
         Lord of himself though not of lands;
         And having nothing yet hath all."
                                 --SIR HENRY WOTTON.

Dorothea's confidence in Caleb Garth's knowledge, which had begun
on her hearing that he approved of her cottages, had grown fast
during her stay at Freshitt, Sir James having induced her to take
rides over the two estates in company with himself and Caleb,
who quite returned her admiration, and told his wife that Mrs. Casaubon
had a head for business most uncommon in a woman. It must be
remembered that by "business" Caleb never meant money transactions,
but the skilful application of labor.

"Most uncommon!" repeated Caleb. "She said a thing I often used
to think myself when I was a lad:--`Mr. Garth, I should like
to feel, if I lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece
of land and built a great many good cottages, because the work
is of a healthy kind while it is being done, and after it is done,
men are the better for it.' Those were the very words: she sees
into things in that way."

"But womanly, I hope," said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that
Mrs. Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination.

"Oh, you can't think!" said Caleb, shaking his head. "You would
like to hear her speak, Susan. She speaks in such plain words,
and a voice like music. Bless me! it reminds me of bits in the
`Messiah'--`and straightway there appeared a multitude of the
heavenly host, praising God and saying;' it has a tone with it
that satisfies your ear."

Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went
to hear an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it
with a profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones,
which made him sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing
much unutterable language into his outstretched hands.

With this good understanding between them, it was natural that Dorothea
asked Mr. Garth to undertake any business connected with the three
farms and the numerous tenements attached to Lowick Manor; indeed,
his expectation of getting work for two was being fast fulfilled.
As he said, "Business breeds." And one form of business which was
beginning to breed just then was the construction of railways.
A projected line was to run through Lowick parish where the
cattle had hitherto grazed in a peace unbroken by astonishment;
and thus it happened that the infant struggles of the railway system
entered into the affairs of Caleb Garth, and determined the course
of this history with regard to two persons who were dear to him.
The submarine railway may have its difficulties; but the bed of the
sea is not divided among various landed proprietors with claims
for damages not only measurable but sentimental. In the hundred
to which Middlemarch belonged railways were as exciting a topic as the
Reform Bill or the imminent horrors of Cholera, and those who held
the most decided views on the subject were women and landholders.
Women both old and young regarded travelling by steam as presumptuous
and dangerous, and argued against it by saying that nothing should
induce them to get into a railway carriage; while proprietors,
differing from each other in their arguments as much as Mr. Solomon
Featherstone differed from Lord Medlicote, were yet unanimous in the
opinion that in selling land, whether to the Enemy of mankind or to a
company obliged to purchase, these pernicious agencies must be made
to pay a very high price to landowners for permission to injure mankind.

But the slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule,
who both occupied land of their own, took a long time to
arrive at this conclusion, their minds halting at the vivid
conception of what it would be to cut the Big Pasture in two,
and turn it into three-cornered bits, which would be "nohow;"
while accommodation-bridges and high payments were remote and incredible.

"The cows will all cast their calves, brother," said Mrs. Waule, in a
tone of deep melancholy, "if the railway comes across the Near Close;
and I shouldn't wonder at the mare too, if she was in foal.
It's a poor tale if a widow's property is to be spaded away,
and the law say nothing to it. What's to hinder 'em from cutting
right and left if they begin? It's well known, _I_ can't fight."

"The best way would be to say nothing, and set somebody on to send 'em
away with a flea in their ear, when they came spying and measuring,"
said Solomon. "Folks did that about Brassing, by what I can understand.
It's all a pretence, if the truth was known, about their being
forced to take one way. Let 'em go cutting in another parish.
And I don't believe in any pay to make amends for bringing a lot
of ruffians to trample your crops. Where's a company's pocket?"

"Brother Peter, God forgive him, got money out of a company,"
said Mrs. Waule. "But that was for the manganese. That wasn't
for railways to blow you to pieces right and left."

"Well, there's this to be said, Jane," Mr. Solomon concluded,
lowering his voice in a cautious manner--"the more spokes we put
in their wheel, the more they'll pay us to let 'em go on, if they
must come whether or not."

This reasoning of Mr. Solomon's was perhaps less thorough than
he imagined, his cunning bearing about the same relation to the course
of railways as the cunning of a diplomatist bears to the general
chill or catarrh of the solar system. But he set about acting on his
views in a thoroughly diplomatic manner, by stimulating suspicion.
His side of Lowick was the most remote from the village, and the
houses of the laboring people were either lone cottages or were
collected in a hamlet called Frick, where a water-mill and some
stone-pits made a little centre of slow, heavy-shouldered industry.

In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were,
public opinion in Frick was against them; for the human mind in that
grassy corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown,
holding rather that it was likely to be against the poor man,
and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it.
Even the rumor of Reform had not yet excited any millennial expectations
in Frick, there being no definite promise in it, as of gratuitous
grains to fatten Hiram Ford's pig, or of a publican at the "Weights
and Scales" who would brew beer for nothing, or of an offer on the
part of the three neighboring farmers to raise wages during winter.
And without distinct good of this kind in its promises, Reform seemed
on a footing with the bragging of pedlers, which was a hint for
distrust to every knowing person. The men of Frick were not ill-fed,
and were less given to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion;
less inclined to believe that they were peculiarly cared for by heaven,
than to regard heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in--
a disposition observable in the weather.

Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for Mr. Solomon
Featherstone to work upon, he having more plenteous ideas of the
same order, with a suspicion of heaven and earth which was better
fed and more entirely at leisure. Solomon was overseer of the
roads at that time, and on his slow-paced cob often took his
rounds by Frick to look at the workmen getting the stones there,
pausing with a mysterious deliberation, which might have misled
you into supposing that he had some other reason for staying
than the mere want of impulse to move. After looking for a long
while at any work that was going on, he would raise his eyes a
little and look at the horizon; finally he would shake his bridle,
touch his horse with the whip, and get it to move slowly onward.
The hour-hand of a clock was quick by comparison with Mr. Solomon,
who had an agreeable sense that he could afford to be slow.
He was in the habit of pausing for a cautious, vaguely designing chat
with every hedger or ditcher on his way, and was especially willing
to listen even to news which he had heard before, feeling himself
at an advantage over all narrators in partially disbelieving them.
One day, however, he got into a dialogue with Hiram Ford, a wagoner,
in which he himself contributed information. He wished to know whether
Hiram had seen fellows with staves and instruments spying about:
they called themselves railroad people, but there was no telling
what they were or what they meant to do. The least they pretended
was that they were going to cut Lowick Parish into sixes and sevens.

"Why, there'll be no stirrin' from one pla-ace to another,"
said Hiram, thinking of his wagon and horses.

"Not a bit," said Mr. Solomon. "And cutting up fine land such as
this parish! Let 'em go into Tipton, say I. But there's no knowing
what there is at the bottom of it. Traffic is what they put for'ard;
but it's to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run."

"Why, they're Lunnon chaps, I reckon," said Hiram, who had a dim
notion of London as a centre of hostility to the country.

"Ay, to be sure. And in some parts against Brassing, by what I've
heard say, the folks fell on 'em when they were spying, and broke
their peep-holes as they carry, and drove 'em away, so as they knew
better than come again."

"It war good foon, I'd be bound," said Hiram, whose fun was much
restricted by circumstances.

"Well, I wouldn't meddle with 'em myself," said Solomon.
"But some say this country's seen its best days, and the sign is,
as it's being overrun with these fellows trampling right and left,
and wanting to cut it up into railways; and all for the big traffic
to swallow up the little, so as there shan't be a team left on the land,
nor a whip to crack."

"I'll crack MY whip about their ear'n, afore they bring it
to that, though," said Hiram, while Mr. Solomon, shaking his bridle,
moved onward.

Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by
railroads was discussed, not only at the "Weights and Scales,"
but in the hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave
opportunities for talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.

One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother
and Mary Garth, in which she confessed to him her feeling for
Fred Vincy, it happened that her father had some business which took
him to Yoddrell's farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure
and value an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor,
which Caleb expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it
must be confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible
terms from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell's, and in
walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his work,
he encountered the party of the company's agents, who were adjusting
their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them, observing that
by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going to measure.
It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which become
delicious about twelve o'clock, when the clouds part a little,
and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the hedgerows.

The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming
along the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried
by unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his
father on one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church,
with Mary on the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it,
and with the working-day world showing no eager need whatever
of a young gentleman without capital and generally unskilled.
It was the harder to Fred's disposition because his father,
satisfied that he was no longer rebellious, was in good humor with him,
and had sent him on this pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds.
Even when he had fixed on what he should do, there would be the task
of telling his father. But it must be admitted that the fixing,
which had to come first, was the more difficult task:--what secular
avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could
not get him an "appointment") which was at once gentlemanly,
lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge?
Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and slackening
his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go round
by Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges
from one field to another. Suddenly a noise roused his attention,
and on the far side of a field on his left hand he could see six
or seven men in smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making
an offensive approach towards the four railway agents who were
facing them, while Caleb Garth and his assistant were hastening
across the field to join the threatened group. Fred, delayed a few
moments by having to find the gate, could not gallop up to the spot
before the party in smock-frocks, whose work of turning the hay
had not been too pressing after swallowing their mid-day beer,
were driving the men in coats before them with their hay-forks;
while Caleb Garth's assistant, a lad of seventeen, who had snatched
up the spirit-level at Caleb's order, had been knocked down and
seemed to be lying helpless. The coated men had the advantage
as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting in front
of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw
their chase into confusion. "What do you confounded fools mean?"
shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting
right and left with his whip. "I'll swear to every one of you
before the magistrate. You've knocked the lad down and killed him,
for what I know. You'll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes,
if you don't mind," said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he
remembered his own phrases.

The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into their
hay-field, and Fred had checked his horse, when Hiram Ford,
observing himself at a safe challenging distance, turned back
and shouted a defiance which he did not know to be Homeric.

"Yo're a coward, yo are. Yo git off your horse, young measter,
and I'll have a round wi' ye, I wull. Yo daredn't come on wi'out
your hoss an' whip. I'd soon knock the breath out on ye, I would."

"Wait a minute, and I'll come back presently, and have a round
with you all in turn, if you like," said Fred, who felt confidence
in his power of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren. But just
now he wanted to hasten back to Caleb and the prostrate youth.

The lad's ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it,
but he was no further hurt, and Fred placed him on the horse that he
might ride to Yoddrell's and be taken care of there.

"Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they
can come back for their traps," said Fred. "The ground is clear now."

"No, no," said Caleb, "here's a breakage. They'll have to give up
for to-day, and it will be as well. Here, take the things before you
on the horse, Tom. They'll see you coming, and they'll turn back."

"I'm glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth,"
said Fred, as Tom rode away. "No knowing what might have happened
if the cavalry had not come up in time."

"Ay, ay, it was lucky," said Caleb, speaking rather absently,
and looking towards the spot where he had been at work at the moment
of interruption. "But--deuce take it--this is what comes of men
being fools--I'm hindered of my day's work. I can't get along
without somebody to help me with the measuring-chain. However!"
He was beginning to move towards the spot with a look of vexation,
as if he had forgotten Fred's presence, but suddenly he turned round
and said quickly, "What have you got to do to-day, young fellow?"

"Nothing, Mr. Garth. I'll help you with pleasure--can I?" said Fred,
with a sense that he should be courting Mary when he was helping
her father.

"Well, you mustn't mind stooping and getting hot."

"I don't mind anything. Only I want to go first and have a round
with that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me. It would
be a good lesson for him. I shall not be five minutes."

"Nonsense!" said Caleb, with his most peremptory intonation.
"I shall go and speak to the men myself. It's all ignorance.
Somebody has been telling them lies. The poor fools don't know
any better."

"I shall go with you, then," said Fred.

"No, no; stay where you are. I don't want your young blood.
I can take care of myself."

Caleb was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear
of hurting others and the fear of having to speechify. But he felt
it his duty at this moment to try and give a little harangue.
There was a striking mixture in him--which came from his having
always been a hard-working man himself--of rigorous notions about
workmen and practical indulgence towards them. To do a good day's
work and to do it well, he held to be part of their welfare, as it
was the chief part of his own happiness; but he had a strong sense
of fellowship with them. When he advanced towards the laborers
they had not gone to work again, but were standing in that form
of rural grouping which consists in each turning a shoulder towards
the other, at a distance of two or three yards. They looked
rather sulkily at Caleb, who walked quickly with one hand in his
pocket and the other thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat,
and had his every-day mild air when he paused among them.

"Why, my lads, how's this?" he began, taking as usual to brief phrases,
which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying
under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to
peep above the water. "How came you to make such a mistake as this?
Somebody has been telling you lies. You thought those men up there
wanted to do mischief."

"Aw!" was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according
to his degree of unreadiness.

"Nonsense! No such thing! They're looking out to see which way the
railroad is to take. Now, my lads, you can't hinder the railroad:
it will be made whether you like it or not. And if you go fighting
against it, you'll get yourselves into trouble. The law gives
those men leave to come here on the land. The owner has nothing
to say against it, and if you meddle with them you'll have to do
with the constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs
and Middlemarch jail. And you might be in for it now, if anybody
informed against you."

Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have
chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.

"But come, you didn't mean any harm. Somebody told you the railroad
was a bad thing. That was a lie. It may do a bit of harm here
and there, to this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven.
But the railway's a good thing."

"Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on," said old
Timothy Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while
the others had been gone on their spree;--"I'n seen lots o'
things turn up sin' I war a young un--the war an' the peace,
and the canells, an' the oald King George, an' the Regen', an'
the new King George, an' the new un as has got a new ne-ame--an'
it's been all aloike to the poor mon. What's the canells been t' him?
They'n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor wage to lay by,
if he didn't save it wi' clemmin' his own inside. Times ha'
got wusser for him sin' I war a young un. An' so it'll be wi'
the railroads. They'll on'y leave the poor mon furder behind.
But them are fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here.
This is the big folks's world, this is. But yo're for the big folks,
Muster Garth, yo are."

Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times--
who had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage,
and was not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of
the feudal spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been
totally unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man.
Caleb was in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark
times and unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in
possession of an undeniable truth which they know through a hard
process of feeling, and can let it fall like a giant's club on your
neatly carved argument for a social benefit which they do not feel.
Caleb had no cant at command, even if he could have chosen to use it;
and he had been accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other
way than by doing his "business" faithfully. He answered--

"If you don't think well of me, Tim, never mind; that's neither here
nor there now. Things may be bad for the poor man--bad they are;
but I want the lads here not to do what will make things worse
for themselves. The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won't
help 'em to throw it over into the roadside pit, when it's partly
their own fodder."

"We war on'y for a bit o' foon," said Hiram, who was beginning
to see consequences. "That war all we war arter."

"Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I'll see that nobody
informs against you."

"I'n ne'er meddled, an' I'n no call to promise," said Timothy.

"No, but the rest. Come, I'm as hard at work as any of you
to-day, and I can't spare much time. Say you'll be quiet without
the constable."

"Aw, we wooant meddle--they may do as they loike for oos"--
were the forms in which Caleb got his pledges; and then he hastened
back to Fred, who had followed him, and watched him in the gateway.

They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously. His spirits had risen,
and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under
the hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer trousers. Was it his
successful onset which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping
Mary's father? Something more. The accidents of the morning had
helped his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself
which had several attractions. I am not sure that certain fibres
in Mr. Garth's mind had not resumed their old vibration towards
the very end which now revealed itself to Fred. For the effective
accident is but the touch of fire where there is oil and tow; and it
al ways appeared to Fred that the railway brought the needed touch.
But they went on in silence except when their business demanded speech.
At last, when they had finished and were walking away, Mr. Garth said--

"A young fellow needn't be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?"

"I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.,"
said Fred. He paused a moment, and then added, more hesitatingly,
"Do you think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Garth?"

"My business is of many sorts, my boy," said Mr. Garth, smiling.
"A good deal of what I know can only come from experience:
you can't learn it off as you learn things out of a book.
But you are young enough to lay a foundation yet." Caleb pronounced
the last sentence emphatically, but paused in some uncertainty.
He had been under the impression lately that Fred had made up his mind
to enter the Church.

"You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?"
said Fred, more eagerly.

"That depends," said Caleb, turning his head on one side and lowering
his voice, with the air of a man who felt himself to be saying
something deeply religious. "You must be sure of two things:
you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge
of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not
be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you
to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work
and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There's this
and there's that--if I had this or that to do, I might make something
of it. No matter what a man is--I wouldn't give twopence for him"--
here Caleb's mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers--
"whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he
didn't do well what he undertook to do."

"I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman,"
said Fred, meaning to take a step in argument.

"Then let it alone, my boy," said Caleb, abruptly, "else you'll
never be easy. Or, if you ARE easy, you'll be a poor stick."

"That is very nearly what Mary thinks about it," said Fred, coloring.
"I think you must know what I feel for Mary, Mr. Garth: I hope
it does not displease you that I have always loved her better
than any one else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her."

The expression of Caleb's face was visibly softening while Fred spoke.
But he swung his head with a solemn slowness, and said--

"That makes things more serious, Fred, if you want to take Mary's
happiness into your keeping."

"I know that, Mr. Garth," said Fred, eagerly, "and I would do anything
for HER. She says she will never have me if I go into the Church;
and I shall be the most miserable devil in the world if I lose all hope
of Mary. Really, if I could get some other profession, business--
anything that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would deserve
your good opinion. I should like to have to do with outdoor things.
I know a good deal about land and cattle already. I used to believe,
you know--though you will think me rather foolish for it--that I
should have land of my own. I am sure knowledge of that sort would
come easily to me, especially if I could be under you in any way."

"Softly, my boy," said Caleb, having the image of "Susan" before
his eyes. "What have you said to your father about all this?"

"Nothing, yet; but I must tell him. I am only waiting to know
what I can do instead of entering the Church. I am very sorry to
disappoint him, but a man ought to be allowed to judge for himself
when he is four-and-twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen,
what it would be right for me to do now? My education was a mistake."

"But hearken to this, Fred," said Caleb. "Are you sure Mary
is fond of you, or would ever have you?"

"I asked Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden me--
I didn't know what else to do," said Fred, apologetically. "And he
says that I have every reason to hope, if I can put myself in an
honorable position--I mean, out of the Church I dare say you think it
unwarrantable in me, Mr. Garth, to be troubling you and obtruding my
own wishes about Mary, before I have done anything at all for myself.
Of course I have not the least claim--indeed, I have already a debt
to you which will never be discharged, even when I have been,
able to pay it in the shape of money."

"Yes, my boy, you have a claim," said Caleb, with much feeling
in his voice. "The young ones have always a claim on the old to
help them forward. I was young myself once and had to do without
much help; but help would have been welcome to me, if it had been
only for the fellow-feeling's sake. But I must consider. Come to
me to-morrow at the office, at nine o'clock. At the office, mind."

Mr. Garth would take no important step without consulting Susan,
but it must be confessed that before he reached home he had
taken his resolution. With regard to a large number of matters
about which other men are decided or obstinate, he was the most
easily manageable man in the world. He never knew what meat
he would choose, and if Susan had said that they ought to live
in a four-roomed cottage, in order to save, he would have said,
"Let us go," without inquiring into details. But where Caleb's
feeling and judgment strongly pronounced, he was a ruler;
and in spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every one
about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose,
he was absolute. He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on
some one else's behalf. On ninety-nine points Mrs. Garth decided,
but on the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform
the singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle,
and to make herself subordinate.

"It is come round as I thought, Susan," said Caleb, when they were
seated alone in the evening. He had already narrated the adventure
which had brought about Fred's sharing in his work, but had kept
back the further result. "The children ARE fond of each other--
I mean, Fred and Mary."

Mrs. Garth laid her work on her knee, and fixed her penetrating
eyes anxiously on her husband.

"After we'd done our work, Fred poured it all out to me. He can't
bear to be a clergyman, and Mary says she won't have him if he is one;
and the lad would like to be under me and give his mind to business.
And I've determined to take him and make a man of him."

"Caleb!" said Mrs. Garth, in a deep contralto, expressive of
resigned astonishment.

"It's a fine thing to do," said Mr. Garth, settling himself
firmly against the back of his chair, and grasping the elbows.
"I shall have trouble with him, but I think I shall carry
it through. The lad loves Mary, and a true love for a good
woman is a great thing, Susan. It shapes many a rough fellow."

"Has Mary spoken to you on the subject?" said Mrs Garth, secretly a
little hurt that she had to be informed on it herself.

"Not a word. I asked her about Fred once; I gave her a bit of a warning.
But she assured me she would never marry an idle self-indulgent man--
nothing since. But it seems Fred set on Mr. Farebrother to talk to her,
because she had forbidden him to speak himself, and Mr. Farebrother
has found out that she is fond of Fred, but says he must not be
a clergyman. Fred's heart is fixed on Mary, that I can see:
it gives me a good opinion of the lad--and we always liked him, Susan."

"It is a pity for Mary, I think," said Mrs. Garth.

"Why--a pity?"

"Because, Caleb, she might have had a man who is worth twenty
Fred Vincy's."

"Ah?" said Caleb, with surprise.

"I firmly believe that Mr. Farebrother is attached to her,
and meant to make her an offer; but of course, now that Fred has
used him as an envoy, there is an end to that better prospect."
There was a severe precision in Mrs. Garth's utterance. She was vexed
and disappointed, but she was bent on abstaining from useless words.

Caleb was silent a few moments under a conflict of feelings.
He looked at the floor and moved his head and hands in accompaniment
to some inward argumentation. At last he said--

"That would have made me very proud and happy, Susan, and I
should have been glad for your sake. I've always felt that your
belongings have never been on a level with you. But you took me,
though I was a plain man."

"I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known," said Mrs. Garth,
convinced that SHE would never have loved any one who came
short of that mark.

"Well, perhaps others thought you might have done better.
But it would have been worse for me. And that is what touches me
close about Fred. The lad is good at bottom, and clever enough
to do, if he's put in the right way; and he loves and honors my
daughter beyond anything, and she has given him a sort of promise
according to what he turns out. I say, that young man's soul is
in my hand; and I'll do the best I can for him, so help me God!
It's my duty, Susan."

Mrs. Garth was not given to tears, but there was a large one
rolling down her face before her husband had finished. It came
from the pressure of various feelings, in which there was much
affection and some vexation. She wiped it away quickly, saying--

"Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties
in that way, Caleb."

"That signifies nothing--what other men would think. I've got
a clear feeling inside me, and that I shall follow; and I hope
your heart will go with me, Susan, in making everything as light
as can be to Mary, poor child."

Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards
his wife. She rose and kissed him, saying, "God bless you, Caleb!
Our children have a good father."

But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression
of her words. She felt sure that her husband's conduct would
be misunderstood, and about Fred she was rational and unhopeful.
Which would turn out to have the more foresight in it--her rationality
or Caleb's ardent generosity?

When Fred went to the office the next morning, there was a test
to be gone through which he was not prepared for.

"Now Fred," said Caleb, "you will have some desk-work. I have always
done a good deal of writing myself, but I can't do without help,
and as I want you to understand the accounts and get the values into
your head, I mean to do without another clerk. So you must buckle to.
How are you at writing and arithmetic?"

Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought
of desk-work; but he was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink.
"I'm not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it always came easily to me.
I think you know my writing."

"Let us see," said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully
and handing it, well dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper.
"Copy me a line or two of that valuation, with the figures at
the end."

At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman
to write legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk.
Fred wrote the lines demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any
viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the
consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes
had a blotted solidity and the letters disdained to keep the line--
in short, it was a manuscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret
when you know beforehand what the writer means.

As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression,
but when Fred handed him the paper he gave something like a snarl,
and rapped the paper passionately with the back of his hand.
Bad work like this dispelled all Caleb's mildness.

"The deuce!" he exclaimed, snarlingly. "To think that this is
a country where a man's education may cost hundreds and hundreds,
and it turns you out this!" Then in a more pathetic tone,
pushing up his spectacles and looking at the unfortunate scribe,
"The Lord have mercy on us, Fred, I can't put up with this!"

"What can I do, Mr. Garth?" said Fred, whose spirits had sunk very low,
not only at the estimate of his handwriting, but at the vision
of himself as liable to be ranked with office clerks.

"Do? Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line.
What's the use of writing at all if nobody can understand it?"
asked Caleb, energetically, quite preoccupied with the bad quality
of the work. "Is there so little business in the world that you must
be sending puzzles over the country? But that's the way people are
brought up. I should lose no end of time with the letters some people
send me, if Susan did not make them out for me. It's disgusting."
Here Caleb tossed the paper from him.

Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have
wondered what was the drama between the indignant man of business,
and the fine-looking young fellow whose blond complexion was getting
rather patchy as he bit his lip with mortification. Fred was struggling
with many thoughts. Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at
the beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had
been at a high pitch, and the downfall was proportionate. He had not
thought of desk-work--in fact, like the majority of young gentlemen,
he wanted an occupation which should be free from disagreeables.
I cannot tell what might have been the consequences if he had not
distinctly promised himself that he would go to Lowick to see
Mary and tell her that he was engaged to work under her father.
He did not like to disappoint himself there.

"I am very sorry," were all the words that he could muster.
But Mr. Garth was already relenting.

"We must make the best of it, Fred," he began, with a return to his
usual quiet tone. "Every man can learn to write. I taught myself.
Go at it with a will, and sit up at night if the day-time isn't enough.
We'll be patient, my boy. Callum shall go on with the books
for a bit, while you are learning. But now I must be off,"
said Caleb, rising. "You must let your father know our agreement.
You'll save me Callum's salary, you know, when you can write;
and I can afford to give you eighty pounds for the first year,
and more after."

When Fred made the necessary disclosure to his parents, the relative
effect on the two was a surprise which entered very deeply into
his memory. He went straight from Mr. Garth's office to the warehouse,
rightly feeling that the most respectful way in which he could behave to
his father was to make the painful communication as gravely and formally
as possible. Moreover, the decision would be more certainly understood
to be final, if the interview took place in his father's gravest
hours, which were always those spent in his private room at the warehouse.

Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he
had done and was resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret
that he should be the cause of disappointment to his father,
and taking the blame on his own deficiencies. The regret was genuine,
and inspired Fred with strong, simple words.

Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise without uttering even
an exclamation, a silence which in his impatient temperament was a sign
of unusual emotion. He had not been in good spirits about trade
that morning, and the slight bitterness in his lips grew intense
as he listened. When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly
a minute, during which Mr. Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned
the key emphatically. Then he looked at his son steadily, and said--

"So you've made up your mind at last, sir?"

"Yes, father."

"Very well; stick to it. I've no more to say. You've thrown away
your education, and gone down a step in life, when I had given you
the means of rising, that's all."

"I am very sorry that we differ, father. I think I can be quite
as much of a gentleman at the work I have undertaken, as if I had
been a curate. But I am grateful to you for wishing to do the best
for me."

"Very well; I have no more to say. I wash my hands of you.
I only hope, when you have a son of your own he will make a better
return for the pains you spend on him."

This was very cutting to Fred. His father was using that unfair
advantage possessed by us all when we are in a pathetic situation
and see our own past as if it were simply part of the pathos.
In reality, Mr. Vincy's wishes about his son had had a great deal
of pride, inconsiderateness, and egoistic folly in them. But still
the disappointed father held a strong lever; and Fred felt as if he
were being banished with a malediction.

"I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?" he said,
after rising to go; "I shall have a sufficient salary to pay for
my board, as of course I should wish to do."

"Board be hanged!" said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust
at the notion that Fred's keep would be missed at his table.
"Of course your mother will want you to stay. But I shall keep no
horse for you, you understand; and you will pay your own tailor.
You will do with a suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay
for 'em."

Fred lingered; there was still something to be said. At last it came.

"I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me
the vexation I have caused you."

Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son,
who had advanced near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly,
"Yes, yes, let us say no more."

Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother,
but she was inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her husband
had never thought of, the certainty that Fred would marry Mary Garth,
that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a perpetual infusion
of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his beautiful
face and stylish air "beyond anybody else's son in Middlemarch,"
would be sure to get like that family in plainness of appearance
and carelessness about his clothes. To her it seemed that there
was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred,
but she dared not enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint
of it had made him "fly out" at her as he had never done before.
Her temper was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt
that her happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely
to look at Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject
of some baleful prophecy. Perhaps she was the slower to recover
her usual cheerfulness because Fred had warned her that she must
not reopen the sore question with his father, who had accepted
his decision and forgiven him. If her husband had been vehement
against Fred, she would have been urged into defence of her darling.
It was the end of the fourth day when Mr. Vincy said to her--

"Come, Lucy, my dear, don't be so down-hearted. You always have
spoiled the boy, and you must go on spoiling him."

"Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy," said the wife, her fair
throat and chin beginning to tremble again, "only his illness."

"Pooh, pooh, never mind! We must expect to have trouble with
our children. Don't make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits."

"Well, I won't," said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and
adjusting herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays
down its ruffled plumage.

"It won't do to begin making a fuss about one," said Mr. Vincy,
wishing to combine a little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness.
"There's Rosamond as well as Fred."

"Yes, poor thing. I'm sure I felt for her being disappointed
of her baby; but she got over it nicely."

"Baby, pooh! I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice,
and getting into debt too, by what I hear. I shall have Rosamond
coming to me with a pretty tale one of these days. But they'll
get no money from me, I know. Let HIS family help him.
I never did like that marriage. But it's no use talking. Ring the
bell for lemons, and don't look dull any more, Lucy. I'll drive you
and Louisa to Riverston to-morrow."

CHAPTER LVII.

        They numbered scarce eight summers when a name
            Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there
        As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
            At penetration of the quickening air:
        His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
            Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor,
        Making the little world their childhood knew
            Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur,
        And larger yet with wonder love belief
            Toward Walter Scott who living far away
        Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief.
            The book and they must part, but day by day,
                In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
                They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.

The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he
had begun to see that this was a world in which even a spirited
young man must sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him)
he set out at five o'clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way,
wishing to assure himself that she accepted their new relations willingly.

He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great
apple-tree in the orchard. It was a festival with Mrs. Garth,
for her eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come
home for a short holiday--Christy, who held it the most desirable
thing in the world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a
regenerate Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred,
a sort of object-lesson given to him by the educational mother.
Christy himself, a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition
of his mother not much higher than Fred's shoulder--which made it
the harder that he should be held superior--was always as simple
as possible, and thought no more of Fred's disinclination to scholarship
than of a giraffe's, wishing that he himself were more of the
same height. He was lying on the ground now by his mother's chair,
with his straw hat laid flat over his eyes, while Jim on the other
side was reading aloud from that beloved writer who has made
a chief part in the happiness of many young lives. The volume was
"Ivanhoe," and Jim was in the great archery scene at the tournament,
but suffered much interruption from Ben, who had fetched his own
old bow and arrows, and was making himself dreadfully disagreeable,
Letty thought, by begging all present to observe his random shots,
which no one wished to do except Brownie, the active-minded but
probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled Newfoundland lying in
the sun looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality of extreme old age.
Letty herself, showing as to her mouth and pinafore some slight
signs that she had been assisting at the gathering of the cherries
which stood in a coral-heap on the tea-table, was now seated
on the grass, listening open-eyed to the reading.

But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival
of Fred Vincy. When, seating himself on a garden-stool, he said
that he was on his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown
down his bow, and snatched up a reluctant half-grown kitten instead,
strode across Fred's outstretched leg, and said "Take me!"

"Oh, and me too," said Letty.

"You can't keep up with Fred and me," said Ben.

"Yes, I can. Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty,
whose life was much checkered by resistance to her depreciation
as a girl.

"I shall stay with Christy," observed Jim; as much as to say
that he had the advantage of those simpletons; whereupon Letty
put her hand up to her head and looked with jealous indecision
from the one to the other.

"Let us all go and see Mary," said Christy, opening his arms.

"No, my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage.
And that old Glasgow suit of yours would never do. Besides, your
father will come home. We must let Fred go alone. He can tell
Mary that you are here, and she will come back to-morrow."

Christy glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fred's
beautiful white trousers. Certainly Fred's tailoring suggested
the advantages of an English university, and he had a graceful way
even of looking warm and of pushing his hair back with his handkerchief.

"Children, run away," said Mrs. Garth; "it is too warm to hang
about your friends. Take your brother and show him the rabbits."

The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately.
Fred felt that Mrs. Garth wished to give him an opportunity of saying
anything he had to say, but he could only begin by observing--

"How glad you must be to have Christy here!"

"Yes; he has come sooner than I expected. He got down from the coach
at nine o'clock, just after his father went out. I am longing for
Caleb to come and hear what wonderful progress Christy is making.
He has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons,
carrying on hard study at the same time. He hopes soon to get
a private tutorship and go abroad."

"He is a great fellow," said Fred, to whom these cheerful
truths had a medicinal taste, "and no trouble to anybody."
After a slight pause, he added, "But I fear you will think
that I am going to be a great deal of trouble to Mr. Garth."

"Caleb likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always
do more than any one would have thought of asking them to do,"
answered Mrs. Garth. She was knitting, and could either look at
Fred or not, as she chose--always an advantage when one is bent
on loading speech with salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Garth
intended to be duly reserved, she did wish to say something
that Fred might be the better for.

"I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good reason,"
said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of something
like a disposition to lecture him. "I happen to have behaved just
the worst to the people I can't help wishing for the most from.
But while two men like Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given
me up, I don't see why I should give myself up." Fred thought it
might be well to suggest these masculine examples to Mrs. Garth.

"Assuredly," said she, with gathering emphasis. "A young man
for whom two such elders had devoted themselves would indeed be
culpable if he threw himself away and made their sacrifices vain."

Fred wondered a little at this strong language, but only said,
"I hope it will not be so with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some
encouragement to believe that I may win Mary. Mr. Garth has told
you about that? You were not surprised, I dare say?" Fred ended,
innocently referring only to his own love as probably evident enough.

"Not surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?"
returned Mrs. Garth, who thought it would be well for Fred to be
more alive to the fact that Mary's friends could not possibly
have wished this beforehand, whatever the Vincys might suppose.
"Yes, I confess I was surprised."

"She never did give me any--not the least in the world, when I
talked to her myself," said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary.
"But when I asked Mr. Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him
to tell me there was a hope."

The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had
not yet discharged itself. It was a little too provoking even for
HER self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish
on the disappointments of sadder and wiser people--making a meal
of a nightingale and never knowing it--and that all the while his
family should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig;
and her vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total
repression towards her husband. Exemplary wives will sometimes
find scapegoats in this way. She now said with energetic decision,
"You made a great mistake, Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak
for you."

"Did I?" said Fred, reddening instantaneously. He was alarmed,
but at a loss to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added,
in an apologetic tone, "Mr. Farebrother has always been such
a friend of ours; and Mary, I knew, would listen to him gravely;
and he took it on himself quite readily."

"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes,
and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said Mrs. Garth
She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine,
and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted,
knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

"I cannot conceive how it could be any

Middlemarch by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries from the Encyclopedia of the Self by Mark ZimmermanReturn to Part 2 of 4Go to Part 4 of 4

Middlemarch
by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman
Return to Part 2 of 4
Go to Part 4 of 4