Middlemarch: vol. 1

MIDDLEMARCH

VOL. II

M. (11)

Manufactured in Great Britain.

Fage

Will, leaning towards her, clasped both her
upraised hands.'

Illustrated by A A Dixon

CONTENTS

PAGB

BOOK V. THE DEAD HAND - - - 5

„ VI. THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE - - 131

„ VII. TWO TEMPTATIONS - - - - 257

„VIII. SUNSET AND SUNRISE - - 372

MIDDLEMARCH

VOL. II

BOOK V~THE DEAD HAND
CHAPTER XLIII

This figure hath high price : 'twas wrought with love

Ages ago in finest ivory;

Naught modish in it, pure and noble lines

Of generous v/omanhood 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 —

6 MIDDLEMARCH

overcame every scruple. That there had been some
crisis in her husband's mind she Vv^as certain : he had
the very next day begun a new method of arranging
his notes, and had associated her quite nevv^y in carry-
ing out his plan. Poor Dorothea needed to lay up
stores of patience.

It was about four o'clock when she drove to Lyd-
gate'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.
WiU 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 Ufe when the habits of the different ranks were
less blent than now. Let those v/ho know, tell us exactly
what stuff it was that Dorothea wore in those days of
mild autumn— that thin v/hite 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 pehsse with sleeves hang-
ing 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 hmbs and neck; and about her
simply parted hair and candid eyes the large round
poke wluch was then in the fate of women, seemed no

MIDDLEMARCH 7

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 Rost^'mond she
was one of those county divinities not mixing ^vith
Middlemarch mortahty, whose sHghtest marks of
manner or appearance were worthy of her study;
moreover, Rosamond was not without satisfaction
that Mrs Casaubon should have an opportunity of
stud3dng her. What is the use of being exquisite if
you are not seen by the best judges? and since Rosa-
mond 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 wdth 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

8 MIDDLEMARCH

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.^vComing forward. He had already taken up
his hat before Dorothea entered. She coloured with
surprise, but put out her hand with a smile of unmis-
takable 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 \vill 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 feeHng rather vexed and
miserable, and found nothing to say on his side. He
handed her into the carriage in silence, they said
good-bye, 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 allow-
ing 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

MIDDLEMARCH 9

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 acco^npanying
piano, which she had not noted much at the time,
returning on her inv/ard 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 wat. 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 roUing
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 com^e a chance which had set him at a disadvantage.
It was not only, as it had been hitherto, that she was
not suprem-ely occupied with him, but that she had
seen him under circumstances in which he might
appear not to be supremely occupied vrith her. He
felt thrust to a new distance from her, amongst the
circles of Middlem^archers who made no part of her
hfe. 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.

10 MIDDLEMARCH

his position requiring that he should know everybody
and everything. Lydgate was really better worth
knowing than any one else in the neighbourhood, 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 \^ith
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, hke odorous bodies, have a double existence
both soHd 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 inter-
rupted. 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

MIDDLEMARCH ii

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 gav^ 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 airy
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 com.e 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 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 gipsy; he thinks nothing
of leather and prunella.'

12 MIDDLEMARCH

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

'Yes : I think he is a good fellow : rather miscellan-
eous and briq-a-brac, but likeable.'

'Do yo\i know, I think he adores Mrs Casau-
bon.'

'Poor devil!' said Lydgate, smihng 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 b3-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 dehghtful 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 for ever hopeless, losing their rest probably, and
if their appetite too, so much the better ! But Rosa-
mond's romance turned at present chiefly on her
crown-prince, and it was enough to enjoy his assured
-subjection. When he said, 'Poor devilT she asked,
with playful curiosity : —

'V\^hy 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

MIDDLEMARCH 13

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 Middle-
march doctor ? ' said Lydgate, letting liis hands fall on
to his \\dfe's shoulders, and looking at her with affec-
tionate gravit}^ 'I shall make you learn my favourite
bit from an old poet : —

WTiy should our pride make such a stir to be
And be forgot? What good is hke to this,
To do worthy the writing, and to write
Worthy the reading and the world's deUght?

Wh3.t 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 som.e
better place than Middlemarch. You cannot say
that I have ever tried to hinder you from working.
But we cannot hve Hke hermits. You are not discon-
tented with me, Tertius ? '

'No, dear, no. I am too entirely contented.'
'But what did Mrs Casaubon want to say to you?'
'^klerely 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 tw'O hundred a year.'

14 MIDDLEMARCH

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 shp an opportunity of
furthering a favourite 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 ques-
tions about the way in which the health of the poor
was affected by their miserable housing.' i

'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 sHpped away from me since I have been
married. I mean,' she said, after a moment's hesita-
tion, 'that the people in our village are tolerably com-|
fortable, 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.*

MIDDLEMARCH 15

'There is everything to be done/ said Lydgate, with
abrupt energy. 'And this Hospital is a capital piece
cf work, due entirely to Mr Bulstrode's exertions, and
in a great degree to his money. But one nitan 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 observa-
tions might contribute to the reform of medical doc-
trine 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 Hght of the great persecutions.

'To put the matter quite fairly, they have other
objections to him : — he is masterful and rather unsoci-
able, and he is concerned with trade, which has

i6 MIDDLEMARCH

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 Middle-
march have set themselves tooth and nail against the
Hospital, and not only refuse to co-operate themselves,
but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder sub-
scriptions.'

'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 beheve 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 !

MIDDLEMARCH 17

I wish I could awake with that knowledge, every
morning. There seems to be so much trouble ta.ken
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 dis-
trusted her affection; and what loneliness is more
lonely than distrust?

i8 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER XLV

It is the humour of many heads to extol the days of their
forefathers, and declaim against the %\ickedness of times
present, ^^^lich 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 comm-nd, 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, Hke other
oppositions, to be viewed in many different hghts.
He regarded it as a mixture of jealousy and dunder-
headed prejudice. Mr Bulstrode saw in it not only
medical jealousy but a determination to thwart liim-
self, prompted mainly by a hatred of that vital rehgion
of which he had striven to be an effectual lay repre-
sentative— a hatred which certainly found pretexts apart
fiom 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 for ever 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 mod^eration of Dr Minchin and
the trenchant assertion of Mrs Dollop, the landlady of
the Tanlvard in Slaughter Lane.

MIDDLEMARCH 19

Mrs Dollop became more and more convinced by her
own asseveration, that Doctor Lydgate meant to let
the people die in the Hospital, if not to poispn 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 over-
thrown 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 pubhc-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 favour 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 recommenda-
tion and might interfere with providential favours.
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

20 MIDDLEMARCH

naturally been divided, depending on a sense of likeli-
hood, situated perhaps in the pit of the stomach or in
the pineal gland, ana differing in its verdicts, but not
the less valuable as a guide in the total deficit of e\d-
dence. Patients who had chronic diseases or whose
hves had long been worn threadbare, hke old Feather-
stone's, had been at once inchned to tr\^ him; also,
many who did not like pa\dng their doctor's bills, thought
agreeably of opening an account ^^ith a new doctor
and sending for him without stint if the children's
temper wanted a dose, occasions vrhen the old prac-
titioners were often crusty ; and all persons thus
inchned to employ Lydgate held it likely that he v»-as
clever. Some considered that he might do more than
others 'where there v/as liver'; — at least there would
be no harm in getting a few bottles of ' stuff' from liim,
since if these proved useless it would still be possible
to return to the Purif\ing Pills, which kept you ahve, if
they did not remove the yellowness. But these were
people of minor imiportance. GoodMiddlemarchfamihes
were of course not going to change their doctor \^ithout
reason sho\Mi; and ever^^body who had employed
Mr Peacock did not feel obhged 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 signifi-
cance is entireh' hidden, like a statistical amount
without a standard of comparison, but v,ith a note of
exclamation at the end. The cubic feet of oxygen
yearly swaUowed by a fuU-grown man — what a shudder
they might have created in some ^liddlemarch circles !
'Ox^'gen ! 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 !'

MIDDLEMARCH 21

One of the facts quickly rumoured 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 Mawonsey, an impor-
tant 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 popu-
lar explanation of his reasons, pointing out to Mr Mawm-
sey 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 Mawinsey — 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 inter-
view 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 fiame-like pyramid, and whose retail deference was
of the cordial, encouraging kind — jocosely compli-
mentary, 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

22 MIDDLEMARCH

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,' mth the air of one who saw everything
clearly enough. But in truth his views were perturbed.
For years he had been pa^dng bills with strictly-made
items, so that for every half-crov/n and eighteenpence
he was certain something measurable had been
delivered. He had done this \vith satisfaction, includ-
ing 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 judg-
ment as to their immediate effects, so as to give an
intelHgent statement for the guidance of Mr Gambit
— a practitioner just a Httle lower in status than
Wrench or Toller, and especially esteemed as an
accoucheur, of whose abihty 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 atten-
dance 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

MIDDLEMARCH 23

of what I have to provide for caUing 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 mix-
ture, 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 humour 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 / 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 / would employ,' said Mrs Mawmsey.
'Others may do as they please.'

24 MIDDLEMARCH

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 paym.ents 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 wdth Mr Hawie^^, and hostile to Mr
Bulstrode. It may seem odd that with such pleasant
habits he should have been given to the heroic treat-
ment, bleeding and blistering and starving his patients,
\\dth a dispassionate disregard to his personal example;
but the incongruity favoured the opinion of his ability
among his patients, who comm.onty 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 favourite in his own circle, and whatever
he implied to any one's disadvantage told doubly
from lus careless ironical tone.

He naturally got tired of smiHng and sa^dng, 'Ah !'

MIDDLEMARCH 25

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 httle 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 quahty 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 ameliora-
tion.'

'Ostentation, Hackbutt?' said Mr Toller, ironically.
*I don't see that. A man can't very well be ostenta-
tious 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 gentle-
man. 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-honoured
procedure. That is my opinion, and I am. ready to

26 MIDDLEMARCH

maintain it against any one who contradicts me.*
Mr Wrench's voice had become exceedingly sharp.

'I can't obHge 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, wiih a
disinterested desire to offer his Hghts. '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.'

]\Ir Toller's prediction was partly verified. If Mr
and Mrs ]\Ia\\'msey, who had no Idea of employing
Lydgate, were made uneasy by his supposed declara-
tion against drugs, it was ine\dtable that those who
caUed him in should watch a Httle anxiously to see
whether he did 'use all the means he might use' in
the case. Even good Mr Powderell, who in his con-
stant charity of interpretation was inchned 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 Pow-
derell 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

MIDDLEMARCH 27

induced his wife privately to take \^idgeon's Purifying
Pills, an esteemed Middiemarch 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 Powder ell himself had no certain reliance on it,
only hoping that it might be attended with a blessing.

But in this doubtful stage of L^^dgate'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 written 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 con-
cerned about alarming symptoms in her charw^om-an,
when Dr Minchia 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 tumour, and recommended the
bearer Nancy Nash as an out-patient, Nancy calling
at home on her way to the Infirmary allowed the
staymaker and his wife, in whose attic she lodged, to
read Dr Mincliin's paper, and by this means became

28 MIDDLEMARCH

a subject of compassionate conversation in the neigh-
bouring shops of Charchyard Lane as being afflicted
vsith a tumour at first declared to be as large and hard as
a duck's eg^, but later in the day to be about the size of
'3-our fist.' Most hearers agreed that it would have
to be cut out, but one had kno^^Tl of oil and another of
'squitchineal' as adequate to soften and reduce any
lump in the bodv when taken enough of into the inside
— the oil by gradually 'soopling/ the squitchineal by
eating away.

Meanwhile when Xancy 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
tumour : it's cramp.' He ordered her a bhster and
some steel mixture, and told her to go home and rest,
gi\-ing her at the same time a note to ^Irs 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 por-
tentously worse, the supposed tumour having indeed
given wav to the bhster, but only wandered to another
region \dth angrier pain. The sta^Tnaker's wife went
to'fetch Lvdgate, and he continued for a fortnight to
attend Nancv in her o\mi homxe — until under his treat-
ment she got quite well and went to work again. But
the case continued to be described as one of tumour in
Churchvard Lane and other streets — nay, by Mrs
Larcher also; for when Lydgate's rem.arkable cure was
mentioned to Dr Minchin, he naturally did not hke to
say, 'The case was not one of tumour, 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 voungster who was not sorry to vex
Minchin \s-ith impurity, exactly what had occurred :

MIDDLEMARCH 29

he privately pronounced that it was indecent in a
general practitioner to contradict aPhysician's diagnosis
in that open manner, and afterwards agreed with\\ rench
that Lydgate was disagreeably inattentive to etiquette.
Lvdgate 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 quahfications. But report took up this
amazing case of tumour, not clearly distinguished
from cancer and considered the more awful for being
of the wandering sort; till much prejudice against
Lvdeate'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 rolhng and roUmg
in agonies from the presence of a tumour both hard
and obstinate, but nevertheless compelled to yield.

' How could Lydgate help himself? It is offensive to
tell a ladv when she is expressing her amazement at
vour skill" that she is altogether mistaken and rather
foohsh in 'her amazement. x\nd to have entered into
the nature of diseases would onlv have added to his
breaches of medical propriety. Thus he had to wmce
under a promise of success given by that ignorant
praise which misses every vahd quahty. _

In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr
Borthrop Trumbull, Lvdgate was conscious of having
=hown himself something better than an everyday
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 ]\Ir Peacock's,
sent for Lydgate, whom he had expressed his intention
to patronise. ^Ir Trumbull was a robust man, a good
subject for tiying the expectant theory upon— watch-
in'^ the course of an interesting disease when left as
mSch as possible to itself, so that the stages might be
noted for future guidance; and from the air with
which he described his sensarions Lydgate surmised

that he would Uke to be taken into his medical man's

30 MIDDLEMARCH

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 beauti-
ful 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 m.edical 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 with-
out 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, feeUng 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/

MIDDLEMARCH 31

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 rivalrj^ 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 ^vith untried notions. His prac-
tice had spread in one or two quarters, and from the
first the report of his high family had led to his being
pretty generally in\ated, so that the other medical
men had to meet him at dinner in the best houses;
and having to meet a man whom you dishke is not
observed always to end in a mutual attachment.
There was hardl}^ 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 crawlirg 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
lav/s Mr Bulstrode was laying do\vn for the direction
of the New Hospital, which were the more exasper-
ating because there was no present possibility of
interfering with his will and pleasure, everybody
except Lord Medlicote ha\ang 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 hinderance from prejudiced
coadjutors; but he had had to spend large sums, and
the building had lingered. Caleb Garth had under-
taken it, had failed during its progress, and before

32 MIDDLEMARCH

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 Hked good solid car-
pentry 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 favourite object wMch also
required money for its accomplishment : he wished to
buy some land in the neighbourhood of Mddlemarch,
and therefore he wished to get considerable contri-
butions towards maintaining the Hospital. Mean-
while he framed his plan of m-anagement. 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 investi-
gations which his stuches, particularly in Paris, had
shown him the importance of, ^he other m.edical
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 govern-
ment.

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, Sve
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

MIDDLEMARCH 33

Brassing. I must work the harder, that's all, ;:.nd 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 carry-
ing out high intentions with vigour, 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 m«idical aversion to Lydgate was hardly dis-
guised 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,
M (11) B

34 MIDDLEMARCH

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 aU
the while; 'there are so many of that sort. I re-
member 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 pre-
tending 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 consti-
tutions 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 \vith 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 he
was bearing enmity and silly misconception with

l\nDDLEMARCH 35

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 Fare-
brother, who had been puffing at his pipe thoughtfully
while Lydgate talked; 'but as to the hostiHty 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 con-
clusions which nobody can foresee.'

'Quite true; ! didn't mean that. I meant only two
things. One is, keep yourself as separable from Bul-
strode 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 feehng 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, care-
lessly, '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 com-
fortably as possible, and feeling in no great need of
advice.

'Why, this. Take care — experto crede — take care

36 MIDDLEMARCH

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 sermonising 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 hostihties 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
favourite ruminating attitude, while Rosamond sat
at the piano, and played one tune after another, of
which her husband only knew (hke 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 fullness 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 her-

MIDDLEMARCH 37

self on a chair dose to the sofa and opposite her hus-
band'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
other-^dse 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.

'WTiat 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 thinldng 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 3'our great heroes,' said
Rosamond, half-playfully, half-anxiously, 'else I shall
have you getting up in the night to go to St Peter's

38 MIDDLEMARCH

churchyard. You know how angry you told me the
people were about Mrs Goby. You have enemies
enough already.'

*So had Vesalius, Ros3^ No wonder the medical
fogies in Middlemarch are jealous, when some of the
greatest doctors living were fierce upon VesaHus
because they had believed in Galen, and he showed
that Galen was wrong. They called him a har 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.

*0h, 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 ship-
wrecked just as he was coming from Jerusalem to take
a great chair at Padua. He died rather miserably.'

There w^as 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 hke sajdng 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 yom* choice of a profession.'

'The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil I'
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 ^^vxh

MIDDLEMARCH 39

but don't like its flavour. 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.

40 MIDDLEMARCH

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 straggling for Medical
Reform against Middlemarch, Middlemarch was be-
coming 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 Middlemxarch, 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 ParUament. 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 Reforai has set
in. There is hkely 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 nov/
is the Pioneer and pohtical 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 Wilber-
force'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/

MIDDLEMARCH 41

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

'Yes, yes, I agree wdth you — I quite take that
point of view. I should put it in that Hght. 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 w^hat it's about.
It wants to have a House of Commons which is not
weighted wdth nominees of the landed class, but with
representatives of the other interests. And as to con-
tending for a reform short of that, it is hke asking
for a bit of an avalanche which had already begun to
thunder.'

'That is fine, Ladislaw : that is the way to put it.
Write that down, now. We must begin to get docu-
ments 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 pohtical 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
knov.^; 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 : refoiTn as we will,
we shall always want talent. That avalanche and the

42 MIDDLEMARCH

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 Avas not displeased with that complimentary
comparison, even from Mr Brooke; for it is a Httle too
trying to human flesh to be conscious of expressing
oneself 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 tim^e is rather fortifying. Will felt that his
literary refinements were usually beyond the limits of
Middlemarch perception; nevertheless, he was begin-
ning 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 the English statesmanship;
he would probably have been rambhng in Italy
sketching plans for several dramas, trying prose and
finding it too jejune, tr3dng 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 sympathising
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

MIDDLEMARCH 43

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 ea ily-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 small-
ness 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 gipsy,
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.

44 MIDDLEMARCH

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 rumoured that
young Ladislaw was Mr Casaubon's nephew or cousin,
it was also rumoured 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 devihsh good reasons, you may be sure,
for turning the cold shoulder on a young fellow whose
bringing-up he paid for. Just hke 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 Trum-
pet, 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
ghbness 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 English
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 characterised Ladislaw' s
speech at a Reform meeting as 'the violence of an
energumen — a miserable effort to shroud in the bril-
liancy of fireworks the daring of irresponsible state-
ments 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?'

*0h, a term that came up in the French Revolution,'
said Keck.

This dangerous aspect of Ladislaw was strangely

MIDDLEMARCH 45

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 hked 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,
Uttle hatless boys with their galUgaskins 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 gipsy 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 bon-
fire in the hollow of a hill-side, 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
hkely to confirm the notions of his dangerously mixed
blood and general laxity.

But Will's articles and speeches naturally recom-
mended 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
where 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 favourite with
the ladies; especially with little Miss Noble, whom

46 MIDDLEMARCH

it was one of his oddities to escort when he met her
in the street with her Uttle basket, giving her his
arm in the eyes of the town, and insisting on
going with her to pay some call where she dis-
tributed 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 aUke, but they agreed none the worse.
Lydgate was abrupt but not irritable, taking httle
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 pre-
occupation which, with all her husband's tenderness
and indulgence, often made his manners unsatisfactory
to her, and confirmed her disUke of the medical pro-
fession.

Lydgate, inclined to be sarcastic on the super-
stitious 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-
coloured 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 notes of 'When

MIDDLEMARCH 47

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 pubUc 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 sa3^s, 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 behaviour in the neighbour-
hood. 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 ParHamentarv
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.'

48 MIDDLEMARCH

'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 w^ant a man —
they only want a vote.'

'That is the way \^dth you political writers, Ladis-
law — crying up a measure as if it were a universal cure,
and crying up men who are a part of the very dis-
ease 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
beheve 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 pubHc agents — ^fiddlestick ! The only conscience
we can trust to is the massive sense of wrong in a
class, and the best wisdom that \vill 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

MIDDLEMARCH 49

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 inunacu-
late men to work with. Should you go on that plan?
li 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 check-
mated 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 wdth him,' Lydgate
added rather proudly, bearing in mind Mr Fare-
brother'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 per-
sonal ground?' said Will Ladislaw, nettled, and turn-
ing 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 indepen-
dence is as important to me as yours is to you. You

50 MIDDLEMARCH

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 honour, 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 bUnd to what Ladislaw
might infer on his own account. *I beg your pardon
for unintentionally anno3ang 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. Politics 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 Ladis-
law to sing with you.'

When Will was gone Rosamond said to her hus-
band, '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/

MIDDLEMARCH 51

*Do I? Then I am a brute,' said Lydgate, caressin{j
her penitently.

'What vexed you?'

*0h, 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.

52 MIDDLEMARCH

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 httle native flower,
DowTiward 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 \vith 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
wdth Mr Brooke. Hesitations before he had taken the
step had since turned into susceptibiUty 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 w^hen he was more than ever
conscious of being something better than a fool?
And for what end?

WeU, 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 sti^xg it \nth dread. But this, which happens to us
all, happens to some with a wide difference; and
Will was not one of those w^hose wit 'keeps the road-
way': he had his bypaths where there were little joys
of his own choosing, such as gentlemen cantering on
the high road might have thought rather idiotic. The

MIDDLEMARCH 53.

way in which he made a sort of happiness for himself
out of his feeUng for Dorothea was an example of this.
It may seem strange, but it is the fact, that the ordi-
nary 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
Uve 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
unwilHng 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 exas-
perated and dehghted 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 m.elody? — 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 ghmpses of it,
is really not an uncommon thing, and may be obtained
as an everyday possession ? Our good depends on the
quaUty and breadth of our emotion; and to Will,
a creature who cared httle for what are called the sohd
things of hfe and greatly for its subtler influences, to
have within him such a feeling as he had towatds
Dorothea, was like the inheritance of a fortune. What
others might have called the futility of his passion.

54 MIDDLEMARCH

made an additional delight for his imagination : he
was conscious of a generous movement, and of veri-
fying in his own experience that higher love-poetry
which had charmed his fancy. Dorothea, he said to
himself, was for ever 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, what-
ever 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 pubhc exer-
tions 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 suddnnly reflecting that the
morrow would be Sunday, he determined to go to

MIDDLEMARCH 55

Lowick Church and see her. He slept upon that idea,
but when he was dressing in the rational morning
hght, 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 every-
thing 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 congre-
gation; 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
humour, 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
Uttle 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,

56 MIDDLEMARCH

but ctianting a little, as he made scenes of what would
happen in church and coming out. He was experi-
menting in tunes to suit some words of his own, some-
times trying a ready-made melody, sometimes impro-
vising. 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 iU 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 showdng 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 w^hich made the congregation from year to
year within the whitewashed 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 notwithstand-
ing this shock to the order of things, there were still

MIDDLEMARCH 57

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 back-
ground, 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 short-sighted 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 sud-
denly uncomfortable, and dare 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

58 MIDDLEMARCH

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 schoolmistress, feeling that the morn-
ing 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 worship-
ping 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 midday along the same
road which he had trodden hopefully in the morning.
The lights were all changed for him both without and
within.

MIDDLEMARCH 59

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 ^^•ind —
Each face is haggard as it looks at me,
Slow turning in the constant clasping round
Storm-driveru

Dorothea's distress when she was leaving the church
came chiefly trom 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 recognise.

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
favourite books. There was a Httle heap of them on

6o MIDDLEMARCH

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 she 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 epi-
grams— the sacred chime of favourite hymns — all
aHke 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 hunger-
ing for, and the hunger had grown from the perpetual
effort demanded by her married life. She was always
tr5dng 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 Ladis-
law 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 propert}^ by her being convinced
that she was in the right and her husband in the wrong,
but that she was helpless. This afternoon the help-
lessness 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 labour producing what
would never see the light. To-day she had stood at

MIDDLEMARCH 6l

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 notebooks on a table, and now
he took up and put into her hand a well-known vol-
ume, which was a table of contents to all the others.

'You will obhge me, my dear,' he said, seating him-
self, '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 intelhgent partici-
pation 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 dis-
position, namely, to demand much interest and
labour from her.

After she had read and marked for two hours, he
said, 'We will take the volume upstairs — 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?'

62 MIDDLEMARCH

'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 sus-
picion, 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 pecuHar 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 hke a sudden vision of sunset after she had
cUmbed 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 Ht two candles, expecting
that Dorothea would awake, but not hking 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 hke me to
read to you ? '

'You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Doro-
thea,' 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

MIDDLEMARCH 63

alert, and iie 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 dis-
tinctly, 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 lay 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, deliberateh?-,
whether, in case of my death, you will carry out my
wishes : whether you will avoid doing what I should
deprecate, and apply 3'Ourself to do what I should
desire.'

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

'You refuse?' said ^Ir 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

64 MIDDLEMARCH

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
httle 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, beseech-
ingly.

'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
v»-as 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 labour
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 —

MIDDLEMARCH 65

— sorting them as food for a theory ^yhich was already
withered in the birth Hke 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
et5miologies 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 any-
thing which had sharper collisions than an elaborate
notion of Gog and Magog : it was as free from inter-
ruption 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 hus-
band had come to cHng to her, as possibly the only
hope left that his labours 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 labour, the am.bition 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 hfe's labour?
— But she had thought the work was to be something
M. (11) C

66 MIDDLEMARCH

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 w'ould 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 5^ears or more, her life would cer-
tainly be spent in helping him and obeying him.

Still, there was a deep difference between that devo-
tion to the living and that indefinite promise of
devotion to the dead. While he Hved, 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 some-
thing more from her than she had been able to imagine,
since he wanted her to pledge to carry out his wishes
without telling her exactly w^hat they were? No;
his heart was bound up in his work only : that w^as the
end for which his failing life w^as to be eked out by
hers.

And now, if she were to say, 'No ! if you die, I will
put no finger to j'Our 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, break-
fasted, and was in the library.

'I never saw 3^ou look so pale, madam,' said Tan-
tripp, a solid-figured woman who had been with the
sisters at Lausanne.

^Was I ever high-coloured, Tantripp?' said Doro-
thea. smiling faintly.

MIDDLEMARCH 6^

'Well, not to sa}^ high-coloured, 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.'

*0h 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 v/aiting 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 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.

68 MIDDLEMARCH

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

This was too much for Dorothea's highly-strung
feehng, 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
caticomb for 3^our 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 ahvays decUned to call Mr Casaubon any-
thing but *3'0ur master,' when speaking to the other
servants.

Pratt laughed. He Hked 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 fellow-
ship 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 comipassion, 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 garm^ent on chill days for the gar-
den. It occurred to her that he might be resting in the

'" '-^^ >Pai/« 6».

'With a sudden confused fear she leaned down
to him.' ,1

MIDDLEMARCH 69

summer-house, towards which the path diverged a
Uttle. 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 hsten, with his face
down in that way. She went into the summer-house
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 bed-
side, and she was talking dehriously, 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.

70 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER XLIX

A task too strong for ^^dzard spells
This squire had brought about;

'Tis easy dropping stones in wells,
But who shall get them out?

'I WISH to God we could hinder Dorothea from know-
ing this/ said Sir James Chettam, with the httle frown
on his brow, and an expression of intense disgust about
his mouth.

He was standing on the hearth-rug in the hbrary
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 hkes 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 ilr 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 3'OU must get rid of Ladis-
law : you must send him out of the country.' Here
Sir James's look of disgust returned in all its
intensity.

MIDDLEMARCH 71

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

' 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 with-
out him, that's all I have to say about it. At any rate,
as Dorothea's brother-in-law, I feel v/arranted 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, 3'ou 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.

72 MIDDLEMARCH

Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books — he didn't
know the w^oiid/

'It's all very well for Ladislaw to put that colour
on it,' said Sir James. 'But I beheve Casaubon was
only jealous of him on Dorothea's account, and the
w^orld 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 Casau-
ton's oddity. This paper, now, "Synoptical Tabula-
ion" 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 uncom-
monly.'

'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?'

'WeU, 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 g&t him a post; let us spend money
on him. If he could go in the suite of some Colonial

MIDDLEMARCH 73

Governor ! Grampus might take him — and I could
write to Fulke about it.'

'But Ladislaw v/on't be shipped off hke 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, Chettamx. Dorothea, now. As
you say, she had better go to Celia as soon as possible.
She can stay under your roof, and in the meantime
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 any-
thing?'

'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 Casau-
bon 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 fram.ed so as to make everybody
believe that she did. I don't beUeve anything of the

74 MIDDLEMARCH

sort about Dorothea/ said Sir James — then frown-
ingly, '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 a;i 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 shaU 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 incon-
venient 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.

MIDDLEMARCH 75

CHAPTER L

This Loller here wol prechen us somewhat.'
'Nay by my father's soule ! that schai he nat,'
Sayde the Schipman, 'here schal he not preche.
He 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 \^dth Celia in the prettiest
of upstairs sitting-rooms, opening into a small con-
servatory— 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 mterpretation made to the oracular nurse.
Dorothea sat by in her widow's dress, with an expres-
sion which rather provoked Ceha, 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 1 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 wiU made at the time of their m.arriage, and
her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her
position, was silently occupied with what she ought to
do as the ov/ner of Lowick Manor with the patronage
of the living attached to it.

One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit.

76 MIDDLEMARCH

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 nov/ 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 him-
self. 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 Hke 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 instruc-
tions 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.

'Com-e, you must not think of these things yet, my
dear. By-and-by, you know.'

'I am quite well nov/, uncle ; I wish to exert myself.

MIDDLEMARCH ^^

'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 Chettaih 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 any-
thing 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 wonder-
ful ! 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 Vv^ere
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.'

'\\niere am I VvTong, 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 advan-
tage, and was determined to use it. None of them

78

MIDDLEMARCH

knew Dodo as well as she did, or knew how to manage
her. Since Ceha's "baby was bom 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 an^iihing 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 desen^e it, and you vnh find that out. He has
behaved very badly. James is as angr}^ with him as
can be. And I had better tell you, to prepare you.'

'Celia,' said Dorothea, entreatingly, '5'ou distress
me. Tell me at once what 3^ou mean.' It glanced
through her mind that Mr Casaubon had left the
property awaj' from her — which would not be so very
distressing.

'WTiy, he has m^ade a codicil to his ^viU, to say the
property was aU to go away from you if 3-ou married —
I m±ean '

'That is of no consequence,' said Dorothea, breaking
in im^petuousty.

'But if 3'OU married Mr Ladisiaw, not anybody else,'
Celia went on ^dth persevering quietude. 'Of course
that is of no consequence in one way — you never
K-Qidd m.arry Mr Ladisiaw; but that only makes it
v/orse of ^Ir Casaubon.'

The blood rushed to Dorothea's face and neck
painfully. But Celia \^'as administering \^-hat she
thought a sobering dose of fact. It v/as taking up
notions that had done Dodo's health so m.uch 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 ii-as a better judge
than James. It is as if ^Ir Casaubon wanted to make

MIDDLEMARCH 79

people believe that you would wish to marry Mr Ladis-
law — 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 bab}'/ 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 ov/n
duteous feeling towards him, every struggle between
them — and yet more, her whole relation to Will
Ladislaw. Her world v/as 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
possibihty, — 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;

8o MIDDLEMARCH

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
likel}^ to be passive, 'is that Mr Casaubon was spiteful.
I never did hke 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. V/e should not grieve,
should we, bab3'?' said Ceha confidentially to that
unconscious centre and poise of the world, who had
the miost remarkable fists all complete even to the
nails, and hair enough, really, when you took his cap
off, to make — 3'ou didn't know what: — in short, he was
Buddha 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 fev/ moments. Then he
said, looking at Dorothea, 'I hardly know. In my
opinion Mrs Casaubon should do v/hat would give her
the most repose of mind. That repose will not always
come from being forbidden to act.'

'Thank 3^ou,' 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
v/ith 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

MIDDLEMARCH 8l

effort was too much for her; she broke off and burst
into sobs.

Lydgate made her drink a dose of sai 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 sore 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. Thert5
was no help for it now — no reason for any further
delay in the execution of necessary business. And the
next day Sir James comphed 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 hap-
pier at Freshitt with Celia. I shall be able to think
better about what should be done at Lowick by look-
ing 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 wa}^ 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

82 MIDDLEMARCH

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 laiow 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 mdce? That word quoted from Mrs
Cadwallader seem.ed 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 direc-
tions for her guidance. In carrying out this bequest of
labour to Dorothea, as in all else, Mr Casaubon had been
slow and hesitating, oppressed in the plan of trans-
mitting 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 com.petence 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

MIDDLEMARCH $3

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 suprem.e use. But now her
judgment, instead of being controlled by duteous
devotion, was made active by the embittering dis-
covery 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 exorbi-
tant 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 honour. 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 m.any 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

84 MIDDLEMARCH

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-satished 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
him.self and his family. His mother, aunt, and sister
all live with him, and depend upon him. 1 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 v.ho had slipped below their own
intention.

'That's a hard question,' said Lydgate. 'I find
mvself that it's uncommonly difhcult to make the
right thing work : tnere are so mxany 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

MIDDLEMARCH 85

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
apostoHc man,' said Dorothea, meditatively. She was
wishing it were possible to restore the times of primi-
tive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr Farebrother with a
strong desire to rescue him from his chance-gotten
m.oney.

*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 uncomfort-
ably 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 labourers 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 alwa^^s
been thinking of the different ways in which Chris-
tianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that

g6 MIDDLEMARCH

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 Lj-dgate; '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 mone}'- winning
business is really a blot. You don't, of course, see
many ^liddlemarch people : but Mr Ladislaw, who is
constantly seeing Mr Brooke, is a great friend of }.Ir
Farebrother" s old ladies, and would be glad to sing
the Mcar's praises. One of the old ladies — Miss
Noble, the aunt — is a wonderfull3v' quaint picture of
self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw gallants her
about somietimes. I met them one day in a back
street : you know Ladislaw's look— a sort of Daphnis
in coat and waistcoat; and this httle old maid reaching
up to his arm — they looked like a couple dropped out
of a romantic comedy. But the best e\idence about
Farebrother is to see him and hear him.'

Happily Dorothea vras 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 I^Ir Casauhon's death
he had hardly seen Ladislaw, and he had heard no
rumour to warn him that Mr Brooke's coriidential
secretary was a dangerous subject _\\ith ^Irs Casaubon.
\\Tien he was gone, his picture of Ladislaw lingered in

MIDDLEMARCH Sy

her mind and disputed the ground with that question
of the Lowick Hving. 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.

88 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LI

Party is Nature too, and j^ou 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 diiterentia too,

This is not That, and He was never You,

Though this and that are ayes, and 5'ou 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 dis-
solution of Parliament and the coming election, as the
old wakes and fairs were filled \^dth 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 pubhc 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 v/idowhood 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 Hkely 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 grin.'

The fact was that Will had been made the more
susceptible by observing that Mr Brooke, instead of
washing him, as before, to come to the Grange oftener
than was quite agreeable to himself, seemed now to

MIDDLEMARCH 8g

contrive that lie should go there as Httle as possible.
This was a shuitiing 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 super-
fluous : they were very much mistaken if they
imagined that he would put himself forward as a
needy adventurer trying to win the favour 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 invv^ard rage, to
think of going away from the neighbourhood : 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 for ever 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 — pubhc reasons why he should not
quit his post at this crisis, leaving Mr Brooke in the
lurch v/hen he needed 'coaching' for the election, and
when there was so much canvassing, direct and in-
direct, 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
gentlem.anly 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

go MIDDLEMARCH

the bag' had not yet been fulfilled, neither the Parlia-
mentary 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 entire ly
between Pinkerton the old Tory member, Bagster the
new \\rhig 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 wiiich would leave Bagster in the
rear, or on the new minting of Tory votes into reform-
ing votes. The latter means, of course, would be
preferable.

This prospect of converting votes v/as a dangerous
distraction to Mr Brooke : his im.pression that waverers
were likelj' 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 — tempting your
ideas — saying, "Well now, there's something in that,"
and so on. I agree with you that this is a pecuhar
occasion — the country wdth 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
difhcult 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 for\vard as a revolutionist, and then ?.Iiddle-
march would not elect you, I fancy. As for trimming,
this is not a time for trimming.'

Mr Brooke always ended by agreeing with ladislaw,

MIDDLEMARCH 91

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 dmwn into
using them with much hopefulness. At this stage of
affairs he wa^ in excellent spirits, which even sup-
ported him under large advances of money; for his
powers of convincing and persuading had not yet
been tested by anything more difficult tlian a chair-
man'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
feehng like the burgesses of old that this necessity of
electing members was a great burden 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 bis 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 parlour.

'As to Reform, sir, put it in a family hght,' he said,
rattling the small silver in his pocket, and smiling
affably. 'Will it support Ivlrs 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

92 MIDDLEMARCH

-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
colour." Those very words have been spoken to me,
sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting. I
don't mean by your honourable self, Mr Brooke.'

'No, no, no — that's narrow, you know. Until my
butler complains to me of your goods, Mr MawTnsey/
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 Mawinsey, feehng that pohtics were clearing
up a httle. 'There would be some pleasure in voting
for a gentleman who speaks in that honourable
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 hght : but pubUc spirit, now. We're all one
family, you know — it's aU 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'm doing;
I must look to what will be the eftects 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

MIDDLEMARCH 93

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 honourable
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 Parhament, 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 plent}^ 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

94 MIDDLEMARCH

begun to perceive that Mr Brooke's mind, if it had the
burden 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 pros-
pect of an understanding between Bagster's com-
mittee and Brooke's, to which Mr Bulstrode, Mr
Standish as a Liberal laws^er, and such manufacturers
as ^Ir Plymdale and ]\Ir Vincy, gave a sohdity v/hich
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 Trum-
pet 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 hght
under his buff-coloured waistcoat. But with regard to
critical occasions, it oftens 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 an}- rate.
I like this, now — this kind of public made up of one's
own nei.s:hbours, you know.'

MIDDLEMARCH 95

The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike

Mr ^lawinsey, had never thought of Mr Brooke as a

neighbour, 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, though one of them —

a pohtical 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

jsay after him. Meanwhile the crowd became denser,

[and as the political personage neared the end of his

j speech, Mr Brooke felt a remarkable change in his

I 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 summ^ons was indifferent.

Til take another glass of sherr^^ 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 sherr}" 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, ma^^ 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 v/as alarming. 'And questions, now,'
hinted the demon just waking up in his stomach,
'somebody may put questions about the schedules. —

96 MIDDLEMARCH

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-chpped blond hair, and neutral physiognomy.
He began with som.e confidence : —

'Gentlemen — Electors of Middlemarch !'

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

'I'm unconunonly 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 aU up now. The only chance
is that, since the best thing won't always do, flounder-
ing may answer for once.' Mr Brooke, meanwhile,
having lost other clues, fell back on himself and his
qualihcations — always an appropriate graceful sub-
ject for a candidate.

'I am a close neighbour of yours, my good friends
- — ^}-ou've known me on the bench a good while — I've
always gone a good deal into public questions —
m.achinery, now, and machine-breaking — you're many

MIDDLEMARCH 97

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, manu-
factures, 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 3- our Middlemarch
goods go — and then, again, in the Baltic. The Baltic,
now.'

Plying among his recollections in this way, ^Ir
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 him.self; buff-coloured waistcoat, eye-glass,
and neutral phj'siognomy, 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 fiUed by laughing
listeners. The most innocent echo has an impish mock-
ery 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

M. (11) D

98 MIDDLEMARCH

laugh might have caught his committee. Mr Bulstrode
asked, reprehensively, what the new police was doing;
but a voice could not Vv'ell be collared, and an attack
on the efhgy 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 fielding, stinging sense that his lost exor-
dium was coming back to fetch him from the Baltic.

'That reminds me,' he went on, thrusting a hand
into his side-pocket, \vith an easy air, 'if I wanted
a precedent, you know — but we never want a prece-
dent 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 encour-
aging; 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 — yoa

MIDDLEMARCH 99

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 election-
eering 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 faU, 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 spirits rose a httle, and his voice
jtoo.

; 'Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth— all
{that is very well' — here an unpleasant egg broke on
iMr Brooke's shoulder, as the echo said, 'All that is
very well;' then came a hail of eggs, chiefly aimed at
I 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
J 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 consola-
tions 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

100 MIDDLEMARCH

at Ladislaw. However, things will come all right at
the nomination.'

But it was not resolved mianimously 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 adver-
tised. 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 him-
self 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 3^ears, for example : political
writing, political speaking, would get a higher value
now pubHc Hfe was going to be wider and more national,
and they might give him such distinction that he
would UOT 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

MIDDLEMARCH loi

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 ardour. 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 man-
kind; namely, to withdraw in favour 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 excitem.ent 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? I 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

102 MIDDLEMARCH

ordinary mail than yon might cany it on now — more
ordinary, you knov/.' ;

'Do you wish me to give it up?' said Will, the quick j|
colour coming in his face, as he rose from the \\Titing-
table, and took a turn of three steps mth his hands
in his pockets. 'I am read}- to do so whenever you
wish it.'

'As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest
opinion of your powers, 5'ou loiow. 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 — indemnifj- me to a certain extent
- — carry it on, in fact. And mider the circumstances,
^rou 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 wTite you any letters, you know — to Althorpe
and people of that kind. I've met Althorpe.'

'I am exceedingly obliged to 5-ou,' said Ladislaw,
proudly. 'Since you are going to part with the Pioneer
I need not trouble you about the steps I shall take. I J
may choose to continue here for the present.' 1

After Mr Brooke had left idm 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
movement, and not because they are afraid of me.'

MIDDLEMARCH 103

CHAPTER LII

His heart
The lowHest duties on itself did lay.

Wordsworth.

On that June evening when Mr Farebrother knew
that he was to have the Lowick hving, there was joy
in the old-fashioned parlour, and even the portraits
of the great lawyers seemed to look on with satisfac-
tion. 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

104 MIDDLEMARCH

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 — I^.Ir Solomon Featherstone, for example, as
soon as I find 3'ou are in love with him.'

Miss Winifred, who had been looking at her brother
all the v/hile and crying heartil}', which was her way
of rejoicing, smiled through her tears and said, 'You
must set me the example. Cam : yott must marrv^ now/

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

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

'I wish vou would marr^' 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 m-arket; as if I had
only to ask and everybody would have me,' said the
Vicar, not caring to specify.

'We don't want ever^'bod^^' said Miss Winifred.
'But you would like Miss Garth, mother, shouldn't
you?'

'My son's choice shall be mine,' said Mrs Fare-
brother, with majestic discretion, 'and a wife v;ould be
most welcome, Camden. You will want your whist at
home when we go to Lowick, and Henrietta Noble
never w^as 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.

MIDDLEMARCH 105

as at some dangerous countenancing of new doc-
trine.

*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 pluraHsm they want to reform if

I I give somebody else most of the money. The stronger

j 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
j 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 370U wiU 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 sub-
ject, 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-benefice d 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.

io6 MIDDLEMARCH

*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, Fm 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 plungingty, 'I might go into the
Church now; and really, look where I ma}^ I can't
see anything else to do. I don't like it, but I know
it's imcommonly h8a-d 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 Fve 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 ph^'sic now, when my father wants me to earn
something. It's all very well to say Fm 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 remon-
strance, and Mr Farebrother might have been inclined
to smile if his mind had not been too busy in imagin-
ing more than Fred told him.

MTDDLEMARCH jTo^

' 'Have you any difficulties about doctrines — about

the Articles?' he said, tiying hard to think of the

question simply for Fred's sake.

'No; I suppose the Articles are right. I am not

prepared \\dth 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 sim.ply.

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

a divine?'
i 'Of course, if I am obhged to be a clerg^'man, I
I shall try and do my duty, though I mayn't like it.

Do you think anybody 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 -vNhat your position
; will require of you. I can only tell you about myself,
[ that I have always been too lax, and have been uneasy
I in consequence.'

I 'But there is another hindrance,* said Fred, colour-
I ing. 'I did not tell you before, though perhaps I may

have said things that m.ade you guess it. There is

somebody I am very fond of : I have loved her ever
I since we were children.'
' 'Miss Garth. I suppose?' said the Mcar, examining

some labels very closely.

'Yes. I shouldn't mind an^-thing if ehe 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 I do think she cares about me. I saw Mrs Garth last

night, and she said that Mary was stajang at Lowick

Rectory with Miss Farebrother.'

io8 MIDDLEMARCH

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

'No, I want to ask a great favour 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 feehng.'

'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 Hve on wooden legs.'

'Will she not be hurt at my intrusion?'

'No, I feel sure she wdll 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 Fare-
brother laid dow^i 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

MIDDLEMARCH 109

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 fore-finger 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, 2\liss
Garth,' said the Vicar, within two yards of her.

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

'But not with young gentlemen?'

'Oh, with some, I suppose; since soitic of them turn
into excellent m^en.'

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

'Not a sill}' one, I hope,' said Mary, beginning to
pluck the roses again, and feehng 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 j'^ou 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.'

no MIDDLEMARCH

*He nas 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 contrar}^ Mr Farebrother,' said Mary,
giving up the roses, and folding her arms, but unable
to look up, 'whenever you have am^thing to say to
me I feel honoured/

'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 for 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 bum the will; and he said that you had
some heart-prickings on that subject, because j^ou had
been the innocent means of hindering Fred from get-
ting 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-oifering
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 som_etimes foUov/ when
they do a man the wrong of marrying him as an act
of atonement. Mary's cheeks had began 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, 3^ou ma}' feel your mind free.'

'Thank you, Mr Farebrother,' said Mary, earnestly.
'I ami 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

MIDDLEMARCH l-iff

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 bless-
ings, and praying by the sick, without feeling as if

112 MIDDLEMARCH

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 clergjnnan. 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 wa}^ — 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 under-
stand that you resist any attempt to fetter you, but
either your feehng 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 hind, or he may in any
case be disappointed. Pardon me, Mary — you know

MIDDLEjVLVRCH 113

I used to catechise you under that name — -but when
the state of a woman's affections touches the happiness
of another Hfe — of more Hves 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
^^^ith 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
ver}^ little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming
to make that weaker. I should like better than an}'-
thing to see him worthy of ever}^ 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 ! '

*0h, please stay, and let me give you some tea/

rr4 MIDDLEMARCH

said ^l3.ry. Her eyes filled with tears, for sometiiing
indefinable, something hke 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 trembhng 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.

MIDDLEMARCH 1I5

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

I whereby the belief and the conduct are ^^Tought into mutual

j sustainment.

Mr Bulstrode, wh?n 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 \^hich 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, labourers, 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 withdra^^dng 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 Feather-
stone would have clung to it as the Garden of Eden.
That was what poor old Peter himself had expected;

Ii6 MIDDLEMARCH

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 neighbours ! We judge from our own desires,
and our neighbours 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 o\mi. 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 money-
changer. From his earliest employment as an errand-
boy in a seaport, he had looked through the windows
of the money-changers 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
oth»r 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

': MIDDLEMARCH 117

i; 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
J had for some time entertained without external
j 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 chas-
tisement 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 chatisement,
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

Ii8 MIDDLEMARCH

Chalky Flats said, 'Dear, dear ! then the Almighty
could have been none so pleased with the alms-houses
after all.'

Affectionate Mrs Bulstrode was particularly glad of
the advantage which her husband's health was hkely
to get from the purchase of Stone Court. Few days
passed without his riding thither and looking over
some part of the farm w^ith the baliff, and the evenings
were delicious in that quiet spot, when the new hay-
ricks lately set up were sending forth odours 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 baliff in
the rickyard.

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 forgive-
ness, and a clenching proof that we are pecuhar instru-
ments 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 5'oung man and used to go out
preaching beyond Highbury. And he would wdllingly
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

MIDDLEMARCH 119

by the return of Caleb Garth, who also was on horse-
I back, and was just shaking his bridle before starting,
I when he exclaimed : —

I 'Bless my heart ! what's this fellow in black coming
along the lane? He's like one of those men one see3
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 horsemen 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 3^ou, eh? you didn't
expect to see me here. Come, shake us by the hand.'
To say that Mr Raffles' s 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 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 crunipled
paper from his pocket.

120 MIDDLEMARCH

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 pecuhar;
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 3/ou 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 knov/ing how poor her
daughter was, eh? But, by Jove ! you're very pale
and pasty, Nick. Come, if you're going home. Til
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, humihation 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

MIDDLEMARCH 121

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 Rallies, m.aking 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 hke 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 feUow !' 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 j-our 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 chiU anger, 'our acquaintance miany years
ago had not the sort of intimacy which you are
now assuming, Mr Raffles. Any services you desire of
me wiU be the more readily rendered if you will avoid
a tone of familiarity which did not he 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 m.em.ory dear. By Jove I my feelings have ripened

1^2 MIDDLEMARCH

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 Bul-
strode, 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 house-
keeper 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 parlour, and no v/itness 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 circum-
stances I will invite you to remain here for the night,
and I will myself ride over here early to-morrow morn-
ing— 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 comfort-
able 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' s manner was a good

MIDDLEMARCH 123

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 v^dth 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 l}iQg 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 ser-
vices accepted. Those misdeeds even when committed
— ^had they not been lialf 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 hfe and the truths he had espoused, in one
heap of obloquy?

In his closest meditations the hfe-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 neighbours and of his own wife. For
the pain, as well as the public estimate of disgrace,
depends on the amount of previous profession^ To

124 mDDLEMARCH

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 lihes 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
the descent of Mi Raffles, with whom he was con-
demned to breakfast.

It was not long before they were seated together in
the wainscoted parlour over their tea and toast, which
was as much as Raffles cared to take at that early
hour. The difference betw^een his morning and even-
ing 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 moredisa.^reeable by the morning hght.

'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 vou 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 3-ou 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 v/ife's dead. I've no particular

MIDDLEMARCH 125

attachment te any spot; I would as soon settle here-
about 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 rem.ain
there for life.'

'Never knew that a wish to go to a place was the same
thing as a ^\ash 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
colour than you. I want an independence.'

'That could be supplied to you, if you would engage
to keep at a distance,' said Mr Bulstrode, with perhaps
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 — honour bright ! — more than
fronts and wristbands; and \vith this suit of mourning,
straps and everything, I should do you credit among
the nobs here.' Mr Raffles had pushed away his 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 onlv handsome and

126 MIDDLEMARCH

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' s slow wink and slight pro-
trusion of his tongue was worse than a nightmare,
because it held the certitude that it was not a night-
mare, but a waking misery. Mr Bulstrode felt a
shuddering nausea, and did not speak, but was con-
sidering diligently whether he should not leave Raffles
to do as he w^uld, 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, Raffl.es ran on,
by way of using time to the utmost.

'I've not had such fine luck as you, by Jove 1

MIDDLEMARCH 127

Things went confoundedly with me in New York;
those Yankees are cool hands, and a man of gentle-
manly 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 state-
ments, 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 suppl}^ you
with a regular annuity — in quarterly payments — so
long as you fulfil a promise to remain at a distance
from this neighbourhood. It is in your power to
choose. If you insist on remaining here, even for
a short time, you will get nothing from m.e. 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.'

128 MIDDLEMARCH

'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
- — honour bright ! — pick up my portmanteau and go
away. But I shall not give up my liberty for a dirty
annuity. I shall com^e 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, feehng
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, rU wait here till you bring it,' said Raffles.
.'I'll take a stroll, and have a snack, and you'U be
back by that time.'

Mr Bulstrode' s sickly body, shattered by the agita-
tions 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 teU 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 pocket-book. However, if I
heard it, I should know it again. I've got my faculties

Pagt 128.

"I'll wait here till you bring it," said Raffles.'

MIDDLEMARCH 129

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 com-
mand. 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 I'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 baliff 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 parlour, 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 efiort — a common experience.

130 MIDDLEMARCH

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, reheving 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.

MIDDLEMARCH 131

BOOK VI.— THE WIDOW AND
THE WIFE

CHAPTER LIV

Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;

Per che si fa gentil cib ch'ella mira :

fOv'ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,
.r-' 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

t^ Nasce nel core a chii parlar la sente;

-»; Ond' h beato chi prima la vide.

Quel ch'ella par quand' un poco sorride,

Non si puo dicer, nb tener a mente,
Si h nuovo miracolo gentile.

Dante : La Vita Nuova.

By that delightful morning when the hayricks 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 labour; but to an aunt who does not recognise

132 MIDDLEMARCH

her infant nephew as Buddha, and has nothing to do
for him but to admire, his behavour is apt to appear
monotonous, and the interest of watching him exhaust-
ible.

This possibiHty was quite hidden from CeHa, 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 Jamxcs,
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? Reall}^ it was a mercy/ said
CeHa; 'and I think it is very nice for Dodo to be a
wddow. She can just be 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 ^^dth disappointment, and in her
quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of sarcasm.

'What wiU you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say
yourself there is nothing to be done there : everybody
is so clean and well off, it makes ^'ou 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

MIDDLEMARCH 133

it all your own way; and I am sure James does every-
thing 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 pur-
pose,' 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 Middlem.arch.'

Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all
converted into resolute submission. She had a great
yearning to be at Lowick, and v/as 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 cer-
tainly 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

134 MIDDLEMARCH

provision to go mad : they are taken care of then.
But you must not run into that. I dare say you are
a httle 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
Hbrary at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the
weather; you must get a few people round you who
wouldn't beheve 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 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

MIDDLEMARCH 135

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, EHnor.'

'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 neighbourhood.'

Mrs Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her hus-
band 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
notebooks 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 imagirxed
that he would wish to see them, in orderly sequence*

136 MIDDLEMARCH

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 Casauhon,
she carefully closed and sealed, writing within the
envelope, ' / could not use it. Do you not see now that
I could not submit my soul to yours, by working hope-
lessly 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 deter-
mined her to come to Lowick. The longing was to
see WiU Ladislaw. She did not know any good that
could come of their meeting : she was helpless; her
hands had been tied from maldng 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 crea-
ture from among those which Hve in herds come to her
erxce 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
wouia be no better than candle-light tinsel and day-
light 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 Fare-
brothers 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

MIDDLEMARCH 137

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 neighbourhood 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 ques-
tion.

'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.

138 MIDDLEMARCH

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 afiairs. 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 experi-
ment 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 candour of her eyes.

Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to
say that Mr Ladislaw was below, and begged per-
mission 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 an 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 unin-
habited.

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

MIDDLEMARCH 139

'I am only come to say good-bye, 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 sud-
denness. 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 hke Doro-
thea 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 sus-
picions of him.

T hope I have not presumed too much in calling/
said Will; 'I could not bear to leave the neighbour-

140 MIDDLEMARCH

hood and begin a new life without seeing 3''ou to say
good-bye.'

'Presumed? Surely not. I should have thought
it unkind if you had not \\dshed to see me/ said Doro-
thea, 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 honourable position for themselves
without family or money.'

'And that wdll make it all the more honourable,'
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. Wlien we were in Rome, I thought you
only cared for poetry and art, and the things that
adorn life for us who are well of. But now I know you
think about the rest of the world.'

VVTiile 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 j^ears, then,
and never coming here again till I have made myselt
of some mark in the world ? ' said Will, tr^'ing hard to
reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to
get an expression of strong feehng 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 behaviour.

MIDDLEMARCH 141

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 feehngs 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
hfe 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 kaned
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

142 MIDDLEMARCH

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 have been an
offence in her words. But all the while there was
a current of thought in her about liis 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 upstairs — I mean that beauti-
ful 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 WiU, 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
JuHa'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

MIDDLEMARCH 143

petulance; it was a little too exasperating to have his
grandmother's portrait offered him at that moment.
But to Dorothea's feehng 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. WTiatever the words might be,
the tone seemed like a dismissal; and quitting his
leaning posture, he walked a Uttle 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 feehng.

*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 hke, but I can very
seldom do it,' said Will. He was standing two yards
from her \vith 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.'

144 MIDDLEMARCH

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 waited Sir James's entrance.

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

*I must say good-bye, Mrs Casaubon; and probably
for a long while.'

Dorothea put out her hand and said her good-bye
cordially. The sense that Sir James was depreciating
Will, and behaving rudely to him, roused her resolu-
tion 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 obhged 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
recognised the disagreeable possibiHty. If any one
had asked him v/hy 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 aU the
stronger because he felt himself unable to interfere.

But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by him-
self. 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.

MIDDLEMARCH 145

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 he beforehand to any sus-
picion that he would play the needy adventurer
seeking a rich woman — lay quite out of her imagination,
and she had interpreted all his behaviour 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 for
ever ended, and become a treasure of the past. For
this very reason she dwelt on it without inward check.

146 MIDDLEMARCH

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 rigour 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 I'eadily shapen into resolve. Ardent souls,
ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to com-
mit 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

MIDDLEMARCH 147

shell/ said Dorothea, smiling. *I feel rather bare and
exposed when it is off.' j-

'I must see you without it; it makes us all warm/-
said Celia, throwing down her fan, and going to Doro-
thea. It was a pretty picture to see this httle 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 CeHa. 'Dodo
need not make such a slavery of her mourning; she need
not wear that cap any more among her friends.'

'My dear CeHa,' 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 Ceha'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 Cad-
wallader, 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.'

148 MIDDLEMARCH

'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 opp©rtunity of freeing her-
self 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
aUusion to you.'

'Oh no,' said CeHa. 'Nobody chose the subject; it
all came out of Dodo's cap. I\Irs 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? 1, 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, Ceha said privately to Dorothea, 'Really, Dodo,

MIDDLEMARCH 149

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 370U will be happy, if you have a plan. Dodo,'
said Ceha. '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 any-
body at all, and was going to take to 'all sorts of

150 MIDDLEMARCH

plans/ just like what she used to have. Sir James
made no remark. To his secret feehng, 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 ^dth meaning if the widow acts accord-
ingly. But if Dorothea did choose to espouse her
solitude, he felt that the resolution would well become
her.

MIDDLEMARCH 151

CHAPTER LVI

How happy is he born and taught/
That serveth not another's will?
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill?

This man is freed from servile hands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall :
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.

Sir Henry Wooton.

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 uncom-
mon in a woman. It must be remembered that by
* business' Caleb never meant money transactions,
but the skilful application of labour.

'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 sus-
pecting that Mrs Casaubon might not hold the true
principle of subordination.

'Oh, you can't think V 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 1

152 MIDDLEMARCH

it reminds me of bits in the Messiah — "and straight-
way 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 wdthin
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 under-
take 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 raSways. A pro-
jected 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 m_ay 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

MIDDLEMARCH 153

from each other in their arguments as much as Mr
Solomon Featherstone differed from Lord Medlicote,
were yet unanimous in the opinion that in selhng
land, whether to the Enemy of mankind or to a com-
pany 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 accom-
modation-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 rail-
way 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,
/ 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 under-
stand. 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 beUeve in any
pay to make amends for bringing a lot of ruf&ans 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 —

154 MIDDLEMARCH

'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 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 labour-
ing 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 rail-
ways 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 hkely to be against the poor man,
and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with
regard to it. Even the rumour 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 neighbouring
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 pedlars, 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 dis-
posed to take them in — a disposition observable in the
weather.

Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for

MIDDLEMARCH 155

Mr Solomon Featherstone to work upon, he having
more plenteous ideas of the same order, with a sus-
picion 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 m\^sterious 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 dock 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 \vith staves and instruments spying about:
they called themselves railroad people, but there was
no telling what they w^ere, or wiat they meant to do.
The least they pretended w^as 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. Trafhck 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,

156 MIDDLEMARCH

who had a dim notion of London as a centre of hos-
tility 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
country-side 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 con-
fessed to him her feehng 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, v/ho were adjust-
ing their spirit-level. After a Httle chat he left them.

MIDDLEMARCH 157

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 humour
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, lucra-
tive, 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

158 MIDDLEMARCH

gallop up to the spot before the party in smock-frocks,
whose work of turning the hay had not been too press-
ing after swallowing their midday beer, 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 ^vith 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 after-
wards laughed heartily as he remembered his own
phrases.

The labourers had been driven through the gateway
into their hay-field, and Fred had checked his horse,
when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a safe chal-
lenging 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 Yod-
drell's and be taken care of there.

'Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the

MIDDLEMARCH 159

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.'

Tm glad I happened to be here at the right moment,
Mr Garth,' said Fred, as Tom rode away. 'Not know-
ing 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 measur-
ing-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 bulky 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. 1 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

i6o MIDDLEMARCH

having to speechify. But he felt it his duty at this
moment to try and give a Httle harangue. There was a
striking mixture in him — which came from his having
always been a hard-working man himself — of rigorous
notions about workm.en 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 labourers 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 everyday mild
air when he paused am.ong them.

'Why, my lads, how's this?' he began, taking as
usual to brief phrases, which seemed pregnant to him-
self, because he had many thoughts lying under them,
like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages
to peep above the water. 'How cam.e you to make
such a mistake as this ? Somebod}^ 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 railway : it will be made whether
you like it or not. And if you go fighting against it,
you'll get 3^ourselves into trouble. The law gives those
men leave to come here on the land. The o^vner 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.*

MIDDLEMARCH i6i

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 he.
It may do a bit of harm here and there, to this and to
that; and so does the sun in heaven. But the rail-
way'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 labourer, 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 beheving 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 undeni-
able 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

M. (II) F

i62 MIDDLEMARCH

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 Til
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
shp in the moist earth under the hedgerow, which
soiled his perfect summer trousers. Was it his suc-
cessful 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 always

MIDDLEMARCH 163

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 honourable 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

i64 MIDDLEMARCH

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 T^Iary thinks about it,'
said Fred, colouring. '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 on 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 hke to have to do with outdoor things. I
know a good deal about land and cattle already.
I used to beheve, 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, ha\dng the image of
* Susan' before his eyes. 'WTiat 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

MIDDLEMARCH 165

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 honour-
able 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 knev/ that on the exceptional occasions
when he chose, he was absolute. He never, indeed.

i66 MIDDLEMARCH

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 busi-
ness. And I've determined to take him and make
a man of him.'

'Caleb !' said Mrs Garth, in a deep contralto, expres-
sive of resigned astonishment.

'It's a fine thing to do,' said Mr Garth, settling him-
self 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 httle 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

MIDDLEMARCH 167

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 Vincys.'

'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 argu-
mentation. 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 honours 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 wa&
a large one rolling down her face before her husband
had finished- It came from the pressure of various

i6S MIDDLEMARCH

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 miorning,
chere was a test to be gone through which he was not
prepared for.

'Now Fred,' said Caleb, 'you v/ill 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 reso-
lute 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 Hne or two
of that valuation, with the figures at the end,'

MIDDLEMARCH 169

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 alilce and the
consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down,
the strokes had a blotted sohdity, and the letters dis-
dained 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 wrapped the paper
passionately with the back of his hand. Bad work
like this dispelled all Caleb's mildness.

'The deuce !' he exclaimed, snarling. '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, 1 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 ofhce-clerks.

'Do? Why, you must learn to form your letters and
keep the hne. What's the use of wxiting 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

170 MIDDLEMARCH

young fellow whose blond complexion was getting
rather patchy as he bit his lip with mortification.
Fred was struggling with man}' thoughts. Mr Garth
had been so kind and encouraging at the beginning of
their inter\dew, that gratitude and hopefulness had
been at a high pitch, and the downfall was propor-
tionate. 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 daytime isn't enough. We'll
be patient, my boy. Galium 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 under-
stood 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.

MIDDLEMARCH 171

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;

172 MIDDLEMARCH

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 pa}^ for 'em.'

Fred lingered; there was still something to be said.
At last it came.

'I hope you will shake hands vriih 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, j^es,
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 marr\'
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
st^dish air 'beyond anybody else's son in Middle-
march,' would be sure to get like that family in plain-
ness 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 an}^
anger; but she felt that her happiness had received
a bruise, and for several days merely to look at Fred

MIDDLEMARCH 173

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 : —

Xome, 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 anci 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/

174 MIDDLEMARCH

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 moimtain, lake, and scaur,
And larger yet with wonder, love, beUef

Toward Walter Scott, who hving 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 hke 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 wilHngly.

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 Person, 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

MIDDLEMARCH 175

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 pina-
fore 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 V

*0h, 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.

'/ shall stay with Christy,' observed Jim; as much
as to say that he had the advantage of those simple-
tons; whereupon Letty put her hand up to her head
and looked with jealous indecision from the one to the
other.

176 MIDDLEMARCH

'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 ^^ours
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 sUght 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

MIDDLEMARCH 177

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 encourage-
ment?' 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' Fare-
brother 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

178 MIDDLEMARCH

blooming youngster should flourish on the disappoint-
ments 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 wiU some-
times 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 Fare-
brother 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 pain to
Mr Farebrother,' said Fred, who nevertheless felt that
surprising conceptions were beginning to form them-
selves.

'Precisely; you cannot conceive,' said Mrs Garth,
cutting her words as neatly as possible.

For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a
dismayed anxiety, and then turning with a quick
movement said almost sharply: —

'Do you mean to say, Mrs Garth, that Mr Fare-
brother is in love with Mary?'

'And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last
person who ought to be surprised.' returned Mrs
Garth, laying her knitting dov/n beside her and fold-
ing her arms. It was an unwonted sign of emotion in

AI. (II.) Page X76.

' Do you mean to say that Mr Farebrother is
in love with Mary?'

MIDDLEMARCH 1^9

her that she should put her work out of her hands.
In fact her feehngs were divided between the satis-
faction of giving Fred his disciphne and the sense of
having gone a httle too far. Fred took his hat and
stick and rose quickly.

'Then you think I am standing in his way, and in
Mary's too?' he said, in a tone which seemed to
demand an answer.

Mrs Garth could not speak immediately. She had
brought herself into the impleasant position of being
called on to say what she really felt, yet she knew
there were strong reasons for concealing. And to her
the consciousness of having exceeded in words was
pecuharly mortifying. Besides, Fred had given out
unexpected electricity, and he now added, 'Mr Garth
seemed pleased that Mary should be attached to me.
He could not have known anything of this.'

Mrs Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of
her husband, the fear that Caleb might think her in
the wrong not being easily endurable. She answered,
wanting to check unintended consequences : —

*I spoke from inference only. I am not aware that
Mary knows anything of the matter.'

But she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire
silence on a subject which she had herself unnecessarily
mentioned, not being used to stoop in that way; and
while she was hesitating there was already a rush of
unintended consequences under the apple-tree where
the tea-things stood. Ben, bouncing across the grass
with Brownie at his heels, and seeing the kitten drag-
ging the knitting by a lengthening line of wool, shouted
and clapped his hands; Brownie barked, the kitten,
desperate, jumped on the tea-table and upset the
milk, then jumped down again and swept half the
cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the half-
knitted sock-top, fitted it over the kitten's head as
a new source of madness, while Letty arriving cried
out to her mother against this cruelty — it was a history

i8o MIDDLEMARCH

as full of sensation as 'This is the house that Jack
built/ Mrs Garth was obliged to interfere, the other
young ones came up and the tUe-^-tUe with Fred
was ended. He got away as soon as he could, and Mrs
Garth could only imply some retractation of her severity
by saying *God bless you' when she shook hands
with him.

She was unpleasantly conscious that she had been
on the verge of speaking as 'one of the foolish women
speaketh' — telling first and entreating silence after.
But she had not entreated silence, ajid to prevent
Caleb's blame she determined to blame herself and
confess all to him that very night. It was curious
what an awful tribunal the mild Caleb's was to her,
whenever he set it up. But she meant to point out to
him that the revelation might do Fred Vincy a great
deal of good.

No doubt it was having a strong effect on him as he
walked to Lowick. Fred's hght hopeful nature had
perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this
suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary
might have made a thoroughly good match. Also he
was piqued that he had been what he called such a
stupid lout as to ask that intervention from Mr Fare-
brother. But it was not in a lover's nature — it was
not in Fred's that the new anxiety raised about Mary's
feeling should not surmount every other. Notwith-
standing his trust in Mr Farebrother's generosity,
notwithstanding what Mary had said to him, Fred
could not help feeling that he had a rival : it was
a new consciousness, and he objected to it extremely,
not being in the least ready to give up Mary for her
good, being ready rather to fight for her with any
man whatsoever. But the fighting with Mr Fare-
brother must be of a metaphorical kind, which was
much more difficult to Fred than the muscular. Cer-
tainly this experience was a discipline for Fred hardly
less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle's

MIDDLEMARCH i8i

will. The iron had not entered into his soul, but he
had begun to imagine what the sharp edge would be.
It did not once occur to Fred that Mrs Garth might be
mistaken about Mr Farebrother, but he suspected
that she might be wrong about Mary. Mary had been
staying at the parsonage lately, and her mother might
know very little of what had been passing in her mind.

He did not feel easier when he found her looking
cheerful with the three ladies in the drawing-room.
They were in animated discussion on some subject
which was dropped when he entered, and Mary was
copying the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet
drawers, in a minute handwriting which she was
skilled in. Mr Farebrother was somewhere in the
village, and the three ladies knew nothing of Fred's
peculiar relation to Mary : it was impossible for either
of them to propose that they should walk round the
garden, and Fred predicted to himself that he should
have to go away without saying a word to her in
private. He told her first of Christy's arrival and then
of his own engagement with her father; and he was
comforted by seeing that this latter news touched her
keenly. She said hurriedly, 'I am so glad,' and then
bent over her writing to hinder any one from noticing
her face. But here was a subject which Mrs Fare-
brother could not let pass.

'You don't mean, my dear Miss Garth, that you are
glad to hear of a young man giving up the Church for
which he was educated : you only mean that things
being so, you are glad that he should be under an
excellent man like your father.'

'No, really, Mrs Farebrother, I am glad of both, I
fear,' said Mary, cleverly getting rid of one rebellious
tear. *I have a dreadfully secular mind. I never Hked
any clergyman except the Vicar of Wakefield and
Mr Farebrother.'

'Now why, my dear?' said Mrs Farebrother, pausing
on her large wooden knitting-needles and looking at

i82 MIDDLEMARCH

Mary. 'You have always a good reason for your
opinions, but this astonishes me. Of course I put out
of the question those who preach new doctrine. But
why should you dislike clergymen?'

*0h dear/ said Mary, her face breaking into merri-
ment as she seemed to consider a moment, 'I don't
like their neckcloths.'

'Wh}^ you don't like Camden's, then,' said Miss
Winifred, in some anxiety.

'Yes, I do,' said Mary. *I don't like the other
clergymen's neckcloths, because it is they who wear
them.'

'How very puzzling !' said Niss Noble, feeling that
her own intellect was probably deficient.

'My dear, you are joking. You would have better
reasons than these for slighting so respectable a class
of men,' said Mrs Farebrother, majestically.

'Miss Garth has such severe notions of what people
should be that it is difficult to satisfy her,' said
Fred.

'Well, I am glad at least that she makes an exception
in favour of my son,' said the old lady.

Mary was wondering at Fred's piqued tone, when
Mr Farebrother came in and had to hear the news
about the engagement under Mr Garth. At the end
he said with quiet satisfaction, 'That is right;' and
then bent to look at Mary's labels and praise her
handwriting. Fred felt horribly jealous — was glad, of
course, that Mr Farebrother was so estimable, but
wished that he had been ugly and fat as men at forty
sometimes are. It was clear what the end would be,
since Mary openly placed Farebrother above every-
body, and these women were all evidently encourag-
ing the affair. He was feeling sure that he should
have no chance of speaking to Mary, when Mr Fare-
brother said : —

'Fred, help me to carry these drawers back into my
study — ^you have never seen my fine new study. Pray

MIDDLEMARCH 183

come too, Miss Garth. I want you to see a stupendous
spider I found this morning.'

Mary at once saw the Vicar's intention. He had
never since the memorable evening deviated from his
old pastoral kindness towards her, and her momen-
tary wonder and doubt had quite gone to sleep. Mary
was accustomed to think rather rigorously of what
was probable, and if a belief flattered her vanity she
felt warned to dismiss it as ridiculous, having early had
much exercise in such dismissals. It was as she had
foreseen : when Fred had been asked to admire the
fittings of the study, and she had been asked to admire
the spider, Mr Farebrother said : —

'Wait here a minute or two. I am going to look out
an engraving which Fred is tall enough to hang for
me. I shall be back in a few minutes.' And then he
went out. Nevertheless, the first word Fred said to
Mary was : —

*It is of no use, whatever I do, Mary. You are sure
to marry Farebrother at last.' There was some rage
in his tone.

'What do you mean, Fred?' Mary exclaimed
indignantly, blushing deeply, and surprised out of
all her readiness in reply.

' It is impossible that you should not see it all clearly
enough — you who see everything.'

*I only see that you are behaving very ill, Fred, in
speaking so of Mr Farebrother after he has pleaded
your cause in every way. How can you have taken up
such an idea?'

Fred was rather deep, in spite of his irritation. If
Mary had really been unsuspicious, there was no good
in telling her what Mrs Garth had sa.id.

'It follows as a matter of course,' he replied. 'Wlien
you are continually seeing a man who beats me in
everything, and whom you set up above everybody,
I can have no fair chance.'

'You are very ungrateful, Fred,' said Mary. 'I

i84 MIDDLEIVIARCH

wish I had never told Mr Farebrother that I cared for
you in the least/

'No, I am not ungrateful; I should be the happiest
fellow in the world if it were not for this. I told your
father everything, and he was ver^^ kind; he treated
me as if I were his son. I could go at the work with
a will, writing and ever^^thing, if it were not for this.'

'For this? for what?' said Mary, imagining now
that something specific must have been said or done.

'This dreadful certainty that I shall be bowled out
by Farebrother/ Mary was appeased by her inclina-
tion to laugh.

'Fred,' she said, peeping round to catch his eyes,
which were sulkily turned away from her, 'you are
too dehghtfully ridiculous. If you were not such a
charming simpleton, what a temptation this would be
to play the wicked coquette, and let you suppose that
somebody besides 3'ou has made love to me.'

'Do you really like me best, Mary?' said Fred,
turning eyes full of affection on her, and tr^^ing to take
her hand.

'I don't like you at all at this moment,' said Mary,
retreating, and^ putting her hands behind her. 'I
only said that no mortal ever made love to me besides
you. And that is no argument that a very wise man
ever will/ she ended, merrily.

*I wish you would teU me that you could not
possibly ever think of him,' said Fred.

'Never dare to mention this any more to me, Fred,'
said Mary, getting serious again. ' I don't know whether
it is more stupid or ungenerous in you not to see that
Mr Farebrother has left us together on purpose that
we might speak freely. I am disappointed that you
should be so blind to his dehcate feeling.'

There was no time to say any more before Mr
Fasebrother came back with the engraving; and
Fred had to return to the drawing-room still with a
jealous dread in his heart, but yet with comforting

MIDDLEMARCH 185

arguments from Mary's words and manner. The
result of the conversation was on the whole more
painful to Mary : inevitably her attention had taken
a new attitude, and she saw the possibility of new
interpretations. She was in a position in which she
seemed to herself to be slighting Mr Farebrother, and
this, in relation to a man who is much honoured, is
always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman.
To have a reason for going home the next day was
a relief, for Mary earnestly desired to be always clear
that she loved Fred best. When a tender affection
has been storing itself in us through many of our
years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for
it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can
set a watch over our affections and our constancy as
we can over other treasures.

'Fred has lost all his other expectations; he must
keep this,' Mary said to herself, with a smile curling
her lips. It was impossible to help fleeting visions of
another kind — new dignities and an acknowledged
value of which she had often felt the absence. But these
things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and
looking sad for the want of her, could never tempt her
deliberate thought.

lS6 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LVIII

For there can live no hatred in thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy change :
In many's looks the false heart's history-
Is \^Trit in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange;
But Heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell;
Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be,
Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell.

Shakespeare : Sonnets.

At the time when Mr Vincy uttered that presentiment!
about Rosamond, she herself had never had the idea
that she should be driven to make the sort of appeal
which he foresaw. She had not yet had any anxiety
about ways and means, although her domestic life had
been expensive as well as eventful. Her baby had
been born prematurely, and all the embroidered robes
and caps had to be laid by in darkness. This mis-
fortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted
in going out on horseback one day when her husband
had^ desired her not to do so; but it must not be sup-
posed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or
rudely told him that she would do as she liked.

What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise
was a visit from Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third
son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our
Tertius of that name as a vapid fop 'parting his hair
from brow to nape in a despicable fashion* (not
followed by Tertius himself), and showing an ignorant
security that he knew the proper thing to say on
every topic. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly
that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to
go to his uncle's on the wedding-tour, and he made

MIDDLEMARCH 187

himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond by saying
so in private. For to Rosamond this visit was a
source of unprecedented but gracefully-concealed
exultation. She was so intensely conscious of having
a cousin who was a baronet's son staying in the house,
that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied
by his presence to be diffused through all other minds;
and when she introduced Captain Lydgate to her
guests, she had a placid sense that his rank penetrated
them as if it had been an odour. The satisfaction was
enough for the time to melt away some disappoint-
ment in the conditions of marriage with a medical man
even of good birth : it seemed now that her marriage
was visibly as well as ideally floating her above the
Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with
letters and visits to and from Quallingham, and
vague advancement in consequence for Tertius.
Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion,
his married sister, Mrs Mengan, had come with her
maid, and stayed two nights on her way from town.
Hence it was clearly worth while for Rosamond to
take pains with her music and the careful selection of
her lace.

As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his
aquiline nose bent on one side, and his rather heavy
utterance, might have been disadvantageous in any
young gentleman who had not a military bearing and
moustache to give him what is doated on by some
flower-hke blond heads as 'style.' He had, moreover,
that sort of high-breeding which consists in being free
from the petty solicitudes of middle-class gentility,
and he was a great critic of feminine charms. Rosa-
mond delighted in his admiration now even more than
she had done at Quallingham, and he found it easy to
spend several hours of the day in flirting with her.
The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest larks
he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he
suspected that his queer cousin Tertius wished him

i88 MIDDLEMARCH

away : though Lydgate, who would rather (hyper-
bohcally speaking) have died than have failed in
polite hospitality, suppressed his dishke, and only
pretended generally not to hear what the gallant
officer said, consigning the task of answering him to
Rosamond. For he was not at all a jealous husband,
and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentle-
man alone with his wife to bearing him company.

* I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner,
Tertius,' said Rosamond, one evening when the impor-
tant guest was gone to Loamford to see some brother
officers stationed there. 'You really look so absent
sometimes — you seem to be seeing through his head
into something behind it, instead of looking at him.'

*My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much
to such a conceited ass as that, I hope,' said Lydgate,
brusquely. *If he got his head broken, I might look
at it with interest, not before.'

*I cannot conceive why you should speak of your
cousin so contemptuously,' said Rosamond, her
fingers moving at her work while she spoke with a
mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

'Ask Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the
greatest bore he ever met \^^ith. Ladislaw has almost
forsaken the house since he came.'

Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why
Mr Ladislaw disliked the Captain : he was jealous,
and she hked his being jealous.

*It is im.possible to say what will suit eccentric
persons,' she answered, 'but in my opinion Captain
Lydgate is a thorough gentleman, and I think you
ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him
with neglect.'

'No, dear; but we have had dinners for him. And
he comes in and goes out as he likes. He doesn't want
me.'

'Still, when he is in the room, you might show him
more attention. He may not be a phoenix of cleverness

MIDDLEMARCH 189

in your sense; his profession is different; but it would
be all the better for you to talk a little on his subjects.
/ think his conversation is quite agreeable. And he
is anything but an unprincipled man.'

'The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more
like him. Rosy,' said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned mur-
mur, with a smile which was not exactly tender, and
certainly not merry, Rosamond was silent and did not
smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked
good-tempered enough without smiling.

Those words of Lydgate' s were like a sad milestone
marking how far he had travelled from his old dream-
land, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared to be that
perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her
husband's mind after the fashion of an accomplished
mermaid, using her comb and looking-glass and
singing her song for the relaxation of his adored
wisdom alone. He had begun to distinguish between
that imagined adoration and the attraction towards
a man's talent because it gives him prestige, and is
like an order in his button-hole or an Honourable
before his name.

It might have been supposed that Rosamond had
travelled too, since she had found the pointless con-
versation of Mr Ned Plymdale perfectly wearisome;
but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is
unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether
acceptable — else, indeed, what would become of
social bonds? Captain Lydgate's stupidity was
delicately scented, carried itself with 'style,' talked
with a good accent, and was closely related to Sir
Godwin. Rosamond found it quite agreeable and
caught many of its phrases.

Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond
of horseback, there were plenty of reasons why she
should be tempted to resume her riding when Captain
Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses
to follow him and put up at the Green Dragon,

IQO MIDDLEMARCH

begged her to go out on the gray, which he warranted
to be gentle and trained to carry a lady — indeed, he
had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to
Ouallingham. Rosamond went out the first time
without telling her husband, and came back before
his return; but the ride had been so thorough a
success, and she declared herself so much the better
in consequence, that he was informed of it with full
reliance on his consent that she should go riding
again.

On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt — ^he
was utterly confounded that she had risked herself on
a strange horse wdthout referring the matter to his
wish. After the first almost thundering exclamations
of astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond
of what was coming, he was silent for some moments.

'However, you have come back safely,' he said, at
last, in a decisive tone. *You will not go again. Rosy;
that is understood. If it were the quietest, most
familiar horse in the world, there would always be the
chance of accident. And you know very well that I
wished you to give up riding the roan on that account.'

'But there is the chance of accident indoors,
Tertius.'

'My darling, don't talk nonsense,' said Lydgate, in
an imploring tone; 'surely I am the person to judge
for you. I think it is enough that I say you are not to
go again.'

Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner,
and the reflection of her head in the glass showed no
change in its loveliness except a little turning aside of
the long neck. L^^dgate had been moving about with
his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her,
as if he awaited some assurance.

'I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear,' said
Rosamond, letting her arms fall with a little sigh, so
as to make a husband ashamed of standing there like
a brute. Lydgate had often fastened the plaits before.

MIDDLEMARCH 191-

being among the deftest of men with his large, finely-
formed fingers. He swept up the soft festoons of
plaits and fastened in the tall comb (to such uses do
men come !) ; and what could he do then but kiss the
exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate
curves? But when we do what we have done before
it is often with a difference. Lydgate was still angry,
and had not forgotten his point.

' I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known
better than offer you his horse,' he said, as he moved
away.

' I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius,'
said Rosamond, looking at him with something more
marked than usual in her speech. 'It will be treating
me as if I were a child. Promise that you will leave
the subject to me.'

There did seem to be some truth in her objection.
Lydgate said, 'Very well,' with a surly obedience, and
thus the discussion ended with his promising Rosa-
mond, and not with her promising him.

In fact, she had been determined not to promise.
Rosamond had that victorious obstinacy which never
wastes its energy in impetuous resistance. What she
liked to do was to her the right thing, and all her
cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing
it. She meant to go out riding again on the gray, and
she did go on the next opportunity of her husband's
absence, not intending that he should know it until
it was late enough not to signify to her. The tempta-
tion was certainly great : she was very fond of the
exercise, and the gratification of riding on a fine horse
with Captain Lydgate, Sir Godwin's son, on another
fine horse by her side, and of being met in this position
by any one but her husband, was something as good
as her dreams before marriage : moreover, she was
riveting the connection with the family at Qualling-
ham, which must be a wise thing to do.

But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a

192 MIDDLEMARCH

tree that was being felled on the edge of HalseU wood,
took fright, and caused a worse fright to Rosamond,
leading finally to the loss of her baby. Lydgate could
not show his anger towards her, but he was rather
bearish to the Captain, whose visit naturally soon
came to an end.

In all future conversation on the subject, Rosamond
was mildly certain that the ride had made no differ-
ence, and that if she had stayed at home the same
symptoms would have come on and would have ended
in the same way, because she had felt something like
them before.

Lydgate could only say, 'Poor, poor darling !' —
but he secretly wondered over the terrible tenacity of
this m-ild creature. There was gathering within him
an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond.
His superior knowledge and mental force, instead of
being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all
occasions, was simply set aside on every practical
question. He had regarded Rosamond's cleverness as
precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.
He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness
was — what was the shape into which it had run as
into a close network aloof and independent. No one
quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects
which lay within the track of her own tastes and
interests : she had seen clearly Lydgate' s pre-eminence
in Middlemarch society, and coufd go on imaginatively
tracing still more agreeable social effects when his
talent should have advanced him; but for her, his
professional and scientific ambition had no other
relation to these desirable effects than if they had
been the fortunate discovery of an ill-smelhng oil. And
that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course
she believed in her own opinion more than she did in his.
Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless trifling
matters, as well as in this last serious case of the
riding, that affection did not make her compliant.

MIDDLEMARCH I93

He had no doubt that the affection was there, and
had no presentiment that he had done anything to
repel it. For his own part he said to himself that he
loved her as tenderly as ever, and could make up his
mind to her negations; but — well ! Lydgate was
much worried, and conscious of new elements in his
life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature
that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after
its illuminated prey in the clearest of waters.

Rosamond was soon looking loveher than ever at
her work-table, enjoying drives in her father's phaeton
and thinking it likely that she might be invited to
Quallingham. She knew that she was a much more
exquisite ornament to the drawing-room there than
any daughter of the family, and in reflecting that the
gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps suffici-
ently consider whether the ladies would be eager to
see themselves surpassed.

Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed
into what she inwardly called his moodiness — a name
which to her covered his thoughtful preoccupation
with other subjects than herself, as well as that uneasy
look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as
if they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really
made a sort of weather-glass to his vexation and fore-
boding. These latter states of mind had one cause
amongst others, which he had generously but mis-
takenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it
should affect her health and spirits. Between him and
her indeed there was that total missing of each other's
mental track, which is too evidently possible even
between persons v/ho are continually thinking of each
other. To Lydgate it seemed that he had been spend-
ing month after month in sacrificing more than half
of his best intent and best power to his tenderness for
Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions
without impatience, and, above all, bearing without
betrayal of bitterness to look through less and less of
M. (ii) G

194 MIDDLEMARCH

interfering illusion at the blank unreflecting surface
her mind presented to his ardour for the more imper-
sonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an
ardour which he had fancied that the ideal wiie must
somehow worship as sublime, though not in the least
knowing why. But his endurance was mingled with
a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid,
we shaU confess to make m.ore than half our bitterness
under grievances, wife or husband included. It always
remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance
would have been less strong against us. Lydgate was
aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often
little more than the lapse of slackening resolution, the
creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is
out of adjustment to a constant portion of our lives.
And on L^-dgate's enthusiasm there was constantly
pressing not a sim.ple weight of sorrow, but the biting
presence of a petty degrading care, such as casts the
blight of irony over all higher effort.

This was the care which he had hitherto abstained
from mentioning to Rosam.ond; and he beUeved, with
some wonder, that it had never entered her mind,
though certainly no difhculty could be less mysterious.
It was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it,
and had been easily dra\Mi by indifferent observers,
that Lydgate was in debt; and he could not succeed
in keeping out of his mind for long together that he
was every day getting deeper into that swam.p, which
tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of
flowers and verdure. It is wonderful hov/ soon a man
gets up to his chin there — in a condition in v/hich,
spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release,
though he had a scheme of the universe in his soul.

Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had
never known the eager want of smaU sum^s, and felt
rather a burning contempt for any one who descended
a step in order to gain them. He was now experiencing
something worse than a sim_ple deficit : he was assailed

MIDDLEMARCH 195

by the vulgar hateful trials of a man who has bought
and used a great many things which might have been
done without, and which he is unable to pay for,
though the demand for payment has become pressing.
How this came about ma^^ be easily seen without
much arithmetic or knowledge of prices. WTien a man
in setting up a house and preparing for marriage
finds that his furniture and other initial expenses
come to between four and five hundred pounds more
than he has capital to pay for; when at the end of a
3/ear it appears that his household expenses, horses,
and et ceteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while
the proceeds of the practice reckoned from the old
books to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk
like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred
chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that,
whether he minds it or not, he is in debt. Those w^ere
less expensive times than our own, and provincial life
was comparatively modest; but the ease with which
a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who
thought that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose
table was supplied without stint, and who paid an
insurance on his life and a high rent for house and
garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts,
can be conceived by any one who does not think these
details beneath his consideration. Rosamond, accus-
tomed from her childhood to an extra,vagant house-
hold, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply
in ordering the best of everything — nothing else
'answered'; and L3^dgate supposed that if 'things
v/ere done at all, they must be done properly' — he
did not see how they were to live otherwise. If each
head of household expenditure had been mentioned
to him beforehand, he would have probably observed
that 'it could hardly come to much,' and if any one
had suggested a saving on a particular article — for
example, the substitution of cheap fish for dear — it
would have appeared to him simply a penny-wise.

196 MIDDLEIMARCH

mean notion. Rosamond, even without such an
occasion as Captain L5'dgate's visit, was fond of giving
in\'itations, and Lydgate, though he often thought the
guests tiresome, did not interfere. This sociability
seemed a necessary part of professional prudence, and
the entertainment must be suitable. It is true Lydgate
was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and
adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their small means;
but, dear me ! has it not by this time ceased to be
remarkable — is it not rather what we expect in men,
that they should have numerous strands of experience
lying side by side and never compare them with
each other? Expenditure — like ugliness and errors
— ^becomes a totally new thing vvhen we attach our own
personality^ to it, and measure it by that wide differ-
ence which is manifest (in our own sensations) between
ourselves and others. Lydgate believed himself to be
careless about his dress, and he despised a man who
calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him
only a matter of course that he had abundance of fresh
garments — such things were naturally ordered in
sheaves. It must be remembered that he had never
hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he
walked by habit, not by self-criticism. But the check
had come.

Its novelty made it the more irritating. He was
amazed, disgusted that conditions so foreign to all
his purposes, so hatefully disconnected with the
objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain
in ambush and clutched him when he was unaware.
And there was not only the actual debt; there was
the certainty that in his present position he must go on
deepening it. Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing,
whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and
whom uncalculated current expenses had ever since
prevented him from paying, had repeatedly sent him
unpleasant letters which had forced themselves on his
attention. This could hardly have been more galling to

MIDDLEMARCH 1-7

any disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense
pride — his disHke of asking a favour or being under an
obligation to any one. He had scorned even to form con-
jectures about Mr Vincy's intentions on money m.atters,
and nothing but extremity could have induced him
to apply to his father-in-law, even if he had not been
made aware in various indirect ways since his marriage
that Mr Vincy's own affairs were not flourishing, and
that the expectation of help from him would be resented.
Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it
had never in the former part of his life occurred to
Lydgate that he should need to do so : he had never
thought what borrowing would be to him; but now
that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he
would rather incur any other hardship. In the mean-
time he had no money or prospect^ of money; and his
practice was not getting more lucrative.

No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress
all signs of inward trouble during the last few months,
and now that Rosam.ond was regaining brilliant health,
he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on
his difficulties. New conversance with tradesmen's
bills had forced his reasoning into a new channel of
comparison : he had begun to consider from a new
point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in
goods ordered, and to see that there must be some
change of habits. How could such a change be made
without Rosamond's concurrence? The immediate
occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was
forced upon him.

Having no money, and having privately sought
advice as to what security could possibly be ^iven by
a man in his position, Lydgate had ofered the one
good security in his power to the less peremptory
creditor, who was a silversmith and jeweller, and who
consented to take on himself the upholsterer's credit
also, accepting interest for a given term. The security!
necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of hist

igS MIDDLEMARCH

house, which might make a creditor easy for a reason-
able time about a debt amounting to less than four
hundred pounds; and the silversmith, Mr Dover, was
willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the
plate and any other article which was as good as new.
'Any other article' was a phrase delicately imiplying
jeweller3^ and more particularly some purple
amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Lydgate had
bought as a bridal present.

Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in m.aking
this present : some may think that it was a graceful
attention to be expected from a man like Lydgate,
and that the fault of any troublesome consequences
lay in the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that
time, which offered no conveniences for professional
people whose fortune was not proportioned to their
tastes; also, in Lydgate' s ridiculous fastidiousness
about asking his friends for money.

However, it had seemed a question of no moment to
him on that fine morning when he went to give a final
order for plate : in the presence of other jewels enor-
mously expensive, and as an addition to orders of
which the amount had not been exactly calculated,
thirty pounds for ornaments so exquisitely suited to
Rosamond's neck and arms could hardly appear exces-
sive v/hen there was no ready cash for it to exceed.
But at this crisis L^'dgate's imagination could not help
dwelling on the possibility of letting the amethysts
take their place again among Mr Dover's stock,
though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to
Rosamond. Having been roused to discern conse-
quences which he had never been in the habit of
tracing, he was preparing to act on this discernment
with some of the rigour (by no means all) that he
would have applied in pursuing experiment. He was
nerving himself to this rigour as he rode from Brassing,
and m.editated on the representations he must make
to Rosamond.

MIDDLEMARCH 199

It was evening when he got home. He was intensely
miserable, this strong man of nine-and-twenty and of
many gifts. He was not saying angrily within himself
that he had made a profound mistake; but the mistake
was at work in him like a recognised chronic disease,
mingling its uneasy importunities with every prospect,
and enfeebling every thought. As he went along the
passage to the drawing-room, he heard the piano and
singing. Of course, Ladislaw was there. It was some
weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he
was still at the old post in Middlemarch. L^^dgate had
no objection in general to Ladislav/'s coming, but just
now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth
free. When he opened the door the two singers went
on towards the key-note, raising their eyes and looking
at him indeed, but not regarding his entrance as an
interruption. To a man galled with his harness as
poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people
warbhng at him, as he comes in with the sense that the
painful day has still pains in store. His face, already
paler than usual, took on a scowl as he walked across
the room and flung himself into a chair.

The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact
that they had had only three bars to sing, now turned
round.

'How are you, Lydgate?' said Will, coming forward
to shake hands.

Lydgate tock his hand, but did not think it necessary
to speak.

'Have 3'ou dined, Tertius? I expected you much
earlier,' said Rosamond, who had already seen that her
husband was in a 'horrible humour.' She seated her-
self in her usual place as she spoke.

'I have dined. I should like some tea, please,' said
Lydgate, curtly, still scowling and looking markedly
at his legs stretched out before him.

Will was too quick to need more. 'I shall be ofi/
he said, reaching his hat. '

200 MIDDLEMARCH

'Tea is coming,' said Rosamond; 'pray don't go.'

*Yes, Lydgate is bored,' said Will who had more
comprehension of Lydgate than Rosamond had, and
was not offended by his manner, easily imagining
outdoor causes of annoyance.

'There is the more need for you to stay,' said Rosa-
mind, playfully, and in her lightest accent; 'he will
not speak to me all the evening.'

'Yes, Rosamond, I shall,' said Lydgate, in his strong
baritone. 'I have some serious business to speak to
you about.'

No introduction of the business could have been
less like that which Lydgate had intended; but her
indifferent manner had been too provoking.

'There 1 you see,' said Will. Tm going to the
meeting about the Mechanics' Institute. Good-bye;'
and he went quickly out of the room.

Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently
rose and took her place before the tea-tray. She was
thinking that she had never seen him so disagreeable.
Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her
as she delicately handled the tea-service with her
taper fingers, and looked at the objects imm^ediately
before her with no curve in her face disturbed, and yet
with an ineffable protest in her air against all people
wdth unpleasant manners. For the moment he lost
the sense of his wound in a sudden speculation about
this new form of feminine impassibility revealing itself
in the sylph-like frame which he had once interpreted
as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness. His
mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosa-
mond, he said inwardly, 'Would she kill me because
I wearied her?' and then, 'It is the way with all
women.' But this power of generalising which gives
men so much the superiority in mistake over the
dumb animals, was immediately thwarted by Lydgate' s
memory of wondering impressions from the behaviour
of another woman — from Dorothea's looks and tones

MIDDLEMARCH 201

of emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to
attend him — from her passionate cry to be taught
what would best comfort that man for whose sake it
seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except
the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. These
revived impressions succeeded each other quickly and
dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the tea was being
brewed. He had shut his eyes in the last instant of
reverie while he heard Dorthea saying, 'Advise me —
think what I can do — he has been all his life labouring
and looking foi-ward. He minds about nothing else —
and I mind about nothing else.'

That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained
within him as the enkindling conceptions of dead and
sceptred genius had remained within him (is there not
a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over human
spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music
from which he was falling away — he had really fallen
into a momentar}^ doze, when Rosamond said in her
silvery neutral way, 'Here is your tea, Tertius,' setting
it on the small table by his side, and then moved back
to her place without looking at him.. Lydgate was too
hasty in attributing insensibility to her; after her own
fashion, she was sensitive enough, and took lasting
impressions. Her impression now was one of offence
and repulsion. But then, Rosamond had no scowls
and had never raised her voice : she was quite sure
that no one could justly find fault with her.

Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off
each other before; but there were strong reasons for
not deferring his revelation, even if he had not
already begun it by that abrupt announcement;
indeed some of the angry desire to rouse her into more
sensibility on his account which had prompted him
to speak prematurely, still mingled with his pain in the
prospect of her pain. But he waited till the tray was
gone, the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might
be counted on : the interv^al had left time for rcDcUed

202 MIDDLEMARCH

tenderness to return into the old course. He spoke

kindl}^

'Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit
by me/ he said, gently, pushing away the table, and
stretching out his arm to draw a chair near his own.

Rosamond obeyed. As she came towards him in her
drapery of transparent faintly-tinted mushn, her slim
yet round figure never looked more graceful; as she
sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his
chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her
delicate neck and cheek and purely-cut lips never had
more of that untarnished beauty which touches us in
spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness. It
touched Lydgate now, and mingled the early moments
of his love for her with all the other memories which
were stirred in this crisis of deep trouble. He laid his
ample hand softly on hers, saying : —

'Dear !' with the lingering utterance which affection
gives to the word. Rosamond too was still under the
power of that same past, and her husband was still
in part the Lydgate whose approval had stirred delight.
She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then
laid her other hand on his, and was conscious of
forgiving him.

'I am obhged to tell you what wall hurt you. Rosy.
But there are things which husband and wife must
think of together. I dare say it has occurred to j-ou
already that I am short of money.'

Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck
and looked at a vase on the mantelpiece.

'I was not able to pay for all the things we had to
get before we were married, and there have been
expenses since which I have been obliged to meet.
The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing
— three hundred and eighty pounds — which has been
pressing on me a good while, and in fact we are getting
deeper every day, for people don't pay me the faster
because others want the Tp.oney. I took pains to keep

MIDDLEMARCH 203

if from you Vv-hil'j you were not well; but now we must
think together about it, and you must help me.'

'What can I do, Tertius?' said Rosamond, turning
her eyes on him again. That little speech of four
words, like so many others in all languages, is capable
by varied vocal inflexions of expressing all states of
mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumen-
tative perception, from the completest self-devoting
fellowship to the most neutral aloofness. Rosamond's
thin utterance threw into the vrords 'What can / do T
as much neutrality as they could hold. They fell like
a mortal chill on Lydgate's roused tenderness. He did
not storm in indignation — he felt too sad a sinking of
the heart. And when he spoke again it was in the
tone of a man who forces himself to fulfil a task.

'It is necessary for you to know, because I have to
give security for a time, and a m-an must come to make
an inventory of the furniture.'

Rosamond coloured deeply. 'Have you not asked
papa for money ? ' she said, as soon as she could speak.

'No.'

'Then I must ask him !' she said, releasing her hands
from Lydgate's, and rising to stand at two yards'
distance from him.

'No, Rosy,' said Lydgate decisively. 'It is too late
to do that. The inventory will be begun to-morrow.
Remember it is a m.ere security : it will make no differ-
ence : it is a temporary affair. I insist upon it that
3^our father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him,'
added Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.

This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown
him back on evil expectation as to what she would do
in the way of quiet steady disobedience. The unkind-
ness seemed unpardonable to her : she was not given
to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and Hps
began to tremble and the tears welled up. Perhaps
it was not possible for Lydgate, under the double stress
of outward material difficulty and of his own proud

204 MIDDLEMARCH

resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine
fully what this sudden trial was to a young creature
who had known nothing but indulgence, and whose
dreams had all been of new indulgence, more exactly
to her taste. But he did wish to spare her as much as
he could, and her tears cut him to the heart. He could
not speak again immediately; but Rosamond did not
go on sobbing : she tried to conquer her agitation and
v/iped away her tears, continuing to look before her
at the mantelpiece.

'Try not to grieve, darling,' said Lydgate, turning
his eyes up towards her. That she had chosen to move
away from him. in this moment of her trouble made
everj'thing harder to say, but he must absolutely go
on. 'We must brace ourselves up to do what is
necessary. It is I who have been in fault : I ought to
have seen that I could not afford to live in this way.
But many things have told against me in my practice,
and it really just now has ebbed to a low point. I may
recover it, but in the meantime \\e must pull up —
we must change our way of living. We shall weather
it. When I have given this security I shall have time
to look about me; and 3'ou are so clever that if you
turn your mind to managing you will school me into
carefulness. I have been a thoughtless rascal about
squaring prices — but come, dear, sit down and for-
give me.*

Lydgate was bov/ing his neck under the yoke like
a creature who had talons, but who had Reason too,
which often reduces us to meekness. WTien he had
spoken the last words in an imploring tone, Rosamond
returned to the chair by his side. His self-blam.e gave
her some hope that he would attend to her opinion,
and she said : —

'Wliy can you not put off having the inventory
made? You can send the men away to-morrow when
they come.'

'I shall not send them away,' said Lydgate, the

MIDDLEMARCH 205

peremptoriness rising again. Was it of any use to
explain ?

'If we left Middlemarch, there would of course be
a sale, and that would do as well.'

'But we are not going to leave Middlemarch.'

*I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to so so.
Why can we not go to London? Or near Durham,
where your family is known?'

'We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond.*

'Your friends would not wish you to be without
money. And surely these odious tradesmen might be
made to understand that, and to wait, if you would
make proper representations to them.'

'This is idle, Rosamond,' said Lydgate, angrily.
'You must learn to tal:e my judgment on questions
you don't understand. I have made necessary arrange-
ments, and they m.ust be carried out. As to friends,
I have no expectations whatever from them, and
shall not ask them for anything.'

Rosamond sat perfectly still. The thought in her
mind was that if she had known how Lydgate would
behave, she would never have m.arried him..

'We have no time to waste now on unnecessary
words, dear,' said Lydgate, trying to be gentle again.
'There are some details that I want to consider with
you. Dover says he will take a good deal of plate back
again, and any of the jewellery we like. He really
behaves very well.'

'Are v/e to go without spoons and forks then?' said
Rosamond, whose very lips seemed to get thinner
with the thinness of her utterance. She was deter-
mined to make no further resistance or suggestions.

'Oh no, dear!' said Lydgate. 'But look here/ he
continued, drawing a paper from his pocket and
opening it; 'here is Dover's account. See, I have
marked a number of articles, which if we returned
them would reduce the amount by thirty pounds and
more. I have not marked any of the jewellery/

2o6 MIDDLEMARCH

Lydgate had really felt this point of the jewellery
very bitter to himself; but he had overcome the feeling
by severe argument. He could not propose to Rosa-
mond that she should return any particular present
of his, but he had told himself that he was bound to
put Dover's offer before her, a.nd her inward prompting
might make the affair easy,

*It is useless for me to look, Tertius,' said Rosamond,
calmly; 'you will return what you please/ She would
not turn her eyes on the paper, and Lydgate, flushing
up to the roots of his hair, drew it back and let it fall
on hiis knee. Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of
the room, leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering.
Was she not coming back? It seemed that she had no
more identified herself \^dth him than if they had
been creatures of different species and opposing
interests. He tossed his head and thrust his hands
deep into his pockets with a sort of vengeance. There
was still science — there were still good objects to work
for. He must have a tug still — all the stronger because
other satisfactions were going.

But the door opened and Rosamond re-entered.
She carried the leather box containing the amethysts,
and a tiny ornamental basket which contained other
boxes, and laying them on the chair where she had
been sitting, she said, with perfect propriety in her
air : —

'This is all the jewellery you ever gave me. \^ou
can return what you like of it, and of the plate also.
You will not, of course, expect me to stay at home
to-morrow. I shall go to papa's.'

To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would
have been more terrible than one of anger : it had in
it a despairing acceptance of the distance she was
placing between them.

'And when shall 3'OU come back again?' he said,
with a bitter edge on his accent.

*0h, in the evening. Of course I shall not mention

MIDDLEMARCH 207

the subject to mamma/ Rosamond was convinced
that no woman could behave more irreproachably than
she was behaving; and she went to sit down at her
work-table. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two,
and the result was that he said, \\dth some of the old
emotion in his tone : —

'Now vre have been united, Rosy, you should not
leave me to myself in the first trouble that has come.'

'Certainly not,' said Rosajnond; *I shall do every-
thing it becomes me to do.'

'It is not right that the thing should be left to
servants, or that I should have to speak to them about
it. And I shaU be obliged to go out — I don't know
how early. I understand your shrinking from the
humihation of these money affairs. But, my dear
Rosamond, as a question of pride, which I feel just as
much as you can, it is surely better to manage the thing
ourselves, and let the servants see as httle of it as
possible; and since you are my wife, there is no hinder-
ing your share in my disgraces — if there were dis-
graces.'

Rosamond did not answer immediately, but at last
she said, 'Very well, I will stay at home.'

*I shall not touch these jewels. Rosy. Take them
away again. But I will write out a list of plate that
we may return, and that can be packed up and sent
at once.'

'The servants will know that,' said Rosamond, with
the slightest touch of sarcasm.

'Well, we must meet some disagreeables as neces-
sities. Where is the ink, I wonder?' said Lydgate,
rising, and throwing the account on the larger table
where he meant to write.

Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after
setting it on the table was going to turn away, when
Lydgate, who was standing close by, put his arm
round her and drew her towards him, saying,

'Come, darling, let us make the best of things. It

2o8 MIDDLEMARCH

will only be for a time, I hope, that we shall have to
be stingy and particular. Kiss me.'

His native warm-heartedness took a great deal of
quenching, and it is a part of m.anliness for a husband
to feel keenly the fact that an inexperienced girl has
got into trouble by marrying him. She received his
kiss and returned it faintty, and in this way an appear-
ance of accord was recovered for the time. But Lyd-
gate could not help looking forward ^\dth dread to the
inevitable future discussions about expenditure and
the necessity for a complete change in their way of
living.

MIDDLEMARCH 209

CHAPTER LIX

They said of old the Soul had human shape,

But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self,

So wandered forth for airing when it pleased.

And see ! beside her cherub-face there floats

A pale-lipped form aerial whispering

Its promptings in that httle shell her ear.

News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively
as that pollen which the bees carry off (having no idea
how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in
search of their particular nectar. This fine comparison
has reference to Fred Vincy, who on that evening at
Lowick Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the
ladies on the news which their old servant had got
from Tantripp concerning Mr Casaubon's strange
mention of Mr Ladislaw in a codicil to his will made
not long before his death. Miss Winifred was astounded
to find that her brother had known the fact before,
and observed that Camden was the most wonderful
man for knowing things and not telling them; where-
upon Mary Garth said that the codicil had perhaps
got mixed up with the habits of spiders, which Miss
Winifred never would listen to. Mrs Farebrother
considered that the news had something to do with
their having once only seen Mr Ladislaw at Lowick,
and Miss Noble made many small compassionate
mewings.

Fred knew little and cared less about Ladislaw and
the Casaubons, and his mind never recurred to that
discussion till one day calling on Rosamond at his
mother's request to deliver a message as he passed,
he happened to see Ladislaw going away. Fred and
Rosamond had little to say to each other now that
marriage had removed her from collision with the

210 MIDDLEMARCH

unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now ttat
he had taken what she held the stupid and even
reprehensible step of giving up the Church to take to
such a business as Mr Garth's. Hence Fred talked b}^
preference of what he considered indifferent news,
and ' a propos of that young Ladislaw ' mentioned
what he had heard at Lowick Parsonage.

Now Lydgate, like Mr Farebrother, knew a great
deal more than he told, and when he had once been
set thinking about the relation between Will and
Dorothea his conjectures had gone beyond the fact.
He imagined that there was a passionate attachment
on both sides, and this struck him as much too serious
to gossip about. He remembered Will's irritabihty
when he had mentioned Mrs Casaubon, and was the
more circumspect. On the whole his surmises, in
addition to what he knew of the fact, increased his
friendhness and tolerance towards Ladislaw, and
made him understand the vacillation which kept him
at Middlemarch after he had said that he should go
away. It was significant of the separateness between
Lydgate' s mind and Rosamond's that he had no
impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did
not quite trust her reticence towards Will. And he was
right there; though he had no vision of the way in
which her mind would act in urging her to speak.

When she repeated Fred's news to Lydgate, he said,
*Take care you don't drop the faintest hint to Ladis-
law, Rosy. He is likely to fiy out as if you insulted
him. Of course it is a painful affair.'

Rosamond turned her neck and patted her hair,
looking the image of placid indifference. But the next
time Will came when Lydgate was away, she spoke
archly about his not going to London as he had
threatened.

'I know all about it. I have a confidential Httle
bird,' she said, showing very pretty airs of her head
over the bit of work held high between her active

MIDDLEMARCH 211

fingers. 'There is a powerful magnet in this neigh-
bourhood.'

'To be sure there is. Nobody knows that better
than you/ said Will, with light gallantry, but inwardly
prepared to be angiy.

' It is really the most charming romance : Mr
Casaubon jealous, and foreseeing that there was no one
else whom Mrs Casaubon would so much like to marry,
and no one who would so much like to marry her as
a certain gentleman; and then Laying a plan to spoil
all by making her forfeit her property if she did marry
that gentleman — and then — and then — and then — oh, I
have no doubt the end will be thoroughly romantic'

'Great God ! what do you mean?' said Will, flushing
over face and ears, his features seeming to change as if
he had had a violent shake. 'Don't joke; tell me
what you mean.'

'You don't really know?' said Rosamond, no longer
playful, and desiring nothing better than to tell in
order that she might evoke efiects.

'No !' he returned impatiently.

'Don't know that Mr Casaubon has left it in his will
that if Mrs Casaubon marries you she is to forfeit all
her property?'

' How do you know^ that it is true ? ' said Will eagerly.

'My brother Fred heard it from the Farebrothers.'

Will started up from his chair and reached his
hat.

'I dare say she likes you better than the property/
said Rosamond, looking at him from a distance.

'Pray don't say any more about it,' said Will, in
a hoarse undertone extremely unlike his usual voice.
'It is a foul insult to her and to me.' Then he sat
down absently, looking before him, but seeing nothing.

'Now you are angry with me' said Rosamond. 'It
is too bad to bear me mahce. You ought to be obhged
to me for telling you.'

'So I am,' said Will, abruntly, speakins: with that

212 MIDDLEMARCH

kind of double soul which belongs to dreamers who
answer questions.

'I expect to hear of the marriage/ said Rosamond,
playfully.

'Never ! You will never hear of the m_arriage !'

With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose,
put out his hand to Rosamond, still with the air oi
a somnambuhst, and went away.

When he was gone, Rosamond left her chair and
walked to the other end of the room, leaning when she
got there against a chiffonier, and looking out of
the window wearily. She was oppressed by ennui,
and by that dissatisfaction which in women's minds
is continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring
to no real claims, springing from no deeper passion than
the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of
impelhng action as well as speech. 'There really is
nothing to care for much/ said poor Rosamond
inwardly, thinking of the family at Qualhngham, who
did not write to her; and that perhaps Tertius when
he came home would tease her about expenses. She
had already secretly disobeyed him by asking her
father to help them, and he had ended decisively by
saying, 'I am more likely to want help myself.'

MIDDLEMARCH 213

CHAPTER LX

Good phrases are surel}^ and ever were, very commendable.

Justice Shallow.

A FEW days afterwards — ^it was already the end of
August — there was an occasion which caused some
excitement in Middlemarch : the pubUc, if it chose,
was to have the advantage of bu3dng, under the dis-
tinguished auspices of Mr Borthrop Trumbull, the
furniture, books, and pictures which anybody might
see by the handbills to be the best in every kind,
belonging to Edwin Larcher, Esq. This was not one
of the sales indicating the depression of trade; on the
contrary, it was due to Mr Larcher' s great success in
the carrying business, which warranted his purchase
of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high
style by an illustrious Spa physician — furnished indeed
with such large framefuls of expensive flesh-painting in
the dining-room, that Mrs Larcher was nervous until
reassured by finding the subjects to be Scriptural.
Hence the fine opportunity to purchasers which was
well pointed out in the handbills of Mr Borthrop
Trumbull, whose acquaintance with the history of
art enabled him to state that the hall furniture, to be
sold without reserve, comprised a piece of carving by
a contemporary of Gibbons.

At Middlemarch in those times a large sale was
regarded as a kind of festival. There was a table
spread with the best cold eatables, as at a superior
funeral; and facilities were offered for that generous
drinking of cheerful glasses which might lead to
generous and cheerful bidding for undesirable articles.
Mr Larcher' s sale was the more attractive in the

214 MIDDLEMARCH

fine weather because the house stood just at the end
of the town, with a garden and stables attached, in
that pleasant issue from Middlemarch called the
London Road, which was also the road to the New
Hospital and to Mr Bulstrode's retired residence,
known as The Shrubs. In short, the auction was as
good as a fair, and drew all classes with leisure at
command : to some, who risked making bids in order
simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting at
the races. The second day, when the best furniture
was to be sold, 'everybody' was there; even Mr
Thesiger, the Rector of St Peter's, had looked in for
a short time, wishing to buy the carved table, and
had rubbed elbows with Mr Bambridge and Mr Hor-
rock. There was a v/reath of Middlemarch ladies
accommodated with seats round the large table in the
dining-room, where Mr Borthrop Tmmbull was
mounted with desk and hammer; but the rows chiefly
of masculine faces behind were often varied by incom-
ings and outgoings both from the door and the
large bow-window opening on to the lawn.

'Everj^body' that day did not include Mr Bulstrode,
whose health could not well endure crowds and
draughts. But Mrs Bulstrode had particularly wished
to have a certain picture — a Supper at Emmaus,
attributed in the catalogue to Guido; and at the last
moment before the day of the sale Mr Bulstrode had
called at the office of the Pioneer, of which he was now
one of the proprietors, to beg of Mr Ladislaw as a
great favour that he would obligingly use his remark-
able knowledge of pictures on behalf of Mrs Bulstrode,
and judge of the value of this particular painting — 'if,'
added the scrupulously polite banker, 'attendance at
the sale would not interfere with the arrangements
for your departure, which I know is imminent.'

This pro\dso might have sounded rather satirically in
Will's ear if he had been in a mood to care about
such satire. It referred to an understanding entered

MIDDLEMARCH 215

into many weeks before with the proprietors of the
paper, that he should be at Hberty any day he pleased
to hand over the management to the sub-editor whom
he had been training; since he wished finally to quit
Middlemarch. But indefinite visions of ambition are
weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or
beguihngly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty
of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that
it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of
mind the most incredulous person has a private
leaning towards miracle : impossible to conceive how
our wish could be fulfilled, still — very wonderful
things have happened ! Will did not confess this
weakness to himself, but he hngered. Vv'hat was the
use of going to London at that time of the year? The
Rugby men who would remember him were not there;
and so far as political writing was concerned, he would
rather for a few weeks go on with the Pioneer. At
the present moment, however, when Mr Bulstrode was
speaking to him, he had both a strengthened resolve
to go and an equally strong resolve not to go till he had
once more seen Dorothea. Hence he replied that he
had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and
would be happy to go to the sale.

Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being
deeply stung with the thought that the people who
looked at him probably knew a fact tantamount to an
accusation against him as a fellow with low designs
which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property.
Like most people \\ho assert their freedom with
regard to conventional distinction, he was prepared
to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any one who
might hint that he had personal reasons for that
assertion — that there was anything in his blood, his
bearing, or his character to which he gave the mask of
an opinion. When he was under an irrita.ting impres-
sion of this kind he would go about for days with
a defiant look, the colour changing in his transparent

2i6 MIDDLEMARCH

skin as if he were on the qui vive, watching for something
which he had to dart upon.

This expression was pecuHarly noticeable in him at
the sale, and those who had only seen him in his moods
of gentle oddity or of bright enjoyment would have
been struck with a contrast. He v/as not sorry to have
this occasion for appearing in public before the Middle-
mxarch tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who
looked down on him as an adventurer, and were in
a state of brutal ignorance about Dante — who sneered
at his Polish blood, and were themselves of a breed
very much in need of crossing. He stood in a con-
spicuous place not far from the auctioneer, with a
forefinger in each side-pocket and his head thrown
backward, not caring to speak to anybody, though he
had been cordially welcomed as a connoiss^^f^ by
Mr Trumbull, who was enjoying the utmost activity
of his great faculties.

And surely among all men whose vocation requires
them to exhibit their powers of speech, the happiest
is a prosperous provincial auctioneer keenly alive to
his own jokes and sensible of his encyclopaedic know-
ledge. Some saturnine, sour-blooded persons might
object to be constantly insisting on the m.erits of all
articles from bootjacks to 'Berghems' ; but Mr Borthrop
Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins; he was an
admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the
universe under his hammer, feeling that it would go
at a higher figure for his recommendation.

Meanwhile Mrs Larcher's drawing-room furniture
was enough for him. When Will Ladislaw had come
in, a second fender, said to have been forgotten in its
right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's enthu-
siasm, which he distributed on the equitable principle
of praising those things most v/hich were most in need
of praise. The fender was of polished steel, with much
lancet-shaped open-v/ork and a sharp edge.

*Now, ladies/ said he, 'I shall appeal to you. Here

MIDDLEivIARCH 217

is a fender which at any other sale would hardly be
offered without reserve, being, as I may say, for quality
of steel and quaintness of design, a kind of thing ' —
here Mr Trumbull dropped his voice and became
shghtly nasal, trimming his outlines with his
left finger — 'that might not fall in with ordinary
tastes. Allow me to tell you that by-and-by this
style of v/orkmanship \\dll be the only one in
vogue — half-a-crown, you said? thank you — agoing
at half-a-crown, this characteristic fender; and I
have particular information that the antique style
is very much sought after in high quarters. Three
shillings — three-and-sixpence — hold it well up, Joseph !
Look, ladies, at the chastity of the design — I have
no doubt myself that it was turned out in the
last century! Four shilUngs, Mr Mawmsey? — four
shillings.'

'It's not a thing I would put in my drawing-room/
said Mrs Mawmsey, audibly, for the warning of the
rash husband. 'I wonder at Mrs Larcher. Every
blessed child's head that fell against it would be
cut in two. The edge is like a knife.'

'Quite true,' rejoined Mr Trumbull, quickly, 'and
most uncommonly useful to have a fender at hand
that will cut, if you have a leather shoetie or a bit of
string that wants cutting and no knife at hand :
many a man has been left hanging because there was
no knife to cut him down. Gentlemen, here's a fender
that if you had the misfortune to hang yourselves
would cut you down in no time — with astonishing
celerity — four-and-sixpence — five — five-and-sixpence —
an appropriate thing for a spare bedroom where there
was a four-poster and a guest a little out of his mind —
six shillings — thank you, Mr Clintup — going at six
shillings — going — gone!' The auctioneer's glance,
which had been searching round him with a preter-
natural susceptibility to all signs of bidding, here
dropped on the paper before him, and his voice too

2i8 MIDDLEMARCH

dropped into a tone of indifferent despatch as he said,
*Mr Qintup. Be handy, Joseph/

* It was worth six shillings to have a fender you could
always tell that joke on/ said Mr Clintup, laughing low
and apologetically to his next neighbour. He was
a diffident though distinguished nurseryman, and
feared that the audience might regard his bid as a
foolish one.

Meanwhile Joseph had brought a trayful of small
articles. 'Now, ladies,' said Mr Trumbull, taking up
one of the articles, 'this tray contains a very recherchy
lot — a collection of trifles for the drawing-room table —
and trifles make the sum of human things — nothing
more important than trifles — (yes, Mr Ladislaw, ye?,
by-and-by) — ^but pass the tray round, Joseph — these
bijoux must be examined, ladies. This I have in my
hand is an ingenious contrivance — a sort of practical
rebus, I may call it : here, you see, it looks like an
elegant heart-shaped box, portable — for the pocket;
there, again, it becomes Hke a splendid double flower
— an ornament for the table; and now' — Mr Trumbull
allowed the flower to fall alarmingly into strings of
heart-shaped leaves — *a book of riddles ! No less than
five hundred printed in a beautiful red. Gentlemen,
if I had less of a conscience, I should not wish you to
bid high for this lot — I have a longing for it myself.
What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say
virtue, more than a good riddle? — it hinders profane
language, and attaches a man to the society of refined
females. This ingenious article itself, without the
elegant dom.ino-box, card-basket, etc., ought alone to
give a high price to the lot. Carried in the pocket it
might make an individual welcome in any society.
Four shiUings, sir? — four shilHngs for this remarkable
collection of riddles with the etceteras. Here is a
sample: "How must you spell honey to make it
catch lady-birds? Answer — money." You hear? —
lady-birds — honey — money. This is an amusement to

MIDDLEMARCH 219

sharpen the intellect; it has a sting — it has what we
call satire, and wit without indecency. Four-and-
sixpence — five shillings.'

The bidding ran on with warming rivalry. Mr
Bowyer was a bidder, and this was too exasperating.
Bowyer couldn't afford it, and only wanted to hinder
every other man from making a figure. The current
carried even Mr Horrock v^ith it, but this committal
of himself to an opinion fell from him \^dth so little
sacrifice of his neutral expression, that the bid might
not have been detected as his but for the friendly
oaths of Ylv Bambridge, who wanted to know what
Horrock would do with blasted stuff only fit for haber-
dashers given over to that state of perdition which
the horse-dealer so cordiality recognised in the majority
of earthly existences. The lot was finally knocked
down at a guinea to Mr Spilkins, a young Slender of
the neighbourhood, who was reckless with his pocket-
money and felt his want of memory for riddles.

'Come, Trumbull, this is too bad — you've been
putting some old maid's rubbish into the sale,' mur-
mured Mr Toller, getting close to the auctioneer.
'I w^ant to see how the prints go, and I must be off
soon,'

'/^mediately, Mr Toller. It was only an act of
benevolence which your noble heart would approve.
Joseph ! quick with the prints — Lot 235. Now,
gentlemen, you who are connoissures, you are going
to have a treat. Here is an engraving of the Duke of
V/eUington surrounded by his staff on the Field of
Waterloo; and notwithstanding recent events which
have, as it were, enveloped our great Hero in a cloud,
I will be bold to sa}^ — for a man in my line must not
be blown about by political winds — that a finer sub-
ject— of the modern order, belonging to our own time
and epoch — the understanding of man could hardly
conceive : angels might, perhaps, but not men, sirs,
not men.'

220 MIDDLEMARCH

'Who painted it ? ' said Mr Powderell,muchimpressed.

'It is a proof before the letter, Mr Powderell — the
painter is not known/ answered Trumbull, with a cer-
tain gaspingness in his last words, after which he
pursed up his lips and stared round him.

TU bid a pound !' said Mr Powderell, in a tone of
resolved emotion, as of a man ready to put himself in
the breach. Whether from awe or pity, nobody raised
the price on him.

Next came two Dutch prints which Mr Toller had
been eager for, and after he had secured them he went
away. Other prints, and afterwards some paintings,
were sold to leading Middlemarchers who had come
with a special desire for them, and there was a more
active movement of the audience in and out; some,
who had bought what they wanted, going away, others
coming in either newly or from a temporary visit to
the refreshments which were spread under the mar-
quee on the lawn. It was this marquee that Mr Bam-
bridge was bent on buying, and he appeared to like
looking inside it frequently, as a foretaste of its pos-
session. On the last occasion of his return from it he
was observed to bring with him a new companion, a
stranger to Mr Trumbull and every one else, whose
appearance, however, led to the supposition that he
might be a relative of the horse-dealer's — also 'given
to indulgence.' His large whiskers, imposing swagger,
and swing of the leg made him a striking figure; but
his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused
the prejudicial inference that he was not able to afford
himself as much indulgence as he liked.

'Who is it you've picked up. Bam?' said Horrock,
aside.

'Ask him yourself,' returned Mr Bambridge. 'He
said he'd just turned in from the road.'

Mr Horrock eyed the stranger, who was leaning back
against his stick v/ith one hand, using his toothpick
with the other, and looking about him with a certain

MIDDLEMARCH 221

restlessness apparently under the silence imposed on
him by circumstances.

At length the Supper at Emmaus was brought
forward, to Will's immense relief, for he was getting
so tired of the proceedings that he had drawn back
a little and leaned his shoulder against the wall just
behind the auctioneer. He now came forward again,
and his eye caught the conspicuous stranger, who,
rather to his surprise, was staring at him markedly.
But Will was immediately appealed to by Mr Trum-
bull.

'Yes, Mr Ladislaw, yes; this interests you as a con-
noissure, I think. It is some pleasure,' the auctioneer
went on with a rising fervour, *to have a picture like
this to show to a company of ladies and gentlemen
— a picture worth any sum to an individual whose
means were on a level with his judgment. It is a
painting of the Italian school — by the celebrated
Guy do, the greatest painter in the world, the chief of
the Old Masters, as they are called — I take it, because
they were up to a thing or two beyond most of us — in
possession of secrets now lost to the bulk of mankind.
Let me tell you, gentlemen, I have seen a great many
pictures by the Old Masters, and they are not all up
to this mark — some of them are darker than you might
like, and not family subjects. But here is a Guydc — the
frame alone is worth pounds — which any lady might
be proud to hang up — a suitable thing for what we
call a refectory in a charitable institution, if any
gentleman of the Corporation wished to show his
munificence. Turn it a little, sir? yes. Joseph, turn
it a little towards Mr Ladislaw — Mr Ladislaw, having
been abroad, understands the merit of these things,
you observe.'

All eyes were for a moment turned towards Will,
who said, coolly, 'Five pounds.' The auctioneer
burst out in deep remonstrance : —

*Ah ! Mr Ladislav/ ! the frame alone is worth that.

222 MIDDLEMARCH

Ladies and gentlemen, for the credit of the town!
Suppose it should be discovered hereafter that a gem of
art has been amongst us in this town and nobody in
Middlemarch aware of it. Five guineas — five seven-
six — ^five ten. Still, ladies, still ! It is a gem, and "Full
many a gem," as the poet says, has been allowed to
go at a nominal price because the public knew no
better, because it was offered in circles where there
was — I was going to say a low feeling, but no ! — Six
pounds — six guineas — a Guydo of the first order going
at six guineas — it is an insult to religion ladies; it
touches us all as Christians, gentlemen, that a subject
like this should go at such a low figure — six pounds

ten — seven '

The bidding was brisk, and Will continued to share
in it, remembering that Mrs Bulstrode had a strong
wish for the picture, and thinking that he might
stretch the price to twelve pounds. But it was knocked
down to him at ten guineas, whereupon he pushed his
way towards the bow- window and went out. He chose
to go under the marquee to get a glass of water, being
hot and thirsty : it was empty of other visitors, and
he asked the woman in attendance to fetch him some
fresh water; but before she was well gone he was
annoyed to see entering the florid stranger who had
stared at him. It struck Will at this moment that the
man might be one of those political parasitic insects of
the bloated kind who had once or twdce claimed
acquaintance with him as having heard him speak
on the Reform question, and who might think of get-
ting a shilling by news. In this light his person,
already rather heating to behold on a summer's day,
appeared the more disagreeable; and Will, half-
seated on the elbow of a garden-chair, turned his eyes
carefully away from the comer. But this signified
little to our acquaintance Mr Raffles, who never
hesitated to thrust himself on unv^dlling observation,
if it suited his purpose to do so. He moved a step or

MIDDLEMARCH 223

two till he was in front of Will, and said with full-
mouthed haste, 'Excuse me, Mr Ladislaw — was your
mothers name Sarah Dunkirk?'

Will, starting to his feet, moved backward a step,
frowning, and saying with some fierceness, 'Yes, sir,
it was. And what is that to you ? '

It was in Will's nature that the first spark it threw out
was a direct answer of the question and a challenge of
the consequences. To have said, 'What is that to you ? '
in the first instance, would have seemed like shuffling
— as if he minded who knew anything about his origin !

Raffles on his side had not the same eagerness for
colhsion which was impUed in Ladislaw' s threatening
air. The slim young fellow with his girl's complexion
looked like a tiger-cat ready to spring on him. Under
such circumstances Mr Raffles' s pleasure in annoying
his company was kept in abeyance.

'No offence, my good sir, no offence ! I only remem-
ber your mother — ^knew her when she was a girl. But
it is your father that you feature, sir. I had the
pleasure of seeing your father too. Parents alive,
Mr Ladislaw?'

'No !' thundered Will, in the sam^e attitude as
before.

'Should be glad to do you a service, Mr Ladislaw —
by Jove, I should ! Hope to meet again.'

Hereupon Raffles, who had lifted his hat with the
last words, turned himself round with a swing of his
leg and walked away. Will looked after him a moment,
and could see that he did not re-enter the auction-room,
but appeared to be walking towards the road. For an
instant he thought that he had been foolish not to let
the man go on talking; — but no ! on the whole he
preferred doing without knowledge from that source.

Later in the evening, however. Raffles overtook him
in the street, and appearing either to have forgotten
the roughness of his former reception or to intend
avenging it by a forgiving familiarity, greeted him

224 MIDDLEMARCH

jovially and walked by his side, remarking at first on
the pleasantness of the town and neighbourhood.
Will suspected that the nam had been drinking and
was considering how to shake him off when Raffles
said : —

'I've been abroad myself, Mr Ladislaw — I've seen
the world — used to parley-vous a little. It was at
Boulogne I saw your father — a most uncommon like-
ness you are of him, by Jove 1 mouth — nose — eyes —
hair turned off your brow just Hke his — a little in the
foreign style. John BuU doesn't do much of that.
But your father was very ill when I saw him. Lord,
lord ! hands you might see through, You were a
small youngster then. Did he get well?'

'No,' said Will, curtly.

'Ah ! Well ! I've often wondered what became of
your mother. She ran away from her friends when
she was a young lass — a proud-spirited lass, and pretty,
by Jove ! / knew the reason why she ran away,' said
Raffles, winking slowly as he looked sideways at WiU.

'You know nothing dishonourable of her, sir,' said
Will, turning on him rather savagely. But Mr Raffles
just now was not sensitive to shades of manner.

'Not a bit !' said he, tossing his head decisively.
'She was a little too honourable to like her friends —
that was it !' Here Raffles again winked slowly.
'Lord bless you, I knew all about 'em — a little in what
you may call the respectable thieving hne — the high
style of receiving-house — none of your holes and
corners — ^first-rate. Slap-up shop, high profits and
no mistake. But Lord I Sarah would have known
nothing about it — a dashing young lady she was —
fine boarding-school — fit for a lord's wdfe — only Archie
Duncan threw it at her out of spite, because she would
have nothing to do with him. And so she ran away
from the whole concern. I travelled for 'em, sir, in
a gentlemanly way — at a high saJary. They didn't
mind her running away at first — godly folks, sir, very

MIDDLEMARCH 225

godly — and she was for the stage. The son was aUve
then, and the daughter was at a discount. Hallo !
here we are at the Blue Bull. \Miat do you say,
Mr Ladislaw ? shall we turn in and have a glass ? '

'No, I must say good- evening,' said Will, dashing
up a passage which led into Lowick Gate, and almost
running to get out of Rafiies's reach.

He walked a long while on the Lowick Road away
from the town, glad of the starlit darkness when it
came. He felt as if he had had dirt cast on him amidst
shouts of scorn. There was this to confirm the fellow's
statement — that his mother never would tell him the
reason why she had run away from her family.

Well ! what was he. Will Ladislaw, the worse, sup-
posing the truth about that family to be the ughest?
His mother had braved hardship in order to separate
herself from it. But if Dorothea's friends had known
this story — if the Chettams had known it — they would
have had a fine colour to give their suspicions, a
welcome ground for thinking him unfit to come near
her. However, let them suspect what they pleased,
they would find themselves in the wrong. They would
find out that the blood in his veins was as free from the
taint of meanness as theirs.

M. (11)

226 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXI

'Inconsistencies,' answered Imlac, 'cannot both be right, but
imputed to man the^^ may both be true.' — Rasselas.

The same night, when Mr Bulstrode returned from a
journey to Brassing on business, his good wife met him
in the entrance-hall and drew him into his private
sitting-room,

'Nicholas,' she said, fixing her honest eyes upon
him anxiously, 'there has been such a disagreeable
man here asking for you — it has made me quite uncom-
fortable.

'WTiat kind of man, my dear,' said Mr Bulstrode,
dreadfully certain of the answer.

*A red-faced man wdth large whiskers, and most
impudent in his manner. He declared he was an old
friend of yours, and said you would be sorry not to
see him. He wanted to wait for you here, but I told
him he could see you at the Bank to-morrow morning.
Most impudent he was ! — stared at me, and said his
friend Nick had luck in wives. I don't believe he
would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened
to break his chain and come running round on the
gravel — for I was in the garden; so I said, "You'd
better go away — the dog is very fierce, and I can't
hold him." Do you really know anything of such a

man

*I believe I know who he is, my dear,' said Mr
Bulstrode, in his usual subdued voice, 'an unfortunate,
dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much in days
gone by. However, I presume you will not be troubled
by him again. He will probably come to the Bank —
to beg, doubtless.'

MIDDLEMARCH 227

No more was said on the subject until the next day,
when Mr Bulstrode had returned from the town and
was dressing for dinner. His wiie, not sure that he
was come home, looked into his dressing-room and
saw him with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm
on a chest of drawers and staring absently at the ground.
He started nervously and looked up as she entered.

'You look very ill, Nicholas. Is there anything
the ma.tter?'

'I have a good deal of pain in my head,' said Mr
Bulstrode, who was so frequently ailing that his wife
was always ready to believe in this cause of depression.

Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar.'

Physically Mr Bulstrode did not want the vinegar,
but morally the affectionate attention soothed him.
Though always polite, it was his habit to receive such
services with marital coolness, as his wife's duty.
But to-day, while she v/as bending over him, he said,
'You are very good, Harriet,' in a tone which had
something new in it to her ear; she did not know
exactly what the novelty was, but her woman's
sohcitude shaped itself into a darting thought that he
might be going to have an illness.

'Has anything worried you?' she said. 'Did that
man come to you at the Bank?'

'Yes; it was as I had supposed. He is a man who
at one time might have done better. But he has sunk
into a drunken debauched creature.'

'Is he quite gone away?' said Mrs Bulstrode,
anxiously; but for certain reasons she refrained from
adding, 'It was very disagreeable to hear him calling
himself a friend of yours.' At that moment she would
not have liked to say anything which imphed her
habitual consciousness that her husband's earher
connections were not quite on a level \\dth her own.
Not that she knew much about them. That her
husband had at first been employed in a bank, that he
had afterwards entered into what he called city

228 MIDDLEMARCH

business and gained a fortune before he was three-and-
thirty, that he had married a widow who was much
older than himself — a Dissenter, and in other w^ays
probably of that disadvantageous quahty usually
perceptible in a first wife if inquired into with the
dispassionate judgment of a second — was almost as
much as she had cared to learn beyond the glimpses
which Mr Bulstrode's naiTative occasionally gave of
his early bent towards religion, his inclination to be
a preacher, and his association with missionary and
philanthropic efforts. She believed in him as an
excellent man whose piety carried a peculiar eminence
in belonging to a layman, whose influence had turned
her own mind towards seriousness, and whose share of
perishable good had been the m.eans of raising her owti
position. But she also liked to think that it was well in
every sense for Mr Bulstrode to have won the hand of
Harriet Vincy; whose family was mideniable in a
Middlemarch light — a better light surely than any
thrown in London thoroughfares or dissenting chapel-
yards. The unreformed provincial mind distrusted
London; and while true rehgion was everywhere
saving, honest IMrs Bulstrode was convinced that to
be saved in the Church was more respectable. She
so much washed to ignore towards others that her
husband had ever been a London Dissenter, that she
liked to keep it out of sight even in talking to him.
He was quite aware of this; indeed in some respects
he was rather afraid of this ingenuous wife, whose
imitative piety and native worldliness were equally
sincere, who had nothing to be ashamed of, and
whom he had married out of a thorough inclination
still subsisting. But his fears were such as belong to
a man who cares to maintain his recognised supremacy :
the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from
every one else who did not clearly hate him out of
enmity to the truth, would be as the beginning of
death to him.. \^^hen she said : —

MIDDLEMARCH 229

'Is he quite gone away?'

'Oh, I trust so,' he answered, with an effort to throw
as much sober unconcern into his tone as possible.

But in truth Mr Bulstrode was very far from a state
of quiet trust. In the interview at the Bank, Raffles
had made it evident that his eagerness to torment was
alm.ost as strong in him as any other greed. He had
franldy said that he had turned out of the way to
come to Middlemarch, just to look about him and see
whether the neighbourhood would suit him to live in.
He had certainly had a few debts to pay more than he
expected, but the tw^o hundred pounds were not gone
yet : a cool five-and-twenty would suffice him to go
away with for the present. What he had wanted
chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and
know all about the prosperity of a man to whom he
was so much attached. By-and-by he might come
back for a longer stay. This time Raffles declined to
be 'seen off the premises,' as he expressed it — declined
to quit Middlemarch under Bulstrode's eyes. He
meant to go by coach the next day — if he chose.

Bulstrode felt himself helpless. Neither threats nor
coaxing could avail : he could not count on any
persistent fear nor on any promise. On the contrary,
he felt a cold certainty at his heart that Raffles —
unless Providence sent death to hinder him — would
come back to Middlemarch before long. And that
certainty was a terror.

It was not that he was in danger of legal punish-
ment or of beggary : he was in danger only of seeing
disclosed to the judgment of his neighbours and the
mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his
past life which would render him an object of scorn
and an opprobrium of the religion with which he had
diligently associated himself. The terror of being
judged sharpens the memory : it sends an inevitable
glare over that long-unvisited past which has been
habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even

230 MIDDLEMARCH

without memory, the Hfe is bound into one by a zone
of dependence in growth and decay; but intense
memory forces a man to own his blameworthy past.
With memory set smarting hke a reopened wound
a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn
preparation of the present : it is not a repented error
shaken loose from the life : it is a still quivering part
of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and
the tinglings of a merited shame.

Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen,
only the pleasures of it seeming to have lost their
quality. Night and day, without interruption save of
brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into
a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life
coming between him and everything else, as obstinately
as when we look through the window from a lighted
room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before
us, instead of the grass and the trees. The successive
events inward and outward were there in one view :
though each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still
kept their hold in the consciousness.

Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk,
Vvdth an agreeable person, as clever in figures as he was
fluent in speech and fond of theological definition : an
eminent though young member of a Calvinistic dis-
senting church at Highbury, having had striking
experience in conviction of sin and sense of pardon.
Again he heard himself called for as Brother Bulstrode
in prayer meetings, speaking on religious platforms,
preaching in private houses. Again he felt himself
thinking of the ministry as possibly his vocation,
and inclined towards missionary labour. That was
the happiest time of his life : that was the spot he
would have chosen now to awr.ke in and find the rest
a dream. The people among whom Brother Bulstrode
was distinguished were very few, but they were very
near to him, and stirred his satisfaction the more;
his power stretched thi'ough a narrow space, but he

MIDDLEMARCH 231

felt its effect the more intensely. He believed without
effort in the peculiar work of grace within him, and in
the signs that God intended him for special instru-
mentality.

Then came the moment of transition; it was with
the sense of promotion he had when he, an orphan
educated at a commercial charity-school, was invited
to a fine villa belonging to Mr Dunkirk, the richest
man in the congregation. Soon he became an intimate
there, honoured for his piety by the wife, marked out
for his ability by the husband, whose wealth was due
to a flourishing city and west-end trade. That was the
setting-in of a new current for his ambition, directing
his prospects of 'instrumentality' tov/ards the uniting of
distinguished religious gifts with successful business.

By-and-by came a decided external leading : a
confidential subordinate partner died, and nobody
seemed to the principal so well fitted to fill the severely-
felt vacancy as his young friend Bulstrode, if he
would become confidential accountant. The offer
was accepted. The business was a pawnbroker's, of
the most magnificent sort both in extent and profits;
and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode became
aware that one source of magnificent profit was the
easy reception of any goods offered, v*dthout strict
inquiry as to where they came from. But there was
a branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or
dinginess to give suggestions of shame.

He remembered his first moments of shrinking.
They were private, and were filled with arguments;
some of these taking the form of prayer. The business
was established and had old roots; is it not one thing
to set up a new gin-palace and another to accept an
investment in an old one? The profits made out of
lost souls — where can the line be drawn at which they
begin in human transactions? Was it not even Cod's
way of saving His chosen? *Thou knowest,' — the
young Bulstrode had said then, as the older Bulstrode

232 MIDDLEMARCH

was saying now — 'Thou knowest how loose my
soul sits from these things — how I view them all
as implements for tilling Thy garden rescued here and
there from the wilderness.'

Metaphors and precedents were not wanting;
peculiar spiritual experiences were not wanting which
at last made the retention of his position seem a
service demanded of him; the vista of a fortune had
already opened itself, and Bulstrode's shrinking
remained private. Mr Dunkirk had never expected
that there would be any shrinking at all : he had
never conceived that trade had anjrthing to do with
the scheme of salvation. And it was true that Bul-
strode found himself carrying on two distinct lives;
his religious activity could not be incompatible with
his business as soon as he had argued himself into not
feeling it incompatible.

Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode
had the same pleas — indeed, the years had been per-
petually spinning them into intricate thickness, like
masses of spider-web, padding the moral sensibility;
nay, as age made egoism more eager but less enjoying,
his soul had become more saturated with the belief
that he did everything for God's sake, being indiffer-
ent to it for his own. And yet — if he could be back
in that far-off spot with his youthful poverty — why,
then he would choose to be a missionary.

But the train of causes in which he had locked him-
self went on. There was trouble in the fine villa at
Highbury. Years before, the only daughter had run
away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage;
and now the only boy died, and after a short time
Mr Dunkirk died also. The wife, a simple pious
woman, left with all the wealth in and out of the
magnificent trade, of which she never knew the pre-
cise nature, had come to believe in Bulstrode, and
innocently adore him as women often adore their
priest or 'man-made' minister . It was natural that

MIDDLEMARCH 233

after a time marriage should have been thought of
between them. But i\Irs Dunkirk had quahns and
3'earnings about her daughter, who had long been
regarded as lost both to God and her parents. It was
known that the daughter had married, but she was
utterly gone out of sight. The mother, having lost
her boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in a double
sense to reclaim her daughter. If she were found,
there would be a channel for property — perhaps a
wide one, in the provision for several grandchildren.
Efforts to find her must be made before Mrs Dunkirk
would marry again. Bulstrode concurred; but after
advertisement as well as other modes of inquiry had
been tried, the mother believed that her daughter was
not to be found, and consented to marry without
reservation of property.

The daughter had been found; but only one man
besides Bulstrode knew it, and he was paid for keep-
ing silence and carrying himself away.

That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now
forced to see in the rigid outline with which acts present
themselves to onlookers. But for himself at that
distant time, and even now in burning memory, the
fact was broken into little sequences, each justified as
it came by reasonings which seemed to prove it
righteous. Bulstrode' s course up to that time had, he
thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences,
appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in
making the best use of a large property and \rithdraw-
ing it from, perversion. Death and other striking
dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness, had come;
and Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's words
— 'Do you call these bare events ? The Lord pity you !'
The events were comparatively small, but the essential
condition was there — namety, that they were in
favour of his o^^^l ends. It was easy for him to settle
what was due from, him to others by inquiring what
were God's intentions with regard to himself. Could

234 MIDDLEMARCH

it be for God's service that this fortune should in any
considerable proportion go to a young woman and her
husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits,
and might scatter it abroad in triviality — people who
seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable provi-
dences? Bulstrode had never said to himself before-
hand, 'The daughter shall not be found' — neverthe-
less when the moment came he kept her existence
hidden; and when other moments followed, he soothed
the mother with consolation in the probability that
the unhappy young woman might be no more.

There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his
action was unrighteous; but how could he go back?
He had mental exercises, called himself naught, laid
hold on redemption, and went on in his course of
instromentality. And after five years Death again
came to widen his path, by taking away his wife.
He did gradually withdraw his capital, but he did not
make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the
business, which was carried on for thirteen years
afterwards before it finally collapsed. Meanwhile
Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred thousand
discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly
important — a banker, a Churchman, a public bene-
factor; also a sleeping partner in trading concerns,
in which his ability was directed to economy in the
raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted
Mr Vincy's silk. And now, when this respectability
had lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty years — when
all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the
consciousness — that past had risen and immersed
his thoughts as if with the terrible irruption of a new
sense overburdening the feeble being.

Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had
learned something momentous, something which
entered actively into the struggle of his longings and
terrors. There, he thought, lay an opening towards
spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.

MIDDLEMARCH 235

The spiritual kind of rescue v/as a genuine need with
him. There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciousl}^
effect behefs and emotions for the sake of gulhng the
world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was
simph^ a man whose desires had been stronger than his
theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the
gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement
with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process
which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever
confession we belong, and whether we believe in the
future perfection of our race or in the nearest date
fixed for the end of the world; whether we regard the
earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant,
including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the
soHdarity of mankind.

The service he could do to the cause of rehgion had
been through hfe the ground he alleged to himself for
his choice of action : it had been the motive which
he had poured out in his prayers. Who would use
money and position better than he meant to use them ?
WTio could surpass him in self-abhorrence and exalta-
tion of God's cause? And to Mr Bulstrode God's
cause was something distinct from his own rectitude
of conduct : it enforced a discrimination of God's
enemies, who were to be used merely as instruments,
and whom it would be as well if possible to keep out
of money and consequent influence. Also, profitable
investments in trades where the power of the prince
of this world showed its most active devices, became
sanctified by a right application of the profits in the
hands of God's servant.

This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar
to evangelical belief than the use of wide phrases for
narrow motives is peculiar to Enghshmen. There is
no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out
our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit
of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

But a man who believes in something else than his

236 MIDDLEMARCH

own greed, has necessarily a conscience or standard to
which he more or less adapts himself. Bulstrode's
standard had been his serviceableness to God's cause :
*I am sinful and naught — a vessel to be consecrated
by use — but use me !' — had been the mould into which
he had constrained his immense need of being some-
thing important and predominating. And now had
come a moment in which that mould seemed in danger
of being broken and utterly cast away.

What, if the acts he had reconciled himself to
because they made him a stronger instrumicnt of the
divine glory, were to become the pretext of the scoffer,
and a darkening of that glory ? If this were to be the
ruling of Providence, he was cast out from the temple
as one who had brought unclean offerings.

He had long poured out utterances of repentance.
But to-day a repentance had come which was of a
bitterer flavour, and a threatening Providence urged
him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply
a doctrinal transaction. The divine tribunal had
changed its aspect for him; self-prostration was no
longer enough, and he must bring restitution in his
hand. It was really before his God that Bulstrode was
about to attempt such restitution as seemed possible :
a great dread had seized his susceptible frame, and the
scorching approach of shame wrought in him a new
spiritual need. Night and day, vvhile the resurgent
threatening past was making a conscience wdthin him,
he was thinking by what means he could recover peace
and trust — by what sacrifice he could stay the rod.
His belief in these moments of dread was, that if he
spontaneously did something right, God would save
him from the consequences of wrong-doing. For
religion can only change when the emotions which fill
it are changed; and the religion of personal fear
remains nearly at the level of the savage.

He had seen Raffles actually going away on the
Brassing coach, and this was a temporary relief; it

MIDDLEMARCH 237

removed the pressure of an immediate dread, but did
not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to
win protection. At last he came to a difficult resolve,
and wrote a letter to Will Ladislaw, begging him to
be at the Shrubs that evening for a private interview
at nine o'clock. Will had felt no particular surprise
at the request, and connected it with some new notions
about the Pioneer; but when he was shown into Mr
Bulstrode's private room, he was struck with the
painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was
going to say, 'Are you ill?' when, checking himself in
that abruptness, he only inquired after Mrs Bulstrode,
and her satisfaction with the picture bought for her.

'Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone
out with her daughters this evening. I begged you to
come, Mr Ladislaw, because I have a communication
of a very private — indeed, I will say, of a sacredly
confidential nature, which I desire to make to you.
Nothing, I dare say has, been further from your
thoughts than that there had been important ties in
the past which could connect your history with mine.'

Will felt something like an electric shock. He was
already in a state of keen sensitiveness and hardly
allayed agitation on the subject of ties in the past, and
his presentiments were not agreeable. It seemed hke
the fluctuations of a dream — as if the action begun by
that loud bloated stranger were being carried on by
this pale-eyed sickly-looking piece of respectabiHty,
whose subdued tone and glib formality of speech
were at this moment almost as repulsive to him as
their remem.bered contrast. He answered, with a
marked change of colour, —

'No, indeed, nothing.'

'You see before you, Mr Ladislaw, a man who is
deeply stricken. But for the urgency of conscience
and the knowledge that I am before the bar of One
who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under no
compulsion to make the disclosure which has been my

238 MIDDLEMARCH

object in asking j^ou to come here to-night. So far
as human laws go, you have no claim on me whatever/

Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering.
Mr Bulstrode had paused, leaning his head on his
hand, and looking at the floor. But he now fixed his
examining glance on Will and said, —

'I am told that your mother's name was Sarah
Dunkirk, and that she ran away from her friends to
go on the stage. Also, that your father was at one
time much emaciated by illness. May I ask if you
can confirm these statements?'

'Yes, they are all true,' said Will, struck with the order
in which an inquir^^ had come, that might have been
expected to be preliminary to the banker's previous
hints. But Mr Bulstrode had to-night followed the
order of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that
the opportunity for restitution had come, and he had
an overpowering impulse towards the penitential
expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.

'Do you know any particulars of your mother's
family ? he continued.

'No; she never liked to speak of them. She was a
very generous, honourable woman,' said Will, almost
angrily.

'I do not wish to allege anything against her. Did
she never mention her mother to you at all?'

'I have heard her say that she thought her mother
did not know the reason of her running away. She
said "poor mother" in a pitying tone.'

'That mother became my wife,' said Bulstrode, and
then paused a moment before he added, 'you
have a claim on me, Mr Ladislaw : as I said before,
not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recog-
nises. I was enriched by that marriage — a result
which would probably not have taken place — certainly
not to the same extent — if your grandmother could
have discovered her daughter. That daughter, I
gather, is no longer living V

MIDDLEMARCH 239

,No/ said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance
rising so strongly within him, that without quite
I'uiowing what he did, he took his hat from the floor
and stood up. The impulse within him was to reject
the disclosed connection.

'Pray be seated, Mr Ladislaw,' said Bulstrode,
anxiously. 'Doubtless you are startled by the sud-
denness of this discovery. But I entreat your patience
with one who is already bowed down by inward trial.'

Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was
half contempt for this voluntary self-abasement of an
elderly man.

*It is my wish, Mr Ladislaw, to make amends for the
deprivation which befell your m.other. I know that
you are without fortune, and I wish to supply you
adequately from a store which would have probably
already been yours had your grandmother been
certain of your mother's existence and been able to
find her.'

Mr Bulstrode paused. He felt that he was perform-
ing a striking piece of scrupulosity in the judgment of
his auditor, and a penitential act in the e3^es of God.
He had no clue to the state of Will Ladislaw' s mind,
smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles, and
with its natural quickness in construction stimulated
by the expectation of discoveries which he would have
been glad to conjure back into darkness. Will made no
answer for several moments, till Mr Bulstrode, who at
the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor,
now raised them with an examining glance, which
Will met fully, saying, —

*I suppose you did know of my mother's existence,
and knew where she might have been found.'

Bulstrode shrank — there was a visible quivering in
his face and hands. He was totally unprepared to
have his advances met in this way, or to find himself
urged into more revelation than he had beforehand
set down as needful. But at that moment he dared not

240 MIDDLEMARCH

tell a lie, and he felt suddenly iincertain of his ground
which he had trodden vvith some confidence before.

'I will not deny that you conjecture rightly/ he
answered, with a faltering in his tone. 'And I wish
to make atonement to you as the one still remaining
who has suffered a loss through me. You enter, I
trust, into my purpose, Mr Ladislaw, which has a
reference to higher than merely human claims, and as
I have already said, is entirely independent of any
legal compulsion. I am ready to narrow my own
resources and the prospects of my famuly by binding
myself to allow you five hundred pounds yearly
during my hfe, and to leave you a proportional capital
at my death — nay, to do still more, if more should
be definitely necessary to an}^ laudable project on your
part.' Mr Bulstrode had gone on to particulars in the
expectation that these would work strongly on Ladis-
law, and merge other feelings in grateful acceptance.

But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with
his lip pouting and his fingers in his side-pockets.
He was not in the least touched, and said firmly : —

'Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr
Bulstrode, I must beg you to answer a question or
two. Were you connected with the business by which
that fortune you speak of was originally made?'

Mr Bulstrode's thought was, 'Raffles has told him.'
How could he refuse to answer when he had volunteered
what drew forth the question? He answered, 'Yes.'

'And was that business — or was it not — a thoroughly
dishonourable one — nay, one that, if its nature had been
made pubHc, might have ranked those concerned in it
with thieves and convicts?'

Will's tone had a cutting bitterness : he was moved
to put his question as nakedly as he could.

Bulstrode reddened wdth irrepressible anger. He
had been prepared for a scene of self-abasement, but
his intense pride and his habit of supremiacy over-
pov/ered penitence, and even dread, when this young

MIDDLEMARCH 241

man, whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him
with the air of a judge.

'The business was estabHshed before I became con-
nected with it, sir; nor is it for you to institute an
inquiry of that kind,' he answered, not raising his
voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.

*Yes it is,' said Will, starting up again with his hat
in his hand. *It is eminently mine to ask such ques-
tions, when I have to decide whether I will have
transactions with you and accept your money. My
unblemished honour is important to me. It is impor-
tant to me to have no stain on my birth and connections.
And now I find there is a stain which I can't help.
My mother felt it, and tried to keep as clear of it as
she could, and so vAll I. You shall keep your ill-
gotten money. If I had any fortune of my own, I
would willingly pay it to any one who could disprove
what you have told me. What I have to thank you
for is that you kept the money till now, when I can
refuse it. It ought to He with a man's self that he
is a gentleman. Good-night, sir.'

Bulstrode was going to speak, but Will with deter-
mined quickness was out of the room in an instant,
and in another the hall-door had closed behind him.
He was too strongly possessed with passionate rebellion
against this inherited blot which had been thrust on
his knowledge to reflect at present whether he had not
been too hard on Bulstrode — too arrogantly merciless
towards a man of sixty, who was making efforts at
retrieval when time had rendered them vain.

No third person listening could have thoroughly
understood the impetuosity of Will's repulse or the
bitterness of his words. No one but himself then knew
how everything connected with the sentimxcnt of his
own dignity had an immediate bearing for him on his
relation to Dorothea and to Mr Casaubon's treatment
of him. And in the rush of impulses by which he
flung back that offer of Bulstrode' s, there was mingled

242 MIDDLEMARCH

the sense that it would have been impossible for him
ever to tell Dorothea that he had accepted it.

As for Bulstrode — when Will was gone he suffered
a violent reaction, and wept like a woman. It was the
first time he had encountered an open expression of
scorn from any man higher than Raffles; and with
that scorn hurrying like venom through his system,
there was no sensibihty left to consolations. But the
relief of weeping had to be checked. His wife and
daughters soon came hom.e from hearing the address
of an Oriental missionary, and were full of regret
that papa had not heard, in the first instance, the
interesting things which they tried to repeat to him.

Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one
that breathed most comfort was, that Will Ladislaw
at least was not likely to publish what had taken
place that evening.

MIDDLEMARCH 243

CHAPTER LXII

He was a squyer of lowe degre,

That loved the king's daughter of Hungrie.

Old Romance.

Will Ladi slaw's mind was now wholly bent on
seeing Dorothea again, and forthwith quitting Middle-
march. The morning after his agitating scene with
Bulstrode he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that
various causes had detained him in the neighbourhood
longer than he had expected, and asking her per-
mission to call again at Lowick at some hour which
she would mention on the earliest possible day, he
being anxious to depart, but unwilling to do so until
she had granted liim an interview. He left the letter
at the office, ordering the messenger to carry it to
Lowick Manor, and wait for an answer.

Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more
last words. His former farewell had been made in
the hearing of Sir James Chettam, and had been
announced as final even to the butler. It is certainly
trying to a man's dignity to reappear when he is not
expected to do so : a first farewell has pathos in it,
but to come back for a second lends an opening to
comedy, and it was possible even that there might be
bitter sneers afloat about Will's motives for lingering.
Still it was on the whole more satisfactory to his feeling
to take the directest means of seeing Dorothea, than
to use any device which might give an air of chance to
a meeting of which he wished her to understand that
it was what he earnestly sought. When he had parted
from her before, he had been in ignorance of facts
which gave a new aspect to the relation between them,
and made a more absolute severance than he had then

244 MIDDLEMARCH

believed in. He knew nothing of Dorothea's private
fortune, and being Httle used to reflect on such matters,
took it for granted that according to Mr Casaubon's
arrangement marriage to him, Will Ladislaw, would
mean that she consented to be penniless. That was
not what he could wish for even in his secret heart,
or even if she had been ready to meet such hard
contrast for his sake. And then, too, there was the
fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother's
family, which if known would be an added reason
why Dorothea's friends should look down upon him
as utterly below her. The secret hope that after some
years he might come back with the sense that he had
at least a personal value equal to her wealth, seemed
now the dreamy continuation of a dream. This change
would surely justify him. in asking Dorothea to receive
him once more.

But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to
receive Will's note. In consequence of a letter from
her uncle announcing his intention to be at home in
a week, she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the
news, meaning to go on to the Grange to deliver some
orders with which her uncle had entrusted her — think-
ing, as he said, 'a little mental occupation of this sort
good for a widow.'

If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the
talk at Freshitt that morning, he would have felt aU
his suppositions confirmed as to the readiness of
certain people to sneer at his lingering in the neigh-
bourhood. Sir James, indeed, though much reheved
concerning Dorothea, had been on the watch to learn
Ladislaw' s m.ovements, and had an instructed infor-
mant in Mr Standish, who was necessarily in his
confidence on this matter. That Ladislaw had stayed
in Middlemarch nearly two months after he had
declared that he was going immediately, was a fact
to embitter Sir James's suspicions, or at least to justify
his aversion to a 'young fellow' whom he represented

MIDDLEMARCH 245

to himself as slight, volatile, and likely enough to show
such recklessness as naturally went along with a
position unriveted by family ties or a strict profession.
But he had just heard something from Standish which,
while it justified these surmises about Will, offered
a means of nullifying all danger with regard to
Dorothea.

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather
unlike ourselves : there are conditions under which
the most majestic person is obhged to sneeze, and our
emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incon-
gruous manner. Good Sir James was this morning so
far unlike himself that he was irritably anxious to say
something to Dorothea on a subject which he usually
avoided as if it had been a matter of shame to them
both. He could not use Celia as a medium, because
he did not choose that she should know the kind of
gossip he had in his mind; and before Dorothea hap-
pened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how,
with his shyness and unready tongue, he could ever
manage to introduce his communication. Her unex-
pected presence brought him to utter hopelessness
in his owTi power of saying anything unpleasant;
but desperation suggested a resource; he sent the
groom on an unsaddled horse across the park with a
pencilled note to Mrs Cadwallader, who already knew
the gossip, and would think it no compromise of her-
self to repeat it as often as required.

Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that
Mr Garth, \^hom she wanted to see, was expected at
the hall within the hour, and she was still talking to
Caleb on the gravel when Sir James, on the watch
for the rector's wife, saw her coming and met her with
the needful hints.

'Enough! I understand,' said Mrs Cadwallader.
'You shall be innocent. I am such a blackamoor that
I cannot smirch myself.'

*I don't mean that it's of any consequence,' said

246 MIDDLEMARCH

Sir James, disliking that Mrs Cadwallader should
understand too much. 'Only it is desirable that
Dorothea should know there are reasons why she
should not receive him again; and I really can't say
so to her. It will come Hghtly from you/

It came very lightly indeed. When Dorothea
quitted Caleb and turned to meet them, it appeared
that Mrs CadwaUader had stepped across the park by
the merest chance in the world, just to chat with
Celia in a matronly way about the baby. And so
Mr Brooke was coming back? Delightful ! — coming
back, it was to be hoped, quite cured of Parliamentary
fever and pioneering. A propos of the Pioneer —
somebody had prophesied that it would soon be like
a dying dolphin, and turn all colours for want of
kno Viang how to help itself, because Mr Brooke's
prot^g^, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or going.
Had Sir James heard that?

The three were walking along the gravel slowly,
and Sir James, turning aside to whip a shrub, said he
had heard something of that sort.

*AU false !' said Mrs Cadwallader. *He is not gone,
or going, apparently; the Pioneer keeps its colour, and
Mr Orlando Ladislaw is making a sad dark-blue
scandal by warbling continually with your Mr Lyd-
gate's wife, who they tell me is as pretty as pretty can
be. It seems nobody ever goes into the house without
finding this young gentleman lying on the rug or
warbling at the piano. But the people in manufac-
turing towns are always disreputable.'

'You began by saying that one report was false,
Mrs Cadwallader, and I beheve this is false too,' said
Dorothea, with indignant energy; 'at least, I feel it is
a misrepresentation. I will not hear any evil spoken
of Mr Ladisaw ; he has already suffered too much
injustice.'

Dorothea when thoroughly moved cared little what
any one thought of her feelings; and even if she had

M. (II.) raot 246.

* I will not heap any evil spoken of Mr Ladislaw.'

! MIDDLEMARCH 247.

)een able to reflect, she would have held it petty to
:eep silence at injurious words about Will from fear of
)eing herself misunderstood. Her face was flushed
md her hp trembled.

Sir James, glancing at her, repented of his strata-
^^em; but Mrs Cadwallader, equal to all occasions,
spread the palms of her hands outward and said,
' Heaven grant it, my dear ! — I mean that all bad
tales about anybody may be false. But it is a pity
that young Lydgate should have married one of these
'Middlemarch girls. Considering he's a son of some-
body, he might have got a woman with good blood in her
veins, and not too young, who would have put up with
his profession. There's Clara Harfager, for instance,
whose friends don't know what to do with her; and
she has a portion. Then we might have had her
among us. However ! — it's no use being wise for
other people. Where is Ceha? Pray let us go in.'

T am going on immediately to Tipton,' said Doro-
thea, rather haughtily. 'Good-bye.'

Sir James could say nothing as he accompanied her
to the carriage. He was altogether discontented with
the result of a contrivance which had cost him some
secret humiliation beforehand.

Dorothea drove along between the berried hedge-
rows and the shorn corn-fields, not seeing or hearing
anything around. The tears came and rolled down
her cheeks, but she did not know it. The world, it
seemed, was turning ugly and hateful, and there was
no place for her trustfulness. 'It is not true— it is not
true !' was the voice within her that she listened to; but
all the while a remembrance to which there had always
clung a vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her
attention — the remembrance of that day when she had
found Will Ladislaw with Mrs Lydgate, and had heard
his voice accompanied by the piano.

'He said he would never do anything that I
disaoproved— I wish I could have told him that 1

248 MIDDLEMARCH

disapproved of that/ said poor Dorothea, inwardh
feeling a strange alternation between anger with Wil
and the passionate defence of him. 'They all try t(
blacken him before me; but I will care for no painj
if he is not to blame. I always believed he was good/ — *
These were her last thoughts before she felt that the
carriage was passing under the archway of the lodge-l
gate at the Grange, when she hurriedly pressed herr
handkerchief to her face and began to think of her*
errands. The coachman begged leave to take out
the horses for half an hour as there was something
wrong with a shoe; and Dorothea, having the sense
that she was going to rest, took off her gloves and
bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the
entrance-hall, and talking to the housekeeper. At
last she said ? —

*I must stay here a little, Mrs Kell. I will go into
the library and write you some mem^oranda from my
uncle's letter, if you will open the shutters for me/

'The shutters are open, madam,' said Mrs Kell,
following Dorothea, who had walked along as she
spoke. 'Mr Ladislaw is there, looking for som.ething/

(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his ov,ti sketches
which he had missed in the act of packing his movables,
and did not choose to leave behind.)

Dorothea's heart seemed to turn over as if it had
had a blow, but she was not perceptibly checked : in
truth, the sense that Will was there was for the moment
all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something
precious that one has lost. When she reached the door
she said to Mrs Kell : —

'Go in first, and tell him. that I am here.'

Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the
table at the far end of the room, to turn over the
sketches and please himself by looking at the memor-
able piece of art which had a relation to nature too
mysterious for Dorothea. He was smiling at it still,
and shaking the sketches into order with the thought

MIDDLEMARCH 249

that lie might find a letter from her awaiting him at
]\Iiddlemarch, when Mrs Kell close to his elbow said : —

'Mrs Casaubon is coming in, sir.'

Will turned round quickly, and the next moment
Dorothea was entering. As Mrs Kell closed the door
behind her they met : each was looking at the other,
and consciousness was overflowed by something that
suppressed utterance. It was not confusion that kept
them silent, for they both felt that parting was near,
and there is no shamefacedness in a sad parting.

She moved automatically towards her uncle's chair
against the writing-table, and Will, after drawing it
out a little for her, went a few paces off and stood
opposite to her.

'Pray sit down,' said Dorothea, crossing her hands
on her lap; 'I am very glad you were here.' Will
thought that her face looked just as it did when she
first shook hands with him in Rome; for her widow's
cap, fixed in her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he
could see that she had lately been shedding tears.
But the mixture of anger in her agitation had vanished
at the sight of him; she had been used, when they
were face to face, always to feel confidence and the
happy freedom which comes with mutual understand-
ing, and hov/ could other people's words hinder that
effect on a sudden? Let the music which can take
possession of our frame and fill the air with joy for us,
sound once more — what does it signify that we heard
it found fault with in its absence?

'I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor to-day, asking
leave to see you,' said Will, seating himself opposite
to her. 'I am going away immediately, and I could
not go without speaking to you again.'

*I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick
many weeks ago — you thought you were going then/
said Dorothea, her voice trembling a little.

'Yes; but I was in ignorance then of things which
I know now — things which have altered my feelings

250 MIDDLEMARCH

about the future. When I saw you before, 1 was
dreaming that I might come back some day. I don't
think I ever shall — now.' Will paused here.

'You wished me to know the reasons?' said Doro-
thea, timidly.

'Yes,' said Will, impetuously, shaking his head
backward, and looking away from her with irritation
in his face. *0f course I must wish it. I have been
grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others.
There has been a mean implication against my char-
acter. I wish you to know that under no circum-
stances would I have lowered myself by — under no
circumstances would I have given men the chance of
saying that I sought money under the pretext of
seeking — something else. There was no need of other
safeguard against me — the safeguard of wealth was
enough.'

W3l rose from his chair with the last word and
went — he hardly knew where; but it was to the
projecting windov/ nearest him, which had been open
as now about the same season a year ago, when he and
Dorothea had stood ^vithin it and talked together.
Her whose heart was going out at this moment in
sympathy with Will's indignation : she only wanted
to convince him that she had never done him injustice,
and he seemed to have turned away from her as if
she too had been part of the unfriendly world.

*It would be very unkind of you to suppose that
I ever attributed any meanness to you,' she began.
Then in her ardent way, wanting to plead with him,
she moved from her chair and went in front of him
to her old place in the window, saying, *Do you
suppose that I ever disbeheved in you?'

When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved
backv/ard out of the window, without meeting her
glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement follow-
ing up the previous anger of his tone. She was ready
to say that it was as hard on her as on him, and that

MIDDLEMARCH 251

she was helpless; but those strange particulars of their
relation which neither of them could explicitly men-
tion kept her always in dread of saying too much. At
this moment she had no behef that Will would in any
case have wanted to marry her, and she feared using
words which might imply such a belief. She only
said earnestly, recurring to his last word — ,

*I am sure no safeguard v/as ever needed against
you.'

Will did not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of
his feelings these words of hers seemed to him cruelly
neutral, and he looked pale and miserable after his
angry outburst. He went to the table and fastened
up his portfolio, while Dorothea looked at him from
the distance. They were wasting these last moments
together in wretched silence. What could he say,
since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind
was the passionate love for her which he forbade him-
self to utter? What could she say, since she might
offer him no help — since she was forced to keep the
money that ought to have been his? — since to-day he
seemed not to respond as he used to do to her thorough
trust and liking?

But Will at last turned away from his portfolio
and approached the v»'indow again.

'I must go,' he said, with that peculiar look of the
eyes which sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if
they had been tired and burned \^dth gazing too close
at a light.

'What shall you do in Hfe?' said Dorothea, timidly.
'Have your intentions remained just the same as
Vv'hen we said good-bye before?'

'Yes,' said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the
subject as uninteresting. 'I shall work away at the
first thing that offers. I suppose one gets a "habit of
doing without happiness or hope.'

'Oh, what sad" words !' said Dorothea, with a
dangerous tendency to sob. Then trying to smile, she

252 MIDDLEMARCH

added, 'We used to agree that we were alike in speak-
ing too strongly.'

'I have not spoken too strongly now/ said Will,
leaning back against the angle of the wall. 'There
are certain things which a man can only go through
once in his life; and he must know some time or other
that the best is over with him. This experience has
happened to me v/hile I am very young — that is all.
What I care more for than I can ever care for anything
else is absolutely forbidden to me — I don't mean
merely by being out of my reach, but forbidden me,
even if it were within my reach, by my own pride
and honour — by everything I respect myself for. Of
course I shall go on living as a man might do who had
seen heaven in a trance.'

Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible
for Dorothea to misunderstand this; indeed he felt
that he was contradicting himself and offending
against his self-approval in speaking to her so plainly;
but still — it could not be fairly called wooing a woman
to tell her that he would never woo her. It must be
admitted to be a ghostly kind of wooing.

But Dorothea's mind was rapidly going over the
past with quite another vision than his. The thought
that she herself might be what Will most cared for
did throb through her an instant, but then came
doubt : the memory of the little they had lived through
together turned pale and shrank before the m.emory
which suggested how much fuller might have been
the intercourse between Will and some one else with
whom he had had constant companionship. Every-
thing he had said might refer to that other relation,
and v.hatever had passed between him and herself
was thoroughly explained by what she had always
regarded as their simple friendship and the cruel
obstniction thrust upon it by her husband's injurious
act. Dorothea stood silent, %\dth her eyes cast down
dreamily, while images crowded upon her which left

MIDDLEMARCH 253

the sickening certainty that Will was referring to
Mrs Lydgate. But why sickening? He wanted her to
know that here too his conduct should be above
suspicion.

Will was not surprised at her silence. His mind also
was tumultuously busy while he watched her, and he was
feeUng rather wildly that something must happen to
hinder their parting — some miracle, clearly nothing in
their own deliberate speech. Yet, after all, had she
any love for him? — he could not pretend to himself
that he would rather believe her to be without that
pain. He could not deny that a secret longing for the
assurance that she loved him v/as at the root of all
his words.

Neither of them knew how long they stood in that
way. Dorothea was raising her eyes, and was about
to speak, when the door opened and her footman
came to say ? —

'The horses are ready, madam, whenever you Hke
to start.'

'Presently,' said Dorothea. Then turning to Will
she said, *I have some memoranda to write for the
housekeeper.'

*I must go,' said Will, when the door had closed
again — advancing towards her. 'The day after to-
morrow I shall leave Middlemarch.'

'You have acted in every way rightly,' said Doro-
thea, in a low tone, feehng a pressure at her heart
which made it difficult to speak.

She put out her hand, and Will took it for an instant
without speaking, for her words had seemed to him
cruelly cold and unlike herself. Their eyes met, but
there was discontent in his, and in hers there was only
sadness. He turned away and took his portfolio under
his arm.

'I have never done you injustice. Please remember
me,' said Dorothea, repressing a rising sob.

'Why should you say that?' said Will, with

254 MIDDLEMARCH

irritation. 'As if I were not in danger ot forgetting
everything else.'

He had really a movement of anger against her at
that moment, and it impelled him to go away without
pause. It was all one flash to Dorothea — his last
words — his distant bow to her as he reached the
door — the sense that he was no longer there. She
sank into the chair, and for a few moments sat like
a statue, while images and emotions were hurrying
upon her. Joy came first, in spite of the threatening
train behind it — joy in the impression that it was
really herself whom Will loved and was renounc>:ng,
that there was really no other love less permissible,
more blameworthy, which honour was hurrying him
away from. They were parted all the same, but —
Dorothea drev/ a deep breath and felt her strength
return — she could think of him unrestrainedly. At
that moment the parting was easy to bear : the first
sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow. It
was as if some hard icy pressure had melted, and her
consciousness had room to expand : her past was
come back to her with larger interpretation. The joy
was not the less — perhaps it was the more complete
just then— because of the irrevocable parting; for
there was no reproach, no contemptuous wonder to
imagine in any eye or from any lips. He had acted
so as to defy reproach, and make wonder respectful.

Any one watching her might have seen that there
v^as a fortifying thought within her. Just as when
inventive power is working wdth glad ease some small
claim on the attention is fully met as if it were only
a cranny opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for
Dorothea to write her memoranda. She spoke her
last words to the housekeeper in cheerful tones, and
when she seated herself in the carriage her eyes were
bright and her cheeks blooming under the dismal
bonnet. She threw back the heavy 'weepers,' and
looked before her, wondering which road Will had

MIDDLEMARCH 255

taken. It was in her nature to be proud that he was
blameless, and through all her feelings there ran this
vein — 'I was right to defend him.'

The coachman was used to drive his grays at a good
pace, Mr Casaubon being unenjoying and impatient in
everything a\\'ay from his desk, and wanting to get
to the end of all journeys; and Dorothea was now
bowled along quickly. Driving was pleasant, for rain
in the night had laid the dust, and the blue sky looked
far off, away from the region of the great clouds that
sailed in masses. The earth looked like a happy place
under the vast heavens, and Dorothea was wishing
that she might overtake Will and see him once more.

After a turn of the road, there he was with the
portfoho under his arm; but the next moment she was
passing him while he raised his hat, and she felt a
pang at being seated there in a sort of exaltation,
leaving him behind. She could not look back at him.
It was as if a crowd of indifferent objects had thrust
them asunder, and forced them along different paths,
taking them farther and farther away from each other,
and making it useless to look back. She could no more
make any sign that would seem to say, 'Need we
part?' than she could stop the carriage to wait for
him. Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon her
against any movement of her thought towards a
future that might reverse the decision of this day !

*I only v%dsh I had known before — I wish he knew
— then we could be quite happy in thinking of each
other, though we are for ever parted. And if I could
but have given him the money, and made things easier
for him !' — were the longings that came back the most
persistently. And yet, so heavily did the world weigh
on her in spite of her independent energy, that with
this idea of Will as in need of such help and at a
disadvantage with the world, there came always the
vision of that unfittingness of any closer relationbetween
them which lay in the opinion of every one connected

256 MIDDLEMARCH

with her. She felt to the full all the imperativeness of
the motives which urged Will's conduct. How could
he dream of her defying the barrier that her husband
had placed between them? — how could she ever say
to herself that she would defy it?

Will's certainty, as the carriage grew smaller in the
distance, had much more bitterness in it. Very sHght
matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood,
and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he
felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking
a position in a world which in his present temper
offered him little that he coveted, made his conduct
seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the
sustainm-ent of resolve. After all, he had no assurance
that she loved him : could any man pretend that he
was simply glad in such a case to have the s-uffering
all on his own side?

That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the
next evening he was gone.

MIDDLEMARCH 257

BOOK VII.— TWO TEMPTATIONS
CHAPTER LXIII

These little things are great to httle man. — Goldsmith.

'Have you seen much of your scientific phoenix,
Lydgate, lately?' said Mr Toller at one of his Christ-
mas dinner-parties, speaking to Mr Farebrother on
his right hand.

'Not much, I am sorry to say,' answered the Vicar,
accustom.ed to parry Mr Toller's banter about his
behef in the new medical light. *I am out of the way,
and he is too busy.'

'Is he? I am glad to hear it,' said Dr Minchin, with
mingled suavity and surprise.

'He gives a great deal of time to the New Hospital,'
said Mr Farebrother, who had his reasons for con-
tinuing the subject : 'I hear of that from my neigh-
bour, Mrs Casaubon, who goes there often. She says
Lydgate is indefatigable, and is making a fine thing of
Bulstrode's institution. He is preparing a new ward
in case of the cholera coming to us.'

'And preparing theories of treatment to try on the
patients, I suppose,' said Mr Toller.

'Come, Toller, be candid,' said Mr Farebrother.
*You are too clever not to see the good of a bold fresh
mind in medicine, as well as in everything else; and
as to cholera, I fancy, none of you are very sure what
you ought to do. If a man goes a little too far along
a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more
than any one else.'

'I am sure you and Wrench ought to be obliged to
him,' said Dr Minchin, looking towards Toller, 'for he
has sent you the cream of Peacock's patients.*

'Lvdppte has been living at a great rate for a young
M (11) X

258 MIDDLEMARCH

beginner/ said Mr Harry Toller, the brewer. *I sup-
pose his relations in the North back him up.'

'I hope so/ said Mr Chichely/ else he ought not to
have married that nice girl we were all so fond of.
Hang it, one has a grudge against a man who carries
off the prettiest girl in the town.'

'Ay, by God ! and the best too,' said Mr Standish.

*My friend Vincy didn't half like the marriage, I
know that,' said Mr Chichely. 'He wouldn't do much.
How the relations on the other side may have come
down I can't say.' There was an emphatic kind of
reticence in Mr Chichely's manner of speaking.

'Oh, I shouldn't think Lydgate ever looked to
practice for a living,' said Mr Toller, vidth a slight
touch of sarcasm; and there the subject was dropped.

This was not the first time that Mr Farebrother had
heard hints of Lydgate' s expenses being obviously
too great to be met by his practice, but he thought it
not unlikely that there were resources or expectations
which excused the large outlay at the time of Lydgate' s
marriage, and which might hinder any bad conse-
quences from the disappointment in his practice.
One evening, when he took the pains to go to Middle-
march on purpose to have a chat with Lydgate as of
old, he noticed in him an air of excited effort quite
unlike his usual easy way of keeping silence or break-
ing it with abrupt energy whenever he had anything to
say. Lydgate talked persistently when they were in his
workroom, putting arguments for and against the
probability of certain biological views; but he had
none of those definite things to say or to show which
give the way-marks of a patient uninterrupted pur-
suit, such as he used himself to insist on, saying that
'there must be a systole and diastole in ail inquiry,-
and that 'a man's mind must be continually expand-
ing and shrinking between the whole human horizon
and the horizon of an object-glass.' That evening he
seemed to be talking widely for the sake of resisting

MIDDLEMARCH 259

any personal bearing; and before long they went
into the drawing-room, where Lydgate, having asked
Rosamond to give them music, sank back in tSs chair
in silence, but with a strange light in his eyes. ^He
may h-ave been taking an opiate ' was a thought that
crossed ^Ir Farebrother's mind — 'tic douloureux per-
haps— or medical worries/

It did not occur to him that Lydgate' s marriage
was not delightful : he believed, as the rest did, that
Rosamond was an amiable, docile creature, though he
had always thought her rather uninteresting — a little
too much the pattern-card of the finishing-school; and
his mother could not forgive Rosamond because she
never seemed to see that Henrietta Noble was in the
room. 'However, Lydgate fell in love with her,' said
the Vicar to himself, 'and she must be to his taste.'

Mr Farebrother was aware that Lydgate was a
proud man, but having very little corresponding fibre
in himself, and perhaps too little care about personal
dignity except the dignity of not being mean or foolish,
he could hardly allow enough for the way in which
Lydgate shrank, as from a burn, from the utterance of
any word about his private affairs. And soon after
that conversation at Mr Toller's, the Vicar learned
something which made him watch the more eagerly
for an opportunity of indirectly letting Lydgate know
that if he wanted to open himself about any difficulty
here was a friendly ear ready.

The opportunity came at Mr Vincy's, where, on
New Year's Day, there was a party, to which Mr
Farebrother was irresistibly invited, on the plea that
he must not forsake his old friends on the first new
year of his being a greater man, and Rector as well as
Vicar. And this party was thoroughly friendly : all
the ladies of the Farebrother family were present;
the Vincy children all dined at the table, and Fred
had persuaded his mother that if she did not invite
Mary Garth, the Farebrothers would regard it as

26o MIDDLEMARCH

a slight to themselves, Mary being their particular
friend. Mary came, and Fred was in high spirits,
though his enjoyment was of a checkered kind —
triumph that his mother should see Mary's importance
with the chief personages in the party being much
streaked with jealousy when Mr Farebrother sat down
by her. Fred used to be much more easy about his
own accomplishments in the days when he had not
begun to dread being 'bowled out by Farebrother,'
and this terror was still before him. Mrs Vincy, in
her fullest matronly bloom, looked at Mary's little
figure, rough wavy hair, and visage quite without
Hlies and roses, and wondered; trying unsuccessfully
to fancy herself caring about Mary's appearance in
wedding clothes, or feeling complacency in grand-
children who would 'feature' the Garths. However,
the party was a merry one, and Mary was particularly
bright; being glad, for Fred's sake, that his friends
were getting kinder to her, and being also quite willing
that they should see how much she was valued by
others whom they must admit to be judges.

Mr Farebrother noticed that Lydgate seemed bored,
and that Mr Vincy spoke as httle as possible to his
son-in-law. Rosamond was perfectly graceful and
calm, and only a subtle observation such as the Vicar
had not been roused to bestow on her would have
perceived the total absence of that interest in her
husband's presence which a loving wife is sure to
betray, even if etiquette keeps her aloof from. him.
When Lydgate was taking part in the conversation,
she never looked towards him any more than if she
had been a sculptured Psyche modelled to look another
way : and when, after being called out for an hour
or two, he re-entered the room, she seemed uncon-
scious of the fact, which eighteen months before would
have had the effect of a numeral before cyphers. In
reality, however, she was intensely aware of Lydgate' s
voice and movements; and her pretty good-tempered

MIDDLEMARCH 261

air of unconsciousness was a studied negation by which
she satisfied her inward opposition to him without com-
promise of propriety. When the ladies were in the
drawing-room after Lydgate had been called away from
the dessert, Mrs Farebrother, when Rosamond happened
to be near her, said — 'You have to give up a great
deal of your husband's society, Mrs Lydgate.'

'Yes, the life of a medical man is very arduous :
especially when he is so devoted to his profession as Mr
Lydgate is,' said Rosamond, who was standing, and
moved easily away at the end of this correct little speech.

'It is dreadfully dull for her when there is no com-
pany,' said Mrs Vincy, who was seated at the old
lady's side. 'I am sure I thought so when Rosamond
was ill, and I was staying with her. You know, Mrs
Farebrother, ours is a cheerful house. I am of a
cheerful disposition myself, and Mr Vincy always likes
something to be going on. That is what Rosamond
has been used to. Very different from a husband out
at odd hours, and never knowing when he will come
home, and of a close, proud disposition, / think' —
indiscreet Mrs Vincy did lower her tone slightly with
this parenthesis. 'But Rosamond always had an
angel of a temper; her brothers used very often not to
please her, but she was never the girl to show temper;
from a baby she was always as good as good, and
with a complexion beyond anything. But my children
are all good-tempered, thank God.'

This was easily credible to any one looking at Mrs
Vincy as she threw back her broad cap-strings, and
smiled towards her three httle girls, aged from seven
to eleven. But in that sm.iling glance she was obliged
to include Mary Garth, whom the three girls had got
into a corner to make her tell them stories. Mary
was just finishing the deHcious tale of Rumpelstiltskin,
which she had well by heart, because Letty was never
tired of communicating it to her ignorant elders from
a favourite red volume. Louisa, Mrs Vincy's dariing,

262 MIDDLEMARCH

now ran to her with wide-eyed serious excitement,
crying, 'O mamma, mamma, the Uttle man stamped
so hard on the floor he couldn't get his leg out again V

'Bless you, my cherub !' said mamma; '^-ou shall
tell me all about it to-morrow. Go and listen T and
then, as her eyes followed Louisa back towards the
attractive corner, she thought that if Fred ^^^shed her
to invite Mar}^ again she would make no objection,
the children being so pleased with her.

But presently the corner became still more animated,
for Mr Farebrother came in, and seating himself
behind Louisa, took her on his lap; whereupon the
girls all insisted that he must hear Rumpelstiltskin,
and Mar^^ must tell it over again. He insisted too,
and M-d-vy, without fuss, began again in her neat
fashion, wdth precise^ the same words as before.
Fred, who had also seated himself near, would have
felt unmixed triumph in Clary's effectiveness if Mr
Farebrother had not been looking at her with evident
admiration, while he dramatised an intense interest in
the tale to please the children.

'You will never care any more about my one-eyed
giant, Loo,' said Fred at the end.

'Yes, I shall. Tell about him now^' said Louisa.

'Oh, I dare say; I am quite cut out. Ask Mr Fare-
brother.'

'Yes,' added Mary; 'ask Mr Farebrother to tell yon
about the ants w^hose beautiful house was knocked
down by a giant named Tom, and he thought they
didn't mind because he couldn't hear them cry, or
see them use their pocket-handkerchiefs.'

'Please,' said Louisa, looking up at the Vicar.

'No, no, I am a grave old pai^on. If I try to draw
A story out of my bag a sermon comes instead. Shall
I preach you a sermon?' said he, putting on his short-
sighted glasses, and pursing up his lips.

'Yes,' said Louisa, falteringly.

'Let me see, then. Against cakes : how cakes are

MIDDLEMARCH 263

bad things, especially if they are sweet and have
plums in them.'

Louisa took the affair rather seriously, and got
down from the Vicar's knee to go to Fred.

'Ah, I see it will not do to preach on New Year's
Day,' said Mr Farebrother, rising and walking away.
He had discovered of late that Fred had become
jealous of him, and also that he himself was not losing
his preference for Mary above all other women.

*A delightful young person is Miss Garth,' said Mrs
Farebrother, who had been watching her son's move-
ments.

*Yes,' said Mrs Vincy, obliged to reply, as the old
lady turned to her expectantly. 'It is a pity she is
not better-looking.'

*I cannot say that,' said Mrs Farebrother, decisively.
*I like her countenance. We must not always ask for
beauty, when a good God has seen fit to make an
excellent young woman without it. I put good man-
ners first, and Miss Garth will know how to conduct
herself in any station.'

The old lady was a little sharp in her tone, having
a prospective reference to Mary's becoming her
daughter-in-law; for there was this inconvenience in
Mary's position with regard to Fred, that it was not
suitable to be made pubHc, and hence the three ladies
at Lowick Parsonage were still hoping that Camden
would choose Miss Garth.

New visitors entered, and the drawing-room was
given up to music and games, while whist-tables were
prepared in the quiet room on the other side of the
hall. Mr Farebrother played a rubber to satisfy his
mother, who regarded her occasional whist as a protest
against scandal and novelty of opinion, in which Ught
even a revoke had its dignity. But at the end he got
Mr Chichely to take his place, and left the room. As
he crossed the hall, Lydgate had just come in and was
taking off his greatcoat.

264 MIDDLEMARCH

'You are the man I was going to look for,' said the
Vicar; and instead of entering the drawing-room,
they walked along the hall and stood against the
fireplace, where the frosty air helped to make a glow-
ing bank. 'You see, I can leave the whist-table easily
enough,' he went on, smiling at Lydgate, 'now I don't
play for money. I owe that to you, Mrs Casaubon says/

'How?' said Lydgate, coldly.

'Ah, you didn't mean me to know it; I call that
ungenerous reticence. You should let a man have the
pleasure of feeling that you have done him a good turn.
I don't enter into some people's dislike of being under
an obligation : upon my word, I prefer being under
an obhgation to everybody for behaving well to me.'

*I can't tell what you mean,' said Lydgate, 'unless
it is that I once spoke of you to Mrs Casaubon. But
I did not think that she would break her promise not
to mention that I had done so,' said Lydgate, leaning
his back against the corner of the mantelpiece, and
showing no radiance in his face.

'It was Brooke who let it out, only the other day.
He paid me the compliment of saying that he was
very glad I had the living, though you had come across
his tactics, and had praised me up as a Ken and
TiDotson, and that sort of thing, till Mrs Casaubon
would hear of no one else.'

'Oh, Brooke is such a leaky-minded fool,' said
Lydgate contemptuously.

'Well, I was glad of the leakiness then. I don't
see why you shouldn't like me to know that you
wished to do me a service, my dear fellow. And you
certainly have done me one. It's rather a strong
check to one's self-complacency to find how much of
one's right doing depends on not being in want of
money. A man will not be tem^pted to say the Lord's
Prayer backward to please the de\Tl, if he doesn't
want the devil's services. I have no need to hang on
the smiles of chance now.'

MIDDLEMARCH 265

'I don't see that there's any money-getting without
chance,' said Lydgate; 'if a man gets it in a profession,
it's pretty sure to come by chance.'

Mr Farebrother thought he could account for this
speech, in striking contrast with Lydgate' s former
way of talking, as the perversity which will often
spring from, the moodiness of a man ill at ease in his
affairs. He answered in a tone of good-humoured
admission : —

'Ah, there's enormous patience wanted with the
way of the world. But it is the easier for a man to
wait patiently when he has friends who love him, and
ask for nothing better than to help him through, so
far as it lies in their power.'

'Oh yes,' said Lydgate, in a careless tone, changing
his attitude and looking at his watch. 'People make
much more of their difficulties than they need to do.'

He knew as distinctly as possible that this was an
offer of help to himself from Mr Farebrother, and he
could not bear it. So strangely determined are we
mortals, that, after having been long gratified with the
sense that he had privately done the Vicar a service,
the suggestion that the Vicar discerned his need of
a service in return made him shrink into unconquer-
able reticence. Besides, behind all making of such
offers what else must come? — that he should 'mention
his case,' imply that he wanted specific things. At
that moment, suicide seemed easier.

Mr Farebrother was too keen a man not to know the
meaning of that reply, and there was a certain massive-
ness in Lydgate's manner and tone, corresponding
with his physique, which if he repelled your advances
in the first instance seemed to put persuasive devices
out of question.

'What time are you?' said the Vicar, devouring his
wounded feeling.

'After eleven,' said Lydgate. And they went into
the drawing-room.

266 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXIV

1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie
too.

2nd Gent. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright
The coming pest with border fortresses.
Or catch your carp with subtle argument.
All force is twain in one : cause is not cause ,
Unless effect be there; and action's self
Must needs contain a passive. So command
Exists but with obedience.

Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open
about his affairs, he knew that it would have hardly
been in Mr Farebrother's power to give him the help
he immediately wanted. With the year's bills coming
in from his tradesmen, with Dover's threatening hold
on his furniture, and with nothing to depend on but
slow dribbling payments from patients, who must not
be offended — for the handsom^e fees he had had from
Freshitt Hall and Lowick Manor had been easily
absorbed — nothing less than a thousand pounds
would have freed him from actual embarrassment, and
left a residue which, according to the favourite phrase
of hopefulness in such circumstances, would have
given him 'time to look about him.'

Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy
New Year, when fellow-citizens expect to be paid for
the trouble and goods they have smilingly bestowed
on their neighbours, had so tightened the pressure of
sordid cares on Lydgate' s mind that it was hardly
possible for him to think unbrokenly of any other
subject, even the most habitual and soliciting. He was
not an ill-tempered man; his intellectual activity, the
ardent kindness of his heart, as well as his strong
frame, would always, under tolerably easy conditions.

MIDDLEMARCH 267

have kept him above the petty uncontrolled sus-
ceptibilities which make bad temper. But he was
how a prey to that worst irritation which arises not
simply from annoyances, but from the second con-
sciousness underlying those annoyances, of wasted
energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the
reverse of all his former purposes, 'This is what I am
thinking of; and that is what I might have been think-
ing of,' was the bitter incessant murmur within him,
making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in
literature by general discontent with the universe as
a trap of dullness into which their great souls have
fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self
and an insignificant world ma}^ have its consolations.
Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear : it
was the sense that there was a grand existence in
thought and effective action lying around him, while
his self was being narrowed into the miserable isolation
of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that
might allay such fears. His troubles will perhaps
appear miserably sordid, and beneath the attention of
lofty persons who can know nothing of debt except on
a magnificent scale. Doubtless they were sordid; and
for the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape
from sordidness but by being free from money-craving,
with all its base hopes and temptations, its watching
for death, its hinted requests, its horse-dealer's desire
to make bad work pass for good, its seeking for function
which ought to be another's, its compulsion often to
long for Luck in the shape of a wide calamity.

It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of
getting his neck beneath this vile yoke that he had
fallen into a bitter moody state which was continually
widening Rosamond's alienation from him. After the
first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made
many efforts to draw her into sympathy with him
about possible measures for narrowing their expenses,

268 MIDDLEMARCH

and with the threatening approach of Christmas his
propositions grew more and more definite. *We two
can do with only one servant, and hve on very httle/
he said, 'and I shall manage with one horse/ For
Lydgate, as we have seen, had begun to reason, with
a more distinct vision, about the expenses of Hving,
and any share of pride he had given to appearances of
that sort was meagre compared with the pride which
made him revolt from exposure as a debtor, or from
asking men to help him with their money.

'Of course you can dismiss the other two servants,
if you like,' said Rosamond; 'but I should have thought
it would be very injurious to your position for us to
live in a poor way. You must expect your practice
to be lowered/

'My dear Rosamond, it is not a question of choice.
We have begun too expensively. Peacock, you know,
lived in a much smaller house than this. It is my
fault : I ought to have known better, and I deserve
a thrashing — if there were anybody who had a right
to give it me — for bringing you into the necessity of
living in a poorer way than you have been used to.
But we married because we loved each other, I
suppose. And that may help us to pull along till
things get better. Come, dear, put down that work
and come to me.'

He was really in chill gloom about her at that
moment, but he dreaded a future without affection, and
v/as determined to resist the oncoming of division
between them. Rosamond obeyed him, and he took
her on his knee, but in her secret soul she was utterly
aloof from him. The poor thing saw only that the
world was not ordered to her likir^, and Lydgate was
part of that world. But he held her waist with one
hand and laid the other gently on both of hers; for
this rather abrupt man had much tenderness in his
manners towards women, seeming to have always
present in his imagination the weakness of their

MIDDLEMARCH 269

frames and the delicate poise of their health both in
body and mind. And he began again to speak per-
suasively.

*I find, now I look into things a little, Rosy, that it
is wonderful what an amount of money slips away in
our housekeeping. I suppose the servants are care-
less, and we have had a great many people coming.
But there must be many in our rank who manage with
much less : they must do with commoner things, I
suppose, and look after the scraps. It seems money
goes but a httle way in these matters, for Wrench has
everything as plain as possible, and he has a very
large practice.'

'Oh, if you think of living as the Wrenches do !'
said Rosamond, with a little turn of her neck. *But
I have heard you express your disgust at that way of
hving.'

'Yes, they have bad taste in everything — they make
economy look ugly. We needn't do that. I only
meant that they avoid expenses, although Wrench has
a capital practice.'

'Why should not you have a good practice, Tertius?
Mr Peacock had. You should be more careful not to
offend people, and you should send out medicines as
the others do. I am sure you began well, and you got
several good houses. It cannot answer to be eccentric;
you should think what will be generally liked,' said
Rosamond, in a decided little tone of admonition.

Lydgate's anger rose : he was prepared to be indul-
gent towards feminine weakness, but not towards
feminine dictation. The shallowness of a waternixie's
soul may have a charm until she becomes didactic.
But he controlled himself, and only said, with a touch
of despotic firmness : —

'What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for mc
to judge. That is not the question between us. It is
enough for you to know that our income is likely to
be a very narrow one— hardly four hundred, perhaps

^70 MIDDLEMARCH

less, for a long time to come, and we must try to
rearrange our lives in accordance with that fact/

Rosamond was silent for a moment or two, looking
before her, and then said, 'My uncle Bulstrode ought
to allow you a salary for the time you give to the
hospital : it is not right that you should work for
nothing/

'It was understood from the beginning that my
services would be gratuitous. That, again, need not
enter into our discussion. I have pointed out what is
the only probability,' said Lydgate, impatiently.
Then checking himself, he went on more quietly : —

'I think I see one resource which would free us from
a good deal of the present difficulty. I hear that
young Ned Plymdale is going to be married to Miss
Sophy Toller. They are rich, and it is not often that
a good house is vacant in Middlemarch. I feel sure that
they would be glad to take this house from us with
most of our furniture, and they would be \villing to
pay handsomely for the lease. I can employ Trum-
bull to speak to Plymdale about it.'

Rosamond left her husband's knee and walked
slowly to the other end of the room; when she turned
round and v/alked towards him it was evident that
the tears had come, and that she was biting her under-
lip and clasping her hands to keep herself from crying.
Lydgate was ^^Tetched — shaken with anger and yet
feeling that it would be unmanly to vent the anger
just now.

*I am very sorr}^ Rosamond; I know this is painful.'

T thought, at least, when I had borne to send the
plate back and have that man taking an inventory of
the furniture — I should have thought that would
suffice.'

'I explained it to you at the time, dear. That was
only a security and behind that security there is a debt.
And that debt must be paid within the next few
months, else we shall have our furniture sold. If

MIDDLEMARCH 271

young Plymdale will take our house and most of our
furniture, we shall be able to pay that debt, and some
others too, and we shall be quit of a place too expen-
sive for us. We might take a smaller house : Trum-
bull, I know, has a very decent one to let at thirty
pounds a year, and this is ninety/ Lydgate uttered
this speech in the curt hammering way with which
we usually try to nail down a vague mind to imperative
facts. Tears rolled silently down Rosamond's cheeks;
she just pressed her handkerchief against them, and
stood looking at the large vase on the mantelpiece.
It was a moment of more intense bitterness than she
Imd ever felt before. At last, she said, without hurry
^nd with careful emphasis : —

*I never could have believed that you would like to
act in that way.'

'Like it?' burst out Lydgate, rising from his chair,
thrusting his hands in his pockets, and stalking away
from the hearth; 'it's not a question of liking. Of
course, I don't like it; it's the only thing I can do.'
He wheeled round there, and turned towards her.

T should have thought there were many other
means than that,' said Rosamond. *Let us have
a sale and leave Middlemarch altogether.'

'To do what?' W^iat is the use of my leaving my
work in Middlemarch to go where I have none? We
should be just as penniless elsewhere as we are here/
said Lydgate still more angrily.

Tf we are to be in that position it will be entirely
your own doing, Tertius,' said Rosamond, turning
round to speak with the fullest conviction. 'You
will not behave as you ought to do to your own family.
You offended Captain Lydgate. Sir Godwin was very
kind to me when we were at Quallingham, and I am
sure if you showed proper regard to him and told him
your affairs, he would do anything for you. But
rather than that, j'ou like giving up our house and
furniture to Mr Ned Plym.daie.'

272 MIDDLEMARCH

There was something hke fierceness in Lydgate's
eyes, as he answered with new violence, 'Well then,
if you will have it so, I do like it. I admit that I
like it better than making a fool of myself by going to
beg where it's of no use. Understand then, that it is
what / like to do.'

There was a tone in the last sentence which was
equivalent to the clutch of his strong hand on Rosa-
mond's delicate arm. But for all that, his will was not
a whit stronger than hers. She immediately walked
out of the room in silence, but with an intense deter-
mination to hinder what Lydgate liked to do.

He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled
he felt that the chief result of the discussion was
a deposit of dread within him at the idea of opening
with his wife in future subjects which might again
urge him to violent speech. It was as if a fracture in
delicate crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any
movement that might make it fatal. His marriage
would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not
go on loving each other. He had long ago made up
his mind to what he thought was her negative char-
acter— her want of sensibility, which showed itself in
disregard both of his specific wishes and of his general
aims. The first great disappointment had been
borne : the tender devotedness and docile adoration
of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be
taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by
men who have lost their limbs. But the real wife had
not only her claims, she had still a hold on his heart,
and it was his intense desire that the hold should
remain strong. In marriage, the certainty, 'She wiU
never love me much,' is easier to bear than the fear,
*I shall love her no more.' Hence, after that outburst,
his inward effort was entirely to excuse her, and to
blame the hard circumstances which were partly his
fault. He tried that evening, by petting her, to heal
the wound he had made in the morning, and it was

MIDDLEMARCH 273

not in Rosamond's nature to be repellent or sulky;
indeed, she welcomed the signs that her husband loved
her and was under control. But this was something
quite distinct from loving him.

Lydgate would not have chosen soon to recur to the
plan of parting with the house; he was resolved to
carry it out, and say as little more about it as possible.
But Rosamond herself touched on it at breakfast by
saying, mildly : —

'Have you spoken to Trumbull yet?'

*No/ said Lydgate, 'but I shall call on him as I go
by this morning. No time must be lost.' He took
Rosamond's question as a sign that she withdrew her
inward opposition, and kissed her head caressingly
when he got up to go away.

As soon as it was late enough to make a call, Rosa-
mond went to Mrs Plymdale, Mr Ned's mother, and
entered with pretty congratulations into the subject
of the coming marriage. Mrs Plymdale' s maternal
view was, that Rosamond might possibly now have
retrospective glimpses of her own folly; and feehng
the advantages to be at present all on the side of her
son, was too kind a woman not to behave graciously.

'Yes, Ned is most happy, I must say. And Sophy
Toller is all I could desire in a daughter-in-law. Of
course her father is able to do something handsome
for her — that is only what would be expected with
a brewery like his. And the connection is everything
we should desire. But that is not what I look at. She
is such a very nice girl — no airs, no pretensions, though
on a level with the first. I don't mean with the titled
aristocracy. I see very little good in people aiming
out of their own sphere. I mean that Sophy is equal
to ihe best in the town, and she is contented with
that.'

'I have always thought her very agreeable,' said
Rosamond.

'I look uDon it as a rew^.rd for Xcd. who never held

274 MIDDLEMARCH

his head too high, that he should have got into the
very best connection/ continued Mrs Plymdale, her
native sharpness softened by a fervid sense that she
was taking a correct view. 'And such particular
people as the Tollers are, they might have objected
because some of otir friends are not theirs. It is well
known that your aunt Bulstrode and I have been
intimate from our youth, and Mr Plymdale has been
always on Mr Bulstrode' s side. x\nd I myself prefer
serious opinions. -But the Tollers have welcomed Ned
all the same/ ' ^

•T am sure he is a ver}^ deserving, well-principled
young man,' said Rosamond, ^^dth a neat air of patron-
age, in return for Mrs Plymdale' s wholesome correc-
tions.

*0h, he has not the style of a captain in the army,
or that sort of carriage as if everybody was beneath
him, or that showy kind of talking, and singing, and
intellectual talent. But I am thankful he has not.
It is a poor preparation both for here and Hereafter.'

'Oh dear, yes; appearances have very little to do
with happiness,' said Rosamond. 'I think there is
every prospect of their being a happy couple. What
house will the. y take?'

*0h, as for that, they must put up with what they
can get. They have been looking at the house in
St Peter's Place, next to Mr Hackbutt's; it belongs
to him, and he is putting it nicely in repair. I suppose
they are not likely to hear of a better. Indeed, I
think Ned will decide the matter to-day.'

*I should think it is a nice houses I like St Peter's
Place.' - '

'Well, it is near the Church, and a genteel situation.
But the windows are narrow, and it is all ups and
downs. You don't happen to know of any other that
would be at liberty?' said Mrs Plymdale, fixing her
round black eyes on Rosamond with the animation
of a sudden thought in them.

MIDDLE]\IARCH 275

'Oh no; I hear so Httle of those things.'

Rosamond had not foreseen that question and
answer in setting out to pay her visit; she had simply
meant to gather any information which would help
her to avert the parting with her own house under
circumstances thoroughly disagreeable to her. As
to the untruth in her reply, she no more reflected on
it than she did on the untruth there was in her saying
that appearances had very little to do with happiness.
Her object, she was convinced, was thoroughly justifi-
able : it was Lydgate whose intention was inexcus-
able; and there was a plan in her mind which, when
she had carried it out fully, would prove how very false
a step it would have been for him to have descended
from his position.

She returned home by Mr Borthrop Trumbull's
office, meaning to call there. It was the first time in
her life that Rosamond had thought of doing anything
in the form of business, but she felt equal to the
occasion. That she should be obliged to do what she
intensely disliked was an idea which turned her quiet
tenacity into active invention. Here was a case in
which it could not be enough simply to disobey and
be serenely, placidly obstinate : she must act according
to her judgment, and she said to herself that her
judgment was right — 'indeed, if it had not been, she
would not have wished to act on it.'

Mr Trumbull was in the back-room of his office, and
received Rosamond with his finest manners, not only
because he had much sensibility to her charms, but
because the good-natured fibre in him was stirred by
his certainty that Lydgate was in difficulties, and that
this uncommonly pretty woman — this young lady
with the highest personal attractions — was likely to
feel the pinch of trouble — to find herself involved in
circumstances beyond her control. He begged her to
do him the honour to take a seat, and stood before
her trimming and comporting himself with an eager

276 MIDDLEMARCH

solicitude, which was chiefly benevolent. Rosamond's
first question was whether her husband had called on
Mr Trumbull that morning, to speak about disposing
of their house.

'Yes, ma'am, yes, he did; he did so,' said the good
auctioneer, trying to throw something soothing into
his iteration. *I was about to fulfil his order, if
possible, this afternoon. He wished me not to
procrastinate.'

* I called to tell you not to go any further, Mr Trum-
bull; and I beg of you not to mention what has been
said on the subject. Will you obhge me?'

'Certainly I wdll, Mrs Lydgate, certainly. Confi-
dence is sacred with me on business or any other
topic. I am then to consider the commission with-
drawn?' said Mr Trumbull, adjusting the long ends
of his blue cravat with both hands, and looking at
Rosamond deferentially.

'Yes, if you please. I find that Mr Ned Plym.dale
has taken a house — the one in St Peter's Place next to
Mr Hackbutt's. Mr Lydgate would be annoyed that
his orders should be fulfilled uselessly. And besides
that, there are other circumstances which render the
proposal unnecessary.'

'Very good, Mrs Lydgate, very good. I am at your
commands, whenever you require any service of me,'
said Mr Trumbull, who felt pleasure in conjecturing
that some new resources had been opened. 'Rely on
me, I beg. The affair shall go no further.'

That evening Lydgate was a little comforted by
observing that Rosamond was more hvely than she had
usually been of late, and even seemed interested in
doing what would please him without being asked.
He thought, 'If she will be happy and I can rub
through, what does it all signify ? It is only a narrow
swamp that we have to pass in a long journey. If I
can get my mind clear again, I shall do.'

He was so much cheered that he began to search for

MIDDLEMARCH

'//

an account of experiments which he had long ago meant
to look up, and had neglected out of that creeping
self-despair which comes in the train of petty
anxieties. He felt again some of the old delightful
absorption in a far-reaching inquiry, while Rosamond
played the quiet music which was as helpful to his
meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening lake.
It was rather late; he had pushed away all the books,
and was looking at the fire with his hands clasped
behind his head in forgetfulness of everything except
the construction of a new controlling experiment,
when Rosamond, who had left the piano and was
leaning back in her chair watching him, said : —

'Mr Ned Plymdale has taken a house already.'

Lydgate, startled and jarred, looked up in silence
for a moment, like a man who has been disturbed in
his sleep. Then flushing with an unpleasant con-
sciousness, he asked : —

'How do you know?'

'I called at Mrs Ph^mdale's this morning, and she
told me that he had taken the house in St Peter's
Place next to Mr Hackbutt's.'

Lydgate was silent. He drew his hands from
behind his head and pressed them against the hair
which was hanging, as it was apt to do, in a mass on
his forehead, while he rested his elbows on his knees.
He was feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had
opened a door out of a suffocating place and had found
it walled up; but he also felt sure that Rosamond
was pleased with the cause of his disappointment.
He preferred not looking at her and not speaking,
until he had got over the first spasm of vexation.
After all, he said in his bitterness, what can a woman
care so much about as house and furniture? a hus-
band without them is an absurdity. When he looked
up and pushed his hair aside, his dark eyes had a
miserable blank non-expectance of sympathy in them,
but he only said, coolly, —

278 MIDDLEIVIARCH

'Perhaps some one else may turn up, I told Trum-
bull to be on the look-out if he failed with Plymdale.'

Rosamond made no remark. She trusted to the
chance that nothing more would pass between her
husband and the auctioneer until some issue should
have justified her interference; at any rate, she had
hindered th^ event which she immediately dreaded.
After a pause she said : —

'How much money is it that those disagreeable
people want?'

'What disagreeable people?'

'Those who took the Hst — and the others. I mean,
how much money would satisfy them so that you need
not be troubled any more ? '

Lydgate surveyed her for a moment, as if he were
looking for symptoms, and then said, 'Oh, if I could
have got six hundred from Plymdale for furniture
and as premium, I might have managed. I could have
paid off Dover, and given enough on account to the
others to make them wait patiently, if we contracted
our expenses.'

'But I mean how much should you want if we
stayed in this house?'

'More than I am likely to get anj^where,' said
Lydgate, \^ith rather a grating sarcasm in his tone.
It angered him to perceive that Rosamond's mind was
wandering over impracticable wishes instead of facing
possible efforts.

'Why should you not mention the sum?' said
Rosamond, with a mild indication that she did not
hke his manners.

'Well,' said Lydgate, in a guessing tone, 'it would
take at least a thousand to set me at ease. But,' he
added, incisively, 'I have to consider what I shall do
without it not with it.' '

Rosamond said no more.

But the next day she carried out her plan of writing
to Sir Godwin Lydgate. Since the Captain's visit,

MIDDLEMARCH 279

she had received a letter from him, and a-ho one from
Mrs Mengan, his married sister, condoling with her
on the loss of her baby, and expressing vaguely the
hope that they should see her again at Quallingham.
Lydgate had told her that this politeness meant
nothing; but she was secretly convinced that any
backwardness in Lydgate' s family towards him was
due to his cold and contemptuous behaviour, and she
had answered the letters in her most charming man-
ner, feeling some confidence that a specific invitation
would follow. But there had been total silence. The
Captain evidently was not a great penman, and Rosa-
mond reflected that the sisters might have been
abroad. However, the season was come for thinking
of friends at home, and at any rate Sir Godwin, who
had chucked her under the chin, and pronounced her
to be like the celebrated beauty, Mrs Croly, who had
made a conquest of him in 1790, would be touched by
any appeal from her, and would find it pleasant for
her sake to behave as he ought to do towards his
nephew. Rosamond was naively convinced of what
an old gentleman ought to do to prevent her from
suffering annoyance. And she wrote what she con-
sidered the most judicious letter possible — one which
would strike Sir Godwin as a proof of her excellent
sense — pointing out how desirable it was that Tertius
should quit such a place as Middlemarch for one more
fitted to his talents, how the unpleasant character of
the inhabitants had hindered his professional success,
and how in consequence he was in money difficulties,
from which it would require a thousand pounds
thoroughly to extricate him. She did not sa^^ that
Tertius wels unaware of her intention to write; for she
had the idea that this supposed sanction of her letter
would be in accordance with what she did say of his great
regard for his uncle Godwin as the relative who had
always been his best friend. Such was the force of poor
Rosamond's tactics now she apphed them to affairs.

28o MIDDLEMARCH

This had happened before the party on New Year's
Day, and no answer had yet come from Sir Godwin.
But on the morning of that day Lydgate had to learn
that Rosamond had revoked his order to Borthrop
Trumbull. Feeling it necessary that she should be
gradually accustomed to the idea of their quitting
the house in Lowick Gate, he overcame his reluctance
to speak to her again on the subject, and when they
were breakfasting said, —

*I shall try to see Trumbull this morning, and tell
him to advertise the house in the Pioneer and the
Trumpet. If the thing were advertised, some one
might be inclined to take it who would not otherwise
have thought of a change. In these country places
many people go on in their old houses when their
families are too large for them, for want of knowing
where they can find another. And Tnmibull seems to
have got no bite at all.'

Rosamond knew that the inevitable moment was
come. 'I ordered Trumbull not to inquire further,'
she said, with a careful calmness which was evidently
defensive.

Lydgate stared at her in mute amazement. Only
half an hour before he had been fastening up her plaits
for her, and talking the 'little language' of affection,
which Rosamond, though not returning it, accepted
as if she had been a serene and lovely image, now
and then miraculously dimpling towards her votary.
With such fibres still astir in him, the shock he
received could not at once be distinctly anger; it
was confused pain. He laid down the knife and fork
with which he w^as carving, and throwing himself
back in his chair, said at last, with a cool irony in his
tone, —

'May I ask when and why you did so?'

'When I knew that the Plymdales had taken a house,
I called to tell him not to mention ours to them; and
at the same time I told him not to let the affair go

MIDDLEMARCH 281

on any further. I knew that it would be very injurious
to you if it Vs^ere known that you wished to part with
your house and furniture, and I had a very strong
objection to it. I think that was reason enough.'

*It was of no consequence then that I had told you
imperative reasons of another kind; and of no conse-
quence that I had come to a different conclusion, and
given an order accordingly?' said Lydgate, bitingly,
the thunder and lightning gathering about his brow
and eyes.

The effect of any one's anger on Rosamond had
always been to make her shrink in cold dislike, and to
become all the more calmly correct, in the conviction
that she was not the person to misbehave, whatever
others might do. She replied : —

* I think I had a perfect right to speak on a sub-
ject which concerns me at least as much as you.'

'Clearly — you had a right to speak, but only to me.
You had no right to contradict my orders secretly, and
treat me as if I were a fool,' said Lydgate, in the sam.e
tone as before. Then with some added scorn, *Is it
possible to make you understand what the conse-
quences will be? Is it of any use for me to tell you
again why we must try to part with the house?'

'It is not necessary for you to tell me again,' said
Rosamond, in a voice that fell and trickled like cold
water-drops. ' I remembered what you said. You
spoke just as violently as you do now. But that does
not alter my opinion that you ought to try every other
means rather than take a step which is so painful to
me. And as to advertising the house, I think it would
be perfectly degrading to you.'

'And suppose I disregard your opinion as you
disregard mine?'

'You can do so, of course. But I think you ought to
have told me before we were married that you would
place me in the worst position, rather than give up
your own will.'

282 MIDDLEMARCH

Lydgate did not speak, but tossed his head on one
side, and twitched the corners of his mouth in despair.
Rosamond, seeing that he was not looking at her, rose
and set his cup of coffee before him; but he took no
notice of it, and went on with an inward drama and
argument, occasionally moving in his seat, resting one
arm on the table, and rubbing his hand against his
hair. There was a conflux of emotions and thoughts
in him that would not let him either give thorough way
to his anger or persevere with simple rigidity of
resolve. Rosamond took advantage of his silence.

'When we were manied every one felt that your
position was very high. I could not have imagined
then that you would want to sell our furniture, and
take a house in Bride Street, where the rooms are like
cages. If we are to liv^ in thai: way let us at least
leave Middlemarch.' ■■c-^l f£ ^-l :.

'These would be very strong considerations,' said
Lydgate, half ironically— still there was a withered
paleness about his lips as he looked at his coffee, and
did not drink — 'these would be very strong con-
siderations if I did not happen to be in debt.'

'Many persons must have been in debt in the same
way, but if they are respectable, people trust them.
I am sure I have heard papa say that the Torbits were
in debt, and they went on very well. It cannot be
good to act rashly,' said Rosamond, with serene wisdom.

Lydgate sat paralysed by opposing impulses :
since no reasoning he could apply to Rosamond seemed
likely to conquer her assent, he wanted to smash and
grind some object on which he could at least produce
an impression, or else to tell her brutally that he was
master, and she must obey. But he not only dreaded
the effect of such extremities on their mutual life-
he had a growing dread of Rosamond's quiet elusive
obstinacy, which would not allow any assertion of
power to be final; and again, she had touched him in
a spot of keenest feeling by implying that sh^ had

MIDDLEMARCH 283

been deluded with a false vision of happiness in
marrying him. As to saying that he was master, it
was not the fact. The very resolution to which he
had wrought himself by dint of logic and honourable
pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo con-
tact. He swallowed half his cup of coffee, and then
rose to go.

'I may at least request that you will not go to
Trumbull at present — until it has been seen that there
are no other means,' said Rosamond. Although she
was not subject to much fear, she felt it safer not to
betray that she had written to Sir Godwin. 'Promise
me that you will not go to him for a few weeks, or
without telling me.'

Lydgate gave a short laugh. 'I think it is I who
should exact a promise that you will do nothing with-
out telling me,' he said, turning his eyes sharply upon
her, and then moving to the door.

' You remember that we are going to dine at papa's,'
said Rosamond, wishing that he should turn and make
a more thorough concession to her. But he only said
'Oh yes,' impatiently, and went away. She held it to
be very odious in him that he did not think the painful
propositions he had had to make to her were enough,
without showing so unpleasant a temper. And when
she put the moderate request that he would defer
going to Trumbull again, it was cruel in him not to
assure her of what he meant to do. She was con-
vinced of her having acted in every way for the best;
and each grating or angry speech of Lydgate' s served
only as an addition to the register of offences in her
mind. Poor Rosamond for months had begun to
associate her husband with feelings of disappoint-
ment, and the terribly inflexible relation of marriage
had lost its charm of encouraging delightful dreams.
It had freed her from the disagreeables of her father's
house, but it had not given her everything that she
had wished and hoped! The Lydgate with whom

2S4 MIDDLEMARCH

she had been in love had been a group of airy con-
ditions for her, most of which had disappeared, while
their place had been taken by everyday details which
must be lived through slowly from hour to hour, not
floated through with a rapid selection of favourable
aspects. The habits of Lydgate's profession, his home,
preoccupation with scientific subjects, which seemed
to her almost like a mxorbid vampire's taste, his
peculiar views of things which had never entered into
the dialogue of courtship — all these continually-
alienating influences, even without the fact of his
ha^dng placed himself at a disadvantage in the town,
and without that first shock of revelation about
Dover's debt, would have made his presence dull to
her. There was another presence which ever since
the early days of her marriage, until four months ago,
had been an agreeable excitement, but that was gone :
Rosamond would not confess to herself how much the
consequent blank had to do with her utter ennui;
and it seemed to her (perhaps she was right) that an
invitation to Quallingham, and an opening for Lyd-
gate to settle elsewhere than in Middlemarch — in
London, or somewhere likely to be free from un-
pleasantness— would satisfy her quite well, and make
her indifferent to the absence of Will Ladislaw, towards
whom she felt some resentment for his exaltation of
Mrs Casaubon.

That was the state of things with Lydgate and
Rosamond on the New Year's Day when they dined
at her father's, she looking mildly neutral towards him
in remembrance of his ill-tempered behaviour at
breakfast, and he carrying a much deeper effect from
the inward conflict in which that morning scene
was only one of many epochs. His flushed effort
while talking to Mr Farebrother — his effort after the
cynical pretence that all ways of getting money are
essentially the same, and th3,t chance has an empire
which reduces choice to a fool's illusion — was but the

MIDDLEMARCH 285

symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response
to the old stimuli of enthusiasm.

What was he to do? He saw even more keenly
than Rosamond did the dreariness of taking her into
the small house in Bride Street, where she would have
scanty furniture around her and discontent within :
a life of privation and life with Rosamond were two
images which had become more and more irrecon-
cilable ever since the threat of privation had disclosed
itself. But even if his resolves had forced the two
images into combination, the useful preliminaries to
that hard change were not visibly within reach. And
though he had not given the promise which his wife
had asked for, he did not go again to Trumbull. He
even began to think of taking a rapid journey to the
North and seeing Sir Godwin. He had once believed
that nothing would urge him into making an applica-
tion for money to his uncle, but he had not then
known the full pressure of alternatives yet more
disagreeable. He could not depend on the effect of
a letter; it was only in an interview, however dis-
agreeable this might be to himself, that he could give
a thorough explanation and could test the effective-
ness of kinship. No sooner had Lydgate begun to
represent this step to himself as the easiest than
there was a reaction of anger that he — he who had
long ago determined to live aloof from such abject
calculations, such self-interested anxiety about the
inclinations and the pockets of men with whom he
had been proud to have no aimxS in common — should
have fallen not simply to their level, but to the level
of sohciting them.

286 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXV

One of us two must bowen douteless;

And, sith. a man is more reasonable

Than woman is, ye [men] moste be suSrable.

Chaucer : Canterbury Tales,

The bias of tniman nature to be slow in correspondence
triumphs even over the present quickening in the
general pace of things : what wonder then that in
1832 old Sir Godwin Lydgate was slow to \\Tite a
letter which was of consequence to others rather than
to himself? Nearly three weeks of the new^ year were
gone, and Rosamond, a\vaiting an answer to her \vm-
ning appeal, was every day disappointed. Lydgate,
in total ignorance of her expectations, was seeing
the bills come in, and feeling that Dover's use of his
advantage over other creditors was inaminent. He
had never mentioned to Rosamond his brooding
piurpose of going to Quallingham : he did not want to
admit what would appear to her a concession to her
wishes after indignant refusal, until the last moment;
but he was really expecting to set off soon. A sUce
of the railway would enable him to manage the whole
journey and back in four days.

But one morning after Lydgate had gone out, a
letter came addressed to him, which Rosamond saw
clearly to be from Sir God\\in. She was full of hope.
Perhaps there might be a particular note to her
enclosed; but Lydgate was naturally addressed on the
question of money or other aid, and the fact that he
was written to, nay, the very delay in writing at all,
seemed to certify that the answer was thoroughly
compliant. She was too much excited by these thoughts

MIDDLEMARCH ,287

to do anything but light stitching in a warm corner
of the dining-room, with the outside of this
momentous letter lying on the table before her.
About twelve she heard her husband's step in the
passage, and tripping to open the door, she said
in her lightest tones, 'Tertius, come in here — here is a
letter for you.'

'Ah?' he said, not taking off his hat, but just turning
her round within his arm to walk towards the spot
where the letter lay. ' My uncle Godwin ! ' he exclaimed,
while Rosamond reseated herself, and watched him as
he opened the letter. She had expected him to be
.surprised.

^^'hile Lydgate's eyes glanced rapidly over the
brief letter, she saw his face, usually of a pale brown,
taking on a dry whiteness; with nostrils and Hps
quivering he tossed down the letter before her^ and
said violently : —

'It will be impossible to endure life with you, if
you will always be acting secretly — acting in opposi-
tion to me and hiding your actions.'

He checked his speech and turned his back on her
^-then wheeled round and walked about, sat down,
and got up again restlessly, grasping hard the objects
deep down in his pockets. He was afraid of saying
something irremediably cruel.

Rosamond too had changed colour as she read.
The letter ran in this way : —

'Dear Tertius,— Don't set 3'our wife to write to
me when you have anything to ask. It is a round-
about wheedling sort of thing which I should not have
credited you with. I never choose to write to a woman
on matters of business. As to my supplying you with
a thousand pounds, or only half that sum, I can do
nothing of the sort. My own family drains me to the
last penny. With two younger sons and three daugh-
ters, I am not likely to have cash to spate. You seem

288 MIDDLEMARCH

to have got through your own money pretty quickly,
and to have made a mess where you are; the sooner
you go somewhere else the better. But I have nothing
to do with men of your profession, and can't help
you there. I did the test I could for you as guardian,
and let you have your own way in taking to medicine.
You might have gone into the army or the Church.
Your money would have held out for that, and there
would have been a surer ladder before j^ou. Your
uncle Charles has had a grudge against you for not
going into his profession, but not I. I have always
wished you well, but you must consider yourself on
your own legs entirely now. — Your affectionate uncle,

Godwin Lydgate.'

When Rosamond had finished reading the letter she
sat quite still, with her hands folded before her,
restraining any show of her keen disappointment, and
entrenching herself in quiet passivity under her hus-
band's wrath. Lydgate paused in his movements,
looked at her again, and said, with biting severity : —

'Will this be enough to convince you of the harm
you may do by secret meddhng? Have you sense
enough to recognise now your incompetence to judge
and act for me — to interfere with your ignorance in
affairs which it belongs to me to decide on?'

The words were hard; but this was not the first
time that Lydgate had been frustrated by her. She did
not look at him, and made no reply.

'I had nearly resolved to go to Quallingham. It
would have cost me pain enough to do it, yet it might
have been of some use. But it has been of no use for
me to think of anything. You have always been
counteracting me secretly. You delude me with a false
assent, and then I am at the mercy of your devices.
If you mean to resist every wish I express, say so and
defy me. I shall at least know what I am doing
then.' . -

MIDDLEMARCH 289

It is a terrible moment in young lives when the
closeness of love's bond has turned to this power of
galling. In spite of Rosamond's self-control a tear fell
silently and rolled over her lips. She still said nothing;
but under that quietude was hidden an intense effect :
she was in such entire disgust with her husband that
she wished she had never seen him. Sir Godwin's
rudeness towards her and utter want of feeUng ranged
him with Dover and all other creditors — disagreeable
people who only thought of themselves, and did not
mind how annoying they w^ere to her. Even her
father was unkind, and might have done more for
them. In fact there was but one person in Rosamond's
world whom she did not regard as blameworthy, and
that was the graceful creature with blond plaits and
with little hands crossed before her, who had never
expressed herself unbecomingly, and had always
acted for the best — the best naturally being what she
best liked.

Lydgate pausing and looking at her began to feel
that half-maddening sense of helplessness which comes
over passionate people when their passion is met by
an innocent-looking silence whose meek victimised
air seems to put them in the wrong, and at last infects
even the justest indignation with a doubt of its justice.
He needed to recover the full sense that he was in the
right by moderating his words.

'Can you not see, Rosamond,' he began again,
trying to be simply grave and not bitter, 'that nothing
can be so fatal as a want of openness and confidence
between us? It has happened again and again that
I have expressed a decided wish, and you have seemed
to assent, yet after that you have secretly disobeyed
my wish. In that way I can never know what I have
to trust to. There would be some hope for us if you
would admit this. Am I such an unreasonable,
furious brute? Why should you not be open with
me?'

M (II) K

zgo MIDDLEMARCH

Still silence.

'Will you only say that you have been mistaken,
and that I may depend on your not acting secretly in
future?' said Lydgate, urgently, but with something
of request in his tone which Rosamond was quick to
perceive. She spoke with coolness.

*I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in
answer to such words as you have used towards me.
I have not been accustomed to language of that kind.
You have spoken of my "secret meddling," and my
* 'interfering ignorance," and my "false assent." I
have never expressed myself in that way to you, and
I think that you ought to apologise. You spoke of its
being impossible to live with me. Certainly you have
not made my life pleasant to me of late. I think it was
to be expected that I should try to avert some of the
hardships which our marriage has brought on me.'
Another tear fell as Rosamond ceased speaking, and
she pressed it away as quietly as the first.

Lydgate flung himself into a chair, feeling check-
mated. What place was there in her mind for a
remonstrance to lodge in? He laid down his hat,
flung an arm over the back of his chair, and looked
down for some moments without speaking. Rosamond
had the double purchase over him of insensibility to
the point of justice in his reproach, and of sensibility
to the undeniable hardships now present in her married
life. Although her duplicity in the affair of the house
had exceeded what he knew, and had really hindered
the Plymdales from knowing of it, she had no con-
sciousness that her action could rightly be called
false. We are not obliged to identify our own acts
according to a strict classification, any more than the
materials of our grocery and clothes. Rosamond felt
that she was aggrieved, and that this was what Lyd-
gate had to recognise.

As for him, the need of accommodating himself to
her nature, which was inflexible in proportion to its

MIDDLEMARCH 291

negations, held him as with pincers. He had begun
to have an alarmed foresight of her irrevocable loss
of love for him, and the consequent dreariness of their
life. The ready fullness of his emotions made this
dread alternate quickly with the first violent move-
ments of his anger. It would assuredly have been
a vain boast in him to say that he was her master.

'You have not made my life pleasant to me of late'
— 'the hardships which our marriage has brought on
me' — these words were stinging his imagination as
a pain makes an exaggerated dream. If he were not
only to sink from his highest resolve, but to sink into
the hideous fettering of domestic hate ?

'Rosamond,' he said, turning his eyes on her with
a melancholy look, 'you should allow for a man's
words when he is disappointed and provoked. You
and I cannot have opposite interests. I cannot part
my happiness from yours. If I am angry with you, it
is that you seem not to see how any concealment
divides us. How could I wish to make anything hard
to you either by my words or conduct? When I hurt
you, I hurt part of my own life. I should never be
angry with you if you would be quite open with me.'

* I have only wished to prevent you from hurrying us
into wretchedness without any necessity,' said Rosa-
mond, the tears coming again from a softened feeling
now that her husband had softened. 'It is so very
hard to be disgraced here among all the people we
know, and to live in such a miserable way. I wish
I had died with the baby.'

She spoke and wept with that gentleness which makes
such words and tears omnipotent over a loving-hearted
man. Lydgate drew his chair near to hers and pressed
her deHcate head against his cheek with his powerful
tender hand. He only caressed her; he did not say
anything; for what was there to say? He could not
promise to shield her from the dreaded wretchedness,
for he could see no sure means of doing so. When

h.

292 MIDDLEMARCH

he left her to go out again, he told himself that it was
ten times harder for her than for him : he had a life
away from home, and constant appeals to his activity
on behalf of others. He wished to excuse everything
in her if he could — but it was inevitable that in that
excusing mood he should think of her as if she were an
animal of another and feebler species. Nevertheless
she had mastered him.

MIDDLEMARCH S93.

CHAPTER LXVI

'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall.

Measure for Measure.

Lydgate certainly had good reason to reflect on the
service his practice did him in counteracting his personal
cares. He had no longer free energy enough for spon-
taneous research and speculative thinking, but by the
bedside of patients the direct external calls on his
judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse
needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply
that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly
men to live respectably and unhappy men to live
calmly — it was a perpetual claim on the immediate
fresh application of thought, and on the consideration
of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back
through life would say that the kindest man we have
ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that
surgeon whose fine tact, directed by deeply-informed
perception, has come to us in our need with a more
sublime beneficence than that of miracle-v/orkers.
Some of that tvvdce-blessed mercy was always with
Lydgate in his work at the Hospital or in private
houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and
sustain him under his anxieties and his sense of mental
degeneracy.

Mr Farebrother's suspicion a.s to the opiate was
true, however. Under the first galling pressure of
foreseen difficulties, and the first perception that his
marriage, if it were not to be a yoked loneliness, must
be a state of effort to go on loving without too much
care about being loved, he had once or twice tried

294 MIDDLEMARCH

a dose of opium. But he had no hereditary consti-
tutional craving after such transient escapes from the
hauntings of misery. He was strong, could drink
a great deal of wine, but did not care about it; and
when the men round him were drinking spirits, he
took sugar and water, having a contemptuous pity
even for the earliest stages of excitement from drink.
It was the same with gambling. He had looked on at
a great deal of gambling in Paris, watching it as if it
had been a disease. He was no more tempted by
such winning than he was by drink. He had said to
himself that the only winning he cared for must be
attained by a conscious process of high, difficult
combination tending towards a beneficent result.
The pov/er he longed for could not be represented by
agitated fingers clutching a heap of coin, or by the half-
barbarous, half -idiotic triumph in the eyes of a man
who sv/eeps within his arms the ventures of twenty
chapfalien companions.

But just as he had tried opium, so his thought
now began to turn upon gambhng — not with, appetite
for its excitement, but with a sort of wistful inward
gaze after that easy way of getting money, which
implied no asking and brought no responsibihty. If he
liad been in London or Paris at that time, it is probable
that such thoughts, seconded by opportunity, would
have taken him into a gambHng-house, no longer to
watch the gamblers, but to watch with them in kindred
eagerness. Repugnance would have been surmounted
by the immxcnse need to win, if chance would be kind
enough to let him. An incident which happened not
very long after that airy notion of getting aid from his
uncle had been excluded, was a strong sign of the effect
that might have followed any extant opportunity of
gambling.

The billiard-room of the Green Dragon was the
constant resort of a certain set, most of whom, like our
acquaintance Mr Bambridge, were regarded as men of

M-OL)

Page 295.

' Lydgate was playing well.'

MIDDLEMARCH 295

pleasure. It was here that poor Fred Vincy had inade
part of his memorable debt, having lost money in
betting, and been obliged to borrow o! that gay com-
I panion. It was generally known in Middlemarch that
I a good deal of money was lost and won in this way;
and the consequent repute of the Green Dragon as
' a place of dissipation naturally heightened in some
' quarters the temptation to go there. Probably its
I regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry,
; wished that there were something a Httle more tremen-
dous to keep to themselves concerning it; but they
were not a closed community, and many decent
seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into the
. billiard-room to see what was going on. Lydgate,
who had the muscular aptitude for billiards, and was
fond of the game, had once or twice in the early days
after his arrival in Middlemarch taken his turn with
the cue at the Green Dragon; but afterwards he had
no leisure for the game, and no inclination for the
1 socialities there. One evening, however, he had
occasion to seek Mr Bambridge at that resort. The
horse-dealer had engaged to get him a customer for his
remaining good horse, for which Lydgate had deter-
mined to substitute a cheap hack, hoping by this
reduction of style to get perhaps twenty pounds; and
he cared now for every small sum, as a help towards
feeding the patience of his tradesmen. To run up to
I the billiard-room, as he was passing, would save time.
I Mr Bambridge was not yet come, but would be sure
I to arrive by-and-by, said his friend Mr Horrock; and
1 Lydgate stayed, playing a game for the sake of passing
the time. That evening he had the peculiar light in
the eyes and the unusual vivacity which had been once
noticed in him by Mr Farebrother. The exceptional
fact of his presence was much noticed in the room,
where there was a good deal of Middlemarch company;
and several lookers-on, as well as some of the players,
were betting with animation. Lydgate was playing

296 MIDDLEMARCH

well, and felt confident; the bets were dropping round
him, and \'\dth a swift glancing thought of the probable
gain which might double the sum he was saving from
his horse, he began to bet on his own play, and won
again and again. Mr Bambridge had come in, but
Lydgate did not notice him. He was not only excited
^^dth his play, but visions were gleaming on him of
going the next day to Brassing, where there was
gambling on a grander scale to be had, and where, by
one powerful snatch at the devil's bait, he might
carry it off without the hook, and buy his rescue from
his daily solicit ings.

He was still v/inning when two new visitors entered.
One of them was a young Hawley, just come from his
law studies in town, and the other was Fred Vincy, who
had spent several evenings of late at this old haunt of
his. Young Hawley, an accomplished billiard-player,
brought a cool fresh hand to the cue. But Fred Vincy,
startled at seeing Lydgate, and astonished to see him
betting with an excited air, stood aside, and kept out of
the circle round the table.

Fred had been rewarding resolution by a little
laxity of late. He had been working heartily for six
months at all outdoor occupations under Mr Garth,
and by dint of severe practice had nearly mastered
the defects of his handwTiting, this practice being,
perhaps, a little the less severe that it was often carried
on in the evening at Mr Garth's under the eyes of Mary.
But the last fortnight Mary had been staying at
Lowick Parsonage with the ladies there, during Mr
Farebrother's residence in Middlemarch, where he was
carrjdng out some parochial plans; and Fred, not
seeing anything more agreeable to do, had turned into
the Green Dragon, partly to play at billiards, partly
to taste the old flavour of discourse about horses,
sport, and things in general, considered from a point
of view which was not strenuously correct. He had
not been out h^jinting once this season, had h^d no

MIDDLEMARCH 297

horse of his own to ride, and had gone from place to
place chiefly with Mr Garth in his gig, or on the sober
cob which Mr Garth could lend him. It was a little
too bad, Fred began to think, that he should be kept
in the traces with more severity than if he had been
a clerg^^man. *I will tell you what, Mistress Mary —
it will be rather harder work to learn surveying and
drawing plans than it would have been to write ser-
mons,' he had said, wishing her to appreciate what
he went through for her sake; 'and as to Hercules
and Theseus, they were nothing to me. They had
sport, and never learned to write a book-keeping hand/
And now, Mary being out of the way for a little while,
Fred, like any other strong dog who cannot sHp his
collar, had pulled up the staple of his chain and made
a small escape, not of course meaning to go fast or far.
There could be no reason why he should not play at
billiards, but he was determined not to bet. As to
money just now, Fred had in his mind the heroic
project of saving almost all of the eighty pounds that
Mr Garth offered him, and returning it, which he could
easily do by giving up all futile money-spending, since
he had a superfluous stock of clothes, and no expense
in his board. In that way he could, in one year, go
a good way towards repaying the ninety pounds of
which he had deprived Mrs Garth, unhappily at a time
when she needed that sum more than she did now.
Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that on this
evening, which was the fifth of his recent visits to the
bilHard-room, Fred had, not in his pocket, but in his
mind, the ten pounds which he meant to reserve for
himself from his half-year s salary (having before him
the pleasure of carrying thirty to Mrs Garth when Mary
was likely to be come home again) — he had those ten
pounds in his mind as a fund from which he might
risk something, if there were a chance of a good bet.
Why? Well, when sovereigns were flying about, why
shouldn't he catch a few? He would never go far

2^8 MlDDLi^MARCH

along that road again; but a ifiah likes to assure hiift-
self, and men of pleasure generally^ what he could d6
in the way of mischief if he chose, and that if he abstains
from making himself ill, or beggaring hiftiself, or talk-
ing with the utmost looseness which the narrow
limits of human capacity will allow, it is not because
he is a spooney. Fred did not eiiter into formal
reasons, which are a very artificial^ inexact way of
representing the tingling returns of old habit, and tM
caprices of young blood : but there was lurking in hita
a prophetic sense that evetiingi that when he began td
play he should also begin to bet---that he should eiijby
some punch-drinking, and iii general prepare himself
for feeling 'rather seedy' ift the niorning. It is in sUeh
indefinable movements that action often begins.

But the last thing likely to have eUtered Ffed'§
expectation was that he should see his brOther-iU-lefcw
Lydgat^— of whom he had ftevet quite dropped the
old opinion that he Was a prigj aUd tremendously
conscious of his superiority^lookirig excited arid
betting, just as he himself might have dOrie. Fred
felt a shock greater than he could quite account i&t
by the vague knowledge that Lydgate was in debt^
and that his father had refused to help him; and his
own inclination to inter iftto the play was suddenly
checked. It was a Strange reversal of attitudes i
Fred's blond face and blue eyes^ usually bright and
careless, ready to give attention to anything that held
out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarily
grave and almost embarrassea as if by the sight ol
something unfitting; while Lydgate, Who had habittl-.
ally an air of self-possessed strength, arid a certain
meditativeness that seemed to lie behirid his md§t
observant attention, was acting, watchittg, speaking
with that excited narrow consciousness which remirid^
one of an animal with fierce eyes and r^ra<:tile ClaWs.

Lydgate, by bettiflg Oti bis own strokes, had Wort
sixteen pounds; but yoUrig HaWley's Arrival had

MIDDLEMARCH 299

changed the poise of things. He made first-rate
strokes himself, and began to bet against Lydgate's
strokes, the strain of whose nerves was thus changed
from simple confidence in his own movements to
defying another person's doubt in them. The defiance
was more exciting than the confidence, but it was less
sure. He continued to bet on his own play, but began
often to fail. Still he went on, for his mind was as
utterly narrowed into that precipitous crevice of play
as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there.
Fred observed that Lydgate was losing fast, and
found himself in the new situation of puzzling his
brains to think of some device b}^ which, ^vithout being
offensive, he could withdraw^ Lydgate's attention, and
perhaps suggest to him a reason for quitting the room.
He saw that others were observing Lydgate's strange
unlikeness to himself, and it occurred to him that
merely to touch his elbow and call him aside for a
moment might rouse him from his absorption. He
could think of nothing cleverer than the daring improba-
bility of saying that he wanted to see Rosy, and
wished to know if she were at home this evening ;
and he was going desperately to carry out this weak
device, when a waiter came up to him with a message,
saying that Mr Farebrother was below, and begged to
speak with him.

Fred was surprised, not quite comfortably, but
sending word that he would be down immediately, he
went with a new impulse up to Lydgate, said, 'Can T
speak to you a moment?' and drew him aside.

'Farebrother has just sent up a message to say
that he wants to speak to me. He is below. I thought
you might like to know he was there, if you had
anything to say to him.'

Fred had simply snatched up this pretext for speak-
ing, because he could not say, 'You are losing con-
foundedly, and are making everybody stare at you :
you had better come away.' But inspiration could

300 MIDDLEMARCH

hardly have served him better. Lydgate had not
before seen that Fred was present, and his sudden
appearance with an announcement of Mr Farebrother
had the effect of a sharp concussion.

*No, no/ said Lydgate; *I have nothing particular
to say to him. But — the game is up— I must be going
■ — I came in just to see Bambridge.'

'Bambridge is over there, but he is making a row
— I don't think he's ready for business. Come down
with me to Farebrother. I expect he is going to blow
me up, and you will shield me, said Fred, with some
adroitness.

Lydgate felt shame, but could not bear to act as if
he felt it, by refusing to see Mr Farebrother; and he
went down. They merely shook hands, however, and
spoke of the frost ; and when all three had turned into
the street, the Vicar seemed quite wilHng to say goqd-
bye to Lydgate. His present purpose was clearly to
talk with Fred alone, and he said, kindly, *I disturbed
xT^ou, young gentleman, because I have some pressing
business with you. Walk with me to St Botolph's,
will you?'

It was a fine night, the sky thick with stars, and
Mr Farebrother proposed that they should make a
circuit to the old church by the London road. The
next thing he said was : —

'I thought Lydgate never went to the Green Dragon?'

'So did I,' said Fred. 'But he said that he went to
see Bambridge.'

*He was not pla57ing, then?*

Fred had not meant to tell this, but he was obliged
now to say, *Yes, he was. But I suppose it was an
accidental thing. I have never seen him there before.'

'You have been going often yourself, then, lately?'

*0h, about five or six times.'

'I think you had some good reason for giving up
the habit of going there?'

'Yes. You know all about it,' said Fred, not liking

MIDDLEMARCH 301

to be catechised in this Vvay. *I made a clean breast
to you.'

*I suppose that gives me a warrant to speak about
the matter now. It is understood between us, is it
not? — that we are on a footing of open friendship :
I have Hstened to you, and you will be willing to
hsten to me. I may take my turn in talking a little
about myself?'

'I am under the deepest obhgation to you, Mr
Farebrother,' said Fred, in a state of uncomfortable
surmise.

'I will not affect to deny that you are under some
obligation to me. But I am going to confess to you,
Fred, that I have been tempted to reverse all that by
keeping silence with you just nov/. When somebody
said to me, "Young Vincy has taken to being at the
billiard-table every night again — he won't bear the
curb long;" I was tempted to do the opposite of v.'hat
I am doing — to hold my tongue and wait while you
went down the ladder again, betting first and then '

'I have not made any bets,' said Fred, hastily.

'Glad to hear it. But I say, my prompting was to
look on and see you take the wrong turning, wear out
Garth's patience, and lose the best opportunity of
your life — the opportunity which you made some
rather difficult efiort to secure. You can guess the
feeling which raised that temptation in me — I am sure
you know it. I am sure you know that the satisfaction
of your affections stands in the way of mine.'

There was a pause. Mr Farebrother seemed to wait
for a recognition of the fact; and the emotion per-
ceptible in the tones of his fine voice gave solemnity
to his words. But no feeling could quell Fred's alarm.

'I could not be expected to give her up,' he said,
after a moment's hesitation : it was not a case for any
pretence of generosity.

'Clearly not, when her affection met yours. But
relations of this sort, even when they are of long

302 MIDDLEI^IARCH

standing, are always liable to change. I can easily
conceive that you might act in a way to loosen the tie
she feels towards you — it must be remembered that
she is only conditionally bound to you — and that in
that case, another man, who may flatter himself that
he has a hold on her regard, might succeed in winning
that firm place in her love as well as respect which you
had let slip. I can easily conceive such a result/
repeated Mr Farebrother, emphatically. 'There is
a companionship of ready sjnnpathy, which might
get the advantage even over the longest associa-
tions.'

It seemed to Fred that if Mr Farebrother had had
a beak and talons instead of his very capable tongue,
his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel. He
had a horrible conviction that behind all this hypo-
thetic statement there was a knowledge of some
actual change in Mary s feehng.

' Of course I know it might easily be all up with me/
he said, in a troubled voice. 'If she is beginning to

compare ' He broke off, not hking to betray aU

he felt, and then said, by the help of a little bitterness,
'But I thought you were friendly to me.'

'So I am; that is why we are here. But I have had
a strong disposition to be otherwise. I have said to
myself, "If there is a likehhood of that youngster
doing himself harm, why should you interfere ? Aren't
you worth as much as he is, and don't your sixteen
years over and above his, in which you have gone
rather hungry, give you more right to satisfaction
than he has? If there's a chance of his going to the
dogs, let him — perhaps you could nohow hinder it — ■
and do you take the benefit." '

There was a pause, in which Fred was seized by a
most uncomfortable chill. What was coming next?
He dreaded to hear that something had been said to
Mary — he felt as if he were listening to a threat rather
than a warning. When the Vicar began again there

MIDDLEMARCH 303

was a change in his tone like the encouraging transition
to a major key.

'But I had once meant better than that, and I am
come back to my old intention. I thought that I
could hardly secure myself in it better, Fred, than by
teUing you just what had gone on in me. And now,
do you understand me? I want you to make the
happiness of her life and your own, and if there is any
chance that a word of warning from me may turn
aside any risk to the contrary — well, I have
uttered it.'

There was a drop in the Vicar's voice when he spoke
the last words. He paused — they were standing on
a patch of green where the road diverged towards
St Botolph's, and he put out his hand, as if to imply
that the conversation was closed. Fred was moved
quite newly. Some one highly susceptible to the
contemplation of a fine act has said, that it produces
a sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and
makes one feel ready to begin a new life. A good
degree of that effect was just then present in Fred
Vincy.

*I will try to be worthy,' he said, breaking off before
he could say 'of you as well as of her.' And mean-
while Mr Farebrother had gathered the impulse to say
something more.

'You must not imagine that I beheve there is at
present any decline in her preference of you, Fred.
Set your heart at rest, that if you keep right, other
things will keep right.'

'I shall never forget what you have done,' Fred
answered. 'I can't say anything that seems worth
saying — only I will try that your goodness shall not be
thrown away.'

'That's enough. Good-bye, and God bless you.'

In that way they parted. But both of them walked
about a long while before they went out of the star-
light. Much of Fred's rumination might be summed up

304 MIDDLEMARCH

in the words, 'It certainly vrould have been a fine
thing for her to marry Farebrother — but if she loves
me best and I am a good husband?'

Perhaps Mr Farebrother' s might be concentrated
into a single shrug and one little speech. 'To think of
the part one little woman can play in the life of a man,
so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation
of heroism, and to \\in her may be a disciphne !'

MIDDLEMARCH 305

CHAPTER LXVII

Now is there civil war within the soul;
Resolve is thrust from oil the sacred tlirone
By clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand-vizier
Makes humble compact, plays the supple part
Of envoy and deft-tongued apologist
For hungry rebels.

Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-
room, and brought away no encouragement to make
a raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt unmixed
disgust with himself the next day when he had to pay
four or five pounds over and above his gains, and he
carried about with him a most unpleasant vision of the
figure he had made, not only rubbing elbows with the
men at the Green Dragon but behaving just as they did.
A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly distinguish-
able from a Philistine under the same circumstances :
the difference will chiefly be found in his subsequent
reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very disagreeable
cud in that way. His reason told him how the affair
might have been magnified into ruin by a slight change
of scenery — if it had been a gambling-house that he
had turned into, where chance could be clutched with
both hands instead of being picked up v/ith thumb
and forefinger. Nevertheless, though reason strangled
the desire to gamble, there remained the feeling that,
with an assurance of luck to the needful amount,
he would have liked to gam^ble, rather than take the
alternative which was beginning to urge itself as
inevitable.

That alternative was to apply to Mr Bulstrode.
Lydgate had so many times boasted both to himself
and others that he was totally independent of Bul-
strode, to whose plans he had lent himself solely

3o6 MIDDLEMARCH

because they enabled him to carry out his own
ideas of professional work and public benefit — he had
so constantly in their personal intercourse had his
pride sustained by the sense that he was making a
good social use of this predominating banker, whose
opinions he thought contemptible and whose motives
often seemed to him an absurd mixture of contra-
dictory impressions — that he had been creating for
himself strong ideal obstacles to the proffering of any
considerable request to him on his own account.

Still, early in March his affairs were at that pass in
which men begin to say that their oaths were delivered
in ignorance, and to perceive that the act which they
had called impossible to them is becoming manifestly
possible. With Dover's ugly security soon to be put
in force, with the proceeds of his practice immedi-
ately absorbed in paying back debts, and with the
chance, if the worst were known, of daily suppUes being
refused on credit, above all with the vision of Rosa-
mond's hopeless discontent continually haunting him,
Lydgate had begun to see that he should inevitably
bend himself to ask help from somebody or other.
At first he had considered whether he should write to
Mr Vincy; but on questioning Rosamond he found,
as he had suspected, she had already applied twice to
her father, the last time being since the disappointment
from Sir Godwin; and papa had said that Lydgate
must look out for himself. 'Papa said he had come,
with one bad year after another, to trade more and
more on borrowed capital, and had had to give up
many indulgences : he could not spare a single hun-
dred from the charges of his family. He said, let
Lydgate ask Bulstrode : they have always been hand
and glove.'

Indeed, Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion
that if he must end by asking for a free loan, his rela-
tions with Bulstrode, more at least than with any other
man, might take the shape of a claim which was not

MIDDLEMAPXH 307

purely personal. Bulstrode had indirectly helped to
cause the failure of his practice, and had also been
highly gratified by getting a medical partner in his
plans : — but who among us ever reduced himself to
the sort of dependence in which Lydgate now stood,
without trying to beUeve that he had claims which
diminished the humiliation of asking? It was true
that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of
interest in Bulstrode about the Hospital; but his
health had got worse, and showed signs of a deep-
seated nervous affection. In other respects he did not
appear to be changed : he had always been highly
polite, but Lydgate had observed in him from the
first a marked coldness about his marriage and other
private circumstances, a coldness which he had hitherto
preferred to any warmth of familiarity between them.
He deferred the intention from day to day, his habit
of acting on his conclusions being made infirm by his
repugnance to every possible conclusion and its
consequent act. He saw Mr Bulstrode often, but he
did not try to use any occasion for his private purpose.
At one moment he thought, 'I will write a letter:
I prefer that to any circuitous talk;* at another he
thought, 'No; if I were talking to him, I could make a
retreat before any signs of disinclination.'

Still the days passed and no letter was written, no
special interview sought. In his shrinking from the
humiliation of a dependent attitude towards Bul-
strode, he began to familiarise his imagination with
another step even more unlike his remembered self.
He began spontaneously to consider whether it would
be possible to carry out that puerile notion of Rosa-
mond's which had often made him angry, nam.ely
that they should quit Middlemarch without seeing
anything beyond that preface. The question came —
* Would any man buy the practice off me even now, for
as Httle as it is worth? Then the sale might happen
as a necessary preparation for going away/

3o8 MIDDLEMARCH

But against his talking this step, which he still felt
to be a contemptible relinquishment of present work,
a guilty turning aside from what v/as a real and might
be a widening channel for worthy activity, to start
again v/ithout any justified destination, there was this
obstacle, that the purchaser, if procurable at all, might
not be quickly forthcoming. And afterwards? Rosa-
mond in a poor lodging, though in the largest city or
more distant town, would not find the life that could
save her from the gloom, and save him from the
reproach of having plunged her into it. For when a
man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes, he may
stay a long while there in spite of his professional
accomplishment. In the British climate there is no
incompatibility between scientific insight and furnished
lodgings : the incompatibility is chiefly between
scientific ambition and a wife who objects to that kind
of residence.

But in the midst of his hesitation, opportunity came
to decide him. A note from Mr Bulstrode requested
Lydgate to call on him at the Bank. A hypochon-
driacal tendency had shown itself in the banker's con-
stitution of late; and a lack of sleep, which was really
only a sHght exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic
symptom, had been dwelt on by him as a sign of
threatening insanity. He wanted to consult Lydgate
without delay on that particular morning, although
he had nothing to tell beyond what he had told before.
He listened eagerly to what Lydgate had to say in
dissipation of his fears, though this too was only
repetition; and this moment in which Bulstrode was
receiving a medical opinion with a sense of comfort,
seem^ed to make the communication of a personal need
to him easier than it had been in Lydgate' s contem-
plation beforehand. He had been insisting that it
would be well for Mr Bulstrode to relax his attention
to business.

*'One sees how any mental strain, however slight,

MIDDLEMARCH 3^9

may affect a delicate frame/ said Lydgate at that
stage of the consultation when the remarks tend to
pass from the personal to the general, 'by the deep
stamp which anxiety will make for a time even on the
young and vigorous. I am naturally very strong; yet
I have been thoroughly shaken by an accumulation of
trouble.'

'I presume that a constitution in the susceptible
state in which mine at present is, would be especially
Hable to fall a victim to cholera, if it visited our dis-
trict. And since its appearance near London, we may
well besiege the Mercy-seat for our protection,' said
Mr Bulstrode, not intending to evade Lydgate' s
allusion, but really preoccupied with alarms about
himself.

'You have at all events taken your share in using
good practical precautions for the town, and that is the
best mode of asking for protection,' said Lydgate
with a strong distaste for the broken metaphor and
bad logic of the banker's rehgion, somewhat increased
by the apparent deafness of his sympathy. But his
mind had taken up its long-prepared movement
towards getting help, and was not yet arrested. He
added, 'The town has done well in the way of
cleansing, and finding appKances; and I think that
if the cholera should come, even our enemies wiU
admit that the arrangements in the Hospital are a
public good.'

'Truly,' said Mr Bulstrode, with some coldness.
'With regard to what you say, Mr Lydgate, about the
relaxation of my mental labour, I have for some time
been entertaining a purpose to that effect — a purpose
of a very decided character. I contemplate at least
a tem.porary withdrawal from the mxanagem^ent of
much business, whether benevolent or commercial.
Also I think of changing my residence for a time :
probably I shall close or let The Shrubs, and take
some place near the coast — under advice, of course.

310 MIDDLEMARCH

as to salubrity. That would be a measure which you
would recommend ? '

'Oh yes/ said Lydgate, falling backward in his chair,
with ill-repressed impatience under the banker s pale
earnest eyes and intense preoccupation with himself.

'I have for some time felt that I should open this
subject with you in relation to our Hospital/ continued
Bulstrode. 'Under the circumstances I have indi-
cated, of course I must cease to have any personal share
in the management, and it is contrary to my views
of responsibility to continue a large application of
means to an institution which I cannot watch over
and to some extent regulate. I shall therefore, in case
of my ultimate decision to leave Middlemarch, con-
sider that I withdraw other support to the New
Hospital than that which will subsist in the fact that
I chiefly supplied the expenses of building it, and have
contributed further large sums to its successful work-
ing.'

Lydgate' s thought, when Bulstrode paused accord-
ing to his wont, was, *He has perhaps been losing a
good deal of money.' This was the most plausible
explanation of a speech which had caused rather
a startling change m his expectations. He said in
reply :—

'The loss to the Hospital can hardly be made up,
I fear.'

'Hardly,' returned Bulstrode, in the same deliberate,
silvery tone; 'except by some changes of plan. The
only person who may be certainly counted on as
willing to increase her contributions is Mrs Casaubon.
I have had an interview with her on the subject, and
I have pointed out to her, as I am about to do to you,
that it will be desirable to win a more general support
to the New Hospital by a change of system.'

Another pause, but Lydgate did not speak.

'The change I mean is an amalgamation with the
Infirmary, so that the New Hospital shall be regarded

MmnLEMAliCH 3n

as a special addition to the elder institution, having the
same directing board. It will be necessary, also, that
the rnedicdl management of the tWo shall be com-
bined. In this way any difficulty as to the adequate
maintenance of our new establishment will be removed;
the benevolent interests of the town will cease to be
divided.'

Mr Bulsttode had Ibwered hi^ eyes from Lydgate's
face to the buttons of his coat as he again paused.

'No doubt that is a good device as to ways and
means,' said Lydgate, with an edge of irony in his tone.
'But I can't be expected to rejoice in it at once, since
orte of the first results will be that the other medical
tnen will upset or interrupt my methods, if it were
only because they are mine.'

'I myself, as you know, Mr Lydgate, highly Valued
the opportunity of new and independent procedure
which you have diligently employed : the original
fjlan, I confess, was one which I had much at heart,
under submission to the Divine will. But since
providential indications demand a renunciation from
me, I renounce.^

Bulstrode showed a tather exasperating ability in
this conversation, the broken metaphor and bad
logic of motive which had stirred his hearer's contempt
were quite consistent with a mode of putting the facts
which m^de it difficult for Lydgate to vent his own
indignation and disappointment. After some rapid
reflection, he Only asked : — ■

'What did Mrs CaSaubon say?*

'That was the futther statement which I wished i6
make to yoU,' said Bulstrode, who had thoroughly
ptepared his ministerial explanation. 'She is, you ate
aWare, a woman of most munificent disposition, and
happily in possession — not I pfesume of great Wealth,
but of funds which she can well spare. She has informed
me that though she had destined the chief part of
those funds to anothet purpose she is Willing to

312 MIDDLEMARCH

consider whether she can fully take my advice in
relation to the Hospital. But she wishes for ample
time to mature her thoughts on the subject, and I
have told her that there is no need for haste — that,
in fact, my own plans are not yet absolute/

Lydgate was ready to say, *If Mrs Casaubon would
take your place, there would be gain, instead of loss/
But there was still a weight on his mind which arrested
this cheerful candour. He repHed, 'I suppose, then,
that I may enter into the subject with Mrs Casaubon/

'Precisely; that is what she expressly desires. Her
decision, she says, will much depend on what you can
tell her. But not at present: she is, I beheve, just
setting out on a journey. I have her letter here,' said
Mr Bulstrode, drawing it out, and reading from it.
* "I am immediately otherwise engaged," she says.
'*I am going into Yorkshire with Sir James and Lady
Chettam; and the conclusions I come to about some
land which I am to see there may affect my power of
contributing to the Hospital." Thus, Mr Lydgate,
there is no haste necessary in this matter; but I wished
to apprise you beforehand of what may possibly occur/

Mr Bulstrode returned the letter to his side -pocket,
and changed his attitude as if his business were closed,
Lydgate, whose renewed hope about the Hospital
only made him more conscious of the facts which
poisoned his hope, felt that his effort after help, if
made at all, must be made now and vigorously.

' I am much obliged to you for giving me full notice,'
he said, with a firm intention in his tone, yet with an
interruptedness in his delivery which showed that he
spoke unwillingly. 'The highest object to me is my
profession, and I had identified the Hospital with the
best use I can at present make of my profession. But
the best use is not always the same with monetary
success. Ever5rthing which has made the Hospital
unpopular has helped with other causes — I think they
are all connected with my professional zeal — to make

MIDDLEMARCH 313

me unpopular as a practitioner. I get chiefly patients
who can't pay me. I should Uke them best, if I had
nobody to pay on my own side.' Lydgate waited a
httle, but Bulstrode only bowed, looking at him fixedly,
and he went on with the same interrupted enunciation
as if he were biting an objectionable leek.

*I have slipped into money difficulties which I can
see no way out of, unless some one who trusts me and
my future will advance me a sum without other
security. I had very little fortune left when I came
here. I have no prospects of money from my own
family. My expenses, in consequence of my marriage,
have been very much greater than I had expected.
The result at this moment is that it would take a
thousand pounds to clear me. I mean, to free me from
the risk of having all my goods sold in security of my
largest debt — as well as to pay my other debts — and
leave ^^nything to keep us a little beforehand with our
smai. income. I find that it is out of the question
that my wife's father should make such an advance.
That is why I mention my position to — to the only
other man who may be held to have some personal
connection with my prosperity or ruin.'

Lydgate hated to hear himself.. But he had spoken
now, and had spoken with unmistakable directness.
Mr Bulstrode replied without haste, but also without
hesitation.

*I am grieved, though, I confess, not surprised b}^
this information, Mr Lydgate. For my own part,
I regretted your alliance with my brother-in-law's
family, which has always been of prodigal habits,
and which has already been much indebted to me for
sustainment in its present position. My advice to
you, Mr Lydgate, would be, that instead of invoivin^^
yourself in further obHgations, and continuing a
doubtful struggle, you should simply become a bank-
rupt'

' ihat would not improve my prospect/ said Lydgate.

314 MIDDLEMARCH

rising, and speaking bitterly, 'even if it were a more
agreeable thing in itself.'

'It is always a trial,' said Mr Bulstrode; 'but trial,
my dear sir, is our portion here, and is a needed cor-
rective. I recommend you to weigh the advice I have
given.'

'Thank you,' said Lydgate, not quite knowing what
he said. 'I have occupied you too long. Good-day.'

MIDDLEMARCH 315

CHAPTER LXVIII

Wtat suit of grace hath Virtue to put on
If Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?
If Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion
Act as fair parts with ends as laudable?
Which all this mighty volume of events
The world, the universal map of deeds,
Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,
That the directest course still best succeeds.
For should not grave and leam'd Experience
That looks with the eyes of all the world beside,
And with all ages holds intelHgence,
Go safer than Deceit without a guide !

Daniel : Muscphilus.

That change of plan and shifting of interest which
Bulstrode stated or betrayed in his conversation with
Lydgate had been determined in him by some severe
experience which he had gone through since the epoch
of Mr Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognised Will
Ladislaw, and when the banker had in vain attempted
an act of restitution which might move Divine Provi-
dence to arrest painful consequences.

His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead,
would return to Middlemarch before long, had been
justified. On Christmas Eve he had reappeared at
The Shrubs. Bulstrode was at home to receive him,
and hinder his communication with the rest of the
family, but he could not altogether hinder the cir-
cumstances of the visit from compromising himself and
alarming his wife. Raffles proved more unmanageable
than he had shown himself to be in his former appear-
ances, his chronic state of mental restlessness, the
growing effect of habitual intemperance, quickly
shaking off every impression from what was said to
him. He insisted on staying in the house, and Bul-
strode. weighing two sets of evils, felt that this was

3i6 MIDDLEMARCH

at least not a worse alternative than his going into the
town. He kept him in his own room for the evening
and saw him to bed, Raffles all the w^hile amusing
him.self with the anno37ance he was causing this
decent and highly prosperous fellow-sinner, an amuse-
ment which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with
his friend's pleasure in entertaining a man who had
been serviceable to him, and who had not had all his
earnings. There was a cunning calculation under this
noisy joking — a cool resolve to extract something the
handsomer from Bulstrode as payment for release from
this new apphcation of torture. But his cunning had
a little overcast its mark.

Bulstrode was indeed m.ore tortured than the coarse
fibre of Raffles could enable him to imagine. He had
told his wife that he was simply taking care of this
wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might
otherwise injure himself; he impHed, without the
direct form of falsehood, that there was a family tie
which bound him to this care, and that there were
signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged
caution. He would himself drive the unfortunate
being away the next morning. In these hints he felt
that he was supplying Mrs Bulstrode with precautionary
information for his daughters and servants, and
accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter
the room even with food and drink. But he sat in an
agony of fear lest Raffles should be overheard in his
loud "^ and plain references to past facts — lest Mrs
Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the
door. How could he liinder her, hovv' betray his terror
by opening the door to detect her? She was a woman
of honest direct habits, and little likely to take so low
a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge; but
fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.

In this way^Raffles had pushed the torture too far,
and produced an effect which had not been in his
plan. By showing himself hopelessly unmanageable

MIDDLEMARCH 317

he had made Bulstrode feel that a strong defiance was
the only resource left. After taking Raffles to bed
that night the banker ordered his closed carriage to
be read}^ at half-past seven the next morning. At
six o'clock he had already been long dressed, and had
spent some of his wretchedness in prayer, pleading his
motives for averting the worst evil if in anything he
had used falsity and spoken what was not true before
God. For Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie wdth an
intensity disproportionate to the number of his more
indirect misdeeds. But many of these misdeeds were
like the subtle muscular movements which are not
taken account of in the consciousness, though they
bring about the end that we fix our mind on and desire.
And it is only what we are vividly conscious of that
we can vividly imagine to be seen by Omniscience.

Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles,
who was apparently in a painful dream. He stood
silent, hoping that the presence of the light would
serve to waken the sleeper gradually and gently, for
he feared some noise as the consequence of a too sudden
awakening. He had watched for a couple of minutes
or more the shudderings and pantings which seemed
likely to end in w^aking, when Raffles, v.dth a long half-
stified moan, started up and stared round him in terror,
trembhng and gasping. But he made no further noise,
and Bulstrode, setting down the candle, awaited his
recovery.

It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode,
with a cold peremptoriness of manner which he had not
before shown, said, *I came to call you thus early,
Mr Raffles, because I have ordered the carriage to be
ready at half-past seven, and intend myself to conduct
you as far as Ilsely, where you can either take the
railway or await a coach.'

Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated
him imperiously, with the words, 'Be silent, sir, and hear
what I have to say. I shall supply you with money

3i8 MIDDLEMARCH

now, and I will furnish you with a reasonable sum
from time to time, on your application to me by
letter; but if you choose to present yourself here
again, if you return to Middlemarch, if you use your
tongue in a manner injurious to me, you will have to
live on such fruits as your mahce can bring you,
without help from me. Nobody will pay you well for
blasting my name : I know the worst you can do
against me, and I shall brave it if you dare to thrust
yourself upon me again. Get up, sir, and do as I order
you, without noise, or I will send for a policeman to
take you off my premises, and you may carry your
stories into every pothouse in the town, but you shall
have no sixpence from me to pay your expenses
there.'

Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such
nervous energy : he had been deliberating on this
speech and its probable effects through a large part of
the night; and though he did not trust to its ultimately
saving him from any return of Raffles, he had concluded
that it was the best throw he could make. It suc-
ceeded in enforcing submission from the jaded man
this morning : his empoisoned system at this moment
quailed before Bulstrode' s cold, resolute bearing, and
he was taken off quietly in the carriage before the
family breakfast-time. The servants imagined him
to be a poor relation, and were not surprised that a
strict man like their master, who held his head high
in the world, should be ashamed of such a cousin and
want to get rid of him. The banker's drive of ten
miles with his hated companion was a dreary beginning
of. the Christmas day; but at the end of the drive.
Raffles had recovered his spirits, and parted in a
contentment for which there was the good reason that
the banker had given him a hundred pounds. Various
motives urged Bulstrode to this open-handedness, but
he did not himself inquire closely into all of them. As
he had stood watching Raffles in his uneasy sleep, it had

MIDDLEMARCH 319

certainly entered his mind that the man had been much
shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.

He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement
of his resolve not to be played on any more; and had
tried to penetrate Raffles with the fact that he had
shown the risks of bribing him to be quite equal to the
risks of defying him. But when, freed from his repul-
sive presence, Bulstrode returned to his quiet home,
he brought with him no confidence that he had secured
more than a respite. It was as if he had had a loathsome
dream, and could not shake off its images with their
hateful kindred of sensations — as if on all the pleasant
surroundings of his Hfe a dangerous reptile had left
his slimy traces.

Who can know how much of his most inward life is
made up of the thoughts he beHeves other men to have
about him, until that fabric of opinion is threatened
with ruin?

Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there
was a deposit of uneasy presentiment in his wife's
mind, because she carefully avoided any allusion to
it. He had been used every day to taste the flavour
of supremacy and the tribute of complete deference;
and the certainty that he was watched or measured
with a hidden suspicion of his having some discredit-
able secret, made his voice totter when he was speaking
to edification. Foreseeing, to men of Bulstrode' s
anxious temperament, is often worse than seeing; and
his imagination continually heightened the anguish of
an imminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his
defiance of Raffles did not keep the man away— and
though he prayed for this result he hardly hoped for
it — the disgrace was certain. In vain he said to him-
self that, if permitted, it would be a Divine visitation,
a chastisement, a preparation; he recoiled from the
imagined burning; and he judged that it must be more
for the Divine glory that he should escape dishonour.
That recoil had at last urged him. to make preparations

320 MIDDLEIMARCH

for quitting Middlemarch. If evil truth must be
reported of him, he would then be at a less scorching
distance from the contempt of his old neighbours;
and in a new scene, w^here his life would not have
gathered the same wide sensibility, the tormentor, if
he pursued him, would be less formidable. To leave
the place finally would, he knew, be extremely painful
to his wife, and on other grounds he would have
preferred to stay where he had struck root. Hence he
made his preparations at first in a conditional way,
wishing to leave on all sides an opening for his return
after brief absence, if any favourable intervention of
Providence should dissipate his fears. He was pre-
paring to transfer his management of the Bank, and
to give up any active control of other commercial
affairs in the neighbourhood, on the ground of his
faihng health, but without excluding his future
resumption of such work. The measure would cause
him some added expense and some diminution of
income beyond what he had already undergone from
the general depression of trade; and the Hospital
presented itself as a principal object of outlay on which
he could fairly economise.

This was the experience which had determined his
conversation with Lydgate. But at this time his
arrangements had most of them gone no farther than
a stage at which he could recall them if they proved
to be unnecessary. He continually deferred the final
steps; in the midst of his fears, like many a man who is
in danger of shipwreck or of being dashed from his
carriage by runaway horses, he had a clinging impression
that something would happen to hinder the worst,
and that to spoil his life by a late transplantation might
be over-hasty — especially since it was difficult to account
satisfactorily to his wife for the project of their
indefinite exile from the only place where she would
like to live.

Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was

MIDDLEMARCH 321

the management of the farm at Stone Court in case of
his absence; and on this as well as on all other matters
connected with any houses and land he possessed in or
about Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth.
Like every one else who had business of that sort,
he wanted to get the agent who was more anxious for
his employer's interests than his own. With regard
to Stone Court, since Bulstrode wished to retain his
hold on the stock, and to have an arrangement by
which he himself could, if he chose, resume his
favourite recreation of superintendence, Caleb had
advised him not to trust to a mere baihff, but to let
the land, stock, and implements yearly, and take a
proportionate share of the proceeds.

'May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these
terms, Mr Garth?' said Bulstrode. 'And will you
mention to me the yearly sum which would repay you
for managing these affairs which we have discussed
together ? '

Til think about it,' said Caleb, in his blunt way.
TU see how I can make it out.'

If it had not been that he had to consider Fred
Vincy's future, Mr Garth would not probably have
been glad of any addition to his work, of which his
wife was always fearing an excess for him as he grew
older. But on quitting Bulstrode after that conver-
sation, a very alluring idea occurred to him about
this said letting of Stone Court. What if Bulstrode
would agree to his placing Fred Vincy there on the
understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be respon-
sible for the management? It would be an excellent
schooHng for Fred; he might make a modest income
there, and still have time left to get knowledge by
helping in other business. He mentioned his notion
to Mrs Garth with such evident delight that she could
not bear to chill his pleasure by expressing her con-
stant fear of his undertaking too much.

'The lad would be as happy as two,' he said, throwing

M (11) , «>

322 MIDDLEMARCH

himself back in his chair, and looking radiant,
*if I could tell him it was all settled. Think Susan !
His mind had been running on that place for years
before old Featherstone died. And it would be as pretty
a turn of things as could be that he should hold the
place in a good industrious way after all — by his taking
to business. For it's hkety enough Bulstrode might let
him go on, and gradually buy the stock. He hasn't
made up his mind, I can see, whether or not he shall
settle somewhere else as a lasting thing. I never was
better pleased wdth a notion in my life. And then the
children might be married by-and-by, Susan.'

'You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred,
until you are sure that Bulstrode would agree to the
plan?' said Mrs Garth, in a tone of gentle caution.
'x\nd as to marriage, Caleb, we old people need not
help to hasten it.'

'Oh, I don't know,' said Caleb, swinging his head
aside. 'Marriage is a taming thing. Fred would want
less of my bit and bridle. However, I shall say nothing
till I know the ground Fm treading on. I shall speak
to Bulstrode again.'

He took his earliest opportunity of doing so. Bul-
strode had anything but a warm interest in his nephew
Fred Vinc}^ but he had a strong wish to secure Mr
Garth's services on many scattered points of business
at which he was sure to be a considerable loser, if they
were under less conscientious management. On that
ground he made no objection to ^Ir Garth's proposal;
and there was also another reason why he was not
sorry to give a consent which was to benefit one of
the Vincy family. It was that Mrs Bulstrode, having
heard of Lydgale's debts, had been anxious to know
whether her husband could not do something for poor
Rosamond, and had been much troubled on learning
from him that Lydgate's affairs were not easily remedi-
able, and that the wisest plan was to let them 'take
their course.' Mrs Bulstrode had then said for the first

MIDDLEMx\RCH 323

time, *I think you are always a little hard towards
my family, Nicholas. And I am sure I have no reason
to deny any of m3^ relatives. Too worldly they may
be, but no one ever had to say that the}- were not
respectable.'

'My dear Harriet,' said Mr Bulstrode, wincing under
his wife's eyes, which were filling with tears, 'I have
supplied your brother with a great deal of capital.
I cannot be expected to take care of his married
children.'

That seemed to be true, and Mrs Bulstrode's remon-
strance subsided into pity for poor Rosamond, whose
extravagant education she had always foreseen the
fruits of.

But remembering that dialogue, Mr Bulstrode felt
that when he had to talk to his wife fully about his
plan of quitting IMiddlemarch, he should be glad to
tell her that he had made an arrangement which
might be for the good of her nephew Fred. At present
he had merely mentioned to her that he thought of
shutting up The Shrubs for a few months, and taking
a house on the Southern Coast.

Hence Mr Garth got the assurance he desired,
namely, that in case of Bulstrode's departure from
Middlemarch for an indefinite time, Fred Vincy should
be allowed to have the tenancy of Stone Court on the
terms proposed.

Caleb was so elated with his hope of this 'neat
turn' being given to things, that if his self-control
had not been braced by a little affectionate
wifely scolding, he would have betrayed evervthing to
Mary, wanting 'to give the child comfort.' however,
he restrained himself, and kept in strict privacy from
Fred certain visits which he was making to Stone
Court, in order to look more thoroughly into the state
of the land and stock, and take a preliminary estimate.
He was certainly more eager in these visits than
the probable speed of events required him to be; but

324 MIDDLEMARCH

he was stimulated by a fatherly delight in occupying
his mind \dth this bit of probable happiness which he
held in store like a hidden birthday gift for Fred and
Mary.

'But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to
be a castle in the air?' said Mrs Garth.

'Well, well/ replied Caleb; 'the castle will tumble
about nobody's head.'

MIDDLEMARCH 325

CHAPTER LXIX

If thou hast heard a word, let it die with thee.

Ecclesiasticus.

ViR BuLSTRODE was Still seated in his manager's room
at the Bank, about three o'clock of the same day on
which he had received Lydgate there, when the clerk
entered to say that his horse was waiting, and also
that Mr Garth was outside and begged to speak with
him.

*By all means,' said Bulstrode; and Caleb entered.
'Pray sit down, Mr Garth,' continued the banker, in his
suavest tone. *I am glad that you arrived just in time
to find me here. I know you count your minutes.'

*0h,' said Caleb, gently with a slow swing of his
head on one side, as he seated himself and laid his hat
on the floor. He looked at the ground, leaning forward
and letting his long fingers droop between his legs,
while each finger moved in succession, as if it were
sharing some thought which filled his large, quiet
brow.

Mr Bulstrode, like every one else who knew Caleb,
was used to his slowness in beginning to speak on any
topic which he felt to be important, and rather expected
that he was about to recur to the buying of some
houses in Blindm.an's Court, for the sake of pulling
them down, as a sacrifice of property v/hich would be
v/ell repaid by the influx of air and light on that spot.
It was by propositions of this kind that Caleb was
sometimes troublesome to his employers; but he had
usually found Bulstrode ready to meet him in projects
of improvement, and they had got on well together.
When he spoke again, however, it was to say, in
rather a subdued voice : —

326 MIDDLEMARCH

*I have just come away from Stone Court, Mr
Bulstrode.'

'You found nothing wrong there, I hope,' said the
banker; 'I was there myself yesterday. Abel has done
well with the lambs this year/

'Why, yes,' said Caleb, looking up gravely, 'there is
something wrong — a stranger, who is very ill, I think.
He wants a doctor, and I came to tell you of that.
His name is Raffles.'

He saw the shock of his words passing through
Bulstrode' s frame. On this subject the banker had
thought that his fears were too constantly on the
watch to be taken by surprise; but he had been
mistaken.

'Poor wretch !' he said in a compassionate tone,
though his Hps trembled a little. 'Do you know how
he came there ? '

*I took him myself,' said Caleb quietly — 'took him
up in my gig. He had got down from the coach, and
was walking a little bej^ond the turning from the
toU-house, and I overtook him. He remembered seeing
me with you once before, at Stone Court, and he asked
me to take him on. I saw he was ill : it seemed to
me the right thing to do, to carry him under shelter.
And now I think you should lose no time in getting
advice for him.' Caleb took up his hat from the floor
as he ended, and rose slowly from his seat.

'Certainly,' said Bulstrode, whose mind was very
active at this moment. 'Perhaps you will yourself
obUge me, Mr Garth, by calHng at Mr I.ydgate's as
you pass — or stay ! he may at this hour probably be
at the Hospital. I will send my man on the horse
there with a note this instant, and then I will myself
ride to Stone Court.'

Bulstrode quickly wrote a note, and went out him-
self to give the commission to his man. When he
returned, Caleb was standing as before with one hand
on the back of the chair, holding his hat with the other.

MIDDLEMARCH 327

In Bulstrode's mind the dominant thought was,
'Perhaps Raffles only spoke to Garth of his illness.
Garth may wonder, as he must have done before, at
this disreputable fellow's claiming intimacy with me;
but he will know nothing. And he is friendly to me
— I can be of use to him.'

He longed for some confirmation of this hopeful
conjecture, but to have asked any question as to what
Raffles had said or done would have been to betray
fear.

*I am exceedingly obhged to you, Mr Garth,' he
said, in his usual tone of politeness. 'My servant will
be back in a few minutes, and I shall then go myself to
see what can be done for this unfortunate man. Per-
haps you had some other business with me? If so,
pray be seated.'

Thank you,' said Caleb, making a sHght gesture
with his right hand to waive the invitation. 'I wish
to say, Mr Bulstrode, that I must request you to put
your business into some other hands than mine. I am
obhged to you for your handsome way of meeting me
— about the letting of Stone Court, and all other busi-
ness. But I must give it up.'

A sharp certainty entered Uke a stab into Bulstrode's
soul.

'This is sudden, Mr Garth,' was all he could say at
first.

'It is,' said Caleb; 'but it is quite fixed. I must
give it up.'

He spoke with a firmness which was very gentle,
and yet he could see that Bulstrode seemed to cower
under that gentleness, his face looking dried and his
eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on
him. Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have
used no pretexts to account for his resolve, even if
they would have been of any use.

'You have been led to this, I apprehend, by some
slanders concerning me uttered by that unhappy

328 MIDDLEMARCH

creature/ said Bulstrode, anxious now to know the
utmost.

'That is true. I can't deny that I act upon what 1
heard from him.'

'You are a conscientious man, Mr Garth — a man,
I trust, who feels himself accountable to God. You
would not msh to injure me by being too ready to
believe a slander,' said Bulstrode, casting about for
pleas that might be adapted to his hearer's mind.
'That is a poor reason for giving up a connection
which I think I may say will be mutually beneficial.'

'I would injure no man if I could help it,' said Caleb;
'even if I thought God winked at it. I hope I should
have a feeling for my fellow-creature. But, sir — I am
obliged to believe that this RafHes has told me the
truth. And I can't be happy in working with you,
or profiting by you. It hurts my mind. I must beg
you to seek another agent.'

'Very well, Mr Garth. But I must at least claim to
know the worst that he has told you. I must know
what is the foul speech that I am liable to be the
victim of,' said Bulstrode, a certain amount of anger
beginning to mingle with his humihation before this
quiet man who renounced his benefits.

'That's needless,' said Caleb, waving his hand,
bowing his head slightly, and not swerving from the
tone which had in it the merciful intention to spare
this pitiable man. 'What he has said to me will never
pass from my Hps, unless something now unknown
forces it from me. If you led a harmful life for gain,
and kept others out of their rights by deceit, to get
the more for yourself, I dare say you repent — you
would like to go back, and can't : that must be a
bitter thing' — Caleb paused a moment and shook his
head — 'it is not for m^e to make your life harder to
you.'

'But you do — you do make it harder to me,' said
Bulstrode, cgnstrained into a genuine, pleading cry.

MIDDLEMARCH 329

' *You make it harder to me by turning your back on

I me.'
. 'That I'm forced to do,' said Caleb, still more gently,

; lifting up his hand, 'I am sorry, I don't judge you
and say, he is wicked, and I am righteous. God
forbid. I don't know everything. A man may do
wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, though he
can't get his hfe clear That's a bad punishment. If

lit is so with you, — well, I'm very sorry for you. But
I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go on working
with you. That's all, Mr Bulstrode. Everything

i else is buried, so far as my will goes. And I wish you

I good-day.'

'One moment, Mr Garth !' said Bulstrode, hurriedly.
'I may trust then to your solemn assurance that you

' will not repeat either to man or woman what — even

i if it have any degree of truth in it — is yet a malicious

: representation ? '

Caleb's wrath was stirred, and he said, indig-

1 nantly :

'Why should I have said it if I didn't mean it ? I am
in no fear of you. Such tales as that will never tempt

imy tongue.'

'Excuse me — I am agitated — I am the victim of
this abandoned man.'

'Stop a bit ! you have got to consider whether you
didn't help to make him worse, when you profited by
his vices.'

'You are wronging me by too readily believing him,'
said Bulstrode, oppressed, as by a nightmare, with the
inability to deny flatly \\4iat Raffles might have said;
and yet feeling it an escape that Caleb had not so
stated it to him as to ask for that flat denial.

'No,' said Caleb, hfting his hand deprecatingly;
'I am ready to believe better, when better is proved.
I rob you of no good chance. As to speaking, I hold
it a crime to expose a man's sin unless I'm clear it
must be done to save the innocent. That is my way of

330 MIDDLEMARCH

thinking, Mr Bulstrode, and what I say, I've no need
to swear. I wish you good-day.'

Some hours later, when he was at home, Caleb said
to his wife, incidentally, that he had had some little
differences with Bulstrode, and that in consequence,
he had given up all notion of taking Stone Court, and
indeed had resigned doing further business for him.

*He was disposed to interfere too much, was he?'
said Mrs Garth, imagining that her husband had been
touched on his sensitive point, and not been allowed to
do what he thought right as to materials and modes
of work.

*0h,' said Caleb, bowing his head and waving his
hand gravely. And Mrs Garth knew that this was
a sign of his not intending to speak further on the
subject.

As for Bulstrode, he had almost immediately
mounted his horse and set off for Stone Court, being
anxious to arrive there before Lydgate.

His mind was crowded with images and conjectures,
which were a language to his hopes and fears, just as
we hear tones from the vibrations which shake our
whole system. The deep humiliation with which he
had winced under Caleb Garth's knowledge of his past
and rejection of his patronage, alternated with and
almost gave way to the sense of safety in the fact that
Garth, and no other, had been the man to whom
Raffles had spoken. It seemed to him a sort of earnest
that Providence intended his rescue from worse con-
sequences; the way being thus left open for the hope
of secrecy. That Raffles should be afflicted with
illness, that he should have been led to Stone Court
rather than elsewhere — Bulstrode' s heart fluttered at
the vision of probabUities which these events conjured
up. If it should turn out that he was freed from all
danger of disgrace — if he could breathe in perfect
liberty — his life should be more consecrated than it
liad ever been before. He mentally lifted up this vow

MIDDLEMARCH 331

as if it would urge the result he longed for — he tried
to believe in the potency of that prayerful resolution
— its potency to determine death. He knew that he
ought to say, 'Thy wfd be done'; and he said it often.
But the intense desire remained that the will of God
might be the death of that hated man.

Yet when he arrived at Stone Court he could not
see the change in Raffles without a shock. But for
his pallor and feebleness, Bulstrode would have called
the change in him entirely mental. Instead of his loud
tormenting mood, he showed an intense, vague terror,
and seemed to deprecate Bulstrode' s anger, because
the money was all gone — he had been robbed — it
had half of it been taken from him. He had only come
here because he was ill and somebody was hunting him —
somebody was after him : he had told nobody any-
thing, he had kept his mouth shut. Bulstrode, not
knowing the significance of these symptoms, interpreted
this new ner\^ous susceptibility into a means of alarm-
ing Raffles into true confessions, and taxed him with
falsehood in saying that he had not told anything,
since he had just told the man who took him up in
his gig and brought him to Stone Court. Raffles denied
this \vith solemn adjurations; the fact being that the
links of consciousness were interrupted in him, and
that his minute terror-stricken narrative to Caleb
Garth had been delivered under a set of visionary
impulses which had dropped back into darkness.

Bulstrode' s heart sank again at this sign that he
could get no grasp over the wretched man's mind, and
that no word of Raffles could be trusted as to the fact
which he most wanted to know, namely, whether or
not he had really kept silence to every one in the
neighbourhood except Caleb Garth. The housekeeper
had told him without the least constraint of manner
that since Mr Garth left. Raffles had asked her for
beer, and after that had not spoken, seeming very ill.
On that side it might be concluded that there had beeu

3Z^ MIDDLEMARCH

no betrayal. Mrs Abel thought, like the servants at
The Shrubs, that the strange man belonged to the
unpleasant 'kin' who are among the troubles of the
rich; she had at first referred the kinship to Mr Rigg, and
where there was property left, the buzzing presence of
such large blue-bottles seemed natural enough. How
he could be 'kin' to Bulstrode as well was not so clear,
but Mrs Abel agreed with her husband that there was
*no kno\idng,' a proposition which had a great deal of
mental food for her, so that she shook her head over
it without further speculation.

In less than an hour Lydgate arrived. Bulstrode
met him outside the wainscoted parlour, where
Raffles was, and said : —

*I have called you in, Mr Lydgate, to an tmfortunate
man who was once in my employment, many years
ago. Afterwards he went to America, and returned
I fear to an idle dissolute life. Being destitute, he has
a claim on me. He was slightly connected with Rigg,
the former owner of this place, and in consequence
found his way here. I believe he is seriously ill :
apparently his mind is affected. I feel bound to do the
utmost for him.'

Lydgate, who had the remembrance of his last
conversation with Bustrode strongly upon him, was
not disposed to say an unnecessary word to him, and
bowed slightly in answer to this account; but just
before entering the room he turned automatically and
said, 'What is his name?' — to know names being as
much a part of the medical man's accomplishment
as of the practical pohtician's.

'Raffles, John Raffles,' said Bulstrode, who hoped
that whatever became of Raffies, Lydgate would never
know any more of him.

When he had thoroughly examined and considered
the patient, Lydgate ordered that he should go to bed,
and be kept there in as complete quiet as possible,
and then went with Bulstrode into another room.

MIDDLEMARCH 333

'It is a serious case, I apprehend/ said the banker,
before Lydgate began to speak.

'No — and yes,' said Lydgate, half dubiously. *It is
difficult to decide as to the possible effect of long-
standing complications; but the man liad a robust
constitution to begin with. I should not expect this
attack to be fatal, though of course the system is in
a ticklish state. He should be well watched and
attended to.'

'I will remain here myself,' said Bulstrode. 'Mrs
Abel and her husband are inexperienced. I can easily
remain here for the night, if you will oblige me by
taking a note for Mrs Bulstrode.'

*I should think that is hardly necessary,' said
Lydgate. 'He seems tame and terrified enough. He
might become more unmanageable. But there is a man
here — is there not?'

' I have more than once stayed here a few nights for
the sake of seclusion,' said Bulstrode, indifferently;
' I am quite disposed to do so now. Mrs Abel and her
husband can relieve or aid me, if necessary.'

'Very well. Then I need give my directions only to
you/ said Lydgate, not feeUng surprised at a little
peculiarity in Bulstrode.

'You think, then, that the case is hopeful?' said Bul-
strode, when Lydgate had ended giving his orders.

'Unless there turn out to to be further complications,
such as I have not at present detected — yes,' said
Lydgate. 'He may pass on to a worse stage; but I
should not wonder if he got better in a few days, by
adhering to the treatment I have prescribed. There
must be firmness. Remember, if he calls for liquors
of any sort, not to give them to him. In my opinion,
men in his condition are oftener killed by treatment
than by the disease. Still, new S3'mptoms may arise.
I shall come again to-morrow morning.'

After waiting for the note to be carried to Mrs
Bulstrode, Lydgate rode away, forming no conjectures.

334 MIDDLEMARCH

in the first instance, about the history of Raffles, but
rehearsing the whole argument, which had lately been
much stirred by the publication of Dr Ware's abundant
experience in America, as to the right way of treating
cases of alcoholic poisoning such as this. Lydgate,
when abroad, had already been interested in this
question : he was strongly convinced against the
prevalent practice of allowing alcohol and persistently
administering large doses of opium; and he had
repeatedl}^ acted on this conviction with a favourable
result.

'The man is in a diseased state,' he thought, 'but
there's a good deal of wear in him still. I suppose he is
an object of charity to Bulstrode. It is curious what
patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in
men's dispositions. Bulstrode seems the most unsym-
pathetic fellow I ever saw about some people, and yet
he has taken no end of trouble, and spent a great deal
of money, on benevolent objects. I suppose he has
some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares
for — he has made up his mind that it doesn't care
for me.'

This streak of bitterness came from a plenteous
source, and kept widening in the current of his thought
as he neared Lowick Gate. He had not been there
since his first interview with Bulstrode in the m.orning,
having been found at the Hospital by the banker's
messenger; and for the first time he was returning to
his home without the vision of any expedient in the
background v/hich left him a hope of raising money
enough to deliver him from the coming destitution of
everything which made his married life tolerable —
everything which saved him and Rosamond from that
bare isolation in which they would be forced to recog-
nise how little of a com.fort they could be to each
other. It was more bearable to do without tenderness
for himself than to see that his own tenderness could
make no amends for the lack of other things to her.

MIDDLEMARCH 335

The sufferings of his own pride from humiliations past
and to come were keen enough, yet they were hardly
distinguishable to himself from that more acute pain
which dominated them — the pain of foreseeing that
Rosamond would come to regard him chiefly as the
cause of disappointment and unhappiness to her. He
had never Hked the makeshifts of poverty, and they
had never before entered into his prospects for himself;
but he was beginning now to imagine how two creatures
who loved each other, and had a stock of thoughts in
common, might laugh over their shabby furniture,
and their calculations how far they could afford butter
and eggs. But the ghmpse of that poetry seemed as
far off from him as the carelessness of the golden age;
in poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough
for luxuries to look small in. He got down from his
horse in a very sad mood, and went into the house,
not expecting to be cheered except by his dinner, and
reflecting that before the evening closed it would be
wise to tell Rosamond of his application to Bulstrode
and its failure. It would be well not to lose time in
preparing her for the worst.

But his dinner waited long for him before he was able
to eat it. For on entering he found that Dover's
agent had already put a man in the house, and when
he asked v/here Mrs L3^dgate was, he was told that she
was in her bedroom. He went up and found her
stretched on the bed pale and silent, without an
answer even in her face to any word or look of his.
He sat down by the bed and leaning over her said
with almost a cry of prayer : —

'Forgive me for this misery, my poor Rosamond !
Let us only love one another.'

She looked at him silently, still with the blank
despair on her face; but then the tears began to fill
her blue eyes, and her lip trembled. The strong man
had had too much to bear that day. He let his head
fall beside hers and sobbed.

336 MIDDLEMARCH

He did not hinder her from going to her father early
in the morning — it seemed now that he ought not to
hinder her from doing as she pleased. In half an hour
she came back, and said that papa and mamma wished
her to go and stay with them while things were in this
miserable state. Papa said he could do nothing about
the debt — if he paid this, there would be half a dozen
more. She had better come back home again till
Lydgate had got a comfortable home for her. 'Do you
object, Tertius?'

'Do as you like,' said Lydgate. 'But things are not
coming to a crisis immediately. There is no hurry.'

*I should not go till to-morrow/ said Rosamond;
*I shall want to pack my clothes.'

'Oh I would wait a httle longer than to-morrow —
there is no knowing what may happen,' said Lydgate,
with bitter irony. 'I may get my neck broken, and
that may make things easier to you.'

It was Lydgate' s misfortune and Rosamond's too,
that his tenderness towards her, which was both an
emotional prompting and a well-considered resolve,
was inevitably interrupted by these outbursts of
indignation either ironical or rem.onstrant. She thought
them totally unwarranted, and the repulsion which
this exceptional severity excited in her was in danger
of making the more persistent tenderness unacceptable.

'I see you do not wish me to go,' she said, with
chill mildness; 'why can you not say so, without that
kind of violence ? I shall stay until you request me to
do otherwise.'

Lydgate said no more, but went out on his rounds.
He felt bruised and shattered, and there v/as a dark
Hne under his ej^es which Rosamond had not seen
before. She could not bear to look at him. Tertius
had a way of taking things which made them a great
deal worse for her.

MIDDLEMARCH 337

CHAPTER LXX

Our deeds still travel with us from afar,

And what we have been makes us what we are.

Bulstrode's first object after Lydgate had left Stone
Court was to examine Raffles's pockets, which he
imagined were sure to carry signs in the shape of
hotel-bills of the places he had stopped in, if he had
not told the truth in saying that he had come straight
from Liverpool because he was ill and had no money.
There were various bills crammed into his pocket-
book, but none of a later date than Christmas at any
other place, except one, which bore date that morning.
This was crumpled up with a handbill about a horse-
fair in one of his tail-pockets, and represented the cost
of three days' stay at an inn at Bilkley, where the fair
was held— a town at least forty miles from Middle-
march. The bill was heavy, and since Raffles had no
luggage with him, it seemed probable that he had left
his portmanteau behind, in payment, in order to save
money for his travelling fare; for his purse was empty,
and he had only a couple of sixpences and some loose
pence in his pockets.

Bulstrode gathered a sense of safety from these
indications that Raffles had really kept at a distance
from Middlemarch since his memorable visit at Christ-
mas. At a distance and among people who were
strangers to Bulstrode, what satisfaction could there
be to Raftles's tormenting, self-magnifying vein in
teUing old scandalous stories about a Middlemarch
banker? And what harm if he did talk? The chief
point now was to keep watch over him as long as
there was any danger of that intelligible raving, that
unaccountable impulse to tell, which seemed to have

338 MIDDLEMARCH

acted tovvards Caleb Garth; and Bulstrode felt much
anxiety lest some such impulse should come over him
at the sight of Lydgate. He sat up alone with him
through the night, only ordering the housekeeper to
lie down in her clothes, so as to be ready when he
called her, alleging his own indisposition to sleep, and
his anxiety to carry out the doctor's orders. He
did carry them out faithfull}^ although Raffles was
incessantly asking for brandy, and declaring that he
was sinking away — that the earth was sinking away
from under him. He was restless and sleepless, but
still quailing and manageable. On the offer of the food
ordered by Lydgate, which he refused, and the denial
of other things which he demanded, he seemed to con-
centrate all Ms terror on Bulstrode, imploringly depre-
cating his anger, his revenge on him by starvation,
and declaring with strong oaths that he had never
told any mortal a word against him. Even this
Bulstrode felt that he would not have liked Lydgate to
hear; but a more alarming sign of fitful alternation
in his delirium was, that in the morning t\\dUght
Raffles suddenly seemed to imagine a doctor present,
addressing him and declaring that Bulstrode wanted
to starve him to death out of revenge for telling,
when he had never told.

Bulstrode' s native imperiousness and strength of
determination served him well. This delicate-looking
man, himself nervously perturbed, found the needed
stimulus in his strenuous circum.stances, and through
that difficult night and morning, while he had the air
of an animated corpse returned to movement without
warmth, holding the mastery by its chill impassibility,
his mind was intensely at work thinking of what he
had to guard against and what would win him security.
Whatever prayers he might hft up, whatever state-
ments he might inwardly make of this man's wretched
spiritual condition, and the duty he himself was under
to submit to the punishmxcnt divinely appointed for

MIDDLEMARCH 339

him rather than to wish for evil to another — tbjrough
all this effort to condense words into a solid mental
state, there pierced and spread with irresistible vivid-
ness the images of the events he desired. And in the
train of those images came their apology. He could not
but see the death of Raffles, and see in it his own deliver-
ance. What was the removal of this wretched crea-
ture? He was impenitent — but were not public
criminals impenitent? — yet the law decided on their
fate. Should Providence in this case award death,
there was no sin in contemplating death as the desir-
able issue — if he kept his hands from hastening it —
if he scrupulously did what was prescribed. Even here
there might be a mistake : human prescriptions were
fallible things : Lydgate had said that treatment
had hastened death, — why not his own method of
treatment? But of course intention was everything
in the question of right and wrong.

And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention
separate from his desire. He inwardly declared that
he intended to obey orders. Why should he have
got into any argument about the validity of these
orders? It was only the common trick of desire —
which avails itself of any irrelevant scepticism, finding
larger room for itself in all uncertainty about effects,
in every obscurity that looks like the absence of law.
Still, he did obey the orders.

His anxieties continually glanced tov/ards Lydgate,
and his remembrance of what had taken place between
them the morning before was accompanied with
sensibilities which had not been roused at all during
the actual scene. He had then cared but httle about
Lydgate' s painful impressions with regard to the
suggested change in the Hospital, or about the dis-
position towards himself which what he held to be
his justifiable refusal of a rather exorbitant request
m-ight call forth. He recurred to the scene now with
a perception that he had probably made Lydgate his

340 MIDDLEMARCH

enemy, and with an awakened desire to propitiate
him, or rather to create in him a strong sense of per-
sonal obhgation. He regretted that he had not at
once made even an unreasonable money-sacrifice.
For in case of unpleasant suspicions or even knowledge
gathered from the raving of Raffles, Bulstrode would
have felt that he had a defence in Lydgate's mind by
having conferred a momentous benefit on him. But
the regret had perhaps come too late.

Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy
man, who had longed for years to be better than he
was — who had taken his selfish passions into discip-
hne and clad them in severe robes, so that he had
walked with them as a devout choir, till now that a
terror had risen among them, and they could chant no
longer, but threw out their common cries for safety.

It was nearly the middle of the day before Lydgate
arrived : he had meant to come earlier, but had been
detained, he said; and his shattered looks were
noticed by Bulstrode. But he immediately threw
himself into the consideration of the patient, and
inquired strictly into all that had occurred. Raffles
was worse, would take hardly any food, was persist-
ently wakeful and restlessly raving ; but still not violent.
Contrary to Bulstrode' s alarmed expectation, he took
little notice of Lydgate's presence, and continued to
talk or murmur incoherently.

'What do you think of him?' said Bulstrode, in
private.

'The symptoms are worse.'

'You are less hopeful?'

*No; I still think he may come round. Are you
going to stay here yourself?' said Lydgate, looking at
Bulstrode with an abrupt question, which made him
uneasy, though in reahty it was not due to any sus-
picious conjecture.

'Yes, I think so,' said Bulstrode, governing himself
and speaking with dehberation. 'Mrs Bulstrode is

MIDDLEMARCH 341

advised of the reasons which detain me. Mrs Abel
and her husband are not experienced enough to be
left quite alone, and this kind of responsibihty is
scarcely included in their service of me-. You have
some fresh instruction, I presume.'

The chief new instruction that Lydgate had to give
was on the administration of extremely moderate
doses of opium, in case of the sleeplessness continuing
after several hours. He had taken the precaution of
bringing opium in his pocket, and he gave mJnute
directions to Bulstrode as to the doses, and the point
at which they should cease. He insisted on the risk
of not ceasing; and repeated his order that no alcohol
should be given,

'From what I see of the case,' he ended, 'narcotism
is the only thing I should be much afraid of. He may
wear through even without much food. There's a
good deal of strength in him.'

'You look ill yourself, Ih Lydgate— a most unusual,
I may say unprecedented thing in my knowledge of
you,' said Bulstrode, showing a solicitude as unlike
his indifference the day before, as his present reckless-
ness about his own fatigue was unHke his habitual
self-cherishing anxiety. 'I fear you are harassed.'

'Yes, I am,' said Lydgate, brusquely, holding his
hat, and ready to go.

'Something new, I fear,' said Bulstrode, inquiringly.
Pray be seated.'

'No, thank you,' said Lydgate, with some hauteur.
'I mentioned to you yesterday what was the state of
my affairs. There is nothing to add, except that the
execution has since then been actually put into my
house. One can tell a good deal of trouble in a short
sentence. I will say good-morning.'

'Stay, Mr Lydgate, stay,' said Bulstrode; 'I have
been reconsidering this subject. I was yesterday taken
by surprise, and saw it superficially. Mrs Bulstrode is
anxious for her niece, and I myself should grieve at

M^

MIDDLEMARCH

a calamitous change in your position. Claims on me
are numerous, but on reconsideration, I esteem it
right that I should incur a small sacrifice rather than
leave you unaided. You said, I think, that a
thousand pounds would suffice entirely to free you
from your burdens, and enable you to recover a
firm stand?'

'Yes,' said Lydgate, a great leap of joy within him
surmounting every other feeling; 'that would pay all
my debts, and leave me a httle on hand. I could set
about economising in our way of living. And by-and-
by my practice might look up.'

'If you \d\\ wait a moment, ]\Ir Lydgate, I will draw
a cheque to that amount. I am aware that help, to
be effectual in these cases, should be thorough.'

While Bulstrode wrote, Lydgate turned to the
wdndow thinking of his home — thinking of his life
with its good start saved from frustration, its good
purposes still unbroken.

'You can give me a note of hand for this, Mr Lydgate,'
said the banker advancing towards him with the
cheque. 'And by-and-by, I hope, you may be in
circumstances gradually to repay me. Meanwhile,
I have pleasure in thinking that you \^ill be released
from further difficulty.'

'I am deeply obliged to you,' said Lydgate. 'You
have restored to me the prospect of working with some
happiness and some chance of good.'

It appeared to him a very natural movement in
Bulstrode that he should have reconsidered his refusal :
it corresponded wdth the more munificent side of his
character. But as he put his hack into a canter, that
he might get cash at the bank to pay over to Dover's
agent, there crossed his mind, wdth an unpleasant
impression, as from a dark-winged flight of evil augury
across his vision, the thought of that contrast in
himself which a few months had brought — that he
should be overjoyed at being under a strong personal

MIDDLEMARCH 343

obligation — that he should be overjoyed at getting
money for himself from Bulstrode.

The banker felt that he had done something to
nullify one cause of uneasiness, and yet he was scarcely
easier. He did not measure the quantity of diseased
motive which had made him wish for Lydgate's
goodwill, but the quantity was none the less actively
there, like an irritating agent in his blood. A man vows,
and yet will not cast away the means of breaking
his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it?
Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are
at work in him dimly, and make their way into his
imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments
when he is telling himself over again the reasons for
his vow. Raffles, recovering quickly, returning to the
free use of his odious powers — how could Bulstrode
wish for that? Raffles dead was the image that
brought release, and indirectly he prayed for that way
of release, beseeching that, if it were possible, the
rest of his days here below might be freed from the
threat of an ignominy which would break him utterly
as an instrument of God's service. Lydgate's opinion
was not on the side of promise that this prayer would
be fulfilled; and as the day advanced, Bulstrode felt
himself getting irritated at the persistent life in this
man, whom he would fain have seen sinking into the
silence of death : imperious will stirred murderous
impulses towards this brute life, over which will, by
itself, had no power. He said inwardly that he was
getting too much worn; he would not sit up with the
patient to-night, but leave him to Mrs Abel, who, if
necessary, could call her husband.

At six o'clock. Raffles, having had only fitful per-
turbed snatches of sleep, from which he waked with
fresh restlessness and perpetual cries that he was
sinking away, Bulstrode began to administer the
opium according to Lydgate's directions. At the end
of half an hour or more he called Mrs Abel and told her

344 MIDDLEMARCH

that he found himself unfit for further watching. He
must now consign the patient to her care; and he
proceeded to repeat to her Lydgate's directions as to
the quantity of each dose. Mrs Abel had not before
known anything of Lydgate's prescriptions; she had
simply prepared and brought whatever Bulstrode
ordered, and had done what he pointed out to her.
She began now to ask what else she should do besides
administering the opium.

'Nothing at present, except the offer of the soup or
the soda-water : you can come to me for further
directions. Unless there is any important change, I
shall not come into the room again to-night. You
will ask your husband for help, if necessary. I must go
to bed early.'

'You've much need, sir, I'm sure,' said Mrs Abel,
'and to take something more strengthening than what
you've done.'

Bulstrode went away now without anxiety as to
what Raffles might say in his raving, which had taken
on a muttering incoherence not likely to create any
dangerous belief. At any rate he must risk this. He
went down into the wainscoted parlour first, and
began to consider whether he would not have his
horse saddled and go home by the moonlight, and
give up caring for earthly consequences. Then he
wished that he had begged Lydgate to come again that
evening. Perhaps he might deUver a different opinion,
and think that Raffles was getting into a less hopeful
state. Should he send for Lydgate? If Raffles
were really getting worse, and slowly dying, Bul-
strode felt that he could go to bed and sleep in grati-
tude to Providence. But was he worse? Lydgate
might come and simply say that he was going on as
he expected, and predict that he would by-and-by
fall into a good sleep, and get well. What was the use
of sending for him? Bulstrode shrank from that
result. No ideas or opinions could hinder him from

MIDDLEMARCH 345

seeing the one probability to be, that Raffles recovered
would be just the same man as before, with his strength
as a tormentor renewed, obliging him to drag away
his wife to spend her years apart from her friends and
native place, carrying an alienating suspicion against
him in her heart.

He had sat an hour and a half in this conflict by the
firelight only, when a sudden thought made him rise
and light the bed-candle, which he had brought down
with him. The thought was, that he had not told
Mrs Abel when the doses of opium must cease.

He took hold of the candlestick, but stood motion-
less for a long while. She might already have given
him more than Lydgate had prescribed. But it was
excusable in him, that he should forget part of an
order, in his present wearied condition. He walked
upstairs, candle in hand, not knowing whether he
should straightway enter his own room and go to bed,
or turn to the patient's room and rectify his omission.
He paused in the passage, with his face turned towards
Raffles' s room, and he could hear him moaning and
murmuring. He was not asleep, then. Who could
know that Lydgate' s prescription would not be better
disobeyed than followed, since there was still no sleep ?

He turned into his own room. Before he had quite
undressed, Mrs Abel rapped at the door; he opened
it an inch, so that he could hear her speak low.

'If you please, sir, should I have no brandy nor
nothing to give the poor creetur? He feels sinking
away, and nothing else will he swaller — and but
little strength in it, if he did — only the opium. And
he says more and more he's sinking down through
the earth.'

To her surprise, Mr Bulstrode did not answer. A
struggle was going on within him.

'I think he must die for want of support, if he goes
on in that way. When I nursed my poor master, Mr
Robisson, I had to give him port wine and brandy

346 MIDDLEMARCH

constant, and a big glass at a time/ added j\lrs Abel,
with a touch of remonstrance in her tone.

But again Mr Bulstrode did not answer immedi-
ately, and she continued, 'It's not a time to spare
when people are at death's door, nor would you wish
it, sir, I'm sure. Else I should give him our own
bottle o' rum as we keep by us. But a sitter-up so as
you've been, and doing everything as laid in your
power '

Here a key was thrust through the inch of doorway,
and Mr Bulstrode said huskily, 'That is the key of the
wine-cooler. You will find plenty of brandy there.'

Early in the morning — about six — Mr Bulstrode
rose and spent some time in prayer. Does any one
suppose that private prayer is necessarily candid —
necessarily goes to the roots of action ? Private prayer
is inaudible speech, and speech is representative :
who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own
reflections? Bulstrode had not yet unravelled in his
thought the confused promptings of the last four-and-
twenty hours.

He listened in the passage, and could hear hard
stertorous breathing. Then he walked out in the
garden, and looked at the early rime on the grass and
fresh spring leaves. When he re-entered the house,
he felt startled at the sight of Mrs Abel.

'How is your patient — asleep, I think?' he said,
with an attempt at cheerfulness in his tone.

'He's gone ver}^ deep, sir,' said Mrs Abel. 'He went
off gradual between three and four o'clock. Would
you please to go and look at him? I thought it no
iiarm to leave him. My man's gone afield, and the
httle girl's seeing to the kettles.'

Bulstrode went up. At a glance he knew that
Raffles was not in the sleep which brings revival, but
in the sleep which streams deeper and deeper into the
gulf of death.

He looked round the room and saw a bottle with

Paae 348.

A key was thrust through the inch of doorway.'

MIDDLEMARCH 347

some brandy in it, and the almost empty opium phial.
He put the phial out of sight, and carried the brandy-
bottle downstairs with him, locking it again in the
wine-cooler.

While breakfasting he considered whether he

should ride to Middlemarch at once, or wait for Lyd-

ate's arrival. He decided to wait, and told Mrs Abel

that she might go about her work — he could watch

in the bedchamber.

As he sat there and beheld the enemy of his peace
going irrevocably into silence, he felt more at rest
than he had done for many months. His conscience
was soothed by the enfolding wing of secrecy, which
seemed just then Hke an angel sent down for his relief.
He drew out his pocket-book to re\dew various memor-
anda there as to the arrangements he had projected
and partty carried out in the prospect of quitting
Middlemarch, and considered how far he would let
them stand or recall them, now that his absence would
be brief. Some economies which he felt desirable
might still find a suitable occasion in his temporar}^
withdrawal from management, and he hoped still
that Mrs Casaubon would take a large share in the
expenses of the Hospital. In that way the moments
passed, until a change in the stertorous breathing was
marked enough to draw his attention wholly to the
bed, and forced him to think of the departing life,
which had once been subservient to his own — which
he had once been glad to find base enough for him to
act on as he would. It was his gladness then which
impelled him now to be glad that the life was at an
end.

And who could say that the death of Raffles had been
hastened? Who knew what would have saved him?

Lydgate arrived at half-past ten, in time to witness
the final pause of the breath. When he entered the
room Bulstrode observed a sudden expression in his
face, which was not so much surprise as a recognition

348 MIDDLEMARCH

that he had not judged correctly. He stood by the
bed in silence for some time, with his eyes turned on
the d^dng man, but with that subdued activity of
expression which showed that he was carrying on an
inward debate.

'When did this change begin?' said he, looking at
Bulstrode,

'I did not watch by him. last night,' said Bulstrode.
'I was overworn, and left him under Mrs Abel's care.
She said that he sank into sleep between three and
four o'clock. VvTien I came in before eight he was
nearly in this condition.'

Lydgate did not ask another question, but watched
in silence until he said, 'It's all over.'

This morning Lydgate was in a state of recovered
hope and freedom. He had set out on his work with.
all his old animation, and felt himself strong enough
to bear all the deficiences of his married life. And he
was conscious that Bulstrode had been a benefactor
to him. But he was uneasy about this case. He had
not expected it to terminate as it had done. Yet he
hardly knew how to put a question on the subject to
Bulstrode \\dthout appearing to insult him; and if he
examined the housekeeper — why, the man was dead.
There seemed to be no use implying that somebody's
ignorance or imprudence had killed him. And after
all, he himself might be wrong.

He and Bulstrode rode back to Middlemarch together,
talking of many things — chiefly cholera and the chances
of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords, and the
firm resolve of the Political Unions. Nothing was
said about Raffles, except that Bulstrode mentioned
the necessity of ha\ing a grave for him in Lowick
churchyard, and observed that, so far as he knew,
the poor man had no connections, except Rigg, whom
he had stated to be unfriendy towards him.

On returning home Lydgate had a visit from Mr
Farebrother. The Vicar had not been in the town the

MIDDLEMARCH 349

day before, but the news that there was an execution
in Lydgate's house had got to Lowick by the evening,
having been carried by Mr Spicer, shoemaker and
parish-clerk, who had it from his brother, the respect-
able bellhanger in Lowick Gate. Since that evening
when Lydgate had come down from the billiard-room
with Fred Vincy, Mr Farebrother's thoughts about
him had been rather gloomy. Playing at the Green
Dragon once or oftener might have been a trifle in
another man; but in Lydgate it was one of several
signs that he was getting unlike his former self. He
was beginning to do things for which he had formerly
even an excessive scorn. V\^hatever certain dis-
satisfactions in marriage, which some silly tinklings
of gossip had given him hints of, might have to do
with this change, Mr Farebrother felt sure that it was
chiefly connected with the debts which were being
more and more distinctly reported, and he began to
fear that any notion of Lydgate's having resources or
friends in the background must be quite illusory.
The rebuff he had met with in his first attempt to win
Lydgate's confidence, disinclined him to a second;
but this news of the execution being actually in the
house, determined the Vicar to overcome his reluctance.

Lydgate had just dismissed a poor patient, in whom
he was much interested, and he came forward to put
out his hand with an open cheerfulness which surprised
Mr Farebrother, Could this too be a proud rejection
of sympathy and help? Never mind; the sympathy
and help should be oftered.

'How are you, Lydgate? I came to see you because
I had heard something which made me anxious about
you,' said the Vicar, in the tone of a good brother,
only that there was no reproach in it. They were
both seated by this time, and Lydgate answered
immediately : —

*I think I know what you mean. You have heard
that there was an execution in the house?*

350 MIDDLEMARCH

'Yes; IS it true?'

'It was true/ said Lydgate, with an air of freedom,
as if he did not mind talking about the affair now.
'But the danger is over; the debt is paid. I am out of
my difficulties now : I shall be freed from debts, and
able, I hope, to start afresh on a better plan.'

'I am very thankful to hear it,' said the Vicar,
falHng back in his chair, and speaking with that low-
toned quickness which often follows the removal of
a load. 'I like that better than all the news in The
Times. I confess I came to you with a heavy
heart.'

'Thank you for coming,' said Lydgate, cordially.
'I can enjoy the kindness all the more because I am
happier. I have certainly been a good deal crushed.
I'm afraid I shall find the bruises still painful by-and-b}^'
he added, smiling rather sadly; 'but just now I can
only feel that the torture-screw is off.'

Mr Farebrother was silent for a mom.ent, and then
said earnestly, 'My dear fellow, let me ask you one
question. Forgive me if I take a liberty.'

'I don't believe you will ask anything that ought to
offend me.'

'Then — this is necessary to set my heart quite at
rest — 3^ou have not — have you?— in order to pay
your debts, incurred another debt which may harass
you worse hereafter?'

'No,' said Lydgate, colouring slightly. 'There is no
reason why I should not tell you — since the fact is
so — that the person to whom I am indebted is Bul-
strode. He has made me a very handsome advance —
a thousand pounds — and he can afford to wait for
repayment.'

'Well, that is generous,' said Mr Farebrother,
compelling himself to approve of the m.an whom he
disHked. His delicate feeling shrank from dwelling
even in his thought on the fact that he had always
urged Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement

MIDDLEMARCH 351

with Bulstrode. He added immediately, 'And Bul-
strode m.ust naturally feel an interest in your welfare,
after you have worked with him in a way which has
probably reduced your income instead of adding to it.
I am glad to think that he has acted accordingly.'

Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly
suppositions. They made more distinct within him
the uneasy consciousness which had shown its first
dim stirrings only a few hours before, that Bulstrode's
motives for his sudden beneficence following close upon
the chillest indifference might be merely selfish. He
let the kindly suppositions pass. He could not tell
the history of the loan, but it was more vividly present
with him than ever, as well as the fact which the
Vicar delicately ignored — that this relation of personal
indebtedness to Bulstrode was what he had once been
most resolved to avoid.

He began, instead of answering, to speak of his
projected economies, and of his having come to look
at his life from a different point of view.

*I shall set up a surgery,' he said. 'I really think
I made a mistaken effort in that respect. And if
Rosamond will not mind, I shall take an apprentice.
I don't like these things, but if one carries them out
faithfully they are not really lowering. I have had
a severe galling to begin with : that will make the
small rubs seem easy.'

Poor Lydgate ! the *if Rosamond will not mind,'
which had fallen from him involuntarih^ as part of
his thought, was a significant mark of "the yoke he
bore. But Mr Farebrother, whose hopes entered
strongly into the same current with Lydgate' s, and
who knew nothing about him that could raise now
a melancholy presentiment, left him with affectionate
congratulation.

r

352 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXI

Clown. . . . 'Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed,
you have a dehght to sit, have you not ?

Froth. I have so ; because it is an open room, and good for
winter.

Clown. Why, very well then : I hope here be truths.

Measure for Measure.

Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr Eambridge
was standing at his leisure under the large archway
leading into the yard of the Green Dragon. He was
not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only
just come out of the house, and any human figure
standing at ease under the archway in the early
afternoon was as certain to attract companionship as
a pigeon which has found something worth pecking at.
In this case there was no material object to feed upon,
but the eye of reason saw a probability of mental
sustenance in the shape of gossip. Mr Hopkins, the
meek-mannered draper opposite, was the first to act
on this inward vision, being the more ambitious of
a little mascuHne talk because his customers were
chiefly women. Mr Eambridge was rather curt to the
draper, feehng that Hopkins was of course glad to
talk to him, but that he was not going to waste much
of his talk on Hopkins. Soon, however, there was
a small cluster of more important listeners, who were
either deposited from the passers-by, or had sauntered
to the spot expressly to see if there were anything going
on at the Green Dragon; and Mr Eambridge was
finding it worth his while to say many impressive
things about the fine studs he had been seeing and the
purchases he had made on a journey in the north
from which he had just returned. Gentlemen present
were assured that when they could show him anything

MIDDLEMARCH 353

to cut out a blood mare, a bay, rising four, which was
to be seen at Doncaster if they chose to go and look
at it, Mr Bambridge would gratify them by being
shot 'from here to Hereford/ Also, a pair of blacks
which he was going to put into the break recalled
vividly to his mind a pair which he had sold to
Faulkner in '19, for a hundred guineas, and which
Faulkner had sold for a hundred and sixty two months
later — any gent who could disprove this statement
being offered the privilege of calling Mr Bambridge
by a very ugly name until the exercise made his
throat dry.

When the discourse was at this point of animation,
came up Mr Frank Hawley. He was not a man to
compromise his dignity by lounging at the Green
Pragon, but happening to pass along the High Street
and seeing Bambridge on the other side, he took some
of his long strides across to ask the horse-dealer
whether he had found the first-rate gig-horse which he
had engaged to look for. Mr Hawley was requested
to wait until he had seen a gray selected at Bilkley :
if that did not meet his wishes to a hair, Bambridge
did not know a horse when he saw it, which seemed
to be the highest conceivable unlikelihood. Mr
Hawley, standing with his back to the street, was
fixing a time for looking at the gray and seeing it
tried, when a horseman passed slowly by.

'Bulstrode !' said two or three voices at once in
a low tone, one of them, which was the draper's,
respectfully prefixing the 'Mr'; but nobody having
more intention in this interjectional naming than if
they had said 'the Riverston coach' when that vehicle
appeared in the distance. Mr Hawley gave a careless
glance round at Bulstrode's back, but as Bambridge's
eyes followed it he made a sarcastic grimace.

'By jingo ! that reminds me,' he began, lowering his
voice a little, 'I picked up something else at Bilkley
besides your gig-horse, Mr Hawley. I picked up a

M (II) M

354

MIDDLEMARCH

fine story about Bulstrode. Do you know how he
came by his fortune? Any gentleman wanting a bit
of curious information, I can give it him free of expense.
If everybody got their deserts, Bulstrode might have
had to say his prayers at Botany Bay/

'What do you mean?' said Mr Hawley, thrusting his
hands into his pockets, and pushing a little forward
under the archway. If Bulstrode should turn out to
be a rascal, Frank Hawley had a prophetic soul.

*I had it from a party who was an old chum of
Bulstrode's. I'll tell you where I first picked him up,'
said Bambridge, with a sudden gesture of his fore-
finger. 'He was at Larcher's sale, but I knew nothing
of him then — he slipped through my fingers — ^was
after Bulstrode, no doubt. He teUs me he can tap
Bulstrode to any amount, knows all his secrets.
However, be blabbed to me at Bilkley : he takes a
stiff glass. Damme if I think he meant to turn king's
evidence; but he's that sort of bragging fellow, the
bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him, tiU he'd
brag of a spavin as if it 'ud fetch money. A man
should know when to pull up.' Mr Bambridge made
this remark with an air of disgust, satisfied that
his own bragging showed a fine sense of the market-
able.

'What's the man's name? Where can he be found?'
said Mr Hawley.

'As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at
the Saracen's Head; but his name is Rafiles.'

'Raffles !' exclaimed Mr Hopkins. 'I furnished his
funeral yesterday. He was buried at Lowick. Mr
Bulstrode followed him. A very decent funeral.'

There was a strong sensation among the listeners.
Mr Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which 'brimstone'
was the mildest word, and Mr Hawley, knitting his
brows and bending his head forward, exclaimed,'
'Wliat? — where did the man die?'

'At Stone Court,' said the draper. 'The house-

MIDDLEMARCH 355

keeper said he was a relation of the master's. He
came there ill on Friday.'

'Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him/
interposed Bambridge.

'Did any doctor attend him?' said Mr Hawley.

'Yes, Mr Lydgate. Mr Bulstrode sat up with him
one night. He died the third morning.'

'Go on, Bambridge,' said Mr Hawley, insistently.
'What did this fellow say about Bulstrode?'

The group had already become larger, the town-
clerk's presence being a guarantee that something
worth Hstening to was going on there; and Mr Bam-
bridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven.
It was mainly what we know, including the fact about
Will Ladislaw, with some local colour and circum-
stajice added : it was what Bulstrode had dreaded the
betrayal of — and hoped to have buried for ever with
the corpse of Raffles — it was that haunting ghost of
his earlier life which as he rode past the archway of
the Green Dragon he was trusting that Providence
had delivered him from. Yes, Providence. He had
not confessed to himself yet that he had done anything
in the way of contrivance to this end; he had accepted
what seemed to have been offered. It was impossible
to prove that he had done anything which hastened
the departure of that man's soul.

But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through
Middlemarch like the smell of fire. Mr Frank Hawley
followed up his information by sending a clerk whom
he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext of inquiring
about hay, but really to gather all that could be
learned about Raffles and his illness from Mrs Abel.
In this way it came to his knowledge that Mr Garth
had carried the man to Stone Court in his gig; and
Mr Hawley in consequence took an opportunity of
seeing Caleb, calling at his office to ask whether he had
time to undertake an arbitration if it were required,
and then asking him incidentally about Raffles. Caleb

356 MIDDLEMARCH

was betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode
beyond the fact which he was forced to admit, that he
had given up acting for him within the last week.
Mr Hawley drew his inferences, and feeHng convinced
that Raffles had told his story to Garth, and that
Garth had given up Bulstrode's affairs in consequence,
said so a few hours later to Mr Toller. The statement
was passed on until it had quite lost the stamp of an
inference, and was taken as information coming
straight from Garth, so that even a diligent historian
might have concluded Caleb to be the chief publisher
of Bulstrode's misdemeanours.

Mr Hav/ley was not slow to perceive that there was
no handle for the law either in the revelations made by
Raffles or in the circumstances of his death. He had
himself ridden to Lowick village that he might look
at the register and talk over the whole matter with
Mr Farebrother, who was not more surprised than
the lawyer that an ugly secret should have come to
hght about Bulstrode, though he had always had
justice enough in him to hinder his antipathy from
turning into conclusions. But while they were talking
another combination was silently going forward in
Mr Farebrother' s mind, which foreshadowed what was
soon to be loudly spoken of in Middlemarch as a
necessary 'putting of two and two together.' With
the reasons which kept Bulstrode in dread of Raffles
there flashed the thought that the dread might have
something to do with his munificence towards his
medical man; and though he resisted the suggestion
that it had been consciously accepted in any way as
a bribe, he had a foreboding that this complication of
things might be of malignant effect on Lydgate's
reputation. He perceived that Mr Hawley knew
nothing at present of the sudden relief from debt, and
he himself was careful to glide away from all approaches
towards the subject.

'Well/ he said, with a deep breath, wanting to

MIDDLEMARCH 357

wind up the illimitable discussion of what might have
been, though nothing could be legally proven, 'it is
a strange story. So our mercurial Ladislaw has a
queer genealogy ! A high-spirited young lady and
a musical Polish patriot made a likely enough stock
for him to spring from, but I should never have sus-
pected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker. However,
there's no knowing what a mixture will turn out
beforehand. Some sorts of dirt serve to clarify.'

'It's just what I should have expected,' said Mr
Hawley, mounting his horse. 'Any cursed alien blood,
Jew, Corsican, or Gipsy.'

'I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley. But
he is really a disinterested, unworldly fellow/ said
Mr Farebrother, smihng.

*Ay, ay, that is 3'our Whiggish twist,' said Mr
Hawley, who had been in the habit of saying apolo-
getically that Farebrother was such a damned pleasant
good-hearted fellow you would mistake him for a Tory.

Mr Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's
attendance on Raffles in any other light than as a
piece of evidence on the side of Bulstrode. But the
news that Lydgate had all at once come not only
to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all
his debts in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering
round it conjectures and comments which gave it
new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears of
other persons besides Mr Hawley, who were not slow
to see a significant relation between this sudden com-
mand of money and Bulstrode's desire to stifle the
scandal of Raffles. That the money came from Bul-
strode would infaUibly have been guessed even if
there had been no direct evidence of it; for it had
beforehand entered into the gossip about Lydgate's
affairs, that neither his father-in-law nor his own
family would do anything for him, and direct evidence
was furnished not only by a clerk at the Bank, but by
innocent Mrs Bulstrode herself, who mentioned the

358 MIDDLEMARCH ;

loan to Mrs Plymdale, who mentioned it to her jj
daughter-in-law, of the house of Toller, who mentioned jj
it generally. The business was felt to be so public and J!
important that it required dinners to feed it, and I;
many invitations were just then issued and accepted |;
on the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode ji
and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took
their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and
all public conviviality, from the Green Dragon to
Dollop's, gathered a zest which could not be won from
the question whether the Lords would throw out the
Reform Bill.

For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous
reason or other was at the bottom of Bulstrode' s i
Hberality to Lydgate. Mr Hawley, indeed, in the first
instance, invited a select party, including the two
physicians, with Mr Toller and Mr Wrench, expressly
to hold a close discussion as to the probabihties of
Raffles' s illness, reciting to them all the particulars
which had been gathered from Mrs Abel in connection
with Lydgate's certificate, that the death was due to
delirium tremens : and the medical gentlemen, who all
stood undisturbedl}^ on the old paths in relation to
this disease, declared that they could see nothing in
these particulars which could be transformed into a
positive ground of suspicion. But the moral grounds
of suspicion remained : the strong motives Bulstrode
clearly had for wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact
that at this critical moment he had given Lydgate
the help which he must for some time have known the
need for; the disposition, moreover, to believe that
Bulstrode would be unscrupulous, and the absence of
any indisposition to believe that Lydgate might be as
easily bribed as other haughty-minded men when
they have found themselves in want of money. Even if
the money had been given merely to make him hold
his tongue about the scandal of Bulstrode's earlier
life, the fact threw an odious light on Lydgate. who had

MIDDLEMARCH 359

long been sneered at as making himself subservient to
the banker for the sake of working himself into pre-
dominance, and discrediting the elder members of
his profession. Hence, in spite of the negative as to
any direct sign of guilt in relation to the death at
Stone Court, Mr Hawley's select party broke up with
the sense that the affair had 'an ugly look.'

But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt,
which was enough to keep up much head-shaking and
biting innuendo even among substantial professional
seniors, had for the general mind all the superior power
of mystery over fact. Everybody liked better to con-
jecture how the thing was, than simply to know it;
for conjecture soon became more confident than
knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the
incompatible. Even the more definite scandal con-
cerning Bulstrode's earlier life was, for some minds,
melted into the mass of mystery, as so much lively
metal to be poured out in dialogue, and to take such
fantastic shapes as Heaven pleased.

This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by
Mrs Dollop, the spirited landlady of the Tankard in
Slaughter Lane, who had often to resist the shallow
pragmatism of customers disposed to think that their
reports from the outer world were of equal force with
what had 'come-up' in her mind. How it had been
brought to her she didn't know, but it was there before
her as if it had been scored with the chalk on the
chimney-board — 'as Bulstrode should say, his inside
was that black as if the hairs of his head knowed the
thoughts of his heart, he'd tear 'em up by the
roots.'

'That's odd,' said Mr Limp, a meditative shoemaker,
with weak eyes and a piping voice. 'Why, I read in
the Trumpet that was what the Duke of Wellington
said when he turned his coat and went over to the
Romans.'

'Very likely,' said Mrs Dollop. 'If one raskill said

k

36o MIDDLEMARCH

it, it's more reason why another should. But hypo-
crite as he's been, and holding things with that high
hand, as there was no parson i' the country good
enough for him, he was forced to take Old Harry into
his counsel, and Old Harry's been too many for him.'

'Ay, ay, he's a 'complice you can't send out o' the
country,' said Mr Crabbe the glazier, who gathered
much news and groped among it dimly. 'But by what
I can make out, there's them says Bulstrode was for
running away, for fear o' being found out, before now.'

'He'U be drove away, whether or no,' said Mr Dill,
the barber, who had just dropped in. *I shaved
Fletcher, Hawley's clerk, this morning — he's got a
bad finger — and he says they're all of one mind to
get rid of Bulstrode. Mr Thesiger is turned against
him, and wants him out of the parish. And there's
gentlemen in this town says they'd as soon dine with
a fellow from the hulks. "And a deal sooner I would,"
says Fletcher; "for what's more against one's stomach
than a man coming and making himself bad company
with his religion, and giving out as the Ten Com-
mandments are not enough for him, and all the while
he's worse than half the men at the treadmill ? "
Fletcher said so himself.'

'It'll be a bad thing for the town though, if Bui-
strode's money goes out of it,' said Mr Limp, quaver-

ingly.

*Ah, there's better folks spend their money worse,'
said a firm-voiced dyer, whose crimson hands looked
out of keeping with his good-natured face.

'But he won't keep his money, by what I can make
out,' said the glazier. 'Don't they say as there's some-
body can strip it off him? By what I can understan',
they could take every penny off him, if they Went to
lawing.'

* No such thing ! ' said the barber, who felt himself a
little above his company at Dollop's, but liked it none
the worse. 'Fletcher says it's no such thing. He says

MIDDLEMARCH 361

they might prove over and over again whose child
this young Ladislaw was, and they'd do no more than
if they proved I came out of the Fens — he couldn't
touch a penny.'

*Look you there now !' said Mrs Dollop, indignantly.
■I thank the Lord He took my children to Himself, if
that's all the law can do for the motherless. Then by
that, it's o' no use who your father and mother is.
But as to listening to what one lawyer says without
asking another — I wonder at a man 0' your cleverness,
Mr Dill. It's well known there's always two sides, if
no more; else who'd go to law, I should hke to know?
It's a poor tale, with all the law as there is up and down,
if it's no use proving whose child you are. Fletcher
may say that if he hkes, but I say, don't Fletcher me\ '

Mr Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way
at Mrs DoUop, as a woman who was more than a
match for the lawyers; being disposed to submit
to much twitting from a landlady who had a long
score against him.

*If they come to lawing, and it's true as folks say,
there's more to be looked to nor money,' said the
glazier. 'There's this poor creetur as is dead and
gone : by what I can make out, he'd seen the day
when he was a deal finer gentleman nor Bulstrode.'

'Finer gentleman ! I'll warrant him,' said Mrs
Dollop; 'and a far personabler man, by what I can
hear. As I said when Mr Baldwin, the tax-gatherer,
comes in, a-standing where you sit, and says, "Bul-
strode got all his money as he brought into this town
by thieving and swindhng," — I said, "You don't
make me no wiser, Mr Baldwin : it's set my blood
a-creeping to look at him ever sin' here he came into
Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my
head : folks don't look the colour o' the dough-tub
and stare at you as if they wanted to see into your
backbone for nothingk." That was what I said— and
Mr Baldwin can bear me witness.'

362 MIDDLEMARCH

'And in the rights of it too/ said Mr Crabbe. Tor
by what I can make out, this Raffles, as they call him,
was a lusty, fresh-coloured man as you'd wish to see,
and the best o' company — though dead he lies in
Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can
understan', there's them knows more than they
should know about how he got there.'

'I'll believe you !' said Mrs Dollop, with a touch of
scorn at Mr Crabbe' s apparent dimness. 'When a
man's been 'ticed to a lone house, and there's them
can pay for hospitals and nurses for half the country-
side choose to be sitters-up night and day, and nobody
to come near but a doctor as is known to stick at
nothingk, and as poor as he can hang together, and
after that so flush o' money as he can pay off Mr Byles
the butcher as his bill has been running on for the
best o* joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonth
— I don't want anybody to come and tell me as there's
been more going on nor the Prayer Book's got a service
for you — I don't want to stand winking and blinking
and thinking.'

Mrs Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady
accustomed to dominate her company. There was
a chorus of adhesion from the more courageous; but
Mr Limp, after taking a draught, placed his flat hands
together and pressed them hard between his knees,
looking down at them with blear-eyed contemplation,
as if the scorching power of Mrs Dollop's speech had
quite dried up and nullified his wits until they could
be brought round again by further moisture.

'Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the
Crowner?' said the dyer. 'It's been done many and
many's the time. If there's been foul play they might
find it out.'

'Not they, Mr Jonas !' said Mrs Dollop, emphatically.
*I know what doctors are. They're a deal too cunning
to be found out. And this Dr Lydgate that's been for
cutting up everybody before the breath was well out

MIDDLEMARCH 363

o' their body — ^it's plain enough what use he wanted
to make o' looking into respectable people's insides.
He knows drugs, you may be sure, as you can neither
smell nor see — neither before they're swallowed nor
after. Why, I've seen drops myself ordered by Doctor
Gambit, as is our club doctor and a good charikter,
and has brought more live children into the world nor
ever another i' Middlemarch — I say I've seen drops
myself as made no difference whether they was in the
glass or out, and yet have grij)ed 3^ou the next day.
So I'll leave your own sense to judge. Don't tell me !
AU I say is, it's a mercy they didn't take this Doctor
Lydgate on to our club. There's many a mother's
child might ha' rued it.'

The heads of this discussion at Dollop's had been
the common theme among all classes in the town, had
been carried to Lowick Parsonage on one side and to
Tipton Grange on the other, had come fuUy to the
ears of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with
sad reference to 'poor Harriet' by all Mrs Bulstrode's
friends, before Lydgate knew distinctly why people
were looking strangely at him, and before Bulstrode
himself suspected the betrayal of his secrets. He had
not been accustomed to very cordial relations with
his neighbours, and hence he could not miss the signs
of cordiality; moreover, he had been taking journeys
on business of various kinds, having now made up his
mind that he need not quit Middlemarch, and feeling
able consequently to determine on matters which he
had before left in suspense.

'We wiU make a journey to Cheltenham in the course
of a month or two,' he had said to his \vife. 'There
are great spiritual advantages to be had in that town
along with the air and the waters, and six weeks there
will be eminently refreshing to us.'

He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and
meant that his life henceforth should be more devoted
because of those later sins which he represented to

364 MIDDLEMARCH

himself as hypothetic, praying hypothetically for their
pardon : — 'if I have herein transgressed/

As to the hospital, he avoided saying anything
further to Lydgate, fearing to manifest a too sudden
change of plans immediately on the death of Raffles.
In his secret soul he believed that Lydgate suspected
his orders to have been intentionally disobeyed, and
suspecting this he must also suspect a motive. But
nothing had been betrayed to him as to the history of
Raffles, and Bulstrode was anxious not to do anything
which would give emphasis to his undefined sus-
picions. As to any certainty that a particular method
of treatment would either save or kill, Lydgate was
constantly arguing against such dogmatism; he had
no right to speak, and he had every motive for being
silent. Hence Bulstrode felt himself providentially
secured. The only incident he had strongly winced
under had been an occasional encounter with Caleb
Garth, who, however, had raised his hat with mild
gravity.

Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen
a strong determination was growing against him.

A meeting was to be held in the Town-Hall on a
sanitary question which had risen into pressing impor-
tance by the occurrence of a cholera case in the town.
Since the Act of Parliament, which had been hurrifedly
passed, authorising assessments for sanitary measures,
there had been a Board for the superintendence of
such measures appointed in Middlemarch, and much
cleansing and preparation had been concurred in by
Whigs and Tories. The question now was, whether
a piece of ground outside the tov/n should be secured as
a burial-ground by means of assessment or by private
subscription. The meeting was to be open, and almost
everybody of importance in the town was expected
to be there.

Mr Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just
before twelve o'clock he started from the Bank with

MIDDLEMARCH 365

the intention of urging the plan of private subscription.
Under the hesitation of his projects, he had for some
time kept himself in the background, and he felt that
he should this morning resume his old position as
a man of action and influence in the pubUc affairs of
the town where he expected to end his days. Among
the various persons going in the same direction, he
saw Lydgate; they joined, talked over the object of
the meeting, and entered it together.

It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier
than they. But there were still spaces left near the
head of the large central table, and they made their
way thither. Mr Farebrother sate opposite, not far
from Mr Hawley; all the medical men were there;
Mr Thesiger was in the chair, and Mr Brooke of Tipton
was on his right hand.

Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances
when he and Bulstrode took their seats.

After the business had been fully opened by the
chairman, who pointed out the advantages of pur-
chasing by subscription a piece of ground large enough
to be ultimately used as a general cemetery, Mr
Bulstrode, whose rather high-pitched but subdued and
fluent voice the town was used to at meetings of this
sort, rose and asked leave to deHver his opinion.
Lydgate could see again the peculiar interchange of
glances before Mr Hawley started up, and said in his
firm resonant voice, 'Mr Chairman, I request that
before any one dehvers his opinion on this point I may
be permitted to speak on a question of public feehng,
which not only by myself, but by many gentlemen
present, is regarded as preliminary.'

Mr Hawley' s mode of speech, even when public
decorum repressed his 'awful language,' was formidable
in its curtness and self-possession. Mr Thesiger
sanctioned the request, Mr Bulstrode sat down, and
Mr Hawley continued.

'In what I have to say, Mr Chairman, I am not

366 MIDDLEMARCH

speaking simply on my own behalf : I am speaking
with the concurrence and at the express request of
no fewer than eight of my fellow-townsmen, who
are immediately around us. It is our united sentiment
that Mr Bulstrode should be called upon — and I do
now call upon him — ^to resign pubUc positions wliich he
holds not simply as a- taxpayer, but as a gentleman
among gentlemen. There are practices and there are
acts which, o\^dng to circumstances, the law cannot
visit, though they may be worse than many things
which are legally punishable. Honest men and gentle-
men, if they don't want the company of people who
perpetrate such acts, have got to defend themselves
as they best can, and that is what I and the friends
whom I may call my chents in this affair are deter-
mined to do. I don't say that Mr Bulstrode has been
guilty of shameful acts, but I call upon him either
publicly to deny and confute the scandalous state-
ments made against him by a man now dead, and
who died in his house — the statement that he was
for many years engaged in nefarious practices, and
that he won his fortune by dishonest procedures —
or else to withdraw from positions which could only
have been allowed him as a gentleman among gentle-
men.'

All eyes in the room were turned on Mr Bulstrode,
who, since the first mention of his name, had been
going through a crisis of feeling almost too violent for
his deHcate frame to support. Lydgate, who himself
was undergoing a shock as from the terrible practical
interpretation of some faint augury, felt, nevertheless,
that his own movement of resentful hatred was checked
by that instinct of the Healer which thinks first of
bringing rescue or rehef to the sufferer, when he looked
at the shrunken misery of Bulstrode's livid face.

The quick vision that his Hfe was after all a failure,
that he was a dishonoured man, and, must quail before
the glance of those towards whom he had habitually

MIDDLEMARCH 367

assumed the attitude of a reprover — that God had
disowned him before men and left him unscreened to
the triumphant scorn of those who were glad to have
their hatred justified — the sense of utter futihty in
that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with
the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now
turned venomously upon him with the full-grown
fang of a discovered lie — all this rushed through him
like the agony of terror which fails to kill, and leaves
the ears still open to the returning wave of execration.
The sudden sense of exposure after the re-established
sense of safety came — not to the coarse organisation
of a criminal but — to the susceptible nerve of a man
whose intensest being lay in such mastery and pre-
dominance as the conditions of his life had shaped
for him.

But in that intense being lay the strength of
reaction. Through all his bodily infirmity there ran
a tenacious nerve of ambitious self-preserving will,
which had continually leaped out like a flame,
scattering all doctrinal fears, and which, even while
he sat an object of compassion for the merciful, was
beginning to stir and glow under his ashy paleness.
Before the last words were out of Mr Hawley's mouth,
Bulstrode felt that he should answer, and that his
answ^er would be a retort. He dared not get up and
say, *I am not guilty, the whole story is false' — even
if he had dared this, it would have seemed to him,
under his present keen sense of betrayal, as vain as to
pull, for covering to his nakedness, a frail rag which
would rend at every little strain.

For a few moments there was total silence, while
every man in the room was looking at Bulstrode. He
sat perfectly still, leaning hard against the back of his
chair; he could not venture to rise, and when he
began to speak he pressed his hands upon the seat on
each side of him. But his voice was perfectly audible,
though hoarser than usual, and his w^ords were

368 MIDDLEMARCH

distinctly pronounced, though he paused between each
sentence as if short of breath. He said, turning first
towards Mr Thesiger, and then looking at Mr Hawley : —

'I protest before you, sir, as a Christian minister,
against the sanction of proceedings towards me which
are dictated by virulent hatred. Those who are hostile
to me are glad to beheve any libel uttered by a loose
tongue against me. And their consciences become
strict against me. Say that the evil-speaking of which
I am to be made the victim accuses me of malpractices
^ — — * here Bulstrode's voice rose and took on a more
biting accent, till it seemed a low cry — 'who shall be
my accuser? Not men whose own lives are unchristian,
nay, scandalous — not men who themselves use low
instruments to carry out their ends — whose profession
is a tissue of chicanery — ^who have been spending their
income on their o\\ti sensual enjoyments, while I have
been devoting mine to advance the best objects with
regard to this life and the next.'

After the word chicanery there was a growing noise,
half of murmurs and half of hisses, while four persons
started up at once — Mr Hawley, Mr Toller, Mr Chichely,
and Mr Hackbutt; but Mr Hawley' s outburst was
instantaneous, and left the others behind in silence.

*If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else
to the inspection of my professional life. As to Christian
or unchristian, I repudiate your canting, palavering
Christianity; and as to the way in which I spend my
income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves
and cheat offspring of their due inheritance in order
to support religion and set myself up as a saintly Kill-
joy. I affect no niceness of conscience — I have not
found any nice standards necessary yet to measure
your actions by, sir. And I again call upon you to
enter into satisfactory explanations concerning the
scandals against you, or else to withdraw from posts
in which we at any rate decline you as a colleague. I
say, sir, we decline to co-operate with a man whose

MIDDLEMARCH 369

character is not cleared from infamous lights cast
upon it, not only by reports but by recent actions.'

'Allow me, Mr Hawley,' said the chairman ; and
Mr Hawley, still fuming, bowed half impatiently, and
sat down with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.

'Mr Bulstrode, it is not desirable, I think, to prolong
the present discussion,' said Mr Thesiger, turning to
the pallid, trembling man ; ' I must so far concur with
what has fallen from Mr Hawley in expression of a
general feeling, as to think it due to your Christian
profession that you should clear yourself, if possible,
from unhappy aspersions. I for my part should be
wiUing to give you full opportunity and hearing. But
I must say that your present attitude is painfully
inconsistent with those principles which you have
sought to identify yourself with, and for the honour
of which I am bound to care. I recommend you at
present, as your clergyman, and one who hopes for
your reinstatement in respect, to quit the room, and
avoid further hindrance to business.'

Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his
hat from the floor and slowly rose, but he grasped the
comer of the chair so totteringly that Lydgate felt
sure there was not strength enough in him to Walk
away without support. What could he do ? He could
not see a man sink close to him for want of help.
He rose and gave his arm to Bulstrode, and in that
way led him out of the room; yet this act, which might
have been one of gentle duty and pure compassion,
was at this moment unspeakably bitter to him. It
seemed as if he were putting his sign-manual to that
association of himself with Bulstrode, of which he now
saw the full meaning as it must have presented itself
to other minds. He now felt the conviction that this
man who was leaning tremblingly on his arm had
given him the thousand pounds as a brib/C, and that
somehow the treatment of Raffles had been tampered
with from an evil motive. The inferences were closely

370 MIDDLEMARCH

linked enough : the town Iniew of the loan, beheved
it to be a bribe, and believed that he took it as a bribe.

Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible
clutch of this revelation, was all the while morally
forced to take Mr Bulstrode to the Bank, send a man
off for his carriage, and wait to accompany him home.

Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched,
and fringed off into eager discussion among various
groups concerning this affair of Bulstrode — and Lydgate.

Mr Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect
hints of it, and was ver^^ uneasy that he had 'gone
a Httle too far' in countenancing Bulstrode, now got
himself fully informed, and felt some benevolent
sadness in talking to Mr Farebrother about the ugly
light in which Lydgate had come to be regarded. Mr
Farebrother was going to walk back to Lowick.

'Step into my carriage,' said Mr Brooke. *I am
going round to see Mrs Casaubon. She was to come
back from Yorkshire last night. She will Uke to see
me, you know.'

So they drove along, Mr Brooke chatting with good-
natured hope that there had not really been anything
black in Lydgate' s behaviour — a young fellow whom
he had seen to be quite above the common mark, when
he brought a letter from his uncle Sir Godwin. Mr
Farebrother said httle : he was deeply mournful :
with a keen perception of human weakness, he could
not be confident that under the pressure of humiliating
needs Lydgate had not fallen below himself.

When the carriage drove up to the gate of the
manor, Dorothea was out on the gravel and came to
greet them.

'Well, my dear,' said Mr Brooke, 'we have just
comxe from a meeting — a sanitary meeting, you know.*

'Was Mr Lydgate there?' said Dorothea, who looked
full of health and animation, and stood with her head
bare imder the gleaming April lights. 'I want to see
him and have a great consultation with him about

MIDDLEMARCH 371

the Hospital. I have engaged with Mr Bulstrode to
do so.'

*0h, my dear/ said Mr Brooke, 'we have been
hearing bad news — ^bad news, you know.'

They walked through the garden towards the
churchyard gate, Mr Farebrother wanting to go on
to the parsonage; and Dorothea heard the whole sad
story.

She hstened with deep interest, and begged to hear
twice over the facts and impressions concerning
Lydgate. After a short silence, pausing at the church-
yard gate, and addressing Mr Farebrother, she said
energetically : —

'You don't believe that Mr Lydgate is guilty of
anything base? I will not believe it. Let us find out
the truth and clear him !*

373 MIDDLEMARCH

BOOK VIII
SUNSET AND SUNRISE

CHAPTER LXXII

Full souls are double mirrors, makiag still
An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.

Dorothea's impetuous generosity, which would have
leaped at once to the vindication of Lydgate from the
suspicion of having accepted money as a bribe, under-
went a melancholy check when she came to consider
all the circumstances of the case by the hght of Mr
Farebrother's experience.

*It is a deUcate matter to touch,' he said. 'How
can we begin to inquire into it? It must be either
pubhcly by setting the magistrate and coroner to
work, or privately by questioning Lydgate. As to
the first proceeding there is no solid ground to go
upon, else Hawley would have adopted it; and as to
opening the subject with Lydgate, I confess I should
shrink from it. He would probably take it as a
deadly insult. I have more than once experienced
the difficulty of speaking to him on personal matters.
And — one should know the truth about his conduct
beforehand, to feel very confident of a good result/

'I feel convinced that his conduct has not been
guilty' : I believe that people are almost always better
than their neighbours think they are,' said Dorothea,
Some of her intensest experience in the last two years
had set her mind strongly in opposition to any un-
favourable construction of others; and for the first

MIDDLEMARCH 373

time she felt rather discontented with Mr Farebrother.
She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences,
instead of an ardent faith in efforts of justice and mercy,
which would conquer by their emotional force. Two
days afterwards, he was dining at the Manor with her
uncle and the Chettams, and when the dessert was
standing uneaten, the servants were out of the room,
and Mr Brooke was nodding in a nap, she returned to
the subject with renewed vivacity.

'Mr Lydgate would understand that if his friends
hear a calumny about him their first wish must be to
justify him. What do we live for, if it is not to make
life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent
to the troubles of a man v/ho advised me in my trouble,
and attended me in my illness.'

Dorothea's tone and manner were not more
energetic than they had been when she was at the
head of her uncle's table nearly three years before,
and her experience since had given her more right to
express a decided opinion. But Sir James Chettam
was no longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor :
he was the anxious brother-in-law, with a devout
admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm
lest she should fall under some new illusion almost
as bad as marrying Casaubon. He smiled much less;
when he said 'Exactly' it was more often an intro-
duction to a dissentient opinion than in those sub-
missive bachelor days; and Dorothea found to her
surprise that she had to resolve not to be afraid of him
— all the more because he was really her best friend.
He disagreed with her now.

'But, Dorothea,' he said, remonstrantly, 'you can't
undertake to manage a man's life for him in that way.
Lydgate must know — at least he will soon come to
know how he stands. If he can clear himself, he will.
He must act for himself.'

'I think his friends must v/ait till they find an
opportunity,' added Mr Farebrother. 'It is possible

374 MIDDLEMARCH

— I have often felt so much weakness in myself that
I can conceive even a man of honourable disposition,
such as I have always believed Lydgate to be, succumb-
ing to such a temptation as that of accepting money
which was offered more or less indirectly as a bribe to
ensure his silence about scandalous facts long gone b}-,
I say, I can conceive this, if he were under the pres-
sure of hard circumstances — if he had been harassed
as I feel sure Lydgate has been. I would not believe
anything worse of him except imder stringent proof.
But there is the terrible Nemesis following on some
errors that it is always possible for those who like it
to interpret them into a crime : there is no proof in
favour of the man outside his own consciousness and
assertion.'

*0h, how cruel !' said Dorothea, clasping her hands.
'And would you not hke to be the one person who
believed in that man's innocence, if the rest of the
world belied him? Besides, there is a man's character
beforehand to speak for him.'

'But, my dear Mrs Casaubon,' said Mr Farebrother,
smiling gently at her ardour, 'character is not cut in
marble — ^it is not something solid and unalterable. It
is something living and changing, and may become
diseased as our bodies do.'

'Then it may be rescued and healed,' said Dorothea.
*I should not be afraid of asking Mr Lydgate to tell
me the truth, that I might help him. Why should I
be afraid? Now that I am not to have the land,
James, I might do as Mr Bulstrode proposed, and take
his place in providing for the hospital; and I have to
consult Mr Lydgate, to know thoroughly what are
the prospects of doing good by keeping up the present
plans. There is the best opportunity in the world for
me to ask for his confidence; and he would be able
to tell me things which might make all the circumstances
clear. Then we would all stand by him and bring him
out of hjs trouble. People glorify all sorts of bravery

MIDDLEMARCH 375

except the bravery they might show on behalf of their
nearest neighbours.' Dorothea's eyes had a moist
brightness in them, and the changed tones of her voice
roused her uncle, who began to listen.

*It is true that a woman may venture on some
efforts of sympathy which would hardly succeed if we
men undertook them,' said Mr Farebrother, almost
converted by Dorothea's ardour.

* Surely, a woman is bound to be cautious and listen
to those who know the world better than she does,'
said Sir James, with his little frown. 'Whatever you
do in the end, Dorothea, you should really keep back
at present, and not volunteer any meddling with this
Bulstrode business. We don't know yet what may turn
up. You must agree with me?' he ended, looking at
Mr Farebrother.

*I do think it would be better to wait,' said the
latter.

'Yes, yes, my dear,' said Mr Brooke, not quite
knowing at what point the discussion had arrived,
but coming up to it with a contribution which was
generally appropriate. 'It is easy to go too far, you
know. You must not let your ideas nm away with
you. And as to being in a hurry to put money into
schemes — it won't do, you know. Garth has drawn
me in uncommonly with repairs, draining, that sort of
thing : I'm uncommonly out of pocket with one
thing or another. I must pull up. As for you, Chettam.,
you are spending a fortune on those oak fences round
your demesne.'

Dorothea, submitting uneasily to this discourage-
ment, went with Ceha into the library, which was her
usual drawing-room.

'Now, Dodo, do listen to what James says,' said
Ceha, 'else you will be getting into a scrape. You
always did, and you always will, when you set about
doing as you please. And I think it is a mercy now
after all that you have got James to think for you.

H.

375 MIDDLEMARCH

He lets you have your plans, only he hinders you from
being taken in. And that is the good of having a
brother instead of a husband. A husband would
not let you have your plans/

* As if I wanted a husband !' said Dorothea. 'I only
want not to have my feelings checked at every turn.'
Mrs Casaubon was stiU undisciplined enough to burst
into angry tears.

'Now, really, Dodo,' said CeHa, with rather a deeper
guttural than usual, 'you are contradictory : first one
thing and then another. You used to submit to Mr
Casaubon quite shamefully : I think you would have
given up ever coming to see me if he had asked you.'

*0f course I submitted to him, because it was my
duty; it was my feehng for him/ said Dorothea,
looking through the prism of her tears,

'Then why can't you think it your duty to submit
a little to what James wishes?' said Celia, with a sense
of stringency in her argument. 'Because he only
wishes what is for your own good. And. of course,
men know best about everything, e^ceept what women
know better.'

Dorothea laughed and forgot her tears.

'Well, I mean about babies and those things,'
exclaimed CeHa. * I should not give up to James when
I knew he was wrong, ^ you used to do to Mr Casaubon/

MIDDLEMARCH 377

CHAPTER LXXIII

Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
May visit you and toe.

When Lydgate had allayed Mrs Bulstrode's anxiety by
telling her that her husband had been seized with
faintness at the meeting, but that he trusted soon to
see him better and would call again the next day,
unless she sent for him earlier, he went directly home,
got on his horse, and rode three miles out of the town
for the sake of being out of reach.

He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable
as if raging under the pain of stings : he was ready to
curse the day on which he had come to Middlemarch.
Everything that had happened to him there seemed
a mere preparation for this hateful fatality, which had
come as a bhght on his honourable ambition, and must
make even people who had only vulgar standards
regard his reputation as irrevocably damaged. In such
moments a man can hardly escape being unloving.
Lydgate thought of himself as the sufferer, and of
others as the agents who had injured his lot. He had
meant everything to turn out differently; and others
had thrust themselves into his Hfe and thwarted his
purposes. His marriage seemed an unmitigated
calamity; and he was afraid of going to Rosamond
before he had vented himself in this soHtary rage, lest
the mere sight of her should exasperate him and make
him behave unwarrantably. There are episodes in
most men's hves in which their highest qualities can
only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill
their inward \asion : Lydgate's tender-heartedness
was present just then only as a dread lest he should
offend against it, not as an emotion that swayed him

378 MIDDLEMARCH

to tenderness. For he was very miserable. Onl\'
those who know the supremacy of the intellectual
life — the life which has a seed of ennobhng thought
and purpose \dthin it — can understand the grief of
one who falls from that serene activity into the absorb-
ing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

How was he to Hve on without vindicating himself
among people who suspected him of baseness? How
could he go silei-^tly away from IVIiddlemarch as if he
were retreating before a just condemnation? And
yet how was he to set about vindicating himself?

For that scene at the meeting, which he had just
witnessed, although it had told him no particulars,
had been enough to make his own situation thoroughly
clear to him. Bulstrode had been in dread of scan-
dalous disclosures on the part of Raffles. Lydgate
could now construct all the probabihties of the case.
'He was afraid of some betrayal in my hearing : all
he wanted was to bind me to him by a strong obUga-
tion : that was why he passed on a sudden from hard-
ness to hberaUty. And he may have tampered with
the patient — he may have disobeyed my orders. I
fear he did. But whether he did or not, the world
beheves that he somehow or other poisoned the man
and that I winked at the crime, if I didn't help in it.
And yet — and yet he may not be guilty of the last
offence; and it is just possible that the change towards
me may have been a genuine relenting — the effect of
second " thoughts such as he alleged. What we call
the "just possible" is sometimes true and the thing
we find it easier to beHeve is grossly false. In his
last deahng with this man Bulstrode may have kept
his hands pure, in spite of my suspicion to the con-
trary.'

There was a benumbing cruelty in his position.
Even if he renounced every other consideration than
that of justifying himself — if he m.et shrugs, cold
glances, and avoidance as an accusation, and made

MIDDLEMARCH 379

a public statement of all the facts as he knew them,
who would be convinced? It would be playing the
part of a fool to offer his own testimony on behalf of
himself, and say, 'I did not take the money as a bribe.'
The circumstances would always be stronger than
his assertion. And besides, to come forward and tell
everything about himself must include declarations
about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions
of others against him. He must tell that he had not
known of Raffles' s existence when he first mentioned
his passing need of money to Bulstrode, and that he
took the money innocently as a result of that com-
munication, not knowing that a new motive for the
loan might have arisen on his being called in to this
man. And after all, the suspicion of Bulstrode's
motives might be unjust.

But then came the question whether he should
have acted in precisely the same way if he had not taken
the money? Certainty, if Raffles had continued ahve
and susceptible of further treatment when he arrived,
and he had then imagined any disobedience to his
orders on the part of Bulstrode, he would have made
a strict inquiry, and if liis conjecture had been verified
he would have thrown up the case, in spite of his
recent heavy obHgation. But if he had not received
any money — if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold
recommendation of bankruptcy — would he, Lydgate,
have abstained from all inquir^^ even on finding the
man dead? — would the shrinking from an insult to
Bulstrode — would the dubiousness of all medical treat-
ment and the argument that his own treatment would
pass for the wrong with most members of his pro-
fession— have had just the same force or significance
with him?

That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate' s conscious-
ness while he was reviewing the facts and resisting all
reproach. If he had been independent, this matter
of a patient's treatment and the distinct rule that he

^8o MIDDLEMARCH

must do or see done that which he beHeved best for
the life committed to him, would have been the point
on which he would have been the sturdiest. As it was,
he had rested in the consideration that disobedience
to his orders, however it might have arisen, could not
be considered a crime, that in the dominant opinion
obedience to his orders was just as likely to be fatal,
and that the affair was simply one of etiquette.
Whereas, again and again, in has time of freedom, he
had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt
into moral doubt and had said— 'the purest experi-
ment in treatment may still be conscientious : my
business is to take care of life, and to do the best I
can think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous
than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but
the very breath of science is a contest with mistake,
and must keep the conscience alive.' Alas ! the
scientific conscience had got into the debasing company
of money obhgation and selfish respects.

'Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch
who would question himself as I do?' said poor
Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of rebellion against
the oppression of his lot. 'And yet they will aU feel
warranted in making a wide space between me and
them, as if I were a leper ! My practice and my repu-
tation are utterly damned — I can see that. Even if
I could be cleared by valid evidence, it would make
little difference to the blessed world here. I have been
set down as tainted and should be cheapened to them
all the same.'

Already there had been abimdant signs which had
hitherto puzzled him, that just when he had been
paying off his debts and getting cheerfully on his feet,
the townsmen were avoiding him or looking strangely
at him, and in two instances it came to his knowledge
that patients of his had called in another practitioner.
The reasons were too plain now. The general black-
balling had begun.

MIDDLEMARCH 381

No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the
sense of a hopeless misconstruction easily turned into
a dogged resistance. The scowl which occasionally
show^ed itself on his square brow was not a meaningless
accident. Already when he was re-entering the town
after that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain,
he was setting his mind on remaining in Middlemarch
in spite of the worst that could be done against him.
He would not retreat before calumny, as if he sub-
mitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no
act of his should show that he was afraid. It belonged
to the generosity as well as defiant force of his nature
that he resolved not to shrink from sho\\dng to the
full his sense of obHgation to Bulstrode. It was true that
the association with this man had been fatal to him
— true that if he had had the thousand pounds still in
his hands with all his debts unpaid he would have
returned the money to Bulstrode, and taken beggary
rather than the rescue which had been sullied with the
suspicion of a bribe (for, remember, he was one of the
proudest among the sons of men) — nevertheless, he
would not turn away from this crushed fellow-mortal
whose aid he had used, and make a pitiful effort to
get acquittal for himself by howling against another.
*I shall do as I think right, and explain to nobody.

They will try to starve me out, but ' he was going

on with an obstinate resolve, but he was getting near
home, and the thought of Rosamond urged itself
again into that chief place from which it had been
thrust by the agonised struggles of wounded honour
and pride.

How would Rosamond take it all? Here was
another weight of chain to drag, and poor Lyd^ate
was in a bad mood for bearing her dumb mastery.
He had no impulse to tell her the trouble which must
soon be common to them both. He preferred waiting
for the incidental disclosure which events must soon
bring about.

382 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXIV

Jlercifully grant that we may grow aged together.
Book of Tobit : Marriage Prayer.

In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant
that the town held a bad opinion of her husband.
No feminine intimate might carry her friendship so
far as to make a plain statement to the wife of the
impleasant fact known or believed about her hus-
band; but when a woman with her thoughts much at
leisure got them suddenly employed on something
grievously disadvantageous to her neighbours, various
moral impulses were called into play which tended
to stimulate utterance. Candour was one. To be
candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use
an early opportunity of letting your friends know that
you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity,
their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour
never waited to be asked for its opinion. Then, again,
there was the love of truth — a wide phrase, but mean-
ing in this relation, a lively objection to seeing a wife
look happier than her husband's character warranted,
or manifest too much satisfaction in her lot : the poor
thing should have some hint given her that if she knew
the truth she would have less complacency in her
bonnet, and in Hght dishes for a supper-party.
Stronger than all, there was the regard for a friend's
moral improvement, sometimes called her soul,
which was likely to be benefited by remarks tending
to gloom, uttered with the accompaniment of pensive
staring at the furniture and a manner implying that
the speaker would not tell what was on her mind,
from regard to the feelings of her hearer. On the whole,
one might say that an ardent charity was at work

MIDDLEMARCH 383

setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbour unhappy
for her good.

There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose
matrimonial misfortunes would in different ways be
likely to call forth more of this moral activity than
Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs Bulstrode was
not an object of disUke, and had never consciously
injured any human being. Men had always thought
her a handsome comfortable woman, and had reckoned
it among the signs of Bulstrode' s hypocrisy that he
had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly
and melancholy person suited to his low esteem for
earthly pleasure. When the scandal about her hus-
band was disclosed they remarked of her — *Ah, poor
woman ! She's as honest as the day — she never
suspected anything wrong in him, you may depend
on it.' Women, who were intimate with her, talked
together much of 'poor Harriet,' imagined what her
feelings must be when she came to know everything,
and conjecture how much she had already come to know.
There was no spiteful disposition towards her; rather,
there was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what
it would be well for her to feel and do under the circum-
stances, which of course kept the imagination occupied
with her character and history from the times when she
was Harriet Vincy till now. With the review of Mrs
Bulstrode and her position it was inevitable to associate
Rosamond, whose prospects were under the same blight
with her aunt's. Rosamond was more severely
criticised and less pitied, though she too, as one of
the good old Vincy family who had always been known
in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage
with an interloper. The Vincys had their weaknesses,
but then they lay on the surface : there was never
anything bad to be 'found out' concerning them. Mrs
Biilstrode was vindicated from any resemblance to her
husband. Harriet's faults were her own.
' 'She has always been showy/ said Mrs Hackbutt,

3^4 MIDDLEMARCH

making tea for a small party, 'though she has got mto
the way of putting her rehgion forward, to conform
to her husband; she has tried to hold her head up
above Middlemarch by making it known that she
invites clergymen and Heaven-lmows-who from River-
ston and those places.'

*We can hardly blame her for that,' said Mrs
Sprague; 'because few of the best people in the town
cared to associate with Bulstrode, and she must have
somebody to sit down at her table.'

'Mr Thesiger has always countenanced him,' said
Mrs Hackbutt. 'I think he must be sorry now.'

'But he was never fond of him in his heart — that
every one knows,' said Mrs Tom Toller. 'Mr Thesiger
never goes into extremes. He keeps to the truth in
what is evangelical. It is only clergymen like Mr
Tyke, who want to use Dissenting hymn-books and
that low kind of rehgion, who ever found Bulstrode to
their taste.'

'I understand, Mr Tyke is in great distress about him/
said Mrs Hackbutt. 'And well he may be : they say
the Bulstrodes have half kept the Tyke family.'

'And of course it is a discredit to his doctrines,'
said Mrs Sprague, who was elderly, and old-fashioned
in her opinions. 'People will not make a boast of
being methodistical in Middlemarch for a good while
to come.'

'I think we must not set down people's bad actions
to their religion,' said falcon-faced Mrs Plymdale,
who had been hstening hitherto.

'Oh, my dear, we are forgetting,' said Mrs Sprague.
'We ought not to be talking of this before you.'

'I am sure I have no reason to be partial,' said Mrs
Plymdale, colouring. 'It's true Mr Plymdale has
9,lways been on good terms with Mr Bulstrode, and
Harriet Vincy was my friend long before she married
him. But I have always kept my own opinions and
tpl4 her where she w.as wrong, poor thing. Still, in

MIDDLEMARCH 385

point of religion, I must say, Mr Bulstrode might have
done what he has, and worse — and yet have been a man
of no reHgion. I don't say that there has not been
a httle too much of that — I hke moderation myself.
But truth is truth. The men tried at the assizes are
not at all over-religious, I suppose.'

'Well,' said Mrs Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, 'all I
can say is, that I think she ought to separate from him.'

'I can't say that,' said Mrs Sprague. 'She took him
for better or worse, you know.'

'But "worse" can never mean finding out that
your husband is fit for Newgate,' said Mrs Hackbutt.
'Fancy living with such a man ! I should expect to be
poisoned.'

'Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime
if such men are to be taken care of and waited on by
good wives,' said Mrs Tom Toller.

'And a good wife poor Harriet has been,' said Mrs
Plymdale. 'She thinks her husband the first of men.
It's true he has never denied her anything.'

'Well, we shall see what she will do,' said Mri
Hackbutt. 'I suppose she knows nothing yet, poor
creature. I do hope and trust I shall not see her, for
I should be frightened to death lest I should say
anything about her husband. Do you think any hint
has reached her?'

'I should hardly think so,' said Mrs Tom Toller.
We hear that he is ill, and has never stirred out of the
house since the meeting on Thursday; but she was
with her girls at church yesterday, and they had new
Tuscan bonnets. Her own had a feather in it. I have
never seen that her religion made any difference in her
dress.'

'She wears very neat patterns always,' said Mrs
Plymdale, a little stung. 'And that feather I know
she got dyed a pale lavender on purpose to be con-
sistent. I must say it of Harriet that she wishes to do
• right.'

M. ai) M

386 MIDDLEMARCH

*As to her knowing what has happened, it can't be
kept from her long/ said Mrs Hackbutt. 'The Vincys
know, for Mr Vincy was at the meeting. It will be
a great blow to him. There is his daughter as well as
his sister.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Mrs Sprague. 'Nobody supposes
that Mr L^^dgate can go on holding up his head in
Middlemarch, things look so black about the thousand
pounds he took just at that man's death. It really
makes one shudder.'

'Pride must have a fall,' said Mrs Hackbutt.

*I am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as
I am for her aunt,' said Mrs Plymdale. 'She needed
a lesson.'

*I suppose the Bulstrodes \vill go and live abroad
somewhere,' said Mrs Sprague. 'That is what is
generally done when there is anjrthing disgraceful in
a family.'

'And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet,' said
Mrs Plymdale. 'If ever a woman was crushed, she
will be. I pity her from my heart. And with all her
faults, few women are better. From a girl she had the
neatest ways, and was always good-hearted, and as
open as the day. You might look into her drawers
when you would — always the same. And so she has
brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how hard
it will be for her to go among foreigners.'

'The doctor says that is what he should recommend
the Lydgates to do,' said Mrs Sprague. 'He says
Lydgate ought to have kept among the French.'

'That would suit her well enowgh, I dare say,' said
Mrs Ptymdale; 'there is that kind of lightness about
her. But she got that from her mother; she never
got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave
her good advice, and to my knowledge would rather
have had her marry elsewhere.'

Mrs Plymdale was in a situation which caused her
some complication of feeling. There had been not

MIDDLEMARCH 387

only her intimacy with Mrs Bulstrode, but also a
profitable business relation of the great Plymdale
dyeing house with Mr Bulstrode, which on the one
hand would have inclined her to desire that the
mildest view of his character should be the true one,
but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming
to palliate his culpability. Again, the late alliance
of her family with the Tollers had brought her in
connection with the best circle, which gratified her
in every direction except in the inclination to those
serious views which she believed to be the best in
another sense. The sharp little woman's conscience
was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of these
opposing 'bests,' and of her griefs and satisfactions
under late events, which were likely to humble those
who needed humbling, but also to fall heavily on her
old friend whose faults she would have preferred see-
ing on a backgroimd of prosperity.

Poor Mrs Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no
further shaken by the oncoming tread of calamity than
in the busier stirring of that secret uneasiness which
had always been present in her since the last visit of
Raffles to The Shrubs. That the hateful man had
come ill to Stone Court, and that her husband had
chosen to remain there and watch over him, she
allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had
been employed and aided in earher days, and that
this made a tie of benevolence towards him in his
degraded helplessness; and she had been since then
innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful
speech about his own health and abiUty to continue
his attention to business. The calm was disturbed
when Lydgate had brought him home ill from the
meeting, and in spite of comforting assurances durirg
the next few days, she cried in private from the con-
viction that her husband was not suffering from bodily
illness merely, but from something that afflicted his
mind. He would not allow her to read to him, and.

388 MIDDLEMARCH

scarcely to sit with him, alleging nervous suscepti-
bility to sounds and movements; yet she suspected
that in shutting himself up in his private room he
wanted to be busy with his papers. Something, she
felt sure, had happened. Perhaps it was some great
loss of money; and she was kept in the dark. Not
daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate,
on the fifth day after the meeting, when she had not
left home except to go to church : —

'Mr Lydgate, pray be open with me : I like to know
the truth. Has an^^thing happened to Mr Bulstrode ? '

'Some little nervous shock,' said Lydgate, evasively.
He felt that it was not for him to make the painful
revelation.

'But what brought it on?' said Mrs Bulstrode,
looking directly at liim with her large dark eyes.

'There is often something poisonous in the air of
pubHc rooms,' said Lydgate. 'Strong men can stand
it, but it tells on people in proportion to the delicacy
of their systems. It is often impossible to account for
the precise moment of an attack — or rather, to say
why the strength gives way at a particular moment.'

Mrs Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer.
There remained in her the behef that some calamity
had befallen her husband, of which she was to be kept
in ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to
object to such concealment. She begged leave for her
daughters to sit v^dth their father, and drove into the
town to pay some visits, conjecturing that if anything
were known to have gone wrong in Mr Bulstrode' s
affairs, she should see or hear some sign of it.

She called on Mrs Thesiger, who was not at home,
and then drove to Mrs Hackbutt's on the other side
of the churchyard. Mrs Hackbutt saw her coming
from an upstairs window, and remembering her
former alarm lest she should meet Mrs Bulstrode, felt
almost bound in consistency to send word that she
was not at home; but against that, there was a sudden

MIDDLEMARCH 389

strong desire within her for the excitement of an
interview in which she was quite determined not to
make the sHghtest allusion to what was in her mind.

Hence Mrs Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-
room, and Mrs Hackbutt went to her, with more
tightness of hp and rubbing of lier hands than was
usually observable in her, these being precautions
adopted against freedom of speech. She was resolved
not to ask how Mr Bulstrode was.

*I have not been anywhere except to church for
nearly a week,' said Mrs Bulstrode, after a few intro-
ductory remarks. 'But Mr Bulstrode was taken so
ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked
to leave the house.'

Mrs Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the
palm of the other held against her chest, and let her
eyes ramble over the pattern on the rug.

'Was Mr Hackbutt at the meeting?' persevered
Mrs Bulstrode.

'Yes, he was,' said Mrs Hackbutt, with the same
attitude. 'The land is to be bought by subscription,
I believe.'

'Let us hope that there will be no more cases of
cholera to be buried in it,' said Mrs Bulstrode. 'It is
an awful visitation. But I always think Middlemarch
a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used to it
from a child; but I never saw the town I should like
to Hve at better, and especially our end.'

'I am sure I should be glad that you always should
live at Middlemarch, Mrs Bulstrode,' said Mrs Hack-
butt, with a slight sigh. 'Still, we must learn to
resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be cast. Though
I am sure there will always be people in this town who
will wish you well.'

Mrs Hackbutt longed to say, 'if you take my advice
you will part from your husband,' but it seemed clear
to her that the poor woman knew nothing of the
thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself

390 MIDDLEMARCH

could do no more than prepare her a little. Mrs
Bulstrode felt suddenly rather chill and trembling :
there was evidently something unusual behind this
speech of Mrs Hackbutt's; but though she had set
out with the desire to be fully informed, she found
herself unable now to pursue her brave purpose, and
turning the conversation by an inquiry about the
young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that
she was going to see Mrs Ptymdale. On her way
.thither she tried to imagine that there might have
been some unusually warm sparring at the meeting
between Mr Bulstrode and some of his frequent oppo-
nents— ^perhaps Mr Hackbutt might have been one of
them. That would account for everything.

But when she was in conversation with Mrs Plym-
daJe that comfort,ing explanation seemed no longer
tenable. 'Sehna' received her with a pathetic affection-
ateness and a disposition to give edifjang answers on
the commonest topics, wliich could hardly have
reference to an ordinary quarrel of which the most
important consequence was a perturbation of Mr
Bulstrode's health. Beforehand Mrs Bulstrode had
thought that she would sooner question Mrs Plymdale
than any one else; but she found to her surprise that
an old friend is not always the person whom it is
easiest to make a confidant of : there was the barrier
of remembered communication under other circum-
stances— ^there was the disUke of being pitied and
informed by one who had been long wont to allow her
the superiority. For certain words of mysterious
appropriateness that Mrs Pl37mdale let fall about her
resolution never to turn her back on her friends,
convinced Mrs Bulstrode that what had happened
must be some kind of misfortune, and instead o't
being able to say with her native directness, 'Wliat is
it that you have in your mind?' she found herself
anxious to get away before she had heard anything
more explicit. She began to have an agitating

MIDDLEMARCH 391

certainty that the misfortune was something more than
the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the
fact that Selina now, just as Mrs Hackbutt had done
before, avoided noticing what she said about her
husband, as they would have avoided noticing a
personal blemish.

She said good-bye with nervous haste, and told the
coachman to drive to Mr Vincy's warehouse. In that
short drive her dread gathered so much force from the
sense of darkness, that when she entered the private
counting-house where her brother sat at his desk, her
knees trembled and her usually florid face was deathly
pale. Something of the same effect was produced in
him by the sight of her : he rose from his seat to meek
her, took her by the hand, and said, with his impulsive
rashness : —

'God help you, Harriet ! you know all.'
That moment was perhaps worse than any which
came after. It contained that concentrated experi-
ence which in great crises of emotion reveals the bias
of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which
will end an intermediate struggle. Without that
memory of Raffles she might still have thought only of
monetary ruin, but now along with her brother's look
and words there darted into her mind the idea of
some guilt in her husband — then, under the working of
terror came the image of her husband exposed to
disgrace — and then, after an instant of scorching
shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world,
with one leap of her heart she was at his side in mourn-
ful but unreproaching fellowship with shame and
isolation. All this went on within her in a mere flash
of time — ^while she sank into the chair, and raised her
eyes to her brother, who stood over her. 'I know
nothing, Walter. What is it?' she said, faintly.

He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow
fragments, making her aware that the scandal went
much beyond proof, especially as to the end of Raffles.

392 MIDDLEMARCH

'People will talk/ he said. 'Even if a man has been
acquitted by a jury, they'll talk, and nod and wink—
and as far as the world goes, a man might often as well
be guilty as not. It's a breakdown blow, and it
damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don't
pretend to say what is the truth. I only wish we had
never heard the name of either Bulstrode or Lydgate.
You'd better have been a Vincy all your life, and so
had Rosamond.'

Mrs Bulstrode made no reply.

'But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet.
People don't blame you. And I'll stand by you what-
ever you make up your mind to do,' said the brother,
with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.

'Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter,' said
Mrs Bulstrode. 'I feel very weak.'

And when she got home she was obliged to say to
her daughter, 'I am not well, my dear; I must go and
lie down. Attend to your papa. Leave me in quiet.
I shall take no dinner.'

She locked herself in her room. She needed time to
get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped
life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted
her. A new searching light had fallen on her husband's
character, and she could not judge him leniently :
the twenty years in which she had believed in him and
venerated him by virtue of his concealments came
back with particulars that made them seem an odious
deceit. He had married her with that bad past hfe
hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest
his innocence of the worst that was imputed to him.
Her honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of
a merited dishonour as bitter as it could be to any
mortal.

But this imperfectly-taught woman, whose phrases
and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit
within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared
through nearly half a hfe, and who had unvaryingly

MIDDLEMARCH 393

cherished her — now that punishment had befallen
him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake
him. There is a forsaking which still sits at the same
board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken
soul, withering it the more by unloving proximity.
She knew, when she locked her door, that she should
unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy husband
and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will
mourn and not reproach. But she needed time to
gather up her strength; she needed to sob out her
farewell to all the gladness and pride of her Hfe. When
she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by
some little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard
onlooker; they were her way of expressing to all
spectators visible or invisible that she had begun a
new Hfe in which she embraced humiHation. She
took off all her ornaments and put on a plain black
gown, and instead of wearing her much-adorned cap
and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair down and
put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made her look
suddenly like an early Methodist.

Bulstrode, who knew that his wife bad been out and
had come in saying that she was not well, had spent
the time in an agitation equal to hers. He had looked
forward to her learning the truth from others, and had
acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to
him than any confession. But now that he imagined
the moment of her knowledge come, he awaited the
result in anguish. His daughters had been obliged to
consent to leave him, and though he had allowed
some food to be brought to him, he had not touched
it. He felt himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery.
Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with
affection in it again. And if he turned to God there
seemed to be no answer but the pressure of retribution.

It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door
opened and his wife entered. He dared not look up
at her. He sat with his eyes bent down, and as she

394 MIDDLEMARCH

went towards him she thought he looked smaller —
he seemed so withered and shrunken. A movement
of new compassion and old tenderness went through
her Hke a great wave, and putting one hand on his
which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on
his shoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly : —

'Look up, Nicholas/

He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at
her half amazed for a moment : her pale face, her
changed — ^mourning dress, the trembling about her
mouth, all said 'I know'; and her hands and eyes
rested gently on him. He burst out cr57ing and they
cried together, she sitting at his side. They could not
yet speak to each other of the shame which she was
bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought
it down on them. His confession was silent and her
promise of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded
as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words
which would have expressed their mutual consciousness
— as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She
could not say, 'How much is only slander and false
suspicion?' and he did not say, *I am innocent.'

MIDDLEMARCH 395

CHAPTER LXXV

Le sentiment de la faussete des plaisirs presents, et I'ignor-
ance de la vanite des plaisirs absents, causent I'inconstance.

Pascal.

Rosamond had a gleam of returning cheerfulness
when the house was freed from the threatening figure,
and when all the disagreeable creditors were paid. But
she was not joyous : her married hfe had fulfilled
none of her hopes, and had been quite spoiled for her
imagination. In this brief interval of calm, Lydgate,
remembering that he had often been stormy in his
hours of perturbation, and mindful of the pain Rosa-
mond had had to bear, was carefully gentle towards
her; but he, too, had lost some of his old spirit, and
he still felt it necessary to refer to an economical
change in their way of h\ang as a matter of course,
tiying to reconcile her to it gradually, and repressing
his anger when she answered by wishing that he would
go to hve in London. When she did not make this
answer, she listened ianguidiy, and wondered v/hat
she had that was worth h\ang for. The hard and
contemptuous words which had fallen from her hus-
band in his anger had deeply offended that vanity
which he had at first called into active enjoyment;
and what she regarded as his perverse way of looking
at things, kept up a secret repulsion, which made her
receive all his tenderness as a poor substitute for th(i
happiness he had failed to give her. They were at
a disadvantage with their neighbours, and "there was
no longer any outlook towards Quallingham — there
was no outlook anywhere except in an occasional
letter from Will Ladislaw. She had felt stung aad

396 MIDDLEMARCH

disappointed by Will's resolution to quit Middlemarch,
for in spite of what she knew and guessed about his
admiration for Dorothea, she secretly cherished the
belief that he had, or would necessarily come to have,
much more admiration for herself; Rosamond being
one of those women who live much in the idea that
each man they meet would have preferred them if
the preference had not been hopeless. Mrs Casaubon
was all very well; but Will's interest in her dated
before he knew Mrs Lydgate. Rosamond took his
way of talking to herself, which was a mixture of
playful fault-finding and hyperbohcal gallantry, as
the disguise of a deeper feeling; and in his presence
she felt that agreeable titillation of vanity and sense
of romantic drama v/hich Lydgate' s presence had no
longer the magic to create. She even fancied — what
will not men and women fancy in these matters? —
that Will exaggerated his admiration for ^Irs Casaubon
in order to pique herself. In this way poor Rosamond's
brain had been busy before Will's departure. He
would have made, she thought, a much more suitable
husband for her than she had found in Lydgate. No
notion could have been falser than this, for Rosa-
mond's discontent in her marriage was due to the
conditions of marriage itself, to its demand for self-
suppression and tolerance, and not to the nature of her
husband; but the easy conception of an unreal Better
had a sentimental charm which diverted her ennui.
She constructed a little romance which was to vary
the flatness of her life : Will Ladislaw was ahvays to be
a bachelor and hve near her, always to be at her
command, and have an understood though never full
expressed passion for her, which would be sending out
lambent flames every now and then in interesting
scenes. His departure had been a proportionate
disappointment, and had sadly increased her weari-
ness of Middlemarch; but at first she had the alter-
native dream of pleasures in store from her intercourse

MIDDLEMARCH 397

with the family at Quallingham. Since then the troubles
of her married Ufe had deepened, and the absence of
other rehef encouraged her regretful rumination over
that thin romance which she had once fed on. Men
and women make sad mistakes about their own symp-
toms, taking their vague uneasy longings sometimes
for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still
for a mighty love. Will Ladislaw had written chatty
letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had
replied: their separation, she felt, was not hkely to
be final, and the change she now most longed for was
that Lydgate should go to live in London; everything
would be agreeable m London; and she had set to
work with quiet determination to win this result,
when there came a sudden, dehghtful promise which
inspirited her.

It came shortly before the memorable meeting at
the town hall, and was nothing less than a letter from
Will Ladislaw to Lydgate, which turned indeed
chiefly on his new interest in plans of colonisation, but
mentioned incidentally, that he might find it necessary
to pay a visit to Middlemarch within the next few
weeks — a very pleasant necessity, he said, almost as
good as holidays to a schoolboy. He hoped there
was his old place on the rug, and a great deal of music
in store for him. But he was quite uncertain as to the
time. WTiile Lydgate was reading the letter to Rosa-
mond, her face' looked hke a reviving flower — it grew
prettier and more blooming. There was nothing
unendurable now : the debts were paid, Mr Ladislaw
was coming, and Lydgate would be persuaded to leave
Middlemarch and settle in London, which was 'so
different from a provincial town.'

That was a bright bit of morning. But soon the
sky became black over poor Rosamond. The presence
of a new gloom in her husband, about which he was
entirely reserved towards her — for he dreaded to expose
his lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception

398 MIDDLEMARCH

• — soon received a painfully strange explanation,
alien to all her previous notions of what could
affect her happiness. In the new gaiety of her spirits,
thinking that Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodi-
ness than usual, causing him to leave her remarks
unanswered, and evidently to keep out of her way as
much as possible, she chose, a few days after the
meeting, and without speaking to him on the subject,
to send out notes of invitation for a small evening
party, feeling convinced that this was a judicious step,
since people seemed to have been keeping aloof from
them, and wanted restoring to the old habit of inter-
course. When the invitations had been accepted, she
would tell Lydgate, and give him a wise admonition as
to how a medical man should behave to his neighbours;
for Rosamond had the gravest little airs possible about
other people's duties. But all the invitations were
decUned, and the last answer came into Lydgate's
hands.

*Thi£ is Chichely's scratch. What is he writing
you about?' said Lydgate, wonderingly, as he
handed the note to her. She was obHged to
let him see it, and, looking at her severely, he
said : —

'Why on earth have you been sending out invitations
without telling me, Rosamond? I beg, I insist that
\x)u will not invite any one to this house. I suppose
you have been in\'iting others, and they have refused
too.'

She said nothing.

*Do you hear me?' thundered Lydgate.

'Yes, certainly I hear you,' said Rosamond, turning
her head aside \\dth the movement of a graceful long-
necked bird.

Lydgate tossed his head without any grace and
walked out of the room, feeling himself dangerous.
Rosamond's thought was, that he was getting more
and more unbearable — not that there was any new

MIDDLEMARCH 399

special reason for this peremptoriness. His indis-
position to tell her anything in which he was sure
beforehand that she would not be interested was
growing into an unreflecting habit, and she was in
ignorance of everything connected with the thousand
pounds except that the loan had come from her uncle
Bulstrode. Lydgate's odious humours and their
neighbours' apparent avoidance of them had an
unaccountable date for her in their rehef from money
difficulties. If the invitations had been accepted she
would have gone to invite her mamma and the rest,
whom she had seen nothing of for several days; and
she now put on her bonnet to go and inquire what had
become of them all, suddenly feeling as if there were
conspiracy to leave her in isolation with a husband
disposed to offend everybody. It wa^ after the dinner
hour, and she found her father and mother seated
together alone in the drawing-room. They greeted
her with sad looks, saying, 'Well, my dear !' and no
more. She had never seen her father look so downcast ;
and seating herself near him she said : —

'Is there anything the matter, papa?'

He did not answer, but Mrs Vincy said, 'Oh, my
dear, have you heard nothing? It won't be long
before it reaches you.'

'Is it anything about Tertius?' said Rosamond,
turning pale. The idea of trouble immediately con-
nected itself with what had been imaccountable to
her in him.

'Oh, my dear, yes. To think of your marrying into
this trouble. Debt was bad enough, but this will be
worse.'

'Stay, stay, Lucy,' said Mr Vincy. 'Have you heard
nothing about your uncle Bulstrode, Rosamond?'

'No, papa,' said the poor thing, feehng as if trouble
were not anything she had before experienced, but some
invisible power with an iron grasp that made her soul
faint within her.

400 MIDDLEMARCH /

Her father told her everything, saving at the end,
'It's better for you to know, my dear. I think Lydgate
must leave the town. Things have gone against him.
I dare say he couldn't help it. I don't accuse him of
any harm,' said Mr Vincy. He had always before
been disposed to find the utmost fault with Lyd-
gate.

The shock to Rosamond was terrible. It seemed to
her that no lot could be so cruelly hard as hers — ^to
have married a man who had become the centre of
infamous suspicions. In many cases it is inevitable
that the shame is felt to be the worst part of crime;
and it would have required a great deal of disentangling
reflection, such as had never entered into Rosamond's
life, for her in these moments to feel that her trouble
was less than if her husband had been certainly known
to have done something criminal. AU the shame
seemed to be there. And she had innocently married
this man with the belief that he and his family were
a glory to her ! She showed her usual reticence to her
parents, and only said, that if Lydgate had done as
she wished he would have left Middlem.arch long ago.

'She bears it beyond anything,' said her mother
when she was gone.

*Ah, thank God !' said Mr Vincy, who was much
broken down.

But Rosamond went home with a sense of justified
repugnance towards her husband. \Vhat had he
really done — how had he really acted? She did not
know. Why had he not told her everyi:hing? He did
not speak to her on the subject, and of course she
could not speak to him. It came into her inind once
that she would ask her father to let her go home again;
but dwelling on that prospect made it seem utter
dreariness to her : a married woman gone back to
live with her parents — Hfe seemed to have no meaning
for her in such a position : she could not contemplate
herself in it.

MIDDLEMARCH 401

The next two days Lydgate observed a change in
her, and believed that she had heard the bad news.
Would she speak to him about it, or would she go on
for ever in the silence which seemed to imply that she
believed him guilty? We must remember that he was
in a morbid state of mind, in which almost all contact
was pain. Certainly Rosamond in this case had
equal reason to complain of reserve and want of
confidence on his part; but in the bitterness of his
soul he excused himself; — was he not justified in
shrinking from the task of telling her, since now she
knew the truth she had no impulse to speak to him?
But a deeper-lying consciousness that he was in fault
made him restless, and the silence between them
became intolerable to him; it was as if they were both
adrift on one piece of wreck and looked away from
each other.

He thought, 'I am a fool. Haven't I given up
expecting anything? I have married care, not help/
And that evening he said : —

'Rosamond, have you heard anything that distresses
you?'

'Yes,' she answered, laying down her work, which
she had been carrying on with a languid semi-
consciousness, most unhke her usual self.

'What have you heard?'

'Everything, I suppose. Papa told me.'

'That people think me disgraced?'

'Yes,' said Rosamond, faintly, beginning to sew
again automatically.

There was silence. Lydgate thought, 'If she has
any trust in me — any notion of what I am, she ought
to speak now and say that she does not believe I have
deserved disgrace.'

But Rosamond on her side went on moving her
fingers languidly. Whatever was to be said on the
subject she expected to come from Tertius. What
did she know? And if he were innocent of

402 MIDDLEMARCH /

any wrong, why did he not do something to clear
himself ?

This silence of hers brought a new rush of gall to
that bitter mood in which Lydgate had been sajdng to
himself that nobody believed in him — even Fare-
brother had not come forward. He had begun to
question her with the intent that their conversation
should disperse the chill fog which had gathered
between them, but he felt his resolution checked by
despairing resentment. Even this trouble, Hke the
rest, she seemed to regard as if it were hers alone. He
was always to her a being apart — doing what she
objected to. He started from his chair with an angry
impulse, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, walked
up and down the room. There was an underlying
consciousness all the while that he should have to
master this anger, and tell her everything, and con-
vince her of the facts. For he had almost learned the
lesson that he must bend himself to her nature, and
that because she came short in her sympathy, he
must give the more. Soon he recurred to his intention
of opening himself : the occasion must not be lost. If
he could bring her to feel with some solemnity that here
was a slander which must be met and not run away
from, and that the whole trouble had come out of his
desperate want of money, it would be a moment for
urging powerfully on her that they should be one in
the resolve to do with as httle money as possible, so
that they might weather the bad time and keep them-
selves independent. He would mention the definite
measures which he desired to take, and win her to
a willing spirit. He was bound to try this — and what
else was there for him to do ?

He did not know how long he had been walking
uneasily backwards and forwards, but Rosamond
felt that it was long, and wished that he would sit
down. She too had begun to think this an opportunity
for urging on Tertius what he ought to do. Whatever

MIDDLEMARCH 4O3

might be the truth about all this misery, there was one
dread which asserted itself.

Lydgate at last seated himself, not in his usual
chair, but in one nearer to Rosamond, leaning aside
in it towards her, and looking at her gravely before he
reopened the sad subject. He had conquered himself
so far, and was about to speak with a sense of solemnity,
as on an occasion which was not to be repeated. He
had even opened his lips when Rosamond, letting her
hands fall, looked at him and said : —

'Surely, Tertius '

'Well?'

'Surely now at last you have given up the idea of
sta3dng in Middlemarch. I cannot go on living here.
Let us go to London. Papa, and every one else, says
you had better go. Whatever misery I have to put
up with, it will be easier away from here.'

Lydgate felt miserably jarred. Instead of that
critical outpouring for which he had prepared him-
self with effort, here was the old round to be gone
through again. He could not bear it. With a quick
change of countenance he rose and went out of the
room.

Perhaps if he had been strong enough to persist in
his determination to be the more because she was
less, that evening might have had a better issue. If
his energy could have borne down that check, he
might still have wrought on Rosamond's vision and
will. We cannot be sure that any natures, however
inflexible or peculiar, will resist this effect from a more
massive being than their own. They may be taken by
storm and for the moment converted, becoming part
of the soul which enwraps them in the ardour of its
movements. But poor Lydgate had a throbbing pain
within him, and his energy had fallen short of its task.

The beginning of mutual understanding and resolve
seemed as far off as ever; nay, it seemed blocked out
by the sense of unsuccessful effort. Thev lived on

404 MIDDLEMARCH

from day to day with their thoughts still apart,
Lydgate going about what work he had in a mood of
despair, and Rosamond feeling, with some justification,
that he was behaving cruelly. It was of no use to say
anything to Tertius; but when Will Ladislaw came
she was determined to tell him everything. In spite
of her general reticence, she needed some one who
would recognise her wrongs.

MIDDLEMARCH 405

CHAPTER LXXVI

To mercy, pity, peace, and love

All pray in their distress,
And to these virtues of delight,

Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face;
And Love, the human form divine;

And Peace, the human dress.

William Blake : Songs of Innocence.

Some days later, Lydgate was riding to Lowick Manor,
in consequence of a summons from Dorothea. The
summons had not been unexpected, since it had
followed a letter from Mr Bulstrode, in which he stated
that he had resumed his arrangements for quitting
Middlemarch, and must remind Lydgate of his previous
communications about the hospital, to the purport of
which he still adhered. It had been his duty, before
taken further steps, to reopen the subject with Mrs
Casaubon, who now wished, as before, to discuss the
question with Lydgate. 'Your views may possibly
have undergone some change,' wrote Mr Biilstrode;
'but in that case also, it is desirable that you should
lay them before her.'

Dorothea awaited his arrival with eager interest.
Though, in deference to her masculine advisers, she
had refrained from what Sir James had called 'inter-
fering in this Bulstrode business,' the hardship of
Lydgate' s position was continually in her mind, and
when Bulstrode applied to her again about the hospital,
she felt that the opportunity was come to her which
she had been hindered from hastening. In her luxur-
ious home, wandering under the boughs of her own

4o6 MIDDLEMARCH

great trees, her thought was going out over the lot of
others, and her emotions were imprisoned. The idea
of some active good within her reach, 'haunted her
hke a passion,' and another's need having once come
to her as a distinct image, preoccupied her desire with
the yearning to give rehef, and made her own ease
tasteless. She was full of confident hope about this
interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was
said of his personal reserve ; never heeding that she was
a very young woman . Nothing could have seemed more
irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence on her youth
and sex when she was moved to show her human
fellowship.

As she sat waiting in the library, she could do
nothing but hve through again all the past scenes
which had brought Lydgate into her memories. They
all owed their significance to her marriage and its
troubles — but no; there were two occasions in which
the image of Lydgate had come painfully in connection
with his wife and some one else. The pain had been
allayed for Dorothea, but it had left in her an awakened
conjecture as to what Lydgate' s marriage might be
to him, a susceptibiHty to the shghtest hint about
Mrs Lydgate, These thoughts were like a drama to
her, and made her eyes bright, and gave an attitude
of suspense to her whole frame, though she was only
looking out from the brown hbrary on to the turf and
the bright green buds which stood in relief against the
dark evergreens.

When Lydgate came in, she was ahnost shocked at
the change in his face, which was strikingly perceptible
to her who had not seen him for two months. It was
not the change of emaciation, but that effect which
even young faces will very soon show from the per-
^stent presence of resentment and despondency.
Her cordial look, when she put out her hand to
him, softened his expression, but only with melan-
choly.

MIDDLEMARCH 407

*I have wished very much to see you for a long while,
Mr Lydgate,' said Dorothea when they were seated
opposite each other; 'but I put off asking you to come
imtil Mr Bulstrode appUed to me again about the
hospital. I know that the advantage of keeping the
management of it separate from that of the infirmary
depends on you, or, at least, on the good which you
are encouraged to hope for from having it under your
control. And I am sure you will not refuse to tell me
exactly what you think.'

'You want to decide whether you should give a
generous support to the hospital,' said Lydgate. 'I
cannot conscientiously ad\ise you to do it in depen-
dence on any activity of mine. I may be obliged to
leave the town.'

He spoke curtly, feehng the ache of despair as to
his being able to carry out any purpose that Rosamond
had set her mind against.

'Not because there is no one to beheve in you?*
said Dorothea, pouring out her words in clearness
from a full heart. 'I know the unhappy mistakes
about you, I knew them from the first moment to be
mistakes. You have never done anything vile. You
would not do anything dishonourable.'

It was the first assurance of belief in him that had
fallen on Lydgate' s ears. He drew a deep breath, and
said, 'Thank you.' He could say no more : it was
something very new and strange in his life that these
few words of trust from a woman should be so much
to him.

'I beseech you to tell me how everything was,' said
Dorothea, fearlessly. 'I am sure that the truth would
clear you.'

Lydgate started up from his chair and went towards
the window, forgetting where he was. He had so
often gone over in his mind the possibility of explaining
everything without aggravating appearances that
would tell, perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode, and

4o8 MIDDLEMARCH

had so often decided against it — he had so often said
to himself that his assertions would not change people's
impressions — ^that Dorothea's words sounded like
a temptation to do something which in his soberness
he had pronounced to be unreasonable.

'Tell me, pray,' said Dorothea, with simple earnest-
ness; 'then we can consult together. It is wicked to
let people think evil of any one falsely, when it can be
hindered.'

Lydgate turned, remembering where he was, and
saw Dorothea's face looking up at him with a sweet
trustful gravity. The presence of a noble nature,
generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes
the lights for us : we begin to see things again in their
larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can
be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.
That influence was beginning to act on Lydgate, who
had for many days been seeing all life as one who is
dragged and struggling amid the throng. He sat down
again, and felt that he was recovering his old self in
the consciousness that he was with one who believed
in it.

'I don't want,' he said, 'to bear hard on Bulstrode,
who has lent me money of which I was in need —
though I would rather have gone without it now. He
is hunted down and miserable, and has only a poor
thread of Ufe in him. But I should Hke to tell you
everything. It will be a comfort to me to speak where
belief has gone beforehand, and where I shall not seem
to be offering assertions of my own honesty. You will
f^el what is fair to another, as you feel what is fair to
me.'

'Do trust me,' said Dorothea; 'I will not repeat
anything without your leave. But at the very least,
I could say that you have made all the circumstances
clear to me, and that I know you are not in any way
guilty. Mr Farebrother would believe me, and my
uncle, and Sir James Chettam. Nay, there are persons

MIDDLEMARCH 409

in Middlemarch to whom I could go; although they
don't know much of me, they would believe me. They
would Imow that I could have no other motive than
truth and justice. I would take any pains to clear you.
I have very Httle to do. There is nothing better that
I can do in the world.'

Dorothea's voice, as she made this childlike picture
of what she would do, might have been almost taken
as a proof that she could do it effectively. The search-
ing tenderness of her woman's tones seemed made for
a defence against ready accusers. Lydgate did not
stay to think that she was Quixotic : he gave himself
up, for the first time in his life, to the exquisite sense of
leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any
check of proud reserve. And he told her everything,
from the time when, under the pressure of his diffi-
culties, he unwillingly made his first application to
Bulstrode; gradually in the relief of speaking, getting
into a more thorough utterance of what had gone on
in his mind — entering fully into the fact that his treat-
ment of the patient was opposed to the dominant
practice, into his doubts at the last, his ideal of medi-
cal duty, and his imeasy consciousness that the accept-
ance of the money had made some difference in his
private incHnation and professional behaviour, though
not in his fulfilment of any publicly recognised obU-
gation.

'It has come to my knowledge since,' he added,
'that Hawley sent some one to examine the house-
keeper at Stone Court, and she said that she gave the
patient all the opium in the phial I left, as well as a
good deal of brandy. But that would not have been
opposed to ordinary prescriptions, even of first-rate
men. The suspicions against me had no hold there :
they are grounded on the knowledge that I took money,
that Bulstrode had strong motives for wishing the
man to die, and that he gave me the money as a brib«
to concur in some malpractices or other against the

410 MIDDLEMARCH

patient — ^that in any case I accepted a bribe to hold
my tongue. They are just the suspicions that cling
the most obstinately, because they lie in people's
inclination and can never be disproved. How my
orders came to be disobeyed is a question to which
I don't know the answer. It is still possible that
Bulstrode was innocent of any criminal intention —
even possible that he had nothing to do with the
disobedience, and merely abstained from mentioning
it. But all that has nothing to do with the public
beHef. It is one of those cases on which a man is
condemned on the ground of his character— it is
believed that he has committed a crime in some
undefined way, because he had the motive for doing it;
and Bulstrode's character has enveloped me, because
I took his money. I am simply bhghted — ^like a dam-
aged ear of com — the business is done and can't be
undone.'

'Oh, it is hard !' said Dorothea. 'I tmderstand the
difficulty there is in your vindicating yourself. And
that all this should have come to you who had meant
to lead a higher life than the common, and to find out
better ways — I cannot bear to rest in this as unchange-
able. I know you meant that. I remember what
you said to me when you first spoke to me about the
hospital. There is no sorrow I have thought more
about than that — to love what is great, and try to
reach it, and yet to fail.'

'Yes,' said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found
room for the full meaning of his grief. 'I had some
ambition. I meant everything to be different with
me. I thought I had more strength and mastery.
But the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can
see except oneself.'

'Suppose,' said Dorothea, meditatively. 'Suppose
we kept on the hospital according to the present plan,
and you stayed here though only with the friendship
and support of a few, the evil feeling towards you

MIDDLE]\iARCH 4x1

would gradually die out; there would come oppor-
tunities in which people would be forced to acknow-
ledge that they had been unjust to you, because they
would see that 3,T)ur purposes were pure. You may
still win a great fame like the Louis and Laennec I
have heard you speak of, and we shall all be proud of
you/ she ended, with a smile.

'That might do if I had my old trust in myself,'
said Lydgate, mournfully. 'Nothing galls me more
than the notion of turning round and running away
before this slander, lea\Tng it unchecked behind me.
Still, I can't ask any one to put a great deal of money
into a plan which depends on me.'

'It would be quite worth my while,' said Dorothea,
simply. 'Only think. I am very uncomfortable with
my money, because they tell me I have too little for
any great scheme of the sort I like best, and yet I
have too much. I don't know what to do. I have
seven hundred a year of my fortune, and nineteen
hundred a year that Mr Casaubon left me, and between
three and four thousand of ready money in the bank.
I wished to raise money and pay it off gradually out
of my income which I don't want^ to buy land with
and found a village which should be a school of industry;
but Sir James and my unde have convinced me that
the risk would be too great. So you see that v>'hat
I should most rejoice at would be to have some-
thing good to do with my money : I should hke
to make other people's lives better to them. It
makes me very uneasy — coming all to me who don't
want it.'

A smile broke through the gloom of Lydgate' s face,
the childlike grave-eyed earnestness with which
Dorothea said all this was irresistible — ^blent into an
adorable Vvhole with her ready understanding of high
experience. (Of lower experience such as plays a
great part in the world, poor IVIrs Casaubon had a
very blurred shortsighted knowledge, little helped by

412 MIDDLEMARCH

her imagination.) But she took the smile as encourage-
ment of her plan,

*I think you see now that you spoke too scrupu-
lously,' she said, in a tone of persuasion. 'The hospital
would be one good; and making your life quite whole
and well again would be another.'

Lydgate's smile had died away. 'You have the
goodness as well as the mioney to do all that; if it
could be done,' he said. 'But '

He hesitated a little while, looking vaguely tov/ards
the window; and she sat in silent expectation. At
last he turned towards her and said impetuously : —

'Why should I not tell you? — you know what sort
of bond marriage is. You will understand everything.'

Dorothea felt her heart beginning to beat faster.
Had he that sorrow too? But she feared to say any
word, and he went on immediately.

'It is impossible for me now to do anything — to
take any step without considering my wife's happiness.
The thing that I might Hke to do if I were alone, is
become impossible to me. I can't see her miserable.
She married me without knowing what she was going
into, and it might have been better for her if she had
not married me.'

'I know, I know — you could not give her pain, if
you were not obHged to do it,' said Dorothea, with
keen memory of her own life.

'And she has set her mind against staying. She
wishes to go. The troubles she has had here have
wearied her,' said Lydgate, breaking off again, lest he
should say too much.

'But when she saw the good that might come of

staying ' said Dorothea, remonstrantly, looking

at Lydgate as if he had forgotten the reasons which
had just been considered. He did not speak immedi-
ately.

'She would not see it,' he said at last, curtly, feehng
at first that this statement must do without explanation.

MIDDLEMARCH 413

'And, indeed, I have lost all spirit about carrying on
my life here.' He paused a moment and then, following
the impulse to let Dorothea see deeper into the diffi-
culty of his Hfe, he said, 'The fact is, this trouble has
come upon her confusedly. We have not been able to
speak to each other about it. I am not sure what is
in her mind about it : she may fear that I have really
done something base. It is my fault; I ought to be
more open. But I have been suffering cruelly/

'May I go and see her?' said Dorothea, eagerly.
'Would she accept my sympathy? I would tell her
that you have not been blamable before an^^ one's
judgrnent but your own. I would tell her that you
shall be cleared in every fair mind. I would cheer her
heart. Will you ask her if I may go to see her? I
did see her once.'

'I am sure you may,' said Lydgate, seizing the propo-
sition with some hope. 'She would feel honoured —
cheered, I think, by the proof that you at least have
some respect for me. I will not speak to her about
you coming — that she may not connect it with my
wishes at all. I know very well that I ought not to
have left anything to be told her by others, but '

He broke off, and there was a moment's silence.
Dorothea refrained from sa^^ing what was in her
mind — how well she knew that there might be
invisible barriers to speech between husband and wife.
This was a point on which even sympathy might make
a wound. She returned to the more outward aspect
of Lydgate' s position, saying cheerfully : —

'And if Mrs Lydgate knew that there were friends
who would believe in you and support you, she might
then be glad that you should stay in your place and
recover your hopes — and do what you meant to do.
Perhaps then 3^ou would see that it was right to agree
with what I proposed about your continuing at the
hospital. Surely you would, if you still have faith in
it as a means of making your knowledge useful?'

414 MIDDLEiyiARCH

Lydgate did not answer, and she saw that he was
debating with himself.

'You need not decide immediately,' she said gently.
*A few days hence it will be early enough for me to
send my answer to Mr Bulstrode.'

Lydgate still waited, but at last turned to speak in
his most decisive tones.

*No; I prefer that there should be no interval left
for wavering. I am no longer sure enough of myself —
I mean of what it would be possible for me to do under
the changed circumstances of my hfe. It would be
dishonourable to let others engage themselves to any-
thing serious in dependence on me. I might be obhged
to go away after all; I see httle chance of an^rthing
else. The whole thing is too problematic; I cannot
consent to be the cause of your goodness being wasted.
No — ^let the new hospital be joined with the old
infirmary, and everything go on as it might have done
if I had never come. I have kept a valuable register
since I have been there; I shall send it to a man who
will make use of it/ he ended bitterly. 'I can think
of nothing for a long while but getting an income.'

'It hurts me very much to hear you speak so
hopelessly,' said Dorothea. 'It would be a happiness
to your friends, who beUeve in your future, in your
power to do great things, if you would let them save
you from that. Think how much money I have; it
would be hke taking a burden from me if you took
some of it ever\^ year till you got free from this fetter-
ing want of income. Why should not people do these
things? It is so difficult to make shares at all even.
This is one way.'

'God bless you, Mrs Casaubon !' said Lydgate,
rising as if with the same impulse that made his words
energetic, and resting his arm on the back of the great
leather chair he had been sitting in. 'It is good that
you should have such feelings. But I am not the
man who ought to allow himself to benefit by them.

MIDDLEMARCH 415

I have not given guarantees enough. I must not at
least sink into the degradation of being pensioned for
v/ork that I never achieved. It is very clear to me that
I must not count on anything else than getting away
from Middlemarch as soon as I can manage it. I
should not be able for a long while, at the very best,
to get an income here, and — and it is easier to make
necessary changes in a new place. I must do as other
men do, and think what wall please the world and
bring in money; look for a httle opening in the London
crowd, and push myself; set up in a watering-place,
or go to some southern towTi where there are plenty
of idle English, and get myself puffed, — that is the sort
of shell I must creep into and try to keep my soul
alive in.'

'Now that is not brave,' said Dorothea, — Ho give
up the fight.'

'No, it is not brave,' said Lydgate, 'but if a man
is afraid of creeping paralysis?' Then, in another tone,
*Yet you have made a great difference in my courage
by believing in me. Everything seems more bearable
since I have talked to you; and if you can clear me in
a few other minds, especially in Farebrother's, I shall
be deeply grateful. The point I wish you not to men-
tion is the fact of disobedience to my orders. That
would soon get distorted. After all, there is no evi-
dence for me but people's opinion of me beforehand.
You can only repeat my own report of m^/self.'

'Mr Farebrother will believe — others will believe,'
said Dorothea. 'I can say of you what will make it
stupidity to suppose that you would be bribed to do
a wickedness.'

'I don't know,' said Lydgate, with something hke
a groan in his voice. 'I have not taken a bribe yet.
But there is a pale shade of bribery which is sometimes
called prosperity. You will do me another great
kindness, then, and come to see my wife?'

'Yes, I will. I remember how pretty she is,' said

4i6 MIDDLEIMARCH

Dorothea, into whose niind every impression about
Rosamond had cut deep. *I hope she will like me.'

As Lydgate rode away, he thought, 'This young
creature has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary.
She evidentty thinks nothing of her own future, and
would pledge away half her income at once, as if she
wanted nothing for herself but a chair to sit in from
which she can look down with those clear eyes at the
poor mortals who pray to her. She seems to have
what I never saw in any woman before— a fountain
of friendship towards men — a man can make a friend
of her. Casaubon must have raised some heroic
hallucination in her. I wonder if she could have any
other sort of passion for a man? Ladislaw? — there
was certainly an unusual feeling between them. And
Casaubon must have had a notion of it. Well — her
love might help a man more than her money.'

Dorothea on her side had immediately formed a
plan of reheving Lydgate from his obligation to Bul-
strode, which she felt sure was a part, though small,
of the galling pressure he had to bear. She sat down
at once under the inspiration of their interview, and
wrote a brief note, in which she pleaded that she had
more claim than Mr Bulstrode had to the satisfaction
of providing the money which had been serviceable to
Lydgate — that it would be unkind in Lydgate not to
grant her the position of being his helper in this smaU
matter, the favour being entirely to her who had so
little that was plainly marked out for her to do with
her superfluous money. He might call her a creditor
or by any other name if it did but imply that he granted
her request. She enclosed a cheque for a thousand
pounds, and determined to take the letter with her
the next day when she went to see Rosamond.

MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXVII

417

And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion.

Henry V

The next day Lydgate had to go to Brassing, and told
Rosamond that he should be away until the evening.
Of late she had never gone beyond her own house and
garden, except to church, and once to see her papa,
to whom she said 'If Tertius goes av/ay, you will help
us to move, will you not, papa? I suppose we shall
have very httle money. I am sure I hope some one
will help us.' And Mr Vincy had said, 'Yes, child,
I don't mind a hundred or two. I can see the end of
that.' With these exceptions she had sat at home in
languid melancholy and suspense, fixing her mind on
Will Ladislaw's coming as the one point of hope and
interest, and associating this with some new urgency on
Lydgate to make immediate arrangements for leaving
Middlemarch and going to London, till she felt assured
that the coming would be a potent cause of the going,
without at all seeing how. This way of estabhshing
sequences is too common to be fairly regarded as a
pecuHar folly in Rosamond. And it is precisely the
sort of sequence which causes the greatest shock when
it is sundered : for to see how an effect may be pro-
duced is often to see possible missings and checks; but
to see nothing except the desirable cause, and close
upon it the desirable effect, rids us of doubt and makes
our minds strongly intuitive. That was the process
going on in poor Rosamond, while she arranged all
objects around her with the same nicety as ever, only
with more slowness — or sat down to the piano, meaning
M. (11) o

4i8 MIDDLEMARCH

to play, and then desisting, yet lingering on the music
stool with her white fingers suspended on the wooden
front, and looking before her in dreamy ennui. Her
melancholy had become so marked that Lydgate felt
a strange timidity before it, as a perpetual silent
reproach, and the strong man, mastered by his keen
sensibilities towards this fair fragile creature whose
life he seemed somehow to have bruised, shrank from
her look, and sometimes started at her approach, fear
of her and fear for her rushing in only the more forcibly
after it had been momentarily expelled by exaspera-
tion.

But this morning Rosamond descended from her
room upstairs — ^where she sometimes sat the whole
day when Lydgate was out — equipped for a walk in
the town. She had a letter to post — a letter addressed
to Mr Ladislaw and \^Titten with charming discretion,
but intended to hasten his arrival by a hint of trouble.
The servant-maid, their sole house-servant now,
noticed her coming downstairs in her walking dress,
and thought 'there never did anybody look so pretty
in a bonnet, poor thing.'

Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was filled with her
project of going to Rosamond, and with the many
thoughts, both of the past and the probable future,
which gathered round the idea of that visit. Until
yesterday when Lydgate had opened to her a glimpse
of some trouble in his married Hfe, the image of Mrs
Lydgate had always been associated for her with that
of Will Ladislaw. Even in her most uneasy moments
■ — even when she had been agitated by Mrs Cad-
wallader's painfully graphic report of gossip — her effort,
nay, her strongest impulsive prompting, had been
towards the vindication of Will from any sullying
surmises; and when, in her meeting with him after-
wards, she had at first interpreted his words as a
probable allusion to a feeling towards Mrs Lydgate
which he was determined to cut himself off from.

MIDDLEMARCH 419

I indulging, she had had a quick, sad, excusing vision
of the charm there might be in his constant oppor-

'tunities of companionship with that fair creature, who
most likely shared his other tastes as she evidently
did his delight in music. But there had followed his
parting words — the few passionate words in which he
had impHed that she herself was the object of whom
his love held him in dread, that it was his love for her
only which he was resolved not to declare but to carry
away into banishment. From the time of that parting,
Dorothea, believing in Will's love for her, believing
with a proud delight in his deUcate sense of honour
and his determination that no one should impeach
him justly, felt her heart quite at rest as to the regard
he might have for Mrs Lydgate. She was sure that the
regard was blameless.

There are natures in which, if they love us, we are
conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration :
they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their
pure belief about us; and our sins become that worst
kind of sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar
of trust. 'If you are not good, none is good' — those
httle words may give a terrific meaning to responsibility,
may hold a vitriolic intensity for remorse.

Dorothea's nature was of that kind : her own
passionate faults lay along the easily-counted open
channels of her ardent character; and while she was
full of pity for the visible mistakes of others, she had
not yet any material within her experience for subtle
constructions and suspicions of hidden wrong. But
that simpHcity of hers, holding up an ideal for others
in her believing conception of them, was one of the
great powers of her womanhood. And it had from the
first acted strongly on Will Ladislaw. He felt, when he
parted from her, that the brief words by which he had
tried to convey to her his feeling about herself and the
division which her fortune made between them, would
only profit by their brevity when Dorothea had to

420 MIDDLEMARCH

interpret them : he felt that in her mind he had found
his highest estimate.

And he was right there. In the months since their
parting Dorothea had felt a delicious though sad
repose in their relation to each other, as one v/hich was
inwardly whole and without blemish. She had an
active force of antagonism within her, when the
antagonism turned on the defence either of plans or
persons that she beUeved in; and the wrongs which
she felt that Will had received from her husband, and
the external conditions which to others were grounds
for sHghting him, only gave the more tenacity to her
affection and admiring judgment. And now with the
disclosures about Bulstrode had come another fact
affecting Will's social position, which roused afresh
Dorothea's inward resistance to what was said about
him in that part of her world which lay within park
palings.

'Young Ladislaw, the grandson of a thieving Jew
pawnbroker,' was a phrase which had entered emphati-
cally into the dialogues about the Bulstrode business,
at Lowick, Tipton, and Freshitt, and was a worse
kind of placard on poor Will's back than the 'ItaHan
with white mice.' Upright Sir James Chettam was
convinced that his own satisfaction was righteous
when he thought with some complacency that here
was an added league to that mountainous distance
between Ladislaw and Dorothea, which enabled him to
dismiss any anxiety in that direction as too absurd.
And perhaps there had been some pleasure in pointing
Mr Brooke's attention to this ugly bit of Ladislaw' s
genealogy, as a fresh candle for him to see his own
folly by. Dorothea had observed the animus with
which Will's part in the painful story had been recalled
more than once; but she had uttered no word, being
checked now, as she had not been formerly in speaking
of Will, by the consciousness of a deeper relation
between them which must always remain in consecrated

MIDDLEMARCH 421

secrecy. But her silence shrouded her resistant
emotion into a more thorough glow; and this mis-
fortune in Will's lot which, it seemed, others were
wishing to fling at his back as an opprobrium, only
gave something more of enthusiasm to her clinging
thought.

She entertained no visions of their ever coming into
nearer union, and yet she had taken no posture of
renunciation. She had accepted her whole relation to
Will very simply as part of her m.arriage sorrows, and
would have thought it very sinful in her to keep up an
inward wail because she was not completely happy,
being rather disposed to dwell on the superfluities of
her lot. She coiild bear that the chief pleasures of her
tenderness should he in memory, and the idea of
marriage came to her solely as a repulsive proposition
frnm some suitor of whom she at present knew nothing,
but whose merits, as seen by her friends, would be
a source of torment to her — 'somebody who will
manage your property for you, my dear,' was Mr
Brooke's attractive suggestion of suitable character-
istics. *I should hke to manage it myself, if I knew
what to do with it,' said Dorothea. No — she adhered
to her declaration that she would never be married
again, and in the long valley of her hfe, which looked
so flat and emipty of way-marks, guidance would come
as she walked along the road, and saw her fellow-
passengers by the way.

This habitual state of feehng about Will Ladislaw
had been strong in all her waking hours since she had
proposed to pay a visit to Mrs Lydgate, making a sort
of background against which she saw Rosamond's
figure presented to her without hindrances to her
interest and compassion. There was evidently some
mental separation, some barrier to complete con-
fidence which had arisen between this life and the
husband who had yet made her happiness a law to
him. That was a trouble which no thirt^ person must

422 MIDDLEMARCH

directly touch. But Dorothea thought with deep
pity of the lonehness which must have come upon
Rosamond from the suspicions cast on her husband;
and there would surely be help in the manifestation of
respect for Lydgate and sympathy with her.

*I shall tadk to her about her husband,' thought
Dorothea, as she was being driven towards the town.
The clear spring morning, the scent of the moist earth,
the fresh leaves just showing their creased-up wealth
of greenery from out their half-opened sheaths, seemed
part of the cheerfulness she was feeHng from a long
conversation with Mr Farebrother, who had joyfully
accepted the justifying explanation of Lydgate's
conduct. 'I shall take Mrs Lydgate good news, and
perhaps she will like to talk to me and make a friend
of me.'

Dorothea had another errand in Lowdck Gate : it
was about a new fine-toned bell for the schoolhouse,
and as she had to get out of her carriage very near to
Lydgate's, she walked thither across the street, having
told the coachman to wait for some packages. The
street door was open, and the servant was taking the
opportunity of looking out at the carriage which was
pausing within sight when it became apparent to her
that the lady who 'belonged to it' was coming towards
her.

*Is Mrs Lydgate at home?' said Dorothea.

*I am not sure, my lady; I'll see, if you'll please
to walk in,' said Martha, a Httle confused on the score
of her kitchen apron, but collected enough to be sure
that *mum' was not the right title for this queenly
young widow with a carriage and pair. 'Will you
please to walk in, and I'll go and see.'

'Say that I am Mrs Casaubon,' said Dorothea, as
Martha moved forward intending to show her into the
drawing-room and then to go upstairs to see if Rosamond
had returned from her walk.

They crossed the broader part of the entrance-hall.

MIDDLEMARCH 443

and turned up the passage which led to the garden.

The drawing-room door was unlatched, and Manha,
pushing it without looking into the room, waited for
Mrs Casaubon to enter and then turned away, the door
haling swung open and swung back again without noise.

Dorothea had less of outward vision than usual this
morning, being filled \\ith images of things as they had
been and were going to be. She found herself on the
other side of the door without seeing anything remark-
able, but immediately she heard a voice speaking in
low tones which startled her as with a sense of dreaming
in daylight, and advancing unconsciously a step or
two beyond the projecting slab of a bookcase, she saw,
in the terrible illumination of a certainty which filled
up all outlines, something which made her pause
motionless, without self-possession enough to speak.

Seated with his back towards her on a sofa which
stood against the wall on a line with the door by which
she had entered, she saw Will Ladislaw : close by him
and turned towards him with a flushed tearfulness
which gave a new briUiancy to her face sat Rosa-
mond, her bonnet hanging back, while Will leaning
towards her clasped both her upraised hands in his
and spoke ^^ith low-toned fervour.

Rosamond in her agitated absorption had not noticed
the silently advancing figure; but when Dorothea,
after the first immeasurable instant of this \ision,
moved confusedly backward and found herself impeded
by some piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly
aware of her presence, and with a spasmodic movement
snatched away her hands and rose, looking at Dorothea
who was necessarily arrested. Will Ladislaw, starting
up, looked round also, and meeting Dorothea's eyes
with a new hghtning in them, seemed changing to
marble. But she immediately turned them away from
him to Rosamond and said in a firm voice : —

'Excuse me, Mrs Lydgate, the servant did not know
that you were here. I called to deliver an important

424 MIDDLEMARCH

letter for Mr Lydgate, which I wished to put into your
hands/

She laid down the letter on the small table which had
checked her retreat, and then including Rosamond and
Will in one distant glance and bow, she went quickly
out of the room, meeting in the passage the surprised
Martha, who said she was sorry the mistress was not
at home, and then showed the strange lady out with an
inward reflection that grand people were probably
more impatient than others.

Dorothea walked across the street with her most
elastic step and was quicldy in her carriage again.

'Drive on to Freshitt Hall,' she said to the coachman,
and any one looking at her might have thought that
though she was paler than usual she was never animated
by a more self-possessed energy. And that was really
her experience. It was as if she had drunk a great
draught of scorn that stimulated her beyond the sus-
ceptibility to other feeUngs. She had seen something
so far below her behef, that her emotions rushed back
from it and made an excited throng without an object.
She needed something active to turn her excitement
out upon. She felt power to walk and work for a
day, without meat or drink. And she would carry
out the purpose with which she had started in the
morning, of going to Freshitt and Tipton to tell Sir
James and her uncle all that she wished them to know
about Lydgate, whose married loneHness under his
trial now presented itself to her with new significance,
and made her more ardent in readiness to • be his
champion. She had never felt anything Uke this
triumphant power of indignation in the struggle of
her married life, in which there had always been a
quickly subduing pang; and she took it as a sign of
new strength,

*Dodo, how very bright your eyes are !' said CeHa^
when Sir James was gone out of the room. 'And you
don't see anything you look at, Arthur or anything.

MIDDLEMARCH 425

You are going to do something uncomfortable, I know.
Is it all about Mr Lydgate, or has something else
happened?' CeHa had been used to watch her sister
with expectation.

'Yes, dear, a great many things have happened,'
said Dodo, in her full tones.

'I wonder what,' said Celia, folding her aims cosily
and leaning forward upon them.

'Oh, all the troubles of all people on the face of the
earth,' said Dorothea, lifting her arms to the back of
her head.

'Dear me, Dodo, are you going to have a scheme for
them?' said CeHa, a little uneasy at this Hamlet-like
raving.

But Sir James came in again, ready to accompany
Dorothea to the Grange, and she finished her expedition
well, not swerving in her resolution until she descended
at her own door.

426 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXVIII

Would it were yesterday and I i' the grave,
With her sweet faith above for monument.

Rosamond and Will stood motionless — ^they did not
know how long — he looking towards the spot where
Dorothea had stood, and she looking towards him with
doubt. It seemed an endless time to Rosamond,
in whose inm.ost soul there was hardly so much annoy-
ance as gratification from what had just happened.
Shallow natures dream of an easy sway over the
emotions of others, trusting impUcitly in their own
petty magic to turn the deepest streams, and confident,
by petty gestures and remarks, of making the thing
that is not as though it were. She knew that Will had
received a severe blow, but she had been Httle used to
imagining other people's states of mind except as a
material cut into shape by her own wishes; and she
believed in her own power to soothe or subdue. Even
Tertius, that most perverse of men, was always sub-
dued in the long-run : events had been obstinate, but
still Rosamond would have said now, as she did
before her marriage, that she never gave up what she
had set her mind on.

She put out her arm and laid the tips of her fingers
on Will's coat -sleeve.

'Don't touch me !' he said, with an utterance like
the cut of a lash, darting from her, and changing from
pink to white and back again, as if his whole frame
were tingling with the pain of the sting. He wheeled
round to the other side of the room and stood opposite
to her, wdth the tips of his fingers in his pockets and

MIDDLEMARCH 427

his head thrown back, looking fiercely not at
Rosamond but at a point a few inches away from
her.

She was keenly offended, but the signs she made of
this were such as only Lydgate was used to interpret.
She became suddenly quiet and seated herself, untying
her hanging bonnet and laying it down with her
shawl. Her little hands which she folded before her
were very cold.

It would have been safer for Will in the first instance
to have taken up his hat and gone away; but he had
felt no impulse to do this; on the contrary, he had
a horrible inclination to stay and shatter Rosamond
with his anger. It seemed as impossible to bear the
fatality she had drawn down on him without venting
his fury as it would be to a panther to bear the javelin-
wound without springing and biting. And yet — how
could he tell a woman that he was ready to curse her?
He was fuming under a repressive law which he was
forced to acknowledge : he was dangerously poised,
and Rosamond's voice now brought the decisive
vibration. In flute-like tones of sarcasm she
said : —

'You can easily go after Mrs Casaubon and explain
your preference.'

*Go after her T he burst out, with a sharp edge in
his voice. 'Do you think she would turn to look at
me, or value any word I ever uttered to her again at
more than a dirty feather? — Explain I How can
a man explain at the expense of a woman ? '

'You can tell her what you please,' said Rosamond,
with more tremor.

'Do you suppose she would Uke me better for
sacrificing you? She is not a woman to be flattered
because I made myself despicable — to believe that
I must be true to her because I was a dastard to
you.'

He began to move about with the restlessness of a

428 MIDDLEMARCH

wild animal that sees prey but cannot reach it.
Presently he burst out again : —

'I had no hope before — not much — of anj^thing
better to come. But I had one certainty — that she
believed in me. Whatever people had said or done
about me, she believed in me. That's gone ! She'll
never again think me anything but a paltry pretence
— too nice to take heaven except upon flattering
conditions, and yet selling myself for any devil's
change by the sly. She'll think of me as an incarnate
insult to her, from the first moment we . . .'

Will stopped as if he had found himself g-rasping
something that must not be throv/n and shattered.
He found another vent for his rage by snatching up
Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles to
be throttled and flung off.

'Explain ! Tell a man to explain how he dropped
into hell 1 Explain my preference ! I never had
a preference for her, any more than I have a
preference for breathing. No other woman exists by
the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it
were dead, than I would touch any other woman's
Hving.'

Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being
hurled at her, was almost losing the sense of her
identity, and seemed to be waking into some new
terrible existence. She had no sense of chill resolute
repulsion, of reticent self- justification such as she had
known under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure :
all her sensibiHty was turned into a bewildering novelty
of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash
never experienced before. What another nature felt
in opposition to her own was being burnt and bitten
into her consciousness. When Will had ceased to
speak she had become an image of sickened misery :
her lips were pale, and her eyes had a tearless dismay
in them. If it had been Tertius who stood opposite
to her, that look of misery would have been a pang to

MIDDLEMARCH 429

him, and he would have sunk by her side to comfort
her, with that strong-armed comfort which she had
often held very cheap.

Let it be forgiven to Will that he had no such
movement of pity. He had felt no bond beforehand to
this woman who had spoiled the ideal treasure of his
life, and he held himself blameless. He knew that he
was cruel, but he had no relenting in him yet.

After he had done speaking, he still moved about,
half in absence of mind, and Rosamond sat perfectly
still. At length Will seeming to bethink himself,
took up his hat, yet stood some moments irresolute.
He had spoken to her in a way that made a phrase
of common politeness difficult to utter; and yet,
now that he had come to the point of going away
from her without further speech, he shrank from it as
a brutaUty; he felt checked and stultified in his
anger. He walked towards the mantelpiece and
leaned his arm on it, and waited in silence for — he
hardly knew what. The vindictive fire was still burn-
ing in him, and he could utter no word of retractation,
but it was nevertheless in his mind that having come back
to this hearth where he had enjoyed a caressing friend-
ship he had found calamity seated there — he had had
suddenly revealed to him a trouble that lay outside
the home as well as within it. And what seemed a fore-
boding was pressing upon him as with slow pincers:
— that his hfe might come to be enslaved by this
helpless woman who had thrown herself upon him in
the dreary sadness of her heart. But he was in
gloomy rebellion against the fact that his quick
apprehensiveness foreshadowed to him, and when his
eyes fell on Rosamond's blighted face it seemed to
him that he was the more pitiable of the two; for
pain must enter into its glorified life of memory
before it can turn into compassion.

And so they remained for many minutes, opposite
each other, far apart, in silence; Will's face still

430 MIDDLEMARCH

possessed by a mute rage, and Rosamond's by a mute
misery. The poor thing had no force to fling out any
passion in return; the terrible collapse of the illusion
towards which all her hope had been strained was
a stroke which had too thoroughly shaken her : her
little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tot-
tering in the midst as a lonely bewildered conscious-
ness.

Will wished that she would speak and bring some
mitigating shadow across his own cruel speech, which
seemed to stand staring at them both in mockery
of any attempt at revived fellowship. But she said
nothing, and at last with a desperate effort over him-
self, he asked, 'Shall I come in and see Lydgate this
evening ? '

Tf you like,' Rosamond answered, just audibly.

And then Will went out of the house, Martha never
knowing that he had been in.

After he was gone, Rosamond tried to get up from
her seat, but fell back fainting. When she came to
herself again, she felt too ill to make the exertion of
rising to ring the bell, and she remained helpless until
the girl, surprised at her long absence, thought for
the first time of looking for her in all the downstairs
rooms. Rosamond said that she had felt suddenly
sick and faint, and wanted to be helped upstairs.
When there she threw herself on the bed with her
clothes on, and lay in apparent torpor, as she had
done once before on a memorable day of grief.

Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected,
about half -past five, and found her there. The per-
ception that she was ill threw every other thought
into the background. When he felt her pulse, her eyes
rested on him with more persistence than they had
done for a long while, as if she felt some content that
he was there. He perceived the difference in a moment,
and seating himself by her put his arm gently under
her, and bending over her said, 'My poor Rosamond 1

MIDDLEMARCH 431

has something agitated you?' Clinging to him she
fell into hysterical sobbings and cries, and for the
next hour he did nothing but soothe and tend her.
He imagined that Dorothea had been to see her, and
that all this effect on her nervous system, which
evidently involved some new turning towards himself,
was due to the excitement of the new impressions
which that visit had raised.

43? MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXIX

Now, I saw in my dream, that just as they had ended their
talk, they drew nigh to a very miry slough, that was in the
midst of the plain; and they, being heedless, did both fall
suddenly into the bog. The name of the slough was Despond.

BUNYAN.

When Rosamond was quiet, and Lydgate had left
her hoping that she might soon sleep under the effect
of an anod3me, he went into the drawing-room to
fetch a book which he had left there, meaning to spend
the evening in his workroom, and he saw on the table
Dorothea's letter addressed to him. He had not
ventured to ask Rosamond if Mrs Casaubon had called,
but the reading of this letter assured him of the fact,
for Dorothea mentioned that it was to be carried by
herself.

When Will Ladislaw came in a little later, Lydgate
met him with a surprise wliich made it clear that he
had not been told of the earlier visit, and Will could
not say, 'Did not Mrs Lydgate tell you that I came this
morning ? '

'Poor Rosamond is ill,' Lydgate added immediately
on his greeting.

'Not seriously, I hope,' said Will.

'No — only a sHght nervous shock — the effect of
some agitation. She has been overwrought lately.
The truth is, Ladislaw, I am an unlucky devil. We
have gone through several rounds of purgatory since
you left, and I have lately got on to a worse ledge
of it than ever. I suppose you are only just come down
— you look rather battered — you have not been long
enough in the town to hear anything?'

'I travelled all night and got to the White Hart

MIDDLEMARCH 433

at eight o'clock this morning. I have been shutting
mj^self up and resting/ said Will, feeling himself a
sneak, but seeing no alternative to this evasion.

And then he heard Lydgate's account of the troubles
which Rosamond had already depicted to him in her
way. She had not mentioned the fact of Will's name
being connected with the public story — this detail
not immediately affecting her — and he now heard it
for the first time.

'I thought it better to tell you that your name is
mixed up with the disclosures,' said L^'dgate, who
could understand better than most men how Ladislaw
might be stung by the revelation. 'You will be sure
to hear it as soon as you turn out into the town. I
suppose it is true that Raffles spoke to you.'

'Yes,' said Will, sardonicalty. 'I shall be fortunate
if gossip does not make me the most disreputable
person in the whole affair. I should think the latest
version must be, that I plotted with RafQes to murder
Bulstrode, and ran away from Middlemarch for the
purpose.'

He was thinking, 'Here is a new ring in the sound of
my name to recommend it in her hearing; however —
what does it signify now?'

But he said nothing of Bulstrode' s offer to him.
Will was very open and careless about his personal
affairs, but it was among the more exquisite touches
in nature's modelling of him that he had a dehcate
generosity which vv-arned him into reticence here. He
shrank from saying that he had rejected Bulstrode' s
money, in the moment when he was learning that it
was Lydgate's misfortune to have accepted it.

Lydgate, too, was reticent in the midst of his confi-
dence. He made no allusion to Rosamond's feeling
under their trouble, and of Dorothea he only said,
'Mrs Casaubon has been the one person to come for-
ward and say that she had no belief in any of the sus-
picions against me.' Observing a change in Will's

434 MIDDLEMARCH

face, he avoided any further mention of her, feeHng
himself too ignorant of their relation to each other
not to fear that his words might have some hidden
painful bearing on it. And it occurred to him that
Dorothea was the real cause of the present visit to
Middlem.arch.

The two men were pitying each other, but it was
only Will who guessed the extent of his companion's
trouble. When Lydgate spoke with desperate resigna-
tion of going to settle in London, and said with a
faint smile, 'We shall have you again, old fellow,'
Will felt inexpressibly mournful, and said nothing.
Rosamond had that morning entreated him to urge
this step on Lydgate; and it seemed to him as if he
were beholding in a magic panorama a future where
he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding
to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is
a conmioner history of perdition than any single
momentous bargain.

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look
passively at our future selves, and see our own figures
led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby
achievement. Poor Lydgate was inwardly groaning
on that margin, and Will was arriving at it. It seemed
to him this evening as if the cruelty of his outburst to
Rosamond had made an obHgation for him, and he
dreaded the obligation : he dreaded Lydgate' s un-
suspecting goodwill : he dreaded his own distaste for
his spoiled hfe, which would leave him in motiveless
levity.

MIDDLEMARCH 435

CHAPTER LXXX

Stem lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fan-
As is the smile upon thy face;
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh
and strong.

Wordsworth : Ode to Duty.

When Dorothea had seen Mr Farebrother in the
morning, she had promised to go and dine at the
parsonage on her return from Freshitt. There was
a frequent interchange of visits between her and the
Farebrother family, which enabled her to say that she
was not at all lonely at the Manor, and to resist for
the present the severe prescription of a lady com-panion.
When she reached home and remembered her engage-
ment, she was glad of it; and finding that she had still
an hour before she could dress for dinner, she walked
straight to the schoolhouse and entered into a con-
versation with the master and mistress about the new
bell, gi^ang eager attention to their small details and
repetitions, and getting up a dramatic sense that her
life was very busy. She paused on her way back to
talk to old "Master Bunney who was putting in some
garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with that raral
sage about the crops that would make the most
return on a perch of ground, and the result of sixty
years' experience as to soils — namely, that if y<i)UJ
soil was pretty mellow it would do, but if there came

wet, wet, wet to make it all of a mummy, why then

Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into

436 MIDDLEMARCH

being rather late, she dressed hastily and went over
to the parsonage rather earher than was necessary.
That house was never dull, Mr Farebrother, like
another White of Selbome, having continually some-
thing new to tell of his inarticulate guests and proteges,
whom he was teaching the boys not to torment; and
he had just set up a pair of beautiful goats to be pets
of the village in general, and to walk at large as sacred
animals. The evening went by cheerfully till after
tea, Dorothea talking more than usual, and dilating
with Mr Farebrother on the possible histories oi
creatures that converse compendiously with their
antennae, and for aught we know may hold reformed
parliam.ents; when suddenly some inarticulate little
sounds were heard which called everybody's attention.

'Henrietta Noble,' said Mrs Farebrother, seeing her
small sister moving about the fumiture-legs distress-
fulty, 'what is the matter?'

*I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I feat
the kitten has rolled it away,' said the tiny old lady,
involuntarily continuing her beaver-hke notes.

'Is it a great treasure, aunt?' said Mr Farebrother,
putting up his glasses and looking at the carpet.

'Mr Ladislaw gave it me,' said Miss Noble. 'A
German box — very pretty; but if it falls it always
spins away as far as it can.'

'Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present,' said Mr Farebrother,
in a deep tone of comprehension — getting up and hunt-
ing. The box was found at last under a chiffonier,
and Miss Noble grasped it with delight, saying, 'it
was imder a fender the last time.'

'That is an affair of the heart ^\ith my aunt,' said
Mr Farebrother, smiling at Dorothea — as he reseated
himself.

'If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any
one, Mrs Casaubon,' said his mother, emphatically,
— 'she is like a dog — she would take their shoes for
a pillow and sleep the better.'

MIDDLEMARCH 437

*Mr Ladislaw's shoes, I would,' said Henrietta
Noble.

Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return.
She was surprised and annoyed to find that her heart
was palpitating violently, and that it was quite useless
to try after a recovery of her former animation.
Alarmed at herself — fearing some further betrayal of
a change so marked in its occasion, she rose and said
in a low voice with undisguised anxiety, 'I must go;
I have overtired myself.'

Mr Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and
said, 'It is true; you must have half-exhausted your-
self in talking about Lydgate. That sort of work tells
upon one after the excitement is over.'

He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea
did not attempt to speak, even when he said good-night.

The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sank
back helpless wdthin the clutch of inescapable anguish.
Dismissing Tantripp with a few faint words, she
locked her door, and turning away from it towards
the vacant room she pressed her hands hard on the
top of her head, and moaned out : —

'Oh, I did love him!'

Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering
shook her too thoroughly to leave any power of thought.
She could only cry in loud whispers, between her sobs,
after her lost belief which she had planted and kept
alive from a very little seed since the days in Rome
— after her lost joy of chnging with silent love and
faith to one who, misprized by others, was worthy in
her thought — after her lost woman's pride of reigning
in his memory — after her sweet dim perspective of
hope, that along some pathway the 3^ should meet
with unchanged recognition and take up the backward
years as a yesterday.

In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes
of solitude have looked on for ages in the spiritual
struggles of man — she besought hardness and coldness

438 MIDDLEMARCH

and aching weariness to bring her relief from the
mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish : she lay
on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her;
while her grand woman's frame was shaken by sobs
as if she had been a despairing child.

There were two images — two living forms that tore
her heart in two, as if it had been the heart of a mother
who seems to see her child divided by the sword and
presses one bleeding half to her breast while her gaze
goes forth in agony towards the half which is carried
away by the lying woman that has never known the
mother's pang.

Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here
within the vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the
bright creature whom she had trusted — who had come
to her like the spirit of morning visiting the dim
vault where she sat as the bride of a worn-out life;
and now, with a full consciousness which had never
awakened before, she stretched out her arms towards
him and cried with bitter cries that their nearness
was a parting vision : she discovered her passion lo
herself in the unshrinking utterance of despair.

And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving
wherever she moved, was the Will Ladislaw who was
a changed belief exhausted of hope, a detected illusion
— no, a hving man towards whom there could not
yet struggle any wail of regretful pity, from the midst
of scorn and indignation and jealous offended pride.
The fire of Dorothea's anger was not easily spent, and it
flamed out in fitful returns of spurning reproach.
Why had he come obtruding his life into hers, hers
that might have been whole enough without him?
Why had he brought his cheap regard and his lip-born
words to her who had nothing paltry to give in
exchange ? He knew that he was deluding her — wished,
in the very moment of farewell, to make her believe
that he gave her the whole price of her heart, and knew
that he had spent it half before. Why had he not

MIDDLEMARCH 439

stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing
— but only prayed that they might be less contemp-
tible?

But she lost energy at last even for her loud
whispered cries and moans : she subsided into helpless
sobs, and on the cold floor she sobbed herself to sleep.

In the chill hours of the morning twihght, when all
was dim around her, she awoke — not with any amazed
wondering where she was or what had happened, but
with the clearest consciousness that she was looking
into the eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm
things around her, and seated herself in a great chair
where she had often watched before. She was vigorous
enough to have borne that hard night ^^dthout feeUng
ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she
had waked to a new condition : she felt as if her soul
had been hberated from its terrible conflict; she was
no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit do'wn
with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer
in her thoughts. For now the thoughts came thickly.
It was not in Dorothea's nature, for longer than the
duration of a paroxysm, to sit in the narrow cell of her
calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousness
that only sees another's lot as an accident of its
own.

She began now to live through that yesterday
morning deliberately again, forcing herself to dwell
on every detail and its possible meaning. Was she
alone in that scene? Was it her event only? She
forced herself to think of it as bound up \\ith another
woman's hfe — a woman towards whom she had set
out with a longing to carry some clearness and comfort
into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap 01
jealous indignation and disgust, when quitting the
hateful room, she had flung away all the mercy with
which she had imdertaken that visit. She had enveloped
both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and
it seemed to her as if Rosamond were burned out of

440 MIDDLEMARCH

her sight for ever. But that base prompting which
makes a woman more cruel to a rival than to a faithless
lover, could have no strength of recurrence in Doro-
thea when the dominant spirit of justice within her
had once overcome the tumult and had once shown
her the truer measure of things. All the active thought
with which she had before been representing to her-
self the trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage
union which, like her o\vn, seemed to have its hidden
as well as evident troubles — all this vivid sympathetic
experience returned to her now as a power : it asserted
itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will
not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance.
She said to her own irremediable grief, that it should
make her more helpful, instead of driving her back
from effort.

And what sort of crisis might not this be in three
hves whose contact with hers laid an obligation on
her as if they had been supphants bearing the sacred
branch? The objects of her rescue were not to be
sought out by her fancy : they were chosen for her.
She yearned tovvards the perfect Right, that it might
make a throne within her, and rule her errant will.
'Wliat should I do — how should I act now, this very
day, if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to
silence, and think of those three?'

It had taken long for her to come to that question,
and there was Hght piercing into the room. She
opened her curtains, and looked out towards the bit
of road that lay in view, with fields beyond, outside
the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man
with a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her
baby; in the field she could see figures moving — per-
haps the shepherd with liis dog. Far off in the bending
sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of
the world and the manifold wakings of m_en to labour
and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary,
palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from

MIDDLEMARCH 441

her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide
her eyes in selfish complaining.

What she would resolve to do that day did not yet
seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve
stirred her as with an approaching murmur which
would soon gather distinctness. She took off the
clothes which seemed to have some of the weariness
of a hard watching in them, and began to make her
toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp, who came in
her dressing-gown.

'Why, madam, you've never been in bed this
blessed night,' burst out Tantripp, looking first at
the bed and than at Dorothea's face, which in spite of
bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyehds of a
mater dolorosa. 'You'll kill yourself, you will. Any-
body might think now you had a right to give yourself
a little comfort.'

'Don't be alarmed, Tantripp,' said Dorothea,
smiling. 'I have slept; I am not ill. I shall be glad
of a cup of coffee as soon as possible. And I w^ant you
to bring me my new dress; and most Hkely I shall
want my new bonnet to-day.*

'They've lain there a month and more ready for
you, madam, and most thankful I shall be to see you
with a couple o' pounds' worth less of crape,' said
Tantripp, stooping to hght the fire. 'There's a reason
in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds at
the bottom of your skirt and a plain quilling in your
bonnet — and if ever anybody looked hke an angel,
it's you in a net quilling — is what's consistent for a
second year. At least, that's my thinking,' ended
Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire; 'and if any-
body was to marry me flattering himself I should
wear those hideous weepers two years for him, he'd
be deceived by his own vanity, that's all.'

'The fire will do, my good Tan,' said Dorothea,
speaking as she used to do in the old Lausanne days,
only with a very low voice; 'get me the coffee.'

442 MIDDLEMARCH

She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her
head against it in fatigued quiescence, while Tan-
tripp went away wondering at this strange contrariness
in her ycung mistress — that just the morning when
she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should
have asked for her lighter mourning which she had
waived before. Tantripp would never have found the
clue to this mystery. Dorothea wished to acknow-
ledge that she had not the less an active life before her
because she had buried a private joy; and the tradition
that fresh garments belonged to all initiation, haunting
her mind, m.ade her grasp after even that sHght out-
ward help towards calm resolve. For the resolve
was not easy.

Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking
towards Middlemarch, having made up her mind that
she would make as quietly and unnoticeably as pos-
sible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.

MIDDLEMARCH 443

CHAPTER LXXXI

Du Erde waxst auch diese Nacht bestandig,
Und athmest neu erquickt zu nieinen Fiissen,
Beginnest schon mit Lust mich zu umgeben,
Du regst und rlihrst ein kraftiges Beschliessen
Zum hdchsfen Dasein immerfort zu sfreben.

Faust : 2r Theil.

When Dorothea was again at Lydgate's door spealdng
to Martha, he was in the room close by with the door
ajar, preparing to go out. He heard her voice, and
immediately came to her.

*Do you think that Mrs Lydgate can receive me this
morning?' she said, ha\'ing reflected that it would be
better to leave out all allusion to her previous visit.

'I have no doubt she will,' said Lydgate, suppressing
his thought about Dorothea's looks, which were as much
changed as Rosamond's, 'if you will be kind enough
to come in and let me tell her that you are here. She
has not been very well since you were here ^^esterday,
but she is better this morning, and I think it is very
likely that she will be cheered by seeing you again.'

It was plain that Lydgate, as Dorothea had expected,
knew nothing about the circumstances of her yesterday's
visit; nay, he appeared to imagine that she had
carried it out according to her intention. She had
prepared a httle note asking Rosamond to see her,
which she would have given to the servant if he had
not been in the way, but now she was in much anxiety
as to the result of his announcement.

After leading her into the drawing-room, he paused
to take a letter from his pocket and put it into her
hands, saying, 'I Avrote this last night, and was going
to carry it to Lowick in my ride. When one is gratefiS

444 MIDDLEMARCH

for something too good for common thanks, writing
is less unsatisfactory than speech — one does not at
least hear how inadequate the words are/

Dorothea's face brightened. * It is I who have most
to thank for, since you have let me take that place.
You have consented?' she said, suddenly doubting.

*Yes, the cheque is going to Bulstrode to-day.'

He said no more, but went upstairs to Rosamond,
who had but lately finished dressing herself, and sat
languidly wondering what she should do next, her
habitual industry in small things, even in the days of
her sadness, prompting her to begin some kind of
occupation, which she dragged through slowly or
paused in from lack of interest. She looked ill, but
had recovered her usual quietude of manner, and
Lydgate had feared to disturb her by any questions.
He had told her of Dorothea's letter containing the
cheque, and afterwards he had said, Ladislaw is come,
Rosy; he sat with me last night; I dare say he will
be here again to-day. I thought he looked rather
battered and depressed.' And Rosamond had made no
reply.

Now, when he came up, he said to her very gently,
'Rosy, dear, Mrs Casaubon is come to see you again;
you would like to see her, would you not?' That
she coloured and gave rather a startled movement
did not surprise him after the agitation produced by
the interview yesterday — a beneficent agitation, he
thought, since it seemed to have made her turn to
him again.

Rosamond dared not say no. She dared not with
a tone of her voice touch the facts of yesterday. Why
had Mrs Casaubon come again? The answer was a
blank which Rosamond could only fill up with dread,
for Will Ladislaw' s lacerating words had made every
thought of Dorothea a fresh smart to her. Neverthe-
less, in her new humihating uncertainty, she dared do
nothing but comply. She did not say yes, but she

MIDDLEMARCH 445

rose and let Lydgate put a light shawl over her
shoulders, while he said, *I am going out immediately/
Then something crossed her mind which prompted
her to say, ' Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else
into the drawing-room.' And Lydgate assented,
thinking that he fully understood this wish. He led
her down to the drawing-room door, and then turned
away, observing to himself that he was rather a
blundering husband to be dependent for his wife's
trust in him on the influence of another woman.

Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as
she walked towards Dorothea, was inwardly wrapping
her soul in cold reserve. Had Mrs Casaubon come to
say anything to her about \Vill? If so, it was a liberty
that Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself
to meet every word with poHte impassibiHty. Will
had bruised her pride too sorely for her to feel any
compunction towards him and Dorothea : her own
injury seemed much the greater. Dorothea was not
only the 'preferred' woman, but had also a formidable
advantage in being Lydgate' s benefactor; and to
poor Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed that
this Mrs Casaubon — this woman who predominated
in all things concerning her — must have come now
with the sense of having the advantage, and with
animosity prompting her to use it. Indeed, not
Rosamond only, but any one else, knowing the outer
facts of the case, and not the simple inspiration on
which Dorothea acted, might well have wondered
why she came.

Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful
slimness wrapped in her soft white shawl, the rounded
infantine mouth and cheek inevitably suggesting mild^
ness and innocence, Rosamond paused at three yards'
distance from her visitor and bowed. But Dorothea,
who had taken off her gloves, from an impulse which
she could never resist when she wanted a sense of
freedom, came forward, and with her face full of a

446 MIDDLEMARCH

sad yet sweet openness, put out her hand. Rosamond
could not avoid meeting her glance, could not avoid
putting her small hand into Dorothea's, which clasped
it with gentle motherliness; and immediately a doubt
of her own prepossessions began to stir within her.
Rosamond's eye was quick for faces; she saw that
Mrs Casaubon's face looked pale and changed since
yesterday, yet gentle — and like the firm softness of her
hand. But Dorothea had counted a little too much
on her own strength : the clearness and intensity of
her mental action this morning were the continuance
of a nervous exaltation which made her frame as
dangerously responsive as a bit of finest Venetian
crystsil; and in looking at Rosamond, she suddenly
found her heart swelling, and was unable to speak
— all her effort was required to keep back tears. She
succeeded in that, and the emotion only passed over
her face like the spirit of a sob; but it added to Rosa-
mond's impression that Mrs Casaubon's state of mind
must be something quite different from what she had
imagined.

So they sat down without a word of preface on the
two chairs that happened to be nearest, and happened
also to be close together; though Rosamond's notion
when she first bowed was that she should stay
a long way off from Mrs Casaubon. But she ceased
thinking how anything would turn out — merely
wondering what would come. And Dorothea began
to speak quite simply, gathering firmness as she
went on.

'I had an errand yesterday which I did not finish;
that is why I am here again so soon. You will not
think me too troublesome, when I tell you that I
came to talk to you about the injustice that has been
shown towards lli Lydgate. It will cheer you — ^will
it not ? — to know a great deal about him, that he may
not Hke to speak about himself just because it is in
his own vindication and to his own honour. You'

MIDDLEMARCH 447

will like to know that your husband has warm friends,
who have not left off believing in his high character?
You will let me speak of this without thinking that
I take a liberty?'

The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow
with generous heedlessness above all the facts which
had filled Rosamond's mind cLS grounds of obstruction
and hatred between her and this woman, came as
soothiagly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears.
Of course Mrs Casaubon had the facts in her mind,
but she was not going to speak of anything connected
with them. That relief was too great for Rosamond
to feel much else at the moment. She answered
prettily, in the new ease of her soul : —

*I know you have been very good. I shall hke to
hear an}i;hing you will say to me about Tertius.'

'The day before yesterday,' said Dorothea, 'when
I had asked him to come to Lowick to give me his
opinion on the affairs of the hospital, he told me every-
thing about his conduct and feelings in this sad event
which has m.ade ignorant people cast suspicions on him.
The reason he told me was because I was very bold and
asked him. I believed that he had never acted dis-
honourably, and I begged him to tell me the history.
He confessed to me that he had never told it before,
not even to you, because he had a great dislike to say,
'T was not wrong," as if that were proof, when there
are guilty people who will say so. The truth is, he
knew nothing of this man Raffles, or that there were
any bad secrets about him; and he thought that Mr
Biistrode offered him the money because he repented,
out of kindness, of having refused it before. All his
anxiety about his patient was to treat him rightly,
and he was a httle uncomfortable that the case did
not end as he had expected; but he thought then and
still thinks that there may have been no wrong in it
on any one's part. And I have told Mr Farebrother,
and Mr Brooke, and Sir James Chettam : they «dl

448 MIDDLEMARCH

believe in your husband. That will cheer you, will
it not? That will give you courage?'

Dorothea's face had become animated, and as it
beamed on Rosamond very close to her, she felt some-
thing like bashful timidity before a superior, in the
presence of this self-forgetful ardour. She said,
with blushing embarrassment, 'Thank you : you are
very kind.'

'And he felt that he had been so wrong not to pour
out everything about this to you. But you will for-
give him. It w^as because he feels so much more
about your happiness than anytliing else — he feels his
life bound into one with yours, and it hurts him more
than an\n:hing, that his misfortunes must hurt you.
He could speak to me because I am an indifferent
person. And then I asked him if I might come to see
you; because I felt so much for his trouble and ^^ours.
That is why I came yesterday, and why I am come
to-day. Trouble is so hard to bear, is it not ? — How
can we live and think that any one has trouble —
piercing trouble — and \ve could help them, and never
try?'

Dorothea, completely swayed by the feeling that
she was uttering, forgot everything but that she was
speaking from out the heart of her own trial to Rosa-
mond's. The emotion had wrought itself m.ore and
more into her utterance, till the tones might have
gone to one's very marrowy hke a low cry from some
suffering creature in the darkness. And she had
unconsciously laid her hand again on the Uttle hand
that she had pressed before.

Rosamond, with an overmastering pang, as if a
wound within her had been probed, burst into
hysterical crying as she had done the day before when
she clung to her husband. Poor Dorothea was feeling
a great wave of her owti sorrow returning over her —
her thought being drawn to the possible share that
Will Ladislaw might have in Rosamond's mental

MIDDLEMARCH 449

tumult. She was beginning to fear that she should
not be able to suppress herself enough to the end of
this meeting, and while her hand was still resting on
Rosamond's lap, though the hand underneath it was
withdrawn, she was struggling against her own rising
sobs. She tried to master herself with the thought
that this might be a turning-point in three Hves —
not in her own; no, there the irrevocable had happened,
but in those three lives which were touching hers with
the solemn neighbourhood of danger and distress.
The fragile creature who was crjdng close to her —
there might still be time to rescue her from the misery
of false incompatible bonds; and this moment was
unHke any other : she and Rosamond could never
be together again with the same thrilling consciousness
of yesterday within them both. She felt the relation
between them to be peculiar enough to give her a
particular influence, though she had no conception
that the way in which her own feelings were involved
was fully known to Mrs Lydgate.

It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience
than even Dorothea could imagine : she was under
the first great shock that had shattered her dream-
world in which she had been easily confident of her-
self and critical of others; and this strange unexpected
manifestation of feeling in a woman whom she had
approached with a shrinking aversion and dread, as
one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred
towards her, made her soul totter all the more with a
sense that she had been walking in an unknown world
which had just broken in upon her.

'N^Hien Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding
into cahn, and she withdrew the handkerchief with
which she had been hiding her face, her eyes met
Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue
flowers. What was the use of thinking about
behaviour after this crying? And Dorothea looked
almost as childish, with the neglected trace of a

M. (11). P

450 MIDDLEMARCH

silent tear. Pride was broken down between these
two.

'We were talking about your husband/ Dorothea
said, with some timidity. 'I thought his looks were
sadly changed with suffering the other day. I had not
seen him for many weeks before. He said he had been
feeling very lonely in his trial; but I think he would
have borne it all better if he had been able to be quite
open with you.'

'Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say any-
thing/ said Rosamond, imagining that he had been
complaining of her to Dorothea. He ought not to
wonder that I object to speak to him on painful
subjects.'

'It was himself he blamed for not speaking,' said
Dorothea. 'What he said of you was, that he could
not be happy in doing anything which made you
imhappy — that his marriage was of course a bond
which must affect his choice about everything; and
for that reason he refused my proposal that he should
keep his position at the hospital, because that would
bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not
undertake to do am^thing which would be painful to
3^ou. He could say that to me, because he knows that
I had much trial in my marriage, from my husband's
illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him;
and he knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk
always in fear of hurting another who is tied to us/

Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint
pleasure stealing over Rosamond's face. But there
was no answer, and she went on, with a gathering
tremor, 'Marriage is so unlike everything else. There
is something even awful in the nearness it brings.
Even if we loved some one else better than — than those
we were married to, it would be no use' — poor Doro-
thea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her
language brokenly — 'I mean, marriage drinks up all
cur power of giving or getting any blessedness in that

MIDDLEMARCH 451

sort of love. I know it may be very dear — but it mur-
ders our marriage — and then the marriage stays with
us like a murder — and everything else is gone. And
then our husband — if he loved and trusted us, and
we have not helped him, but made a curse in his
life . . .'

Her voice had sunk very low : there was a dread
upon her of presuming too far, and of speaking as if
she herself were perfection addressing error. She was
too much preoccupied with her own anxiety, to be
aware that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled
with the need to express pitying fellowship rather
then rebuke, she put her hands on Rosamond's, and
said with more agitated rapidity, — 'I know, I know
that the feeling may be very dear — it has taken hold
of us unawares— it is so hard, it may seem hke death
to part with it — and we are weak — I am weak '

The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which
she was struggling to save another, rushed over
Dorothea with conquering force. She stopped in
speechless agitation, not crying, but feeling as if she
were being inwardly grappled. Her face had become
of a deathlier paleness, her lips trembled, and she
pressed her hands helplessly on the hands that lay
under them.

Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger
than her own — hurried along in a nev/ movement
which gave all things some new, awful, undefined
aspect — could find no words, but involuntarily she
put her Hps to Dorothea's forehead which was very
near her, and then for a minute the two women clasped
each other as if they had been in a shipwreck.

'You are thinking what is not true,' said Rosamond,
in an eager half-whisper, while she was still feeling
Dorothea's arms round her — urged by a mysterious
necessity to free herself from something that oppressed
her as if it were blood-guiltiness.

They moved apart, looking at each other.

452 MIDDLEMARCH

'When you came in yesterday — it was not as you
thought/ said Rosamond in the same tone.

There was a movement of surprised attention in
Dorothea. She expected a vindication of Rosamond
herself.

'He was telHng me how he loved another woman,
that I might know he could never love me/ said
Rosamond, getting m-ore and more hurried as she went
on. 'And now I think he hates me because — because
you mistook him yesterday. He says it is through me
that you will think ill of him — think that he is a false
person. But it shall not be through me. He has
never had any love for me — I know he has not — he
has always thought sUghtly of me. He said yesterday
that no other woman existed for him beside you.
The blame of what happened is entirely mine. He
said he could never explain to you — because of me.
He said you could never think well of him again.
But now I have told you, and he cannot reproach me
any more.'

Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses
which she had not known before. She had begun her
confession under the subduing influence of Dorothea's
enotion; and as she went on she had gathered the
sense that she was repelling Will's reproaches, which
were still like a knife-wound within her.

The revulsion of feeUng in Dorothea was too strong
to be called joy. It was a tumult in which the terrible
strain of the night and morning made a resistant
pain : — she could only perceive that this would be
joy when she had recovered her power of feeling it.
Her immediate consciousness was one of immense
sympathy without check; she cared for Rosamond
without struggle now, and responded earnestly to
her last words : —

.'No, he cannot reproach you any more.'

With her usual tendency to over estimate the good
in others, she felt a great outgoing of her heart towards

MIDDLEMARCH 453

Rosamond for the generous effort which had redeemed
her from suffering, not counting that the effort was
a reflex of her own energy.

After they had been silent a little, she said : —

'You are not sorry that I came this morning?'

'No, you have been very good to me,' said Rosa-
mond. 'I did not think that you would be so good.
I was very unhappy. I am not happy now. Every-
thing is so sad.'

'But better days will come. Your husband will be
rightly valued. And he depends on you for comfort.
He loves you best. The worst loss would be to lose
that — and you have not lost it,' said Dorothea.

She tried to thrust away the too overpowering
thought of her own relief, lest she should fail to win
some sign that Rosamond's affection was yearning back
towards her husband.

'Tertius did not find fault with me, then?' said
Rosamond, understanding now that Lydgate might
have said anything to Mrs Casaubon, and that she
certainly was different from other women. Perhaps
there was a faint taste of jealousy in the question.
A smile began to play over Dorothea's face as she
said : —

'No, indeed! How could you imagine 't?' But
here the door opened, and Lydgate entered.

'I am come back in my quality of doctor,' he said.
'After I went away, I was haunted by two pale faces :
Mrs Casaubon looked as much in need of care as you.
Rosy. And I thought that I had not done my duty
in leaving you together; so when I had been to Cole-
man's I came home again. I noticed that you were
walking, Mrs Casaubon, and the sky has changed — ■
I think we may have rain. May I send some one to
order your carriage to come for you?'

'Oh no ! I am strong : I need the walk,* said
Dorothea, rising with animation in her face. 'Mrs
Lydgate and I have chatted a great deal, and it is

454 MIDDLEMARCH

time for me to go. I have always been accused of
being immoderate and saying too much/

She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said
an earnest, quiet good-bye without kiss or other show
of effusion : there had been between them too much
serious emotion for them to use the signs of it super-
ficially.

As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing
of Rosamond-, but told him of Mr Farebrother and
the other friends who had listened with behef to his
ston/.

When he came back to Rosamond, she had already
thrown herself on the sofa, in resigned fatigue.

'Well, Rosy,' he said, standing over her, and touch-
ing her hair, 'what do j^ou think of Mrs Casaubon now
you have seen so much of her?'

'I think she must be better than any one,'* said
Rosamond, 'and she is very beautiful. If you go to
talk to her so often, you will be m.ore discontented
with me than ever T

Lydgate laughed at the 'so often.' 'But has she
made you any less discontented with me?'

'I think she has,' said Rosamond, looking up in his
face. 'How heavy your eyes are, Tertius — and do
push your hair back.' He lifted up his large white
hand to obey her, and felt thankful for this little mark
of interest in him. Poor Rosam.ond's vagrant fancy
had come back terribly scourged — meek enough to
nestle under the old despised shelter. And the shelter
was still there : Lydgate had accepted his narrowed
lot with sad resignation. He had chosen this fragile
creature, and had taken the burden of her life upon
his arms. He must walk as he could, carrying that
burden pitifully.

MIDDLEMARCH 455

CHAPTER LXXXII

My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

Shakespeare : Sonnets.

Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are
unhkely to stay in banishment unless they are obHged.
When Will Ladislaw exiled himself from Middlemarch
he had placed no stronger obstacle to his return than
his own resolve, v/hich was by no means an iron
barrier, but simply a state of mind Uable to melt into
a minuet with other states of mind, and to find itself
bowing, smiHng, and giving place with polite facility.
As the months went on, it had seemed more and more
difficult to him to say why he should not run down
to Middlemarch — merely for the sake of hearing some-
thing about Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit
he should chance by some strange coincidence to meet
with her, there was no reason for him to be ashamed
of having taken an innocent journey which he had
beforehand supposed that he should not take. Since
he was hopelessly divided from her, he might surely
venture into her neighbourhood; and as to the sus
picious friends who kept a dragon watch over her —
their opinions seemed less and less important with
time and change of air.

And there had come a reason quite irrespective of
Dorothea, which seemed to make a journey to Middle-
march a sort of philanthropic duty. Will had given
a disinterested attention to an intended settlement
on a new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds
in order to carry out a good design had set him on
debating with himself whether it would not be a
laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode. to

456 MIDDLEMARCH

urge the application of that money which had been
offered to himself as a means of carrying out a scheme
likely to be largely beneficial. The question seemed
a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance to
again entering into any relation with the banker
might have made him dismiss it quickly, if there had
not arisen in his imagination the probability that his
judgment might be more safely determined by a visit
to Middlemarch.

That was the object which Will stated to himself
as a reason for coming down. He had meant to con-
fide in Lydgate, and discuss the money question with
him, and he had meant to amuse himself for the few
evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music
and badinage with fair Rosamond, without neglecting
his friends at Lowick Parsonage — if the Parsonage
was close to the Manor, that was no fault of his. He
had neglected the Farebrothers before his departure,
from a proud resistance to the possible accusation of
indirectly seeking interviews with Dorothea; but
hunger tames us, and Will had become very hungry
for the vision of a certain form and the sound of a
certain voice. Nothing had done instead — ^not the
opera, or the converse of zealous politicians, or the
flattering reception (in dim comers) of his new hand
in leading articles.

Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence
how almost everything would be in his famihar Httle
world; fearing, indeed, that there would be no sur-
prises in his visit. But he had found that humdrum
world in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even
badinage and lyrism had turned explosive; and the
first day of this visit had become the most fatal epoch
of his life. The next morning he felt so harassed with
the nightmare of consequences — he dreaded so much
the immediate issues before liim — that seeing while he
breakfasted the arrival of the Riverston coach, he went
out hurriedly and took his place on it, that he might

MIDDLEMARCH 457

be relieved, at least for a day, from the necessity of
doing or saying anything in Middlemarch. Will
Ladislaw was in one of those tangled crises which are
commoner in experience than one might imagine,
from the shallow absoluteness of men's judgments.
He had found Lydgate, for whom he had the sincerest
respect, under circumstances which claimed his
thorough and frankly-declared sympathy; and the
reason why, in spite of that claim, it would have been
better for Will to have avoided all further intimacy,
or even contact, with Lydgate, was precisely of the
kind to make such a course appear impossible. To
a creature of Will's susceptible temperament — without
any neutral region of indifference in his nature, ready
to turn everything that befell him into the collisions
of a passionate drama — the revelation that Rosamond
had made her happiness in any way dependent on
him was a difficulty which his outburst of rage towards
her had immeasurably increased for him. He hated
his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to show the fullness
of his relenting : he must go to her again; the friend-
ship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappi-
ness was a power which he dreaded. And all the while
there was no more foretaste of enjoyment in the
life before him than if his Hmbs had been lopped off
and he was making his fresh start on crutches. In
the night he had debated whether he should not ^et
on the coach, not for Riverston, but for London,
leaving a note to Lydgate which would give a make-
shift reason for his retreat. But there were strong
cords pulhng him back from that abrupt departure :
the blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea,
the crushing of that chief hope which had remained
in spite of the acknowledged necessity for renunciation,
was too fresh a misery for him to resign himself to it,
and go straightway into a distance which was also
despair.

Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the

458 MIDDLETvIARCH

Riverston coach. He came back again by it while
it was still daylight, having made up his mind that
he must go to Lydgate's that evening. The Rubicon,
we know, was a very insignificant stream to look at;
its significance lay entirely in certain invisible con-
ditions. Will felt as if he were forced to cross his
sm_all boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it
was not empire, but discontented subjection.

But it is given to us sometimes even in our everyday
life to witness the saving influence of a noble nature,
the divine efhcacy of rescue that may lie in a self-
subduing act of fellowship. If Dorothea, after her
night's anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamond
— why, she perhaps v/ould have been a woman who
gained a higher character for discretion, but it would
certainly not have been , as well for those three who
were on one hearth in Lydgate's house at half-past
seven that evening.

Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and
she recived him. with a languid coldness which Lyd-
gate accounted for by her nervous exhaustion, of which
he could not suppose that it had any relation to Will.
And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of
work, he innocently apologised for her in an indirect
way by begging her to lean backward and rest. Will
was miserable in the necessity for plajdng the part of
a friend who was making his first appearance and
greeting to Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy
about her feehng since that scene of 3^esterday, which
seemed still inexorably to enclose them both, like the
painful vision of a double madness. It happened that
nothing called Lydgate out of the room; but when
Rosamond poured out the tea, and Will came near to
fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded paper in his
saucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he
went back to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold
the paper. A^Tiat Rosamond had written to him would
probably deepen the painful impressions of the evening.

MIDDLEMARCH 459

Still, he opened and read it by his bed-candle.
There were only these few words in her neatly-flowing
hand : —

'I have told Mrs Casaubon. She is not under any
mistake about you. I told her because she came to
see me and was very kind. You will have nothing
to reproach me \vith now. I shall not have made any
difference to you.'

The effect of these words was not quite all gladness.
As Will dwelt on them with excited imagination, he
felt his cheeks and ears burning at the thought of
what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond
— at the uncertainty how far Dorothea might still
feel her dignity wounded in having an explanation of
his conduct ofiered to her. There might still remain
in her mind a changed association with him which
made an irremediable difference — a lasting flaw.
With active fancy he wrought himself into a state of
doubt little more easy than that of the man who has
escaped from wreck b}^ night and stands on unknown
ground in the darkness. Until that wretched yesterday
— except the moment of vexation long ago in the very
same room and in the very same presence — all their
vision, all their thought of each other, had been as
in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on tall white
lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.
But now — would Dorothea meet him in that world
again ?

46o MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXXIII

And now good-morrow to our waking souls
\Vhich watch not one another out of fear;
For love aU love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.

Dr Donne.

On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosa-
mond, she had had two nights of sound sleep, and had
not only lost all traces of fatigue, but felt as if she had
a great deal of superfluous strength — that is to say,
more strength than she could manage to concentrate
on any occupation. The day before, she had taken
long walks outside the grounds, and had paid two
visits to the Parsonage; but she never in her life
told any one the reason why she spen+ her time in
that fruitless manner, and this morning she was
rather angry with herself for her childish restlessness.
To-day was to be spent quite differently. What was
there to be done in the village ? O dear ! nothing.
Everybody was weU and had flannel; nobody's pig
had died; and it was Saturday morning, when there
was a general scrubbing of floors and door-stones, and
when it was useless to go into the school. But there
were various subjects that Dorothea was trydng to
get clear upon, and she resolved to throw herself
energetically into the gravest of all. She sat down in
the library before her particular httle heap of books
on political economy and kindred matters, out of
which she was trying to get Hght as to the best way
of spending money so as not to injure one's neighbours,
or — ^what comes to the same thing — so as to do them
the most good. Here was a weighty subject which,
if she could but lay hold of it, would certainly keep

MIDDLEMARCH 461

her mind steady. Unhappily her mind sHpped off it
for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself
reading sentences twice over with an intense con-
sciousness of many things, but not of any one thing
contained in the text. This was hopeless. Should she
order the carriage and drive to Tipton ? No ; for some
reason or other she preferred staying at Lowick. But
her vagrant mind must be reduced to order : there
was an art in self-discipline; and she walked round
and round the brown library considering by what
sort of manoeuvre she could arrest her wandering
thoughts. Perhaps a mere task was the best means —
something to which she must go doggedly. Was there
not the geography of Asia Minor, in which her slack-
ness had often been rebuked by Mr Casaubon? She
went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one : this
morning she might make herself finally sure that
Paphlagonia was not on the Levantine coast, and fix
her total darkness about the Chalybes firmly on the
shores of the Euxine. A map was a fine thing to study
when you were disposed to think of something else,
being made up of names that would turn into a chime
if you went back upon them. Dorothea set earnestly
to work, bending close to her map, and uttering the
names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got
into a chime. She looked amusingly girhsh after all
her deep experience — nodding her head and marking
the names off on her fingers, with a httle pursing of
her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her
hands on each side of her face and say, 'Oh dear ! oh
dear ! '

There was no reason why this should end any more
than a meny-go-round; but it was at last interruptevi
by the opening of the door and the announcement of
Miss Noble.

The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached
Dorothea's shoulder, was warmly welcomed, but
while her hand was being pressed she made many of

462 MIDDLEMARCH

her beaver-like noises, as if she had something difficult
to say.

'Do sit down/ said Dorothea, rolhng a chair forward.
'Am I wanted for anything? I shall be so glad if
I can do anything.'

'I will not stay/ said Miss Noble, putting her hand
into her small basket, and holding some articles inside
it nervously; *I have left a friend in the churchyard/
She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds, and uncon-
sciously drew forth the article which she was fingering.
It was the tortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea
felt the colour mounting to her cheeks.

'Mr Ladislaw,' continued the timid Httle woman.
'He fears he has offended you, and has begged me to
ask if you \vill see him for a few minutes.'

Dorothea did not answer on the instant : it was
crossing her mind that she could not receive him in
this library, where her husband's prohibition seemed
to dwell. She looked towards the window. Could
she go out and meet him in the grounds? The sky was
heavy, and the trees had begun to shiver as at a coming
storm. Besides, she shrank from going out to him.

'Do see him, Mrs Casaubon,' said Miss Noble,
pathetically; 'else I must go back and say No, and
that will hurt him.'

'Yes, I will see him,' said Dorothea. 'Pray tell
him to come.'

What else was there to be done ? There was nothing
that she longed for at that m.oment to see except Will :
the possibihty of seeing him had thrust itself insistently
between her and every other object; and yet she had
a throbbing excitement Hke an alaim upon her — a
sense that she was doing something daringly defiant
for his sake.

\Vhen the Httle lady had trotted away on her
mission, Dorothea stood in the middle of the library
'Mth her hands faUing clasped before her, making no
attempt to compose herself in an attitude of dignified

MIDDLEMARCH 463

unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of
just then was her own body : she was thinking of
what was likely to be in Will's mind, and of the hard
feehngs that others had had about him. How could
any duty bind her to hardness? Resistance to unjust
dispraise had mingled with her feeling for him from
the very first, and now in the rebound of her heart
after her anguish the resistance was stronger than
ever. 'If I love him too much it is because he has
been used so ill :' — there was a voice within her saying
this to some imagined audience, when the door was
opened, and she saw Will before her.

She did not move, and he came towards her with
more doubt and timidity in his face than she had ever
seen before. He was in a state of uncertainty which
made him afraid lest some look or word of his should
condemn him to a new distance from her; and Doro-
thea was afraid of her own emotion. She looked as
if there were a spell upon her, keeping her motionless
and hindering her from unclasping her hands, while
some intense, grave yearning was imprisoned within
her eyes. Seeing that she did not put out her hand as
usual, Will paused a yard from her and said with
embarrassment, 'I am so grateful to you for seeing m.e.'

*I wanted to see you,' said Dorothea, having no
other words at command. It did not occur to her to
sit down, and WiU did not give a cheerful interpretation
to this queenly way of receiving him; but he went on
to say what he had made up his mind to say.

'I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for
coming back so soon. I have been punished for my
impatience. You know— every one knows now — a
painful story about my parentage. I knew of it before
I went away, and I always meant to tell you of it if
— if we ever met again.'

There was a shght movement in Dorothea, and she
unclasped her hands, but immediately folded them
over each other.

464 MIDDLEMARCH

'But the affair is matter for gossip now/ Will
continued, 'I wished you to know that something
connected with it — something which happened before
I went awa3^ helped to bring me down here again.
At least 1 thougnt it excused my coming. It was the
idea of getting Bulstrode to apply some money to a
pubHc purpose — some money which he had thought
of giving me. Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode's
credit that he privately offered me compensation for
an old injury : he offered to give me a good income to
make amends; but I suppose you know the disagree-
able story?'

Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner
was gathering some of the defiant courage with which
he always thought of this fact in his destiny. He
added, 'You know that it must be altogether painful
to me.'

'Yes — yes — I know,' said Dorothea, hastily.

'I did not choose to accept an income from such a
source. I was sure that you would not think well
of me if I did so,' said Will. Why should he mind
saying anything of that sort to her now? She knew
that he had avowed his love for her. 'I felt that' —
he broke off, nevertheless.

'You acted as I should have expected you to act,'
said Dorothea, her face brightening and her head
becoming a little more erect on its beautiful
stem.

'I did not believe that you would let any circum-
stance of my birth create a prejudice in you against
me, though it was sure to do so in others,' said Will,
shaking his head backward in his old way, and looking
VAth a grave appeal into her eyes.

'If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason
for me to cling to you,' said Dorothea, fervidly.

'Nothing could have changed me but ' her heart

was swelling, and it was dif&cult to go on; she made
a great effort over herself to say in a low tremulous

MIDDLEMARCH 465

voice, 'but thinking that you were different — not so
good as I had believed you to be.'

'You are sure to beHeve me better than I am in
everything but one/ said Will, giving way to his own
feeling in the evidence of hers. 'I mean, in my truth
to you. When I thought you doubted of that, I didn't
care about anything that was left. I thought it was
all over with me, and there was notliing to try for —
only things to endure.'

'I don't doubt you any longer,' said Dorothea, putting
out her hand; a vague fear for him impelling her
unutterable affection.

He took her hand and raised it to his Hps with
something like a sob. But he stood with his hat and
gloves in the other hand, and might have done for the
portrait of a Royahst. Still it was difficult to loose
the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a con-
fusion that distressed her, looked and moved
away.

'See how dark the clouds have become, and how the
trees are tossed,' she said, walking towards the window,
yet speaking and moving with only a dim sense of
what she was doing.

Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned
against the tall back of a leather chair, on which he
ventured now to lay his hat and gloves, and free
himself from the intolerable durance of formahty
to which he had been for the first time condemned in
Dorothea's presence. It must be confessed that he
felt very happy at that moment leaning on the chair.
He was not lauch afraid of anything that she might
feel now.

They stood silent, not looking at each other, but
looking at the evergreens which were being tossed, and
were showing the pale underside of their leaves against
the blackening sky. Will never enjoyed the prospect
of a storm so much : it delivered him from the necessity
of going away. Leaves and little branches were

466 MIDDLEMARCH

hurled about, and the thunder was getting nearer.
The hght was more and more sombre, but there came
a flash of hghtning which made them start and look
at each other, and then smile. Dorothea began to
say what she had been thinking of.

'That was a \\Tong thing for you to say, that you
would have had nothing to try for. If we had lost
our own chief good, other people's good would remain,
and that is worth trying for. Some can be happy.
I seemed to see that more clearly than ever, when I
was the most wretched. I can hardly think how I
could have borne the trouble, if that feeling had not
come to me to make strength.'

'You have never felt the sort of misery I felt,' said
Will; 'the misery of knowing that you must despise
me.'

'But I have felt worse — it was worse to think ill — — *
Dorothea had begun impetuously, but broke off.

Will coloured. He had the sense that whatever she
said was uttered in the vision of a fatality that kept
them apart. He was silent a moment, and then said
passionately, —

'We may at least have the comfort of speaking to
each other without disguise. Since I must go away —
since we must always be divided — you may think of
me as one on the brink of the grave.'

WTiile he was speaking there came a vivid flash of
lightning which lit each of them up for the other —
and the light seemed to be the terror of a hopeless love.
Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window;
Will followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic
movement; and so they stood, with their hands
clasped, hke two children, looldng out on the storm,
while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll
above them, and the rain began to pour down. Then
they turned their faces towards each other, with the
memory of his last words in them, and they did not
loose each other's hands.

MiDDLEMARCH 467

'There is no hope for me/ said Will. 'Even if you
loved me as well as I love you — even if I were every-
thing to you — I shall most likely always be very poor :
on a sober calculation, one can coimt on nothing but
a creeping lot. It is impossible for us ever to belong
to each other. It is perhaps base of me to have
asked for a word from you. I meant to go away
into silence, but I have not been able to do what I
meant.'

'Don't be sorr}^' said Dorothea, in her clear tender
tones. 'I would rather share all the trouble of our
parting.'

Her hps trembled, and so did his. It was never
knowTi which Hps were the first to move towards the
other lips; but they kissed trembhngly, and then they
moved apart.

The rain was dashing against the window-panes as
if an angrv^ spirit were ^^^thin it, and behind it was the
great swoop of the ^^ind; it was one of those moments
in which both the busy and the idle pause with a
certain awe.

Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a
long low ottoman in the middle of the room, and A^dth
her hands folded over each other on her lap, looked
at the drear outer world. Will stood still an instant
looking at her, then seated himself beside her, and
laid his hand on hers, which turned itself upward to
be clasped. They sat in that way without looking
at each other, until the rain abated and began to fall
in stillness. Each had been full of thoughts which
neither of them could begin to utter.

But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to
look at Will. With passionate exclamation, as if
some torture-screw were threatening him, he started
up and said, 'It is impossible !'

He went and leaned on the back of the chair again,
and seemed to be batthng with his own anger, while
she looked towards him sadlv.

468 MIDDLEMARCH

*It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that
divides people/ he burst out again; 'it is more intoler-
able— to have our life maimed by petty accidents.'

'No — don't say that — your life need not be maimed/
said Dorothea, gently.

*Yes, it must/ said Will, angrily. *It is cruel of
you to speak in that way — as if there were any com-
fort. You may see beyond the misery of it, but I don't.
It is unkind — it is throwing back my love for you as
if it were a trifle, to speak in that way in the face of
the fact. We can never be married.'

'Some time — we might,' said Dorothea, in a tremb-
ling voice.

'When?' said Will, bitterly. 'What is the use of
counting on any success of mine ? It is a mere toss up
whether I shall ever do more than keep myself decently,
unless I choose to sell myself as a mere pen and a
mouthpiece. I can see that clearly enough. I could
not offer myself to any woman, even if she had no
luxuries to renounce.'

There was silence. Dorothea's heart was full of
something that she wanted to say, and yet the words
were too difficult. She was wholly possessed by them :
at that moment debate was mute within her. And it
was very hard that she could not say what she wanted
to say. Will was looking out of the window angrily.
If he would have looked at her and not gone away from
her side, she thought everything would have been
easier. At last he turned, still resting against the
chair, and stretching his hand automatically towards
his hat, said with a sort of exasperation, 'Good-
bye.'

'Oh, I cannot bear it — my heart will break,' said
Dorothea, starting from her seat, the flood of her
young passion bearing down all the obstructions
which had kept her silent — the great tears rising and
falHng in an instant : 'I don't mind about poverty —
I hate mv wealth.'

MIDDLEMARCK 469

In an instant Will was close to her and had his
arms round her, but she drew her head back and held
his away gently that she might go on speaking, her
large tear-filled eyes looking at his very simply, while
she said in a sobbing childlike way, *We could live
quite well on my own fortune — it is too much — seven,
hundred a year — I want so little — no new clothes —
and T will learn what everything costs,'

470 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXXIV

Though it be songe of old and yonge,

That I sholde be to blame,
The3^rs be the charge, that spoke so large

In hiirtynge of my name.

The Not-browne Mayde.

It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform
Bill : that explains how Mr Cadwallader came to be
walking on the slope of the lawn near the great con-
servaton.^ at Freshitt Hall, holding The Times in his
hands behind him, while he talked wdth a trout-
fisher's dispassionateness about the prospects of the
countr}^ to Sir James Chettam. Mrs Cadwallader, the
Dowager Lady Chettam, and Ceha were sometimes
seated on garden-chairs, sometim.es walking to meet
Httle Arthur, who was being dra\\Ti in his chariot, and,
as became the infantine Buddha, was sheltered by his
sacred umbrella \^dth handsome silken fringe.

The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully.
Mrs Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation
of peers : she had it for certain from her cousin that
Truberry had gone over to the other side entirely at
the instigation of his \\dfe, who had scented peerages
in the air from the very first introduction of the Reform
question, and would sign her soul away to take pre-
cedence of her 5^ounger sister, who had married a
baronet. Lad}' Chettam thought that such conduct
was very reprehensible, and remembered that Mrs
Truberry' s mother was a Miss \^^alsingham of Mel-
spring. Celia confessed it was nicer to be 'Lad}^' than
'Mrs,' and that Dodo never minded about precedence
if she could have her o-wn way. Mrs Cadwallader
held that it was a poor satisfaction to take precedence

MIDDLEMARCH 471

when everybody about you knew that you had not
a drop of good blood in your veins; and Celia again,
stopping to look at Arthur, said, 'It would be very
nice, if he were a Viscount — and his lordship's little
tooth coming through 1 He might have been if Sir
James had been an Earl.'

'My dear Celia,' said the Dowager, 'James's title
is worth far more than any new earldom. I never
wished his father to be anything else than Sir James.'

'Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth,' said
Celia, comfortably. 'But see, here is my uncle
coming.'

She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James
and Mr Cadwallader came forward to make one group
with the ladies. Celia had slipped her arm through
her uncle's, and he patted her hand with a rather
melancholy 'Well, my dear !' As they approached,
it was evident that Mr Brooke was looking dejected,
but this was fully accounted for by the state of
politics; and as he was shaking hands all round
without more greeting than a 'Well, you're all here,
you know,' the Rector said, laughingly : —

'Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to
heart, Brooke; you've got all the riff-raff of the
country on your side.'

'The Bill, eh? ah T said Mr Brooke, with a mild
distractedness of manner. *Thi*own out, you know,
eh? The Lords are going too far, though. They'll
have to pull up. Sad news, you know. I mean, here
at home — sad news. But you must not blame me,
Chettam.'

'What is the matter?' said Sir James. 'Not another
gamekeeper shot, I hope? It's what I should expect,
when a fellow Uke Trapping Bass is let off so easily.'

'Gamekeeper? No. Let us go in; I can tell 3-ou all
in the house, you know,' said Mr Brooke, nodding at
the Cadwalladers, to show that he included them in
his confidence. 'As to poachers like Trapping Bass,

472 MIDDLEMARCH

you know, Chettam/ he continued, as they were
entering, 'when you are a magistrate, you'll not find
it so easy to commit. Severity is all very well, but it's
a great deal easier when you've got somebody to do
it for you. You have a soft place in your heart your-
self, you know — you're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that
sort of thing.'

Mr Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous
perturbation. When he had something painful to
tell, it was usually his way to introduce it among a
number of disjointed particulars, as if it were a medicine
that would get milder flavour by mixing. He con-
tinued his chat with Sir James about the poachers
until they were all seated, and Mrs Cadwallader,
impatient of this drivelHng, said : —

'I'm dying to know the sad news. The gamekeeper
is not shot : that is settled. What is it, then?'

'Well, it's a very tr3ang thing, you know,' said Mr
Brooke. 'I'm glad you and the Rector are here; it's
a family matter — but you will help us all to bear it,
Cadwallader. I've got to break it to you, my dear.*
Here Mr Brooke looked at Celia — 'You've no notion
what it is, you know. And, Chettam, it wiU annoy
you uncommonly — but, you see, you have not been
able to hinder it, any more than I have. There's
something singular in things : they come round, you
know.*

'It must be about Dodo,' said Celia, who had been
used to think of her sister as the dangerous part of
the family machinery. She had seated herself on a low
stool against her husband's knee.

'For God's sake let us hear what it is !' said Sir
James.

'Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's
will : it was a sort of will to make things worse.'

'Exactly,' said Sir James, hastily. 'But what is

worse

'Dorothea is going to be married again, you know/

MIDDLEMARCH 473

said Mr Brooke, nodding towards Celia, who immedi-
ately looked up at her husband with a frightened
glance, and put her hand on his knee.

Sir James was almost white with anger, but he did
not speak.

'Merciful Heaven !' said Mrs Cadwallader. 'Not to
young Ladislaw?' ,

Mr Brooke nodded, saying, 'Yes, to Ladislaw, and
then fell into a prudential silence.

'You see, Humphrey !' said Mrs Cadwallader, waving
her arm towards her husband. 'Another time you will
admit that I have some foresight; or rather you will
contradict me and be just as bUnd as ever. You
supposed that the young gentleman was gone out of
the country.'

'So he might be, and yet come back/ said the Rector
quietly.

'When did you learn this?' said Sir James, not
liking to hear any one else speak, though finding it
difficult to speak liimself.

'Yesterday,' said Mr Brooke, meekly. *I went to
Lowick. Dorothea sent for me, you know. It had
come about quite suddenly — neither of them had any
idea two days ago — not any idea, you know. There's
something singular in things. But Dorothea is quite
determined— it is no use opposing. I put it strongly
to her. I did my duty, Chettam. But she can act
as she likes, you know.'

'It would have been better if I had called him out
and shot him a year ago,' said Sir James, not from
bloody-mindedness, but because he needed something
strong to say.

'Really, James, that would have been very disagree-
able,' said Celia.

'Be reasonable, Chettam. Look at the affair more
quietly,' said Mr Cadwallader, sorry to see his good-
natured friend so overmastered by anger.

'That is not so very easy for a man of any dignity

474 MIDDLEMARCH

— with any sense of right — when the affair happens
to be in his own family,' said Sir James, still in his
white indignation. 'It is perfectly scandalous. If
Ladislaw had had a spark of honour he would have
gone out of the country at once, and never shown his
face in it again. However, I am not surprised. The
day after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to
be done. But I w^as not Hstened to.'

'You wanted what was impossible, you know,
Chettam,' said Mr Brooke. 'You wanted him shipped
off. I told you Ladislaw was not to be done as we
liked with : he had his ideas. He was a remarkable
fellow — and I always said he was a remarkable fellow.'

'Yes,' said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, 'it
is rather a pity you fonned that high opinion of him.
We are indebted to that for his being lodged in this
neighbourhood. We are indebted to that for seeing
a wom.an like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying
him.' Sir James made httle stoppages between his
clauses, the words not coming easily. 'A man so marked
out by her husband's wall, that dehcacy ought to have
forbidden her from seeing him again — ^who takes her
out of her proper rank — into poverty — has the mean-
ness to accept such a sacrifice — has always had an
objectionable position — a bad origin — and, / believe,
is a man of little principle and Hght character. That
is my opinion,' Sir James ended emphatically, turning
aside and crossing his leg,

'I pointed everything out to her,' said Mr Brooke,
apologetically — 'I mean the poverty, and abandoning
her position. I said, "My dear, you don't know what
it is to live on seven hundred a year, and have no
carriage, and that kind of thing, and go amongst
people w^ho don't know w^ho you are." I put it
strongly to her. But I ad\dse you to talk to Dorothea
herself. The fact is, she has a disHke to Casaubon's
property. You will hear what she says, you know.*

'No — excuse me — I shall not,' said Sir Jam.es, with

MIDDLEMARCH 475

more coolness. *I cannot bear to see her again; it is
too painful. It hurts me too much that a woman hke
Dorothea should have done what is wrong.'

'Be just, Chettam/ said the easy, large-hpped Rector,
who objected to all this unnecessary discomfort. 'Mrs
Casaubon may be acting imprudently : she is giving
up a fortune for the sake of a man, and we men have
so poor an opinion of each other that w^e can hardly
call a woman wise who does that. But I think you
should not condemn it as a wrong action, in the strict
sense of the word.'

'Yes, I do,' answered Sir James. 'I think that
Dorothea commits a wrong action in marrying
Ladislaw.'

']\Iy dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an
act wrong because it is unpleasant to us,' said the
Rector, quietly. Like many men w^ho take hfe easily,
he had the knack of saying a home truth occasionally
to those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper.
Sir James took out his handkerchief and began to
bite the corner.

'It is very dreadful of Dodo, though,' said CeUa,
wishing to justify her husband. 'She said she never
would marry again — not anybody at all.'

'I heard her say that same thing myself,' said Lady
Chettam, majestically, as if this were royai evidence.

'Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases,*
said Mrs Cadwallader. 'The only wonder to me is,
that any of you are surprised. You did nothing to
hinder it. If you would have had Lord Triton down
here to woo her with his philanthropy, he might have
carried her off before the year was over. There was
no safety in anything else. Mr Casaubon had prepared
all this as beautifully as possible. He mad^ himself
disagreeable — or it pleased God to make nim so —
and then he dared her to contradict him. It's the
way to make any trumpery tempting, to ticket it
at a high price in that way.'

476 MIDDLEMARCH

*I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cad-
wallader,' said Sir James, still feeling a little stung,
and turning round in his chair towards the Rector.
'He's not a man we can take into the family. At
least, I must speak for myself,' he continued, carefully
keeping his eyes off Mr Brooke. *I suppose others
will find his society too pleasant to care about the
propriety of the thing.'

'Well, you know, Chettam,' said Mr Brooke, good-
humourediy, nursing his leg, 'I can't turn my back on
Dorothea. I must be a father to her up to a certain
point. I said, "My dear, I won't refuse to give you
away." I had spoken strongly before. But I can cut
off the entail, you know. It will cost money and be
troublesome; but I can do it, you know.'

Mr Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he
was both showing his own force of resolution and
propitiating what was just in the Baronet's vexation.
He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than
he was aware of. He had touched a motive of v/hich
Sir James was ashamed. The mass of his feeling
about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was due partly
to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion,
partly to a jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladis-
law's case than in Casaubon's. He was convinced that
the marriage was a fatal one for Dorothea. But amid
that mass ran a vein of which he was too good and
honourable a man to Hke the avowal even to himself :
it was undeniable that the union of the two estates
— Tipton and Freshitt — lying charmingly within a
ring-fence, was a prospect that flattered him for his
son and heir. Hence when Mr Brooke noddingly
appealed to that motive, Sir James felt a sudden
embarrassment; there was a stoppage in his throat;
he even blushed. He had found more words than
usual in the first jet of his anger, but Mr Brooke's
propitiation was more clogging to his tongue than Mr
Cadwallader's caustic hint.

MIDDLEMARCH 477

But Celia was glad to have room for speech after
her uncle's suggestion of the marriage ceremony, and
she said, though with as httle eagerness of manner as
if the question had turned on an invitation to dinner,
'Do you mean that Dodo is going to be married directly,
uncle ? '

*In three weeks, you know,' said Mr Brooke, help-
lessly. *I can do nothing to hinder it, Cadwallader,'
he added, turning for a little countenance toward the
Rector, who said : —

*/ should not make any fuss about it. If she likes
to be poor, that is her affair. Nobody would have
said anything if she had married the young fellow
because he was rich. Plenty of beneficed clergy are
poorer than they will be. Here is Elinor,' continued
the provoking husband; 'she vexed her friends by
marrying me : I had hardly a thousand a year — I was
a lout — nobody could see anything in me — my shoes
were not the right cut — all the men wondered how a
woman could like me. Upon my word, I must take
Ladislaw's part until I hear more harm of him.'

'Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it,'
said his wife. 'Everything is all one — that is the begin-
ning and end with you. As if you had not been a
Cadwallader ! Does any one suppose that I would
have taken such a m.onster as you by any other
name ? '

'And a clergym.an too,' observed Lady Chettam
with approbation. 'Elinor cannot be said to have
descended below her rank. It is difficult to say what
Mr Ladislaw is, eh, James?'

Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less
respectful than his usual mode of answering his
mother. Celia looked up at him like a thoughtful
kitten.

'It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful
mixture !' said Mrs Cadwallader. 'The Casaubon
cuttle-fish fluid to begin with, and a rebellious PoUsh

478 MIDDLEMARCH

fiddler or dancing-master, was it? — and then an old
clo '

'Nonsense, Elinor,' said the Rector, rising. 'It is
time for us to go.'

'After all, he is a pretty sprig,' said Mrs Cadwallader,
rising too, and wishing to make amends. 'He is Hke
the fine old Crichley portraits before the idiots came
in.'

'I'll go with you,' said Mr Brooke, starting up
with alacrity. 'You must all come and dine with me
to-morrow, you know — eh, Celia, my dear?'

'You will, James — won't you?' said Celia, taking
her husband's hand.

'Oh, of course, if you like,' said Sir James, pulling
down his waistcoat, but unable yet to adjust his face
good-humouredly. 'That is to say, if it is not to meet
anybody else.'

'No, no, no,' said Mr Brooke, understanding the
condition. 'Dorothea would not come, 5'Ou know,
unless you had been to see her.'

When Sir James and Ceha were alone, she said, 'Do
you mind about my having the carriage to go to
Lowick, James?'

'What, now, directly?' he answered, with some
surprise.

'Yes, it is very important,' said Celia.

'Remember, CeHa, I cannot see her,' said Sir James.

'Not if she gave up marrying?'

'What is the use of saying that? — however, I'm
going to the stables. I'll tell Briggs to bring the
carriage round.'

CeHa thought it was of great use, if not to say that,
at least to take a journey to Lowick in order to influ-
ence Dorothea's mind. AU through their girlhood she
had felt that she could act on her sister by a word
judiciously placed — by opening a htile window for
the daylight of her own understanding to enter among
the strange coloured lamps by v/hich Dodo habitually

MIDDLEMARCH 479

saw. And Celia the matron naturally felt more able
to advise her childless sister. How could any one
understand Dodo so well as Celia did, or love her so
tenderly ?

Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure
at the sight of her sister so soon after the revelation
of her intended marriage. She had prefigured to her-
self, even with exaggeration, the disgust of her friends,
and she had even feared that Celia might be kept
aloof from her.

'O Kitty, I am deHghted to see you !' said Dorothea,
putting her hands on Celia' s shoulders, and beaming
on her. 'I almost thought you would not come to
me.'

'I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry,*
said Celia, and they sat down on two small chairs
opposite each other, with their knees touching.

'You know. Dodo, it is very bad,' said Celia, in her
placid guttural, looking as prettily free from humours
as possible. 'You have disappointed us all so. And
I can't think that it ever will be — you never can go
and live in that way. And then there are all your
plans ! You never can have thought of that. James
would have taken any trouble for you, and you
might have gone on all your life doing what you
hked.'

'On the contrary, dear,' said Dorothea, *I never
could do anything that I liked. I have never carried
out any plan yet.'

'Because you always wanted things that wouldn't
do. But other plans would have come. And how
can you marry Mr Ladislaw, that we none of us thought
you could marry? It shocks James so dreadfully.
And then it is all so different from what you have
always been. You would have Mr Casaubon because
he had such a great soul, and was so old, and dismal,
and learned; and now, to think of marrying Mr Ladis-
law, who has got no estate or an\d:hing. I suppose it

48o MIDDLEMARCH

is because you must be making yourself uncomfortable
in some way or other.'

Dorothea laughed.

'Well, it is very serious, Dodo,' said Celia, becoming
more impressive. 'How will you live? and you will go
away among queer people. And I shall never see you
— and you won't mind about little Arthur — and I
thought you always would '

Celia' s rare tears had got into her eyes, and the
corners of her mouth were agitated.

'Dear Celia,' said Dorothea, with tender gravity,
'if you don't ever see me, it will not be my fault.'

'Yes, it will,' said Celia, with the same touching
distortion of her small features. 'How can I come to
you or have you with me when James can't bear it?
— that is because he thinks it is not right — he thinks
you are so wrong, Dodo. But you always were
wrong; only I can't help loving you. And nobody
can think where you will live : where can you go?'

'I am going to London,' said Dorothea.

'How can you always Uve in a street ? And you will
be so poor. I could give you half my things, only how
can I, when I never see you?'

'Bless you, Kitty,' said Dorothea, with gentle
warmth. 'Take comfort : perhaps James will for-
give me some time.'

'But it would be much better if you would not be
married,' said Ceha, drying her e3/es, and returning to
her argument; 'then there would be nothing uncom-
fortable. And you v/ould not do what nobody thought
you could do. James always said you ought to be
a queen; but this is not at all being like a queen.
You know what mistakes you have always been
making. Dodo, and this is another. Nobody thinks Mr
Ladislaw a proper husband for you. And you said
you would never be married again.'

'It is quite true that I might be a wiser person,
Celia/ said Dorothea, 'and that I might have done

^ MIDDLEMARCH 481

something better, if I had been better, But this is
what I am going to do. I have promised to marry
Mr Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him.'

The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note
that Celia had long learned to recognise. She was
silent a few moments, and then said, as if she had
dismissed all contest, 'Is he very fond of you, Dodo?'

'I hope so. I am very fond of him.'

'That is nice,' said Celia, comfortably. 'Only I
would rather you had such a sort of husband as James
is, with a place very near, that I could drive to.'

Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative.
Presently she said, 'I cannot think how it all came
about.' CeHa thought it would be pleasant to hear
the story.

*I dare say not,' said Dorothea, pinching her sister's
chin. 'If you knew how it came about, it would not
seem wonderful to you.'

'Can't you tell me?' said CeHa, setthng her arms
cosily.

'No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you
would never know.'

M. (II)

482 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXXV

Then went the jury out, whose names were Mr Blindman,
Mr No-good, Mr IMalice, Mr Love-lust, Mr Live-loose, Mr
Heady, Mr High-mind, Mr Enmity, Mr Liar, Mr Cruelty,
Mr Hate-light, Mr Implacable, who every one gave in his
private verdict against him among themselves, and afterwards
unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before the judge.
And first among themselves, Mr Blindman, the foreman, said,
I see clearly that this man is a heretic. Then said Mr No-good,
Away with such a fellow from the earth ! Ay, said Mr Mahce,
for I hate the very look of him. Then said Mr Love-lust, I
could never endure him. Nor I, said Mr Live-loose; for he
would be always condemning my way. Hang him, hang him,
said Mr Heady. A sorry scrub, said Mr High-mind. My heart
riseth against him, said Mr Enmity. He is a rogue said Mr
Liar. Hanging is too good for him, said Mr Cruelty. Let us
despatch him out of the way, said Mr Hate-light. Then said
Mr Implacable, Might I have all the world given me, I could
not be reconciled to him; therefore let us forthwith bring him
in guilty of death.' — Pilgrim's Progress.

When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the
persecuting passions bringing in their verdict of
guilt3^ who pities Faithful ? That is a rare and blessed
lot which some greatest men have not attained, to
know ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd —
to be sure that what we are denounced for is solely
the good in us. The pitiable lot is that of the man
who could not call himself a martyr even though he
were to persuade himself that the men w^ho stoned
him were but ugly passions incarnate — who knows
that he is stoned, not for professing the Right, but for
not being the man he professed to be.

This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was
withering under while he made his preparations for
departing from Middlemarch, and going to end his
stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of

MIDDLEMARCH 483

new faces. The duteous merciful constancy of his
wife had delivered him from one dread, but it could
not hinder her presence from being still a tribunal
before which he shrank from confession and desired
advocacy. His equivocations with himself about the
death of Raffles had sustained the conception of an
Omniscience whom he prayed to, yet he had a terror
upon him which would not let him expose them to
judgment by a full confession to his wife : the acts
which he had washed and diluted with inward argu-
ment and motive, and for which it seemed compara-
tively easy to win invisible pardon — what name
would she call them by ? That she should ever silently
call his acts Murder was what he could not bear.
He felt shrouded by her doubt : he got strength to
face her from the sense that she could not yet feel
warranted in pronouncing that worst condemnation
on him. Some time, perhaps — when he was dying —
— he would tell her all : in the deep shadow of that
time, when she held his hand in the gathering dark-
ness, she might listen without recoiling from his touch.
Perhaps : but concealment had been the habit of
his life, and the impulse to confession had no power
against the dread of a deeper humiliation.

He was full of timid care for his \dfe, not only because
he deprecated any harshness of judgment from her, but
because he felt a deep distress at the sight of her suffer-
ing. She had sent her daughters away to board at a
school on the coast, that this crisis might be hidden from
them as far as possible. Set free by their absence
from the intolerable necessity of accounting for her
grief or of beholding their frightened wonder, she could
live unconstrainedly with the sorrow that was every
day streaking her hair with whiteness and making
her eyelids languid.

'Tell me anything that you would Hke to have me
do, Harriet,' Bulstrode had said to her; 'I mean with
regard to arrangements of property. It is my intention

484 MIDDLEMARCH

not to sell the land I possess in this neighbourhood,
but to leave it to you as a safe provision. If you have
any wish on such subjects, do not conceal if from
me.'

A few days afterwards, when she had returned
from a visit to her brother's, she began to speak to
her husband on a subject which had for some time
been in her mind.

*I should like to do something for my brother's
family, Nicholas; and I think we are bound to make
some amends to Rosamond and her husband. Walter
says Mr Lydgate must leave the town, and his practice
is almost good for nothing, and they have very Uttle
left to settle an5rwhere with. I would rather do
without something for ourselves, to make some amends
to my poor brother's family.'

Mrs Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the
facts than in the phrase 'make some amends' ; know-
ing that her husband must understand her. He had
a particular reason, which she was not aware of, for
wincing under her suggestion. He hesitated before
he said : —

*It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way
you propose, my dear. Mr Lydgate has virtually
rejected any further service from me. He has returned
the thousand pounds which I lent him. Mrs Casaubon
advanced him the sum for that purpose. Here is his
letter.'

The letter seemed to cut Mrs Bulstrode severely.
The mention of Mrs Casaubon' s loan seemed a reflection
of that public feeling which held it a matter of course
that every one would avoid a connection with her
husband. She was silent for some time; and the tears
fell one after the other, her chin trembling as she
\\dped them away. Bulstrode, sitting opposite to her,
ached at the sight of that grief-worn face, which two
months before had been bright and blooming. It
had aged to keep sad company v/ith his own withered

MIDDLEMARCH 485

features. Urged into some effort at comforting her,
he said : —

'There is another means, Harriet, by which I might
do a service to your brother's family, if you Uke to
act in it. And it would, I think, be beneficial to you :
it would be an advantageous way of managing the
land which I mean to be yours.*

She looked attentive.

'Garth once thought of undertaking the manage-
ment of Stone Court in order to place your nephew
Fred there. The stock was to remain as it is, and they
were to pay a certain share of the profits instead
of an ordinary rent. That would be a desirable begin-
ning for the young man, in conjunction with his
employment under Garth. Would it be a satisfaction
to you?'

'Yes, it would,' said Mrs Bulstrode, with some
return of energy. 'Poor Walter is so cast down; I
would try anything in my power to do him some
good before I go away. We have always been brother
and sister.'

'You must make that proposal to Garth yourself,
Harriet,' said Mr Bulstrode, not hking what he had to
say, but desiring the end he had in view, for other
reasons besides the consolation of his vidfe. 'You
must state to him that the land is \4rtually yours,
and that he need have no transactions with me.
Communications can be made through Standish. I
mention this, because Garth gave up being my agent.
I can put into your hands a paper \^hich he himself
drew up, stating conditions; and you can propose his
renewed acceptance of them. I think it is not unlikely
that he will accept when you propose the thing for
the sake of your nephew.'

486 MIDDLEMARCH

CHAPTER LXXXVI

Le coeur se sature d'amour com me d'un sel divin qui le
conserve; de la rincorruptible adherence de ceux qui se sent
aimes des I'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles amours
prolonges. II existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est'de
Daphnis et Chloe que sont faits Pidlemon et Baucis. Cette
vieillesse la, ressemblance du soir avec I'aurore.

Victor Hugo : L'homme qui rit.

Mrs Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about
tea-time, opened the parlour-door and said, 'There you
are, Caleb. Have you had your dinner?' (Mr Garth's
meals were much subordinated to 'business.')

'Oh yes, a good dinner — cold mutton and I don't
know what. Where is Mary?'

'In the garden with Letty, I think.'

'Fred is not come 3'et?'

'No. Are you going out again without taking tea,
Caleb ? ' said Mrs Garth, seeing that her absent-minded
husband was putting on again the hat wliich he had
just taken off.

'No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute.'

Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where
there was a swing loftily hung between two pear-
trees. She had a pink kerchief tied over her head,
making a little poke to shade her eyes from the level
sunbeams, while she was gi\'ing a glorious s^ving to
Letty, who laughed and screamed mldly.

Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to
meet him, pushing back the pink kerchief and smiling
afar off at him with the involuntary smile of loving
pleasure.

'I came to look for you, Mary,' said Mr Garth.
'Let us walk about a bit.'

MIDDLEMARCH 487

Mary knew quite well that her father had something
particular to say : his eyebrows made their pathetic
angle, and there was a tender gravity in his voice :
these things had been signs to her when she was
Letty's age. She put her arm within his, and they
turned by the row of nut-trees.

'It will be a sad while before you can be married,
Mary,' said her father, not looking at her, but at
the end of the stick which he held in his other
hand.

'Not a sad while, father — I mean to be merry,' said
Mary, laughingly. 'I have been single and merry fof
four-and-twenty years and more : I suppose it wiU
not be quite as long again as that.' Then, after a
little pause, she said, more gravely, bending her face
before her father's, *If you are contented with
Fred?'

Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head
aside wisely.

'Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday.
You said he had an uncommon notion of stock, and
a good eye for things.'

'Did I?' said Caleb, rather slyly.

'Yes, I put it all down, and the date, anno Domini,
and ever}i:hing,' said Mary. 'You like things to be
neatly booked. And then his behaviour to you,
father, is really good; ^he has a deep respect for you;
and it is impossible to have a better temper than Fred
has.'

'Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him
a fine match.'

'No, indeed, father. I don't love him because he is
a fine match.'

'What for then?'

*0h, dear, because I have always loved him. I
should never like scolding any one else so well; and
that is a point to be thought of in a husband.'

'Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?' said Caleb,

488 MIDDLEMARCH

returning to his first tone. 'There's no other wish
come into it since things have been going on as they
have been of late ? ' (Caleb meant a great deal in that
vague phrase); 'because, better late than never. A
woman must not force her heart — she'll do a man no
good by that.'

'My feehngs have not changed, father/ said Mary,
cahnly. 'I shall be constant to Fred as long as he is
constant to me. I don't think either of us could spare
the other, or Hke any one else better, however much we
might admire them. It would make too great a
difference to us — ^hke seeing aU the old places altered,
and changing the name for everything. We must
wait for each other a long while; but Fred knows
that.'

Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood stiU
and screwed lus stick on the grassy walk. Then he
said, with emotion in his voice, 'Well, I've got a bit of
news. What do you think of Fred going to Hve at
Stone Court, and managing the land there?*

'How can that ever be, father?' said Mary, won-
der ingly.

'He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode. The
poor woman has been to me begging and praying.
She wants to do the lad good, and it might be a fine
thing for him. With saving, he might gradually buy
the stock, and he has a turn for farming.'

'Oh Fred would be so happy? It is too good to
believe.'

*Ah, but mind you,' said Caleb, turning his head
warningly, 'I must take it on my shoulders, and be
responsible, and see after everything; and that will
grieve your mother a bit, though she mayn't say so.
Fred had need be careful.'

'Perhaps it is too much, father,' said Mary, checked
in her joy. 'There would be no happiness in bringing
you any fresh trouble.'

'Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it

MIDDLEMARCH 489

doesn't vex your mother. And then, if you and Fred
get married,' here Caleb's voice shook just perceptibly,
'he'll be steady and saving; and you've got your
mother's cleverness, and mine too, in a woman's sort
of way; and you'll keep him in order. He'll be coming
by-and-by, so I wanted to tell you first, because I
think you'd Uke to tell him by yourselves. After that,
I could talk it well over with him, and we could go
into business and the nature of things.'

*0h, you dear good father !' cried Mary putting her
hands round her father's neck, while he bent his head
placidly, willing to be caressed. 'I wonder if any
other girl thinks her father the best man in the
world !'

'Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better.'

'Impossible,' said Mary, relapsing into her usual
tone; 'husbands are an inferior class of men, who
require keeping in order.'

When they were entering the house with Letty,
who had run to join them, Mary saw Fred at the orchard
gate, and went to meet him.

'What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant
youth !' said Mary, as Fred stood still and raised his
hat to her with playful formality. 'You are not
learning economy.'

'Now that is too bad, Mary,' said Fred. 'Just look
at the edges of these coat-cuffs ! It is only by dint of
good brushing that I look respectable. I am saving
up three suits — one for a wedding -suit.'

'How very droll you will look! — like a gentleman
in an old fashion-book.'

'Oh no, they will keep two years.'

'Two years ? be reasonable, Fred,' said Mary,
turning to walk. 'Don't encourage flattering expecta-
tions.'

'Why not? One lives on them better than on
unflattering ones. If we can't be married in two years,
the truth will be quite bad enough when it comes.'

490 MIDDLEMARCH

*I have heard a story of a young gentleman who
once encouraged flattering expectations, and they did
him harm.'

'Mary, if you've got something discouraging to
tell me I shall bolt; I shall go into the house to
Mr Garth. I am out of spirits. My father is so cut
up — home is not hke itself. I can't bear any more
bad news.'

'Should you call it bad news to be told that you
were to Uve at Stone Court, and manage the farm, and
be remarkably prudent, and save money every
year till all the stock and furniture were your own,
and you were a distinguished agricultural character,
as Mr Borthrop Trumbull sa^^s — rather stout, I fear,
and with the Greek and Latin sadly weather-worn?'

'You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?'
said Fred, colouring shghtly nevertheless.

'That is what my father has just told me of as what
may happen, and he never talks nonsense,' said Mary,
looking up at Fred now, while he grasped her hand as
they walked, till it rather hurt her; but she would
not complain.

'Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then,
Mar\^ and we could be married directly.'

'Not so fast, sir : how do you know that I would
not rather defer our marriage for some years? That
would leave you time to misbehave, and then if I
liked some one else better, I should have an excuse
for jilting 3'Ou.'

'Pray don't joke, Mary,' said Fred, with strong
feehng. 'Tell me seriously that all this is true, and
that you are happy because of it — because you love
me best.'

' It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it —
because I love you best,' said Mary, in a tone of
obedient recitation.

They lingered on the doorstep under the steep-
roofed porch, and Fred almost in a whisper said : —

MIDDLEMARCH 491

'When we were first engaged, with the umbrella-
ring, Maiy, \'0u used to '

The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in
Mary's eyes, but the fatal Ben came running to the
door with Brownie yapping behind him, and, bouncing
against them, said : —

'Fred and Mary ! are you ever coming in? — or may
I eat vour cake?'

492 MIDDLEMARCH

FINALE

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who
can quit young lives after being long in company with
them, and not desire to know what befell them in
their after-}' ears ? For the fragment of a hfe, however
typical, is not the sample of an even web : promises
may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed
by declension ; latent powers may find their long-waited
opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many
narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to
Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden,
but had their first httle one among the thorns and
thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of
the home epic — the gradual conquest or irremediable
loss of that complete union which makes the advancing
years a chmax, and age the harvest of sweet memories
in common.

Some set out, Uke Crusaders of old, with a glorious
equipment of hope and enthusiasm, and get broken by
the way, wanting patience \\dth each other and the
world.

All who have cared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth
wdU like to know that these two made no such failure,
but achieved a sohd mutual happiness. Fred surprised
his neighbours in various ways. He became rather
distinguished in his side of the coimty as a theoretic
and practical farmer, and produced a work on the
Cultivation of Green Crops and the Economy of Cattle-
Feeding which won him high congratulations at agri-
cultural meetings. In Middlemarch admiration was
more reser\'ed : most persons there were incHned to
believe that the m.erit^of Fred's authorship was due

MIDDLEMARCH 493

to his wife, since they had never expected Fred Vincy
to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.

But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys,
called Stories of Great Men, taken from Plutarch, and
had it printed and published by Gripp & Co., Middle-
march, every one in the town was willing to give the
credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been
to the University, 'where the ancients were studied/
and might have been a clergyman if he had chosen.

In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch
had never been deceived, and that there was no need
to praise anybody for writing a book, since it was
always done by somebody else.

Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady.
Some years after his marriage he told Mary that his
happiness was half owing to Farebrother, who gave
him a strong pull-up at the right moment. I cannot
say that he was never again misled by his hopefulness :
the yield of crops or the profits of a cattle sale usually
fell below his estimate; and he was always prone to
beheve that he could make m-oney by the purchase of a
horse which turned out badly — though this, Mary
observed, was of course the fault of the horse, not of
Fred's judgment. He kept his love of horsemanship,
but he rarely allowed himself a day's hunting; and
when he did so, it was remarkable that he submitted
to be laughed at for cowardhness at the fences,
seeming to see Mary and the boys sitting on the five-
barred gate, or showing their curly heads between hedge
and ditch.

There were three boys : Mary was not discontented
that she brought forth men-children only; and when
Fred wished to have a girl like her, she said, laugh-
ingly, 'That would be too great a trial to your mother/
Mrs Vincy in her dechning years, and in the diminished
lustre of her housekeeping, was much comforted by
her perception that two at least of Fred's boys were
real Vincys, and did not 'feature the Garths.' But

494 MIDDLEMARCH

Mary secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three
was very much what her father must have been when
he wore a round jacket, and showed a marvellous
nicety of aim in playing at marbles, or in throwing
stones to bring down the mellow pears.

Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt
before they were well in their teens, disputed much
as to whether nephews or nieces were more desirable;
Ben contending that it was clear girls were good for
less than boys, else they would not be always in
petticoats, which showed how Httle they were meant
for; whereupon Letty, who argued much from books,
got angry in replying that God made coats of skins
for both Adam and Eve alike — also it occurred to her
that in the East the men too wore petticoats. But
this latter argument, obscuring the majesty of the
former, was one too many, for Ben answ^ered con-
temptuously, 'The more spooney s they V and immedi-
ately appealed to his mother whether boys were not
better than girls. Mrs Garth pronounced that both
were ahke naughty, but that boys were undoubtedly
stronger, could run faster, and throw with more
precision to a greater distance. With this oracular
sentence Ben was well satisfied, not minding the
naughtiness; but Letty took it ill, her feehng of super-
iority being stronger than her muscles.

Fred never became rich — his hopefulness had not
led him to expect that; but he gradually saved enough
to become ovmer of the stock and furniture at Stone
Court, and the work which Mr Garth put into his
hands carried him in plenty through those 'bad times'
which are always present with farmers. Mary, in her
matronly days, became as solid in figure as her mother;
but, unlike her, gave the boys little formal teaching,
so that Mrs Garth was alarmed lest they should never
be well grounded in grammar and geography. Never-
theless, they v/ere found quite forward enough when
they went to school; perhaps, because they had liked

MIDDLEMARCH 495

nothing so well as being with their mother, \\lien Fred
was riding home on wdnter evenings he had a pleasant
vision beforehand of the bright hearth in the wain-
scoted parlour, and was sorr}' for other men who
could not have Mary for their vrde; especial]}' for Mr
Farebrother. 'He was ten tim.es worthier of you than
I was/ Fred could nov/ say to her, magnanimously.
*To be sure he was,' Mar},- answered : 'and for that
reason he could do better without me. But you —
I shudder to think what you would have been — a
curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric pocket-
handkerchiefs V

On inquirs^ it might possibly be found that
Fred and Mary still inhabit Stone Court — that the
creeping plants still cast the foam of their blossoms
over the fine stone-wall into the field where the walnut-
trees stand in stately row — and that on sunny days
the two lovers who were first engaged \nth the umbrella-
ring may be seen in white-haired placidity at the
open window from which Mary Garth, in the days of
old Peter Featherstone, had often been ordered to
look out for Mr Lydgate.

Lydgate's hair never became white. He died when
he was only fifty, leaving his wife and children provided
for by a heaw insurance on his life. He had gained
an excellent practice, alternating, according to the
season, between London and a Continental bathing-
place; ha\ing wTitten a treatise on Gout, a disease
which has a good deal of wealth on its side. His skill
was rehed on by many paying patients, but he always
regarded himself as a failure : he had not done what he
once meant to do. His acquaintances thought him
enviable to have so charming a wife, and nothing
happened to shake their opinion. Rosamond never
committed a second compromising indiscretion. She
simply continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible
in her judgment, disposed to admonish her husband,
and able to frustrate him by stratagem. As the years

496 middle:\iapxh

went on he opposed her less and less, whence Rosa-
mond concluded that he had learned the value of her
opinion; on the other hand, she had a more thorough
conviction of his talents now that he gained a good
income, and instead of the threatened cage in Bride
Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the
bird of paradise that she resembled. In brief, Lydgate
was what is called a successful man. But he died
prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond afterwards
married an elderly and wealthy physician, who took
kindly to her four children. She made a very pretty
show with her daughters, driving out in her carriage,
and often spoke of her happiness as 'a reward' — she
did not say for what, but probably she meant that it
was a reward for her patience with Tertius, whose
temper never became faultless, and to the last occasion-
ally let shp a bitter speech which was more memorable
than the signs he made of his repentance. He once
called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an
explanation, said that basil was a plant which had
flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains.
Rosamond had a placid but strong answer to such
speeches. Why then had he chosen her? It was
a pity he had not had jMrs Ladislaw, whom he was
always praising and placing above her. And thus the
conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's
side. But it would be unjust not to tell, that she
never uttered a word in depreciation of Dorothea,
keeping in religious remembrance the generosity which
had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of her life.

Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised
above other women, feehng that there was always
something better which she might have done, if she
had only been better and known better. Still, she
never repented that she had given up position and
fortune to marry Will Ladislaw, and he would have
held it the greatest shame as well as sorrow to him if
she had repented. They were bound to each other

MIDDLEMARCH 497

by a love stronger than any impulses which could
have marred it. No life would have been possible to
Dorothea which was not filled with emotion, and
she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity
which she had not the doubtful pains of discovering and
marking out for herself. Will became an ardent
pubHc man, working well in those times when reforms
were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate
good which has been much checked in our days, and
getting at last returned to ParUament by a con-
stituency who paid his expenses. Dorothea could
have Uked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than
that her husband should be in the thick of a struggle
against them, and that she should give him wifely
help. Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so
substantive and rare a creature should have been
absorbed into the life of another, and be only known
in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one
stated exactly what else that was in her power she
ought rather to have done — not even Sir James
Chettam, who went no further than the negative
prescription that she ought not to haVe married Will
Ladislaw.

But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting
alienation; and the way in which the family was made
whole again was characteristic of all concerned. Mr
Brooke could not resist the pleasure of corresponding
with Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his
pen had been remarkably fluent on the prospects of
Municipal Reform, it ran off into an invitation to
the Grange, which once written, could not be done
away with at less cost than the sacrifice (hardly to be
conceived) of the whole valuable letter. During the
months of this correspondence Mr Brooke had con-
tinually, in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been
presupposing or hinting that the intention of cutting
off the entail was still maintained; and the day on
which his pen gave the daring invitation, he went to

498 MIDDLEMARCH

Freshitt expressly to intimate that he had a stronger
sense than ever of the reasons for taking that energetic
step as a precaution against any mixture of low blood
in the heir of the Brookes.

But that morning something exciting had happened
at the Hall. A letter had come to Celia which made
her cry silently as she read it; and when Sir James,
unused to see her in tears, asked anxiously what v/as
the matter, she burst out in a wail such as he had
never heard from her before.

'Dorothea has a httle boy. And you will not let
me go and see her. And I am sure she wants to see
me. And she will not know ^^'hat to do with the baby
— she will do wrong things with it. And they thought
she would die. It is very dreadful ! Suppose it had
been me and httle Arthur, and Dodo had t^een hindered
from coming to see me ! I wish you w^oiild be less
unkind, James !'

'Good Heavens, CeHa !' said Sir James, much
wrought upon, 'what do you wish? I will do any-
thing 3'ou hke. I will take you to town to-morrow if
you w^ish it.' And Ceha did wish it.

It was after this that Mr Brooke came, and meeting
the Baronet in the grounds, began to chat with him
in ignorance of the news, which Sir James for some
reason did not care to teU him immediately. But
when the entail was touched on in the usual w^ay, he
said, 'My dear sir, it is not for me to dictate to you,
but for my part I would let that alone. I would let
things remain as they are.'

Mr Brooke felt so much surprise that he did not'at
once find out how much he was relieved by the sense
that he was not expected to do anything in particular.

Such being the bent of Ceha's heart, it was inevit-
able that Sir James should consent to a reconciliation
with Dorothea and her husband. Where women love
each other, men learn to smother their mutual dis-
like. Sir James never liked Ladislaw^ and Will always

MIDDLEMARCH 499

preferred to have Sir James's company mixed with
another kind : they were on a footing of reciprocal
tolerance which was made quite easy only when
Dorothea and Celia were present.

It became an understood thing that Mr and Mrs
Ladislaw should pay at least two visits during the
year to the Grange, and there came gradually a smaU
row of cousins at Freshitt who enjoyed pla>dng with
the two cousins visiting Tipton as much as if the blood
of these cousins had been less dubiously mixed.

Mr Brooke hved to a good old age, and his estate
was inherited by Dorothea's son, who might have
represented Middlemarch, but decUned, thinking that
his opinions had less chance of being stifled if he
remained out of doors.

Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second
marriage as a mistake; and indeed this remained the
tradition concerning it in Middlemarch, where she
was spoken of to a 3'ounger generation as a fine girl
who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be
her father, and in Hltle more than a 3^ear after his
death gave up her estate to marr\^ his cousin — young
enough to have been his son, with no property, and
not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of
Dorothea usually observed that she could not have
been 'a nice woman,' else she would not have married
either the one or the other.

Certainly those determining acts of her Hfe were
not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of
3"0ung and noble impulse struggling amidst the con-
ditions of an imperfect social state, in which great
feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great
faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature
whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly
determined by what Hes outside it. A new Theresa
will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a
conventual life, any more than a new Antigone wall
spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a

500 MIDDLEMARCH

brother's burial : the medium in which their ardent
deeds took shape is for ever gone. But we insignificant
people with our daily words and acts are preparing the
lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present
a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose
story we know.

Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues,
though they were not widely visible. Her full nature,
like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength,
spent itself in channels which had no great name on
the earth. But the effect of her being on those around
her was incalculably diffusive : for the growdng good
of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;
and that things are not so ill with you and me as they
might have been, is half owing to the number who
Hved faithfully a hidden life, and rest in un visited
tombs.

LONDON AND GLASGOW: COLLINS CLEAR-TYPE PRESS.

Collins'
Illustrated Pocket Classics

THIN PAPER EDITIONS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

Cloth, 2/- net. Leather, Gilt top, 4/- net.

266 Volumes, with beautiful Illustrations.

AINSWORTH, W. H.
74 Windsor Castle
200 The Tower of London
228 Old St Paul's

X KEMPIS, THOMAS

98 The Imitation of Christ

ANDERSEN, HANS

175 Fairy Tales

ARNOLD, MATTHEW
138 Poems

AURELIUS, MARCUS
82 The Meditations

AUSTEN, JANE

53 Sense and Sensibility
103 Pride and Prejudice
190 Emma
193 Mansfield Park

BACON, FRANCIS
167 Essays

BALLANTYNE, R. M.
238 Coral Island

BALZAC, HONOR^ DE
221 Old Father Goriot
237 Caesar Birotteau
244 Eugenie Grandet

BARHAM, Rev. R. H,

71 The Ingoldsby Legends

BESANT AND RICE

261 The Golden Butterfly

BLACK, WILLIAM

260 A Daughter of Heth

BLACKMORE, R. D.

176 Loma Doone

BORROW, GEORGE
141 Lavengro
217 The Bible in Spain
233 The Romany Rye

BRADLEY-BIRT, F. B.
215 Through Persia

BRONTg, ANNE

97 The Tenant of WUdfell Hall

BRONTE, CHARLOTTE
7 Shirley
II Jane Ej^e
64 Vilette

BRONTJS, EMILY

31 Wuthering Heights

BRONTfi, The Sisters

91 Agnes Grey, The Professor, and
Poems

BRo^;^Tsn:NG, mrs. e. b.

67 Poems— Series I.
127 Poems — Series II,

BROWNING, ROBERT
156 Poetical Works

BUNYAN, JOHN

24 Pilgrim's Progress

BURNS, ROBERT
164 Poetical Works

CARLYI.E, TH03kLA.S

61 Heroes and Hero -Worship
109 Sartor Resartus

114 French Revolution — I.

115 French Revolution — II.
155 Past and Present

Illustrated Pocket Classics — continued.

CARROI^I., I.EWIS

8 1 Alice in Wonderland

CHAUCER

259 Tales from Chaucer (Charles C.
Clarke)

coi^eridg:^, s. tayi^or

218 Golden Horns

COI,I,INS, WII.KIE

18 The Woman in White
20 No Name
130 The Moonstone

CONSCIENCE, HENDRIK
250 The l4on of Flanders

COOPER, FENIMORE
134 The Deerslayer
188 The Pathfinder
258 I^ast of the Mohicans

CRAIK, Mrs.

5 John Halifax, Gentleman
80 A Noble I,ife
137 A I^ife for a I,ife
236 Two Marriages

DARWIN, CHARI^ES

69 The Voyage of the Beagle
149 On the Origin of Species

DAUDET, AI^PHONSE
182 Tartarin of Tarascon

DE QUINCEY, THOMAS

75 Confessions of an Opium-Eater

DICKENS, CHARI.ES
I David Copperfield
14 Great Expectations
29 Bamaby Rudge
33 Ohver Twist

35 A Tale of Two Cities

36 The Old Curiosity Shop

37 Nicholas Nickleby

38 Pickwick Papers

39 Sketches by Boz

40 Dombey and Son — Vol. I.
40a Dombey and Son — Vol. II.

41 American Notes

42 Hard Times

43 A Child's History of England

44 Christmas Books

45 Reprinted Pieces

46 Martin Chuzzlewit

47 Bleak House

48 I^itUe Dorrit

49 Master Humphrey's Clock, etc.

50 Stories and Sketches

Dickens — Conti.

73 Our Mutual Friend — Vol. I,
73a Our Mutual Friend — Vol. II.
154 The Uncommercial Traveller
220 Edwin Drood

DODD, WHXIAM

169 Beauties of Shakespeare

DUMAS, ALEXANDRE

62 The Three Musketeers — Vol. I.
62a The Three Musketeers— Vol. II.
123 Twenty Years After

132 The Coimt of Monte-Cristo —

Vol. I.

133 The Count of Monte-Cristo —

Vol. II.
160 The Black Tulip
165 Marguerite de Valois
173 Vicomte de Bragelorme
178 I,ouise de la ValHere
185 The Man in the Iron Mask
199 The Forty-Five Guardsmen
206 Chicot the Jester
214 I.e Chevalier de Maison Rouge

247 Cotmtess de Charny

248 Taking the Bastille

255 The Queen's Necklace

256 The Conspirators

DUNCAN, JANE E.

211 A Summer Ride through
Western Tibet

EI.IOT, GEORGE
3 Adam Bede
13 The Mill on the Floss
19 Silas Mamer
32 Scenes of Clerical I<ife
68 Romola
96 FeUx Holt

223 iVIiddlemarch — Vol. I.

224 Middlemarch — Vol. II.

263 Daniel Deronda — Vol. 1.

264 Daniel Deronda — Vol. II.

EMERSON, R. W.

99 Essays and Representative
Men

ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN

209 The Conscript and Waterloo

FROUDE, J. A.
125 Short Studies

GASKEI.I<, IvlRS.

54 North and South
57 Cranford
186 Mary Barton
251 Sylvia's I^overs

Illustrated Pocket Classics — continued.

GOi;DSHnTH, OUVER

94 The Vicar of Wakefield

GRA>:T, JAMES

122 The Romance of War

GRncvi, Brothebs
143 Fairy Tales

HAWTHORNE, N.

17 The Scarlet Letter

28 The House of the Seven Gables

HAZLITT, WILLIAM
172 Table Talk

HOLMES, O. W.

59 The Autocrat of the Breakfast

Table
92 The Professor at the Breakfast
Table
113 The Poet at the Breakfast

Table
124 Elsie Venner

HUGHES, THOMAS

8 Tom Brown's Sdiool Days

HUGO, VICTOR

128 The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
142 Les Mis^rables— Vol. I.
142a I.,es Mis^ables — Vol. II.
162 The Toilers of the Sea
202 Ninety-Three
242 The Laughing Man

IR\TNG, WASHINGTON

107 The Sketch Book

JAMES, G. P. R.
245 Richelieu

KEATS, JOHN
179 Poetical Works

KINGSLEY, CHARLES
4 Two Years Ago
6 Westward Ho !
86 Hypatia

89 Hereward the Wake
106 Alton Locke

108 The Heroes
161 Yeast

KINGSLEY, HENTIY
116 Ravenshoe

140 The Recollections of GeofEry
Hamlyn

LAilB, CHARLES

56 1^ Essays of Elia

LAMB, CHAS. AND MARY
76 Tales from Shakespeare

LEVER, CHARLES
X48 Harry Lorrequer

LONGFELLOW, H. W.
65 Poetical Works

LYTTON, LORD

27 The Last of the Barons

55 The Last Days of Pompeii

yy Rienzi

87 Harold
126 The Caxtons
152 Eugene Aram
204 Devereuj:
216 Night and Morning
229 Kenelm Cliillingly

>L\CALXAY, LORD

118 Historical Essajrs

119 Miscellaneous Essays — Vol. I.
119a Miscellaneous Essays — Vcl. IL

MARRYAT, CAPTAIN

84 Mr. :Midshipman Easy

195 Children of the New Forest
222 Peter Simple

MELVILLE, HERMAN
146 Typee

WHYTE-MEL\^J,K

85 The Gladiators
105 The Interpreter
145 The Queen's Maries

196 Cerise

212 Kate Coventry

DULLER, HUGH

X04 My Schools and Schoolmasters

MORRIS, W^L

197 The Life and Death of Jason

OLIPHANT. Mrs.

I02 Miss jMarjoribanks

PALGRAVE, F. T.

95 The Golden Treasiury

PAYN, JAMES

no Lost Sir Massingberd

POE, EDGAR ALLAN

201 Tales of Mystery and Imagina-
tion

PROCTER, ADELAIDE
72 Legends and Lyrics

READE, CHARLES

9 It is Never too Late to Mend
21 The Cloister and the Heartli
52 Hard Cash

Illustrated Pocket Classics — continued.

Reade — Contd.

136 Peg Woflfington and Christie

Johnstone
150 Love Me Little, Love Me Long
170 Put Yourself in His Place

231 Griffith Gaimt

246 The Course of True Love
249 Foul Play

RUSKTN, JOHN

70 Sesame and Lilies
78 Unto This Last, and The Two
Paths

SCOTT, SIR WALTER
2 Kenilworth

12 The Talisman

22 Ivanhoe

58 Waverley

63 The Heart of Midlothian

90 Old. Mortality
101 Poems

112 The Bride of Lammermoor
117 The Fair Maid of Perth
131 Guy ilannering
139 Rob Roy
153 The Monastery
157 The Abbot
163 The Antiquary
168 Redgauntlet
174 The Forttmes of Nigel
177 Woodstock
180 The Pirate
187 Quentin Diirward
194 Peveril of the Peak
203 The Black Dwarf
208 Anne of Geierstein
219 St Ronan's Well

232 Castle Dangeroiis and the

Surgeon's Datighter

234 Coimt Robert of Paris

235 The Betrothed

243 The Chronicles of the Canon-
gate

SEWELL, ANNA
262 Black Beauty

SHAKESPEARE;, WILLL^IVI
189 Tragedies
230 Comedies

SLADEN, DOUGLAS
146a The Jape at Home

SOUTHEY, ROBERT
III The Life of Nelson

TENNYSON, LORD
25 Poetical Works

THACKERAY, W. M.
23 Henry Esmond
34 Vanity Fair — Vol. I.
34a Vanity Fair — Vol. II.
66 The Newcomes — Vol. I.
66a The Newcomes — Vol. II.
83 The Virginians

120 The Adventure of Philip

121 Pendennis — Vol. I.
I2ia Pendennis — Vol. 11.
144 The Yellowplush Papers
151 The FoTor Georges

158 Christmas Books
171 Lovel the Widower
181 Barry Lyndon, etc.
184 The Book of Snobs

192 The Great Hoggarty Diamond

198 Paris Sketch Book

205 The Irish Sketch Book

207 Roundabout Papers

227 Novels by Eminent Hands

TROLLOPE, ANTHON-Y
79 Barchester Towers
100 Framiey Parsonage
147 Orley Farm

159 The Claverings

TWAIN, MARK

252 The Innocents Abroad

VERN-E, JULES

226 Roimd the World in Eighty
Days

239 The English at the North Pole
254 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

WALLACE, LEW
225 Ben Hur

WALTON, IZAAK

88 The Compleat Angler

WOOD, MRS. HENRY
10 East LjTUie
16 The Channings
26 Mrs. HaUibtirton's Troubles
30 Danesbmy House
51 Vemer's Pride
210 Lord Oakbmm's Daughters

253 Roland Yorke
257 A Life's Secret

WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM

240 Shorter Poems

YONGE, C M.

93 The Heir of Reddyffe
166 The Dove in the E^e's Nest
213 A Book of Golden Deeds