The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached to him than if he had been sent in a box from London. But they listened without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced the candidate, one of them—a political personage from Brassing, who came to tell Middlemarch its duty—spoke so fully, that it was alarming to think what the candidate could find to say after him. Meanwhile the crowd became denser, and as the political personage neared the end of his speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change in his sensations while he still handled his eye-glass, trifled with documents before him, and exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom the moment of summons was indifferent.
“I’ll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw,” he said, with an easy air, to Will, who was close behind him, and presently handed him the supposed fortifier. It was ill-chosen; for Mr. Brooke was an abstemious man, and to drink a second glass of sherry quickly at no great interval from the first was a surprise to his system which tended to scatter his energies instead of collecting them. Pray pity him: so many English gentlemen make themselves miserable by speechifying on entirely private grounds! whereas Mr. Brooke wished to serve his country by standing for Parliament—which, indeed, may also be done on private grounds, but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some speechifying.
It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr. Brooke was at all anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all right; he should have it quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope. Embarking would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might come after was alarming. “And questions, now,” hinted the demon just waking up in his stomach, “somebody may put questions about the schedules.—Ladislaw,” he continued, aloud, “just hand me the memorandum of the schedules.”
When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were quite loud enough to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings, and other expressions of adverse theory, which were so moderate that Mr. Standish (decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him, “This looks dangerous, by God! Hawley has got some deeper plan than this.” Still, the cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate could look more amiable than Mr. Brooke, with the memorandum in his breast-pocket, his left hand on the rail of the balcony, and his right trifling with his eye-glass. The striking points in his appearance were his buff waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair, and neutral physiognomy. He began with some confidence.
“Gentlemen—Electors of Middlemarch!”
This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it seemed natural.
“I’m uncommonly glad to be here—I was never so proud and happy in my life—never so happy, you know.”
This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for, unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away—even couplets from Pope may be but “fallings from us, vanishings,” when fear clutches us, and a glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among our ideas. Ladislaw, who stood at the window behind the speaker, thought, “it’s all up now. The only chance is that, since the best thing won’t always do, floundering may answer for once.” Mr. Brooke, meanwhile, having lost other clews, fell back on himself and his qualifications—always an appropriate graceful subject for a candidate.
“I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends—you’ve known me on the bench a good while—I’ve always gone a good deal into public questions—machinery, now, and machine-breaking—you’re many of you concerned with machinery, and I’ve been going into that lately. It won’t do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on—trade, manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples—that kind of thing—since Adam Smith, that must go on. We must look all over the globe:—‘Observation with extensive view,’ must look everywhere, ‘from China to Peru,’ as somebody says—Johnson, I think, ‘The Rambler,’ you know. That is what I have done up to a certain point—not as far as Peru; but I’ve not always stayed at home—I saw it wouldn’t do. I’ve been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go—and then, again, in the Baltic. The Baltic, now.”
Plying among his recollections in this way, Mr. Brooke might have got along, easily to himself, and would have come back from the remotest seas without trouble; but a diabolical procedure had been set up by the enemy. At one and the same moment there had risen above the shoulders of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards of him, the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat, eye-glass, and neutral physiognomy, painted on rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of the cuckoo, a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of his words. Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at the opposite angles of the converging streets; but they were either blank, or filled by laughing listeners. The most innocent echo has an impish mockery in it when it follows a gravely persistent speaker, and this echo was not at all innocent; if it did not follow with the precision of a natural echo, it had a wicked choice of the words it overtook. By the time it said, “The Baltic, now,” the laugh which had been running through the audience became a general shout, and but for the sobering effects of party and that great public cause which the entanglement of things had identified with “Brooke of Tipton,” the laugh might have caught his committee. Mr. Bulstrode asked, reprehensively, what the new police was doing; but a voice could not well be collared, and an attack on the effigy of the candidate would have been too equivocal, since Hawley probably meant it to be pelted.
Mr. Brooke himself was not in a position to be quickly conscious of anything except a general slipping away of ideas within himself: he had even a little singing in the ears, and he was the only person who had not yet taken distinct account of the echo or discerned the image of himself. Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than anxiety about what we have got to say. Mr. Brooke heard the laughter; but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance, and he was at this moment additionally excited by the tickling, stinging sense that his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him from the Baltic.
“That reminds me,” he went on, thrusting a hand into his side-pocket, with an easy air, “if I wanted a precedent, you know—but we never want a precedent for the right thing—but there is Chatham, now; I can’t say I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt—he was not a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know.”
“Blast your ideas! we want the Bill,” said a loud rough voice from the crowd below.
Immediately the invisible Punch, who had hitherto followed Mr. Brooke, repeated, “Blast your ideas! we want the Bill.” The laugh was louder than ever, and for the first time Mr. Brooke being himself silent, heard distinctly the mocking echo. But it seemed to ridicule his interrupter, and in that light was encouraging; so he replied with amenity—
“There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we meet for but to speak our minds—freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, liberty—that kind of thing? The Bill, now—you shall have the Bill”—here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his eye-glass and take the paper from his breast-pocket, with a sense of being practical and coming to particulars. The invisible Punch followed:—
“You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, and a seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence.”
Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye-glass fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw the image of himself, which had come nearer. The next moment he saw it dolorously bespattered with eggs. His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.
“Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth—all that is very well”—here an unpleasant egg broke on Mr. Brooke’s shoulder, as the echo said, “All that is very well;” then came a hail of eggs, chiefly aimed at the image, but occasionally hitting the original, as if by chance. There was a stream of new men pushing among the crowd; whistles, yells, bellowings, and fifes made all the greater hubbub because there was shouting and struggling to put them down. No voice would have had wing enough to rise above the uproar, and Mr. Brooke, disagreeably anointed, stood his ground no longer. The frustration would have been less exasperating if it had been less gamesome and boyish: a serious assault of which the newspaper reporter “can aver that it endangered the learned gentleman’s ribs,” or can respectfully bear witness to “the soles of that gentleman’s boots having been visible above the railing,” has perhaps more consolations attached to it.
Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room, saying, as carelessly as he could, “This is a little too bad, you know. I should have got the ear of the people by-and-by—but they didn’t give me time. I should have gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know,” he added, glancing at Ladislaw. “However, things will come all right at the nomination.”
But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing new devices.
“It was Bowyer who did it,” said Mr. Standish, evasively. “I know it as well as if he had been advertised. He’s uncommonly good at ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God! Hawley has been having him to dinner lately: there’s a fund of talent in Bowyer.”
“Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would have invited him to dine,” said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a great deal of inviting for the good of his country.
“There’s not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer,” said Ladislaw, indignantly, “but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always to turn the scale.”
Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his “principal,” and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a half-formed resolve to throw up the “Pioneer” and Mr. Brooke together. Why should he stay? If the impassable gulf between himself and Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying here and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of Brooke’s. Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do—in five years, for example: political writing, political speaking, would get a higher value now public life was going to be wider and more national, and they might give him such distinction that he would not seem to be asking Dorothea to step down to him. Five years:—if he could only be sure that she cared for him more than for others; if he could only make her aware that he stood aloof until he could tell his love without lowering himself—then he could go away easily, and begin a career which at five-and-twenty seemed probable enough in the inward order of things, where talent brings fame, and fame everything else which is delightful. He could speak and he could write; he could master any subject if he chose, and he meant always to take the side of reason and justice, on which he would carry all his ardor. Why should he not one day be lifted above the shoulders of the crowd, and feel that he had won that eminence well? Without doubt he would leave Middlemarch, go to town, and make himself fit for celebrity by “eating his dinners.”
But not immediately: not until some kind of sign had passed between him and Dorothea. He could not be satisfied until she knew why, even if he were the man she would choose to marry, he would not marry her. Hence he must keep his post and bear with Mr. Brooke a little longer.
But he soon had reason to suspect that Mr. Brooke had anticipated him in the wish to break up their connection. Deputations without and voices within had concurred in inducing that philanthropist to take a stronger measure than usual for the good of mankind; namely, to withdraw in favor of another candidate, to whom he left the advantages of his canvassing machinery. He himself called this a strong measure, but observed that his health was less capable of sustaining excitement than he had imagined.
“I have felt uneasy about the chest—it won’t do to carry that too far,” he said to Ladislaw in explaining the affair. “I must pull up. Poor Casaubon was a warning, you know. I’ve made some heavy advances, but I’ve dug a channel. It’s rather coarse work—this electioneering, eh, Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it. However, we have dug a channel with the ‘Pioneer’—put things in a track, and so on. A more ordinary man than you might carry it on now—more ordinary, you know.”
“Do you wish me to give it up?” said Will, the quick color coming in his face, as he rose from the writing-table, and took a turn of three steps with his hands in his pockets. “I am ready to do so whenever you wish it.”
“As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest opinion of your powers, you know. But about the ‘Pioneer,’ I have been consulting a little with some of the men on our side, and they are inclined to take it into their hands—indemnify me to a certain extent—carry it on, in fact. And under the circumstances, you might like to give up—might find a better field. These people might not take that high view of you which I have always taken, as an alter ego, a right hand—though I always looked forward to your doing something else. I think of having a run into France. But I’ll write you any letters, you know—to Althorpe and people of that kind. I’ve met Althorpe.”
“I am exceedingly obliged to you,” said Ladislaw, proudly. “Since you are going to part with the ‘Pioneer,’ I need not trouble you about the steps I shall take. I may choose to continue here for the present.”
After Mr. Brooke had left him Will said to himself, “The rest of the family have been urging him to get rid of me, and he doesn’t care now about my going. I shall stay as long as I like. I shall go of my own movements and not because they are afraid of me.”
CHAPTER LII.
“His heart The lowliest duties on itself did lay.” —WORDSWORTH.
On that June evening when Mr. Farebrother knew that he was to have the Lowick living, there was joy in the old fashioned parlor, and even the portraits of the great lawyers seemed to look on with satisfaction. His mother left her tea and toast untouched, but sat with her usual pretty primness, only showing her emotion by that flush in the cheeks and brightness in the eyes which give an old woman a touching momentary identity with her far-off youthful self, and saying decisively—
“The greatest comfort, Camden, is that you have deserved it.”
“When a man gets a good berth, mother, half the deserving must come after,” said the son, brimful of pleasure, and not trying to conceal it. The gladness in his face was of that active kind which seems to have energy enough not only to flash outwardly, but to light up busy vision within: one seemed to see thoughts, as well as delight, in his glances.
“Now, aunt,” he went on, rubbing his hands and looking at Miss Noble, who was making tender little beaver-like noises, “There shall be sugar-candy always on the table for you to steal and give to the children, and you shall have a great many new stockings to make presents of, and you shall darn your own more than ever!”
Miss Noble nodded at her nephew with a subdued half-frightened laugh, conscious of having already dropped an additional lump of sugar into her basket on the strength of the new preferment.
“As for you, Winny”—the Vicar went on—“I shall make no difficulty about your marrying any Lowick bachelor—Mr. Solomon Featherstone, for example, as soon as I find you are in love with him.”
Miss Winifred, who had been looking at her brother all the while and crying heartily, which was her way of rejoicing, smiled through her tears and said, “You must set me the example, Cam: you must marry now.”
“With all my heart. But who is in love with me? I am a seedy old fellow,” said the Vicar, rising, pushing his chair away and looking down at himself. “What do you say, mother?”
“You are a handsome man, Camden: though not so fine a figure of a man as your father,” said the old lady.
“I wish you would marry Miss Garth, brother,” said Miss Winifred. “She would make us so lively at Lowick.”
“Very fine! You talk as if young women were tied up to be chosen, like poultry at market; as if I had only to ask and everybody would have me,” said the Vicar, not caring to specify.
“We don’t want everybody,” said Miss Winifred. “But you would like Miss Garth, mother, shouldn’t you?”
“My son’s choice shall be mine,” said Mrs. Farebrother, with majestic discretion, “and a wife would be most welcome, Camden. You will want your whist at home when we go to Lowick, and Henrietta Noble never was a whist-player.” (Mrs. Farebrother always called her tiny old sister by that magnificent name.)
“I shall do without whist now, mother.”
“Why so, Camden? In my time whist was thought an undeniable amusement for a good churchman,” said Mrs. Farebrother, innocent of the meaning that whist had for her son, and speaking rather sharply, as at some dangerous countenancing of new doctrine.
“I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes,” said the Vicar, preferring not to discuss the virtues of that game.
He had already said to Dorothea, “I don’t feel bound to give up St. Botolph’s. It is protest enough against the pluralism they want to reform if I give somebody else most of the money. The stronger thing is not to give up power, but to use it well.”
“I have thought of that,” said Dorothea. “So far as self is concerned, I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep them. It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of me.”
“It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power,” said Mr. Farebrother.
His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active when the yoke of life ceases to gall them. He made no display of humility on the subject, but in his heart he felt rather ashamed that his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get benefices were free from.
“I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman,” he said to Lydgate, “but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good a clergyman out of myself as I can. That is the well-beneficed point of view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much simplified,” he ended, smiling.
The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly—something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.
Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from Omnibus College with his bachelor’s degree.
“I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother,” said Fred, whose fair open face was propitiating, “but you are the only friend I can consult. I told you everything once before, and you were so good that I can’t help coming to you again.”
“Sit down, Fred, I’m ready to hear and do anything I can,” said the Vicar, who was busy packing some small objects for removal, and went on with his work.
“I wanted to tell you—” Fred hesitated an instant and then went on plungingly, “I might go into the Church now; and really, look where I may, I can’t see anything else to do. I don’t like it, but I know it’s uncommonly hard on my father to say so, after he has spent a good deal of money in educating me for it.” Fred paused again an instant, and then repeated, “and I can’t see anything else to do.”
“I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way with him. He said it was too late. But you have got over one bridge now: what are your other difficulties?”
“Merely that I don’t like it. I don’t like divinity, and preaching, and feeling obliged to look serious. I like riding across country, and doing as other men do. I don’t mean that I want to be a bad fellow in any way; but I’ve no taste for the sort of thing people expect of a clergyman. And yet what else am I to do? My father can’t spare me any capital, else I might go into farming. And he has no room for me in his trade. And of course I can’t begin to study for law or physic now, when my father wants me to earn something. It’s all very well to say I’m wrong to go into the Church; but those who say so might as well tell me to go into the backwoods.”
Fred’s voice had taken a tone of grumbling remonstrance, and Mr. Farebrother might have been inclined to smile if his mind had not been too busy in imagining more than Fred told him.
“Have you any difficulties about doctrines—about the Articles?” he said, trying hard to think of the question simply for Fred’s sake.
“No; I suppose the Articles are right. I am not prepared with any arguments to disprove them, and much better, cleverer fellows than I am go in for them entirely. I think it would be rather ridiculous in me to urge scruples of that sort, as if I were a judge,” said Fred, quite simply.
“I suppose, then, it has occurred to you that you might be a fair parish priest without being much of a divine?”
“Of course, if I am obliged to be a clergyman, I shall try and do my duty, though I mayn’t like it. Do you think any body ought to blame me?”
“For going into the Church under the circumstances? That depends on your conscience, Fred—how far you have counted the cost, and seen what your position will require of you. I can only tell you about myself, that I have always been too lax, and have been uneasy in consequence.”
“But there is another hindrance,” said Fred, coloring. “I did not tell you before, though perhaps I may have said things that made you guess it. There is somebody I am very fond of: I have loved her ever since we were children.”
“Miss Garth, I suppose?” said the Vicar, examining some labels very closely.
“Yes. I shouldn’t mind anything if she would have me. And I know I could be a good fellow then.”
“And you think she returns the feeling?”
“She never will say so; and a good while ago she made me promise not to speak to her about it again. And she has set her mind especially against my being a clergyman; I know that. But I can’t give her up. I do think she cares about me. I saw Mrs. Garth last night, and she said that Mary was staying at Lowick Rectory with Miss Farebrother.”
“Yes, she is very kindly helping my sister. Do you wish to go there?”
“No, I want to ask a great favor of you. I am ashamed to bother you in this way; but Mary might listen to what you said, if you mentioned the subject to her—I mean about my going into the Church.”
“That is rather a delicate task, my dear Fred. I shall have to presuppose your attachment to her; and to enter on the subject as you wish me to do, will be asking her to tell me whether she returns it.”
“That is what I want her to tell you,” said Fred, bluntly. “I don’t know what to do, unless I can get at her feeling.”
“You mean that you would be guided by that as to your going into the Church?”
“If Mary said she would never have me I might as well go wrong in one way as another.”
“That is nonsense, Fred. Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.”
“Not my sort of love: I have never been without loving Mary. If I had to give her up, it would be like beginning to live on wooden legs.”
“Will she not be hurt at my intrusion?”
“No, I feel sure she will not. She respects you more than any one, and she would not put you off with fun as she does me. Of course I could not have told any one else, or asked any one else to speak to her, but you. There is no one else who could be such a friend to both of us.” Fred paused a moment, and then said, rather complainingly, “And she ought to acknowledge that I have worked in order to pass. She ought to believe that I would exert myself for her sake.”
There was a moment’s silence before Mr. Farebrother laid down his work, and putting out his hand to Fred said—
“Very well, my boy. I will do what you wish.”
That very day Mr. Farebrother went to Lowick parsonage on the nag which he had just set up. “Decidedly I am an old stalk,” he thought, “the young growths are pushing me aside.”
He found Mary in the garden gathering roses and sprinkling the petals on a sheet. The sun was low, and tall trees sent their shadows across the grassy walks where Mary was moving without bonnet or parasol. She did not observe Mr. Farebrother’s approach along the grass, and had just stooped down to lecture a small black-and-tan terrier, which would persist in walking on the sheet and smelling at the rose-leaves as Mary sprinkled them. She took his fore-paws in one hand, and lifted up the forefinger of the other, while the dog wrinkled his brows and looked embarrassed. “Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you,” Mary was saying in a grave contralto. “This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody would think you were a silly young gentleman.”
“You are unmerciful to young gentlemen, Miss Garth,” said the Vicar, within two yards of her.
Mary started up and blushed. “It always answers to reason with Fly,” she said, laughingly.
“But not with young gentlemen?”
“Oh, with some, I suppose; since some of them turn into excellent men.”
“I am glad of that admission, because I want at this very moment to interest you in a young gentleman.”
“Not a silly one, I hope,” said Mary, beginning to pluck the roses again, and feeling her heart beat uncomfortably.
“No; though perhaps wisdom is not his strong point, but rather affection and sincerity. However, wisdom lies more in those two qualities than people are apt to imagine. I hope you know by those marks what young gentleman I mean.”
“Yes, I think I do,” said Mary, bravely, her face getting more serious, and her hands cold; “it must be Fred Vincy.”
“He has asked me to consult you about his going into the Church. I hope you will not think that I consented to take a liberty in promising to do so.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Farebrother,” said Mary, giving up the roses, and folding her arms, but unable to look up, “whenever you have anything to say to me I feel honored.”
“But before I enter on that question, let me just touch a point on which your father took me into confidence; by the way, it was that very evening on which I once before fulfilled a mission from Fred, just after he had gone to college. Mr. Garth told me what happened on the night of Featherstone’s death—how you refused to burn the will; and he said that you had some heart-prickings on that subject, because you had been the innocent means of hindering Fred from getting his ten thousand pounds. I have kept that in mind, and I have heard something that may relieve you on that score—may show you that no sin-offering is demanded from you there.”
Mr. Farebrother paused a moment and looked at Mary. He meant to give Fred his full advantage, but it would be well, he thought, to clear her mind of any superstitions, such as women sometimes follow when they do a man the wrong of marrying him as an act of atonement. Mary’s cheeks had begun to burn a little, and she was mute.
“I mean, that your action made no real difference to Fred’s lot. I find that the first will would not have been legally good after the burning of the last; it would not have stood if it had been disputed, and you may be sure it would have been disputed. So, on that score, you may feel your mind free.”
“Thank you, Mr. Farebrother,” said Mary, earnestly. “I am grateful to you for remembering my feelings.”
“Well, now I may go on. Fred, you know, has taken his degree. He has worked his way so far, and now the question is, what is he to do? That question is so difficult that he is inclined to follow his father’s wishes and enter the Church, though you know better than I do that he was quite set against that formerly. I have questioned him on the subject, and I confess I see no insuperable objection to his being a clergyman, as things go. He says that he could turn his mind to doing his best in that vocation, on one condition. If that condition were fulfilled I would do my utmost in helping Fred on. After a time—not, of course, at first—he might be with me as my curate, and he would have so much to do that his stipend would be nearly what I used to get as vicar. But I repeat that there is a condition without which all this good cannot come to pass. He has opened his heart to me, Miss Garth, and asked me to plead for him. The condition lies entirely in your feeling.”
Mary looked so much moved, that he said after a moment, “Let us walk a little;” and when they were walking he added, “To speak quite plainly, Fred will not take any course which would lessen the chance that you would consent to be his wife; but with that prospect, he will try his best at anything you approve.”
“I cannot possibly say that I will ever be his wife, Mr. Farebrother: but I certainly never will be his wife if he becomes a clergyman. What you say is most generous and kind; I don’t mean for a moment to correct your judgment. It is only that I have my girlish, mocking way of looking at things,” said Mary, with a returning sparkle of playfulness in her answer which only made its modesty more charming.
“He wishes me to report exactly what you think,” said Mr. Farebrother.
“I could not love a man who is ridiculous,” said Mary, not choosing to go deeper. “Fred has sense and knowledge enough to make him respectable, if he likes, in some good worldly business, but I can never imagine him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings, and praying by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a caricature. His being a clergyman would be only for gentility’s sake, and I think there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile gentility. I used to think that of Mr. Crowse, with his empty face and neat umbrella, and mincing little speeches. What right have such men to represent Christianity—as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly—as if—” Mary checked herself. She had been carried along as if she had been speaking to Fred instead of Mr. Farebrother.
“Young women are severe: they don’t feel the stress of action as men do, though perhaps I ought to make you an exception there. But you don’t put Fred Vincy on so low a level as that?”
“No, indeed, he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show it as a clergyman. He would be a piece of professional affectation.”
“Then the answer is quite decided. As a clergyman he could have no hope?”
Mary shook her head.
“But if he braved all the difficulties of getting his bread in some other way—will you give him the support of hope? May he count on winning you?”
“I think Fred ought not to need telling again what I have already said to him,” Mary answered, with a slight resentment in her manner. “I mean that he ought not to put such questions until he has done something worthy, instead of saying that he could do it.”
Mr. Farebrother was silent for a minute or more, and then, as they turned and paused under the shadow of a maple at the end of a grassy walk, said, “I understand that you resist any attempt to fetter you, but either your feeling for Fred Vincy excludes your entertaining another attachment, or it does not: either he may count on your remaining single until he shall have earned your hand, or he may in any case be disappointed. Pardon me, Mary—you know I used to catechise you under that name—but when the state of a woman’s affections touches the happiness of another life—of more lives than one—I think it would be the nobler course for her to be perfectly direct and open.”
Mary in her turn was silent, wondering not at Mr. Farebrother’s manner but at his tone, which had a grave restrained emotion in it. When the strange idea flashed across her that his words had reference to himself, she was incredulous, and ashamed of entertaining it. She had never thought that any man could love her except Fred, who had espoused her with the umbrella ring, when she wore socks and little strapped shoes; still less that she could be of any importance to Mr. Farebrother, the cleverest man in her narrow circle. She had only time to feel that all this was hazy and perhaps illusory; but one thing was clear and determined—her answer.
“Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else. I should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of me. It has taken such deep root in me—my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker. I should like better than anything to see him worthy of every one’s respect. But please tell him I will not promise to marry him till then: I should shame and grieve my father and mother. He is free to choose some one else.”
“Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly,” said Mr. Farebrother, putting out his hand to Mary, “and I shall ride back to Middlemarch forthwith. With this prospect before him, we shall get Fred into the right niche somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your hands. God bless you!”
“Oh, please stay, and let me give you some tea,” said Mary. Her eyes filled with tears, for something indefinable, something like the resolute suppression of a pain in Mr. Farebrother’s manner, made her feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she saw her father’s hands trembling in a moment of trouble.
“No, my dear, no. I must get back.”
In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation of whist, or even than the writing of penitential meditations.
CHAPTER LIII.
It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from what outsiders call inconsistency—putting a dead mechanism of “ifs” and “therefores” for the living myriad of hidden suckers whereby the belief and the conduct are wrought into mutual sustainment.
Mr. Bulstrode, when he was hoping to acquire a new interest in Lowick, had naturally had an especial wish that the new clergyman should be one whom he thoroughly approved; and he believed it to be a chastisement and admonition directed to his own shortcomings and those of the nation at large, that just about the time when he came in possession of the deeds which made him the proprietor of Stone Court, Mr. Farebrother “read himself” into the quaint little church and preached his first sermon to the congregation of farmers, laborers, and village artisans. It was not that Mr. Bulstrode intended to frequent Lowick Church or to reside at Stone Court for a good while to come: he had bought the excellent farm and fine homestead simply as a retreat which he might gradually enlarge as to the land and beautify as to the dwelling, until it should be conducive to the divine glory that he should enter on it as a residence, partially withdrawing from his present exertions in the administration of business, and throwing more conspicuously on the side of Gospel truth the weight of local landed proprietorship, which Providence might increase by unforeseen occasions of purchase. A strong leading in this direction seemed to have been given in the surprising facility of getting Stone Court, when every one had expected that Mr. Rigg Featherstone would have clung to it as the Garden of Eden. That was what poor old Peter himself had expected; having often, in imagination, looked up through the sods above him, and, unobstructed by perspective, seen his frog-faced legatee enjoying the fine old place to the perpetual surprise and disappointment of other survivors.
But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbors! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbors themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs. The cool and judicious Joshua Rigg had not allowed his parent to perceive that Stone Court was anything less than the chief good in his estimation, and he had certainly wished to call it his own. But as Warren Hastings looked at gold and thought of buying Daylesford, so Joshua Rigg looked at Stone Court and thought of buying gold. He had a very distinct and intense vision of his chief good, the vigorous greed which he had inherited having taken a special form by dint of circumstance: and his chief good was to be a moneychanger. From his earliest employment as an errand-boy in a seaport, he had looked through the windows of the moneychangers as other boys look through the windows of the pastry-cooks; the fascination had wrought itself gradually into a deep special passion; he meant, when he had property, to do many things, one of them being to marry a genteel young person; but these were all accidents and joys that imagination could dispense with. The one joy after which his soul thirsted was to have a money-changer’s shop on a much-frequented quay, to have locks all round him of which he held the keys, and to look sublimely cool as he handled the breeding coins of all nations, while helpless Cupidity looked at him enviously from the other side of an iron lattice. The strength of that passion had been a power enabling him to master all the knowledge necessary to gratify it. And when others were thinking that he had settled at Stone Court for life, Joshua himself was thinking that the moment now was not far off when he should settle on the North Quay with the best appointments in safes and locks.
Enough. We are concerned with looking at Joshua Rigg’s sale of his land from Mr. Bulstrode’s point of view, and he interpreted it as a cheering dispensation conveying perhaps a sanction to a purpose which he had for some time entertained without external encouragement; he interpreted it thus, but not too confidently, offering up his thanksgiving in guarded phraseology. His doubts did not arise from the possible relations of the event to Joshua Rigg’s destiny, which belonged to the unmapped regions not taken under the providential government, except perhaps in an imperfect colonial way; but they arose from reflecting that this dispensation too might be a chastisement for himself, as Mr. Farebrother’s induction to the living clearly was.
This was not what Mr. Bulstrode said to any man for the sake of deceiving him: it was what he said to himself—it was as genuinely his mode of explaining events as any theory of yours may be, if you happen to disagree with him. For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.
However, whether for sanction or for chastisement, Mr. Bulstrode, hardly fifteen months after the death of Peter Featherstone, had become the proprietor of Stone Court, and what Peter would say “if he were worthy to know,” had become an inexhaustible and consolatory subject of conversation to his disappointed relatives. The tables were now turned on that dear brother departed, and to contemplate the frustration of his cunning by the superior cunning of things in general was a cud of delight to Solomon. Mrs. Waule had a melancholy triumph in the proof that it did not answer to make false Featherstones and cut off the genuine; and Sister Martha receiving the news in the Chalky Flats said, “Dear, dear! then the Almighty could have been none so pleased with the almshouses after all.”
Affectionate Mrs. Bulstrode was particularly glad of the advantage which her husband’s health was likely to get from the purchase of Stone Court. Few days passed without his riding thither and looking over some part of the farm with the bailiff, and the evenings were delicious in that quiet spot, when the new hay-ricks lately set up were sending forth odors to mingle with the breath of the rich old garden. One evening, while the sun was still above the horizon and burning in golden lamps among the great walnut boughs, Mr. Bulstrode was pausing on horseback outside the front gate waiting for Caleb Garth, who had met him by appointment to give an opinion on a question of stable drainage, and was now advising the bailiff in the rick-yard.
Mr. Bulstrode was conscious of being in a good spiritual frame and more than usually serene, under the influence of his innocent recreation. He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching proof that we are peculiar instruments of the divine intention. The memory has as many moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama. At this moment Mr. Bulstrode felt as if the sunshine were all one with that of far-off evenings when he was a very young man and used to go out preaching beyond Highbury. And he would willingly have had that service of exhortation in prospect now. The texts were there still, and so was his own facility in expounding them. His brief reverie was interrupted by the return of Caleb Garth, who also was on horseback, and was just shaking his bridle before starting, when he exclaimed—
“Bless my heart! what’s this fellow in black coming along the lane? He’s like one of those men one sees about after the races.”
Mr. Bulstrode turned his horse and looked along the lane, but made no reply. The comer was our slight acquaintance Mr. Raffles, whose appearance presented no other change than such as was due to a suit of black and a crape hat-band. He was within three yards of the horseman now, and they could see the flash of recognition in his face as he whirled his stick upward, looking all the while at Mr. Bulstrode, and at last exclaiming:—
“By Jove, Nick, it’s you! I couldn’t be mistaken, though the five-and-twenty years have played old Boguy with us both! How are you, eh? you didn’t expect to see me here. Come, shake us by the hand.” To say that Mr. Raffles’ manner was rather excited would be only one mode of saying that it was evening. Caleb Garth could see that there was a moment of struggle and hesitation in Mr. Bulstrode, but it ended in his putting out his hand coldly to Raffles and saying—
“I did not indeed expect to see you in this remote country place.”
“Well, it belongs to a stepson of mine,” said Raffles, adjusting himself in a swaggering attitude. “I came to see him here before. I’m not so surprised at seeing you, old fellow, because I picked up a letter—what you may call a providential thing. It’s uncommonly fortunate I met you, though; for I don’t care about seeing my stepson: he’s not affectionate, and his poor mother’s gone now. To tell the truth, I came out of love to you, Nick: I came to get your address, for—look here!” Raffles drew a crumpled paper from his pocket.
Almost any other man than Caleb Garth might have been tempted to linger on the spot for the sake of hearing all he could about a man whose acquaintance with Bulstrode seemed to imply passages in the banker’s life so unlike anything that was known of him in Middlemarch that they must have the nature of a secret to pique curiosity. But Caleb was peculiar: certain human tendencies which are commonly strong were almost absent from his mind; and one of these was curiosity about personal affairs. Especially if there was anything discreditable to be found out concerning another man, Caleb preferred not to know it; and if he had to tell anybody under him that his evil doings were discovered, he was more embarrassed than the culprit. He now spurred his horse, and saying, “I wish you good evening, Mr. Bulstrode; I must be getting home,” set off at a trot.
“You didn’t put your full address to this letter,” Raffles continued. “That was not like the first-rate man of business you used to be. ‘The Shrubs,’—they may be anywhere: you live near at hand, eh?—have cut the London concern altogether—perhaps turned country squire—have a rural mansion to invite me to. Lord, how many years it is ago! The old lady must have been dead a pretty long while—gone to glory without the pain of knowing how poor her daughter was, eh? But, by Jove! you’re very pale and pasty, Nick. Come, if you’re going home, I’ll walk by your side.”
Mr. Bulstrode’s usual paleness had in fact taken an almost deathly hue. Five minutes before, the expanse of his life had been submerged in its evening sunshine which shone backward to its remembered morning: sin seemed to be a question of doctrine and inward penitence, humiliation an exercise of the closet, the bearing of his deeds a matter of private vision adjusted solely by spiritual relations and conceptions of the divine purposes. And now, as if by some hideous magic, this loud red figure had risen before him in unmanageable solidity—an incorporate past which had not entered into his imagination of chastisements. But Mr. Bulstrode’s thought was busy, and he was not a man to act or speak rashly.
“I was going home,” he said, “but I can defer my ride a little. And you can, if you please, rest here.”
“Thank you,” said Raffles, making a grimace. “I don’t care now about seeing my stepson. I’d rather go home with you.”
“Your stepson, if Mr. Rigg Featherstone was he, is here no longer. I am master here now.”
Raffles opened wide eyes, and gave a long whistle of surprise, before he said, “Well then, I’ve no objection. I’ve had enough walking from the coach-road. I never was much of a walker, or rider either. What I like is a smart vehicle and a spirited cob. I was always a little heavy in the saddle. What a pleasant surprise it must be to you to see me, old fellow!” he continued, as they turned towards the house. “You don’t say so; but you never took your luck heartily—you were always thinking of improving the occasion—you’d such a gift for improving your luck.”
Mr. Raffles seemed greatly to enjoy his own wit, and swung his leg in a swaggering manner which was rather too much for his companion’s judicious patience.
“If I remember rightly,” Mr. Bulstrode observed, with chill anger, “our acquaintance many years ago had not the sort of intimacy which you are now assuming, Mr. Raffles. Any services you desire of me will be the more readily rendered if you will avoid a tone of familiarity which did not lie in our former intercourse, and can hardly be warranted by more than twenty years of separation.”
“You don’t like being called Nick? Why, I always called you Nick in my heart, and though lost to sight, to memory dear. By Jove! my feelings have ripened for you like fine old cognac. I hope you’ve got some in the house now. Josh filled my flask well the last time.”
Mr. Bulstrode had not yet fully learned that even the desire for cognac was not stronger in Raffles than the desire to torment, and that a hint of annoyance always served him as a fresh cue. But it was at least clear that further objection was useless, and Mr. Bulstrode, in giving orders to the housekeeper for the accommodation of the guest, had a resolute air of quietude.
There was the comfort of thinking that this housekeeper had been in the service of Rigg also, and might accept the idea that Mr. Bulstrode entertained Raffles merely as a friend of her former master.
When there was food and drink spread before his visitor in the wainscoted parlor, and no witness in the room, Mr. Bulstrode said—
“Your habits and mine are so different, Mr. Raffles, that we can hardly enjoy each other’s society. The wisest plan for both of us will therefore be to part as soon as possible. Since you say that you wished to meet me, you probably considered that you had some business to transact with me. But under the circumstances I will invite you to remain here for the night, and I will myself ride over here early to-morrow morning—before breakfast, in fact—when I can receive any communication you have to make to me.”
“With all my heart,” said Raffles; “this is a comfortable place—a little dull for a continuance; but I can put up with it for a night, with this good liquor and the prospect of seeing you again in the morning. You’re a much better host than my stepson was; but Josh owed me a bit of a grudge for marrying his mother; and between you and me there was never anything but kindness.”
Mr. Bulstrode, hoping that the peculiar mixture of joviality and sneering in Raffles’ manner was a good deal the effect of drink, had determined to wait till he was quite sober before he spent more words upon him. But he rode home with a terribly lucid vision of the difficulty there would be in arranging any result that could be permanently counted on with this man. It was inevitable that he should wish to get rid of John Raffles, though his reappearance could not be regarded as lying outside the divine plan. The spirit of evil might have sent him to threaten Mr. Bulstrode’s subversion as an instrument of good; but the threat must have been permitted, and was a chastisement of a new kind. It was an hour of anguish for him very different from the hours in which his struggle had been securely private, and which had ended with a sense that his secret misdeeds were pardoned and his services accepted. Those misdeeds even when committed—had they not been half sanctified by the singleness of his desire to devote himself and all he possessed to the furtherance of the divine scheme? And was he after all to become a mere stone of stumbling and a rock of offence? For who would understand the work within him? Who would not, when there was the pretext of casting disgrace upon him, confound his whole life and the truths he had espoused, in one heap of obloquy?
In his closest meditations the life-long habit of Mr. Bulstrode’s mind clad his most egoistic terrors in doctrinal references to superhuman ends. But even while we are talking and meditating about the earth’s orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our movements to is the stable earth and the changing day. And now within all the automatic succession of theoretic phrases—distinct and inmost as the shiver and the ache of oncoming fever when we are discussing abstract pain, was the forecast of disgrace in the presence of his neighbors and of his own wife. For the pain, as well as the public estimate of disgrace, depends on the amount of previous profession. To men who only aim at escaping felony, nothing short of the prisoner’s dock is disgrace. But Mr. Bulstrode had aimed at being an eminent Christian.
It was not more than half-past seven in the morning when he again reached Stone Court. The fine old place never looked more like a delightful home than at that moment; the great white lilies were in flower, the nasturtiums, their pretty leaves all silvered with dew, were running away over the low stone wall; the very noises all around had a heart of peace within them. But everything was spoiled for the owner as he walked on the gravel in front and awaited the descent of Mr. Raffles, with whom he was condemned to breakfast.
It was not long before they were seated together in the wainscoted parlor over their tea and toast, which was as much as Raffles cared to take at that early hour. The difference between his morning and evening self was not so great as his companion had imagined that it might be; the delight in tormenting was perhaps even the stronger because his spirits were rather less highly pitched. Certainly his manners seemed more disagreeable by the morning light.
“As I have little time to spare, Mr. Raffles,” said the banker, who could hardly do more than sip his tea and break his toast without eating it, “I shall be obliged if you will mention at once the ground on which you wished to meet with me. I presume that you have a home elsewhere and will be glad to return to it.”
“Why, if a man has got any heart, doesn’t he want to see an old friend, Nick?—I must call you Nick—we always did call you young Nick when we knew you meant to marry the old widow. Some said you had a handsome family likeness to old Nick, but that was your mother’s fault, calling you Nicholas. Aren’t you glad to see me again? I expected an invite to stay with you at some pretty place. My own establishment is broken up now my wife’s dead. I’ve no particular attachment to any spot; I would as soon settle hereabout as anywhere.”
“May I ask why you returned from America? I considered that the strong wish you expressed to go there, when an adequate sum was furnished, was tantamount to an engagement that you would remain there for life.”
“Never knew that a wish to go to a place was the same thing as a wish to stay. But I did stay a matter of ten years; it didn’t suit me to stay any longer. And I’m not going again, Nick.” Here Mr. Raffles winked slowly as he looked at Mr. Bulstrode.
“Do you wish to be settled in any business? What is your calling now?”
“Thank you, my calling is to enjoy myself as much as I can. I don’t care about working any more. If I did anything it would be a little travelling in the tobacco line—or something of that sort, which takes a man into agreeable company. But not without an independence to fall back upon. That’s what I want: I’m not so strong as I was, Nick, though I’ve got more color than you. I want an independence.”
“That could be supplied to you, if you would engage to keep at a distance,” said Mr. Bulstrode, perhaps with a little too much eagerness in his undertone.
“That must be as it suits my convenience,” said Raffles coolly. “I see no reason why I shouldn’t make a few acquaintances hereabout. I’m not ashamed of myself as company for anybody. I dropped my portmanteau at the turnpike when I got down—change of linen—genuine—honor bright—more than fronts and wristbands; and with this suit of mourning, straps and everything, I should do you credit among the nobs here.” Mr. Raffles had pushed away 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 only handsome and witty, but clad in a mourning style which implied solid connections.
“If you intend to rely on me in any way, Mr. Raffles,” said Bulstrode, after a moment’s pause, “you will expect to meet my wishes.”
“Ah, to be sure,” said Raffles, with a mocking cordiality. “Didn’t I always do it? Lord, you made a pretty thing out of me, and I got but little. I’ve often thought since, I might have done better by telling the old woman that I’d found her daughter and her grandchild: it would have suited my feelings better; I’ve got a soft place in my heart. But you’ve buried the old lady by this time, I suppose—it’s all one to her now. And you’ve got your fortune out of that profitable business which had such a blessing on it. You’ve taken to being a nob, buying land, being a country bashaw. Still in the Dissenting line, eh? Still godly? Or taken to the Church as more genteel?”