The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary on the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman without capital and generally unskilled. It was the harder to Fred’s disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds. Even when he had fixed on what he should do, there would be the task of telling his father. But it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the more difficult task:—what secular avocation on earth was there for a young man (whose friends could not get him an “appointment”) which was at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special knowledge? Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and slackening his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go round by Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges from one field to another. Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and on the far side of a field on his left hand he could see six or seven men in smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive approach towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while Caleb Garth and his assistant were hastening across the field to join the threatened group. Fred, delayed a few moments by having to find the gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the party in smock-frocks, whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing after swallowing their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats before them with their hay-forks; while Caleb Garth’s assistant, a lad of seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at Caleb’s order, had been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless. The coated men had the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting in front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw their chase into confusion. “What do you confounded fools mean?” shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right and left with his whip. “I’ll swear to every one of you before the magistrate. You’ve knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I know. You’ll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you don’t mind,” said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he remembered his own phrases.
The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into their hay-field, and Fred had checked his horse, when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a safe challenging distance, turned back and shouted a defiance which he did not know to be Homeric.
“Yo’re a coward, yo are. Yo git off your horse, young measter, and I’ll have a round wi’ ye, I wull. Yo daredn’t come on wi’out your hoss an’ whip. I’d soon knock the breath out on ye, I would.”
“Wait a minute, and I’ll come back presently, and have a round with you all in turn, if you like,” said Fred, who felt confidence in his power of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren. But just now he wanted to hasten back to Caleb and the prostrate youth.
The lad’s ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he was no further hurt, and Fred placed him on the horse that he might ride to Yoddrell’s and be taken care of there.
“Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can come back for their traps,” said Fred. “The ground is clear now.”
“No, no,” said Caleb, “here’s a breakage. They’ll have to give up for to-day, and it will be as well. Here, take the things before you on the horse, Tom. They’ll see you coming, and they’ll turn back.”
“I’m glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth,” said Fred, as Tom rode away. “No knowing what might have happened if the cavalry had not come up in time.”
“Ay, ay, it was lucky,” said Caleb, speaking rather absently, and looking towards the spot where he had been at work at the moment of interruption. “But—deuce take it—this is what comes of men being fools—I’m hindered of my day’s work. I can’t get along without somebody to help me with the measuring-chain. However!” He was beginning to move towards the spot with a look of vexation, as if he had forgotten Fred’s presence, but suddenly he turned round and said quickly, “What have you got to do to-day, young fellow?”
“Nothing, Mr. Garth. I’ll help you with pleasure—can I?” said Fred, with a sense that he should be courting Mary when he was helping her father.
“Well, you mustn’t mind stooping and getting hot.”
“I don’t mind anything. Only I want to go first and have a round with that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me. It would be a good lesson for him. I shall not be five minutes.”
“Nonsense!” said Caleb, with his most peremptory intonation. “I shall go and speak to the men myself. It’s all ignorance. Somebody has been telling them lies. The poor fools don’t know any better.”
“I shall go with you, then,” said Fred.
“No, no; stay where you are. I don’t want your young blood. I can take care of myself.”
Caleb was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear of hurting others and the fear of having to speechify. But he felt it his duty at this moment to try and give a little harangue. There was a striking mixture in him—which came from his having always been a hard-working man himself—of rigorous notions about workmen and practical indulgence towards them. To do a good day’s work and to do it well, he held to be part of their welfare, as it was the chief part of his own happiness; but he had a strong sense of fellowship with them. When he advanced towards the laborers they had not gone to work again, but were standing in that form of rural grouping which consists in each turning a shoulder towards the other, at a distance of two or three yards. They looked rather sulkily at Caleb, who walked quickly with one hand in his pocket and the other thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, and had his every-day mild air when he paused among them.
“Why, my lads, how’s this?” he began, taking as usual to brief phrases, which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to peep above the water. “How came you to make such a mistake as this? Somebody has been telling you lies. You thought those men up there wanted to do mischief.”
“Aw!” was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his degree of unreadiness.
“Nonsense! No such thing! They’re looking out to see which way the railroad is to take. Now, my lads, you can’t hinder the railroad: it will be made whether you like it or not. And if you go fighting against it, you’ll get yourselves into trouble. The law gives those men leave to come here on the land. The owner has nothing to say against it, and if you meddle with them you’ll have to do with the constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Middlemarch jail. And you might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you.”
Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.
“But come, you didn’t mean any harm. Somebody told you the railroad was a bad thing. That was a lie. It may do a bit of harm here and there, to this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven. But the railway’s a good thing.”
“Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on,” said old Timothy Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been gone on their spree;—“I’n seen lots o’ things turn up sin’ I war a young un—the war an’ the peace, and the canells, an’ the oald King George, an’ the Regen’, an’ the new King George, an’ the new un as has got a new ne-ame—an’ it’s been all aloike to the poor mon. What’s the canells been t’ him? They’n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor wage to lay by, if he didn’t save it wi’ clemmin’ his own inside. Times ha’ got wusser for him sin’ I war a young un. An’ so it’ll be wi’ the railroads. They’ll on’y leave the poor mon furder behind. But them are fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here. This is the big folks’s world, this is. But yo’re for the big folks, Muster Garth, yo are.”
Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times—who had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of the feudal spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man. Caleb was in a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling, and can let it fall like a giant’s club on your neatly carved argument for a social benefit which they do not feel. Caleb had no cant at command, even if he could have chosen to use it; and he had been accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by doing his “business” faithfully. He answered—
“If you don’t think well of me, Tim, never mind; that’s neither here nor there now. Things may be bad for the poor man—bad they are; but I want the lads here not to do what will make things worse for themselves. The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won’t help ’em to throw it over into the roadside pit, when it’s partly their own fodder.”
“We war on’y for a bit o’ foon,” said Hiram, who was beginning to see consequences. “That war all we war arter.”
“Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I’ll see that nobody informs against you.”
“I’n ne’er meddled, an’ I’n no call to promise,” said Timothy.
“No, but the rest. Come, I’m as hard at work as any of you to-day, and I can’t spare much time. Say you’ll be quiet without the constable.”
“Aw, we wooant meddle—they may do as they loike for oos”—were the forms in which Caleb got his pledges; and then he hastened back to Fred, who had followed him, and watched him in the gateway.
They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously. His spirits had risen, and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under the hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer trousers. Was it his successful onset which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping Mary’s father? Something more. The accidents of the morning had helped his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself which had several attractions. I am not sure that certain fibres in Mr. Garth’s mind had not resumed their old vibration towards the very end which now revealed itself to Fred. For the effective accident is but the touch of fire where there is oil and tow; and it always appeared to Fred that the railway brought the needed touch. But they went on in silence except when their business demanded speech. At last, when they had finished and were walking away, Mr. Garth said—
“A young fellow needn’t be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?”
“I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.,” said Fred. He paused a moment, and then added, more hesitatingly, “Do you think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Garth?”
“My business is of many sorts, my boy,” said Mr. Garth, smiling. “A good deal of what I know can only come from experience: you can’t learn it off as you learn things out of a book. But you are young enough to lay a foundation yet.” Caleb pronounced the last sentence emphatically, but paused in some uncertainty. He had been under the impression lately that Fred had made up his mind to enter the Church.
“You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?” said Fred, more eagerly.
“That depends,” said Caleb, turning his head on one side and lowering his voice, with the air of a man who felt himself to be saying something deeply religious. “You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that—if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is—I wouldn’t give twopence for him”—here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter, and he snapped his fingers—“whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.”
“I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman,” said Fred, meaning to take a step in argument.
“Then let it alone, my boy,” said Caleb, abruptly, “else you’ll never be easy. Or, if you are easy, you’ll be a poor stick.”
“That is very nearly what Mary thinks about it,” said Fred, coloring. “I think you must know what I feel for Mary, Mr. Garth: I hope it does not displease you that I have always loved her better than any one else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her.”
The expression of Caleb’s face was visibly softening while Fred spoke. But he swung his head with a solemn slowness, and said—
“That makes things more serious, Fred, if you want to take Mary’s happiness into your keeping.”
“I know that, Mr. Garth,” said Fred, eagerly, “and I would do anything for her. She says she will never have me if I go into the Church; and I shall be the most miserable devil in the world if I lose all hope of Mary. Really, if I could get some other profession, business—anything that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would deserve your good opinion. I should like to have to do with outdoor things. I know a good deal about land and cattle already. I used to believe, you know—though you will think me rather foolish for it—that I should have land of my own. I am sure knowledge of that sort would come easily to me, especially if I could be under you in any way.”
“Softly, my boy,” said Caleb, having the image of “Susan” before his eyes. “What have you said to your father about all this?”
“Nothing, yet; but I must tell him. I am only waiting to know what I can do instead of entering the Church. I am very sorry to disappoint him, but a man ought to be allowed to judge for himself when he is four-and-twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what it would be right for me to do now? My education was a mistake.”
“But hearken to this, Fred,” said Caleb. “Are you sure Mary is fond of you, or would ever have you?”
“I asked Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden me—I didn’t know what else to do,” said Fred, apologetically. “And he says that I have every reason to hope, if I can put myself in an honorable position—I mean, out of the Church. I dare say you think it unwarrantable in me, Mr. Garth, to be troubling you and obtruding my own wishes about Mary, before I have done anything at all for myself. Of course I have not the least claim—indeed, I have already a debt to you which will never be discharged, even when I have been able to pay it in the shape of money.”
“Yes, my boy, you have a claim,” said Caleb, with much feeling in his voice. “The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them forward. I was young myself once and had to do without much help; but help would have been welcome to me, if it had been only for the fellow-feeling’s sake. But I must consider. Come to me to-morrow at the office, at nine o’clock. At the office, mind.”
Mr. Garth would take no important step without consulting Susan, but it must be confessed that before he reached home he had taken his resolution. With regard to a large number of matters about which other men are decided or obstinate, he was the most easily manageable man in the world. He never knew what meat he would choose, and if Susan had said that they ought to live in a four-roomed cottage, in order to save, he would have said, “Let us go,” without inquiring into details. But where Caleb’s feeling and judgment strongly pronounced, he was a ruler; and in spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he was absolute. He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some one else’s behalf. On ninety-nine points Mrs. Garth decided, but on the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform the singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to make herself subordinate.
“It is come round as I thought, Susan,” said Caleb, when they were seated alone in the evening. He had already narrated the adventure which had brought about Fred’s sharing in his work, but had kept back the further result. “The children are fond of each other—I mean, Fred and Mary.”
Mrs. Garth laid her work on her knee, and fixed her penetrating eyes anxiously on her husband.
“After we’d done our work, Fred poured it all out to me. He can’t bear to be a clergyman, and Mary says she won’t have him if he is one; and the lad would like to be under me and give his mind to business. And I’ve determined to take him and make a man of him.”
“Caleb!” said Mrs. Garth, in a deep contralto, expressive of resigned astonishment.
“It’s a fine thing to do,” said Mr. Garth, settling himself firmly against the back of his chair, and grasping the elbows. “I shall have trouble with him, but I think I shall carry it through. The lad loves Mary, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan. It shapes many a rough fellow.”
“Has Mary spoken to you on the subject?” said Mrs Garth, secretly a little hurt that she had to be informed on it herself.
“Not a word. I asked her about Fred once; I gave her a bit of a warning. But she assured me she would never marry an idle self-indulgent man—nothing since. But it seems Fred set on Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden him to speak himself, and Mr. Farebrother has found out that she is fond of Fred, but says he must not be a clergyman. Fred’s heart is fixed on Mary, that I can see: it gives me a good opinion of the lad—and we always liked him, Susan.”
“It is a pity for Mary, I think,” said Mrs. Garth.
“Why—a pity?”
“Because, Caleb, she might have had a man who is worth twenty Fred Vincy’s.”
“Ah?” said Caleb, with surprise.
“I firmly believe that Mr. Farebrother is attached to her, and meant to make her an offer; but of course, now that Fred has used him as an envoy, there is an end to that better prospect.” There was a severe precision in Mrs. Garth’s utterance. She was vexed and disappointed, but she was bent on abstaining from useless words.
Caleb was silent a few moments under a conflict of feelings. He looked at the floor and moved his head and hands in accompaniment to some inward argumentation. At last he said—
“That would have made me very proud and happy, Susan, and I should have been glad for your sake. I’ve always felt that your belongings have never been on a level with you. But you took me, though I was a plain man.”
“I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known,” said Mrs. Garth, convinced that she would never have loved any one who came short of that mark.
“Well, perhaps others thought you might have done better. But it would have been worse for me. And that is what touches me close about Fred. The lad is good at bottom, and clever enough to do, if he’s put in the right way; and he loves and honors my daughter beyond anything, and she has given him a sort of promise according to what he turns out. I say, that young man’s soul is in my hand; and I’ll do the best I can for him, so help me God! It’s my duty, Susan.”
Mrs. Garth was not given to tears, but there was a large one rolling down her face before her husband had finished. It came from the pressure of various feelings, in which there was much affection and some vexation. She wiped it away quickly, saying—
“Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties in that way, Caleb.”
“That signifies nothing—what other men would think. I’ve got a clear feeling inside me, and that I shall follow; and I hope your heart will go with me, Susan, in making everything as light as can be to Mary, poor child.”
Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards his wife. She rose and kissed him, saying, “God bless you, Caleb! Our children have a good father.”
But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression of her words. She felt sure that her husband’s conduct would be misunderstood, and about Fred she was rational and unhopeful. Which would turn out to have the more foresight in it—her rationality or Caleb’s ardent generosity?
When Fred went to the office the next morning, there was a test to be gone through which he was not prepared for.
“Now Fred,” said Caleb, “you will have some desk-work. I have always done a good deal of writing myself, but I can’t do without help, and as I want you to understand the accounts and get the values into your head, I mean to do without another clerk. So you must buckle to. How are you at writing and arithmetic?”
Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought of desk-work; but he was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink. “I’m not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it always came easily to me. I think you know my writing.”
“Let us see,” said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully and handing it, well dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper. “Copy me a line or two of that valuation, with the figures at the end.”
At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to write legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk. Fred wrote the lines demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes had a blotted solidity and the letters disdained to keep the line—in short, it was a manuscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret when you know beforehand what the writer means.
As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression, but when Fred handed him the paper he gave something like a snarl, and rapped the paper passionately with the back of his hand. Bad work like this dispelled all Caleb’s mildness.
“The deuce!” he exclaimed, snarlingly. “To think that this is a country where a man’s education may cost hundreds and hundreds, and it turns you out this!” Then in a more pathetic tone, pushing up his spectacles and looking at the unfortunate scribe, “The Lord have mercy on us, Fred, I can’t put up with this!”
“What can I do, Mr. Garth?” said Fred, whose spirits had sunk very low, not only at the estimate of his handwriting, but at the vision of himself as liable to be ranked with office clerks.
“Do? Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line. What’s the use of writing at all if nobody can understand it?” asked Caleb, energetically, quite preoccupied with the bad quality of the work. “Is there so little business in the world that you must be sending puzzles over the country? But that’s the way people are brought up. I should lose no end of time with the letters some people send me, if Susan did not make them out for me. It’s disgusting.” Here Caleb tossed the paper from him.
Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have wondered what was the drama between the indignant man of business, and the fine-looking young fellow whose blond complexion was getting rather patchy as he bit his lip with mortification. Fred was struggling with many thoughts. Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at the beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had been at a high pitch, and the downfall was proportionate. He had not thought of desk-work—in fact, like the majority of young gentlemen, he wanted an occupation which should be free from disagreeables. I cannot tell what might have been the consequences if he had not distinctly promised himself that he would go to Lowick to see Mary and tell her that he was engaged to work under her father. He did not like to disappoint himself there.
“I am very sorry,” were all the words that he could muster. But Mr. Garth was already relenting.
“We must make the best of it, Fred,” he began, with a return to his usual quiet tone. “Every man can learn to write. I taught myself. Go at it with a will, and sit up at night if the day-time isn’t enough. We’ll be patient, my boy. Callum shall go on with the books for a bit, while you are learning. But now I must be off,” said Caleb, rising. “You must let your father know our agreement. You’ll save me Callum’s salary, you know, when you can write; and I can afford to give you eighty pounds for the first year, and more after.”
When Fred made the necessary disclosure to his parents, the relative effect on the two was a surprise which entered very deeply into his memory. He went straight from Mr. Garth’s office to the warehouse, rightly feeling that the most respectful way in which he could behave to his father was to make the painful communication as gravely and formally as possible. Moreover, the decision would be more certainly understood to be final, if the interview took place in his father’s gravest hours, which were always those spent in his private room at the warehouse.
Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he had done and was resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret that he should be the cause of disappointment to his father, and taking the blame on his own deficiencies. The regret was genuine, and inspired Fred with strong, simple words.
Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise without uttering even an exclamation, a silence which in his impatient temperament was a sign of unusual emotion. He had not been in good spirits about trade that morning, and the slight bitterness in his lips grew intense as he listened. When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly a minute, during which Mr. Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned the key emphatically. Then he looked at his son steadily, and said—
“So you’ve made up your mind at last, sir?”
“Yes, father.”
“Very well; stick to it. I’ve no more to say. You’ve thrown away your education, and gone down a step in life, when I had given you the means of rising, that’s all.”
“I am very sorry that we differ, father. I think I can be quite as much of a gentleman at the work I have undertaken, as if I had been a curate. But I am grateful to you for wishing to do the best for me.”
“Very well; I have no more to say. I wash my hands of you. I only hope, when you have a son of your own he will make a better return for the pains you spend on him.”
This was very cutting to Fred. His father was using that unfair advantage possessed by us all when we are in a pathetic situation and see our own past as if it were simply part of the pathos. In reality, Mr. Vincy’s wishes about his son had had a great deal of pride, inconsiderateness, and egoistic folly in them. But still the disappointed father held a strong lever; and Fred felt as if he were being banished with a malediction.
“I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?” he said, after rising to go; “I shall have a sufficient salary to pay for my board, as of course I should wish to do.”
“Board be hanged!” said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust at the notion that Fred’s keep would be missed at his table. “Of course your mother will want you to stay. But I shall keep no horse for you, you understand; and you will pay your own tailor. You will do with a suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay for ’em.”
Fred lingered; there was still something to be said. At last it came.
“I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me the vexation I have caused you.”
Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son, who had advanced near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly, “Yes, yes, let us say no more.”
Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother, but she was inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her husband had never thought of, the certainty that Fred would marry Mary Garth, that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a perpetual infusion of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his beautiful face and stylish air “beyond anybody else’s son in Middlemarch,” would be sure to get like that family in plainness of appearance and carelessness about his clothes. To her it seemed that there was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred, but she dared not enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint of it had made him “fly out” at her as he had never done before. Her temper was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject of some baleful prophecy. Perhaps she was the slower to recover her usual cheerfulness because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the sore question with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him. If her husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged into defence of her darling. It was the end of the fourth day when Mr. Vincy said to her—
“Come, Lucy, my dear, don’t be so down-hearted. You always have spoiled the boy, and you must go on spoiling him.”
“Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy,” said the wife, her fair throat and chin beginning to tremble again, “only his illness.”
“Pooh, pooh, never mind! We must expect to have trouble with our children. Don’t make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits.”
“Well, I won’t,” said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled plumage.
“It won’t do to begin making a fuss about one,” said Mr. Vincy, wishing to combine a little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness. “There’s Rosamond as well as Fred.”
“Yes, poor thing. I’m sure I felt for her being disappointed of her baby; but she got over it nicely.”
“Baby, pooh! I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice, and getting into debt too, by what I hear. I shall have Rosamond coming to me with a pretty tale one of these days. But they’ll get no money from me, I know. Let his family help him. I never did like that marriage. But it’s no use talking. Ring the bell for lemons, and don’t look dull any more, Lucy. I’ll drive you and Louisa to Riverston to-morrow.”
CHAPTER LVII.
They numbered scarce eight summers when a name Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame At penetration of the quickening air: His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor, Making the little world their childhood knew Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur, And larger yet with wonder, love, belief Toward Walter Scott who living far away Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. The book and they must part, but day by day, In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.
The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to see that this was a world in which even a spirited young man must sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five o’clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way, wishing to assure himself that she accepted their new relations willingly.
He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great apple-tree in the orchard. It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a short holiday—Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in the world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of object-lesson given to him by the educational mother. Christy himself, a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother not much higher than Fred’s shoulder—which made it the harder that he should be held superior—was always as simple as possible, and thought no more of Fred’s disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe’s, wishing that he himself were more of the same height. He was lying on the ground now by his mother’s chair, with his straw hat laid flat over his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that beloved writer who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young lives. The volume was “Ivanhoe,” and Jim was in the great archery scene at the tournament, but suffered much interruption from Ben, who had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making himself dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to observe his random shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the active-minded but probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality of extreme old age. Letty herself, showing as to her mouth and pinafore some slight signs that she had been assisting at the gathering of the cherries which stood in a coral-heap on the tea-table, was now seated on the grass, listening open-eyed to the reading.
But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fred Vincy. When, seating himself on a garden-stool, he said that he was on his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown down his bow, and snatched up a reluctant half-grown kitten instead, strode across Fred’s outstretched leg, and said “Take me!”
“Oh, and me too,” said Letty.
“You can’t keep up with Fred and me,” said Ben.
“Yes, I can. Mother, please say that I am to go,” urged Letty, whose life was much checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl.
“I shall stay with Christy,” observed Jim; as much as to say that he had the advantage of those simpletons; whereupon Letty put her hand up to her head and looked with jealous indecision from the one to the other.
“Let us all go and see Mary,” said Christy, opening his arms.
“No, my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage. And that old Glasgow suit of yours would never do. Besides, your father will come home. We must let Fred go alone. He can tell Mary that you are here, and she will come back to-morrow.”
Christy glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fred’s beautiful white trousers. Certainly Fred’s tailoring suggested the advantages of an English university, and he had a graceful way even of looking warm and of pushing his hair back with his handkerchief.
“Children, run away,” said Mrs. Garth; “it is too warm to hang about your friends. Take your brother and show him the rabbits.”
The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately. Fred felt that Mrs. Garth wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he had to say, but he could only begin by observing—
“How glad you must be to have Christy here!”
“Yes; he has come sooner than I expected. He got down from the coach at nine o’clock, just after his father went out. I am longing for Caleb to come and hear what wonderful progress Christy is making. He has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons, carrying on hard study at the same time. He hopes soon to get a private tutorship and go abroad.”
“He is a great fellow,” said Fred, to whom these cheerful truths had a medicinal taste, “and no trouble to anybody.” After a slight pause, he added, “But I fear you will think that I am going to be a great deal of trouble to Mr. Garth.”
“Caleb likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more than any one would have thought of asking them to do,” answered Mrs. Garth. She was knitting, and could either look at Fred or not, as she chose—always an advantage when one is bent on loading speech with salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Garth intended to be duly reserved, she did wish to say something that Fred might be the better for.
“I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good reason,” said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of something like a disposition to lecture him. “I happen to have behaved just the worst to the people I can’t help wishing for the most from. But while two men like Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given me up, I don’t see why I should give myself up.” Fred thought it might be well to suggest these masculine examples to Mrs. Garth.
“Assuredly,” said she, with gathering emphasis. “A young man for whom two such elders had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he threw himself away and made their sacrifices vain.”
Fred wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, “I hope it will not be so with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some encouragement to believe that I may win Mary. Mr. Garth has told you about that? You were not surprised, I dare say?” Fred ended, innocently referring only to his own love as probably evident enough.
“Not surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?” returned Mrs. Garth, who thought it would be well for Fred to be more alive to the fact that Mary’s friends could not possibly have wished this beforehand, whatever the Vincys might suppose. “Yes, I confess I was surprised.”
“She never did give me any—not the least in the world, when I talked to her myself,” said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary. “But when I asked Mr. Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a hope.”
The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not yet discharged itself. It was a little too provoking even for her self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the disappointments of sadder and wiser people—making a meal of a nightingale and never knowing it—and that all the while his family should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig; and her vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total repression towards her husband. Exemplary wives will sometimes find scapegoats in this way. She now said with energetic decision, “You made a great mistake, Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak for you.”
“Did I?” said Fred, reddening instantaneously. He was alarmed, but at a loss to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone, “Mr. Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite readily.”
“Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others,” said Mrs. Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.
“I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother,” said Fred, who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning to form themselves.
“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. Farebrother 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 down beside her and folding her arms. It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that she should put her work out of her hands. In fact her feelings were divided between the satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the sense of having gone a little 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 unpleasant position of being called on to say what she really felt, yet what she knew there were strong reasons for concealing. And to her the consciousness of having exceeded in words was peculiarly 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 dragging 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 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 tête-à-tête 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, and 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 light 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. Farebrother. 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. Notwithstanding 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. Farebrother must be of a metaphorical kind, which was much more difficult to Fred than the muscular. Certainly this experience was a discipline for Fred hardly less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle’s 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. Farebrother 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 liked 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 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?”
“Oh dear,” said Mary, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to consider a moment, “I don’t like their neckcloths.”
“Why, 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 Miss 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 favor 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 everybody, and these women were all evidently encouraging the affair. He was feeling sure that he should have no chance of speaking to Mary, when Mr. Farebrother said—
“Fred, help me to carry these drawers back into my study—you have never seen my fine new study. Pray 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 momentary 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 said.
“It follows as a matter of course,” he replied. “When 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 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 very kind; he treated me as if I were his son. I could go at the work with a will, writing and everything, 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 inclination to laugh.
“Fred,” she said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily turned away from her, “you are too delightfully 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 you has made love to me.”
“Do you really like me best, Mary?” said Fred, turning eyes full of affection on her, and trying 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 tell 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 delicate feeling.”
There was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother 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 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 honored, 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.
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 writ 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 misfortune 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 supposed 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 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 odor. The satisfaction was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment 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.