Middlemarch.......................................................................................................................................................1

George Eliot .............................................................................................................................................1

To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes, in this nineteenth year of our blessed union.

Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying

experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some

gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning handinhand with her still smaller

brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila,

wideeyed and helplesslooking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea;

until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That

childpilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were

manyvolumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly

burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which

would never justify weariness, which would reconcile selfdespair with the rapturous consciousness of life

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many

Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of

farresonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur illmatched

with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into

oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble

agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for

these laterborn Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function

of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common

yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme

Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the

ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude.

Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would

imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite lovestories in prose and verse. Here and

there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in

fellowship with its own oaryfooted kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing,

whose loving heartbeats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist

were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed

Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more

dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine

quotation from the Bible,or from one of our elder poets,in a paragraph of today's newspaper. She was

usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more

commonsense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that

her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain

dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared. The pride of being ladies had

something to do with it: the Brooke connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably

"good:" if you inquired backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yardmeasuring or

parceltying forefathersanything lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestor

discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterwards conformed, and managed to

come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate. Young women of such birth,

living in a quiet countryhouse, and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor, naturally regarded

frippery as the ambition of a huckster's daughter. Then there was wellbred economy, which in those days

made show in dress the first item to be deducted from, when any margin was required for expenses more

distinctive of rank. Such reasons would have been enough to account for plain dress, quite apart from

religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it; and Celia mildly

acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that commonsense which is able to accept

momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and

of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the

solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a

spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery.

Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might

frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and

greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to

make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. Certainly

such elements in the character of a marriageable girl tended to interfere with her lot, and hinder it from being

decided according to custom, by good looks, vanity, and merely canine affection. With all this, she, the elder

of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old

and had lost their parents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and afterwards

in a Swiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the

It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of

acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote. He had travelled in his younger years, and

was held in this part of the county to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke's conclusions

were as difficult to predict as the weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent

intentions, and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out. For the most glutinously

indefinite minds enclose some hard grains of habit; and a man has been seen lax about all his own interests

except the retention of his snuffbox, concerning which he was watchful, suspicious, and greedy of clutch.

In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance; but in his niece Dorothea it

glowed alike through faults and virtues, turning sometimes into impatience of her uncle's talk or his way of

"letting things be" on his estate, and making her long all the more for the time when she would be of age and

have some command of money for generous schemes. She was regarded as an heiress; for not only had the

sisters seven hundred ayear each from their parents, but if Dorothea married and had a son, that son would

inherit Mr. Brooke's estate, presumably worth about three thousand ayeara rental which seemed wealth to

provincial families, still discussing Mr. Peel's late conduct on the Catholic question, innocent of future

goldfields, and of that gorgeous plutocracy which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life.

And how should Dorothea not marry?a girl so handsome and with such prospects? Nothing could hinder it

but her love of extremes, and her insistence on regulating life according to notions which might cause a wary

man to hesitate before he made her an offer, or even might lead her at last to refuse all offers. A young lady

of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed

fervidly as if she thought herself living in the time of the Apostleswho had strange whims of fasting like a

Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine

morning with a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere with political economy

and the keeping of saddlehorses: a man would naturally think twice before he risked himself in such

fellowship. Women were expected to have weak opinions; but the great safeguard of society and of domestic

life was, that opinions were not acted on. Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics

The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers, was generally in favor of Celia, as

being so amiable and innocentlooking, while Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual

and striking. Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocentlooking Celia was knowing and worldlywise;

so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clockface for it.

Yet those who approached Dorothea, though prejudiced against her by this alarming hearsay, found that she

had a charm unaccountably reconcilable with it. Most men thought her bewitching when she was on

horseback. She loved the fresh air and the various aspects of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks

glowed with mingled pleasure she looked very little like a devotee. Riding was an indulgence which she

allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and

She was open, ardent, and not in the least selfadmiring; indeed, it was pretty to see how her imagination

adorned her sister Celia with attractions altogether superior to her own, and if any gentleman appeared to

come to the Grange from some other motive than that of seeing Mr. Brooke, she concluded that he must be in

love with Celia: Sir James Chettam, for example, whom she constantly considered from Celia's point of view,

inwardly debating whether it would be good for Celia to accept him. That he should be regarded as a suitor to

herself would have seemed to her a ridiculous irrelevance. Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths

of life, retained very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted the judicious

Hooker, if she had been born in time to save him from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony; or John

Milton when his blindness had come on; or any of the other great men whose odd habits it would have been

glorious piety to endure; but an amiable handsome baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she

expressed uncertainty,how could he affect her as a lover? The really delightful marriage must be that

where your husband was a sort of father, and could teach you even Hebrew, if you wished it.

These peculiarities of Dorothea's character caused Mr. Brooke to be all the more blamed in neighboring

families for not securing some middleaged lady as guide and companion to his nieces. But he himself

dreaded so much the sort of superior woman likely to be available for such a position, that he allowed himself

to be dissuaded by Dorothea's objections, and was in this case brave enough to defy the worldthat is to say,

Mrs. Cadwallader the Rector's wife, and the small group of gentry with whom he visited in the northeast

corner of Loamshire. So Miss Brooke presided in her uncle's household, and did not at all dislike her new

Sir James Chettam was going to dine at the Grange today with another gentleman whom the girls had never

seen, and about whom Dorothea felt some venerating expectation. This was the Reverend Edward Casaubon,

noted in the county as a man of profound learning, understood for many years to be engaged on a great work

concerning religious history; also as a man of wealth enough to give lustre to his piety, and having views of

his own which were to be more clearly ascertained on the publication of his book. His very name carried an

impressiveness hardly to be measured without a precise chronology of scholarship.

Early in the day Dorothea had returned from the infant school which she had set going in the village, and was

taking her usual place in the pretty sittingroom which divided the bedrooms of the sisters, bent on finishing

a plan for some buildings (a kind of work which she delighted in), when Celia, who had been watching her

"Dorothea, dear, if you don't mindif you are not very busysuppose we looked at mamma's jewels

today, and divided them? It is exactly six months today since uncle gave them to you, and you have not

Celia's face had the shadow of a pouting expression in it, the full presence of the pout being kept back by an

habitual awe of Dorothea and principle; two associated facts which might show a mysterious electricity if you

touched them incautiously. To her relief, Dorothea's eyes were full of laughter as she looked up.

"What a wonderful little almanac you are, Celia! Is it six calendar or six lunar months?"

"It is the last day of September now, and it was the first of April when uncle gave them to you. You know, he

said that he had forgotten them till then. I believe you have never thought of them since you locked them up

"Well, dear, we should never wear them, you know." Dorothea spoke in a full cordial tone, half caressing,

half explanatory. She had her pencil in her hand, and was making tiny sideplans on a margin.

Celia colored, and looked very grave. "I think, dear, we are wanting in respect to mamma's memory, to put

them by and take no notice of them. And," she added, after hesitating a little, with a rising sob of

mortification, "necklaces are quite usual now; and Madame Poincon, who was stricter in some things even

than you are, used to wear ornaments. And Christians generallysurely there are women in heaven now who

wore jewels." Celia was conscious of some mental strength when she really applied herself to argument.

"You would like to wear them?" exclaimed Dorothea, an air of astonished discovery animating her whole

person with a dramatic action which she had caught from that very Madame Poincon who wore the

ornaments. "Of course, then, let us have them out. Why did you not tell me before? But the keys, the keys!"

She pressed her hands against the sides of her head and seemed to despair of her memory.

"They are here," said Celia, with whom this explanation had been long meditated and prearranged.

The casket was soon open before them, and the various jewels spread out, making a bright parterre on the

table. It was no great collection, but a few of the ornaments were really of remarkable beauty, the finest that

was obvious at first being a necklace of purple amethysts set in exquisite gold work, and a pearl cross with

five brilliants in it. Dorothea immediately took up the necklace and fastened it round her sister's neck, where

it fitted almost as closely as a bracelet; but the circle suited the HenriettaMaria style of Celia's head and

"There, Celia! you can wear that with your Indian muslin. But this cross you must wear with your dark

Celia was trying not to smile with pleasure. "O Dodo, you must keep the cross yourself."

"No, no, dear, no," said Dorothea, putting up her hand with careless deprecation.

"Yes, indeed you must; it would suit youin your black dress, now," said Celia, insistingly. "You MIGHT

"Not for the world, not for the world. A cross is the last thing I would wear as a trinket." Dorothea shuddered

"No, dear, no," said Dorothea, stroking her sister's cheek. "Souls have complexions too: what will suit one

"No, I have other things of mamma'sher sandalwood box which I am so fond ofplenty of things. In

fact, they are all yours, dear. We need discuss them no longer. Theretake away your property."

Celia felt a little hurt. There was a strong assumption of superiority in this Puritanic toleration, hardly less

trying to the blond flesh of an unenthusiastic sister than a Puritanic persecution.

"But how can I wear ornaments if you, who are the elder sister, will never wear them?"

"Nay, Celia, that is too much to ask, that I should wear trinkets to keep you in countenance. If I were to put

on such a necklace as that, I should feel as if I had been pirouetting. The world would go round with me, and

Celia had unclasped the necklace and drawn it off. "It would be a little tight for your neck; something to lie

down and hang would suit you better," she said, with some satisfaction. The complete unfitness of the

necklace from all points of view for Dorothea, made Celia happier in taking it. She was opening some

ringboxes, which disclosed a fine emerald with diamonds, and just then the sun passing beyond a cloud sent

"How very beautiful these gems are!" said Dorothea, under a new current of feeling, as sudden as the gleam.

"It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent I suppose that is the reason why gems are

used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St. John. They look like fragments of heaven. I think that

"And there is a bracelet to match it," said Celia. "We did not notice this at first."

"They are lovely," said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her finely turned finger and wrist, and

holding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. All the while her thought was trying to justify her

"You WOULD like those, Dorothea," said Celia, rather falteringly, beginning to think with wonder that her

sister showed some weakness, and also that emeralds would suit her own complexion even better than purple

amethysts. "You must keep that ring and braceletif nothing else. But see, these agates are very pretty and

"Yes! I will keep thesethis ring and bracelet," said Dorothea. Then, letting her hand fall on the table, she

said in another tone"Yet what miserable men find such things, and work at them, and sell them!" She

paused again, and Celia thought that her sister was going to renounce the ornaments, as in consistency she

"Yes, dear, I will keep these," said Dorothea, decidedly. "But take all the rest away, and the casket."

She took up her pencil without removing the jewels, and still looking at them. She thought of often having

"Shall you wear them in company?" said Celia, who was watching her with real curiosity as to what she

Dorothea glanced quickly at her sister. Across all her imaginative adornment of those whom she loved, there

darted now and then a keen discernment, which was not without a scorching quality. If Miss Brooke ever

"Perhaps," she said, rather haughtily. "I cannot tell to what level I may sink."

Celia blushed, and was unhappy: she saw that she had offended her sister, and dared not say even anything

pretty about the gift of the ornaments which she put back into the box and carried away. Dorothea too was

unhappy, as she went on with her plandrawing, questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech in the

Celia's consciousness told her that she had not been at all in the wrong: it was quite natural and justifiable that

she should have asked that question, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was inconsistent: either she

should have taken her full share of the jewels, or, after what she had said, she should have renounced them

"I am sureat least, I trust," thought Celia, "that the wearing of a necklace will not interfere with my

prayers. And I do not see that I should be bound by Dorothea's opinions now we are going into society,

though of course she herself ought to be bound by them. But Dorothea is not always consistent."

Thus Celia, mutely bending over her tapestry, until she heard her sister calling her.

"Here, Kitty, come and look at my plan; I shall think I am a great architect, if I have not got incompatible

As Celia bent over the paper, Dorothea put her cheek against her sister's arm caressingly. Celia understood

the action. Dorothea saw that she had been in the wrong, and Celia pardoned her. Since they could remember,

there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The

younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions?

"`Seest thou not yon cavalier who cometh toward us on a dapplegray steed, and weareth a golden helmet?'

`What I see,' answered Sancho, `is nothing but a man on a gray ass like my own, who carries something shiny

on his head.' `Just so,' answered Don Quixote: `and that resplendent object is the helmet of Mambrino.'"

"Sir Humphry Davy?" said Mr. Brooke, over the soup, in his easy smiling way, taking up Sir James

Chettam's remark that he was studying Davy's Agricultural Chemistry. "Well, now, Sir Humphry Davy; I

dined with him years ago at Cartwright's, and Wordsworth was there toothe poet Wordsworth, you know.

Now there was something singular. I was at Cambridge when Wordsworth was there, and I never met

himand I dined with him twenty years afterwards at Cartwright's. There's an oddity in things, now. But

Davy was there: he was a poet too. Or, as I may say, Wordsworth was poet one, and Davy was poet two. That

Dorothea felt a little more uneasy than usual. In the beginning of dinner, the party being small and the room

still, these motes from the mass of a magistrate's mind fell too noticeably. She wondered how a man like Mr.

Casaubon would support such triviality. His manners, she thought, were very dignified; the set of his

irongray hair and his deep eyesockets made him resemble the portrait of Locke. He had the spare form and

the pale complexion which became a student; as different as possible from the blooming Englishman of the

"I am reading the Agricultural Chemistry," said this excellent baronet, "because I am going to take one of the

farms into my own hands, and see if something cannot be done in setting a good pattern of farming among

"A great mistake, Chettam," interposed Mr. Brooke, "going into electrifying your land and that kind of thing,

and making a parlor of your cowhouse. It won't do. I went into science a great deal myself at one time; but I

saw it would not do. It leads to everything; you can let nothing alone. No, nosee that your tenants don't sell

their straw, and that kind of thing; and give them drainingtiles, you know. But your fancy farming will not

dothe most expensive sort of whistle you can buy: you may as well keep a pack of hounds."

"Surely," said Dorothea, "it is better to spend money in finding out how men can make the most of the land

which supports them all, than in keeping dogs and horses only to gallop over it. It is not a sin to make

She spoke with more energy than is expected of so young a lady, but Sir James had appealed to her. He was

accustomed to do so, and she had often thought that she could urge him to many good actions when he was

Mr. Casaubon turned his eyes very markedly on Dorothea while she was speaking, and seemed to observe her

"Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr. Brooke, smiling towards Mr.

Casaubon. "I remember when we were all reading Adam Smith. THERE is a book, now. I took in all the new

ideas at one timehuman perfectibility, now. But some say, history moves in circles; and that may be very

well argued; I have argued it myself. The fact is, human reason may carry you a little too farover the

hedge, in fact. It carried me a good way at one time; but I saw it would not do. I pulled up; I pulled up in

time. But not too hard. I have always been in favor of a little theory: we must have Thought; else we shall be

landed back in the dark ages. But talking of books, there is Southey's `Peninsular War.' I am reading that of a

"No" said Mr. Casaubon, not keeping pace with Mr. Brooke's impetuous reason, and thinking of the book

only. "I have little leisure for such literature just now. I have been using up my eyesight on old characters

lately; the fact is, I want a reader for my evenings; but I am fastidious in voices, and I cannot endure listening

to an imperfect reader. It is a misfortune, in some senses: I feed too much on the inward sources; I live too

much with the dead. My mind is something like the ghost of an ancient, wandering about the world and

trying mentally to construct it as it used to be, in spite of ruin and confusing changes. But I find it necessary

This was the first time that Mr. Casaubon had spoken at any length. He delivered himself with precision, as if

he had been called upon to make a public statement; and the balanced singsong neatness of his speech,

occasionally corresponded to by a movement of his head, was the more conspicuous from its contrast with

good Mr. Brooke's scrappy slovenliness. Dorothea said to herself that Mr. Casaubon was the most interesting

man she had ever seen, not excepting even Monsieur Liret, the Vaudois clergyman who had given

conferences on the history of the Waldenses. To reconstruct a past world, doubtless with a view to the highest

purposes of truthwhat a work to be in any way present at, to assist in, though only as a lampholder! This

elevating thought lifted her above her annoyance at being twitted with her ignorance of political economy,

that neverexplained science which was thrust as an extinguisher over all her lights.

"But you are fond of riding, Miss Brooke," Sir James presently took an opportunity of saying. "I should have

thought you would enter a little into the pleasures of hunting. I wish you would let me send over a chestnut

horse for you to try. It has been trained for a lady. I saw you on Saturday cantering over the hill on a nag not

worthy of you. My groom shall bring Corydon for you every day, if you will only mention the time."

"Thank you, you are very good. I mean to give up riding. I shall not ride any more," said Dorothea, urged to

this brusque resolution by a little annoyance that Sir James would be soliciting her attention when she wanted

"No, that is too hard," said Sir James, in a tone of reproach that showed strong interest. "Your sister is given

to selfmortification, is she not?" he continued, turning to Celia, who sat at his right hand.

"I think she is," said Celia, feeling afraid lest she should say something that would not please her sister, and

"If that were true, Celia, my givingup would be selfindulgence, not selfmortification. But there may be

Mr. Brooke was speaking at the same time, but it was evident that Mr. Casaubon was observing Dorothea,

"No, indeed, not exactly. I did not say that of myself," answered Dorothea, reddening. Unlike Celia, she

rarely blushed, and only from high delight or anger. At this moment she felt angry with the perverse Sir

James. Why did he not pay attention to Celia, and leave her to listen to Mr. Casaubon?if that learned man

would only talk, instead of allowing himself to be talked to by Mr. Brooke, who was just then informing him

that the Reformation either meant something or it did not, that he himself was a Protestant to the core, but

that Catholicism was a fact; and as to refusing an acre of your ground for a Romanist chapel, all men needed

"I made a great study of theology at one time," said Mr. Brooke, as if to explain the insight just manifested. "I

know something of all schools. I knew Wilberforce in his best days. Do you know Wilberforce?"

"Well, Wilberforce was perhaps not enough of a thinker; but if I went into Parliament, as I have been asked to

do, I should sit on the independent bench, as Wilberforce did, and work at philanthropy."

"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, with an easy smile, "but I have documents. I began a long while ago to collect

documents. They want arranging, but when a question has struck me, I have written to somebody and got an

answer. I have documents at my back. But now, how do you arrange your documents?"

"In pigeonholes partly," said Mr. Casaubon, with rather a startled air of effort.

"Ah, pigeonholes will not do. I have tried pigeonholes, but everything gets mixed in pigeonholes: I never

"I wish you would let me sort your papers for you, uncle," said Dorothea. "I would letter them all, and then

Mr. Casaubon gravely smiled approval, and said to Mr. Brooke, "You have an excellent secretary at hand,

"No, no," said Mr. Brooke, shaking his head; "I cannot let young ladies meddle with my documents. Young

Dorothea felt hurt. Mr. Casaubon would think that her uncle had some special reason for delivering this

opinion, whereas the remark lay in his mind as lightly as the broken wing of an insect among all the other

"Celia! He is one of the most distinguishedlooking men I ever saw. He is remarkably like the portrait of

"Oh, I dare say! when people of a certain sort looked at him," said Dorothea, walking away a little.

"All the better. I suppose you admire a man with the complexion of a cochon de lait."

"Dodo!" exclaimed Celia, looking after her in surprise. "I never heard you make such a comparison before."

"Why should I make it before the occasion came? It is a good comparison: the match is perfect."

"It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilet,

"Yes, I believe he has," said Dorothea, with the full voice of decision. "Everything I see in him corresponds

Celia thought privately, "Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chettam; I believe she would not accept him."

Celia felt that this was a pity. She had never been deceived as to the object of the baronet's interest.

Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would perhaps not make a husband happy who had not her

way of looking at things; and stifled in the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister was too religious

for family comfort. Notions and scruples were like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting

When Miss Brooke was at the teatable, Sir James came to sit down by her, not having felt her mode of

answering him at all offensive. Why should he? He thought it probable that Miss Brooke liked him, and

manners must be very marked indeed before they cease to be interpreted by preconceptions either confident

or distrustful. She was thoroughly charming to him, but of course he theorized a little about his attachment.

He was made of excellent human dough, and had the rare merit of knowing that his talents, even if let loose,

would not set the smallest stream in the county on fire: hence he liked the prospect of a wife to whom he

could say, "What shall we do?" about this or that; who could help her husband out with reasons, and would

also have the property qualification for doing so. As to the excessive religiousness alleged against Miss

Brooke, he had a very indefinite notion of what it consisted in, and thought that it would die out with

marriage. In short, he felt himself to be in love in the right place, and was ready to endure a great deal of

predominance, which, after all, a man could always put down when he liked. Sir James had no idea that he

should ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose cleverness he delighted. Why

not? A man's mindwhat there is of ithas always the advantage of being masculine,as the smallest

birchtree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality.

Sir James might not have originated this estimate; but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality

"Let me hope that you will rescind that resolution about the horse, Miss Brooke," said the persevering

"I am aware of it," said Dorothea, coldly. "I think it would do Celia goodif she would take to it."

"Then that is a reason for more practice. Every lady ought to be a perfect horsewoman, that she may

"You see how widely we differ, Sir James. I have made up my mind that I ought not to be a perfect

horsewoman, and so I should never correspond to your pattern of a lady." Dorothea looked straight before

her, and spoke with cold brusquerie, very much with the air of a handsome boy, in amusing contrast with the

"I should like to know your reasons for this cruel resolution. It is not possible that you should think

"We must not inquire too curiously into motives," he interposed, in his measured way. "Miss Brooke knows

that they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the

Dorothea colored with pleasure, and looked up gratefully to the speaker. Here was a man who could

understand the higher inward life, and with whom there could be some spiritual communion; nay, who could

illuminate principle with the widest knowledge a man whose learning almost amounted to a proof of

Dorothea's inferences may seem large; but really life could never have gone on at any period but for this

liberal allowance of conclusions, which has facilitated marriage under the difficulties of civilization. Has any

one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of prematrimonial acquaintanceship?

"Certainly," said good Sir James. "Miss Brooke shall not be urged to tell reasons she would rather be silent

He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea had looked up at Mr. Casaubon: it never

occurred to him that a girl to whom he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm

towards fifty, except, indeed, in a religious sort of way, as for a clergyman of some distinction.

However, since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with Mr. Casaubon about the Vaudois

clergy, Sir James betook himself to Celia, and talked to her about her sister; spoke of a house in town, and

asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London. Away from her sister, Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James

said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty, though not, as

some people pretended, more clever and sensible than the elder sister. He felt that he had chosen the one who

was in all respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He would be the

If it had really occurred to Mr. Casaubon to think of Miss Brooke as a suitable wife for him, the reasons that

might induce her to accept him were already planted in her mind, and by the evening of the next day the

reasons had budded and bloomed. For they had had a long conversation in the morning, while Celia, who did

not like the company of Mr. Casaubon's moles and sallowness, had escaped to the vicarage to play with the

Dorothea by this time had looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of Mr. Casaubon's mind, seeing reflected

there in vague labyrinthine extension every quality she herself brought; had opened much of her own

experience to him, and had understood from him the scope of his great work, also of attractively labyrinthine

extent. For he had been as instructive as Milton's "affable archangel;" and with something of the archangelic

manner he told her how he had undertaken to show (what indeed had been attempted before, but not with that

thoroughness, justice of comparison, and effectiveness of arrangement at which Mr. Casaubon aimed) that all

the mythical systems or erratic mythical fragments in the world were corruptions of a tradition originally

revealed. Having once mastered the true position and taken a firm footing there, the vast field of mythical

constructions became intelligible, nay, luminous with the reflected light of correspondences. But to gather in

this great harvest of truth was no light or speedy work. His notes already made a formidable range of

volumes, but the crowning task would be to condense these voluminous stillaccumulating results and bring

them, like the earlier vintage of Hippocratic books, to fit a little shelf. In explaining this to Dorothea, Mr.

Casaubon expressed himself nearly as he would have done to a fellowstudent, for he had not two styles of

talking at command: it is true that when he used a Greek or Latin phrase he always gave the English with

scrupulous care, but he would probably have done this in any case. A learned provincial clergyman is

accustomed to think of his acquaintances as of "lords, knyghtes, and other noble and worthi men, that conne

Dorothea was altogether captivated by the wide embrace of this conception. Here was something beyond the

shallows of ladies' school literature: here was a living Bossuet, whose work would reconcile complete

knowledge with devoted piety; here was a modern Augustine who united the glories of doctor and saint.

The sanctity seemed no less clearly marked than the learning, for when Dorothea was impelled to open her

mind on certain themes which she could speak of to no one whom she had before seen at Tipton, especially

on the secondary importance of ecclesiastical forms and articles of belief compared with that spiritual

religion, that submergence of self in communion with Divine perfection which seemed to her to be expressed

in the best Christian books of widely distant ages, she found in Mr. Casaubon a listener who understood her

at once, who could assure her of his own agreement with that view when duly tempered with wise

"He thinks with me," said Dorothea to herself, "or rather, he thinks a whole world of which my thought is but

a poor twopenny mirror. And his feelings too, his whole experiencewhat a lake compared with my little

Miss Brooke argued from words and dispositions not less unhesitatingly than other young ladies of her age.

Signs are small measurable things, but interpretations are illimitable, and in girls of sweet, ardent nature,

every sign is apt to conjure up wonder, hope, belief, vast as a sky, and colored by a diffused thimbleful of

matter in the shape of knowledge. They are not always too grossly deceived; for Sinbad himself may have

fallen by goodluck on a true description, and wrong reasoning sometimes lands poor mortals in right

conclusions: starting a long way off the true point, and proceeding by loops and zigzags, we now and then

arrive just where we ought to be. Because Miss Brooke was hasty in her trust, it is not therefore clear that Mr.

He stayed a little longer than he had intended, on a slight pressure of invitation from Mr. Brooke, who offered

no bait except his own documents on machinebreaking and rickburning. Mr. Casaubon was called into the

library to look at these in a heap, while his host picked up first one and then the other to read aloud from in a

skipping and uncertain way, passing from one unfinished passage to another with a "Yes, now, but here!" and

finally pushing them all aside to open the journal of his youthful Continental travels.

"Look herehere is all about Greece. Rhamnus, the ruins of Rhamnusyou are a great Grecian, now. I

don't know whether you have given much study to the topography. I spent no end of time in making out these

thingsHelicon, now. Here, now!`We started the next morning for Parnassus, the doublepeaked

Parnassus.' All this volume is about Greece, you know," Mr. Brooke wound up, rubbing his thumb

Mr. Casaubon made a dignified though somewhat sad audience; bowed in the right place, and avoided

looking at anything documentary as far as possible, without showing disregard or impatience; mindful that

this desultoriness was associated with the institutions of the country, and that the man who took him on this

severe mental scamper was not only an amiable host, but a landholder and custos rotulorum. Was his

endurance aided also by the reflection that Mr. Brooke was the uncle of Dorothea?

Certainly he seemed more and more bent on making her talk to him, on drawing her out, as Celia remarked to

herself; and in looking at her his face was often lit up by a smile like pale wintry sunshine. Before he left the

next morning, while taking a pleasant walk with Miss Brooke along the gravelled terrace, he had mentioned

to her that he felt the disadvantage of loneliness, the need of that cheerful companionship with which the

presence of youth can lighten or vary the serious toils of maturity. And he delivered this statement with as

much careful precision as if he had been a diplomatic envoy whose words would be attended with results.

Indeed, Mr. Casaubon was not used to expect that he should have to repeat or revise his communications of a

practical or personal kind. The inclinations which he had deliberately stated on the 2d of October he would

think it enough to refer to by the mention of that date; judging by the standard of his own memory, which was

a volume where a vide supra could serve instead of repetitions, and not the ordinary longused blottingbook

which only tells of forgotten writing. But in this case Mr. Casaubon's confidence was not likely to be

falsified, for Dorothea heard and retained what he said with the eager interest of a fresh young nature to

It was three o'clock in the beautiful breezy autumn day when Mr. Casaubon drove off to his Rectory at

Lowick, only five miles from Tipton; and Dorothea, who had on her bonnet and shawl, hurried along the

shrubbery and across the park that she might wander through the bordering wood with no other visible

companionship than that of Monk, the Great St. Bernard dog, who always took care of the young ladies in

their walks. There had risen before her the girl's vision of a possible future for herself to which she looked

forward with trembling hope, and she wanted to wander on in that visionary future without interruption. She

walked briskly in the brisk air, the color rose in her cheeks, and her straw bonnet (which our contemporaries

might look at with conjectural curiosity as at an obsolete form of basket) fell a little backward. She would

perhaps be hardly characterized enough if it were omitted that she wore her brown hair flatly braided and

coiled behind so as to expose the outline of her head in a daring manner at a time when public feeling

required the meagreness of nature to be dissimulated by tall barricades of frizzed curls and bows, never

surpassed by any great race except the Feejeean. This was a trait of Miss Brooke's asceticism. But there was

nothing of an ascetic's expression in her bright full eyes, as she looked before her, not consciously seeing, but

absorbing into the intensity of her mood, the solemn glory of the afternoon with its long swathes of light

All people, young or old (that is, all people in those antereform times), would have thought her an

interesting object if they had referred the glow in her eyes and cheeks to the newly awakened ordinary images

of young love: the illusions of Chloe about Strephon have been sufficiently consecrated in poetry, as the

pathetic loveliness of all spontaneous trust ought to be. Miss Pippin adoring young Pumpkin, and dreaming

along endless vistas of unwearying companionship, was a little drama which never tired our fathers and

mothers, and had been put into all costumes. Let but Pumpkin have a figure which would sustain the

disadvantages of the shortwaisted swallowtail, and everybody felt it not only natural but necessary to the

perfection of womanhood, that a sweet girl should be at once convinced of his virtue, his exceptional ability,

and above all, his perfect sincerity. But perhaps no persons then livingcertainly none in the neighborhood

of Tiptonwould have had a sympathetic understanding for the dreams of a girl whose notions about

marriage took their color entirely from an exalted enthusiasm about the ends of life, an enthusiasm which was

lit chiefly by its own fire, and included neither the niceties of the trousseau, the pattern of plate, nor even the

It had now entered Dorothea's mind that Mr. Casaubon might wish to make her his wife, and the idea that he

would do so touched her with a sort of reverential gratitude. How good of himnay, it would be almost as if

a winged messenger had suddenly stood beside her path and held out his hand towards her! For a long while

she had been oppressed by the indefiniteness which hung in her mind, like a thick summer haze, over all her

desire to made her life greatly effective. What could she do, what ought she to do?she, hardly more than a

budding woman, but yet with an active conscience and a great mental need, not to be satisfied by a girlish

instruction comparable to the nibblings and judgments of a discursive mouse. With some endowment of

stupidity and conceit, she might have thought that a Christian young lady of fortune should find her ideal of

life in village charities, patronage of the humbler clergy, the perusal of "Female Scripture Characters,"

unfolding the private experience of Sara under the Old Dispensation, and Dorcas under the New, and the care

of her soul over her embroidery in her own boudoirwith a background of prospective marriage to a man

who, if less strict than herself, as being involved in affairs religiously inexplicable, might be prayed for and

seasonably exhorted. From such contentment poor Dorothea was shut out. The intensity of her religious

disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic,

and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed

in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walledin maze of small paths that

led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing

which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended

admission of rules which were never acted on. Into this soulhunger as yet all her youthful passion was

poured; the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own

ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the

"I should learn everything then," she said to herself, still walking quickly along the bridle road through the

wood. "It would be my duty to study that I might help him the better in his great works. There would be

nothing trivial about our lives. Everyday things with us would mean the greatest things. It would be like

marrying Pascal. I should learn to see the truth by the same light as great men have seen it by. And then I

should know what to do, when I got older: I should see how it was possible to lead a grand life

herenowin England. I don't feel sure about doing good in any way now: everything seems like going on

a mission to a people whose language I don't know;unless it were building good cottagesthere can be no

doubt about that. Oh, I hope I should be able to get the people well housed in Lowick! I will draw plenty of

Dorothea checked herself suddenly with selfrebuke for the presumptuous way in which she was reckoning

on uncertain events, but she was spared any inward effort to change the direction of her thoughts by the

appearance of a cantering horseman round a turning of the road. The wellgroomed chestnut horse and two

beautiful setters could leave no doubt that the rider was Sir James Chettam. He discerned Dorothea, jumped

off his horse at once, and, having delivered it to his groom, advanced towards her with something white on

"How delightful to meet you, Miss Brooke," he said, raising his hat and showing his sleekly waving blond

Miss Brooke was annoyed at the interruption. This amiable baronet, really a suitable husband for Celia,

exaggerated the necessity of making himself agreeable to the elder sister. Even a prospective brotherinlaw

may be an oppression if he will always be presupposing too good an understanding with you, and agreeing

with you even when you contradict him. The thought that he had made the mistake of paying his addresses to

herself could not take shape: all her mental activity was used up in persuasions of another kind. But he was

positively obtrusive at this moment, and his dimpled hands were quite disagreeable. Her roused temper made

Sir James interpreted the heightened color in the way most gratifying to himself, and thought he never saw

"I have brought a little petitioner," he said, "or rather, I have brought him to see if he will be approved before

his petition is offered." He showed the white object under his arm, which was a tiny Maltese puppy, one of

"It is painful to me to see these creatures that are bred merely as pets," said Dorothea, whose opinion was

forming itself that very moment (as opinions will) under the heat of irritation.

"I believe all the petting that is given them does not make them happy. They are too helpless: their lives are

too frail. A weasel or a mouse that gets its own living is more interesting. I like to think that the animals

about us have souls something like our own, and either carry on their own little affairs or can be companions

"I am so glad I know that you do not like them," said good Sir James. "I should never keep them for myself,

but ladies usually are fond of these Maltese dogs. Here, John, take this dog, will you?"

The objectionable puppy, whose nose and eyes were equally black and expressive, was thus got rid of, since

Miss Brooke decided that it had better not have been born. But she felt it necessary to explain.

"You must not judge of Celia's feeling from mine. I think she likes these small pets. She had a tiny terrier

once, which she was very fond of. It made me unhappy, because I was afraid of treading on it. I am rather

"You have your own opinion about everything, Miss Brooke, and it is always a good opinion."

"Do you know, I envy you that," Sir James said, as they continued walking at the rather brisk pace set by

"Your power of forming an opinion. I can form an opinion of persons. I know when I like people. But about

other matters, do you know, I have often a difficulty in deciding. One hears very sensible things said on

"Or that seem sensible. Perhaps we don't always discriminate between sense and nonsense."

"On the contrary, I am often unable to decide. But that is from ignorance. The right conclusion is there all the

"I think there are few who would see it more readily. Do you know, Lovegood was telling me yesterday that

you had the best notion in the world of a plan for cottagesquite wonderful for a young lady, he thought.

You had a real GENUS, to use his expression. He said you wanted Mr. Brooke to build a new set of cottages,

but he seemed to think it hardly probable that your uncle would consent. Do you know, that is one of the

things I wish to doI mean, on my own estate. I should be so glad to carry out that plan of yours, if you

would let me see it. Of course, it is sinking money; that is why people object to it. Laborers can never pay

"Worth doing! yes, indeed," said Dorothea, energetically, forgetting her previous small vexations. "I think we

deserve to be beaten out of our beautiful houses with a scourge of small cordsall of us who let tenants live

in such sties as we see round us. Life in cottages might be happier than ours, if they were real houses fit for

"Yes, certainly. I dare say it is very faulty. But I have been examining all the plans for cottages in Loudon's

book, and picked out what seem the best things. Oh what a happiness it would be to set the pattern about

here! I think instead of Lazarus at the gate, we should put the pigsty cottages outside the parkgate."

Dorothea was in the best temper now. Sir James, as brother inlaw, building model cottages on his estate, and

then, perhaps, others being built at Lowick, and more and more elsewhere in imitationit would be as if the

spirit of Oberlin had passed over the parishes to make the life of poverty beautiful!

Sir James saw all the plans, and took one away to consult upon with Lovegood. He also took away a

complacent sense that he was making great progress in Miss Brooke's good opinion. The Maltese puppy was

not offered to Celia; an omission which Dorothea afterwards thought of with surprise; but she blamed herself

for it. She had been engrossing Sir James. After all, it was a relief that there was no puppy to tread upon.

Celia was present while the plans were being examined, and observed Sir James's illusion. "He thinks that

Dodo cares about him, and she only cares about her plans. Yet I am not certain that she would refuse him if

she thought he would let her manage everything and carry out all her notions. And how very uncomfortable

It was Celia's private luxury to indulge in this dislike. She dared not confess it to her sister in any direct

statement, for that would be laying herself open to a demonstration that she was somehow or other at war

with all goodness. But on safe opportunities, she had an indirect mode of making her negative wisdom tell

upon Dorothea, and calling her down from her rhapsodic mood by reminding her that people were staring, not

listening. Celia was not impulsive: what she had to say could wait, and came from her always with the same

quiet staccato evenness. When people talked with energy and emphasis she watched their faces and features

merely. She never could understand how wellbred persons consented to sing and open their mouths in the

It was not many days before Mr. Casaubon paid a morning visit, on which he was invited again for the

following week to dine and stay the night. Thus Dorothea had three more conversations with him, and was

convinced that her first impressions had been just. He was all she had at first imagined him to be: almost

everything he had said seemed like a specimen from a mine, or the inscription on the door of a museum

which might open on the treasures of past ages; and this trust in his mental wealth was all the deeper and

more effective on her inclination because it was now obvious that his visits were made for her sake. This

accomplished man condescended to think of a young girl, and take the pains to talk to her, not with absurd

compliment, but with an appeal to her understanding, and sometimes with instructive correction. What

delightful companionship! Mr. Casaubon seemed even unconscious that trivialities existed, and never handed

round that smalltalk of heavy men which is as acceptable as stale bridecake brought forth with an odor of

cupboard. He talked of what he was interested in, or else he was silent and bowed with sad civility. To

Dorothea this was adorable genuineness, and religious abstinence from that artificiality which uses up the

soul in the efforts of pretence. For she looked as reverently at Mr. Casaubon's religious elevation above

herself as she did at his intellect and learning. He assented to her expressions of devout feeling, and usually

with an appropriate quotation; he allowed himself to say that he had gone through some spiritual conflicts in

his youth; in short, Dorothea saw that here she might reckon on understanding, sympathy, and guidance. On

oneonly oneof her favorite themes she was disappointed. Mr. Casaubon apparently did not care about

building cottages, and diverted the talk to the extremely narrow accommodation which was to be had in the

dwellings of the ancient Egyptians, as if to check a too high standard. After he was gone, Dorothea dwelt

with some agitation on this indifference of his; and her mind was much exercised with arguments drawn from

the varying conditions of climate which modify human needs, and from the admitted wickedness of pagan

despots. Should she not urge these arguments on Mr. Casaubon when he came again? But further reflection

told her that she was presumptuous in demanding his attention to such a subject; he would not disapprove of

her occupying herself with it in leisure moments, as other women expected to occupy themselves with their

dress and embroiderywould not forbid it whenDorothea felt rather ashamed as she detected herself in

these speculations. But her uncle had been invited to go to Lowick to stay a couple of days: was it reasonable

to suppose that Mr. Casaubon delighted in Mr. Brooke's society for its own sake, either with or without

Meanwhile that little disappointment made her delight the more in Sir James Chettam's readiness to set on

foot the desired improvements. He came much oftener than Mr. Casaubon, and Dorothea ceased to find him

disagreeable since he showed himself so entirely in earnest; for he had already entered with much practical

ability into Lovegood's estimates, and was charmingly docile. She proposed to build a couple of cottages, and

transfer two families from their old cabins, which could then be pulled down, so that new ones could be built

on the old sites. Sir James said "Exactly," and she bore the word remarkably well.

Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good

feminine direction, if they were fortunate in choosing their sistersinlaw! It is difficult to say whether there

was or was not a little wilfulness in her continuing blind to the possibility that another sort of choice was in

question in relation to her. But her life was just now full of hope and action: she was not only thinking of her

plans, but getting down learned books from the library and reading many things hastily (that she might be a

little less ignorant in talking to Mr. Casaubon), all the while being visited with conscientious questionings

whether she were not exalting these poor doings above measure and contemplating them with that

"Sir James seems determined to do everything you wish," said Celia, as they were driving home from an

"He is a good creature, and more sensible than any one would imagine," said Dorothea, inconsiderately.

"No, no," said Dorothea, recollecting herself, and laying her hand on her sister's a moment, "but he does not

"I should think none but disagreeable people do," said Celia, in her usual purring way. "They must be very

Dorothea laughed. "O Kitty, you are a wonderful creature!" She pinched Celia's chin, being in the mood now

to think her very winning and lovelyfit hereafter to be an eternal cherub, and if it were not doctrinally

wrong to say so, hardly more in need of salvation than a squirrel. "Of course people need not be always

talking well. Only one tells the quality of their minds when they try to talk well."

"I was speaking generally. Why do you catechise me about Sir James? It is not the object of his life to please

"Certainly. He thinks of me as a future sisterthat is all." Dorothea had never hinted this before, waiting,

from a certain shyness on such subjects which was mutual between the sisters, until it should be introduced

"Pray do not make that mistake any longer, Dodo. When Tantripp was brushing my hair the other day, she

said that Sir James's man knew from Mrs. Cadwallader's maid that Sir James was to marry the eldest Miss

"How can you let Tantripp talk such gossip to you, Celia?" said Dorothea, indignantly, not the less angry

because details asleep in her memory were now awakened to confirm the unwelcome revelation. "You must

"I see no harm at all in Tantripp's talking to me. It is better to hear what people say. You see what mistakes

you make by taking up notions. I am quite sure that Sir James means to make you an offer; and he believes

that you will accept him, especially since you have been so pleased with him about the plans. And uncle

tooI know he expects it. Every one can see that Sir James is very much in love with you."

The revulsion was so strong and painful in Dorothea's mind that the tears welled up and flowed abundantly.

All her dear plans were embittered, and she thought with disgust of Sir James's conceiving that she

"How could he expect it?" she burst forth in her most impetuous manner. "I have never agreed with him

"But you have been so pleased with him since then; he has begun to feel quite sure that you are fond of him."

"Fond of him, Celia! How can you choose such odious expressions?" said Dorothea, passionately.

"Dear me, Dorothea, I suppose it would be right for you to be fond of a man whom you accepted for a

"It is offensive to me to say that Sir James could think I was fond of him. Besides, it is not the right word for

"Well, I am sorry for Sir James. I thought it right to tell you, because you went on as you always do, never

looking just where you are, and treading in the wrong place. You always see what nobody else sees; it is

impossible to satisfy you; yet you never see what is quite plain. That's your way, Dodo." Something certainly

gave Celia unusual courage; and she was not sparing the sister of whom she was occasionally in awe. Who

can tell what just criticisms Murr the Cat may be passing on us beings of wider speculation?

"It is very painful," said Dorothea, feeling scourged. "I can have no more to do with the cottages. I must be

uncivil to him. I must tell him I will have nothing to do with them. It is very painful." Her eyes filled again

"Wait a little. Think about it. You know he is going away for a day or two to see his sister. There will be

nobody besides Lovegood." Celia could not help relenting. "Poor Dodo," she went on, in an amiable staccato.

"FAD to draw plans! Do you think I only care about my fellowcreatures' houses in that childish way? I may

well make mistakes. How can one ever do anything nobly Christian, living among people with such petty

No more was said; Dorothea was too much jarred to recover her temper and behave so as to show that she

admitted any error in herself. She was disposed rather to accuse the intolerable narrowness and the purblind

conscience of the society around her: and Celia was no longer the eternal cherub, but a thorn in her spirit, a

pinkandwhite nullifidian, worse than any discouraging presence in the "Pilgrim's Progress." The FAD of

drawing plans! What was life worthwhat great faith was possible when the whole effect of one's actions

could be withered up into such parched rubbish as that? When she got out of the carriage, her cheeks were

pale and her eyelids red. She was an image of sorrow, and her uncle who met her in the hall would have been

alarmed, if Celia had not been close to her looking so pretty and composed, that he at once concluded

Dorothea's tears to have their origin in her excessive religiousness. He had returned, during their absence,

from a journey to the county town, about a petition for the pardon of some criminal.

"Well, my dears," he said, kindly, as they went up to kiss him, "I hope nothing disagreeable has happened

"No, uncle," said Celia, "we have been to Freshitt to look at the cottages. We thought you would have been at

"I came by Lowick to lunchyou didn't know I came by Lowick. And I have brought a couple of pamphlets

for you, Dorotheain the library, you know; they lie on the table in the library."

It seemed as if an electric stream went through Dorothea, thrilling her from despair into expectation. They

were pamphlets about the early Church. The oppression of Celia, Tantripp, and Sir James was shaken off, and

she walked straight to the library. Celia went upstairs. Mr. Brooke was detained by a message, but when he

reentered the library, he found Dorothea seated and already deep in one of the pamphlets which had some

marginal manuscript of Mr. Casaubon's,taking it in as eagerly as she might have taken in the scent of a

She was getting away from Tipton and Freshitt, and her own sad liability to tread in the wrong places on her

Mr. Brooke sat down in his armchair, stretched his legs towards the woodfire, which had fallen into a

wondrous mass of glowing dice between the dogs, and rubbed his hands gently, looking very mildly towards

Dorothea, but with a neutral leisurely air, as if he had nothing particular to say. Dorothea closed her

pamphlet, as soon as she was aware of her uncle's presence, and rose as if to go. Usually she would have been

interested about her uncle's merciful errand on behalf of the criminal, but her late agitation had made her

"I came back by Lowick, you know," said Mr. Brooke, not as if with any intention to arrest her departure, but

apparently from his usual tendency to say what he had said before. This fundamental principle of human

speech was markedly exhibited in Mr. Brooke. "I lunched there and saw Casaubon's library, and that kind of

thing. There's a sharp air, driving. Won't you sit down, my dear? You look cold."

Dorothea felt quite inclined to accept the invitation. Some times, when her uncle's easy way of taking things

did not happen to be exasperating, it was rather soothing. She threw off her mantle and bonnet, and sat down

opposite to him, enjoying the glow, but lifting up her beautiful hands for a screen. They were not thin hands,

or small hands; but powerful, feminine, maternal hands. She seemed to be holding them up in propitiation for

her passionate desire to know and to think, which in the unfriendly mediums of Tipton and Freshitt had

She bethought herself now of the condemned criminal. "What news have you brought about the

"Hanged, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with a quiet nod. "Poor Romilly! he would have helped us. I knew

Romilly. Casaubon didn't know Romilly. He is a little buried in books, you know, Casaubon is."

"When a man has great studies and is writing a great work, he must of course give up seeing much of the

"That's true. But a man mopes, you know. I have always been a bachelor too, but I have that sort of

disposition that I never moped; it was my way to go about everywhere and take in everything. I never moped:

but I can see that Casaubon does, you know. He wants a companiona companion, you know."

"It would be a great honor to any one to be his companion," said Dorothea, energetically.

"You like him, eh?" said Mr. Brooke, without showing any surprise, or other emotion. "Well, now, I've

known Casaubon ten years, ever since he came to Lowick. But I never got anything out of himany ideas,

you know. However, he is a tiptop man and may be a bishopthat kind of thing, you know, if Peel stays in.

"The fact is, he has a very high opinion indeed of you. And he speaks uncommonly welldoes Casaubon.

He has deferred to me, you not being of age. In short, I have promised to speak to you, though I told him I

thought there was not much chance. I was bound to tell him that. I said, my niece is very young, and that kind

of thing. But I didn't think it necessary to go into everything. However, the long and the short of it is, that he

has asked my permission to make you an offer of marriageof marriage, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with

No one could have detected any anxiety in Mr. Brooke's manner, but he did really wish to know something of

his niece's mind, that, if there were any need for advice, he might give it in time. What feeling he, as a

magistrate who had taken in so many ideas, could make room for, was unmixedly kind. Since Dorothea did

"Thank you, uncle," said Dorothea, in a clear unwavering tone. "I am very grateful to Mr. Casaubon. If he

makes me an offer, I shall accept him. I admire and honor him more than any man I ever saw."

Mr. Brooke paused a little, and then said in a lingering low tone, "Ah? . . . Well! He is a good match in some

respects. But now, Chettam is a good match. And our land lies together. I shall never interfere against your

wishes, my dear. People should have their own way in marriage, and that sort of thingup to a certain point,

you know. I have always said that, up to a certain point. I wish you to marry well; and I have good reason to

"It is impossible that I should ever marry Sir James Chettam," said Dorothea. "If he thinks of marrying me, he

"That is it, you see. One never knows. I should have thought Chettam was just the sort of man a woman

"Pray do not mention him in that light again, uncle," said Dorothea, feeling some of her late irritation revive.

Mr. Brooke wondered, and felt that women were an inexhaustible subject of study, since even he at his age

was not in a perfect state of scientific prediction about them. Here was a fellow like Chettam with no chance

"Well, but Casaubon, now. There is no hurryI mean for you. It's true, every year will tell upon him. He is

over fiveandforty, you know. I should say a good sevenandtwenty years older than you. To be sure,if

you like learning and standing, and that sort of thing, we can't have everything. And his income is goodhe

has a handsome property independent of the Churchhis income is good. Still he is not young, and I must

not conceal from you, my dear, that I think his health is not overstrong. I know nothing else against him."

"I should not wish to have a husband very near my own age," said Dorothea, with grave decision. "I should

Mr. Brooke repeated his subdued, "Ah?I thought you had more of your own opinion than most girls. I

"I cannot imagine myself living without some opinions, but I should wish to have good reasons for them, and

a wise man could help me to see which opinions had the best foundation, and would help me to live

"Very true. You couldn't put the thing bettercouldn't put it better, beforehand, you know. But there are

oddities in things," continued Mr. Brooke, whose conscience was really roused to do the best he could for his

niece on this occasion. "Life isn't cast in a mouldnot cut out by rule and line, and that sort of thing. I never

married myself, and it will be the better for you and yours. The fact is, I never loved any one well enough to

put myself into a noose for them. It IS a noose, you know. Temper, now. There is temper. And a husband

"I know that I must expect trials, uncle. Marriage is a state of higher duties. I never thought of it as mere

"Well, you are not fond of show, a great establishment, balls, dinners, that kind of thing. I can see that

Casaubon's ways might suit you better than Chettam's. And you shall do as you like, my dear. I would not

hinder Casaubon; I said so at once; for there is no knowing how anything may turn out. You have not the

same tastes as every young lady; and a clergyman and scholarwho may be a bishopthat kind of

thingmay suit you better than Chettam. Chettam is a good fellow, a good soundhearted fellow, you know;

but he doesn't go much into ideas. I did, when I was his age. But Casaubon's eyes, now. I think he has hurt

"I should be all the happier, uncle, the more room there was for me to help him," said Dorothea, ardently.

"You have quite made up your mind, I see. Well, my dear, the fact is, I have a letter for you in my pocket."

Mr. Brooke handed the letter to Dorothea, but as she rose to go away, he added, "There is not too much hurry,

When Dorothea had left him, he reflected that he had certainly spoken strongly: he had put the risks of

marriage before her in a striking manner. It was his duty to do so. But as to pretending to be wise for young

people,no uncle, however much he had travelled in his youth, absorbed the new ideas, and dined with

celebrities now deceased, could pretend to judge what sort of marriage would turn out well for a young girl

who preferred Casaubon to Chettam. In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt

blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid.

MY DEAR MISS BROOKE,I have your guardian's permission to address you on a subject than which I

have none more at heart. I am not, I trust, mistaken in the recognition of some deeper correspondence than

that of date in the fact that a consciousness of need in my own life had arisen contemporaneously with the

possibility of my becoming acquainted with you. For in the first hour of meeting you, I had an impression of

your eminent and perhaps exclusive fitness to supply that need (connected, I may say, with such activity of

the affections as even the preoccupations of a work too special to be abdicated could not uninterruptedly

dissimulate); and each succeeding opportunity for observation has given the impression an added depth by

convincing me more emphatically of that fitness which I had preconceived, and thus evoking more decisively

those affections to which I have but now referred. Our conversations have, I think, made sufficiently clear to

you the tenor of my life and purposes: a tenor unsuited, I am aware, to the commoner order of minds. But I

have discerned in you an elevation of thought and a capability of devotedness, which I had hitherto not

conceived to be compatible either with the early bloom of youth or with those graces of sex that may be said

at once to win and to confer distinction when combined, as they notably are in you, with the mental qualities

above indicated. It was, I confess, beyond my hope to meet with this rare combination of elements both solid

and attractive, adapted to supply aid in graver labors and to cast a charm over vacant hours; and but for the

event of my introduction to you (which, let me again say, I trust not to be superficially coincident with

foreshadowing needs, but providentially related thereto as stages towards the completion of a life's plan), I

should presumably have gone on to the last without any attempt to lighten my solitariness by a matrimonial

Such, my dear Miss Brooke, is the accurate statement of my feelings; and I rely on your kind indulgence in

venturing now to ask you how far your own are of a nature to confirm my happy presentiment. To be

accepted by you as your husband and the earthly guardian of your welfare, I should regard as the highest of

providential gifts. In return I can at least offer you an affection hitherto unwasted, and the faithful

consecration of a life which, however short in the sequel, has no backward pages whereon, if you choose to

turn them, you will find records such as might justly cause you either bitterness or shame. I await the

expression of your sentiments with an anxiety which it would be the part of wisdom (were it possible) to

divert by a more arduous labor than usual. But in this order of experience I am still young, and in looking

forward to an unfavorable possibility I cannot but feel that resignation to solitude will be more difficult after

the temporary illumination of hope. In any case, I shall remain, Yours with sincere devotion, EDWARD

Dorothea trembled while she read this letter; then she fell on her knees, buried her face, and sobbed. She

could not pray: under the rush of solemn emotion in which thoughts became vague and images floated

uncertainly, she could but cast herself, with a childlike sense of reclining, in the lap of a divine consciousness

which sustained her own. She remained in that attitude till it was time to dress for dinner.

How could it occur to her to examine the letter, to look at it critically as a profession of love? Her whole soul

was possessed by the fact that a fuller life was opening before her: she was a neophyte about to enter on a

higher grade of initiation. She was going to have room for the energies which stirred uneasily under the

dimness and pressure of her own ignorance and the petty peremptoriness of the world's habits.

Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties; now she would be allowed to live

continually in the light of a mind that she could reverence. This hope was not unmixed with the glow of

proud delightthe joyous maiden surprise that she was chosen by the man whom her admiration had chosen.

All Dorothea's passion was transfused through a mind struggling towards an ideal life; the radiance of her

transfigured girlhood fell on the first object that came within its level. The impetus with which inclination

became resolution was heightened by those little events of the day which had roused her discontent with the

After dinner, when Celia was playing an "air, with variations," a small kind of tinkling which symbolized the

aesthetic part of the young ladies' education, Dorothea went up to her room to answer Mr. Casaubon's letter.

Why should she defer the answer? She wrote it over three times, not because she wished to change the

wording, but because her hand was unusually uncertain, and she could not bear that Mr. Casaubon should

think her handwriting bad and illegible. She piqued herself on writing a hand in which each letter was

distinguishable without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use of this

MY DEAR MR. CASAUBON,I am very grateful to you for loving me, and thinking me worthy to be your

wife. I can look forward to no better happiness than that which would be one with yours. If I said more, it

would only be the same thing written out at greater length, for I cannot now dwell on any other thought than

Later in the evening she followed her uncle into the library to give him the letter, that he might send it in the

morning. He was surprised, but his surprise only issued in a few moments' silence, during which he pushed

about various objects on his writingtable, and finally stood with his back to the fire, his glasses on his nose,

"There was no need to think long, uncle. I know of nothing to make me vacillate. If I changed my mind, it

"Ah!then you have accepted him? Then Chettam has no chance? Has Chettam offended youoffended

Mr. Brooke threw his head and shoulders backward as if some one had thrown a light missile at him.

"I mean in the light of a husband. He is very kind, I thinkreally very good about the cottages. A

"But you must have a scholar, and that sort of thing? Well, it lies a little in our family. I had it myselfthat

love of knowledge, and going into everythinga little too muchit took me too far; though that sort of

thing doesn't often run in the femaleline; or it runs underground like the rivers in Greece, you knowit

comes out in the sons. Clever sons, clever mothers. I went a good deal into that, at one time. However, my

dear, I have always said that people should do as they like in these things, up to a certain point. I couldn't, as

your guardian, have consented to a bad match. But Casaubon stands well: his position is good. I am afraid

That evening, of course, Celia knew nothing of what had happened. She attributed Dorothea's abstracted

manner, and the evidence of further crying since they had got home, to the temper she had been in about Sir

James Chettam and the buildings, and was careful not to give further offence: having once said what she

wanted to say, Celia had no disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects. It had been her nature when a child

never to quarrel with any one only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her, and looked like

turkeycocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat's cradle with them whenever they recovered

themselves. And as to Dorothea, it had always been her way to find something wrong in her sister's words,

though Celia inwardly protested that she always said just how things were, and nothing else: she never did

and never could put words together out of her own head. But the best of Dodo was, that she did not keep

angry for long together. Now, though they had hardly spoken to each other all the evening, yet when Celia

put by her work, intending to go to bed, a proceeding in which she was always much the earlier, Dorothea,

who was seated on a low stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical

intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech like a fine bit of recitative

Celia knelt down to get the right level and gave her little butterfly kiss, while Dorothea encircled her with

"Don't sit up, Dodo, you are so pale tonight: go to bed soon," said Celia, in a comfortable way, without any

"So much the better," thought Celia. "But how strangely Dodo goes from one extreme to the other."

The next day, at luncheon, the butler, handing something to Mr. Brooke, said, "Jonas is come back, sir, and

Mr. Brooke read the letter, and then, nodding toward Dorothea, said, "Casaubon, my dear: he will be here to

It could not seem remarkable to Celia that a dinner guest should be announced to her sister beforehand, but,

her eyes following the same direction as her uncle's, she was struck with the peculiar effect of the

announcement on Dorothea. It seemed as if something like the reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed

across her features, ending in one of her rare blushes. For the first time it entered into Celia's mind that there

might be something more between Mr. Casaubon and her sister than his delight in bookish talk and her

delight in listening. Hitherto she had classed the admiration for this "ugly" and learned acquaintance with the

admiration for Monsieur Liret at Lausanne, also ugly and learned. Dorothea had never been tired of listening

to old Monsieur Liret when Celia's feet were as cold as possible, and when it had really become dreadful to

see the skin of his bald head moving about. Why then should her enthusiasm not extend to Mr. Casaubon

simply in the same way as to Monsieur Liret? And it seemed probable that all learned men had a sort of

But now Celia was really startled at the suspicion which had darted into her mind. She was seldom taken by

surprise in this way, her marvellous quickness in observing a certain order of signs generally preparing her to

expect such outward events as she had an interest in. Not that she now imagined Mr. Casaubon to be already

an accepted lover: she had only begun to feel disgust at the possibility that anything in Dorothea's mind could

tend towards such an issue. Here was something really to vex her about Dodo: it was all very well not to

accept Sir James Chettam, but the idea of marrying Mr. Casaubon! Celia felt a sort of shame mingled with a

sense of the ludicrous. But perhaps Dodo, if she were really bordering on such an extravagance, might be

turned away from it: experience had often shown that her impressibility might be calculated on. The day was

damp, and they were not going to walk out, so they both went up to their sittingroom; and there Celia

observed that Dorothea, instead of settling down with her usual diligent interest to some occupation, simply

leaned her elbow on an open book and looked out of the window at the great cedar silvered with the damp.

She herself had taken up the making of a toy for the curate's children, and was not going to enter on any

Dorothea was in fact thinking that it was desirable for Celia to know of the momentous change in Mr.

Casaubon's position since he had last been in the house: it did not seem fair to leave her in ignorance of what

would necessarily affect her attitude towards him; but it was impossible not to shrink from telling her.

Dorothea accused herself of some meanness in this timidity: it was always odious to her to have any small

fears or contrivances about her actions, but at this moment she was seeking the highest aid possible that she

might not dread the corrosiveness of Celia's pretty carnally minded prose. Her reverie was broken, and the

difficulty of decision banished, by Celia's small and rather guttural voice speaking in its usual tone, of a

"Really, Dodo, can't you hear how he scrapes his spoon? And he always blinks before he speaks. I don't know

whether Locke blinked, but I'm sure I am sorry for those who sat opposite to him if he did."

"Celia," said Dorothea, with emphatic gravity, "pray don't make any more observations of that kind."

"Why not? They are quite true," returned Celia, who had her reasons for persevering, though she was

"Then I think the commonest minds must be rather useful. I think it is a pity Mr. Casaubon's mother had not a

commoner mind: she might have taught him better." Celia was inwardly frightened, and ready to run away,

Dorothea's feelings had gathered to an avalanche, and there could be no further preparation.

Perhaps Celia had never turned so pale before. The paper man she was making would have had his leg

injured, but for her habitual care of whatever she held in her hands. She laid the fragile figure down at once,

and sat perfectly still for a few moments. When she spoke there was a tear gathering

"Oh, Dodo, I hope you will be happy." Her sisterly tenderness could not but surmount other feelings at this

"It is quite decided, then?" said Celia, in an awed under tone. "And uncle knows?"

"I have accepted Mr. Casaubon's offer. My uncle brought me the letter that contained it; he knew about it

"I beg your pardon, if I have said anything to hurt you, Dodo," said Celia, with a slight sob. She never could

have thought that she should feel as she did. There was something funereal in the whole affair, and Mr.

Casaubon seemed to be the officiating clergyman, about whom it would be indecent to make remarks.

"Never mind, Kitty, do not grieve. We should never admire the same people. I often offend in something of

In spite of this magnanimity Dorothea was still smarting: perhaps as much from Celia's subdued astonishment

as from her small criticisms. Of course all the world round Tipton would be out of sympathy with this

marriage. Dorothea knew of no one who thought as she did about life and its best objects.

Nevertheless before the evening was at an end she was very happy. In an hour's teteatete with Mr.

Casaubon she talked to him with more freedom than she had ever felt before, even pouring out her joy at the

thought of devoting herself to him, and of learning how she might best share and further all his great ends.

Mr. Casaubon was touched with an unknown delight (what man would not have been?) at this childlike

unrestrained ardor: he was not surprised (what lover would have been?) that he should be the object of it.

"My dear young ladyMiss BrookeDorothea!" he said, pressing her hand between his hands, "this is a

happiness greater than I had ever imagined to be in reserve for me. That I should ever meet with a mind and

person so rich in the mingled graces which could render marriage desirable, was far indeed from my

conception. You have allnay, more than allthose qualities which I have ever regarded as the

characteristic excellences of womanhood. The great charm of your sex is its capability of an ardent

selfsacrificing affection, and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence of our own.

Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer kind: my satisfactions have been those of the solitary

student. I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither in my hand, but now I shall pluck

No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention: the frigid rhetoric at the end was as

sincere as the bark of a dog, or the cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not be rash to conclude that there

was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike us as the thin music of a mandolin?

Dorothea's faith supplied all that Mr. Casaubon's words seemed to leave unsaid: what believer sees a

disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put

"I am very ignorantyou will quite wonder at my ignorance," said Dorothea. "I have so many thoughts that

may be quite mistaken; and now I shall be able to tell them all to you, and ask you about them. But," she

added, with rapid imagination of Mr. Casaubon's probable feeling, "I will not trouble you too much; only

when you are inclined to listen to me. You must often be weary with the pursuit of subjects in your own

"How should I be able now to persevere in any path without your companionship?" said Mr. Casaubon,

kissing her candid brow, and feeling that heaven had vouchsafed him a blessing in every way suited to his

peculiar wants. He was being unconsciously wrought upon by the charms of a nature which was entirely

without hidden calculations either for immediate effects or for remoter ends. It was this which made Dorothea

so childlike, and, according to some judges, so stupid, with all her reputed cleverness; as, for example, in the

present case of throwing herself, metaphorically speaking, at Mr. Casaubon's feet, and kissing his

unfashionable shoeties as if he were a Protestant Pope. She was not in the least teaching Mr. Casaubon to

ask if he were good enough for her, but merely asking herself anxiously how she could be good enough for

Mr. Casaubon. Before he left the next day it had been decided that the marriage should take place within six

weeks. Why not? Mr. Casaubon's house was ready. It was not a parsonage, but a considerable mansion, with

much land attached to it. The parsonage was inhabited by the curate, who did all the duty except preaching

As Mr. Casaubon's carriage was passing out of the gateway, it arrested the entrance of a pony phaeton driven

by a lady with a servant seated behind. It was doubtful whether the recognition had been mutual, for Mr.

Casaubon was looking absently before him; but the lady was quickeyed, and threw a nod and a "How do

you do?" in the nick of time. In spite of her shabby bonnet and very old Indian shawl, it was plain that the

lodgekeeper regarded her as an important personage, from the low curtsy which was dropped on the

"Well, Mrs. Fitchett, how are your fowls laying now?" said the highcolored, darkeyed lady, with the

"Pretty well for laying, madam, but they've ta'en to eating their eggs: I've no peace o' mind with 'em at all."

"Oh, the cannibals! Better sell them cheap at once. What will you sell them a couple? One can't eat fowls of a

"Halfacrown, these times! Come nowfor the Rector's chickenbroth on a Sunday. He has consumed all

ours that I can spare. You are half paid with the sermon, Mrs. Fitchett, remember that. Take a pair of

tumblerpigeons for themlittle beauties. You must come and see them. You have no tumblers among your

"Well, madam, Master Fitchett shall go and see 'em after work. He's very hot on new sorts; to oblige you."

"Oblige me! It will be the best bargain he ever made. A pair of church pigeons for a couple of wicked

Spanish fowls that eat their own eggs! Don't you and Fitchett boast too much, that is all!"

The phaeton was driven onwards with the last words, leaving Mrs. Fitchett laughing and shaking her head

slowly, with an interjectional "SureLY, sureLY!"from which it might be inferred that she would have

found the countryside somewhat duller if the Rector's lady had been less freespoken and less of a skinflint.

Indeed, both the farmers and laborers in the parishes of Freshitt and Tipton would have felt a sad lack of

conversation but for the stories about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did: a lady of immeasurably high birth,

descended, as it were, from unknown earls, dim as the crowd of heroic shadeswho pleaded poverty, pared

down prices, and cut jokes in the most companionable manner, though with a turn of tongue that let you

know who she was. Such a lady gave a neighborliness to both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness

of uncommuted tithe. A much more exemplary character with an infusion of sour dignity would not have

furthered their comprehension of the Thirtynine Articles, and would have been less socially uniting.

Mr. Brooke, seeing Mrs. Cadwallader's merits from a different point of view, winced a little when her name

"I see you have had our Lowick Cicero here," she said, seating herself comfortably, throwing back her wraps,

and showing a thin but wellbuilt figure. "I suspect you and he are brewing some bad polities, else you would

not be seeing so much of the lively man. I shall inform against you: remember you are both suspicious

characters since you took Peel's side about the Catholic Bill. I shall tell everybody that you are going to put

up for Middlemarch on the Whig side when old Pinkerton resigns, and that Casaubon is going to help you in

an underhand manner: going to bribe the voters with pamphlets, and throw open the publichouses to

"Nothing of the sort," said Mr. Brooke, smiling and rubbing his eyeglasses, but really blushing a little at the

impeachment. "Casaubon and I don't talk politics much. He doesn't care much about the philanthropic side of

things; punishments, and that kind of thing. He only cares about Church questions. That is not my line of

"Raather too much, my friend. I have heard of your doings. Who was it that sold his bit of land to the

Papists at Middlemarch? I believe you bought it on purpose. You are a perfect Guy Faux. See if you are not

burnt in effigy this 5th of November coming. Humphrey would not come to quarrel with you about it, so I am

"Very good. I was prepared to be persecuted for not persecutingnot persecuting, you know."

"There you go! That is a piece of claptrap you have got ready for the hustings. Now, DO NOT let them lure

you to the hustings, my dear Mr. Brooke. A man always makes a fool of himself, speechifying: there's no

excuse but being on the right side, so that you can ask a blessing on your humming and hawing. You will lose

yourself, I forewarn you. You will make a Saturday pie of all parties' opinions, and be pelted by everybody."

"That is what I expect, you know," said Mr. Brooke, not wishing to betray how little he enjoyed this

prophetic sketch"what I expect as an independent man. As to the Whigs, a man who goes with the thinkers

is not likely to be hooked on by any party. He may go with them up to a certain pointup to a certain point,

"Where your certain point is? No. I should like to be told how a man can have any certain point when he

belongs to no partyleading a roving life, and never letting his friends know his address. `Nobody knows

where Brooke will bethere's no counting on Brooke'that is what people say of you, to be quite frank.

Now, do turn respectable. How will you like going to Sessions with everybody looking shy on you, and you

"I don't pretend to argue with a lady on politics," said Mr. Brooke, with an air of smiling indifference, but

feeling rather unpleasantly conscious that this attack of Mrs. Cadwallader's had opened the defensive

campaign to which certain rash steps had exposed him. "Your sex are not thinkers, you knowvarium et

mutabile semperthat kind of thing. You don't know Virgil. I knew"Mr. Brooke reflected in time that he

had not had the personal acquaintance of the Augustan poet"I was going to say, poor Stoddart, you know.

That was what HE said. You ladies are always against an independent attitudea man's caring for nothing

but truth, and that sort of thing. And there is no part of the county where opinion is narrower than it is

hereI don't mean to throw stones, you know, but somebody is wanted to take the independent line; and if I

"Who? Why, any upstart who has got neither blood nor position. People of standing should consume their

independent nonsense at home, not hawk it about. And you! who are going to marry your niece, as good as

your daughter, to one of our best men. Sir James would be cruelly annoyed: it will be too hard on him if you

Mr. Brooke again winced inwardly, for Dorothea's engagement had no sooner been decided, than he had

thought of Mrs. Cadwallader's prospective taunts. It might have been easy for ignorant observers to say,

"Quarrel with Mrs. Cadwallader;" but where is a country gentleman to go who quarrels with his oldest

neighbors? Who could taste the fine flavor in the name of Brooke if it were delivered casually, like wine

"I hope Chettam and I shall always be good friends; but I am sorry to say there is no prospect of his marrying

my niece," said Mr. Brooke, much relieved to see through the window that Celia was coming in.

"Why not?" said Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharp note of surprise. "It is hardly a fortnight since you and I

"My niece has chosen another suitorhas chosen him, you know. I have had nothing to do with it. I should

have preferred Chettam; and I should have said Chettam was the man any girl would have chosen. But there

"Why, whom do you mean to say that you are going to let her marry?" Mrs. Cadwallader's mind was rapidly

But here Celia entered, blooming from a walk in the garden, and the greeting with her delivered Mr. Brooke

from the necessity of answering immediately. He got up hastily, and saying, "By the way, I must speak to

"My dear child, what is this?this about your sister's engagement?" said Mrs. Cadwallader.

"She is engaged to marry Mr. Casaubon," said Celia, resorting, as usual, to the simplest statement of fact, and

"Oh, Mrs. Cadwallader, I don't think it can be nice to marry a man with a great soul."

"Well, my dear, take warning. You know the look of one now; when the next comes and wants to marry you,

"No; one such in a family is enough. So your sister never cared about Sir James Chettam? What would you

"I should have liked that very much. I am sure he would have been a good husband. Only," Celia added, with

a slight blush (she sometimes seemed to blush as she breathed), "I don't think he would have suited

"Dodo is very strict. She thinks so much about everything, and is so particular about what one says. Sir James

"Please don't be angry with Dodo; she does not see things. She thought so much about the cottages, and she

"Well," said Mrs. Cadwallader, putting on her shawl, and rising, as if in haste, "I must go straight to Sir

James and break this to him. He will have brought his mother back by this time, and I must call. Your uncle

will never tell him. We are all disappointed, my dear. Young people should think of their families in

marrying. I set a bad examplemarried a poor clergyman, and made myself a pitiable object among the De

Bracysobliged to get my coals by stratagem, and pray to heaven for my salad oil. However, Casaubon has

money enough; I must do him that justice. As to his blood, I suppose the family quarterings are three

cuttlefish sable, and a commentator rampant. By the bye, before I go, my dear, I must speak to your Mrs.

Carter about pastry. I want to send my young cook to learn of her. Poor people with four children, like us,

you know, can't afford to keep a good cook. I have no doubt Mrs. Carter will oblige me. Sir James's cook is a

In less than an hour, Mrs. Cadwallader had circumvented Mrs. Carter and driven to Freshitt Hall, which was

not far from her own parsonage, her husband being resident in Freshitt and keeping a curate in Tipton.

Sir James Chettam had returned from the short journey which had kept him absent for a couple of days, and

had changed his dress, intending to ride over to Tipton Grange. His horse was standing at the door when Mrs.

Cadwallader drove up, and he immediately appeared there himself, whip in hand. Lady Chettam had not yet

returned, but Mrs. Cadwallader's errand could not be despatched in the presence of grooms, so she asked to

be taken into the conservatory close by, to look at the new plants; and on coming to a contemplative stand,

"I have a great shock for you; I hope you are not so far gone in love as you pretended to be."

It was of no use protesting, against Mrs. Cadwallader's way of putting things. But Sir James's countenance

"I do believe Brooke is going to expose himself after all. I accused him of meaning to stand for Middlemarch

on the Liberal side, and he looked silly and never denied ittalked about the independent line, and the usual

"Why," rejoined Mrs. Cadwallader, with a sharper note, "you don't mean to say that you would like him to

"That is what I told him. He is vulnerable to reason therealways a few grains of commonsense in an

ounce of miserliness. Miserliness is a capital quality to run in families; it's the safe side for madness to dip on.

And there must be a little crack in the Brooke family, else we should not see what we are to see."

"Worse than that. I really feel a little responsible. I always told you Miss Brooke would be such a fine match.

I knew there was a great deal of nonsense in hera flighty sort of Methodistical stuff. But these things wear

"What do you mean, Mrs. Cadwallader?" said Sir James. His fear lest Miss Brooke should have run away to

join the Moravian Brethren, or some preposterous sect unknown to good society, was a little allayed by the

knowledge that Mrs. Cadwallader always made the worst of things. "What has happened to Miss Brooke?

"Very well. She is engaged to be married." Mrs. Cadwallader paused a few moments, observing the deeply

hurt expression in her friend's face, which he was trying to conceal by a nervous smile, while he whipped his

Sir James let his whip fall and stooped to pick it up. Perhaps his face had never before gathered so much

concentrated disgust as when he turned to Mrs. Cadwallader and repeated, "Casaubon?"

"Good God! It is horrible! He is no better than a mummy!" (The point of view has to be allowed for, as that

"She says, he is a great soul.A great bladder for dried peas to rattle in!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.

"What business has an old bachelor like that to marry?" said Sir James. "He has one foot in the grave."

"Brooke ought not to allow it: he should insist on its being put off till she is of age. She would think better of

"Not he! Humphrey finds everybody charming I never can get him to abuse Casaubon. He will even speak

well of the bishop, though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman; what can one do with a husband

who attends so little to the decencies? I hide it as well as I can by abusing everybody myself. Come, come,

cheer up! you are well rid of Miss Brooke, a girl who would have been requiring you to see the stars by

daylight. Between ourselves, little Celia is worth two of her, and likely after all to be the better match. For

"Oh, on my own accountit is for Miss Brooke's sake I think her friends should try to use their influence."

"Well, Humphrey doesn't know yet. But when I tell him, you may depend on it he will say, `Why not?

Casaubon is a good fellowand youngyoung enough.' These charitable people never know vinegar from

wine till they have swallowed it and got the colic. However, if I were a man I should prefer Celia, especially

when Dorothea was gone. The truth is, you have been courting one and have won the other. I can see that she

admires you almost as much as a man expects to be admired. If it were any one but me who said so, you

Sir James handed Mrs. Cadwallader to the phaeton, and then jumped on his horse. He was not going to

renounce his ride because of his friend's unpleasant newsonly to ride the faster in some other direction than

Now, why on earth should Mrs. Cadwallader have been at all busy about Miss Brooke's marriage; and why,

when one match that she liked to think she had a hand in was frustrated, should she have straightway

contrived the preliminaries of another? Was there any ingenious plot, any hideandseek course of action,

which might be detected by a careful telescopic watch? Not at all: a telescope might have swept the parishes

of Tipton and Freshitt, the whole area visited by Mrs. Cadwallader in her phaeton, without witnessing any

interview that could excite suspicion, or any scene from which she did not return with the same unperturbed

keenness of eye and the same high natural color. In fact, if that convenient vehicle had existed in the days of

the Seven Sages, one of them would doubtless have remarked, that you can know little of women by

following them about in their ponyphaetons. Even with a microscope directed on a waterdrop we find

ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may

seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they

were so many animated taxpennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make

vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom. In this way,

metaphorically speaking, a strong lens applied to Mrs. Cadwallader's matchmaking will show a play of

minute causes producing what may be called thought and speech vortices to bring her the sort of food she

needed. Her life was rurally simple, quite free from secrets either foul, dangerous, or otherwise important,

and not consciously affected by the great affairs of the world. All the more did the affairs of the great world

interest her, when communicated in the letters of highborn relations: the way in which fascinating younger

sons had gone to the dogs by marrying their mistresses; the fine oldblooded idiocy of young Lord Tapir, and

the furious gouty humors of old Lord Megatherium; the exact crossing of genealogies which had brought a

coronet into a new branch and widened the relations of scandal,these were topics of which she retained

details with the utmost accuracy, and reproduced them in an excellent pickle of epigrams, which she herself

enjoyed the more because she believed as unquestionably in birth and nobirth as she did in game and

vermin. She would never have disowned any one on the ground of poverty: a De Bracy reduced to take his

dinner in a basin would have seemed to her an example of pathos worth exaggerating, and I fear his

aristocratic vices would not have horrified her. But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious

hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high retail prices, and Mrs. Cadwallader detested high

prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's design in

making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was

hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a wellbred scheme of the

universe. Let any lady who is inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader inquire into the comprehensiveness of

her own beautiful views, and be quite sure that they afford accommodation for all the lives which have the

With such a mind, active as phosphorus, biting everything that came near into the form that suited it, how

could Mrs. Cadwallader feel that the Miss Brookes and their matrimonial prospects were alien to her?

especially as it had been the habit of years for her to scold Mr. Brooke with the friendliest frankness, and let

him know in confidence that she thought him a poor creature. From the first arrival of the young ladies in

Tipton she had prearranged Dorothea's marriage with Sir James, and if it had taken place would have been

quite sure that it was her doing: that it should not take place after she had preconceived it, caused her an

irritation which every thinker will sympathize with. She was the diplomatist of Tipton and Freshitt, and for

anything to happen in spite of her was an offensive irregularity. As to freaks like this of Miss Brooke's, Mrs.

Cadwallader had no patience with them, and now saw that her opinion of this girl had been infected with

some of her husband's weak charitableness: those Methodistical whims, that air of being more religious than

the rector and curate together, came from a deeper and more constitutional disease than she had been willing

"However," said Mrs. Cadwallader, first to herself and afterwards to her husband, "I throw her over: there

was a chance, if she had married Sir James, of her becoming a sane, sensible woman. He would never have

contradicted her, and when a woman is not contradicted, she has no motive for obstinacy in her absurdities.

It followed that Mrs. Cadwallader must decide on another match for Sir James, and having made up her mind

that it was to be the younger Miss Brooke, there could not have been a more skilful move towards the success

of her plan than her hint to the baronet that he had made an impression on Celia's heart. For he was not one of

those gentlemen who languish after the unattainable Sappho's apple that laughs from the topmost boughthe

"Smile like the knot of cowslips on the cliff, Not to be come at by the willing hand."

He had no sonnets to write, and it could not strike him agreeably that he was not an object of preference to

the woman whom he had preferred. Already the knowledge that Dorothea had chosen Mr. Casaubon had

bruised his attachment and relaxed its hold. Although Sir James was a sportsman, he had some other feelings

towards women than towards grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife in the light of prey,

valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of

primitive races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was necessary to the

historical continuity of the marriagetie. On the contrary, having the amiable vanity which knits us to those

who are fond of us, and disinclines us to those who are indifferent, and also a good grateful nature, the mere

idea that a woman had a kindness towards him spun little threads of tenderness from out his heart towards

Thus it happened, that after Sir James had ridden rather fast for half an hour in a direction away from Tipton

Grange, he slackened his pace, and at last turned into a road which would lead him back by a shorter cut.

Various feelings wrought in him the determination after all to go to the Grange today as if nothing new had

happened. He could not help rejoicing that he had never made the offer and been rejected; mere friendly

politeness required that he should call to see Dorothea about the cottages, and now happily Mrs. Cadwallader

had prepared him to offer his congratulations, if necessary, without showing too much awkwardness. He

really did not like it: giving up Dorothea was very painful to him; but there was something in the resolve to

make this visit forthwith and conquer all show of feeling, which was a sort of filebiting and counterirritant.

And without his distinctly recognizing the impulse, there certainly was present in him the sense that Celia

would be there, and that he should pay her more attention than he had done before.

We mortals, men and women, devour many a disappointment between breakfast and dinnertime; keep back

the tears and look a little pale about the lips, and in answer to inquiries say, "Oh, nothing!" Pride helps us;

and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurtsnot to hurt others.

Mr. Casaubon, as might be expected, spent a great deal of his time at the Grange in these weeks, and the

hindrance which courtship occasioned to the progress of his great workthe Key to all

Mythologiesnaturally made him look forward the more eagerly to the happy termination of courtship. But

he had deliberately incurred the hindrance, having made up his mind that it was now time for him to adorn his

life with the graces of female companionship, to irradiate the gloom which fatigue was apt to hang over the

intervals of studious labor with the play of female fancy, and to secure in this, his culminating age, the solace

of female tendance for his declining years. Hence he determined to abandon himself to the stream of feeling,

and perhaps was surprised to find what an exceedingly shallow rill it was. As in droughty regions baptism by

immersion could only be performed symbolically, Mr. Casaubon found that sprinkling was the utmost

approach to a plunge which his stream would afford him; and he concluded that the poets had much

exaggerated the force of masculine passion. Nevertheless, he observed with pleasure that Miss Brooke

showed an ardent submissive affection which promised to fulfil his most agreeable previsions of marriage. It

had once or twice crossed his mind that possibly there, was some deficiency in Dorothea to account for the

moderation of his abandonment; but he was unable to discern the deficiency, or to figure to himself a woman

who would have pleased him better; so that there was clearly no reason to fall back upon but the

"Could I not be preparing myself now to be more useful?" said Dorothea to him, one morning, early in the

time of courtship; "could I not learn to read Latin and Greek aloud to you, as Milton's daughters did to their

"I fear that would be wearisome to you," said Mr. Casaubon, smiling; "and, indeed, if I remember rightly, the

young women you have mentioned regarded that exercise in unknown tongues as a ground for rebellion

"Yes; but in the first place they were very naughty girls, else they would have been proud to minister to such

a father; and in the second place they might have studied privately and taught themselves to understand what

they read, and then it would have been interesting. I hope you don't expect me to be naughty and stupid?"

"I expect you to be all that an exquisite young lady can be in every possible relation of life. Certainly it might

be a great advantage if you were able to copy the Greek character, and to that end it were well to begin with a

Dorothea seized this as a precious permission. She would not have asked Mr. Casaubon at once to teach her

the languages, dreading of all things to be tiresome instead of helpful; but it was not entirely out of devotion

to her future husband that she wished to know Latin and Creek. Those provinces of masculine knowledge

seemed to her a standingground from which all truth could be seen more truly. As it was, she constantly

doubted her own conclusions, because she felt her own ignorance: how could she be confident that

oneroomed cottages were not for the glory of God, when men who knew the classics appeared to conciliate

indifference to the cottages with zeal for the glory? Perhaps even Hebrew might be necessaryat least the

alphabet and a few rootsin order to arrive at the core of things, and judge soundly on the social duties of

the Christian. And she had not reached that point of renunciation at which she would have been satisfier' with

having a wise husband: she wished, poor child, to be wise herself. Miss Brooke was certainly very naive with

al: her alleged cleverness. Celia, whose mind had never been thought too powerful, saw the emptiness of

other people's pretensions much more readily. To have in general but little feeling, seems to be the only

However, Mr. Casaubon consented to listen and teach for an hour together, like a schoolmaster of little boys,

or rather like a lover, to whom a mistress's elementary ignorance and difficulties have a touching fitness. Few

scholars would have disliked teaching the alphabet under such circumstances. But Dorothea herself was a

little shocked and discouraged at her own stupidity, and the answers she got to some timid questions about

the value of the Greek accents gave her a painful suspicion that here indeed there might be secrets not capable

Mr. Brooke had no doubt on that point, and expressed himself with his usual strength upon it one day that he

"Well, but now, Casaubon, such deep studies, classics, mathematics, that kind of thing, are too taxing for a

"Dorothea is learning to read the characters simply," said Mr. Casaubon, evading the question. "She had the

"Ah, well, without understanding, you knowthat may not be so bad. But there is a lightness about the

feminine minda touch and gomusic, the fine arts, that kind of thingthey should study those up to a

certain point, women should; but in a light way, you know. A woman should be able to sit down and play you

or sing you a good old English tune. That is what I like; though I have heard most thingsbeen at the opera

in Vienna: Gluck, Mozart, everything of that sort. But I'm a conservative in musicit's not like ideas, you

"Mr. Casaubon is not fond of the piano, and I am very glad he is not," said Dorothea, whose slight regard for

domestic music and feminine fine art must be forgiven her, considering the small tinkling and smearing in

which they chiefly consisted at that dark period. She smiled and looked up at her betrothed with grateful eyes.

If he had always been asking her to play the "Last Rose of Summer," she would have required much

resignation. "He says there is only an old harpsichord at Lowick, and it is covered with books."

"Ah, there you are behind Celia, my dear. Celia, now, plays very prettily, and is always ready to play.

However, since Casaubon does not like it, you are all right. But it's a pity you should not have little

recreations of that sort, Casaubon: the bow always strungthat kind of thing, you knowwill not do."

"I never could look on it in the light of a recreation to have my ears teased with measured noises," said Mr.

Casaubon. "A tune much iterated has the ridiculous effect of making the words in my mind perform a sort of

minuet to keep timean effect hardly tolerable, I imagine, after boyhood. As to the grander forms of music,

worthy to accompany solemn celebrations, and even to serve as an educating influence according to the

ancient conception, I say nothing, for with these we are not immediately concerned."

"No; but music of that sort I should enjoy," said Dorothea. "When we were coming home from Lausanne my

"That kind of thing is not healthy, my dear," said Mr. Brooke. "Casaubon, she will be in your hands now: you

He ended with a smile, not wishing to hurt his niece, but really thinking that it was perhaps better for her to

be early married to so sober a fellow as Casaubon, since she would not hear of Chettam.

"It is wonderful, though," he said to himself as he shuffled out of the room"it is wonderful that she should

have liked him. However, the match is good. I should have been travelling out of my brief to have hindered

it, let Mrs. Cadwallader say what she will. He is pretty certain to be a bishop, is Casaubon. That was a very

seasonable pamphlet of his on the Catholic Question:a deanery at least. They owe him a deanery."

And here I must vindicate a claim to philosophical reflectiveness, by remarking that Mr. Brooke on this

occasion little thought of the Radical speech which, at a later period, he was led to make on the incomes of

the bishops. What elegant historian would neglect a striking opportunity for pointing out that his heroes did

not foresee the history of the world, or even their own actions?For example, that Henry of Navarre, when a

Protestant baby, little thought of being a Catholic monarch; or that Alfred the Great, when he measured his

laborious nights with burning candles, had no idea of future gentlemen measuring their idle days with

watches. Here is a mine of truth, which, however vigorously it may be worked, is likely to outlast our coal.

But of Mr. Brooke I make a further remark perhaps less warranted by precedentnamely, that if he had

foreknown his speech, it might not have made any great difference. To think with pleasure of his niece's

husband having a large ecclesiastical income was one thingto make a Liberal speech was another thing;

and it is a narrow mind which cannot look at a subject from various points of view.

It was wonderful to Sir James Chettam how well he continued to like going to the Grange after he had once

encountered the difficulty of seeing Dorothea for the first time in the light of a woman who was engaged to

another man. Of course the forked lightning seemed to pass through him when he first approached her, and he

remained conscious throughout the interview of hiding uneasiness; but, good as he was, it must be owned that

his uneasiness was less than it would have been if he had thought his rival a brilliant and desirable match. He

had no sense of being eclipsed by Mr. Casaubon; he was only shocked that Dorothea was under a melancholy

illusion, and his mortification lost some of its bitterness by being mingled with compassion.

Nevertheless, while Sir James said to himself that he had completely resigned her, since with the perversity of

a Desdemona she had not affected a proposed match that was clearly suitable and according to nature; he

could not yet be quite passive under the idea of her engagement to Mr. Casaubon. On the day when he first

saw them together in the light of his present knowledge, it seemed to him that he had not taken the affair

seriously enough. Brooke was really culpable; he ought to have hindered it. Who could speak to him?

Something might be done perhaps even now, at least to defer the marriage. On his way home he turned into

the Rectory and asked for Mr. Cadwallader. Happily, the Rector was at home, and his visitor was shown into

the study, where all the fishing tackle hung. But he himself was in a little room adjoining, at work with his

turning apparatus, and he called to the baronet to join him there. The two were better friends than any other

landholder and clergyman in the countya significant fact which was in agreement with the amiable

Mr. Cadwallader was a large man, with full lips and a sweet smile; very plain and rough in his exterior, but

with that solid imperturbable ease and goodhumor which is infectious, and like great grassy hills in the

sunshine, quiets even an irritated egoism, and makes it rather ashamed of itself. "Well, how are you?" he said,

showing a hand not quite fit to be grasped. "Sorry I missed you before. Is there anything particular? You look

Sir James's brow had a little crease in it, a little depression of the eyebrow, which he seemed purposely to

"It is only this conduct of Brooke's. I really think somebody should speak to him."

"What? meaning to stand?" said Mr. Cadwallader, going on with the arrangement of the reels which he had

just been turning. "I hardly think he means it. But where's the harm, if he likes it? Any one who objects to

Whiggery should be glad when the Whigs don't put up the strongest fellow. They won't overturn the

"Oh, I don't mean that," said Sir James, who, after putting down his hat and throwing himself into a chair, had

begun to nurse his leg and examine the sole of his boot with much bitterness. "I mean this marriage. I mean

"She is too young to know what she likes. Her guardian ought to interfere. He ought not to allow the thing to

be done in this headlong manner. I wonder a man like you, Cadwalladera man with daughters, can look at

the affair with indifference: and with such a heart as yours! Do think seriously about it."

"I am not joking; I am as serious as possible," said the Rector, with a provoking little inward laugh. "You are

as bad as Elinor. She has been wanting me to go and lecture Brooke; and I have reminded her that her friends

"But look at Casaubon," said Sir James, indignantly. "He must be fifty, and I don't believe he could ever have

"Confound you handsome young fellows! you think of having it all your own way in the world. Tou don't

under stand women. They don't admire you half so much as you admire yourselves. Elinor used to tell her

sisters that she married me for my uglinessit was so various and amusing that it had quite conquered her

"You! it was easy enough for a woman to love you. But this is no question of beauty. I don't LIKE

Casaubon." This was Sir James's strongest way of implying that he thought ill of a man's character.

"Why? what do you know against him?" said the Rector laying down his reels, and putting his thumbs into

Sir James paused. He did not usually find it easy to give his reasons: it seemed to him strange that people

should not know them without being told, since he only felt what was reasonable. At last he said

"Well, yes. I don't mean of the melting sort, but a sound kernel, THAT you may be sure of. He is very good

to his poor relations: pensions several of the women, and is educating a young fellow at a good deal of

expense. Casaubon acts up to his sense of justice. His mother's sister made a bad matcha Pole, I

thinklost herselfat any rate was disowned by her family. If it had not been for that, Casaubon would not

have had so much money by half. I believe he went himself to find out his cousins, and see what he could do

for them. Every man would not ring so well as that, if you tried his metal. YOU would, Chettam; but not

"I don't know," said Sir James, coloring. "I am not so sure of myself." He paused a moment, and then added,

"That was a right thing for Casaubon to do. But a man may wish to do what is right, and yet be a sort of

parchment code. A woman may not be happy with him. And I think when a girl is so young as Miss Brooke

is, her friends ought to interfere a little to hinder her from doing anything foolish. You laugh, because you

fancy I have some feeling on my own account. But upon my honor, it is not that. I should feel just the same if

"I should say that the marriage must not be decided on until she was of age. And depend upon it, in that case,

it would never come off. I wish you saw it as I doI wish you would talk to Brooke about it."

Sir James rose as he was finishing his sentence, for he saw Mrs. Cadwallader entering from the study. She

held by the hand her youngest girl, about five years old, who immediately ran to papa, and was made

"I hear what you are talking about," said the wife. "But you will make no impression on Humphrey. As long

as the fish rise to his bait, everybody is what he ought to be. Bless you, Casaubon has got a troutstream, and

"Well, there is something in that," said the Rector, with his quiet, inward laugh. "It is a very good quality in a

"But seriously," said Sir James, whose vexation had not yet spent itself, "don't you think the Rector might do

"Oh, I told you beforehand what he would say," answered Mrs. Cadwallader, lifting up her eyebrows. "I have

"In the first place," said the Rector, looking rather grave, "it would be nonsensical to expect that I could

convince Brooke, and make him act accordingly. Brooke is a very good fellow, but pulpy; he will run into

"But, my dear Chettam, why should I use my influence to Casaubon's disadvantage, unless I were much surer

than I am that I should be acting for the advantage of Miss Brooke? I know no harm of Casaubon. I don't care

about his Xisuthrus and Feefofum and the rest; but then he doesn't care about my fishingtackle. As to the

line he took on the Catholic Question, that was unexpected; but he has always been civil to me, and I don't

see why I should spoil his sport. For anything I can tell, Miss Brooke may be happier with him than she

"Humphrey! I have no patience with you. You know you would rather dine under the hedge than with

"What has that to do with Miss Brooke's marrying him? She does not do it for my amusement."

"No. Somebody put a drop under a magnifyingglass and it was all semicolons and parentheses," said Mrs.

"Why does he not bring out his book, instead of marrying," said Sir James, with a disgust which he held

"Oh, he dreams footnotes, and they run away with all his brains. They say, when he was a little boy, he made

an abstract of `Hop o' my Thumb,' and he has been making abstracts ever since. Ugh! And that is the man

"Well, he is what Miss Brooke likes," said the Rector. "I don't profess to understand every young lady's

"That would be a different affair. She is NOT my daughter, and I don't feel called upon to interfere. Casaubon

is as good as most of us. He is a scholarly clergyman, and creditable to the cloth. Some Radical fellow

speechifying at Middlemarch said Casaubon was the learned strawchopping incumbent, and Freke was the

brickandmortar incumbent, and I was the angling incumbent. And upon my word, I don't see that one is

worse or better than the other." The Rector ended with his silent laugh. He always saw the joke of any satire

against himself. His conscience was large and easy, like the rest of him: it did only what it could do without

Clearly, there would be no interference with Miss Brooke's marriage through Mr. Cadwallader; and Sir James

felt with some sadness that she was to have perfect liberty of misjudgment. It was a sign of his good

disposition that he did not slacken at all in his intention of carrying out Dorothea's de. sign of the cottages.

Doubtless this persistence was the best course for his own dignity: but pride only helps us to be generous; it

never makes us so, any more than vanity makes us witty. She was now enough aware of Sir James's position

with regard to her, to appreciate the rectitude of his perseverance in a landlord's duty, to which he had at first

been urged by a lover's complaisance, and her pleasure in it was great enough to count for something even in

her present happiness. Per. haps she gave to Sir James Chettam's cottages all the interest she could spare from

Mr. Casaubon, or rather from the symphony of hopeful dreams, admiring trust, and passionate self devotion

which that learned gentleman had set playing in her soul. Hence it happened that in the good baronet's

succeed ing visits, while he was beginning to pay small attentions to Celia, he found himself talking with

more and more pleasure to Dorothea. She was perfectly unconstrained and without irritation towards him

now, and he was gradually discovering the delight there is in frank kindness and companionship between a

Mr. Casaubon's behavior about settlements was highly satisfactory to Mr. Brooke, and the preliminaries of

marriage rolled smoothly along, shortening the weeks of courtship. The betrothed bride must see her future

home, and dictate any changes that she would like to have made there. A woman dictates before marriage in

order that she may have an appetite for submission afterwards. And certainly, the mistakes that we male and

female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.

On a gray but dry November morning Dorothea drove to Lowick in company with her uncle and Celia. Mr.

Casaubon's home was the manorhouse. Close by, visible from some parts of the garden, was the little

church, with the old parsonage opposite. In the beginning of his career, Mr. Casaubon had only held the

living, but the death of his brother had put him in possession of the manor also. It had a small park, with a

fine old oak here and there, and an avenue of limes towards the southwest front, with a sunk fence between

park and pleasureground, so that from the drawingroom windows the glance swept uninterruptedly along a

slope of greensward till the limes ended in a level of corn and pastures, which often seemed to melt into a

lake under the setting sun. This was the happy side of the house, for the south and east looked rather

melancholy even under the brightest morning. The grounds here were more confined, the flowerbeds

showed no very careful tendance, and large clumps of trees, chiefly of sombre yews, had risen high, not ten

yards from the windows. The building, of greenish stone, was in the old English style, not ugly, but

smallwindowed and melancholylooking: the sort of house that must have children, many flowers, open

windows, and little vistas of bright things, to make it seem a joyous home. In this latter end of autumn, with a

sparse remnant of yellow leaves falling slowly athwart the dark evergreens in a stillness without sunshine, the

house too had an air of autumnal decline, and Mr. Casaubon, when he presented himself, had no bloom that

"Oh dear!" Celia said to herself, "I am sure Freshitt Hall would have been pleasanter than this." She thought

of the white freestone, the pillared portico, and the terrace full of flowers, Sir James smiling above them like

a prince issuing from his enchantment in a rosebush, with a handkerchief swiftly metamorphosed from the

most delicately odorous petalsSir James, who talked so agreeably, always about things which had

commonsense in them, and not about learning! Celia had those light young feminine tastes which grave and

weatherworn gentlemen sometimes prefer in a wife; but happily Mr. Casaubon's bias had been different, for

Dorothea, on the contrary, found the house and grounds all that she could wish: the dark bookshelves in the

long library, the carpets and curtains with colors subdued by time, the curious old maps and bird'seye views

on the walls of the corridor, with here and there an old vase below, had no oppression for her, and seemed

more cheerful than the easts and pictures at the Grange, which her uncle had long ago brought home from his

travelsthey being probably among the ideas he had taken in at one time. To poor Dorothea these severe

classical nudities and smirking RenaissanceCorreggiosities were painfully inexplicable, staring into the

midst of her Puritanic conceptions: she had never been taught how she could bring them into any sort of

relevance with her life. But the owners of Lowick apparently had not been travellers, and Mr. Casaubon's

Dorothea walked about the house with delightful emotion. Everything seemed hallowed to her: this was to be

the home of her wifehood, and she looked up with eyes full of confidence to Mr. Casaubon when he drew her

attention specially to some actual arrangement and asked her if she would like an alteration. All appeals to

her taste she met gratefully, but saw nothing to alter. His efforts at exact courtesy and formal tenderness had

no defect for her. She filled up all blanks with unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as she interpreted

the works of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness to the higher harmonies.

And there are many blanks left in the weeks of courtship which a loving faith fills with happy assurance.

"Now, my dear Dorothea, I wish you to favor me by pointing out which room you would like to have as your

boudoir," said Mr. Casaubon, showing that his views of the womanly nature were sufficiently large to include

"It is very kind of you to think of that," said Dorothea, "but I assure you I would rather have all those matters

decided for me. I shall be much happier to take everything as it isjust as you have been used to have it, or

as you will yourself choose it to be. I have no motive for wishing anything else."

Mr. Casaubon led the way thither. The bowwindow looked down the avenue of limes; the furniture was all

of a faded blue, and there were miniatures of ladies and gentlemen with powdered hair hanging in a group. A

piece of tapestry over a door also showed a bluegreen world with a pale stag in it. The chairs and tables

were thinlegged and easy to upset. It was a room where one might fancy the ghost of a tightlaced lady

revisiting the scene of her embroidery. A light bookcase contained duodecimo volumes of polite literature in

"Yes," said Mr. Brooke, "this would be a pretty room with some new hangings, sofas, and that sort of thing.

"No, uncle," said Dorothea, eagerly. "Pray do not speak of altering anything. There are so many other things

in the world that want alteringI like to take these things as they are. And you like them as they are, don't

you?" she added, looking at Mr. Casaubon. "Perhaps this was your mother's room when she was young."

"This is your mother," said Dorothea, who had turned to examine the group of miniatures. "It is like the tiny

one you brought me; only, I should think, a better portrait. And this one opposite, who is this?"

"Her elder sister. They were, like you and your sister, the only two children of their parents, who hang above

"The sister is pretty," said Celia, implying that she thought less favorably of Mr. Casaubon's mother. It was a

new open ing to Celia's imagination, that he came of a family who had all been young in their timethe

"It is a peculiar face," said Dorothea, looking closely. "Those deep gray eyes rather near togetherand the

delicate irregular nose with a sort of ripple in itand all the powdered curls hanging backward. Altogether it

seems to me peculiar rather than pretty. There is not even a family likeness between her and your mother."

Dorothea wondered a little, but felt that it would be indelicate just then to ask for any information which Mr.

Casaubon did not proffer, and she turned to the window to admire the view. The sun had lately pierced the

"And you would like to see the church, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "It is a droll little church. And the

village. It all lies in a nutshell. By the way, it will suit you, Dorothea; for the cottages are like a row of

"Yes, please," said Dorothea, looking at Mr. Casaubon, "I should like to see all that." She had got nothing

They were soon on a gravel walk which led chiefly between grassy borders and clumps of trees, this being

the nearest way to the church, Mr. Casaubon said. At the little gate leading into the churchyard there was a

pause while Mr. Casaubon went to the parsonage close by to fetch a key. Celia, who had been hanging a little

in the rear, came up presently, when she saw that Mr. Casaubon was gone away, and said in her easy staccato,

"There may be a young gardener, you knowwhy not?" said Mr. Brooke. "I told Casaubon he should change

"No, not a gardener," said Celia; "a gentleman with a sketchbook. He had lightbrown curls. I only saw his

"The curate's son, perhaps," said Mr. Brooke. "Ah, there is Casaubon again, and Tucker with him. He is

Mr. Tucker was the middleaged curate, one of the "inferior clergy," who are usually not wanting in sons.

But after the introduction, the conversation did not lead to any question about his family, and the startling

apparition of youthfulness was forgotten by every one but Celia. She inwardly declined to believe that the

lightbrown curls and slim figure could have any relationship to Mr. Tucker, who was just as old and

mustylooking as she would have expected Mr. Casaubon's curate to be; doubtless an excellent man who

would go to heaven (for Celia wished not to be unprincipled), but the corners of his mouth were so

unpleasant. Celia thought with some dismalness of the time she should have to spend as bridesmaid at

Lowick, while the curate had probably no pretty little children whom she could like, irrespective of principle.

Mr. Tucker was invaluable in their walk; and perhaps Mr. Casaubon had not been without foresight on this

head, the curate being able to answer all Dorothea's questions about the villagers and the other parishioners.

Everybody, he assured her, was well off in Lowick: not a cottager in those double cottages at a low rent but

kept a pig, and the strips of garden at the back were well tended. The small boys wore excellent corduroy, the

girls went out as tidy servants, or did a little strawplaiting at home: no looms here, no Dissent; and though

the public disposition was rather towards laying by money than towards spirituality, there was not much vice.

The speckled fowls were so numerous that Mr. Brooke observed, "Your farmers leave some barley for the

women to glean, I see. The poor folks here might have a fowl in their pot, as the good French king used to

wish for all his people. The French eat a good many fowlsskinny fowls, you know."

"I think it was a very cheap wish of his," said Dorothea, indignantly. "Are kings such monsters that a wish

"And if he wished them a skinny fowl," said Celia, "that would not be nice. But perhaps he wished them to

"Yes, but the word has dropped out of the text, or perhaps was subauditum; that is, present in the king's mind,

but not uttered," said Mr. Casaubon, smiling and bending his head towards Celia, who immediately dropped

Dorothea sank into silence on the way back to the house. She felt some disappointment, of which she was yet

ashamed, that there was nothing for her to do in Lowick; and in the next few minutes her mind had glanced

over the possibility, which she would have preferred, of finding that her home would be in a parish which had

a larger share of the world's misery, so that she might have had more active duties in it. Then, recurring to the

future actually before her, she made a picture of more complete devotion to Mr. Casaubon's aims in which

she would await new duties. Many such might reveal themselves to the higher knowledge gained by her in

Mr. Tucker soon left them, having some clerical work which would not allow him to lunch at the Hall; and as

"You seem a little sad, Dorothea. I trust you are pleased with what you have seen."

"I am feeling something which is perhaps foolish and wrong," answered Dorothea, with her usual

openness"almost wishing that the people wanted more to be done for them here. I have known so few

ways of making my life good for anything. Of course, my notions of usefulness must be narrow. I must learn

"Doubtless," said Mr. Casaubon. "Each position has its corresponding duties. Yours, I trust, as the mistress of

"Indeed, I believe that," said Dorothea, earnestly. "Do not suppose that I am sad."

"That is well. But, if you are not tired, we will take another way to the house than that by which we came."

Dorothea was not at all tired, and a little circuit was made towards a fine yewtree, the chief hereditary glory

of the grounds on this side of the house. As they approached it, a figure, conspicuous on a dark background of

evergreens, was seated on a bench, sketching the old tree. Mr. Brooke, who was walking in front with Celia,

"That is a young relative of mine, a second cousin: the grandson, in fact," he added, looking at Dorothea, "of

The young man had laid down his sketchbook and risen. His bushy lightbrown curls, as well as his

"Dorothea, let me introduce to you my cousin, Mr. Ladislaw. Will, this is Miss Brooke."

The cousin was so close now, that, when he lifted his hat, Dorothea could see a pair of gray eves rather near

together, a delicate irregular nose with a little ripple in it, and hair falling backward; but there was a mouth

and chin of a more prominent, threatening aspect than belonged to the type of the grandmother's miniature.

Young Ladislaw did not feel it necessary to smile, as if he were charmed with this introduction to his future

"You are an artist, I see," said Mr. Brooke, taking up the sketchbook and turning it over in his

"No, I only sketch a little. There is nothing fit to be seen there," said young Ladislaw, coloring, perhaps with

"Oh, come, this is a nice bit, now. I did a little in this way myself at one time, you know. Look here, now; this

is what I call a nice thing, done with what we used to call BRIO." Mr. Brooke held out towards the two girls a

"I am no judge of these things," said Dorothea, not coldly, but with an eager deprecation of the appeal to her.

"You know, uncle, I never see the beauty of those pictures which you say are so much praised. They are a

language I do not understand. I suppose there is some relation between pictures and nature which I am too

ignorant to feeljust as you see what a Greek sentence stands for which means nothing to me." Dorothea

looked up at Mr. Casaubon, who bowed his head towards her, while Mr. Brooke said, smiling

"Bless me, now, how different people are! But you had a bad style of teaching, you knowelse this is just

the thing for girlssketching, fine art and so on. But you took to drawing plans; you don't understand

morbidezza, and that kind of thing. You will come to my house, I hope, and I will show you what I did in this

way," he continued, turning to young Ladislaw, who had to be recalled from his preoccupation in observing

Dorothea. Ladislaw had made up his mind that she must be an unpleasant girl, since she was going to marry

Casaubon, and what she said of her stupidity about pictures would have confirmed that opinion even if he had

believed her. As it was, he took her words for a covert judgment, and was certain that she thought his sketch

detestable. There was too much cleverness in her apology: she was laughing both at her uncle and himself.

But what a voice! It was like the voice of a soul that had once lived in an AEolian harp. This must be one of

Nature's inconsistencies. There could be no sort of passion in a girl who would marry Casaubon. But he

"We will turn over my Italian engravings together," continued that goodnatured man. "I have no end of

those things, that I have laid by for years. One gets rusty in this part of the country, you know. Not you,

Casaubon; you stick to your studies; but my best ideas get undermostout of use, you know. You clever

young men must guard against indolence. I was too indolent, you know: else I might have been anywhere at

"That is a seasonable admonition," said Mr. Casaubon; "but now we will pass on to the house, lest the young

When their backs were turned, young Ladislaw sat down to go on with his sketching, and as he did so his face

broke into an expression of amusement which increased as he went on drawing, till at last he threw back his

head and laughed aloud. Partly it was the reception of his own artistic production that tickled him; partly the

notion of his grave cousin as the lover of that girl; and partly Mr. Brooke's definition of the place he might

have held but for the impediment of indolence. Mr. Will Ladislaw's sense of the ludicrous lit up his features

very agreeably: it was the pure enjoyment of comicality, and had no mixture of sneering and selfexaltation.

"What is your nephew going to do with himself, Casaubon?" said Mr. Brooke, as they went on.

"The answer to that question is painfully doubtful. On leaving Rugby he declined to go to an English

university, where I would gladly have placed him, and chose what I must consider the anomalous course of

studying at Heidelberg. And now he wants to go abroad again, without any special object, save the vague

purpose of what he calls culture, preparation for he knows not what. He declines to choose a profession."

"I have always given him and his friends reason to understand that I would furnish in moderation what was

necessary for providing him with a scholarly education, and launching him respectably. I amtherefore bound

to fulfil the expectation so raised," said Mr. Casaubon, putting his conduct in the light of mere rectitude: a

"He has a thirst for travelling; perhaps he may turn out a Bruce or a Mungo Park," said Mr. Brooke. "I had a

"No, he has no bent towards exploration, or the enlargement of our geognosis: that would be a special

purpose which I could recognize with some approbation, though without felicitating him on a career which so

often ends in premature and violent death. But so far is he from having any desire for a more accurate

knowledge of the earth's surface, that he said he should prefer not to know the sources of the Nile, and that

there should be some unknown regions preserved as hunting grounds for the poetic imagination."

"Well, there is something in that, you know," said Mr. Brooke, who had certainly an impartial mind.

"It is, I fear, nothing more than a part of his general inaccuracy and indisposition to thoroughness of all kinds,

which would be a bad augury for him in any profession, civil or sacred, even were he so far submissive to

"Perhaps he has conscientious scruples founded on his own unfitness," said Dorothea, who was interesting

herself in finding a favorable explanation. "Because the law and medicine should be very serious professions

"Doubtless; but I fear that my young relative Will Ladislaw is chiefly determined in his aversion to these

callings by a dislike to steady application, and to that kind of acquirement which is needful instrumentally,

but is not charming or immediately inviting to selfindulgent taste. I have insisted to him on what Aristotle

has stated with admirable brevity, that for the achievement of any work regarded as an end there must be a

prior exercise of many energies or acquired facilities of a secondary order, demanding patience. I have

pointed to my own manuscript volumes, which represent the toil of years preparatory to a work not yet

accomplished. But in vain. To careful reasoning of this kind he replies by calling himself Pegasus, and every

Celia laughed. She was surprised to find that Mr. Casaubon could say something quite amusing.

"Well, you know, he may turn out a Byron, a Chatterton, a Churchillthat sort of thingthere's no telling,"

said Mr. Brooke. "Shall you let him go to Italy, or wherever else he wants to go?"

"Yes; I have agreed to furnish him with moderate supplies for a year or so; he asks no more. I shall let him be

"That is very kind of you," said Dorothea, looking up at Mr. Casaubon with delight. "It is noble. After all,

people may really have in them some vocation which is not quite plain to themselves, may they not? They

may seem idle and weak because they are growing. We should be very patient with each other, I think."

"I suppose it is being engaged to be married that has made you think patience good," said Celia, as soon as

"Yes; when people don't do and say just what you like." Celia had become less afraid of "saying things" to

Dorothea since this engagement: cleverness seemed to her more pitiable than ever.

Young Ladislaw did not pay that visit to which Mr. Brooke had invited him, and only six days afterwards Mr.

Casaubon mentioned that his young relative had started for the Continent, seeming by this cold vagueness to

waive inquiry. Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any more precise destination than the entire area of

Europe. Genius, he held, is necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the utmost play for

its spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await those messages from the universe which summon it to

its peculiar work, only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime chances. The attitudes of

receptivity are various, and Will had sincerely tried many of them. He was not excessively fond of wine, but

he had several times taken too much, simply as an experiment in that form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he

was faint, and then supped on lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly original

had resulted from these measures; and the effects of the opium had convinced him that there was an entire

dissimilarity between his constitution and De Quincey's. The superadded circumstance which would evolve

the genius had not yet come; the universe had not yet beckoned. Even Caesar's fortune at one time was, but a

grand presentiment. We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be

disguised in helpless embryos.In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs

called possibilities. Will saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing no chick, and

but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose plodding application, rows of notebooks, and

small taper of learned theory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a moral entirely

encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the intentions of the universe with regard to himself. He held that

reliance to be a mark of genius; and certainly it is no mark to the contrary; genius consisting neither in

selfconceit nor in humility, but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, but something in

particular. Let him start for the Continent, then, without our pronouncing on his future. Among all forms of

But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment interests me more in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to

his young cousin. If to Dorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere occasion which had set alight the fine

inflammable material of her youthful illusions, does it follow that he was fairly represented in the minds of

those less impassioned personages who have hitherto delivered their judgments concerning him? I protest

against any absolute conclusion, any prejudice derived from Mrs. Cadwallader's contempt for a neighboring

clergyman's alleged greatness of soul, or Sir James Chettam's poor opinion of his rival's legs,from Mr.

Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or from Celia's criticism of a middleaged scholar's personal

appearance. I am not sure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary superlative existed, could

escape these unfavorable reflections of himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his

portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking

for himself, has rather a chilling rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or fine feeling

in him. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of hieroglyphs write detestable verses? Has the theory

of the solar system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact? Suppose we turn from

outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener interest, what is the report of his own consciousness about

his doings or capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors; what fading of hopes, or what

deeper fixity of selfdelusion the years are marking off within him; and with what spirit he wrestles against

universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and bring his heart to its final pause. Doubtless

his lot is important in his own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place in our

consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer him to the Divine regard with perfect

confidence; nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he may

have got from us. Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre of his own world; if he was liable to think that others

were providentially made for him, and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness for the author of

a "Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not quite alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals,

Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched him more nearly than it did any one of the

persons who have hitherto shown their disapproval of it, and in the present stage of things I feel more

tenderly towards his experience of success than towards the disappointment of the amiable Sir James. For in

truth, as the day fixed for his marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find his spirits rising; nor did the

contemplation of that matrimonial garden scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was to be

bordered with flowers, prove persistently more enchanting bo him than the accustomed vaults where he

walked taper in hand. He did not confess to himself, still less could he have breathed to another, his surprise

that though he had won a lovely and noblehearted girl he had not won delight,which he had also regarded

as an object to be found by search. It is true that he knew all the classical passages implying the contrary; but

knowing classical passages, we find, is a mode of motion, which explains why they leave so little extra force

Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studious bachelorhood had stored up for him a compound

interest of enjoyment, and that large drafts on his affections would not fail to be honored; for we all of us,

grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them. And now he

was in danger of being saddened by the very conviction that his circumstances were unusually happy: there

was nothing external by which he could account for a certain blankness of sensibility which came over him

just when his expectant gladness should have been most lively, just when he exchanged the accustomed

dulness of his Lowick library for his visits to the Grange. Here was a weary experience in which he was as

utterly condemned to loneliness as in the despair which sometimes threatened him while toiling in the morass

of authorship without seeming nearer to the goal. And his was that worst loneliness which would shrink from

sympathy. He could not but wish that Dorothea should think him not less happy than the world would expect

her successful suitor to be; and in relation to his authorship he leaned on her young trust and veneration, he

liked to draw forth her fresh interest in listening, as a means of encouragement to himself: in talking to her he

presented all his performance and intention with the reflected confidence of the pedagogue, and rid himself

for the time of that chilling ideal audience which crowded his laborious uncreative hours with the vaporous

For to Dorothea, after that toybox history of the world adapted to young ladies which had made the chief

part of her education, Mr. Casaubon's talk about his great book was full of new vistas; and this sense of

revelation, this surprise of a nearer introduction to Stoics and Alexandrians, as people who had ideas not

totally unlike her own, kept in abeyance for the time her usual eagerness for a binding theory which could

bring her own life and doctrine into strict connection with that amazing past, and give the remotest sources of

knowledge some bearing on her actions. That more complete teaching would comeMr. Casaubon would

tell her all that: she was looking forward to higher initiation in ideas, as she was looking forward to marriage,

and blending her dim conceptions of both. It would be a great mistake to suppose that Dorothea would have

cared about any share in Mr. Casaubon's learning as mere accomplishment; for though opinion in the

neighborhood of Freshitt and Tipton had pronounced her clever, that epithet would not have described her to

circles in whose more precise vocabulary cleverness implies mere aptitude for knowing and doing, apart from

character. All her eagerness for acquirement lay within that full current of sympathetic motive in which her

ideas and impulses were habitually swept along. She did not want to deck herself with knowledgeto wear it

loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action; and if she had written a book she must have done it as

Saint Theresa did, under the command of an authority that constrained her conscience. But something she

yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at once rational and ardent; and since the time was

gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer heightened yearning but not instruction, what

lamp was there but knowledge? Surely learned men keptthe only oil; and who more learned than Mr.

Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea's joyous grateful expectation was unbroken, and however her lover might

occasionally be conscious of flatness, he could never refer it to any slackening of her affectionate interest.

The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extending the wedding journey as far as Rome, and

Mr. Casaubon was anxious for this because he wished to inspect some manuscripts in the Vatican.

"I still regret that your sister is not to accompany us," he said one morning, some time after it had been

ascertained that Celia objected to go, and that Dorothea did not wish for her companionship. "You will have

many lonely hours, Dorotheas, for I shall be constrained to make the utmost use of my time during our stay in

The words "I should feel more at liberty" grated on Dorothea. For the first time in speaking to Mr. Casaubon

"You must have misunderstood me very much," she said, "if you think I should not enter into the value of

your timeif you think that I should not willingly give up whatever interfered with your using it to the best

"That is very amiable in you, my dear Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon, not in the least noticing that she was

hurt; "but if you had a lady as your companion, I could put you both under the care of a cicerone, and we

"I beg you will not refer to this again," said Dorothea, rather haughtily. But immediately she feared that she

was wrong, and turning towards him she laid her hand on his, adding in a different tone, "Pray do not be

anxious about me. I shall have so much to think of when I am alone. And Tantripp will be a sufficient

companion, just to take care of me. I could not bear to have Celia: she would be miserable."

It was time to dress. There was to be a dinnerparty that day, the last of the parties which were held at the

Grange as proper preliminaries to the wedding, and Dorothea was glad of a reason for moving away at once

on the sound of the bell, as if she needed more than her usual amount of preparation. She was ashamed of

being irritated from some cause she could not define even to herse1f; for though she had no intention to be

untruthful, her reply had not touched the real hurt within her. Mr. Casaubon's words had been quite

reasonable, yet they had brought a vague instantaneous sense of aloofness on his part.

"Surely I am in a strangely selfish weak state of mind," she said to herself. "How can I have a husband who is

Having convinced herself that Mr. Casaubon was altogether right, she recovered her equanimity, and was an

agreeable image of serene dignity when she came into the drawingroom in her silvergray dressthe

simple lines of her darkbrown hair parted over her brow and coiled massively behind, in keeping with the

entire absence from her manner and expression of all search after mere effect. Sometimes when Dorothea was

in company, there seemed to be as complete an air of repose about her as if she had been a picture of Santa

Barbara looking out from her tower into the clear air; but these intervals of quietude made the energy of her

She was naturally the subject of many observations this evening, for the dinnerparty was large and rather

more miscellaneous as to the male portion than any which had been held at the Grange since Mr. Brooke's

nieces had resided with him, so that the talking was done in duos and trios more or less inharmonious. There

was the newly elected mayor of Middlemarch, who happened to be a manufacturer; the philanthropic banker

his brotherinlaw, who predominated so much in the town that some called him a Methodist, others a

hypocrite, according to the resources of their vocabulary; and there were various professional men. In fact,

Mrs. Cadwallader said that Brooke was beginning to treat the Middlemarchers, and that she preferred the

farmers at the tithedinner, who drank her health unpretentiously, and were not ashamed of their

grandfathers' furniture. For in that part of the country, before reform had done its notable part in developing

the political consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of parties; so that

Mr. Brooke's miscellaneous invitations seemed to belong to that general laxity which came from his

Already, as Miss Brooke passed out of the diningroom, opportunity was found for some interjectional

"A fine woman, Miss Brooke! an uncommonly fine woman, by God!" said Mr. Standish, the old lawyer, who

had been so long concerned with the landed gentry that he had become landed himself, and used that oath in a

deepmouthed manner as a sort of armorial bearings, stamping the speech of a man who held a good

Mr. Bulstrode, the banker, seemed to be addressed, but that gentleman disliked coarseness and profanity, and

merely bowed. The remark was taken up by Mr. Chichely, a middleaged bachelor and coursing celebrity,

who had a complexion something like an Easter egg, a few hairs carefully arranged, and a carriage implying

"Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us. There should

be a little filigree about a womansomething of the coquette. A man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a

"There's some truth in that," said Mr. Standish, disposed to be genial. "And, by God, it's usually the way with

them. I suppose it answers some wise ends: Providence made them so, eh, Bulstrode?"

"I should be disposed to refer coquetry to another source," said Mr. Bulstrode. "I should rather refer it to the

"Ay, to be sure, there should be a little devil in a woman," said Mr. Chichely, whose study of the fair sex

seemed to have been detrimental to his theology. "And I like them blond, with a certain gait, and a swan

neck. Between ourselves, the mayor's daughter is more to my taste than Miss Brooke or Miss Celia either. If I

"Well, make up, make up," said Mr. Standish, jocosely; "you see the middleaged fellows early the day."

Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to incur the certainty of being accepted

The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely's ideal was of course not present; for Mr. Brooke,

always objecting to go too far, would not have chosen that his nieces should meet the daughter of a

Middlemarch manufacturer, unless it were on a public occasion. The feminine part of the company included

none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs. Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel's widow, was

not only unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on the ground of her complaint, which

puzzled the doctors, and seemed clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might need the

supplement of quackery. Lady Chettam, who attributed her own remarkable health to homemade bitters

united with constant medical attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew's

account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her case of all, strengthening medicines.

"Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear?" said the mild but stately dowager, turning to

"It strengthens the disease," said the Rector's wife, much too wellborn not to be an amateur in medicine.

"Everything depends on the constitution: some people make fat, some blood, and some bilethat's my view

"Then she ought to take medicines that would reducereduce the disease, you know, if you are right, my

"Certainly it is reasonable. You have two sorts of potatoes, fed on the same soil. One of them grows more and

"Ah! like this poor Mrs. Renfrewthat is what I think. Dropsy! There is no swelling yetit is inward. I

should say she ought to take drying medicines, shouldn't you?or a dry hotair bath. Many things might be

"Let her try a certain person's pamphlets," said Mrs. Cadwallader in an undertone, seeing the gentlemen enter.

"Who, my dear?" said Lady Chettam, a charming woman, not so quick as to nullify the pleasure of

"The bridegroomCasaubon. He has certainly been drying up faster since the engagement: the flame of

"I should think he is far from having a good constitution," said Lady Chettam, with a still deeper undertone.

"Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a death's head skinned over for the occasion. Mark my words:

in a year from this time that girl will hate him. She looks up to him as an oracle now, and byandby she will

"How very shocking! I fear she is headstrong. But tell meyou know all about himis there anything very

"The truth? he is as bad as the wrong physicnasty to take, and sure to disagree."

"There could not be anything worse than that," said Lady Chettam, with so vivid a conception of the physic

that she seemed to have learned something exact about Mr. Casaubon's disadvantages. "However, James will

"That is a generous makebelieve of his. Depend upon it, he likes little Celia better, and she appreciates him.

"Certainly; she is fonder of geraniums, and seems more docile, though not so fine a figure. But we were

talking of physic. Tell me about this new young surgeon, Mr. Lydgate. I am told he is wonderfully clever: he

"Yes. Mr. Brooke says he is one of the Lydgates of Northumberland, really well connected. One does not

expect it in a practitioner of that kind. For my own part, I like a medical man more on a footing with the

servants; they are often all the cleverer. I assure you I found poor Hicks's judgment unfailing; I never knew

him wrong. He was coarse and butcherlike, but he knew my constitution. It was a loss to me his going off so

suddenly. Dear me, what a very animated conversation Miss Brooke seems to be having with this Mr.

"She is talking cottages and hospitals with him," said Mrs. Cadwallader, whose ears and power of

interpretation were quick. "I believe he is a sort of philanthropist, so Brooke is sure to take him up."

"James," said Lady Chettam when her son came near, "bring Mr. Lydgate and introduce him to me. I want to

The affable dowager declared herself delighted with this opportunity of making Mr. Lydgate's acquaintance,

Mr. Lydgate had the medical accomplishment of looking perfectly grave whatever nonsense was talked to

him, and his dark steady eyes gave him impressiveness as a listener. He was as little as possible like the

lamented Hicks, especially in a certain careless refinement about his toilet and utterance. Yet Lady Chettam

gathered much confidence in him. He confirmed her view of her own constitution as being peculiar, by

admitting that all constitutions might be called peculiar, and he did not deny that hers might be more peculiar

than others. He did not approve of a too lowering system, including reckless cupping, nor, on the other hand,

of incessant port wine and bark. He said "I think so" with an air of so much deference accompanying the

"I am quite pleased with your protege," she said to Mr. Brooke before going away.

"This young Lydgate, the new doctor.He seems to me to understand his profession admirably."

"Oh, Lydgate! he is not my protege, you know; only I knew an uncle of his who sent me a letter about him.

However, I think he is likely to be firstratehas studied in Paris, knew Broussais; has ideas, you

"Lydgate has lots of ideas, quite new, about ventilation and diet, that sort of thing," resumed Mr. Brooke,

after he had handed out Lady Chettam, and had returned to be civil to a group of Middlemarchers.

"Hang it, do you think that is quite sound?upsetting The old treatment, which has made Englishmen what

"Medical knowledge is at a low ebb among us," said Mr. Bulstrode, who spoke in a subdued tone, and had

rather a sickly wir "I, for my part, hail the advent of Mr. Lydgate. I hope to find good reason for confiding the

"That is all very fine," replied Mr. Standish, who was not fond of Mr. Bulstrode; "if you like him to try

experiments on your hospital patients, and kill a few people for charity I have no objection. But I am not

going to hand money out of my purse to have experiments tried on me. I like treatment that has been tested a

"Well, you know, Standish, every dose you take is an experimentan experiment, you know," said Mr.

"Oh, if you talk in that sense!" said Mr. Standish, with as much disgust at such nonlegal quibbling as a man

"I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me without reducing me to a skeleton, like poor Grainger,"

said Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a florid man, who would have served for a study of flesh in striking contrast with

the Franciscan tints of Mr. Bulstrode. "It's an uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding

against the shafts of disease, as somebody said,and I think it a very good expression myself."

Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing. He had quitted the party early, and would have thought it

altogether tedious but for the novelty of certain introductions, especially the introduction to Miss Brooke,

whose youthful bloom, with her approaching marriage to that faded scholar, and her interest in matters

"She is a good creaturethat fine girlbut a little too earnest," he thought. "It is troublesome to talk to such

women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question,

and usually fall hack on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste."

Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate's style of woman any more than Mr. Chichely's. Considered,

indeed, in relation to the latter, whose mied was matured, she was altogether a mistake, and calculated to

shock his trust in final causes, including the adaptation of fine young women to purplefaced bachelors. But

Lydgate was less ripe, and might possibly have experience before him which would modify his opinion as to

Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of these gentlemen under her maiden name. Not long

after that dinnerparty she had become Mrs. Casaubon, and was on her way to Rome.

Lydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fascinated by a woman strikingly different from Miss

Brooke: he did not in the least suppose that he had lost his balance and fallen in love, but he had said of that

particular woman, "She is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely and accomplished. That is what a woman ought

to be: she ought to produce the effect of exquisite music." Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe

facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science. But Rosamond Vincy seemed to have

the true melodic charm; and when a man has seen the woman whom he would have chosen if he had intended

to marry speedily, his remaining a bachelor will usually depend on her resolution rather than on his. Lydgate

believed that he should not marry for several years: not marry until he had trodden out a good clear path for

himself away from the broad road which was quite ready made. He had seen Miss Vincy above his horizon

almost as long as it had taken Mr. Casaubon to become engaged and married: but this learned gentleman was

possessed of a fortune; he had assembled his voluminous notes, and had made that sort of reputation which

precedes performance,often the larger part of a man's fame. He took a wife, as we have seen, to adorn the

remaining quadrant of his course, and be a little moon that would cause hardly a calculable perturbation. But

Lydgate was young, poor, ambitious. He had his halfcentury before him instead of behind him, and he had

come to Middlemarch bent on doing many things that were not directly fitted to make his fortune or even

secure him a good income. To a man under such circumstances, taking a wife is something more than a

question of adornment, however highly he may rate this; and Lydgate was disposed to give it the first place

among wifely functions. To his taste, guided by a single conversation, here was the point on which Miss

Brooke would be found wanting, notwithstanding her undeniable beauty. She did not look at things from the

proper feminine angle. The society of such women was about as relaxing as going from your work to teach

the second form, instead of reclining in a paradise with sweet laughs for birdnotes, and blue eyes for a

Certainly nothing at present could seem much less important to Lydgate than the turn of Miss Brooke's mind,

or to Miss Brooke than the qualities of the woman who had attracted this young surgeon. But any one

watching keenly the stealthy convergence of human lots, sees a slow preparation of effects from one life on

another, which tells like a calculated irony on the indifference or the frozen stare with which we look at our

unintroduced neighbor. Destiny stands by sarcastic with our dramatis personae folded in her hand.

Old provincial society had its share of this subtle movement: had not only its striking downfalls, its brilliant

young professional dandies who ended by living up an entry with a drab and six children for their

establishment, but also those less marked vicissitudes which are constantly shifting the boundaries of social

intercourse, and begetting new consciousness of interdependence. Some slipped a little downward, some got

higher footing: people denied aspirates, gained wealth, and fastidious gentlemen stood for boroughs; some

were caught in political currents, some in ecclesiastical, and perhaps found themselves surprisingly grouped

in consequence; while a few personages or families that stood with rocky firmness amid all this fluctuation,

were slowly presenting new aspects in spite of solidity, and altering with the double change of self and

beholder. Municipal town and rural parish gradually made fresh threads of connectiongradually, as the old

stocking gave way to the savingsbank, and the worship of the solar guinea became extinct; while squires

and baronets, and even lords who had once lived blamelessly afar from the civic mind, gathered the faultiness

of closer acquaintanceship. Settlers, too, came from distant counties, some with an alarming novelty of skill,

others with an offensive advantage in cunning. In fact, much the same sort of movement and mixture went on

in old England as we find in older Herodotus, who also, in telling what had been, thought it well to take a

woman's lot for his startingpoint; though Io, as a maiden apparently beguiled by attractive merchandise, was

the reverse of Miss Brooke, and in this respect perhaps bore more resemblance to Rosamond Vincy, who had

excellent taste in costume, with that nymphlike figure and pure blindness which give the largest range to

choice in the flow and color of drapery. But these things made only part of her charm. She was admitted to be

the flower of Mrs. Lemon's school, the chief school in the county, where the teaching included all that was

demanded in the accomplished femaleeven to extras, such as the getting in and out of a carriage. Mrs.

Lemon herself had always held up Miss Vincy as an example: no pupil, she said, exceeded that young lady

for mental acquisition and propriety of speech, while her musical execution was quite exceptional. We cannot

help the way in which people speak of us, and probably if Mrs. Lemon had undertaken to describe Juliet or

Imogen, these heroines would not have seemed poetical. The first vision of Rosamond would have been

Lydgate could not be long in Middlemarch without having that agreeable vision, or even without making the

acquaintance of the Vincy family; for though Mr. Peacock, whose practice he had paid something to enter on,

had not been their doctor (Mrs. Vincy not liking the lowering system adopted by him), he had many patients

among their connections and acquaintances. For who of any consequence in Middlemarch was not connected

or at least acquainted with the Vincys? They were old manufacturers, and had kept a good house for three

generations, in which there had naturally been much intermarrying with neighbors more or less decidedly

genteel. Mr. Vincy's sister had made a wealthy match in accepting Mr. Bulstrode, who, however, as a man

not born in the town, and altogether of dimly known origin, was considered to have done well in uniting

himself with a real Middlemarch family; on the other hand, Mr. Vincy had descended a little, having taken an

innkeeper's daughter. But on this side too there was a cheering sense of money; for Mrs. Vincy's sister had

been second wife to rich old Mr. Featherstone, and had died childless years ago, so that her nephews and

nieces might be supposed to touch the affections of the widower. And it happened that Mr. Bulstrode and Mr.

Featherstone, two of Peacock's most important patients, had, from different causes, given an especially good

reception to his successor, who had raised some partisanship as well as discussion. Mr. Wrench, medical

attendant to the Vincy family, very early had grounds for thinking lightly of Lydgate's professional

discretion, and there was no report about him which was not retailed at the Vincys', where visitors were

frequent. Mr. Vincy was more inclined to general goodfellowship than to taking sides, but there was no

need for him to be hasty in making any new man acquaintance. Rosamond silently wished that her father

would invite Mr. Lydgate. She was tired of the faces and figures she had always been used tothe various

irregular profiles and gaits and turns of phrase distinguishing those Middlemarch young men whom she had

known as boys. She had been at school with girls of higher position, whose brothers, she felt sure, it would

have been possible for her to be more interested in, than in these inevitable Middlemarch companions. But

she would not have chosen to mention her wish to her father; and he, for his part, was in no hurry on the

subject. An alderman about to be mayor must byandby enlarge his dinnerparties, but at present there were

That table often remained covered with the relics of the family breakfast long after Mr. Vincy had gone with

his second son to the warehouse, and when Miss Morgan was already far on in morning lessons with the

younger girls in the schoolroom. It awaited the family laggard, who found any sort of inconvenience (to

others) less disagreeable than getting up when he was called. This was the case one morning of the October in

which we have lately seen Mr. Casaubon visiting the Grange; and though the room was a little overheated

with the fire, which had sent the spaniel panting to a remote corner, Rosamond, for some reason, continued to

sit at her embroidery longer than usual, now and then giving herself a little shake, and laying her work on her

knee to contemplate it with an air of hesitating weariness. Her mamma, who had returned from an excursion

to the kitchen, sat on the other side of the small worktable with an air of more entire placidity, until, the

clock again giving notice that it was going to strike, she looked up from the lacemending which was

"Knock at Mr. Fred's door again, Pritchard, and tell him it has struck halfpast ten."

This was said without any change in the radiant goodhumor of Mrs. Vincy's face, in which fortyfive years

had delved neither angles nor parallels; and pushing back her pink capstrings, she let her work rest on her lap,

"Mamma," said Rosamond, "when Fred comes down I wish you would not let him have red herrings. I cannot

"Oh, my dear, you are so hard on your brothers! It is the only fault I have to find with you. You are the

"Oh, my dear, you must allow for young men. Be thankful if they have good hearts. A woman must learn to

"Don't decry your own brother, my dear. Few young men have less against them, although he couldn't take

his degreeI'm sure I can't understand why, for he seems to me most clever. And you know yourself he was

thought equal to the best society at college. So particular as you are, my dear, I wonder you are not glad to

have such a gentlemanly young man for a brother. You are always finding fault with Bob because he is not

"Well, my dear, you will not find any Middlemarch young man who has not something against him."

"But"here Rosamond's face broke into a smile which suddenly revealed two dimples. She herself thought

unfavorably of these dimples and smiled little in general society. "But I shall not marry any Middlemarch

"So it seems, my love, for you have as good as refused the pick of them; and if there's better to be had, I'm

"Why, that seems just as plain and common. If I had had time to think, I should have said, `the most superior

"What must Rosy know, mother?" said Mr. Fred, who had slid in unobserved through the halfopen door

while the ladies were bending over their work, and now going up to the fire stood with his back towards it,

"Whether it's right to say `superior young men,'" said Mrs. Vincy, ringing the bell.

"Oh, there are so many superior teas and sugars now. Superior is getting to be shopkeepers' slang."

"I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang

"Aha, Miss Rosy, you don't know Homer from slang. I shall invent a new game; I shall write bits of slang and

"Dear me, how amusing it is to hear young people talk!" said Mrs. Vincy, with cheerful admiration.

"Have you got nothing else for my breakfast, Pritchard?" said Fred, to the servant who brought in coffee and

buttered toast; while he walked round the table surveying the ham, potted beef, and other cold remnants, with

"Really, Fred," said Rosamond, when the servant had left the room, "if you must have hot things for

breakfast, I wish you would come down earlier. You can get up at six o'clock to go out hunting; I cannot

"That is your want of understanding, Rosy. I can get up to go hunting because I like it."

"What would you think of me if I came down two hours after every one else and ordered grilled bone?"

"I should think you were an uncommonly fast young lady," said Fred, eating his toast with the utmost

"I cannot see why brothers are to make themselves disagreeable, any more than sisters."

"I don't make myself disagreeable; it is you who find me so. Disagreeable is a word that describes your

"Not at all. It describes a sensation in your little nose associated with certain finicking notions which are the

classics of Mrs. Lemon's school. Look at my mother you don't see her objecting to everything except what

"Bless you both, my dears, and don't quarrel," said Mrs. Vincy, with motherly cordiality. "Come, Fred, tell us

"Pretty well, I think. He asks Lydgate all sorts of questions and then screws up his face while he hears the

answers, as if they were pinching his toes. That's his way. Ah, here comes my grilled bone."

"But how came you to stay out so late, my dear? You only said you were going to your uncle's."

"And what do you think of him? He is very gentlemanly, I suppose. They say he is of excellent familyhis

"Yes," said Fred. "There was a Lydgate at John's who spent no end of money. I find this man is a second

"It always makes a difference, though, to be of good family," said Rosamond, with a tone of decision which

showed that she had thought on this subject. Rosamond felt that she might have been happier if she had not

been the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer. She disliked anything which reminded her that her

mother's father had been an innkeeper. Certainly any one remembering the fact might think that Mrs. Vincy

had the air of a very handsome goodhumored landlady, accustomed to the most capricious orders of

"I thought it was odd his name was Tertius," said the brightfaced matron, "but of course it's a name in the

"Why, my dear, doctors must have opinions," said Mrs. Vincy. "What are they there for else?"

"Yes, mother, the opinions they are paid for. But a prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his

"I suppose Mary Garth admires Mr. Lydgate," said Rosamond, not without a touch of innuendo.

"Really, I can't say." said Fred, rather glumly, as he left the table, and taking up a novel which he had brought

down with him, threw himself into an armchair. "If you are jealous of her, go oftener to Stone Court

"I wish you would not be so vulgar, Fred. If you have finished, pray ring the bell."

"It is true, thoughwhat your brother says, Rosamond," Mrs. Vincy began, when the servant had cleared the

table. "It is a thousand pities you haven't patience to go and see your uncle more, so proud of you as he is,

and wanted you to live with him. There's no knowing what he might have done for you as well as for Fred.

God knows, I'm fond of having you at home with me, but I can part with my children for their good. And

now it stands to reason that your uncle Featherstone will do something for Mary Garth."

"Mary Garth can bear being at Stone Court, because she likes that better than being a governess," said

Rosamond, folding up her work. "I would rather not have anything left to me if I must earn it by enduring

"He can't be long for this world, my dear; I wouldn't hasten his end, but what with asthma and that inward

complaint, let us hope there is something better for him in another. And I have no illwill toward's Mary

Garth, but there's justice to be thought of. And Mr. Featherstone's first wife brought him no money, as my

sister did. Her nieces and nephews can't have so much claim as my sister's. And I must say I think Mary

"Every one would not agree with you there, mother," said Fred, who seemed to be able to read and listen too.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, wheeling skilfully, "if she HAD some fortune left her,a man marries his

wife's relations, and the Garths are so poor, and live in such a small way. But I shall leave you to your

"Fred's studies are not very deep," said Rosamond, rising with her mamma, "he is only reading a novel."

"Well, well, byandby he'll go to his Latin and things," said Mrs. Vincy, soothingly, stroking her son's head.

"There's a fire in the smokingroom on purpose. It's your father's wish, you knowFred, my dearand I

"I suppose you are not going out riding today?" said Rosamond, lingering a little after her mamma was

"You can go with me tomorrow, if you like. Only I am going to Stone Court, remember."

"I want to ride so much, it is indifferent to me where we go." Rosamond really wished to go to Stone Court,

"Oh, I say, Rosy," said Fred, as she was passing out of the room, "if you are going to the piano, let me come

"Really, Fred, I wish you would leave off playing the flute. A man looks very silly playing the flute. And you

"When next any one makes love to you, Miss Rosamond, I will tell him how obliging you are."

"Why should you expect me to oblige you by hearing you play the flute, any more than I should expect you to

This question led to an adjustment, for Rosamond had set her mind on that particular ride.

So Fred was gratified with nearly an hour's practice of "Ar hyd y nos," "Ye banks and braes," and other

favorite airs from his "Instructor on the Flute;" a wheezy performance, into which he threw much ambition

The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, lay through a pretty bit of

midland landscape, almost all meadows and pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty

and to spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the

eyes that have looked on them from childhood: the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees

leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in midpasture; the high bank where the ashtrees

grew; the sudden slope of the old marlpit making a red background for the burdock; the huddled roofs and

ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the

bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys with wondrous

modulations of light and shadow such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more

beautiful. These are the things that make the gamut of joy in landscape to midlandbred soulsthe things

they toddled among, or perhaps learned by heart standing between their father's knees while he drove

But the road, even the byroad, was excellent; for Lowick, as we have seen, was not a parish of muddy lanes

and poor tenants; and it was into Lowick parish that Fred and Rosamond entered after a couple of miles'

riding. Another mile would bring them to Stone Court, and at the end of the first half, the house was already

visible, looking as if it had been arrested in its growth toward a stone mansion by an unexpected budding of

farmbuildings on its left flank, which had hindered it from becoming anything more than the substantial

dwelling of a gentleman farmer. It was not the less agreeable an object in the distance for the cluster of

Presently it was possible to discern something that might be a gig on the circular drive before the front door.

"Dear me," said Rosamond, "I hope none of my uncle's horrible relations are there."

"They are, though. That is Mrs. Waule's gigthe last yellow gig left, I should think. When I see Mrs. Waule

in it, I understand how yellow can have been worn for mourning. That gig seems to me more funereal than a

hearse. But then Mrs. Waule always has black crape on. How does she manage it, Rosy? Her friends can't

"I don't know at all. And she is not in the least evangelical," said Rosamond, reflectively, as if that religious

point of view would have fully accounted for perpetual crape. "And, not poor," she added, after a moment's

"No, by George! They are as rich as Jews, those Waules and Featherstones; I mean, for people like them, who

don't want to spend anything. And yet they hang about my uncle like vultures, and are afraid of a farthing

The Mrs. Waule who was so far from being admirable in the eyes of these distant connections, had happened

to say this very morning (not at all with a defiant air, but in a low, muffied, neutral tone, as of a voice heard

through cotton wool) that she did not wish "to enjoy their good opinion." She was seated, as she observed, on

her own brother's hearth, and had been Jane Featherstone fiveandtwenty years before she had been Jane

Waule, which entitled her to speak when her own brother's name had been made free with by those who had

"What are you driving at there?" said Mr. Featherstone, holding his stick between his knees and settling his

wig, while he gave her a momentary sharp glance, which seemed to react on him like a draught of cold air

Mrs. Waule had to defer her answer till he was quiet again, till Mary Garth had supplied him with fresh

syrup, and he had begun to rub the gold knob of his stick, looking bitterly at the fire. It was a bright fire, but it

made no difference to the chilllooking purplish tint of Mrs. Waule's face, which was as neutral as her voice;

"The doctors can't master that cough, brother. It's just like what I have; for I'm your own sister, constitution

and everything. But, as I was saying, it's a pity Mrs. Vincy's family can't be better conducted."

"Tchah! you said nothing o' the sort. You said somebody had made free with my name."

"And no more than can be proved, if what everybody says is true. My brother Solomon tells me it's the talk

up and down in Middlemarch how unsteady young Vincy is, and has been forever gambling at billiards since

"Nonsense! What's a game at billiards? It's a good gentlemanly game; and young Vincy is not a clodhopper.

"Your nephew John never took to billiards or any other game, brother, and is far from losing hundreds of

pounds, which, if what everybody says is true, must be found somewhere else than out of Mr. Vincy the

father's pocket. For they say he's been losing money for years, though nobody would think so, to see him go

coursing and keeping open house as they do. And I've heard say Mr. Bulstrode condemns Mrs. Vincy beyond

"Well, Mrs. Bulstrode is Mr. Vincy's own sister, and they do say that Mr. Vincy mostly trades on the Bank

money; and you may see yourself, brother, when a woman past forty has pink strings always flying, and that

light way of laughing at everything, it's very unbecoming. But indulging your children is one thing, and

finding money to pay their debts is another. And it's openly said that young Vincy has raised money on his

expectations. I don't say what expectations. Miss Garth hears me, and is welcome to tell again. I know young

"No, thank you, Mrs. Waule," said Mary Garth. "I dislike hearing scandal too much to wish to repeat it."

Mr. Featherstone rubbed the knob of his stick and made a brief convulsive show of laughter, which had much

the same genuineness as an old whistplayer's chuckle over a bad hand. Still looking at the fire, he said

"And who pretends to say Fred Vincy hasn't got expectations? Such a fine, spirited fellow is like enough to

There was a slight pause before Mrs. Waule replied, and when she did so, her voice seemed to be slightly

"Whether or no, brother, it is naturally painful to me and my brother Solomon to hear your name made free

with, and your complaint being such as may carry you off sudden, and people who are no more Featherstones

than the MerryAndrew at the fair, openly reckoning on your property coming to THEM. And me your own

sister, and Solomon your own brother! And if that's to be it, what has it pleased the Almighty to make

"Come, out with it, Jane!" said Mr. Featherstone, looking at her. "You mean to say, Fred Vincy has been

getting somebody to advance him money on what he says he knows about my will, eh?"

"I never said so, brother" (Mrs. Waule's voice had again become dry and unshaken). "It was told me by my

brother Solomon last night when he called coming from market to give me advice about the old wheat, me

being a widow, and my son John only threeandtwenty, though steady beyond anything. And he had it from

"Stuff and nonsense! I don't believe a word of it. It's all a gotup story. Go to the window, missy; I thought I

"Not got up by me, brother, nor yet by Solomon, who, whatever else he may beand I don't deny he has

odditieshas made his will and parted his property equal between such kin as he's friends with; though, for

my part, I think there are times when some should be considered more than others. But Solomon makes it no

"The more fool he!" said Mr. Featherstone, with some difficulty; breaking into a severe fit of coughing that

required Mary Garth to stand near him, so that she did not find out whose horses they were which presently

Before Mr. Featherstone's cough was quiet, Rosamond entered, bearing up her ridinghabit with much grace.

She bowed ceremoniously to Mrs. Waule, who said stiffly, "How do you do, miss?" smiled and nodded

silently to Mary, and remained standing till the coughing should cease, and allow her uncle to notice her.

Even those neighbors who had called Peter Featherstone an old fox, had never accused him of being

insincerely polite, and his sister was quite used to the peculiar absence of ceremony with which he marked his

sense of bloodrelationship. Indeed, she herself was accustomed to think that entire freedom from the

necessity of behaving agreeably was included in the Almighty's intentions about families. She rose slowly

without any sign of resentment, and said in her usual muffled monotone, "Brother, I hope the new doctor will

be able to do something for you. Solomon says there's great talk of his cleverness. I'm sure it's my wish you

should be spared. And there's none more ready to nurse you than your own sister and your own nieces, if

"Ay, ay, I rememberyou'll see I've remembered 'em allall dark and ugly. They'd need have some money,

eh? There never was any beauty in the women of our family; but the Featherstones have always had some

money, and the Waules too. Waule had money too. A warm man was Waule. Ay, ay; money's a good egg;

and if you 've got money to leave behind you, lay it in a warm nest. Goodby, Mrs. Waule." Here Mr.

Featherstone pulled at both sides of his wig as if he wanted to deafen himself, and his sister went away

ruminating on this oracular speech of his. Notwithstanding her jealousy of the Vincys and of Mary Garth,

there remained as the nethermost sediment in her mental shallows a persuasion that her brother Peter

Featherstone could never leave his chief property away from his bloodrelations:else, why had the

Almighty carried off his two wives both childless, after he had gained so much by manganese and things,

turning up when nobody expected it?and why was there a Lowick parish church, and the Waules and

Powderells all sit ting in the same pew for generations, and the Featherstone pew next to them, if, the Sunday

after her brother Peter's death, everybody was to know that the property was gone out of the family? The

human mind has at no period accepted a moral chaos; and so preposterous a result was not strictly

When Fred came in the old man eyed him with a peculiar twinkle, which the younger had often had reason to

"Come into my room, Rosamond, you will not mind the cold for a little while," said Mary. The two girls had

not only known each other in childhood, but had been at the same provincial school together (Mary as an

articled pupil), so that they had many memories in common, and liked very well to talk in private. Indeed,

Old Featherstone would not begin the dialogue till the door had been closed. He continued to look at Fred

with the same twinkle and with one of his habitual grimaces, alternately screwing and widening his mouth;

and when he spoke, it was in a low tone, which might be taken for that of an informer ready to be bought off,

rather than for the tone of an offended senior. He was not a man to feel any strong moral indignation even on

account of trespasses against himself. It was natural that others should want to get an advantage over him, but

"So, sir, you've been paying ten per cent for money which you've promised to pay off by mortgaging my land

when I'm dead and gone, eh? You put my life at a twelvemonth, say. But I can alter my will yet."

Fred blushed. He had not borrowed money in that way, for excellent reasons. But he was conscious of having

spoken with some confidence (perhaps with more than he exactly remembered) about his prospect of getting

"I don't know what you refer to, sir. I have certainly never borrowed any money on such an insecurity. Please

"No, sir, it's you must explain. I can alter my will yet, let me tell you. I'm of sound mindcan reckon

compound interest in my head, and remember every fool's name as well as I could twenty years ago. What

"I have contradicted it, sir," Fred answered, with a touch of impatience, not remembering that his uncle did

not verbally discriminate contradicting from disproving, though no one was further from confounding the two

ideas than old Featherstone, who often wondered that so many fools took his own assertions for proofs. "But I

"Name the authority, and make him name the man of whom I borrowed the money, and then I can disprove

"It's pretty good authority, I thinka man who knows most of what goes on in Middlemarch. It's that fine,

religious, charitable uncle o' yours. Come now!" Here Mr. Featherstone had his peculiar inward shake which

"Then the story has grown into this lie out of some sermonizing words he may have let fall about me. Do they

"If there is such a man, depend upon it Bulstrode knows him. But, supposing you only tried to get the money

lent, and didn't get itBulstrode 'ud know that too. You bring me a writing from Bulstrode to say he doesn't

Mr. Featherstone's face required its whole scale of grimaces as a muscular outlet to his silent triumph in the

"You must be joking, sir. Mr. Bulstrode, like other men, believes scores of things that are not true, and he has

a prejudice against me. I could easily get him to write that he knew no facts in proof of the report you speak

of, though it might lead to unpleasantness. But I could hardly ask him to write down what he believes or does

not believe about me." Fred paused an instant, and then added, in politic appeal to his uncle's vanity, "That is

"Ay, I know what you mean. You'd sooner offend me than Bulstrode. And what's he?he's got no land

hereabout that ever I heard tell of. A speckilating fellow! He may come down any day, when the devil leaves

off backing him. And that's what his religion means: he wants God A'mighty to come in. That's nonsense!

There's one thing I made out pretty clear when I used to go to churchand it's this: God A'mighty sticks to

the land. He promises land, and He gives land, and He makes chaps rich with corn and cattle. But you take

the other side. You like Bulstrode and speckilation better than Featherstone and land."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Fred, rising, standing with his back to the fire and beating his boot with his

whip. "I like neither Bulstrode nor speculation." He spoke rather sulkily, feeling himself stalemated.

"Well, well, you can do without me, that's pretty clear," said old Featherstone, secretly disliking the

possibility that Fred would show himself at all independent. "You neither want a bit of land to make a squire

of you instead of a starving parson, nor a lift of a hundred pound by the way. It's all one to me. I can make

five codicils if I like, and I shall keep my banknotes for a nestegg. It's all one to me."

Fred colored again. Featherstone had rarely given him presents of money, and at this moment it seemed

almost harder to part with the immediate prospect of banknotes than with the more distant prospect of the

"I am not ungrateful, sir. I never meant to show disregard for any kind intentions you might have towards me.

"Very good. Then prove it. You bring me a letter from Bulstrode saying he doesn't believe you've been

cracking and promising to pay your debts out o' my land, and then, if there's any scrape you've got into, we'll

see if I can't back you a bit. Come now! That's a bargain. Here, give me your arm. I'll try and walk round the

Fred, in spite of his irritation, had kindness enough in him to be a little sorry for the unloved, unvenerated old

man, who with his dropsical legs looked more than usually pitiable in walking. While giving his arm, he

thought that he should not himself like to be an old fellow with his constitution breaking up; and he waited

goodtemperedly, first before the window to hear the wonted remarks about the guineafowls and the

weathercock, and then before the scanty bookshelves, of which the chief glories in dark calf were

Josephus, Culpepper, Klopstock's "Messiah," and several volumes of the "Gentleman's Magazine."

"What did missy want with more books? What must you be bringing her more books for?"

"A little too fond," said Mr. Featherstone, captiously. "She was for reading when she sat with me. But I put a

stop to that. She's got the newspaper to read out loud. That's enough for one day, I should think. I can't abide

to see her reading to herself. You mind and not bring her any more books, do you hear?"

"Yes, sir, I hear." Fred had received this order before, and had secretly disobeyed it. He intended to disobey it

Rosamond and Mary had been talking faster than their male friends. They did not think of sitting down, but

stood at the toilettable near the window while Rosamond took off her hat, adjusted her veil, and applied

little touches of her fingertips to her hairhair of infantine fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow. Mary Garth

seemed all the plainer standing at an angle between the two nymphsthe one in the glass, and the one out of

it, who looked at each other with eyes of heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an

ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner if these should

happen to be less exquisite. Only a few children in Middlemarch looked blond by the side of Rosamond, and

the slim figure displayed by her ridinghabit had delicate undulations. In fact, most men in Middlemarch,

except her brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the world, and some called her an angel. Mary

Garth, on the contrary, had the aspect of an ordinary sinner: she was brown; her curly dark hair was rough

and stubborn; her stature was low; and it would not be true to declare, in satisfactory antithesis, that she had

all the virtues. Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it is apt either to

feign amiability, or, not feigning it, to show all the repulsive ness of discontent: at any rate, to be called an

ugly thing in contrast with that lovely creature your companion, is apt to produce some effect beyond a sense

of fine veracity and fitness in the phrase. At the age of twoandtwenty Mary had certainly not attained that

perfect good sense and good principle which are usually recommended to the less fortunate girl, as if they

were to be obtained in quantities ready mixed, with a flavor of resignation as required. Her shrewdness had a

streak of satiric bitterness continually renewed and never carried utterly out of sight, except by a strong

current of gratitude towards those who, instead of telling her that she ought to be contented, did something to

make her so. Advancing womanhood had tempered her plainness, which was of a good human sort, such as

the mothers of our race have very commonly worn in all latitudes under a more or less becoming headgear.

Rembrandt would have painted her with pleasure, and would have made her broad features look out of the

canvas with intelligent honesty. For honesty, truthtelling fairness, was Mary's reigning virtue: she neither

tried to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood she had

humor enough in her to laugh at herself. When she and Rosamond happened both to be reflected in the glass,

"What a brown patch I am by the side of you, Rosy! You are the most unbecoming companion."

"Oh no! No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little

consequence in reality," said Rosamond, turning her head towards Mary, but with eyes swerving towards the

Rosamond thought, "Poor Mary, she takes the kindest things ill." Aloud she said, "What have you been doing

"I? Oh, minding the housepouring out syruppretending to be amiable and contentedlearning to have a

"No," said Mary, curtly, with a little toss of her head. "I think my life is pleasanter than your Miss Morgan's."

"She is interesting to herself, I suppose; and I am not at all sure that everything gets easier as one gets older."

"No," said Rosamond, reflectively; "one wonders what such people do, without any prospect. To be sure,

there is religion as a support. But," she added, dimpling, "it is very different with you,'Mary. You may have

"Of course not. I mean, there is a gentleman who may fall in love with you, seeing you almost every day."

A certain change in Mary's face was chiefly determined by the resolve not to show any change.

"Does that always make people fall in love?" she answered, carelessly; "it seems to me quite as often a reason

"Oh, Mr. Lydgate!" said Mary, with an unmistakable lapse into indifference. "You want to know something

"There is no question of liking at present. My liking always wants some little kindness to kindle it. I am not

"Is he so haughty?" said Rosamond, with heightened satisfaction. "You know that he is of good family?"

"Mary! you are the oddest girl. But what sort of looking man is he? Describe him to me."

"How can one describe a man? I can give you an inventory: heavy eyebrows, dark eyes, a straight nose, thick

dark hair, large solid white handsandlet me seeoh, an exquisite cambric pockethandkerchief. But

Rosamond blushed a little, but said, meditatively, "I rather like a haughty manner. I cannot endure a rattling

"I did not tell you that Mr. Lydgate was haughty; but il y en a pour tous les gouts, as little Mamselle used to

say, and if any girl can choose the particular sort of conceit she would like, I should think it is you, Rosy."

"I wish no one said any worse of him. He should be more careful. Mrs. Waule has been telling uncle that Fred

is very unsteady." Mary spoke from a girlish impulse which got the better of her judgment. There was a

vague uneasiness associated with the word "unsteady" which she hoped Rosamond might say something to

dissipate. But she purposely abstained from mentioning Mrs. Waule's more special insinuation.

"Oh, Fred is horrid!" said Rosamond. She would not have allowed herself so unsuitable a word to any one but

"How can you say he is quite right, Mary? I thought you had more sense of religion."

"But he ought to be fit.""Well, then, he is not what he ought to be. I know some other people who are in

"But no one approves of them. I should not like to marry a clergyman; but there must be clergymen."

"But when papa has been at the expense of educating him for it! And only suppose, if he should have no

"Then I wonder you can defend Fred," said Rosamond, inclined to push this point.

"I don't defend him," said Mary, laughing; "I would defend any parish from having him for a clergyman."

"Why should I not take his part?" said Mary, lighting up. "He would take mine. He is the only person who

"You make me feel very uncomfortable, Mary," said Rosamond, with her gravest mildness; "I would not tell

"If your mamma is afraid that Fred will make me an offer, tell her that I would not marry him if he asked me.

But he is not going to do so, that I am aware. He certainly never has asked me."

"Oh, blameless people are always the most exasperating. There is the bellI think we must go down."

"Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of

"Am I to repeat what you have said?" "Just as you please. I never say what I am afraid of having repeated.

Mr. Lydgate was rather late this morning, but the visitors stayed long enough to see him; for Mr.

Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him, and she herself wasso kind as to propose a second favorite

song of his"Flow on, thou shining river"after she had sung "Home, sweet home" (which she detested).

This hardheaded old Overreach approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also

Mr. Featherstone was still applauding the last performance, and assuring missy that her voice was as clear as

His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged patientwho can hardly believe that

medicine would not "set him up" if the doctor were only clever enoughadded to his general disbelief in

Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision of Rosamond, whom old

Featherstone made haste ostentatiously to introduce as his niece, though he had never thought it worth while

to speak of Mary Garth in that light. Nothing escaped Lydgate in Rosamond's graceful behavior: how

delicately she waived the notice which the old man's want of taste had thrust upon her by a quiet gravity, not

showing her dimples on the wrong occasion, but showing them afterwards in speaking to Mary, to whom she

addressed herself with so much goodnatured interest, that Lydgate, after quickly examining Mary more fully

than he had done before, saw an adorable kindness in Rosamond's eyes. But Mary from some cause looked

"Miss Rosy has been singing me a songyou've nothing to say against that, eh, doctor?" said Mr.

"That has made me forget how the time was going," said Rosamond, rising to reach her hat, which she had

laid aside before singing, so that her flowerlike head on its white stem was seen in perfection aboveher

"Very good," said Fred, who had his own reasons for not being in the best spirits, and wanted to get away.

"Miss Vincy is a musician?" said Lydgate, following her with his eyes. (Every nerve and muscle in

Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of

parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to

"The best in Middlemarch, I'll be bound," said Mr. Featherstone, "let the next be who she will. Eh, Fred?

"Middlemarch has not a very high standard, uncle," said Rosamond, with a pretty lightness, going towards

Lydgate was quick in anticipating her. He reached the whip before she did, and turned to present it to her. She

bowed and looked at him: he of course was looking at her, and their eyes met with that peculiar meeting

which is never arrived at by effort, but seems like a sudden divine clearance of haze. I think Lydgate turned a

little paler than usual, but Rosamond blushed deeply and felt a certain astonishment. After that, she was really

anxious to go, and did not know what sort of stupidity her uncle was talking of when she went to shake hands

Yet this result, which she took to be a mutual impression, called falling in love, was just what Rosamond had

contemplated beforehand. Ever since that important new arrival in Middlemarch she had woven a little future,

of which something like this scene was the necessary beginning. Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to

a raft, or duly escorted and accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination for

the virgin mind, against which native merit has urged itself in vain. And a stranger was absolutely necessary

to Rosamond's social romance, which had always turned on a lover and bridegroom who was not a

Middlemarcher, and who had no connections at all like her own: of late, indeed, the construction seemed to

demand that he should somehow be related to a baronet. Now that she and the stranger had met, reality

proved much more moving than anticipation, and Rosamond could not doubt that this was the great epoch of

her life. She judged of her own symptoms as those of awakening love, and she held it still more natural that

Mr. Lydgate should have fallen in love at first sight of her. These things happened so often at balls, and why

not by the morning light, when the complexion showed all the better for it? Rosamond, though no older than

Mary, was rather used to being fallen in love with; but she, for her part, had remained indifferent and

fastidiously critical towards both fresh sprig and faded bachelor. And here was Mr. Lydgate suddenly

corresponding to her ideal, being altogether foreign to Middlemarch, carrying a certain air of distinction

congruous with good family, and possessing connections which offered vistas of that middleclass heaven,

rank: a man of talent, also, whom it would be especially delightful to enslave: in fact, a man who had touched

her nature quite newly, and brought a vivid interest into her life which was better than any fancied

Thus, in riding home, both the brother and the sister were preoccupied and inclined to be silent. Rosamond,

whose basis for her structure had the usual airy slightness, was of remarkably detailed and realistic

imagination when the foundation had been once presupposed; and before they had ridden a mile she was far

on in the costume and introductions of her wedded life, having determined on her house in Middlemarch,

and foreseen the visits she would pay to her husband's highbred relatives at a distance, whose finished

manners she could appropriate as thoroughly as she had done her school accomplishments, preparing herself

thus for vaguer elevations which might ultimately come. There was nothing financial, still less sordid, in her

previsions: she cared about what were considered refinements, and not about the money that was to pay for

Fred's mind, on the other hand, was busy with an anxiety which even his ready hopefulness could not

immediately quell. He saw no way of eluding Featherstone's stupid demand without incurring consequences

which he liked less even than the task of fulfilling it. His father was already out of humor with him, and

would be still more so if he were the occasion of any additional coolness between his own family and the

Bulstrodes. Then, he himself hated having to go and speak to his uncle Bulstrode, and perhaps after drinking

wine he had said many foolish things about Featherstone's property, and these had been magnified by report.

Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a fellow who bragged about expectations from a queer old miser

like Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his bidding. Butthose expectations! He really had

them, and he saw no agreeable alternative if he gave them up; besides, he had lately made a debt which galled

him extremely, and old Featherstone had almost bargained to pay it off. The whole affair was miserably

small: his debts were small, even his expectations were not anything so very magnificent. Fred had known

men to whom he would have been ashamed of confessing the smallness of his scrapes. Such ruminations

naturally produced a streak of misanthropic bitterness. To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer,

and inevitable heir to nothing in particular, while such men as Mainwaring and Vyancertainly life was a

poor business, when a spirited young fellow, with a good appetite for the best of everything, had so poor an

It had not occurred to Fred that the introduction of Bulstrode's name in the matter was a fiction of old

Featherstone's; nor could this have made any difference to his position. He saw plainly enough that the old

man wanted to exercise his power by tormenting him a little, and also probably to get some satisfaction out of

seeing him on unpleasant terms with Bulstrode. Fred fancied that he saw to the bottom of his uncle

Featherstone's soul, though in reality half what he saw there was no more than the reflex of his own

inclinations. The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is

Fred's main point of debate with himself was, whether he should tell his father, or try to get through the affair

without his father's knowledge. It was probably Mrs. Waule who had been talking about him; and if Mary

Garth had repeated Mrs. Waule's report to Rosamond, it would be sure to reach his father, who would as

"Mary mentioned nothing else. But really, Fred, I think you ought to be ashamed."

"I am not obliged to tell you. You care so very much what Mary says, and you are too rude to allow me to

"At least, Fred, let me advise YOU not to fall in love with her, for she says she would not marry you if you

"Not at all. She would not have said so if you had not provoked her." Before reaching home, Fred concluded

that he would tell the whole affair as simply as possible to his father, who might perhaps take on himself the

In consequence of what he had heard from Fred, Mr. Vincy determined to speak with Mr. Bulstrode in his

private room at the Bank at halfpast one, when he was usually free from other callers. But a visitor had

come in at one o'clock, and Mr. Bulstrode had so much to say to him, that there was little chance of the

interview being over in half an hour. The banker's speech was fluent, but it was also copious, and he used up

an appreciable amount of time in brief meditative pauses. Do not imagine his sickly aspect to have been of

the yellow, blackhaired sort: he had a pale blond skin, thin graybesprinkled brown hair, lightgray eyes,

and a large forehead. Loud men called his subdued tone an undertone, and sometimes implied that it was

inconsistent with openness; though there seems to be no reason why a loud man should not be given to

concealment of anything except his own voice, unless it can be shown that Holy Writ has placed the seat of

candor in the lungs. Mr. Bulstrode had also a deferential bending attitude in listening, and an apparently fixed

attentiveness in his eyes which made those persons who thought themselves worth hearing infer that he was

seeking the utmost improvement from their discourse. Others, who expected to make no great figure, disliked

this kind of moral lantern turned on them. If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction

in seeing your guest hold up his wineglass to the light and look judicial. Such joys are reserved for

conscious merit. Hence Mr. Bulstrode's close attention was not agreeable to the publicans and sinners in

Middlemarch; it was attributed by some to his being a Pharisee, and by others to his being Evangelical. Less

superficial reasoners among them wished to know who his father and grandfather were, observing that

fiveandtwenty years ago nobody had ever heard of a Bulstrode in Middlemarch. To his present visitor,

Lydgate, the scrutinizing look was a matter of indifference: he simply formed an unfavorable opinion of the

banker's constitution, and concluded that he had an eager inward life with little enjoyment of tangible things.

"I shall be exceedingly obliged if you will look in on me here occasionally, Mr. Lydgate," the banker

observed, after a brief pause. "If, as I dare to hope, I have the privilege of finding you a valuable coadjutor in

the interesting matter of hospital management, there will be many questions which we shall need to discuss in

private. As to the new hospital, which is nearly finished, I shall consider what you have said about the

advantages of the special destination for fevers. The decision will rest with me, for though Lord Medlicote

has given the land and timber for the building, he is not disposed to give his personal attention to the object."

"There are few things better worth the pains in a provincial town like this," said Lydgate. "A fine fever

hospital in addition to the old infirmary might be the nucleus of a medical school here, when once we get our

medical reforms; and what would do more for medical education than the spread of such schools over the

country? A born provincial man who has a grain of public spirit as well as a few ideas, should do what he can

to resist the rush of everything that is a little better than common towards London. Any valid professional

One of Lydgate's gifts was a voice habitually deep and sonorous, yet capable of becoming very low and

gentle at the right moment. About his ordinary bearing there was a certain fling, a fearless expectation of

success, a confidence in his own powers and integrity much fortified by contempt for petty obstacles or

seductions of which he had had no experience. But this proud openness was made lovable by an expression of

unaffected goodwill. Mr. Bulstrode perhaps liked him the better for the difference between them in pitch

and manners; he certainly liked him the better, as Rosamond did, for being a stranger in Middlemarch. One

"I shall rejoice to furnish your zeal with fuller opportunities," Mr. Bulstrode answered; "I mean, by confiding

to you the superintendence of my new hospital, should a maturer knowledge favor that issue, for I am

determined that so great an object shall not be shackled by our two physicians. Indeed, I am encouraged to

consider your advent to this town as a gracious indication that a more manifest blessing is now to be awarded

to my efforts, which have hitherto been much with stood. With regard to the old infirmary, we have gained

the initial pointI mean your election. And now I hope you will not shrink from incurring a certain amount

of jealousy and dislike from your professional brethren by presenting yourself as a reformer."

"I will not profess bravery," said Lydgate, smiling, "but I acknowledge a good deal of pleasure in fighting,

and I should not care for my profession, if I did not believe that better methods were to be found and enforced

"The standard of that profession is low in Middlemarch, my dear sir," said the banker. "I mean in knowledge

and skill; not in social status, for our medical men are most of them connected with respectable townspeople

here. My own imperfect health has induced me to give some attention to those palliative resources which the

divine mercy has placed within our reach. I have consulted eminent men in the metropolis, and I am painfully

aware of the backwardness under which medical treatment labors in our provincial districts."

"Yes;with our present medical rules and education, one must be satisfied now and then to meet with a fair

practitioner. As to all the higher questions which determine the startingpoint of a diagnosisas to the

philosophy of medial evidenceany glimmering of these can only come from a scientific culture of which

Mr. Bulstrode, bending and looking intently, found the form which Lydgate had given to his agreement not

quite suited to his comprehension. Under such circumstances a judicious man changes the topic and enters on

"I am aware," he said, "that the peculiar bias of medical ability is towards material means. Nevertheless, Mr.

Lydgate, I hope we shall not vary in sentiment as to a measure in which you are not likely to be actively

concerned, but in which your sympathetic concurrence may be an aid to me. You recognize, I hope; the

"Certainly I do. But those words are apt to cover different meanings to different minds."

"Precisely. And on such subjects wrong teaching is as fatal as no teaching. Now a point which I have much at

heart to secure is a new regulation as to clerical attendance at the old infirmary. The building stands in Mr.

"I have seen him. He gave me his vote. I must call to thank him. He seems a very bright pleasant little fellow.

"Mr. Farebrother, my dear sir, is a man deeply painful to contemplate. I suppose there is not a clergyman in

this country who has greater talents." Mr. Bulstrode paused and looked meditative.

"I have not yet been pained by finding any excessive talent in Middlemarch," said Lydgate, bluntly.

"What I desire," Mr. Bulstrode continued, looking still more serious, "is that Mr. Farebrother's attendance at

the hospital should be superseded by the appointment of a chaplainof Mr. Tyke, in fact and that no other

"As a medial man I could have no opinion on such a point unless I knew Mr. Tyke, and even then I should

require to know the cases in which he was applied." Lydgate smiled, but he was bent on being circumspect.

"Of course you cannot enter fully into the merits of this measure at present. But"here Mr. Bulstrode began

to speak with a more chiselled emphasis"the subject is likely to be referred to the medical board of the

infirmary, and what I trust I may ask of you is, that in virtue of the cooperation between us which I now look

forward to, you will not, so far as you are concerned, be influenced by my opponents in this matter."

"I hope I shall have nothing to do with clerical disputes," said Lydgate. "The path I have chosen is to work

"My responsibility, Mr. Lydgate, is of a broader kind. With me, indeed, this question is one of sacred

accountableness; whereas with my opponents, I have good reason to say that it is an occasion for gratifying a

spirit of worldly opposition. But I shall not therefore drop one iota of my convictions, or cease to identify

myself with that truth which an evil generation hates. I have devoted myself to this object of

hospitalimprovement, but I will boldly confess to you, Mr. Lydgate, that I should have no interest in

hospitals if I believed that nothing more was concerned therein than the cure of mortal diseases. I have

another ground of action, and in the face of persecution I will not conceal it."

Mr. Bulstrode's voice had become a loud and agitated whisper as he said the last words.

"There we certainly differ," said Lydgate. But he was not sorry that the door was now opened, and Mr. Vincy

was announced. That florid sociable personage was become more interesting to him since he had seen

Rosamond. Not that, like her, he had been weaving any future in which their lots were united; but a man

naturally remembers a charming girl with pleasure, and is willing to dine where he may see her again. Before

he took leave, Mr. Vincy had given that invitation which he had been "in no hurry about," for Rosamond at

breakfast had mentioned that she thought her uncle Featherstone had taken the new doctor into great favor.

Mr. Bulstrode, alone with his brotherinlaw, poured himself out a glass of water, and opened a

"No, no; I've no opinion of that system. Life wants padding," said Mr. Vincy, unable to omit his portable

theory. "However," he went on, accenting the word, as if to dismiss all irrelevance, "what I came here to talk

"That is a subject on which you and I are likely to take quite as different views as on diet, Vincy."

"I hope not this time." (Mr. Vincy was resolved to be goodhumored.) "The fact is, it's about a whim of old

Featherstone's. Somebody has been cooking up a story out of spite, and telling it to the old man, to try to set

him against Fred. He's very fond of Fred, and is likely to do something handsome for him; indeed he has as

good as told Fred that he means to leave him his land, and that makes other people jealous."

"Vincy, I must repeat, that you will not get any concurrence from me as to the course you have pursued with

your eldest son. It was entirely from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church: with a family of

three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting money to an expensive education which

has succeeded in nothing but in giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the consequences."

To point out other people's errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from, but Mr. Vincy was not

equally prepared to be patient. When a man has the immediate prospect of being mayor, and is ready, in the

interests of commerce, to take up a firm attitude on politics generally, he has naturally a sense of his

importance to the framework of things which seems to throw questions of private conduct into the

background. And this particular reproof irritated him more than any other. It was eminently superfluous to

him to be told that he was reaping the consequences. But he felt his neck under Bulstrode's yoke; and though

"As to that, Bulstrode, it's no use going back. I'm not one of your pattern men, and I don't pretend to be. I

couldn't foresee everything in the trade; there wasn't a finer business in Middlemarch than ours, and the lad

was clever. My poor brother was in the Church, and would have done wellhad got preferment already, but

that stomach fever took him off: else he might have been a dean by this time. I think I was justified in what I

tried to do for Fred. If you come to religion, it seems to me a man shouldn't want to carve out his meat to an

ounce beforehand:one must trust a little to Providence and be generous. It's a good British feeling to try

and raise your family a little: in my opinion, it's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance."

"I don't wish to act otherwise than as your best friend, Vincy, when I say that what you have been uttering

"Very well," said Mr. Vincy, kicking in spite of resolutions, "I never professed to be anything but worldly;

and, what's more, I don't see anybody else who is not worldly. I suppose you don't conduct business on what

you call unworldly principles. The only difference I see is that one worldliness is a little bit honester than

"This kind of discussion is unfruitful, Vincy," said Mr. Bulstrode, who, finishing his sandwich, had thrown

himself back in his chair, and shaded his eyes as if weary. "You had some more particular business."

"Yes, yes. The long and short of it is, somebody has told old Featherstone, giving you as the authority, that

Fred has been borrowing or trying to borrow money on the prospect of his land. Of course you never said any

such nonsense. But the old fellow will insist on it that Fred should bring him a denial in your handwriting;

that is, just a bit of a note saying you don't believe a word of such stuff, either of his having borrowed or tried

to borrow in such a fool's way. I suppose you can have no objection to do that."

"Pardon me. I have an objection. I am by no means sure that your son, in his recklessness and ignoranceI

will use no severer word has not tried to raise money by holding out his future prospects, or even that

some one may not have been foolish enough to supply him on so vague a presumption: there is plenty of such

"But Fred gives me his honor that he has never borrowed money on the pretence of any understanding about

his uncle's land. He is not a liar. I don't want to make him better than he is. I have blown him up

wellnobody can say I wink at what he does. But he is not a liar. And I should have thoughtbut I may be

wrong that there was no religion to hinder a man from believing the best of a young fellow, when you

don't know worse. It seems to me it would be a poor sort of religion to put a spoke in his wheel by refusing to

say you don't believe such harm of him as you've got no good reason to believe."

"I am not at all sure that I should be befriending your son by smoothing his way to the future possession of

Featherstone's property. I cannot regard wealth as a blessing to those who use it simply as a harvest for this

world. You do not like to hear these things, Vincy, but on this occasion I feel called upon to tell you that I

have no motive for furthering such a disposition of property as that which you refer to. I do not shrink from

saying that it will not tend to your son's eternal welfare or to the glory of God. Why then should you expect

me to pen this kind of affidavit, which has no object but to keep up a foolish partiality and secure a foolish

"If you mean to hinder everybody from having money but saints and evangelists, you must give up some

profitable partnerships, that's all I can say," Mr. Vincy burst out very bluntly. "It may be for the glory of God,

but it is not for the glory of the Middlemarch trade, that Plymdale's house uses those blue and green dyes it

gets from the Brassing manufactory; they rot the silk, that's all I know about it. Perhaps if other people knew

so much of the profit went to the glory of God, they might like it better. But I don't mind so much about

Mr. Bulstrode paused a little before he answered. "You pain me very much by speaking in this way, Vincy. I

do not expect you to understand my grounds of actionit is not an easy thing even to thread a path for

principles in the intricacies of the world still less to make the thread clear for the careless and the scoffing.

You must remember, if you please, that I stretch my tolerance towards you as my wife's brother, and that it

little becomes you to complain of me as withholding material help towards the worldly position of your

family. I must remind you that it is not your own prudence or judgment that has enabled you to keep your

"Very likely not; but you have been no loser by my trade yet," said Mr. Vincy, thoroughly nettled (a result

which was seldom much retarded by previous resolutions). "And when you married Harriet, I don't see how

you could expect that our families should not hang by the same nail. If you've changed your mind, and want

my family to come down in the world, you'd better say so. I've never changed; I'm a plain Churchman now,

just as I used to be before doctrines came up. I take the world as I find it, in trade and everything else. I'm

contented to be no worse than my neighbors. But if you want us to come down in the world, say so. I shall

"You talk unreasonably. Shall you come down in the world for want of this letter about your son?"

"Well, whether or not, I consider it very unhandsome of you to refuse it. Such doings may be lined with

religion, but outside they have a nasty, doginthemanger look. You might as well slander Fred: it comes

pretty near to it when you refuse to say you didn't set a slander going. It's this sort of thingthis tyrannical

spirit, wanting to play bishop and banker everywhereit's this sort of thing makes a man's name stink."

"Vincy, if you insist on quarrelling with me, it will be exceedingly painful to Harriet as well as myself," said

"I don't want to quarrel. It's for my interestand perhaps for yours toothat we should be friends. I bear

you no grudge; I think no worse of you than I do of other people. A man who half starves himself, and goes

the length in family prayers, and so on, that you do, believes in his religion whatever it may be: you could

turn over your capital just as fast with cursing and swearing: plenty of fellows do. You like to be master,

there's no denying that; you must be first chop in heaven, else you won't like it much. But you're my sister's

husband, and we ought to stick together; and if I know Harriet, she'll consider it your fault if we quarrel

because you strain at a gnat in this way, and refuse to do Fred a good turn. And I don't mean to say I shall

Mr. Vincy rose, began to button his greatcoat, and looked steadily at his brotherinlaw, meaning to imply

This was not the first time that Mr. Bulstrode had begun by admonishing Mr. Vincy, and had ended by seeing

a very unsatisfactory reflection of himself in the coarse unflattering mirror which that manufacturer's mind

presented to the subtler lights and shadows of his fellowmen; and perhaps his experience ought to have

warned him how the scene would end. But a fullfed fountain will be generous with its waters even in the

rain, when they are worse than useless; and a fine fount of admonition is apt to be equally irrepressible.

It was not in Mr. Bulstrode's nature to comply directly in consequence of uncomfortable suggestions. Before

changing his course, he always needed to shape his motives and bring them into accordance with his habitual

"I will reflect a little, Vincy. I will mention the subject to Harriet. I shall probably send you a letter."

"Very well. As soon as you can, please. I hope it will all be settled before I see you tomorrow."

Mr. Bulstrode's consultation of Harriet seemed to have had the effect desired by Mr. Vincy, for early the next

morning a letter came which Fred could carry to Mr. Featherstone as the required testimony.

The old gentleman was staying in bed on account of the cold weather, and as Mary Garth was not to be seen

in the sittingroom, Fred went upstairs immediately and presented the letter to his uncle, who, propped up

comfortably on a bedrest, was not less able than usual to enjoy his consciousness of wisdom in distrusting

and frustrating mankind. He put on his spectacles to read the letter, pursing up his lips and drawing down

"Under the circumstances I will not decline to state my conviction tchah! what fine words the fellow puts!

He's as fine as an auctioneer that your son Frederic has not obtained any advance of money on bequests

promised by Mr. Featherstonepromised? who said I had ever promised? I promise nothingI shall make

codicils as long as I likeand that considering the nature of such a proceeding, it is unreasonable to presume

that a young man of sense and character would attempt itah, but the gentleman doesn't say you are a young

man of sense and character, mark you that, sir!As to my own concern with any report of such a nature, I

distinctly affirm that I never made any statement to the effect that your son had borrowed money on any

`property'accruedemise! Lawyer Standish is nothing to him. He couldn't speak finer if he wanted to

borrow. Well," Mr. Featherstone here looked over his spectacles at Fred, while he handed back the letter to

him with a contemptuous gesture, "you don't suppose I believe a thing because Bulstrode writes it out fine,

Fred colored. "You wished to have the letter, sir. I should think it very likely that Mr. Bulstrode's denial is as

"Every bit. I never said I believed either one or the other. And now what d' you expect?" said Mr.

Featherstone, curtly, keeping on his spectacles, but withdrawing his hands under his wraps.

"I expect nothing, sir." Fred with difficulty restrained himself from venting his irritation. "I came to bring you

"Tell missy to come!" said Mr. Featherstone, impatiently. "What business had she to go away?" He spoke in

"Why couldn't you sit still here till I told you to go? want my waistcoat now. I told you always to put it on the

Mary's eyes looked rather red, as if she had been crying. It was clear that Mr. Featherstone was in one of his

most snappish humors this morning, and though Fred had now the prospect of receiving the muchneeded

present of money, he would have preferred being free to turn round on the old tyrant and tell him that Mary

Garth was too good to be at his beck. Though Fred had risen as she entered the room, she had barely noticed

him, and looked as if her nerves were quivering with the expectation that something would be thrown at her.

But she never had anything worse than words to dread. When she went to reach the waistcoat from a peg,

"Let it alone! You bring it, missy, and lay it down here," said Mr. Featherstone. "Now you go away again till

I call you," he added, when the waistcoat was laid down by him. It was usual with him to season his pleasure

in showing favor to one person by being especially disagreeable to another, and Mary was always at hand to

furnish the condiment. When his own relatives came she was treated better. Slowly he took out a bunch of

keys from the waistcoat pocket, and slowly he drew forth a tin box which was under the bedclothes.

"You expect I am going to give you a little fortune, eh?" he said, looking above his spectacles and pausing in

"Not at all, sir. You were good enough to speak of making me a present the other day, else, of course, I

should not have thought of the matter." But Fred was of a hopeful disposition, and a vision had presented

itself of a sum just large enough to deliver him from a certain anxiety. When Fred got into debt, it always

seemed to him highly probable that something or other he did not necessarily conceive whatwould

come to pass enabling him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close

at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a

faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a whole one.

The deepveined hands fingered many banknotesone after the other, laying them down flat again, while

Fred leaned back in his chair, scorning to look eager. He held himself to be a gentleman at heart, and did not

like courting an old fellow for his money. At last, Mr. Featherstone eyed him again over his spectacles and

presented him with a little sheaf of notes: Fred could see distinctly that there were but five, as the less

significant edges gaped towards him. But then, each might mean fifty pounds. He took them, saying

"I am very much obliged to you, sir," and was going to roll them up without seeming to think of their value.

"Come, don't you think it worth your while to count 'em? You take money like a lord; I suppose you lose it

"I thought I was not to look a gifthorse in the mouth, sir. But I shall be very happy to count them."

Fred was not so happy, however, after he had counted them. For they actually presented the absurdity of

being less than his hopefulness had decided that they must be. What can the fitness of things mean, if not

their fitness to a man's expectations? Failing this, absurdity and atheism gape behind him. The collapse for

Fred was severe when he found that he held no more than five twenties, and his share in the higher education

of this country did not seem to help him. Nevertheless he said, with rapid changes in his fair complexion

"I should think it is," said Mr. Featherstone, locking his box and replacing it, then taking off his spectacles

deliberately, and at length, as if his inward meditation had more deeply convinced him, repeating, "I should

"I assure you, sir, I am very grateful," said Fred, who had had time to recover his cheerful air.

"So you ought to be. You want to cut a figure in the world, and I reckon Peter Featherstone is the only one

you've got to trust to." Here the old man's eyes gleamed with a curiously mingled satisfaction in the

consciousness that this smart young fellow relied upon him, and that the smart young fellow was rather a fool

"Yes, indeed: I was not born to very splendid chances. Few men have been more cramped than I have been,"

said Fred, with some sense of surprise at his own virtue, considering how hardly he was dealt with. "It really

seems a little too bad to have to ride a brokenwinded hunter, and see men, who, are not half such good

judges as yourself, able to throw away any amount of money on buying bad bargains."

"Well, you can buy yourself a fine hunter now. Eighty pound is enough for that, I reckonand you'll have

twenty pound over to get yourself out of any little scrape," said Mr. Featherstone, chuckling slightly.

"You are very good, sir," said Fred, with a fine sense of contrast between the words and his feeling.

"Ay, rather a better uncle than your fine uncle Bulstrode. You won't get much out of his spekilations, I think.

"Well, he shows some sense there. But other people find 'em out without his telling. HE'LL never have much

to leave you: he'll mostlike die without a willhe's the sort of man to do it let 'em make him mayor of

Middlemarch as much as they like. But you won't get much by his dying without a will, though you ARE the

Fred thought that Mr. Featherstone had never been so disagreeable before. True, he had never before given

"Shall I destroy this letter of Mr. Bulstrode's, sir?" said Fred, rising with the letter as if he would put it in the

Fred carried the letter to the fire, and thrust the poker through it with much zest. He longed to get out of the

room, but he was a little ashamed before his inner self, as well as before his uncle, to run away immediately

after pocketing the money. Presently, the farmbailiff came up to give his master a report, and Fred, to his

He had longed not only to be set free from his uncle, but also to find Mary Garth. She was now in her usual

place by the fire, with sewing in her hands and a book open on the little table by her side. Her eyelids had lost

Mary sat down again, and resumed her work. She was certainly treating him with more indifference than

usual: she did not know how affectionately indignant he had felt on her behalf upstairs.

"Pray sit down," said Mary; "you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr. John Waule, who was here yesterday,

"I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be

some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is

grateful. I should have thought that I, at least, might have been safe from all that. I have no ground for the

Mary did not mean to betray any feeling, but in spite of herself she ended in a tremulous tone of vexation.

"Confound John Waule! I did not mean to make you angry. I didn't know you had any reason for being

grateful to me. I forgot what a great service you think it if any one snuffs a candle for you. Fred also had his

pride, and was not going to show that he knew what had called forth this outburst of Mary's.

"Oh, I am not angry, except with the ways of the world. I do like to be spoken to as if I had commonsense. I

really often feel as if I could understand a little more than I ever hear even from young gentlemen who have

been to college." Mary had recovered, and she spoke with a suppressed rippling undercurrent of laughter

"I don't care how merry you are at my expense this morning," said Fred, "I thought you looked so sad when

you came upstairs. It is a shame you should stay here to be bullied in that way."

"Oh, I have an easy lifeby comparison. I have tried being a teacher, and I am not fit for that: my mind is

too fond of wandering on its own way. I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid

for, and never really doing it. Everything here I can do as well as any one else could; perhaps better than

someRosy, for example. Though she is just the sort of beautiful creature that is imprisoned with ogres in

"Oh, that I am idle and extravagant. Well, I am not fit to be a poor man. I should not have made a bad fellow

"You would have done your duty in that state of life to which it has not pleased God to call you," said Mary,

"Well, I couldn't do my duty as a clergyman, any more than you could do yours as a governess. You ought to

"I never said you ought to be a clergyman. There are other sorts of work. It seems to me very miserable not to

"I did not say that. You want to quarrel with me. It is too bad of you to be guided by what other people say

"How can I want to quarrel with you? I should be quarrelling with all my new books," said Mary, lifting the

volume on the table. "However naughty you may be to other people, you are good to me."

"You would admire a stupendous fellow, who would have wise opinions about everything."

"Yes, I should." Mary was sewing swiftly, and seemed provokingly mistress of the situation. When a

conversation has taken a wrong turn for us, we only get farther and farther into the swamp of awkwardness.

"I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known ever since she can remember; as

"Let me see," said Mary, the corners of her mouth curling archly; "I must go back on my experience. There is

Julietshe seems an example of what you say. But then Ophelia had probably known Hamlet a long while;

and Brenda Troilshe had known Mordaunt Merton ever since they were children; but then he seems to

have been an estimable young man; and Minna was still more deeply in love with Cleveland, who was a

stranger. Waverley was new to Flora MacIvor; but then she did not fall in love with him. And there are Olivia

and Sophia Primrose, and Corinnethey may be said to have fallen in love with new men. Altogether, my

Mary looked up with some roguishness at Fred, and that look of hers was very dear to him, though the eyes

were nothing more than clear windows where observation sat laughingly. He was certainly an affectionate

fellow, and as he had grown from boy to man, he had grown in love with his old playmate, notwithstanding

that share in the higher education of the country which had exalted his views of rank and income.

"When a man is not loved, it is no use for him to say that he could be a better fellowcould do anythingI

"Not of the least use in the world for him to say he COULD be better. Might, could, wouldthey are

"I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly."

"I never shall be good for anything, Mary, if you will not say that you love meif you will not promise to

"If I did love you, I would not marry you: I would certainly not promise ever to marry you."

"I think that is quite wicked, Mary. If you love me, you ought to promise to marry me."

"On the contrary, I think it would be wicked in me to marry you even if I did love you."

"You mean, just as I am, without any means of maintaining a wife. Of course: I am but threeandtwenty."

"In that last point you will alter. But I am not so sure of any other alteration. My father says an idle man

"No; on the whole I should think you would do better to pass your examination. I have heard Mr. Farebrother

"That is all very fine. Anything is easy to him. Not that cleverness has anything to do with it. I am ten times

"Dear me!" said Mary, unable to repress her sarcasm; "that accounts for the curates like Mr. Crowse. Divide

your cleverness by ten, and the quotientdear me!is able to take a degree. But that only shows you are ten

"That is not the questionwhat I want you to do. You have a conscience of your own, I suppose. There!

"Mary," said Fred, seizing her hand as she rose; "if you will not give me some encouragement, I shall get

"I will not give you any encouragement," said Mary, reddening. "Your friends would dislike it, and so would

mine. My father would think it a disgrace to me if I accepted a man who got into debt, and would not work!"

Fred was stung, and released her hand. She walked to the door, but there she turned and said: "Fred, you have

always been so good, so generous to me. I am not ungrateful. But never speak to me in that way again."

"Very well," said Fred, sulkily, taking up his hat and whip. His complexion showed patches of pale pink and

dead white. Like many a plucked idle young gentleman, he was thoroughly in love, and with a plain girl, who

had no money! But having Mr. Featherstone's land in the background, and a persuasion that, let Mary say

When he got home, he gave four of the twenties to his mother, asking her to keep them for him. "I don't want

to spend that money, mother. I want it to pay a debt with. So keep it safe away from my fingers."

"Bless you, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy. She doted on her eldest son and her youngest girl (a child of six),

whom others thought her two naughtiest children. The mother's eyes are not always deceived in their

partiality: she at least can best judge who is the tender, filialhearted child. And Fred was certainly very fond

of his mother. Perhaps it was his fondness for another person also that made him particularly anxious to take

some security against his own liability to spend the hundred pounds. For the creditor to whom he owed a

hundred and sixty held a firmer security in the shape of a bill signed by Mary's father.

A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty

years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk

under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in

those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the

proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were

longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the

clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and if we

did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as if delivered from a campstool in a

parrothouse. I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were

woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not

At present I have to make the new settler Lydgate better known to any one interested in him than he could

possibly be even to those who had seen the most of him since his arrival in Middlemarch. For surely all must

admit that a man may be puffed and belauded, envied, ridiculed, counted upon as a tool and fallen in love

with, or at least selected as a future husband, and yet remain virtually unknown known merely as a cluster

of signs for his neighbors' false suppositions. There was a general impression, however, that Lydgate was not

altogether a common country doctor, and in Middlemarch at that time such an impression was significant of

great things being expected from him. For everybody's family doctor was remarkably clever, and was

understood to have immeasurable skill in the management and training of the most skittish or vicious

diseases. The evidence of his cleverness was of the higher intuitive order, lying in his ladypatients'

immovable conviction, and was unassailable by any objection except that their intuitions were opposed by

others equally strong; each lady who saw medical truth in Wrench and "the strengthening treatment"

regarding Toller and "the lowering system" as medical perdition. For the heroic times of copious bleeding

and blistering had not yet departed, still less the times of thoroughgoing theory, when disease in general was

called by some bad name, and treated accordingly without shillyshallyas if, for example, it were to be

called insurrection, which must not be fired on with blankcartridge, but have its blood drawn at once. The

strengtheners and the lowerers were all "clever" men in somebody's opinion, which is really as much as can

be said for any living talents. Nobody's imagination had gone so far as to conjecture that Mr. Lydgate could

know as much as Dr. Sprague and Dr. Minchin, the two physicians, who alone could offer any hope when

danger was extreme, and when the smallest hope was worth a guinea. Still, I repeat, there was a general

impression that Lydgate was something rather more uncommon than any general practitioner in

Middlemarch. And this was true. He was but sevenandtwenty, an age at which many men are not quite

commonat which they are hopeful of achievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall

never put a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather that Mammon, if they have anything to

He had been left an orphan when he was fresh from a public school. His father, a military man, had made but

little provision for three children, and when the boy Tertius asked to have a medical education, it seemed

easier to his guardians to grant his request by apprenticing him to a country practitioner than to make any

objections on the score of family dignity. He was one of the rarer lads who early get a decided bent and make

up their minds that there is something particular in life which they would like to do for its own sake, and not

because their fathers did it. Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some morning or evening

hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new

talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our

love. Something of that sort happened to Lydgate. He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would

toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it

were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the

Apocrypha in it. Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or

listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; he had then read through "Chrysal, or

the Adventures of a Guinea," which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for

milk, and it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid. His school studies had

not much modified that opinion, for though he "did" his classics and mathematics, he was not preeminent in

them. It was said of him, that Lydgate could do anything he liked, but he had certainly not yet liked to do

anything remarkable. He was a vigorous animal with a ready understanding, but no spark had yet kindled in

him an intellectual passion; knowledge seemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from

the conversation of his elders, he had apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life.

Probably this was not an exceptional result of expensive teaching at that period of shortwaisted coats, and

other fashions which have not yet recurred. But, one vacation, a wet day sent him to the small home library to

hunt once more for a book which might have some freshness for him: in vain! unless, indeed, he took down a

dusty row of volumes with graypaper backs and dingy labelsthe volumes of an old Cyclopaedia which he

had never disturbed. It would at least be a novelty to disturb them. They were on the highest shelf, and he

stood on a chair to get them down. But he opened the volume which he first took from the shelf: somehow,

one is apt to read in a makeshift attitude, just where it might seem inconvenient to do so. The page he opened

on was under the head of Anatomy, and the first passage that drew his eyes was on the valves of the heart. He

was not much acquainted with valves of any sort, but he knew that valvae were foldingdoors, and through

this crevice came a sudden light startling him with his first vivid notion of finely adjusted mechanism in the

human frame. A liberal education had of course left him free to read the indecent passages in the school

classics, but beyond a general sense of secrecy and obscenity in connection with his internal structure, had

left his imagination quite unbiassed, so that for anything he knew his brains lay in small bags at his temples,

and he had no more thought of representing to himself how his blood circulated than how paper served

instead of gold. But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got down from his chair, the world was

made new to him by a presentiment of. endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by

that wordy ignorance which he had supposed to be knowledge. From that hour Lydgate felt the growth of an

We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a woman and be

wedded to her, or else be fatally parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we are never

weary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom and her fairnesse," never weary of listening

to the twanging of the old Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of

"makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small

desires? In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious marriage,

sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom the catastrophe is bound up with the other passion,

sung by the Troubadours. For in the multitude of middleaged men who go about their vocations in a daily

course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number

who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen

after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps

their ardor in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor of other youthful loves, till one day

their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world

more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I

may have sent some of our breath towards infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew

our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came with the vibrations from a woman's glance.

Lydgate did not mean to be one of those failures, and there was the better hope of him because his scientific

interest soon took the form of a professional enthusiasm: he had a youthful belief in his breadwinning work,

not to be stifled by that initiation in makeshift called his 'prentice days; and he carried to his studies in

London, Edinburgh, and Paris, the conviction that the medical profession as it might be was the finest in the

world; presenting the most perfect interchange between science and art; offering the most direct alliance

between intellectual conquest and the social good. Lydgate's nature demanded this combination: he was an

emotional creature, with a fleshandblood sense of fellowship which withstood all the abstractions of

special study. He cared not only for "cases," but for John and Elizabeth, especially Elizabeth.

There was another attraction in his profession: it wanted reform, and gave a man an opportunity for some

indignant resolve to reject its venal decorations and other humbug, and to be the possessor of genuine though

undemanded qualifications. He went to study in Paris with the determination that when he provincial home

again he would settle in some provincial town as a general practitioner, and resist the irrational severance

between medical and surgical knowledge in the interest of his own scientific pursuits, as well as of the

general advance: he would keep away from the range of London intrigues, jealousies, and social truckling,

and win celebrity, however slowly, as Jenner had done, by the independent value of his work. For it must be

remembered that this was a dark period; and in spite of venerable colleges which used great efforts to secure

purity of knowledge by making it scarce, and to exclude error by a rigid exclusiveness in relation to fees and

appointments, it happened that very ignorant young gentlemen were promoted in town, and many more got a

legal right to practise over large areas in the country. Also, the high standard held up to the public mind by

the College of which which gave its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly rarefied medical instruction

obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it;

for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might

be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic

measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. Considering that

statistics had not yet embraced a calculation as to the number of ignorant or canting doctors which absolutely

must exist in the teeth of all changes, it seemed to Lydgate that a change in the units was the most direct

mode of changing the numbers. He meant to be a unit who would make a certain amount of difference

towards that spreading change which would one day tell appreciably upon the averages, and in the mean time

have the pleasure of making an advantageous difference to the viscera of his own patients. But he did not

simply aim at a more genuine kind of practice than was common. He was ambitious of a wider effect: he was

fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an anatomical conception and make a link in the

Does it seem incongruous to you that a Middlemarch surgeon should dream of himself as a discoverer? Most

of us, indeed, know little of the great originators until they have been lifted up among the constellations and

already rule our fates. But that Herschel, for example, who "broke the barriers of the heavens"did he not

once play a provincial churchorgan, and give musiclessons to stumbling pianists? Each of those Shining

Ones had to walk on the earth among neighbors who perhaps thought much more of his gait and his garments

than of anything which was to give him a title to everlasting fame: each of them had his little local personal

history sprinkled with small temptations and sordid cares, which made the retarding friction of his course

towards final companionship with the immortals. Lydgate was not blind to the dangers of such friction, but

he had plenty of confidence in his resolution to avoid it as far as possible: being sevenandtwenty, he felt

himself experienced. And he was not going to have his vanities provoked by contact with the showy worldly

successes of the capital, but to live among people who could hold no rivalry with that pursuit of a great idea

which was to be a twin object with the assiduous practice of his profession. There was fascination in the hope

that the two purposes would illuminate each other: the careful observation and inference which was his daily

work, the use of the lens to further his judgment in special cases, would further his thought as an instrument

of larger inquiry. Was not this the typical preeminence of his profession? He would be a good Middlemarch

doctor, and by that very means keep himself in the track of farreaching investigation. On one point he may

fairly claim approval at this particular stage of his career: he did not mean to imitate those philanthropic

models who make a profit out of poisonous pickles to support themselves while they are exposing

adulteration, or hold shares in a gamblinghell that they may have leisure to represent the cause of public

morality. He intended to begin in his own case some particular reforms which were quite certainly within his

reach, and much less of a problem than the demonstrating of an anatomical conception. One of these reforms

was to act stoutly on the strength of a recent legal decision, and simply prescribe, without dispensing drugs or

taking percentage from druggists. This was an innovation for one who had chosen to adopt the style of

general practitioner in a country town, and would be felt as offensive criticism by his professional brethren.

But Lydgate meant to innovate in his treatment also, and he was wise enough to see that the best security for

his practising honestly according to his belief was to get rid of systematic temptations to the contrary.

Perhaps that was a more cheerful time for observers and theorizers than the present; we are apt to think it the

finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were

wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom; and about 1829 the dark territories of Pathology were a fine

America for a spirited young adventurer. Lydgate was ambitious above all to contribute towards enlarging the

scientific, rational basis of his profession. The more he became interested in special questions of disease, such

as the nature of fever or fevers, the more keenly he felt the need for that fundamental knowledge of structure

which just at the beginning of the century had been illuminated by the brief and glorious career of Bichat,

who died when he was only oneandthirty, but, like another Alexander, left a realm large enough for many

heirs. That great Frenchman first carried out the conception that living bodies, fundamentally considered, are

not associations of organs which can be understood by studying them first apart, and then as it were federally;

but must be regarded as consisting of certain primary webs or tissues, out of which the various

organsbrain, heart, lungs, and so on are compacted, as the various accommodations of a house are built

up in various proportions of wood, iron, stone, brick, zinc, and the rest, each material having its peculiar

composition and proportions. No man, one sees, can understand and estimate the entire structure or its

partswhat are its frailties and what its repairs, without knowing the nature of the materials. And the

conception wrought out by Bichat, with his detailed study of the different tissues, acted necessarily on

medical questions as the turning of gaslight would act on a dim, oillit street, showing new connections and

hitherto hidden facts of structure which must be taken into account in considering the symptoms of maladies

and the action of medicaments. But results which depend on human conscience and intelligence work slowly,

and now at the end of 1829, most medical practice was still strutting or shambling along the old paths, and

there was still scientific work to be done which might have seemed to be a direct sequence of Bichat's. This

great seer did not go beyond the consideration of the tissues as ultimate facts in the living organism, marking

the limit of anatomical analysis; but it was open to another mind to say, have not these structures some

common basis from which they have all started, as your sarsnet, gauze, net, satin, and velvet from the raw

cocoon? Here would be another light, as of oxyhydrogen, showing the very grain of things, and revising ail

former explanations. Of this sequence to Bichat's work, already vibrating along many currents of the

European mind, Lydgate was enamoured; he longed to demonstrate the more intimate relations of living

structure, and help to define men's thought more accurately after the true order. The work had not yet been

done, but only prepared for those who knew how to use the preparation. What was the primitive tissue? In

that way Lydgate put the question not quite in the way required by the awaiting answer; but such missing

of the right word befalls many seekers. And he counted on quiet intervals to be watchfully seized, for taking

up the threads of investigationon many hints to be won from diligent application, not only of the scalpel,

but of the microscope, which research had begun to use again with new enthusiasm of reliance. Such was

Lydgate's plan of his future: to do good small work for Middlemarch, and great work for the world.

He was certainly a happy fellow at this time: to be sevenandtwenty, without any fixed vices, with a

generous resolution that his action should be beneficent, and with ideas in his brain that made life interesting

quite apart from the cultus of horseflesh and other mystic rites of costly observance, which the eight hundred

pounds left him after buying his practice would certainly not have gone far in paying for. He was at a

startingpoint which makes many a man's career a fine subject for betting, if there were any gentlemen given

to that amusement who could appreciate the complicated probabilities of an arduous purpose, with all the

possible thwartings and furtherings of circumstance, all the niceties of inward balance, by which a man

swims and makes his point or else is carried headlong. The risk would remain even with close knowledge of

Lydgate's character; for character too is a process and an unfolding. The man was still in the making, as much

as the Middlemarch doctor and immortal discoverer, and there were both virtues and faults capable of

shrinking or expanding. The faults will not, I hope, be a reason for the withdrawal of your interest in him.

Among our valued friends is there not some one or other who is a little too selfconfident and disdainful;

whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant

there with native. prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the

influence of transient solicitations? All these things might be alleged against Lydgate, but then, they are the

periphrases of a polite preacher, who talks of Adam, and would not like to mention anything painful to the

pewrenters. The particular faults from which these delicate generalities are distilled have distinguishable

physiognomies, diction, accent, and grimaces; filling up parts in very various dramas. Our vanities differ as

our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental

make in which one of us differs from another. Lydgate's conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering,

never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. He would do a great deal for

noodles, being sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no power over him: he had thought

of joining the Saint Simonians when he was in Paris, in order to turn them against some of their own

doctrines. All his faults were marked by kindred traits, and were those of a man who had a fine baritone,

whose clothes hung well upon him, and who even in his ordinary gestures had an air of inbred distinction.

Where then lay the spots of commonness? says a young lady enamoured of that careless grace. How could

there be any commonness in a man so wellbred, so ambitious of social distinction, so generous and unusual

in his views of social duty? As easily as there may be stupidity in a man of genius if you take him unawares

on the wrong subject, or as many a man who has the best will to advance the social millennium might be

illinspired in imagining its lighter pleasures; unable to go beyond Offenbach's music, or the brilliant

punning in the last burlesque. Lydgate's spots of commonness lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which,

in spite of noble intention and sympathy, were half of them such as are found in ordinary men of the world:

that distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardor, did not penetrate his feeling and judgment

about furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without his telling) that he was better born

than other country surgeons. He did not mean to think of furniture at present; but whenever he did so it was to

be feared that neither biology nor schemes of reform would lift him above the vulgarity of feeling that there

As to women, he had once already been drawn headlong by impetuous folly, which he meant to be final,

since marriage at some distant period would of course not be impetuous. For those who want to be acquainted

with Lydgate it will be good to know what was that case of impetuous folly, for it may stand as an example

of the fitful swerving of passion to which he was prone, together with the chivalrous kindness which helped

to make him morally lovable. The story can be told without many words. It happened when he was studying

in Paris, and just at the time when, over and above his other work, he was occupied with some galvanic

experiments. One evening, tired with his experimenting, and not being able to elicit the facts he needed, he

left his frogs and rabbits to some repose under their trying and mysterious dispensation of unexplained

shocks, and went to finish his evening at the theatre of the Porte Saint Martin, where there was a melodrama

which he had already seen several times; attracted, not by the ingenious work of the collaborating authors, but

by an actress whose part it was to stab her lover, mistaking him for the evildesigning duke of the piece.

Lydgate was in love with this actress, as a man is in love with a woman whom he never expects to speak to.

She was a Provencale, with dark eyes, a Greek profile, and rounded majestic form, having that sort of beauty

which carries a sweet matronliness even in youth, and her voice was a soft cooing. She had but lately come to

Paris, and bore a virtuous reputation, her husband acting with her as the unfortunate lover. It was her acting

which was "no better than it should be," but the public was satisfied. Lydgate's only relaxation now was to go

and look at this woman, just as he might have thrown himself under the breath of the sweet south on a bank

of violets for a while, without prejudice to his galvanism, to which he would presently return. But this

evening the old drama had a new catastrophe. At the moment when the heroine was to act the stabbing of her

lover, and he was to fall gracefully, the wife veritably stabbed her husband, who fell as death willed. A wild

shriek pierced the house, and the Provencale fell swooning: a shriek and a swoon were demanded by the play,

but the swooning too was real this time. Lydgate leaped and climbed, he hardly knew how, on to the stage,

and was active in help, making the acquaintance of his heroine by finding a contusion on her head and lifting

her gently in his arms. Paris rang with the story of this death:was it a murder? Some of the actress's

warmest admirers were inclined to believe in her guilt, and liked her the better for it (such was the taste of

those times); but Lydgate was not one of these. He vehemently contended for her innocence, and the remote

impersonal passion for her beauty which he had felt before, had passed now into personal devotion, and

tender thought of her lot. The notion of murder was absurd: no motive was discoverable, the young couple

being understood to dote on each other; and it was not unprecedented that an accidental slip of the foot should

have brought these grave consequences. The legal investigation ended in Madame Laure's release. Lydgate

by this time had had many interviews with her, and found her more and more adorable. She talked little; but

that was an additional charm. She was melancholy, and seemed grateful; her presence was enough, like that

of the evening light. Lydgate was madly anxious about her affection, and jealous lest any other man than

himself should win it and ask her to marry him. But instead of reopening her engagement at the Porte Saint

Martin, where she would have been all the more popular for the fatal episode, she left Paris without warning,

forsaking her little court of admirers. Perhaps no one carried inquiry far except Lydgate, who felt that all

science had come to a standstill while he imagined the unhappy Laure, stricken by everwandering sorrow,

herself wandering, and finding no faithful comforter. Hidden actresses, however, are not so difficult to find as

some other hidden facts, and it was not long before Lydgate gathered indications that Laure had taken the

route to Lyons. He found her at last acting with great success at Avignon under the same name, looking more

majestic than ever as a forsaken wife carrying her child in her arms. He spoke to her after the play, was

received with the usual quietude which seemed to him beautiful as clear depths of water, and obtained leave

to visit her the next day; when he was bent on telling her that he adored her, and on asking her to marry him.

He knew that this was like the sudden impulse of a madmanincongruous even with his habitual foibles. No

matter! It was the one thing which he was resolved to do. He had two selves within him apparently, and they

must learn to accommodate each other and bear reciprocal impediments. Strange, that some of us, with quick

alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain

To have approached Laure with any suit that was not reverentially tender would have been simply a

"You have come all the way from Paris to find me?" she said to him the next day, sitting before him with

folded arms, and looking at him with eyes that seemed to wonder as an untamed ruminating animal wonders.

"I came because I could not live without trying to see you. You are lonely; I love you; I want you to consent

to be my wife; I will wait, but I want you to promise that you will marry me no one else."

Laure looked at him in silence with a melancholy radiance from under her grand eyelids, until he was full of

"I will tell you something," she said, in her cooing way, keeping her arms folded. "My foot really slipped."

"I know, I know," said Lydgate, deprecatingly. "It was a fatal accident a dreadful stroke of calamity that

Lydgate, strong man as he was, turned pale and trembled: moments seemed to pass before he rose and stood

"There was a secret, then," he said at last, even vehemently. "He was brutal to you: you hated him."

"No! he wearied me; he was too fond: he would live in Paris, and not in my country; that was not agreeable to

"Great God!" said Lydgate, in a groan of horror. "And you planned to murder him?"

Lydgate stood mute, and unconsciously pressed his hat on while he looked at her. He saw this womanthe

first to whom he had given his young adorationamid the throng of stupid criminals.

"You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have another."

Three days afterwards Lydgate was at his galvanism again in his Paris chambers, believing that illusions were

at an end for him. He was saved from hardening effects by the abundant kindness of his heart and his belief

that human life might be made better. But he had more reason than ever for trusting his judgment, now that it

was so experienced; and henceforth he would take a strictly scientific view of woman, entertaining no

No one in Middle march was likely to have such a notion of Lydgate's past as has here been faintly

shadowed, and indeed the respectable townsfolk there were not more given than mortals generally to any

eager attempt at exactness in the representation to themselves of what did not come under their own senses.

Not only young virgins of that town, but graybearded men also, were often in haste to conjecture how a new

acquaintance might be wrought into their purposes, contented with very vague knowledge as to the way in

which life had been shaping him for that instrumentality. Middlemarch, in fact, counted on swallowing

The question whether Mr. Tyke should be appointed as salaried chaplain to the hospital was an exciting topic

to the Middlemarchers; and Lydgate heard it discussed in a way that threw much light on the power exercised

in the town by Mr. Bulstrode. The banker was evidently a ruler, but there was an opposition party, and even

among his supporters there were some who allowed it to be seen that their support was a compromise, and

who frankly stated their impression that the general scheme of things, and especially the casualties of trade,

Mr. Bulstrode's power was not due simply to his being a country banker, who knew the financial secrets of

most traders in the town and could touch the springs of their credit; it was fortified by a beneficence that was

at once ready and severeready to confer obligations, and severe in watching the result. He had gathered, as

an industrious man always at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities, and his private

charities were both minute and abundant. He would take a great deal of pains about apprenticing Tegg the

shoemaker's son, and he would watch over Tegg's churchgoing; he would defend Mrs. Strype the

washerwoman against Stubbs's unjust exaction on the score of her dryingground, and he would

himselfscrutinize a calumny against Mrs. Strype. His private minor loans were numerous, but he would

inquire strictly into the circumstances both before and after. In this way a man gathers a domain in his

neighbors' hope and fear as well as gratitude; and power, when once it has got into that subtle region,

propagates itself, spreading out of all proportion to its external means. It was a principle with Mr. Bulstrode

to gain as much power as possible, that he might use it for the glory of God. He went through a great deal of

spiritual conflict and inward argument in order to adjust his motives, and make clear to himself what God's

glory required. But, as we have seen, his motives were not always rightly appreciated. There were many crass

minds in Middlemarch whose reflective scales could only weigh things in the lump; and they had a strong

suspicion that since Mr. Bulstrode could not enjoy life in their fashion, eating and drinking so little as he did,

and worreting himself about everything, he must have a sort of vampire's feast in the sense of mastery.

The subject of the chaplaincy came up at Mr. Vincy's table when Lydgate was dining there, and the family

connection with Mr. Bulstrode did not, he observed, prevent some freedom of remark even on the part of the

host himself, though his reasons against the proposed arrangement turned entirely on his objection to Mr.

Tyke's sermons, which were all doctrine, and his preference for Mr. Farebrother, whose sermons were free

from that taint. Mr. Vincy liked well enough the notion of the chaplain's having a salary, supposing it were

given to Farebrother, who was as good a little fellow as ever breathed, and the best preacher anywhere, and

"What line shall you take, then?" said Mr. Chichely, the coroner, a great coursing comrade of Mr. Vincy's.

"Oh, I'm precious glad I'm not one of the Directors now. I shall vote for referring the matter to the Directors

and the Medical Board together. I shall roll some of my responsibility on your shoulders, Doctor," said Mr.

Vincy, glancing first at Dr. Sprague, the senior physician of the town, and then at Lydgate who sat opposite.

"You medical gentlemen must consult which sort of black draught you will prescribe, eh, Mr. Lydgate?"

"I know little of either," said Lydgate; "but in general, appointments are apt to be made too much a question

of personal liking. The fittest man for a particular post is not always the best fellow or the most agreeable.

Sometimes, if you wanted to get a reform, your only way would be to pension off the good fellows whom

Dr. Sprague, who was considered the physician of most "weight," though Dr. Minchin was usually said to

have more "penetration," divested his large heavy face of all expression, and looked at his wineglass while

Lydgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical and suspected about this young manfor example, a

certain showiness as to foreign ideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his

elders was positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed thirty years before by a

treatise on Meningitis, of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf. For my part I have some

fellowfeeling with Dr. Sprague: one's selfsatisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very

Lydgate's remark, however, did not meet the sense of the company. Mr. Vincy said, that if he could have HIS

"Hang your reforms!" said Mr. Chichely. "There's no greater humbug in the world. You never hear of a

reform, but it means some trick to put in new men. I hope you are not one of the `Lancet's' men, Mr.

Lydgatewanting to take the coronership out of the hands of the legal profession: your words appear to

"I disapprove of Wakley," interposed Dr. Sprague, "no man more: he is an illintentioned fellow, who would

sacrifice the respectability of the profession, which everybody knows depends on the London Colleges, for

the sake of getting some notoriety for himself. There are men who don't mind about being kicked blue if they

can only get talked about. But Wakley is right sometimes," the Doctor added, judicially. "I could mention one

"Oh, well," said Mr. Chichely, "I blame no man for standing up in favor of his own cloth; but, coming to

argument, I should like to know how a coroner is to judge of evidence if he has not had a legal training?"

"In my opinion," said Lydgate, "legal training only makes a man more incompetent in questions that require

knowledge a of another kind. People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scales by a blind

Justice. No man can judge what is good evidence on any particular subject, unless he knows that subject well.

A lawyer is no better than an old woman at a postmortem examination. How is he to know the action of a

poison? You might as well say that scanning verse will teach you to scan the potato crops."

"You are aware, I suppose, that it is not the coroner's business to conduct the postmortem, but only to take

"Who is often almost as ignorant as the coroner himself," said Lydgate. "Questions of medical jurisprudence

ought not to be left to the chance of decent knowledge in a medical witness, and the coroner ought not to be a

man who will believe that strychnine will destroy the coats of the stomach if an ignorant practitioner happens

Lydgate had really lost sight of the fact that Mr. Chichely was his Majesty's coroner, and ended innocently

"To a certain extentwith regard to populous districts, and in the metropolis," said the Doctor. "But I hope it

will be long before this part of the country loses the services of my friend Chichely, even though it might get

the best man in our profession to succeed him. I am sure Vincy will agree with me."

"Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good coursing man," said Mr. Vincy, jovially. "And in my opinion,

you're safest with a lawyer. Nobody can know everything. Most things are `visitation of God.' And as to

poisoning, why, what you want to know is the law. Come, shall we join the ladies?"

Lydgate's private opinion was that Mr. Chichely might be the very coroner without bias as to the coats of the

stomach, but he had not meant to be personal. This was one of the difficulties of moving in good

Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office. Fred

Vincy had called Lydgate a prig, and now Mr. Chichely was inclined to call him prickeared; especially

when, in the drawingroom, he seemed to be making himself eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he

had easily monopolized in a teteatete, since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the teatable. She resigned no

domestic function to her daughter; and the matron's blooming goodnatured face, with the two volatile pink

strings floating from her fine throat, and her cheery manners to husband and children, was certainly among

the great attractions of the Vincy houseattractions which made it all the easier to fall in love with the

daughter. The tinge of unpretentious, inoffensive vulgarity in Mrs. Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond's

Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impression of refined manners, and the right thing

said seems quite astonishingly right when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid. And

Rosamond could say the right thing; for she was clever with that sort of cleverness which catches every tone

except the humorous. Happily she never attempted to joke, and this perhaps was the most decisive mark of

She and Lydgate readily got into conversation. He regretted that he had not heard her sing the other day at

Stone Court. The only pleasure he allowed himself during the latter part of his stay in Paris was to go and

"No, I know the notes of many birds, and I know many melodies by ear; but the music that I don't know at

all, and have no notion about, delights meaffects me. How stupid the world is that it does not make more

"Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tuneless. There are hardly any good musicians. I only know two

"I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way, leaving you to fancy the tunevery much

"Ah, you have heard Mr. Bowyer," said Rosamond, with one of her rare smiles. "But we are speaking very ill

Lydgate was almost forgetting that he must carry on the conversation, in thinking how lovely this creature

was, her garment seeming to be made out of the faintest blue sky, herself so immaculately blond, as if the

petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and disclosed her; and yet with this infantine blondness

showing so much ready, selfpossessed grace. Since he had had the memory of Laure, Lydgate had lost all

taste for largeeyed silence: the divine cow no longer attracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite.

"I will let you hear my attempts, if you like," said Rosamond. "Papa is sure to insist on my singing. But I

shall tremble before you, who have heard the best singers in Paris. I have heard very little: I have only once

been to London. But our organist at St. Peter's is a good musician, and I go on studying with him."

"Very little." (A more naive girl would have said, "Oh, everything!" But Rosamond knew better.) "A few of

"Do you call yourself a raw country girl?" said Lydgate, looking at her with an involuntary emphasis of

admiration, which made Rosamond blush with pleasure. But she remained simply serious, turned her long

neck a little, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hairplaits an habitual gesture with her as pretty

as any movements of a kitten's paw. Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph caught

"I assure you my mind is raw," she said immediately; "I pass at Middlemarch. I am not afraid of talking to

"An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her knowledge is of a different

sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand thingsas an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were

any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so

"Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him from jarring all your nerves," said

Rosamond, moving to the other side of the room, where Fred having opened the piano, at his father's desire,

that Rosamond might give them some music, was parenthetically performing "Cherry Ripe!" with one hand.

Able men who have passed their examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than the plucked Fred.

"Fred, pray defer your practising till tomorrow; you will make Mr. Lydgate ill," said Rosamond. "He has an

Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, "You perceive, the bears will not always be taught."

"Now then, Rosy!" said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it upward for her, with a hearty

Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemon's school (close to a county town with a memorable

history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be

found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more

plentiful conditions of musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant's instinct, had seized his manner of

playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo. It was almost

startling, heard for the first time. A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Rosamond's fingers; and so

indeed it was, since souls live on in perpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there goes somewhere an

originating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter. Lydgate was taken possession of, and began to believe

in her as something exceptional. After all, he thought, one need not be surprised to find the rare conjunctions

of nature under circumstances apparently unfavorable: come where they may, they always depend on

conditions that are not obvious. He sat looking at her, and did not rise to pay her any compliments, leaving

Her singing was less remarkable? but also well trained, and sweet to hear as a chime perfectly in tune. It is

true she sang "Meet me by moonlight," and "I've been roaming;" for mortals must share the fashions of their

time, and none but the ancients can be always classical. But Rosamond could also sing "Blackeyed Susan"

with effect, or Haydn's canzonets, or "Voi, che sapete," or "Batti, batti"she only wanted to know what her

Her father looked round at the company, delighting in their admiration. Her mother sat, like a Niobe before

her troubles, with her youngest little girl on her lap, softly beating the child's hand up and down in time to the

music. And Fred, notwithstanding his general scepticism about Rosy, listened to her music with perfect

allegiance, wishing he could do the same thing on his flute. It was the pleasantest family party that Lydgate

had seen since he came to Middlemarch. The Vincys had the readiness to enjoy, the rejection of all anxiety,

and the belief in life as a merry lot, which made a house exceptional in most county towns at that time, when

Evangelicalism had east a certain suspicion as of plagueinfection over the few amusements which survived

in the provinces. At the Vincys' there was always whist, and the cardtables stood ready now, making some

of the company secretly impatient of the music. Before it ceased Mr. Farebrother came in a handsome,

broadchested but otherwise small man, about forty, whose black was very threadbare: the brilliancy was all

in his quick gray eyes. He came like a pleasant change in the light, arresting little Louisa with fatherly

nonsense as she was being led out of the room by Miss Morgan, greeting everybody with some special word,

and seeming to condense more talk into ten minutes than had been held all through the evening. He claimed

from Lydgate the fulfilment of a promise to come and see him. "I can't let you off, you know, because I have

some beetles to show you. We collectors feel an interest in every new man till he has seen all we have to

But soon he swerved to the whisttable, rubbing his hands and saying, "Come now, let us be serious! Mr.

Lydgate said to himself that the clergyman whose abilities were so painful to Mr. Bulstrode, appeared to have

found an agreeable resort in this certainly not erudite household. He could half understand it: the

goodhumor, the good looks of elder and younger, and the provision for passing the time without any labor

of intelligence, might make the house beguiling to people who had no particular use for their odd hours.

Everything looked blooming and joyous except Miss Morgan, who was brown, dull, and resigned, and

altogether, as Mrs. Vincy often said, just the sort of person for a governess. Lydgate did not mean to pay

many such visits himself. They were a wretched waste of the evenings; and now, when he had talked a little

"You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure," she said, when the whistplayers were settled. "We are

"I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike," said Lydgate. "But I have noticed that one always

believes one's own town to be more stupid than any other. I have made up my mind to take Middlemarch as it

comes, and shall be much obliged if the town will take me in the same way. I have certainly found some

"You mean the rides towards Tipton and Lowick; every one is pleased with those," said Rosamond, with

Rosamond rose and reached her netting, and then said, "Do you care about dancing at all? I am not quite sure

"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a slight deprecatory laugh. "I was only going to say that we sometimes have

dancing, and I wanted to know whether you would feel insulted if you were asked to come."

After this chat Lydgate thought that he was going, but on moving towards the whisttables, he got interested

in watching Mr. Farebrother's play, which was masterly, and also his face, which was a striking mixture of

the shrewd and the mild. At ten o'clock supper was brought in (such were the customs of Middlemarch) and

there was punchdrinking; but Mr. Farebrother had only a glass of water. He was winning, but there seemed

to be no reason why the renewal of rubbers should end, and Lydgate at last took his leave.

But as it was not eleven o'clock, he chose to walk in the brisk air towards the tower of St. Botolph's, Mr.

Farebrother's church, which stood out dark, square, and massive against the starlight. It was the oldest church

in Middlemarch; the living, however, was but a vicarage worth barely four hundred ayear. Lydgate had

heard that, and he wondered now whether Mr. Farebrother cared about the money he won at cards; thinking,

"He seems a very pleasant fellow, but Bulstrode may have his good reasons." Many things would be easier to

Lydgate if it should turn out that Mr. Bulstrode was generally justifiable. "What is his religious doctrine to

me, if he carries some good notions along with it? One must use such brains as are to be found."

These were actually Lydgate's first meditations as he walked away from Mr. Vincy's, and on this ground I

fear that many ladies will consider him hardly worthy of their attention. He thought of Rosamond and her

music only in the second place; and though, when her turn came, he dwelt on the image of her for the rest of

his walk, he felt no agitation, and had no sense that any new current had set into his life. He could not marry

yet; he wished not to marry for several years; and therefore he was not ready to entertain the notion of being

in love with a girl whom he happened to admire. He did admire Rosamond exceedingly; but that madness

which had once beset him about Laure was not, he thought, likely to recur in relation to any other woman

Certainly, if falling in love had been at all in question, it would have been quite safe with a creature like this

Miss Vincy, who had just the kind of intelligence one would desire in a woman polished, refined, docile,

lending itself to finish in all the delicacies of life, and enshrined in a body which expressed this with a force

of demonstration that excluded the need for other evidence. Lydgate felt sure that if ever he married, his wife

would have that feminine radiance, that distinctive womanhood which must be classed with flowers and

music, that sort of beauty which by its very nature was virtuous, being moulded only for pure and delicate

But since he did not mean to marry for the next five years his more pressing business was to look into

Louis' new book on Fever, which he was specially interested in, because he had known Louis in Paris, and

had followed many anatomical demonstrations in order to ascertain the specific differences of typhus and

typhoid. He went home and read far into the smallest hour, bringing a much more testing vision of details and

relations into this pathological study than he had ever thought it necessary to apply to the complexities of

love and marriage, these being subjects on which he felt himself amply informed by literature, and that

traditional wisdom which is handed down in the genial conversation of men. Whereas Fever had obscure

conditions, and gave him that delightful labor of the imagination which is not mere arbitrariness, but the

exercise of disciplined powercombining and constructing with the clearest eye for probabilities and the

fullest obedience to knowledge; and then, in yet more energetic alliance with impartial Nature, standing aloof

Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength of their profuseness in indifferent

drawing or cheap narration: reports of very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifer

coming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's wings and spurts of phosphorescence; or

exaggerations of wantonness that seem to reflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspiration

Lydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with the imagination that reveals subtle actions

inaccessible by any sort of lens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways of necessary

sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement of Energy, capable of bathing even the ethereal

atoms in its ideally illuminated space. He for his part had tossed away all cheap inventions where ignorance

finds itself able and at ease: he was enamoured of that arduous invention which is the very eye of research,

provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and more exactness of relation; he wanted to pierce

the obscurity of those minute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisible thoroughfares

which are the first lurkingplaces of anguish, mania, and crime, that delicate poise and transition which

As he threw down his book, stretched his legs towards the embers in the grate, and clasped his hands at the

back of his head, in that agreeable afterglow of excitement when thought lapses from examination of a

specific object into a suffusive sense of its connections with all the rest of our existenceseems, as it were,

to throw itself on its back after vigorous swimming and float with the repose of unexhausted

strengthLydgate felt a triumphant delight in his studies, and something like pity for those less lucky men

"If I had not taken that turn when I was a lad," he thought, "I might have got into some stupid draughthorse

work or other, and lived always in blinkers. I should never have been happy in any profession that did not call

forth the highest intellectual strain, and yet keep me in good warm contact with my neighbors. There is

nothing like the medical profession for that: one can have the exclusive scientific life that touches the

distance and befriend the old fogies in the parish too. It is rather harder for a clergyman: Farebrother seems to

This last thought brought back the Vincys and all the pictures of the evening. They floated in his mind

agreeably enough, and as he took up his bedcandle his lips were curled with that incipient smile which is apt

to accompany agreeable recollections. He was an ardent fellow, but at present his ardor was absorbed in love

of his work and in the ambition of making his life recognized as a factor in the better life of mankindlike

other heroes of science who had nothing but an obscure country practice to begin with.

Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond! Each lived in a world of which the other knew nothing. It had

not occurred to Lydgate that he had been a subject of eager meditation to Rosamond, who had neither any

reason for throwing her marriage into distant perspective, nor any pathological studies to divert her mind

from that ruminating habit, that inward repetition of looks, words, and phrases, which makes a large part in

the lives of most girls. He had not meant to look at her or speak to her with more than the inevitable amount

of admiration and compliment which a man must give to a beautiful girl; indeed, it seemed to him that his

enjoyment of her music had remained almost silent, for he feared falling into the rudeness of telling her his

great surprise at her possession of such accomplishment. But Rosamond had registered every look and word,

and estimated them as the opening incidents of a preconceived romanceincidents which gather value from

the foreseen development and climax. In Rosamond's romance it was not necessary to imagine much about

the inward life of the hero, or of his serious business in the world: of course, he had a profession and was

clever, as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgate was his good birth, which

distinguished him from all Middlemarch admirers, and presented marriage as a prospect of rising in rank and

getting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in which she would have nothing to do with vulgar

people, and perhaps at last associate with relatives quite equal to the county people who looked down on the

Middlemarchers. It was part of Rosamond's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank, and

once when she had seen the Miss Brookes accompanying their uncle at the county assizes, and seated among

If you think it incredible that to imagine Lydgate as a man of family could cause thrills of satisfaction which

had anything to do with the sense that she was in love with him, I will ask you to use your power of

comparison a little more effectively, and consider whether red cloth and epaulets have never had an influence

of that sort. Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of

notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store

Rosamond, in fact, was entirely occupied not exactly with Tertius Lydgate as he was in himself, but with his

relation to her; and it was excusable in a girl who was accustomed to hear that all young men might, could,

would be, or actually were in love with her, to believe at once that Lydgate could be no exception. His looks

and words meant more to her than other men's, because she cared more for them: she thought of them

diligently, and diligently attended to that perfection of appearance, behavior, sentiments, and all other

elegancies, which would find in Lydgate a more adequate admirer than she had yet been conscious of.

For Rosamond, though she would never do anything that was disagreeable to her, was industrious; and now

more than ever she was active in sketching her landscapes and marketcarts and portraits of friends, in

practising her music, and in being from morning till night her own standard of a perfect lady, having always

an audience in her own consciousness, with sometimes the not unwelcome addition of a more variable

external audience in the numerous visitors of the house. She found time also to read the best novels, and even

the second best, and she knew much poetry by heart. Her favorite poem was "Lalla Rookh."

"The best girl in the world! He will be a happy fellow who gets her!" was the sentiment of the elderly

gentlemen who visited the Vincys; and the rejected young men thought of trying again, as is the fashion in

country towns where the horizon is not thick with coming rivals. But Mrs. Plymdale thought that Rosamond

had been educated to a ridiculous pitch, for what was the use of accomplishments which would be all laid

aside as soon as she was married? While her aunt Bulstrode, who had a sisterly faithfulness towards her

brother's family, had two sincere wishes for Rosamondthat she might show a more serious turn of mind,

The Rev. Camden Farebrother, whom Lydgate went to see the next evening, lived in an old parsonage, built

of stone, venerable enough to match the church which it looked out upon. All the furniture too in the house

was old, but with another grade of agethat of Mr. Farebrother's father and grandfather. There were painted

white chairs, with gilding and wreaths on them, and some lingering red silk damask with slits in it. There

were engraved portraits of Lord Chancellors and other celebrated lawyers of the last century; and there were

old pierglasses to reflect them, as well as the little satinwood tables and the sofas resembling a

prolongation of uneasy chairs, all standing in relief against the dark wainscot This was the physiognomy of

the drawingroom into which Lydgate was shown; and there were three ladies to receive him, who were also

oldfashioned, and of a faded but genuine respectability: Mrs. Farebrother, the Vicar's whitehaired mother,

befrilled and kerchiefed with dainty cleanliness, up right, quickeyed, and still under seventy; Miss Noble,

her sister, a tiny old lady of meeker aspect, with frills and kerchief decidedly more worn and mended; and

Miss Winifred Farebrother, the Vicar's elder sister, welllooking like himself, but nipped and subdued as

single women are apt to be who spend their lives in uninterrupted subjection to their elders. Lydgate had not

expected to see so quaint a group: knowing simply that Mr. Farebrother was a bachelor, he had thought of

being ushered into a snuggery where the chief furniture would probably be books and collections of natural

objects. The Vicar himself seemed to wear rather a changed aspect, as most men do when acquaintances

made elsewhere see them for the first time in their own homes; some indeed showing like an actor of genial

parts disadvantageously cast for the curmudgeon in a new piece. This was not the case with Mr. Farebrother:

he seemed a trifle milder and more silent, the chief talker being his mother, while he only put in a

goodhumored moderating remark here and there. The old lady was evidently accustomed to tell her

company what they ought to think, and to regard no subject as quite safe without her steering. She was

afforded leisure for this function by having all her little wants attended to by Miss Winifred. Meanwhile tiny

Miss Noble carried on her arm a small basket, into which she diverted a bit of sugar, which she had first

dropped in her saucer as if by mistake; looking round furtively afterwards, and reverting to her teacup with a

small innocent noise as of a tiny timid quadruped. Pray think no ill of Miss Noble. That basket held small

savings from her more portable food, destined for the children of her poor friends among whom she trotted on

fine mornings; fostering and petting all needy creatures being so spontaneous a delight to her, that she

regarded it much as if it had been a pleasant vice that she was addicted to. Perhaps she was conscious of

being tempted to steal from those who had much that she might give to those who had nothing, and carried in

her conscience the guilt of that repressed desire. One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

Mrs. Farebrother welcomed the guest with a lively formality and precision. She presently informed him that

they were not often in want of medical aid in that house. She had brought up her children to wear flannel and

not to overeat themselves, which last habit she considered the chief reason why people needed doctors.

Lydgate pleaded for those whose fathers and mothers had overeaten themselves, but Mrs. Farebrother held

that view of things dangerous: Nature was more just than that; it would be easy for any felon to say that his

ancestors ought to have been hanged instead of him. If those he had bad fathers and mothers were bad

themselves, they were hanged for that. There was no need to go back on what you couldn't see.

"My mother is like old George the Third," said the Vicar, "she objects to metaphysics."

"I object to what is wrong, Camden. I say, keep hold of a few plain truths, and make everything square with

them. When I was young, Mr. Lydgate, there never was any question about right and wrong. We knew our

catechism, and that was enough; we learned our creed and our duty. Every respectable Church person had the

same opinions. But now, if you speak out of the Prayerbook itself, you are liable to be contradicted."

"That makes rather a pleasant time of it for those who like to maintain their own point," said Lydgate.

"No, no, Camden, you must not lead Mr. Lydgate into a mistake about ME. I shall never show that disrespect

to my parents, to give up what they taught me. Any one may see what comes of turning. If you change once,

"A man might see good arguments for changing once, and not see them for changing again," said Lydgate,

"Excuse me there. If you go upon arguments, they are never wanting, when a man has no constancy of mind.

My father never changed, and he preached plain moral sermons without arguments, and was a good man

few better. When you get me a good man made out of arguments, I will get you a good dinner with reading

you the cookerybook. That's my opinion, and I think anybody's stomach will bear me out."

"It is the same thing, the dinner or the man. I am nearly seventy, Mr. Lydgate, and I go upon experience. I am

not likely to follow new lights, though there are plenty of them here as elsewhere. I say, they came in with the

mixed stuffs that will neither wash nor wear. It was not so in my youth: a Churchman was a Churchman, and

a clergyman, you might be pretty sure, was a gentleman, if nothing else. But now he may be no better than a

Dissenter, and want to push aside my son on pretence of doctrine. But whoever may wish to push him aside, I

am proud to say, Mr. Lydgate, that he will compare with any preacher in this kingdom, not to speak of this

town, which is but a low standard to go by; at least, to my thinking, for I was born and bred at Exeter."

"A mother is never partial," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling. "What do you think Tyke's mother says about

"Ah, poor creature! what indeed?" said Mrs. Farebrother, her sharpness blunted for the moment by her

confidence in maternal judgments. "She says the truth to herself, depend upon it."

"Oh, nothing bad at all," said Mr. Farebrother. "He is a zealous fellow: not very learned, and not very wise, I

"Why, Camden!" said Miss Winifred, "Griffin and his wife told me only today, that Mr. Tyke said they

Mrs. Farebrother laid down her knitting, which she had resumed after her small allowance of tea and toast,

and looked at her son as if to say "You hear that?" Miss Noble said, "Oh poor things! poor things!" in

reference, probably, to the double loss of preaching and coal. But the Vicar answered quietly

"That is because they are not my parishioners. And I don't think my sermons are worth a load of coals to

"Mr. Lydgate," said Mrs. Farebrother, who could not let this pass, "you don't know my son: he always

undervalues himself. I tell him he is undervaluing the God who made him, and made him a most excellent

"That must be a hint for me to take Mr. Lydgate away to my study, mother," said the Vicar, laughing. "I

promised to show you my collection," he added, turning to Lydgate; "shall we go?"

All three ladies remonstrated. Mr. Lydgate ought not to be hurried away without being allowed to accept

another cup of tea: Miss Winifred had abundance of good tea in the pot. Why was Camden in such haste to

take a visitor to his den? There was nothing but pickled vermin, and drawers full of bluebottles and moths,

with no carpet on the floor. Mr. Lydgate must excuse it. A game at cribbage would be far better. In short, it

was plain that a vicar might be adored by his womankind as the king of men and preachers, and yet be held

by them to stand in much need of their direction. Lydgate, with the usual shallowness of a young bachelor.

"My mother is not used to my having visitors who can take any interest in my hobbies," said the Vicar, as he

opened the door of his study, which was indeed as bare of luxuries for the body as the ladies had implied,

"Men of your profession don't generally smoke," he said. Lydgate smiled and shook his head. "Nor of mine

either, properly, I suppose. You will hear that pipe alleged against me by Bulstrode and Company. They don't

"I understand. You are of an excitable temper and want a sedative. I am heavier, and should get idle with it. I

"And you mean to give it all to your work. I am some ten or twelve years older than you, and have come to a

compromise. I feed a weakness or two lest they should get clamorous. See," continued the Vicar, opening

several small drawers, "I fancy I have made an exhaustive study of the entomology of this district. I am going

on both with the fauna and flora; but I have at least done my insects well. We are singularly rich in

orthoptera: I don't know whetherAh! you have got hold of that glass jar you are looking into that instead

"Not by the side of this lovely anencephalous monster. I have never had time to give myself much to natural

history. I was early bitten with an interest in structure, and it is what lies most directly in my profession. I

"Ah! you are a happy fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, turning on his heel and beginning to fill his pipe. "You

don't know what it is to want spiritual tobaccobad emendations of old texts, or small items about a variety

of Aphis Brassicae, with the wellknown signature of Philomicron, for the `Twaddler's Magazine;' or a

learned treatise on the entomology of the Pentateuch, including all the insects not mentioned, but probably

met with by the Israelites in their passage through the desert; with a monograph on the Ant, as treated by

Solomon, showing the harmony of the Book of Proverbs with the results of modern research. You don't mind

Lydgate was more surprised at the openness of this talk than at its implied meaningthat the Vicar felt

himself not altogether in the right vocation. The neat fittingup of drawers and shelves, and the bookcase

filled with expensive illustrated books on Natural History, made him think again of the winnings at cards and

their destination. But he was beginning to wish that the very best construction of everything that Mr.

Farebrother did should be the true one. The Vicar's frankness seemed not of the repulsive sort Chat comes

from an uneasy consciousness seeking to forestall the judgment of others, but simply the relief of a desire to

do with as little pretence as possible. Apparently he was not without a sense that his freedom of speech might

"I have not yet told you that I have the advantage of you, Mr. Lydgate, and know you better than you know

me. You remember Trawley who shared your apartment at Paris for some time? I was a correspondent of his,

and he told me a good deal about you. I was not quite sure when you first came that you were the same man. I

was very glad when I found that you were. Only I don't forget that you have not had the like prologue about

Lydgate divined some delicacy of feeling here, but did not half understand it. "By the way," he said, "what

has become of Trawley? I have quite lost sight of him. He was hot on the French social systems, and talked of

"Not at all. He is practising at a German bath, and has married a rich patient."

Then my notions wear the best, so far," said Lydgate, with a short scornful laugh. "He would have it, the

medical profession was an inevitable system of humbug. I said, the fault was in the men men who truckle

to lies and folly. Instead of preaching against humbug outside the walls, it might be better to set up a

disinfecting apparatus within. In shortI am reporting my own conversation you may be sure I had all the

"Your scheme is a good deal more difficult to carry out than the Pythagorean community, though. You have

not only got the old Adam in yourself against you, but you have got all those descendants of the original

Adam who form the society around you. You see, I have paid twelve or thirteen years more than you for my

knowledge of difficulties. But"Mr. Farebrother broke off a moment, and then added, "you are eying that

glass vase again. Do you want to make an exchange? You shall not have it without a fair barter."

"I have some seamicefine specimensin spirits. And I will throw in Robert Brown's new

thing`Microscopic Observations on the Pollen of Plants'if you don't happen to have it already."

"Why, seeing how you long for the monster, I might ask a higher price. Suppose I ask you to look through my

drawers and agree with me about all my new species?" The Vicar, while he talked in this way, alternately

moved about with his pipe in his mouth, and returned to hang rather fondly over his drawers. "That would be

good discipline, you know, for a young doctor who has to please his patients in Middlemarch. You must learn

"Don't you think men overrate the necessity for humoring everybody's nonsense, till they get despised by the

very fools they humor?" said Lydgate, moving to Mr. Farebrother's side, and looking rather absently at the

insects ranged in fine gradation, with names subscribed in exquisite writing. "The shortest way is to make

your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not."

"With all my heart. But then you must be sure of having the value, and you must keep yourself independent.

Very few men can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you

wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yokefellows pull you. But do look at these delicate

Lydgate had after all to give some scrutiny to each drawer, the Vicar laughing at himself, and yet persisting in

"Apropos of what you said about wearing harness," Lydgate began, after they had sat down, "I made up my

mind some time ago to do with as little of it aspossible. That was why I determined not to try anything in

London, for a good many years at least. I didn't like what I saw when I was studying thereso much empty

bigwiggism, and obstructive trickery. In the country, people have less pretension to knowledge, and are less

of companions, but for that reason they affect one's amourpropre less: one makes less bad blood, and can

"Yeswellyou have got a good start; you are in the right profession, the work you feel yourself most fit

for. Some people miss that, and repent too late. But you must not be too sure of keeping your independence."

"You mean of family ties?" said Lydgate, conceiving that these might press rather tightly on Mr. Farebrother.

"Not altogether. Of course they make many things more difficult. But a good wifea good unworldly

womanmay really help a man, and keep him more independent. There's a parishioner of mine a fine

fellow, but who would hardly have pulled through as he has done without his wife. Do you know the Garths?

"Oh, she gauges everybody. I prepared her for confirmation she is a favorite of mine."

Mr. Farebrother puffed a few moments in silence, Lydgate not caring to know more about the Garths. At last

the Vicar laid down his pipe, stretched out his legs, and turned his bright eyes with a smile towards Lydgate,

"But we Middlemarchers are not so tame as you take us to be. We have our intrigues and our parties. I am a

party man, for example, and Bulstrode is another. If you vote for me you will offend Bulstrode."

"I did not say there was anything against him except that. If you vote against him you will make him your

"I don't know that I need mind about that," said Lydgate, rather proudly; "but he seems to have good ideas

about hospitals, and he spends large sums on useful public objects. He might help me a good deal in carrying

out my ideas. As to his religious notions why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if

administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don't mind

"Very good. But then you must not offend your arsenicman. You will not offend me, you know," said Mr.

Farebrother, quite unaffectedly. "I don't translate my own convenience into other people's duties. I am

opposed to Bulstrode in many ways. I don't like the set he belongs to: they are a narrow ignorant set, and do

more to make their neighbors uncomfortable than to make them better. Their system is a sort of

worldlyspiritual cliqueism: they really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish

them for heaven. But," he added, smilingly, "I don't say that Bulstrode's new hospital is a bad thing; and as to

his wanting to oust me from the old onewhy, if he thinks me a mischievous fellow, he is only returning a

Lydgate was not at all sure that the Vicar maligned himself. A model clergyman, like a model doctor, ought

to think his own profession the finest in the world, and take all knowledge as mere nourishment to his moral

pathology and therapeutics. He only said, "What reason does Bulstrode give for superseding you?"

"That I don't teach his opinionswhich he calls spiritual religion; and that I have no time to spare. Both

statements are true. But then I could make time, and I should be glad of the forty pounds. That is the plain

fact of the case. But let us dismiss it. I only wanted to tell you that if you vote for your arsenicman, you are

not to cut me in consequence. I can't spare you. You are a sort of circumnavigator come to settle among us,

and will keep up my belief in the antipodes. Now tell me all about them in Paris."

Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the chaplaincy gathered any practical

import for Lydgate, and without telling himself the reason, he deferred the predetermination on which side he

should give his vote. It would really have been a matter of total indifference to himthat is to say, he would

have taken the more convenient side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke without any

But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph's grew with growing acquaintanceship. That, entering into

Lydgate's position as a newcomer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr. Farebrother should

have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity,

which Lydgate's nature was keenly alive to. It went along with other points of conduct in Mr. Fare brother

which were exceptionally fine, and made his character resemble those southern landscapes which seem

divided between natural grandeur and social slovenliness. Very few men could have been as filial and

chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and sister, whose dependence on him had in many ways shaped his

life rather uneasily for himself; few men who feel the pressure of small needs are so nobly resolute not to

dress up their inevitably selfinterested desires in a pretext of better motives. In these matters he was

conscious that his life would bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps the consciousness encouraged a little

defiance towards the critical strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve their

domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account for their actions. Then, his preaching

was ingenious and pithy, like the preaching of the English Church in its robust age, and his sermons were

delivered without book. People outside his parish went to hear him; and, since to fill the church was always

the most difficult part of a clergyman's function, here was another ground for a careless sense of superiority.

Besides, he was a likable man: sweettempered, readywitted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness

or other conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our friends. Lydgate liked him heartily,

With this feeling uppermost, he continued to waive the question of the chaplaincy, and to persuade himself

that it was not only no proper business of his, but likely enough never to vex him with a demand for his vote.

Lydgate, at Mr. Bulstrode's request, was laying down plans for the internal arrangements of the new hospital,

and the two were often in consultation. The banker was always presupposing that he could count in general

on Lydgate as a coadjutor, but made no special recurrence to the coming decision between Tyke and

Farebrother. When the General Board of the Infirmary had met, however, and Lydgate had notice that the

question of the chaplaincy was thrown on a council of the directors and medical men, to meet on the

following Friday, he had a vexed sense that he must make up his mind on this trivial Middlemarch business.

He could not help hearing within him the distinct declaration that Bulstrode was prime minister, and that the

Tyke affair was a question of office or no office; and he could not help an equally pronounced dislike to

giving up the prospect of office. For his observation was constantly confirming Mr. Farebrother's assurance

that the banker would not overlook opposition. "Confound their petty politics!" was one of his thoughts for

three mornings in the meditative process of shaving, when he had begun to feel that he must really hold a

court of conscience on this matter. Certainly there were valid things to be said against the election of Mr.

Farebrother: he had too much on his hands already, especially considering how much time he spent on

nonclerical occupations. Then again it was a continually repeated shock, disturbing Lydgate's esteem, that

the Vicar should obviously play for the sake of money, liking the play indeed, but evidently liking some end

which it served. Mr. Farebrother contended on theory for the desirability of all games, and said that

Englishmen's wit was stagnant for want of them; but Lydgate felt certain that he would have played very

much less but for the money. There was a billiardroom at the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers

and wives regarded as the chief temptation in Middlemarch. The Vicar was a firstrate billiardplayer, and

though he did not frequent the Green Dragon, there were reports that he had sometimes been there in the

daytime and had won money. And as to the chaplaincy, he did not pretend that he cared for it, except for the

sake of the forty pounds. Lydgate was no Puritan, but he did not care for play, and winning money at it had

always seemed a meanness to him; besides, he had an ideal of life which made this subservience of conduct

to the gaining of small sums thoroughly hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life his wants had been supplied

without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was always to be liberal with halfcrowns as matters of

no importance to a gentleman; it had never occurred to him to devise a plan for getting halfcrowns. He had

always known in a general way that he was not rich, but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of

imagining the part which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men. Money had never been

a motive to him. Hence he was not ready to frame excuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains. It was

altogether repulsive to him, and he never entered into any calculation of the ratio between the Vicar's income

and his more or less necessary expenditure. It was possible that he would not have made such a calculation in

And now, when the question of voting had come, this repulsive fact told more strongly against Mr.

Farebrother than it had done before. One would know much better what to do if men's characters were more

consistent, and especially if one's friends were invariably fit for any function they desired to undertake!

Lydgate was convinced that if there had been no valid objection to Mr. Farebrother, he would have voted for

him, whatever Bulstrode might have felt on the subject: he did not intend to be a vassal of Bulstrode's. On the

other hand, there was Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simply curate at a chapel of

ease in St. Peter's parish, and had time for extra duty. Nobody had anything to say against Mr. Tyke, except

that they could not bear him, and suspected him of cant. Really, from his point of view, Bulstrode was

But whichever way Lydgate began to incline, there was something to make him wince; and being a proud

man, he was a little exasperated at being obliged to wince. He did not like frustrating his own best purposes

by getting on bad terms with Bulstrode; he did not like voting against Farebrother, and helping to deprive him

of function and salary; and the question occurred whether the additional forty pounds might not leave the

Vicar free from that ignoble care about winning at cards. Moreover, Lydgate did not like the consciousness

that in voting for Tyke he should be voting on the side obviously convenient for himself. But would the end

really be his own convenience? Other people would say so, and would allege that he was currying favor with

Bulstrode for the sake of making himself important and getting on in the world. What then? He for his own

part knew that if his personal prospects simply had been concerned, he would not have cared a rotten nut for

the banker's friendship or enmity. What he really cared for was a medium for his work, a vehicle for his

ideas; and after all, was he not bound to prefer the object of getting a good hospital, where he could

demonstrate the specific distinctions of fever and test therapeutic results, before anything else connected with

this chaplaincy? For the first time Lydgate was feeling the hampering threadlike pressure of small social

conditions, and their frustrating complexity. At the end of his inward debate, when he set out for the hospital,

his hope was really in the chance that discussion might somehow give a new aspect to the question, and make

the scale dip so as to exclude the necessity for voting. I think he trusted a little also to the energy which is

begotten by circumstancessome feeling rushing warmly and making resolve easy, while debate in cool

blood had only made it more difficult. However it was, he did not distinctly say to himself on which side he

would vote; and all the while he was inwardly resenting the subjection which had been forced upon him. It

would have seemed beforehand like a ridiculous piece of bad logic that he, with his unmixed resolutions of

independence and his select purposes, would find himself at the very outset in the grasp of petty alternatives,

each of which was repugnant to him. In his student's chambers, he had prearranged his social action quite

Lydgate was late in setting out, but Dr. Sprague, the two other surgeons, and several of the directors had

arrived early; Mr. Bulstrode, treasurer and chairman, being among those who were still absent. The

conversation seemed to imply that the issue was problematical, and that a majority for Tyke was not so

certain as had been generally supposed. The two physicians, for a wonder, turned out to be unanimous, or

rather, though of different minds, they concurred in action. Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as

every one had foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother. The Doctor was more than suspected of having no

religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor;

indeed it is probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the worldold association of

cleverness with the evil principle being still potent in the minds even of ladypatients who had the strictest

ideas of frilling and sentiment. It was perhaps this negation in the Doctor which made his neighbors call him

hardheaded and drywitted; conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of

judgments connected with drugs. At all events, it is certain that if any medical man had come to Middlemarch

with the reputation of having very definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and of otherwise

showing an active piety, there would have been a general presumption against his medical skill.

On this ground it was (professionally speaking) fortunate for Dr. Minchin that his religious sympathies were

of a general kind, and such as gave a distant medical sanction to all serious sentiment, whether of Church or

Dissent, rather than any adhesion to particular tenets. If Mr. Bulstrode insisted, as he was apt to do, on the

Lutheran doctrine of justification, as that by which a Church must stand or fall, Dr. Minchin in return was

quite sure that man was not a mere machine or a fortuitous conjunction of atoms; if Mrs. Wimple insisted on

a particular providence in relation to her stomach complaint, Dr. Minchin for his part liked to keep the mental

windows open and objected to fixed limits; if the Unitarian brewer jested about the Athanasian Creed, Dr.

Minchin quoted Pope's "Essay on Man." He objected to the rather free style of anecdote in which Dr. Sprague

indulged, preferring wellsanctioned quotations, and liking refinement of all kinds: it was generally known

that he had some kinship to a bishop, and sometimes spent his holidays at "the palace."

Dr. Minchin was softhanded, palecomplexioned, and of rounded outline, not to be distinguished from a

mild clergyman in appearance: whereas Dr. Sprague was superfluously tall; his trousers got creased at the

knees, and showed an excess of boot at a time when straps seemed necessary to any dignity of bearing; you

heard him go in and out, and up and down, as if he had come to see after the roofing. In short, he had weight,

and might be expected to grapple with a disease and throw it; while Dr. Minchin might be better able to

detect it lurking and to circumvent it. They enjoyed about equally the mysterious privilege of medical

reputation, and concealed with much etiquette their contempt for each other's skill. Regarding themselves as

Middlemarch institutions, they were ready to combine against all innovators, and against nonprofessionals

given to interference. On this ground they were both in their hearts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though

Dr. Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differed from him without elaborate

explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution. A layman

who pried into the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtruding his reforms, though he

was less directly embarrassing to the two physicians than to the surgeonapothecaries who attended paupers

by contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as such; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the

new pique against Bulstrode, excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate. The

longestablished practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were just now standing apart and having a

friendly colloquy, in which they agreed that Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve Bulstrode's

purpose. To nonmedical friends they had already concurred in praising the other young practitioner, who

had come into the town on Mr. Peacock's retirement without further recommendation than his own merits and

such argument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered from his having apparently wasted no

time on other branches of knowledge. It was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast

imputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between his own rank as a general practitioner and

that of the physicians, who, in the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various grades,

especially against a man who had not been to either of the English universities and enjoyed the absence of

anatomical and bedside study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in Edinburgh and

Thus it happened that on this occasion Bulstrode became identified with Lydgate, and Lydgate with Tyke;

and owing to this variety of interchangeable names for the chaplaincy question, diverse minds were enabled

Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly. to the group assembled when he entered, "I go for Farebrother. A salary,

with all my heart. But why take it from the Vicar? He has none too muchhas to insure his life, besides

keeping house, and doing a vicar's charities. Put forty pounds in his pocket and you'll do no harm. He's a

good fellow, is Farebrother, with as little of the parson about him as will serve to carry orders."

"Ho, ho! Doctor," said old Mr. Powderell, a retired ironmonger of some standinghis interjection being

something between a laugh and a Parliamentary disapproval; "we must let you have your say. But what we

have to consider is not anybody's incomeit's the souls of the poor sick people"here Mr. Powderell's

voice and face had a sincere pathos in them. "He is a real Gospel preacher, is Mr. Tyke. I should vote against

"Mr. Tyke's opponents have not asked any one to vote against his conscience, I believe," said Mr. Hackbutt, a

rich tanner of fluent speech, whose glittering spectacles and erect hair were turned with some severity

towards innocent Mr. Powderell. "But in my judgment it behoves us, as Directors, to consider whether we

will regard it as our whole business to carry out propositions emanating from a single quarter. Will any

member of the committee aver that he would have entertained the idea of displacing the gentleman who has

always discharged the function of chaplain here, if it had not been suggested to him by parties whose

disposition it is to regard every institution of this town as a machinery for carrying out their own views? I tax

no man's motives: let them lie between himself and a higher Power; but I do say, that there are influences at

work here which are incompatible with genuine independence, and that a crawling servility is usually dictated

by circumstances which gentlemen so conducting themselves could not afford either morally or financially to

avow. I myself am a layman, but I have given no inconsiderable attention to the divisions in the Church

"Oh, damn the divisions!" burst in Mr. Frank Hawley, lawyer and townclerk, who rarely presented himself

at the board, but now looked in hurriedly, whip in hand. "We have nothing to do with them here. Farebrother

has been doing the workwhat there waswithout pay, and if pay is to be given, it should be given to him.

"I think it would be as well for gentlemen not to give their remarks a personal bearing," said Mr. Plymdale. "I

shall vote for the appointment of Mr. Tyke, but I should not have known, if Mr. Hackbutt hadn't hinted it, that

"I disclaim any personalities. I expressly said, if I may be allowed to repeat, or even to conclude what I was

"Ah, here's Minchin!" said Mr. Frank Hawley; at which everybody turned away from Mr. Hackbutt, leaving

him to feel the uselessness of superior gifts in Middlemarch. "Come, Doctor, I must have you on the right

"I hope so," said Dr. Minchin, nodding and shaking hands here and there; "at whatever cost to my feelings."

"If there's any feeling here, it should be feeling for the man who is turned out, I think," said Mr. Frank

"I confess I have feelings on the other side also. I have a divided esteem," said Dr. Minchin, rubbing his

hands. "I consider Mr. Tyke an exemplary mannone more soand I believe him to be proposed from

unimpeachable motives. I, for my part, wish that I could give him my vote. But I am constrained to take a

view of the case which gives the preponderance to Mr. Farebrother's claims. He is an amiable man, an able

Old Mr. Powderell looked on, sad and silent. Mr. Plymdale settled his cravat, uneasily.

"You don't set up Farebrother as a pattern of what a clergyman ought to be, I hope," said Mr. Larcher, the

eminent carrier, who had just come in. "I have no illwill towards him, but I think we owe something to the

public, not to speak of anything higher, in these appointments. In my opinion Farebrother is too lax for a

clergyman. I don't wish to bring up particulars against him; but he will make a little attendance here go as far

"And a devilish deal better than too much," said Mr. Hawley, whose bad language was notorious in that part

of the county. "Sick people can't bear so much praying and preaching. And that methodistical sort of religion

is bad for the spirits bad for the inside, eh?" he added, turning quickly round to the four medical men who

But any answer was dispensed with by the entrance of three gentlemen, with whom there were greetings

more or less cordial. These were the Reverend Edward Thesiger, Rector of St. Peter's, Mr. Bulstrode, and our

friend Mr. Brooke of Tipton, who had lately allowed himself to be put on the board of directors in his turn,

but had never before attended, his attendance now being due to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions. Lydgate was the

Every one now sat down, Mr. Bulstrode presiding, pale and selfrestrained as usual. Mr. Thesiger, a

moderate evangelical, wished for the appointment of his friend Mr. Tyke, a zealous able man, who,

officiating at a chapel of ease, had not a cure of souls too extensive to leave him ample time for the new duty.

It was desirable that chaplaincies of this kind should be entered on with a fervent intention: they were

peculiar opportunities for spiritual influence; and while it was good that a salary should be allotted, there was

the more need for scrupulous watching lest the office should be perverted into a mere question of salary. Mr.

Thesiger's manner had so much quiet propriety that objectors could only simmer in silence.

Mr. Brooke believed that everybody meant well in the matter. He had not himself attended to the affairs of

the Infirmary, though he had a strong interest in whatever was for the benefit of Middlemarch, and was most

happy to meet the gentlemen present on any public question "any public question, you know," Mr. Brooke

repeated, with his nod of perfect understanding. "I am a good deal occupied as a magistrate, and in the

collection of documentary evidence, but I regard my time as being at the disposal of the publicand, in

short, my friends have convinced me that a chaplain with a salarya salary, you know is a very good

thing, and I am happy to be able to come here and vote for the appointment of Mr. Tyke, who, I understand,

is an unexceptionable man, apostolic and eloquent and everything of that kind and I am the last man to

"It seems to me that you have been crammed with one side of the question, Mr. Brooke," said Mr. Frank

Hawley, who was afraid of nobody, and was a Tory suspicious of electioneering intentions. "You don't seem

to know that one of the worthiest men we have has been doing duty as chaplain here for years without pay,

"Excuse me, Mr. Hawley," said Mr. Bulstrode. "Mr. Brooke has been fully informed of Mr. Farebrother's

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Bulstrode, in a subdued tone, "the merits of the question may be very briefly stated,

and if any one present doubts that every gentleman who is about to give his vote has not been fully informed,

"I don't see the good of that," said Mr. Hawley. "I suppose we all know whom we mean to vote for. Any man

who wants to do justice does not wait till the last minute to hear both sides of the question. I have no time to

A brief but still hot discussion followed before each person wrote "Tyke" or "Farebrother" on a piece of paper

and slipped it into a glass tumbler; and in the mean time Mr. Bulstrode saw Lydgate enter.

"I perceive that the votes are equally divided at present," said Mr. Bulstrode, in a clear biting voice. Then,

"There is a castingvote still to be given. It is yours, Mr. Lydgate: will you be good enough to write?"

"The thing is settled now," said Mr. Wrench, rising. "We all know how Mr. Lydgate will vote."

"You seem to speak with some peculiar meaning, sir," said Lydgate, rather defiantly, and keeping his pencil

"I merely mean that you are expected to vote with Mr. Bulstrode. Do you regard that meaning as offensive?"

"It may be offensive to others. But I shall not desist from voting with him on that account." Lydgate

So the Rev. Walter Tyke became chaplain to the Infirmary, and Lydgate continued to work with Mr.

Bulstrode. He was really uncertain whether Tyke were not the more suitable candidate, and yet his

consciousness told him that if he had been quite free from indirect bias he should have voted for Mr.

Farebrother. The affair of the chaplaincy remained a sore point in his memory as a case in which this petty

medium of Middlemarch had been too strong for him. How could a man be satisfied with a decision between

such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he has

chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation

But Mr. Farebrother met him with the same friendliness as before. The character of the publican and sinner is

not always practically incompatible with that of the modern Pharisee, for the majority of us scarcely see more

distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, or the dulness of our

own jokes. But the Vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by

dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them

in thisthat he could excuse other; for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct

"The world has been to strong for ME, I know," he said one day to Lydgate. "But then I am not a mighty

manI shall never be a man of renown. The choice of Hercules is a pretty fable; but Prodicus makes it easy

work for the hero, as if the first resolves were enough. Another story says that he came to hold the distaff, and

at last wore the Nessus shirt. I suppose one good resolve might keep a man right if everybody else's resolve

The Vicar's talk was not always inspiriting: he had escaped being a Pharisee, but he had not escaped that low

estimate of possibilities which we rather hastily arrive at as an inference from our own failure. Lydgate

When George the Fourth was still reigning over the privacies of Windsor, when the Duke of Wellington was

Prime Minister, and Mr. Vincy was mayor of the old corporation in Middlemarch, Mrs. Casaubon, born

Dorothea Brooke, had taken her wedding journey to Rome. In those days the world in general was more

ignorant of good and evil by forty years than it is at present. Travellers did not often carry full information on

Christian art either in their heads or their pockets; and even the most brilliant English critic of the day

mistook the flowerflushed tomb of the ascended Virgin for an ornamental vase due to the painter's fancy.

Romanticism, which has helped to fill some dull blanks with love and knowledge, had not yet penetrated the

times with its leaven and entered into everybody's food; it was fermenting still as a distinguishable vigorous

enthusiasm in certain longhaired German artists at Rome, and the youth of other nations who worked or

One fine morning a young man whose hair was not immoderately long, but abundant and curly, and who was

otherwise English in his equipment, had just turned his back on the Belvedere Torso in the Vatican and was

looking out on the magnificent view of the mountains from the adjoining round vestibule. He was sufficiently

absorbed not to notice the approach of a darkeyed, animated German who came up to him and placing a

hand on his shoulder, said with a strong accent, "Come here, quick! else she will have changed her pose."

Quickness was ready at the call, and the two figures passed lightly along by the Meleager, towards the hall

where the reclining Ariadne, then called the Cleopatra, lies in the marble voluptuousness of her beauty, the

drapery folding around her with a petallike ease and tenderness. They were just in time to see another figure

standing against a pedestal near the reclining marble: a breathing blooming girl, whose form, not shamed by

the Ariadne, was clad in Quakerish gray drapery; her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown backward

from her arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing somewhat backward the white

beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her face around the simply braided darkbrown hair. She was not

looking at the sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight

which fell across the floor. But she became conscious of the two strangers who suddenly paused as if to

contemplate the Cleopatra, and, without looking at them, immediately turned away to join a maidservant

"What do you think of that for a fine bit of antithesis?" said the German, searching in his friend's face for

responding admiration, but going on volubly without waiting for any other answer. "There lies antique

beauty, not corpselike even in death, but arrested in the complete contentment of its sensuous perfection:

and here stands beauty in its breathing life, with the consciousness of Christian centuries in its bosom. But

she should be dressed as a nun; I think she looks almost what you call a Quaker; I would dress her as a nun in

my picture. However, she is married; I saw her weddingring on that wonderful left hand, otherwise I should

have thought the sallow Geistlicher was her father. I saw him parting from her a good while ago, and just

now I found her in that magnificent pose. Only think! he is perhaps rich, and would like to have her portrait

taken. Ah! it is no use looking after her there she goes! Let us follow her home!"

"I know that she is married to my cousin," said Will Ladislaw, sauntering down the hall with a preoccupied

"What! the Geistlicher? He looks more like an unclea more useful sort of relation."

"He is not my uncle. I tell you he is my second cousin," said Ladislaw, with some irritation.

"Schon, schon. Don't be snappish. You are not angry with me for thinking Mrs. SecondCousin the most

"Angry? nonsense. I have only seen her once before, for a couple of minutes, when my cousin introduced her

to me, just before I left England. They were not married then. I didn't know they were coming to Rome."

"But you will go to see them nowyou will find out what they have for an addresssince you know the

"Confound you, Naumann! I don't know what I shall do. I am not so brazen as you."

"Bah! that is because you are dilettantish and amateurish. If you were an artist, you would think of Mistress

SecondCousin as antique form animated by Christian sentimenta sort of Christian Antigone sensuous

"Yes, and that your painting her was the chief outcome of her existencethe divinity passing into higher

completeness and all but exhausted in the act of covering your bit of canvas. I am amateurish if you like: I do

NOT think that all the universe is straining towards the obscure significance of your pictures."

"But it is, my dear!so far as it is straining through me, Adolf Naumann: that stands firm," said the

goodnatured painter, putting a hand on Ladislaw's shoulder, and not in the least disturbed by the

unaccountable touch of illhumor in his tone. "See now! My existence presupposes the existence of the

whole universe does it NOT? and my function is to paintand as a painter I have a conception which is

altogether genialisch, of your greataunt or second grandmother as a subject for a picture; therefore, the

universe is straining towards that picture through that particular hook or claw which it puts forth in the shape

"But how if another claw in the shape of me is straining to thwart it? the case is a little less simple then."

"Not at all: the result of the struggle is the same thing picture or no picturelogically."

Will could not resist this imperturbable temper, and the cloud in his face broke into sunshiny laughter.

"No; nonsense, Naumann! English ladies are not at everybody's service as models. And you want to express

too much with your painting. You would only have made a better or worse portrait with a background which

every connoisseur would give a different reason for or against. And what is a portrait of a woman? Your

painting and Plastik are poor stuff after all. They perturb and dull conceptions instead of raising them.

"Yes, for those who can't paint," said Naumann. "There you have perfect right. I did not recommend you to

The amiable artist carried his sting, but Ladislaw did not choose to appear stung. He went on as if he had not

"Language gives a fuller image, which is all the better for beings vague. After all, the true seeing is within;

and painting stares at you with an insistent imperfection. I feel that especially about representations of

women. As if a woman were a mere colored superficies! You must wait for movement and tone. There is a

difference in their very breathing: they change from moment to moment.This woman whom you have just

seen, for example: how would you paint her voice, pray? But her voice is much diviner than anything you

"I see, I see. You are jealous. No man must presume to think that he can paint your ideal. This is serious, my

"Good. Suppose I get acquainted with her in spite of you, and find that she very much wishes to be painted?"

"Yes, suppose!" said Will Ladislaw, in a contemptuous undertone, intended to dismiss the subject. He was

conscious of being irritated by ridiculously small causes, which were half of his own creation. Why was he

making any fuss about Mrs. Casaubon? And yet he felt as if something had happened to him with regard to

her. There are characters which are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in dramas which

nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilities will clash against objects that remain innocently

Two hours later, Dorothea was seated in an inner room or boudoir of a handsome apartment in the Via

I am sorry to add that she was sobbing bitterly, with such abandonment to this relief of an oppressed heart as

a woman habitually controlled by pride on her own account and thoughtfulness for others will sometimes

allow herself when she feels securely alone. And Mr. Casaubon was certain to remain away for some time at

Yet Dorothea had no distinctly shapen grievance that she could state even to herself; and in the midst of her

confused thought and passion, the mental act that was struggling forth into clearness was a selfaccusing cry

that her feeling of desolation was the fault of her own spiritual poverty. She had married the man of her

choice, and with the advantage over most girls that she had contemplated her marriage chiefly as the

beginning of new duties: from the very first she had thought of Mr. Casaubon as having a mind so much

above her own, that he must often be claimed by studies which she could not entirely share; moreover, after

the brief narrow experience of her girlhood she was beholding Rome, the city of visible history, where the

past of a whole hemisphere seems moving in funeral procession with strange ancestral images and trophies

But this stupendous fragmentariness heightened the dreamlike strangeness of her bridal life. Dorothea had

now been five weeks in Rome, and in the kindly mornings when autumn and winter seemed to go hand in

hand like a happy aged couple one of whom would presently survive in chiller loneliness, she had driven

about at first with Mr. Casaubon, but of late chiefly with Tantripp and their experienced courier. She had

been led through the best galleries, had been taken to the chief points of view, had been shown the grandest

ruins and the most glorious churches, and she had ended by oftenest choosing to drive out to the Campagna

where she could feel alone with the earth and sky, awayfrom the oppressive masquerade of ages, in which

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul

into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be

the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the

gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had

been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the

handscreen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles,

fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a

pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty

found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome

might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Angloforeign

society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi,

set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warmblooded seemed sunk in the deep

degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and

struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the

monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed

confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric

shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the

flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in

her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through

her afteryears. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the

magiclantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to

see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of

the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas

Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young

nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go

about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks

after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at

the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply

moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet

wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If

we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the

squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the

However, Dorothea was crying, and if she had been required to state the cause, she could only have done so

in some such general words as I have already used: to have been driven to be more particular would have

been like trying to give a history of the lights and shadows, for that new real future which was replacing the

imaginary drew its material from the endless minutiae by which her view of Mr. Casaubon and her wifely

relation, now that she was married to him, was gradually changing with the secret motion of a watchhand

from what it had been in her maiden dream. It was too early yet for her fully to recognize or at least admit the

change, still more for her to have readjusted that devotedness which was so necessary a part of her mental life

that she was almost sure sooner or later to recover it. Permanent rebellion, the disorder of a life without some

loving reverent resolve, was not possible to her; but she was now in an interval when the very force of her

nature heightened its confusion. In this way, the early months of marriage often are times of critical

tumultwhether that of a shrimppool or of deeper waterswhich afterwards subsides into cheerful peace.

But was not Mr. Casaubon just as learned as before? Had his forms of expression changed, or his sentiments

become less laudable? Oh waywardness of womanhood! did his chronology fail him, or his ability to state not

only a theory but the names of those who held it; or his provision for giving the heads of any subject on

demand? And was not Rome the place in all the world to give free play to such accomplishments? Besides,

had not Dorothea's enthusiasm especially dwelt on the prospect of relieving the weight and perhaps the

sadness with which great tasks lie on him who has to achieve them? And that such weight pressed on Mr.

All these are crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot

find the pearly dawn at noonday. The fact is unalterable, that a fellowmortal with whose nature you are

acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship, may,

when seen in the continuity of married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than what

you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether the same. And it would be astonishing to find

how soon the change is felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To share lodgings with a

brilliant dinnercompanion, or to see your favorite politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite

as rapid: in these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we sometimes end by

Still, such comparisons might mislead, for no man was more incapable of flashy makebelieve than Mr.

Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating

any illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly

observed but felt with a stifling depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of

finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and winding passages which seemed to lead

nowhither? I suppose it was that in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the

smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee delightful stores which the broad leisure of

marriage will reveal. But the doorsill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on the present.

Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is impossible not to be aware that you make no way and

that the sea is not within sightthat, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

In their conversation before marriage, Mr. Casaubon had often dwelt on some explanation or questionable

detail of which Dorothea did not see the bearing; but such imperfect coherence seemed due to the brokenness

of their intercourse, and, supported by her faith in their future, she had listened with fervid patience to a

recitation of possible arguments to be brought against Mr. Casaubon's entirely new view of the Philistine god

Dagon and other fishdeities, thinking that hereafter she should see this subject which touched him so nearly

from the same high ground whence doubtless it had become so important to him. Again, the

matterofcourse statement and tone of dismissal with which he treated what to her were the most stirring

thoughts, was easily accounted for as belonging to the sense of haste and preoccupation in which she herself

shared during their engagement. But now, since they had been in Rome, with all the depths of her emotion

roused to tumultuous activity, and with life made a new problem by new elements, she had been becoming

more and more aware, with a certain terror, that her mind was continually sliding into inward fits of anger

and repulsion, or else into forlorn weariness. How far the judicious Hooker or any other hero of erudition

would have been the same at Mr. Casaubon's time of life, she had no means of knowing, so that he could not

have the advantage of comparison; but her husband's way of commenting on the strangely impressive objects

around them had begun to affect her with a sort of mental shiver: he had perhaps the best intention of

acquitting himself worthily, but only of acquitting himself. What was fresh to her mind was worn out to his;

and such capacity of thought and feeling as had ever been stimulated in him by the general life of mankind

had long shrunk to a sort of dried preparation, a lifeless embalmment of knowledge.

When he said, "Does this interest you, Dorothea? Shall we stay a little longer? I am ready to stay if you wish

it,"it seemed to her as if going or staying were alike dreary. Or, "Should you like to go to the Farnesina,

Dorothea? It contains celebrated frescos designed or painted by Raphael, which most persons think it worth

"They are, I believe, highly esteemed. Some of them represent the fable of Cupid and Psyche, which is

probably the romantic invention of a literary period, and cannot, I think, be reckoned as a genuine mythical

product. But if you like these wallpaintings we can easily drive thither; and you ill then, I think, have seen

the chief works of Raphael, any of which it were a pity to omit in a visit to Rome. He is the painter who has

been held to combine the most complete grace of form with sublimity of expression. Such at least I have

This kind of answer given in a measured official tone, as of a clergyman reading according to the rubric, did

not help to justify the glories of the Eternal City, or to give her the hope that if she knew more about them the

world would be joyously illuminated for her. There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent

creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued in a blank absence of

On other subjects indeed Mr. Casaubon showed a tenacity of occupation and an eagerness which are usually

regarded as the effect of enthusiasm, and Dorothea was anxious to follow this spontaneous direction of his

thoughts, instead of being made to feel that she dragged him away from it. But she was gradually ceasing to

expect with her former delightful confidence that she should see any wide opening where she followed him.

Poor Mr. Casaubon himself was lost among small closets and winding stairs, and in an agitated dimness

about the Cabeiri, or in an exposure of other mythologists' illconsidered parallels, easily lost sight of any

purpose which had prompted him to these labors. With his taper stuck before him he forgot the absence of

windows, and in bitter manuscript remarks on other men's notions about the solar deities, he had become

These characteristics, fixed and unchangeable as bone in Mr. Casaubon, might have remained longer unfelt

by Dorothea if she had been encouraged to pour forth her girlish and womanly feelingif he would have

held her hands between his and listened with the delight of tenderness and understanding to all the little

histories which made up her experience, and would have given her the same sort of intimacy in return, so that

the past life of each could be included in their mutual knowledge and affectionor if she could have fed her

affection with those childlike caresses which are the bent of every sweet woman, who has begun by

showering kisses on the hard pate of her bald doll, creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the

wealth of her own love. That was Dorothea's bent. With all her yearning to know what was afar from her and

to be widely benignant, she had ardor enough for what was near, to have kissed Mr. Casaubon's coatsleeve,

or to have caressed his shoelatchet, if he would have made any other sign of acceptance than pronouncing

her, with his unfailing propriety, to be of a most affectionate and truly feminine nature, indicating at the same

time by politely reaching a chair for her that he regarded these manifestations as rather crude and startling.

Having made his clerical toilet with due care in the morning, he was prepared only for those amenities of life

which were suited to the welladjusted stiff cravat of the period, and to a mind weighted with unpublished

And by a sad contradiction Dorothea's ideas and resolves seemed like melting ice floating and lost in the

warm flood of which they had been but another form. She was humiliated to find herself a mere victim of

feeling, as if she could know nothing except through that medium: all her strength was scattered in fits of

agitation, of struggle, of despondency, and then again in visions of more complete renunciation, transforming

all hard conditions into duty. Poor Dorothea! she was certainly troublesometo herself chiefly; but this

She had begun, while they were taking coffee, with a determination to shake off what she inwardly called her

selfishness, and turned a face all cheerful attention to her husband when he said, "My dear Dorothea, we must

now think of all that is yet left undone, as a preliminary to our departure. I would fain have returned home

earlier that we might have been at Lowick for the Christmas; but my inquiries here have been protracted

beyond their anticipated period. I trust, however, that the time here has not been passed unpleasantly to you.

Among the sights of Europe, that of Rome has ever been held one of the most striking and in some respects

edifying. I well remember that I considered it an epoch in my life when I visited it for the first time; after the

fall of Napoleon, an event which opened the Continent to travellers. Indeed I think it is one among several

cities to which an extreme hyperbole has been applied `See Rome and die:' but in your case I would

propose an emendation and say, See Rome as a bride, and live henceforth as a happy wife."

Mr. Casaubon pronounced this little speech with the most conscientious intention, blinking a little and

swaying his head up and down, and concluding with a smile. He had not found marriage a rapturous state, but

he had no idea of being anything else than an irreproachable husband, who would make a charming young

"I hope you are thoroughly satisfied with our stayI mean, with the result so far as your studies are

concerned," said Dorothea, trying to keep her mind fixed on what most affected her husband.

"Yes," said Mr. Casaubon, with that peculiar pitch of voice which makes the word half a negative. "I have

been led farther than I had foreseen, and various subjects for annotation have presented themselves which,

though I have no direct need of them, I could not pretermit. The task, notwithstanding the assistance of my

amanuensis, has been a somewhat laborious one, but your society has happily prevented me from that too

continuous prosecution of thought beyond the hours of study which has been the snare of my solitary life."

"I am very glad that my presence has made any difference to you," said Dorothea, who had a vivid memory

of evenings in which she had supposed that Mr. Casaubon's mind had gone too deep during the day to be able

to get to the surface again. I fear there was a little temper in her reply. "I hope when we get to Lowick, I shall

be more useful to you, and be able to enter a little more into what interests you."

"Doubtless, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon, with a slight bow. "The notes I have here made will want sifting,

"And all your notes," said Dorothea, whose heart had already burned within her on this subject, so that now

she could not help speaking with her tongue. "All those rows of volumeswill you not now do what you

used to speak of?will you not make up your mind what part of them you will use, and begin to write the

book which will make your vast knowledge useful to the world? I will write to your dictation, or I will copy

and extract what you tell me: I can be of no other use." Dorothea, in a most unaccountable, darkly feminine

The excessive feeling manifested would alone have been highly disturbing to Mr. Casaubon, but there were

other reasons why Dorothea's words were among the most cutting and irritating to him that she could have

been impelled to use. She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers: she had not yet learned those

hidden conflicts in her husband which claim our pity. She had not yet listened patiently to his heartbeats, but

only felt that her own was beating violently. In Mr. Casaubon's ear, Dorothea's voice gave loud emphatic

iteration to those muffled suggestions of consciousness which it was possible to explain as mere fancy, the

illusion of exaggerated sensitiveness: always when such suggestions are unmistakably repeated from without,

they are resisted as cruel and unjust. We are angered even by the full acceptance of our humiliating

confessionshow much more by hearing in hard distinct syllables from the lips of a near observer, those

confused murmurs which we try to call morbid, and strive against as if they were the oncoming of numbness!

And this cruel outward accuser was there in the shape of a wifenay, of a young bride, who, instead of

observing his abundant penscratches and amplitude of paper with the uncritical awe of an elegantminded

canarybird, seemed to present herself as a spy watching everything with a malign power of inference. Here,

towards this particular point of the compass, Mr. Casaubon had a sensitiveness to match Dorothea's, and an

equal quickness to imagine more than the fact. He had formerly observed with approbation her capacity for

worshipping the right object; he now foresaw with sudden terror that this capacity might be replaced by

presumption, this worship by the most exasperating of all criticism,that which sees vaguely a great many

For the first time since Dorothea had known him, Mr. Casaubon's face had a quick angry flush upon it.

"My love," he said, with irritation reined in by propriety, "you may rely upon me for knowing the times and

the seasons, adapted to the different stages of a work which is not to be measured by the facile conjectures of

ignorant onlookers. It had been easy for me to gain a temporary effect by a mirage of baseless opinion; but it

is ever the trial of the scrupulous explorer to be saluted with the impatient scorn of chatterers who attempt

only the smallest achievements, being indeed equipped for no other. And it were well if all such could be

admonished to discriminate judgments of which the true subjectmatter lies entirely beyond their reach, from

those of which the elements may be compassed by a narrow and superficial survey."

This speech was delivered with an energy and readiness quite unusual with Mr. Casaubon. It was not indeed

entirely an improvisation, but had taken shape in inward colloquy, and rushed out like the round grains from

a fruit when sudden heat cracks it. Dorothea was not only his wife: she was a personification of that shallow

Dorothea was indignant in her turn. Had she not been repressing everything in herself except the desire to

"My judgment WAS a very superficial onesuch as I am capable of forming," she answered, with a prompt

resentment, that needed no rehearsal. "You showed me the rows of notebooksyou have often spoken of

themyou have often said that they wanted digesting. But I never heard you speak of the writing that is to

be published. Those were very simple facts, and my judgment went no farther. I only begged you to let me be

Dorothea rose to leave the table and Mr. Casaubon made no reply, taking up a letter which lay beside him as

if to reperuse it. Both were shocked at their mutual situationthat each should have betrayed anger towards

the other. If they had been at home, settled at Lowick in ordinary life among their neighbors, the clash would

have been less embarrassing: but on a wedding journey, the express object of which is to isolate two people

on the ground that they are all the world to each other, the sense of disagreement is, to say the least,

confounding and stultifying. To have changed your longitude extensively and placed yourselves in a moral

solitude in order to have small explosions, to find conversation difficult and to hand a glass of water without

looking, can hardly be regarded as satisfactory fulfilment even to the toughest minds. To Dorothea's

inexperienced sensitiveness, it seemed like a catastrophe, changing all prospects; and to Mr. Casaubon it was

a new pain, he never having been on a wedding journey before, or found himself in that close union which

was more of a subjection than he had been able to imagine, since this charming young bride not only obliged

him to much consideration on her behalf (which he had sedulously given), but turned out to be capable of

agitating him cruelly just where he most needed soothing. Instead of getting a soft fence against the cold,

shadowy, unapplausive audience of his life, had he only given it a more substantial presence?

Neither of them felt it possible to speak again at present. To have reversed a previous arrangement and

declined to go out would have been a show of persistent anger which Dorothea's conscience shrank from,

seeing that she already began to feel herself guilty. However just her indignation might be, her ideal was not

to claim justice, but to give tenderness. So when the carriage came to the door, she drove with Mr. Casaubon

to the Vatican, walked with him through the stony avenue of inscriptions, and when she parted with him at

the entrance to the Library, went on through the Museum out of mere listlessness as to what was around her.

She had not spirit to turn round and say that she would drive anywhere. It was when Mr. Casaubon was

quitting her that Naumann had first seen her, and he had entered the long gallery of sculpture at the same time

with her; but here Naumann had to await Ladislaw with whom he was to settle a bet of champagne about an

enigmatical mediaevallooking figure there. After they had examined the figure, and had walked on finishing

their dispute, they had parted, Ladislaw lingering behind while Naumann had gone into the Hall of Statues

where he again saw Dorothea, and saw her in that brooding abstraction which made her pose remarkable. She

did not really see the streak of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues: she was inwardly seeing

the light of years to come in her own home and over the English fields and elms and hedgebordered

highroads; and feeling that the way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness was not so clear to

her as it had been. But in Dorothea's mind there was a current into which all thought and feeling were apt

sooner or later to flowthe reaching forward of the whole consciousness towards the fullest truth, the least

It was in that way Dorothea came to be sobbing as soon as she was securely alone. But she was presently

roused by a knock at the door, which made her hastily dry her eyes before saying, "Come in." Tantripp had

brought a card, and said that there was a gentleman waiting in the lobby. The courier had told him that only

Mrs. Casaubon was at home, but he said he was a relation of Mr. Casaubon's: would she see him?

"Yes," said Dorothea, without pause; "show him into the salon." Her chief impressions about young Ladislaw

were that when she had seen him at Lowick she had been made aware of Mr. Casaubon's generosity towards

him, and also that she had been interested in his own hesitation about his career. She was alive to anything

that gave her an opportunity for active sympathy, and at this moment it seemed as if the visit had come to

shake her out of her selfabsorbed discontentto remind her of her husband's goodness, and make her feel

that she had now the right to be his helpmate in all kind deeds. She waited a minute or two, but when she

passed into the next room there were just signs enough that she had been crying to make her open face look

more youthful and appealing than usual. She met Ladislaw with that exquisite smile of goodwill which is

unmixed with vanity, and held out her hand to him. He was the elder by several years, but at that moment he

looked much the younger, for his transparent complexion flushed suddenly, and he spoke with a shyness

extremely unlike the ready indifference of his manner with his male companion, while Dorothea became all

"I was not aware that you and Mr. Casaubon were in Rome, until this morning, when I saw you in the Vatican

Museum," he said. "I knew you at oncebutI mean, that I concluded Mr. Casaubon's address would be

found at the Poste Restante, and I was anxious to pay my respects to him and you as early as possible."

"Pray sit down. He is not here now, but he will be glad to hear of you, I am sure," said Dorothea, seating

herself unthinkingly between the fire and the light of the tall window, and pointing to a chair opposite, with

the quietude of a benignant matron. The signs of girlish sorrow in her face were only the more striking. "Mr.

Casaubon is much engaged; but you will leave your address will you not?and he will write to you."

"You are very good," said Ladislaw, beginning to lose his diffidence in the interest with which he was

observing the signs of weeping which had altered her face. "My address is on my card. But if you will allow

me I will call again tomorrow at an hour when Mr. Casaubon is likely to be at home."

"He goes to read in the Library of the Vatican every day, and you can hardly see him except by an

appointment. Especially now. We are about to leave Rome, and he is very busy. He is usually away almost

Will Ladislaw was struck mute for a few moments. He had never been fond of Mr. Casaubon, and if it had

not been for the sense of obligation, would have laughed at him as a Bat of erudition. But the idea of this

driedup pedant, this elaborator of small explanations about as important as the surplus stock of false

antiquities kept in a vendor's back chamber, having first got this adorable young creature to marry him, and

then passing his honeymoon away from her, groping after his mouldy futilities (Will was given to

hyperbole) this sudden picture stirred him with a sort of comic disgust: he was divided between the

impulse to laugh aloud and the equally unseasonable impulse to burst into scornful invective.

For an instant he felt that the struggle, was causing a queer contortion of his mobile features, but with a good

Dorothea wondered; but the smile was irresistible, and shone back from her face too. Will Ladislaw's smile

was delightful, unless you were angry with him beforehand: it was a gush of inward light illuminating the

transparent skin as well as the eyes, and playing about every curve and line as if some Ariel were touching

them with a new charm, and banishing forever the traces of moodiness. The reflection of that smile could not

but have a little merriment in it too, even under dark eyelashes still moist, as Dorothea said inquiringly,

"Yes," said Will, quick in finding resources. "I am thinking of the sort of figure I cut the first time I saw you,

"My criticism?" said Dorothea, wondering still more. "Surely not. I always feel particularly ignorant about

"I suspected you of knowing so much, that you knew how to say just what was most cutting. You saidI

dare say you don't remember it as I do that the relation of my sketch to nature was quite hidden from you.

Will's goodhumor. "I must have said so only because I never could see any beauty in the pictures which my

uncle told me all judges thought very fine. And I have gone about with just the same ignorance in Rome.

There are comparatively few paintings that I can really enjoy. At first when I enter a room where the walls

are covered with frescos, or with rare pictures, I feel a kind of awelike a child present at great ceremonies

where there are grand robes and processions; I feel myself in the presence of some higher life than my own.

But when I begin to examine the pictures one by on the life goes out of them, or else is something violent and

strange to me. It must be my own dulness. I am seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it.

That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not be able to feel

"Oh, there is a great deal in the feeling for art which must be acquired," said Will. (It was impossible now to

doubt the directness of Dorothea's confession.) "Art is an old language with a great many artificial affected

styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing. I enjoy

the art of all sorts here immensely; but I suppose if I could pick my enjoyment to pieces I should find it made

up of many different threads. There is something in daubing a little one's self, and having an idea of the

"You mean perhaps to be a painter?" said Dorothea, with a new direction of interest. "You mean to make

painting your profession? Mr. Casaubon will like to hear that you have chosen a profession."

"No, oh no," said Will, with some coldness. "I have quite made up my mind against it. It is too onesided a

life. I have been seeing a great deal of the German artists here: I travelled from Frankfort with one of them.

Some are fine, even brilliant fellows but I should not like to get into their way of looking at the world

"That I can understand," said Dorothea, cordially. "And in Rome it seems as if there were so many things

which are more wanted in the world than pictures. But if you have a genius for painting, would it not be right

to take that as a guide? Perhaps you might do better things than theseor different, so that there might not be

There was no mistaking this simplicity, and Will was won by it into frankness. "A man must have a very rare

genius to make changes of that sort. I am afraid mine would not carry me even to the pitch of doing well what

has been done already, at least not so well as to make it worth while. And I should never succeed in anything

"I have heard Mr. Casaubon say that he regrets your want of patience," said Dorothea, gently. She was rather

The slight streak of contempt in this hasty reply offended Dorothea. She was all the more susceptible about

"Certainly you differ," she said, rather proudly. "I did not think of comparing you: such power of persevering

Will saw that she was offended, but this only gave an additional impulse to the new irritation of his latent

dislike towards Mr. Casaubon. It was too intolerable that Dorothea should be worshipping this husband: such

weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but the husband in question. Mortals are easily tempted to pinch

the life out of their neighbor's buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

"No, indeed," he answered, promptly. "And therefore it is a pity that it should be thrown away, as so much

English scholarship is, for want of knowing what is being done by the rest of the world. If Mr. Casaubon read

"I merely mean," said Will, in an offhand way, "that the Germans have taken the lead in historical inquiries,

and they laugh at results which are got by groping about in woods with a pocketcompass while they have

made good roads. When I was with Mr. Casaubon I saw that he deafened himself in that direction: it was

almost against his will that he read a Latin treatise written by a German. I was very sorry."

Will only thought of giving a good pinch that would annihilate that vaunted laboriousness, and was unable to

imagine the mode in which Dorothea would be wounded. Young Mr. Ladislaw was not at all deep himself in

German writers; but very little achievement is required in order to pity another man's shortcomings.

Poor Dorothea felt a pang at the thought that the labor of her husband's life might be void, which left her no

energy to spare for the question whether this young relative who was so much obliged to him ought not to

have repressed his observation. She did not even speak, but sat looking at her hands, absorbed in the

Will, however, having given that annihilating pinch, was rather ashamed, imagining from Dorothea's silence

that he had offended her still more; and having also a conscience about plucking the tailfeathers from a

"I regretted it especially," he resumed, taking the usual course from detraction to insincere eulogy, "because

of my gratitude and respect towards my cousin. It would not signify so much in a man whose talents and

Dorothea raised her eyes, brighter than usual with excited feeling, and said in her saddest recitative, "How I

wish I had learned German when I was at Lausanne! There were plenty of German teachers. But now I can be

There was a new light, but still a mysterious light, for Will in Dorothea's last words. The question how she

had come to accept Mr. Casaubonwhich he had dismissed when he first saw her by saying that she must be

disagreeable in spite of appearanceswas not now to be answered on any such short and easy method.

Whatever else she might be, she was not disagreeable. She was not coldly clever and indirectly satirical, but

adorably simple and full of feeling. She was an angel beguiled. It would be a unique delight to wait and

watch for the melodious fragments in which her heart and soul came forth so directly and ingenuously. The

She must have made some original romance for herself in this marriage. And if Mr. Casaubon had been a

dragon who had carried her off to his lair with his talons simply and without legal forms, it would have been

an unavoidable feat of heroism to release her and fall at her feet. But he was something more unmanageable

than a dragon: he was a benefactor with collective society at his back, and he was at that moment entering the

room in all the unimpeachable correctness of his demeanor, while Dorothea was looking animated with a

newly roused alarm and regret, and Will was looking animated with his admiring speculation about her

Mr. Casaubon felt a surprise which was quite unmixed with pleasure, but he did not swerve from his usual

politeness of greeting, when Will rose and explained his presence. Mr. Casaubon was less happy than usual,

and this perhaps made him look all the dimmer and more faded; else, the effect might easily have been

produced by the contrast of his young cousin's appearance. The first impression on seeing Will was one of

sunny brightness, which added to the uncertainty of his changing expression. Surely, his very features

changed their form, his jaw looked sometimes large and sometimes small; and the little ripple in his nose was

a preparation for metamorphosis. When he turned his head quickly his hair seemed to shake out light, and

some persons thought they saw decided genius in this coruscation. Mr. Casaubon, on the contrary, stood

As Dorothea's eyes were turned anxiously on her husband she was perhaps not insensible to the contrast, but

it was only mingled with other causes in making her more conscious of that new alarm on his behalf which

was the first stirring of a pitying tenderness fed by the realities of his lot and not by her own dreams. Yet it

was a source of greater freedom to her that Will was there; his young equality was agreeable, and also

perhaps his openness to conviction. She felt an immense need of some one to speak to, and she had never

before seen any one who seemed so quick and pliable, so likely to understand everything.

Mr. Casaubon gravely hoped that Will was passing his time profitably as well as pleasantly in Romehad

thought his intention was to remain in South Germanybut begged him to come and dine tomorrow, when

he could converse more at large: at present he was somewhat weary. Ladislaw understood, and accepting the

Dorothea's eyes followed her husband anxiously, while he sank down wearily at the end of a sofa, and resting

his elbow supported his head and looked on the floor. A little flushed, and with bright eyes, she seated herself

"Forgive me for speaking so hastily to you this morning. I was wrong. I fear I hurt you and made the day

"I am glad that you feel that, my dear," said Mr. Casaubon. He spoke quietly and bowed. his head a little, but

"But you do forgive me?" said Dorothea, with a quick sob. In her need for some manifestation of feeling she

was ready to exaggerate her own fault. Would not love see returning penitence afar off, and fall on its neck

"My dear Dorothea`who with repentance is not satisfied, is not of heaven nor earth:'you do not think me

worthy to be banished by that severe sentence," said Mr. Casaubon, exerting himself to make a strong

Dorothea was silent, but a tear which had come up with the sob would insist on falling.

"You are excited, my dear.. And I also am feeling some unpleasant consequences of too much mental

disturbance," said Mr. Casaubon. In fact, he had it in his thought to tell her that she ought not to have

received young Ladislaw in his absence: but he abstained, partly from the sense that it would be ungracious to

bring a new complaint in the moment of her penitent acknowledgment, partly because he wanted to avoid

further agitation of himself by speech, and partly because he was too proud to betray that jealousy of

disposition which was not so exhausted on his scholarly compeers that there was none to spare in other

directions. There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire: it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in

"I think it is time for us to dress," he added, looking at his watch. They both rose, and there was never any

But Dorothea remembered it to the last with the vividness with which we all remember epochs in our

experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born. Today she had begun to see that

she had been under a wild illusion in expecting a response to her feeling from Mr. Casaubon, and she had felt

the waking of a presentiment that there might be a sad consciousness in his life which made as great a need

We are all of us born in moral stupidity, taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves: Dorothea

had early begun to emerge from that stupidity, but yet it had been easier to her to imagine how she would

devote herself to Mr. Casaubon, and become wise and strong in his strength and wisdom, than to conceive

with that distinctness which is no longer reflection but feeling an idea wrought back to the directness of

sense, like the solidity of objectsthat he had an equivalent centre of self, whence the lights and shadows

Will Ladislaw was delightfully agreeable at dinner the next day, and gave no opportunity for Mr. Casaubon to

show disapprobation. On the contrary it seemed to Dorothea that Will had a happier way of drawing her

husband into conversation and of deferentially listening to him than she had ever observed in any one before.

To be sure, the listeners about Tipton were not highly gifted! Will talked a good deal himself, but what he

said was thrown in with such rapidity, and with such an unimportant air of saying something by the way, that

it seemed a gay little chime after the great bell. If Will was not always perfect, this was certainly one of his

good days. He described touches of incident among the poor people in Rome, only to be seen by one who

could move about freely; he found himself in agreement with Mr. Casaubon as to the unsound opinions of

Middleton concerning the relations of Judaism and Catholicism; and passed easily to a halfenthusiastic

halfplayful picture of the enjoyment he got out of the very miscellaneousness of Rome, which made the

mind flexible with constant comparison, and saved you from seeing the world's ages as a set of boxlike

partitions without vital connection. Mr. Casaubon's studies, Will observed, had always been of too broad a

kind for that, and he had perhaps never felt any such sudden effect, but for himself he confessed that Rome

had given him quite a new sense of history as a whole: the fragments stimulated his imagination and made

him constructive. Then occasionally, but not too often, he appealed to Dorothea, and discussed what she said,

as if her sentiment were an item to be considered in the final judgment even of the Madonna di Foligno or the

Laocoon. A sense of contributing to form the world's opinion makes conversation particularly cheerful; and

Mr. Casaubon too was not without his pride in his young wife, who spoke better than most women, as indeed

Since things were going on so pleasantly, Mr. Casaubon's statement that his labors in the Library would be

suspended for a couple of days, and that after a brief renewal he should have no further reason for staying in

Rome, encouraged Will to urge that Mrs. Casaubon should not go away without seeing a studio or two.

Would not Mr. Casaubon take her? That sort of thing ought not to be missed: it was quite special: it was a

form of life that grew like a small fresh vegetation with its population of insects on huge fossils. Will would

Mr. Casaubon, seeing Dorothea look earnestly towards him, could not but ask her if she would be interested

in such visits: he was now at her service during the whole day; and it was agreed that Will should come on

Will could not omit Thorwaldsen, a living celebrity about whom even Mr. Casaubon inquired, but before the

day was far advanced he led the way to the studio of his friend Adolf Naumann, whom he mentioned as one

of the chief renovators of Christian art, one of those who had not only revived but expanded that grand

conception of supreme events as mysteries at which the successive ages were spectators, and in relation to

which the great souls of all periods became as it were contemporaries. Will added that he had made himself

"I have been making some oilsketches under him," said Will. "I hate copying. I must put something of my

own in. Naumann has been painting the Saints drawing the Car of the Church, and I have been making a

sketch of Marlowe's Tamburlaine Driving the Conquered Kings in his Chariot. I am not so ecclesiastical as

Naumann, and I sometimes twit him with his excess of meaning. But this time I mean to outdo him in breadth

of intention. I take Tamburlaine in his chariot for the tremendous course of the world's physical history

lashing on the harnessed dynasties. In my opinion, that is a good mythical interpretation." Will here looked at

Mr. Casaubon, who received this offhand treatment of symbolism very uneasily, and bowed with a neutral

"The sketch must be very grand, if it conveys so much," said Dorothea. "I should need some explanation even

of the meaning you give. Do you intend Tamburlaine to represent earthquakes and volcanoes?"

"Oh yes," said Will, laughing, "and migrations of races and clearings of forestsand America and the

"What a difficult kind of shorthand!" said Dorothea, smiling towards her husband. "It would require all your

Mr. Casaubon blinked furtively at Will. He had a suspicion that he was being laughed at. But it was not

They found Naumann painting industriously, but no model was present; his pictures were advantageously

arranged, and his own plain vivacious person set off by a dovecolored blouse and a maroon velvet cap, so

that everything was as fortunate as if he had expected the beautiful young English lady exactly at that time.

The painter in his confident English gave little dissertations on his finished and unfinished subjects, seeming

to observe Mr. Casaubon as much as he did Dorothea. Will burst in here and there with ardent words of

praise, marking out particular merits in his friend's work; and Dorothea felt that she was getting quite new

notions as to the significance of Madonnas seated under inexplicable canopied thrones with the simple

country as a background, and of saints with architectural models in their hands, or knives accidentally

wedged in their skulls. Some things which had seemed monstrous to her were gathering intelligibility and

even a natural meaning: but all this was apparently a branch of knowledge in which Mr. Casaubon had not

"I think I would rather feel that painting is beautiful than have to read it as an enigma; but I should learn to

understand these pictures sooner than yours with the very wide meaning," said Dorothea, speaking to Will.

"Don't speak of my painting before Naumann," said Will. "He will tell you, it is all pfuscherei, which is his

"Is that true?" said Dorothea, turning her sincere eyes on Naumann, who made a slight grimace and said

"Oh, he does not mean it seriously with painting. His walk must be belleslettres. That is wiide."

Naumann's pronunciation of the vowel seemed to stretch the word satirically. Will did not half like it, but

managed to laugh: and Mr. Casaubon, while he felt some disgust at the artist's German accent, began to

The respect was not diminished when Naumann, after drawing Will aside for a moment and looking, first at a

"My friend Ladislaw thinks you will pardon me, sir, if I say that a sketch of your head would be invaluable to

me for the St. Thomas Aquinas in my picture there. It is too much to ask; but I so seldom see just what I

"You astonish me greatly, sir," said Mr. Casaubon, his looks improved with a glow of delight; "but if my

poor physiognomy, which I have been accustomed to regard as of the commonest order, can be of any use to

you in furnishing some traits for the angelical doctor, I shall feel honored. That is to say, if the operation will

As for Dorothea, nothing could have pleased her more, unless it had been a miraculous voice pronouncing

Mr. Casaubon the wisest and worthiest among the sons of men. In that case her tottering faith would have

Naumann's apparatus was at hand in wonderful completeness, and the sketch went on at once as well as the

conversation. Dorothea sat down and subsided into calm silence, feeling happier than she had done for a long

while before. Every one about her seemed good, and she said to herself that Rome, if she had only been less

ignorant, would have been full of beauty its sadness would have been winged with hope. No nature could be

less suspicious than hers: when she was a child she believed in the gratitude of wasps and the honorable

susceptibility of sparrows, and was proportionately indignant when their baseness was made manifest.

The adroit artist was asking Mr. Casaubon questions about English polities, which brought long answers, and,

Will meanwhile had perched himself on some steps in the background overlooking all.

Presently Naumann said"Now if I could lay this by for half an hour and take it up againcome and look,

Will vented those adjuring interjections which imply that admiration is too strong for syntax; and Naumann

"Ahnowif I could but have had morebut you have other engagements I could not ask itor even

"Oh, let us stay!" said Dorothea. "We have nothing to do today except go about, have we?" she added,

looking entreatingly at Mr. Casaubon. "It would be a pity not to make the head as good as possible."

"I am at your service, sir, in the matter," said Mr. Casaubon, with polite condescension. "Having given up the

interior of my head to idleness, it is as well that the exterior should work in this way."

"You are unspeakably goodnow I am happy!" said Naumann, and then went on in German to Will,

pointing here and there to the sketch as if he were considering that. Putting it aside for a moment, he looked

round vaguely, as if seeking some occupation for his visitors, and afterwards turning to Mr. Casaubon, said

"Perhaps the beautiful bride, the gracious lady, would not be unwilling to let me fill up the time by trying to

make a slight sketch of hernot, of course, as you see, for that picture only as a single study."

Mr. Casaubon, bowing, doubted not that Mrs. Casaubon would oblige him, and Dorothea said, at once,

Naumann was all apologies in asking her to stand, and allow him to adjust her attitude, to which she

submitted without any of the affected airs and laughs frequently thought necessary on such occasions, when

the painter said, "It is as Santa Clara that I want you to stand leaning so, with your cheek against your

Will was divided between the inclination to fall at the Saint's feet and kiss her robe, and the temptation to

knock Naumann down while he was adjusting her arm. All this was impudence and desecration, and he

The artist was diligent, and Will recovering himself moved about and occupied Mr. Casaubon as ingeniously

as he could; but he did not in the end prevent the time from seeming long to that gentleman, as was clear from

his expressing a fear that Mrs. Casaubon would be tired. Naumann took the hint and said

So Mr. Casaubon's patience held out further, and when after all it turned out that the head of Saint Thomas

Aquinas would be more perfect if another sitting could be had, it was granted for the morrow. On the morrow

Santa Clara too was retouched more than once. The result of all was so far from displeasing to Mr. Casaubon,

that he arranged for the purchase of the picture in which Saint Thomas Aquinas sat among the doctors of the

Church in a disputation too abstract to be represented, but listened to with more or less attention by an

audience above. The Santa Clara, which was spoken of in the second place, Naumann declared himself to be

dissatisfied with he could not, in conscience, engage to make a worthy picture of it; so about the Santa

I will not dwell on Naumann's jokes at the expense of Mr. Casaubon that evening, or on his dithyrambs about

Dorothea's charm, in all which Will joined, but with a difference. No sooner did Naumann mention any detail

of Dorothea's beauty, than Will got exasperated at his presumption: there was grossness in his choice of the

most ordinary words, and what business had he to talk of her lips? She was not a woman to be spoken of as

other women were. Will could not say just what he thought, but he became irritable. And yet, when after

some resistance he had consented to take the Casaubons to his friend's studio, he had been allured by the

gratification of his pride in being the person who could grant Naumann such an opportunity of studying her

lovelinessor rather her divineness, for the ordinary phrases which might apply to mere bodily prettiness

were not applicable to her. (Certainly all Tipton and its neighborhood, as well as Dorothea herself, would

have been surprised at her beauty being made so much of. In that part of the world Miss Brooke had been

"Oblige me by letting the subject drop, Naumann. Mrs. Casaubon is not to be talked of as if she were a

"Schon! I will talk of my Aquinas. The head is not a bad type, after all. I dare say the great scholastic himself

would have been flattered to have his portrait asked for. Nothing like these starchy doctors for vanity! It was

"He's a cursed whiteblooded pedantic coxcomb," said Will, with gnashing impetuosity. His obligations to

Mr. Casaubon were not known to his hearer, but Will himself was thinking of them, and wishing that he

Naumann gave a shrug and said, "It is good they go away soon, my dear. They are spoiling your fine temper."

All Will's hope and contrivance were now concentrated on seeing Dorothea when she was alone. He only

wanted her to take more emphatic notice of him; he only wanted to be something more special in her

remembrance than he could yet believe himself likely to be. He was rather impatient under that open ardent

goodwill, reach he saw was her usual state of feeling. The remote worship of a woman throned out of their

reach plays a great part in men's lives, but in most cases the worshipper longs for some queenly recognition,

some approving sign by which his soul's sovereign may cheer him without descending from her high place.

That was precisely what Will wanted. But there were plenty of contradictions in his imaginative demands. It

was beautiful to see how Dorothea's eyes turned with wifely anxiety and beseeching to Mr. Casaubon: she

would have lost some of her halo if she had been without that duteous preoccupation; and yet at the next

moment the husband's sandy absorption of such nectar was too intolerable; and Will's longing to say

damaging things about him was perhaps not the less tormenting because he felt the strongest reasons for

Will had not been invited to dine the next day. Hence he persuaded himself that he was bound to call, and that

the only eligible time was the middle of the day, when Mr. Casaubon would not be at home.

Dorothea, who had not been made aware that her former reception of Will had displeased her husband, had

no hesitation about seeing him, especially as he might be come to pay a farewell visit. When he entered she

was looking at some cameos which she had been buying for Celia. She greeted Will as if his visit were quite

"I am so glad you are come. Perhaps you understand all about cameos, and can tell me if these are really

good. I wished to have you with us in choosing them, but Mr. Casaubon objected: he thought there was not

time. He will finish his work tomorrow, and we shall go away in three days. I have been uneasy about these

"I am not particularly knowing, but there can be no great mistake about these little Homeric bits: they are

"Oh, they are for my sister, who has quite a different complexion. You saw her with me at Lowick: she is

lighthaired and very pretty at least I think so. We were never so long away from each other in our lives

before. She is a great pet and never was naughty in her life. I found out before I came away that she wanted

me to buy her some cameos, and I should be sorry for them not to be goodafter their kind." Dorothea

"You seem not to care about cameos," said Will, seating himself at some distance from her, and observing her

"I fear you are a heretic about art generally. How is that? I should have expected you to be very sensitive to

"I suppose I am dull about many things," said Dorothea, simply. "I should like to make life beautifulI

mean everybody's life. And then all this immense expense of art, that seems somehow to lie outside life and

make it no better for the world, pains one. It spoils my enjoyment of anything when I am made to think that

"I call that the fanaticism of sympathy," said Will, impetuously. "You might say the same of landscape, of

poetry, of all refinement. If you carried it out you ought to be miserable in your own goodness, and turn evil

that you might have no advantage over others. The best piety is to enjoywhen you can. You are doing the

most then to save the earth's character as an agreeable planet. And enjoyment radiates. It is of no use to try

and take care of all the world; that is being taken care of when you feel delight in art or in anything else.

Would you turn all the youth of the world into a tragic chorus, wailing and moralizing over misery? I suspect

that you have some false belief in the virtues of misery, and want to make your life a martyrdom." Will had

gone further than he intended, and checked himself. But Dorothea's thought was not taking just the same

"Indeed you mistake me. I am not a sad, melancholy creature. I am never unhappy long together. I am angry

and naughtynot like Celia: I have a great outburst, and then all seems glorious again. I cannot help

believing in glorious things in a blind sort of way. I should be quite willing to enjoy the art here, but there is

so much that I don't know the reason ofso much that seems to me a consecration of ugliness rather than

beauty. The painting and sculpture may be wonderful, but the feeling is often low and brutal, and sometimes

even ridiculous. Here and there I see what takes me at once as noblesomething that I might compare with

the Alban Mountains or the sunset from the Pincian Hill; but that makes it the greater pity that there is so

little of the best kind among all that mass of things over which men have toiled so."

"Of course there is always a great deal of poor work: the rarer things want that soil to grow in."

"Oh dear," said Dorothea, taking up that thought into the chief current of her anxiety; "I see it must be very

difficult to do anything good. I have often felt since I have been in Rome that most of our lives would look

much uglier and more bungling than the pictures, if they could be put on the wall."

Dorothea parted her lips again as if she were going to say more, but changed her mind and paused.

"You are too youngit is an anachronism for you to have such thoughts," said Will, energetically, with a

quick shake of the head habitual to him. "You talk as if you had never known any youth. It is monstrous as

if you had had a vision of Hades in your childhood, like the boy in the legend. You have been brought up in

some of those horrible notions that choose the sweetest women to devourlike Minotaurs And now you will

go and be shut up in that stone prison at Lowick: you will be buried alive. It makes me savage to think of it! I

Will again feared that he had gone too far; but the meaning we attach to words depends on our feeling, and

his tone of angry regret had so much kindness in it for Dorothea's heart, which had always been giving out

ardor and had never been fed with much from the living beings around her, that she felt a new sense of

"It is very good of you to be anxious about me. It is because you did not like Lowick yourself: you had set

The last sentence was spoken with an almost solemn cadence, and Will did not know what to say, since it

would not be useful for him to embrace her slippers, and tell her that he would die for her: it was clear that

she required nothing of the sort; and they were both silent for a moment or two, when Dorothea began again

"I wanted to ask you again about something you said the other day. Perhaps it was half of it your lively way

of speaking: I notice that you like to put things strongly; I myself often exaggerate when I speak hastily."

"What was it?" said Will, observing that she spoke with a timidity quite new in her. "I have a hyperbolical

"I mean what you said about the necessity of knowing GermanI mean, for the subjects that Mr. Casaubon

is engaged in. I have been thinking about it; and it seems to me that with Mr. Casaubon's learning he must

have before him the same materials as German scholarshas he not?" Dorothea's timidity was due to an

indistinct consciousness that she was in the strange situation of consulting a third person about the adequacy

"Not exactly the same materials," said Will, thinking that he would be duly reserved. "He is not an

Orientalist, you know. He does not profess to have more than secondhand knowledge there."

"But there are very valuable books about antiquities which were written a long while ago by scholars who

knew nothing about these modern things; and they are still used. Why should Mr. Casaubon's not be valuable,

like theirs?" said Dorothea, with more remonstrant energy. She was impelled to have the argument aloud,

"That depends on the line of study taken," said Will, also getting a tone of rejoinder. "The subject Mr.

Casaubon has chosen is as changing as chemistry: new discoveries are constantly making new points of view.

Who wants a system on the basis of the four elements, or a book to refute Paracelsus? Do you not see that it

is no use now to be crawling a little way after men of the last century men like Bryantand correcting

their mistakes?living in a lumberroom and furbishing up brokenlegged theories about Chus and

"How can you bear to speak so lightly?" said Dorothea, with a look between sorrow and anger. "If it were as

you say, what could be sadder than so much ardent labor all in vain? I wonder it does not affect you more

painfully, if you really think that a man like Mr. Casaubon, of so much goodness, power, and learning, should

in any way fail in what has been the labor of his best years." She was beginning to be shocked that she had

got to such a point of supposition, and indignant with Will for having led her to it.

"You questioned me about the matter of fact, not of feeling," said Will. "But if you wish to punish me for the

fact, I submit. I am not in a position to express my feeling toward Mr. Casaubon: it would be at best a

"Pray excuse me," said Dorothea, coloring deeply. "I am aware, as you say, that I am in fault in having

introduced the subject. Indeed, I am wrong altogether. Failure after long perseverance is much grander than

"I quite agree with you," said Will, determined to change the situation "so much so that I have made up my

mind not to run that risk of never attaining a failure. Mr. Casaubon's generosity has perhaps been dangerous

to me, and I mean to renounce the liberty it has given me. I mean to go back to England shortly and work my

"That is fineI respect that feeling," said Dorothea, with returning kindness. "But Mr. Casaubon, I am sure,

has never thought of anything in the matter except what was most for your welfare."

"She has obstinacy and pride enough to serve instead of love, now she has married him," said Will to himself.

"Oh, stay till Mr. Casaubon comes," said Dorothea, earnestly. "I am so glad we met in Rome. I wanted to

"Oh no. My sister tells me I am always angry with people who do not say just what I like. But I hope I am not

given to think ill of them. In the end I am usually obliged to think ill of myself. for being so impatient."

"Not at all," said Dorothea, with the most open kindness. "I like you very much."

Will was not quite contented, thinking that he would apparently have been of more importance if he had been

"And I am quite interested to see what you will do," Dorothea went on cheerfully. "I believe devoutly in a

natural difference of vocation. If it were not for that belief, I suppose I should be very narrow there are so

many things, besides painting, that I am quite ignorant of. You would hardly believe how little I have taken in

of music and literature, which you know so much of. I wonder what your vocation will turn out to be: perhaps

"That depends. To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so

quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotiona

soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of

"But you leave out the poems," said Dorothea. "I think they are wanted to complete the poet. I understand

what you mean about knowledge passing into feeling, for that seems to be just what I experience. But I am

"You ARE a poemand that is to be the best part of a poet what makes up the poet's consciousness in his

best moods," said Will, showing such originality as we all share with the morning and the springtime and

"I am very glad to hear it," said Dorothea, laughing out her words in a birdlike modulation, and looking at

"I wish I could ever do anything that would be what you call kind that I could ever be of the slightest

service to you I fear I shall never have the opportunity." Will spoke with fervor.

"Oh yes," said Dorothea, cordially. "It will come; and I shall remember how well you wish me. I quite hoped

that we should be friends when I first saw youbecause of your relationship to Mr. Casaubon." There was a

certain liquid brightness in her eyes, and Will was conscious that his own were obeying a law of nature and

filling too. The allusion to Mr. Casaubon would have spoiled all if anything at that moment could have

spoiled the subduing power, the sweet dignity, of her noble unsuspicious inexperience.

"And there is one thing even now that you can do," said Dorothea, rising and walking a little way under the

strength of a recurring impulse. "Promise me that you will not again, to any one, speak of that subject I

mean about Mr. Casaubon's writingsI mean in that kind of way. It was I who led to it. It was my fault. But

She had returned from her brief pacing and stood opposite Will, looking gravely at him.

"Certainly, I will promise you," said Will, reddening however. If he never said a cutting word about Mr.

Casaubon again and left off receiving favors from him, it would clearly be permissible to hate him the more.

The poet must know how to hate, says Goethe; and Will was at least ready with that accomplishment. He said

that he must go now without waiting for Mr. Casaubon, whom he would come to take leave of at the last

But going out of the porte cochere he met Mr. Casaubon, and that gentleman, expressing the best wishes for

his cousin, politely waived the pleasure of any further leavetaking on the morrow, which would be

"I have something to tell you about our cousin Mr. Ladislaw, which I think will heighten your opinion of

him," said Dorothea to her husband in the coarse of the evening. She had mentioned immediately on his

entering that Will had just gone away, and would come again, but Mr. Casaubon had said, "I met him outside,

and we made our final adieux, I believe," saying this with the air and tone by which we imply that any

subject, whether private or public, does not interest us enough to wish for a further remark upon it. So

"What is that, my love?" said Mr Casaubon (he always said "my love" when his manner was the coldest).

"He has made up his mind to leave off wandering at once, and to give up his dependence on your generosity.

He means soon to go back to England, and work his own way. I thought you would consider that a good

"Did he mention the precise order of occupation to which he would addict himself?"

"No. But he said that he felt the danger which lay for him in your generosity. Of course he will write to you

"I told him I was sure that the thing you considered in all you did for him was his own welfare. I remembered

your goodness in what you said about him when I first saw him at Lowick," said Dorothea, putting her hand

"I had a duty towards him," said Mr. Casaubon, laying his other hand on Dorothea's in conscientious

acceptance of her caress, but with a glance which he could not hinder from being uneasy. "The young man, I

confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor need we, I think, discuss his future course, which it is

not ours to determine beyond the limits which I have sufficiently indicated." Dorothea did not mention Will

Fred Vincy, we have seen. had a debt on his mind, and though no such immaterial burthen could depress that

buoyanthearted young gentleman for many hours together, there were circumstances connected with this

debt which made the thought of it unusually importunate. The creditor was Mr. Bambridge a horsedealer of

the neighborhood, whose company was much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood to be

"addicted to pleasure." During the vacations Fred had naturally required more amusements than he had ready

money for, and Mr. Bambridge had been accommodating enough not only to trust him for the hire of horses

and the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter, but also to make a small advance by which he might be

able to meet some losses at billiards. The total debt was a hundred and sixty pounds. Bambridge was in no

alarm about his money, being sure that young Vincy had backers; but he had required something to show for

it, and Fred had at first given a bill with his own signature. Three months later he had renewed this bill with

the signature of Caleb Garth. On both occasions Fred had felt confident that he should meet the bill himself,

having ample funds at disposal in his own hopefulness. You will hardly demand that his confidence should

have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a

comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the

mysteries of luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about

agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste in costume, and our general preference for the

best style of thing. Fred felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle, that he should have a run of

luck, that by dint of "swapping" he should gradually metamorphose a horse worth forty pounds into a horse

that would fetch a hundred at any moment"judgment" being always equivalent to an unspecified sum in

hard cash. And in any case, even supposing negations which only a morbid distrust could imagine, Fred had

always (at that time) his father's pocket as a last resource, so that his assets of hopefulness had a sort of

gorgeous superfluity about them. Of what might be the capacity of his father's pocket, Fred had only a vague

notion: was not trade elastic? And would not the deficiencies of one year be made up for by the surplus of

another? The Vincys lived in an easy profuse way, not with any new ostentation, but according to the family

habits and traditions, so that the children had no standard of economy, and the elder ones retained some of

their infantine notion that their father might pay for anything if he would. Mr. Vincy himself had expensive

Middlemarch habitsspent money on coursing, on his cellar, and on dinnergiving, while mamma had those

running accounts with tradespeople, which give a cheerful sense of getting everything one wants without any

question of payment. But it was in the nature of fathers, Fred knew, to bully one about expenses: there was

always a little storm over his extravagance if he had to disclose a debt, and Fred disliked bad weather within

doors. He was too filial to be disrespectful to his father, and he bore the thunder with the certainty that it was

transient; but in the mean time it was disagreeable to see his mother cry, and also to be obliged to look sulky

instead of having fun; for Fred was so goodtempered that if he looked glum under scolding, it was chiefly

for propriety's sake. The easier course plainly, was to renew the bill with a friend's signature. Why not? With

the superfluous securities of hope at his command, there was no reason why he should not have increased

other people's liabilities to any extent, but for the fact that men whose names were good for anything were

usually pessimists, indisposed to believe that the universal order of things would necessarily be agreeable to

With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do justice to their more amiable qualities, forgive their little

offenses, and concerning each in turn, try to arrive at the conclusion that he will be eager to oblige us, our

own eagerness to be obliged being as communicable as other warmth. Still there is always a certain number

who are dismissed as but moderately eager until the others have refused; and it happened that Fred checked

off all his friends but one, on the ground that applying to them would be disagreeable; being implicitly

convinced that he at least (whatever might be maintained about mankind generally) had a right to be free

from anything disagreeable. That he should ever fall into a thoroughly unpleasant positionwear trousers

shrunk with washing, eat cold mutton, have to walk for want of a horse, or to "duck under" in any sort of

waywas an absurdity irreconcilable with those cheerful intuitions implanted in him by nature. And Fred

winced under the idea of being looked down upon as wanting funds for small debts. Thus it came to pass that

the friend whom he chose to apply to was at once the poorest and the kindestnamely, Caleb Garth.

The Garths were very fond of Fred, as he was of them; for when he and Rosamond were little ones, and the

Garths were better off, the slight connection between the two families through Mr. Featherstone's double

marriage (the first to Mr. Garth's sister, and the second to Mrs. Vincy's) had led to an acquaintance which was

carried on between the children rather than the parents: the children drank tea together out of their toy

teacups, and spent whole days together in play. Mary was a little hoyden, and Fred at six years old thought

her the nicest girl in the world making her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut from an umbrella.

Through all the stages of his education he had kept his affection for the Garths, and his habit of going to their

house as a second home, though any intercourse between them and the elders of his family had long ceased.

Even when Caleb Garth was prosperous, the Vincys were on condescending terms with him and his wife, for

there were nice distinctions of rank in Middlemarch; and though old manufacturers could not any more than

dukes be connected with none but equals, they were conscious of an inherent social superiority which was

defined with great nicety in practice, though hardly expressible theoretically. Since then Mr. Garth had failed

in the building business, which he had unfortunately added to his other avocations of surveyor, valuer, and

agent, had conducted that business for a time entirely for the benefit of his assignees, and had been living

narrowly, exerting himself to the utmost that he might after all pay twenty shillings in the pound. He had now

achieved this, and from all who did not think it a bad precedent, his honorable exertions had won him due

esteem; but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture

and complete dinnerservice. Mrs. Vincy had never been at her ease with Mrs. Garth, and frequently spoke

of her as a woman who had had to work for her bread meaning that Mrs. Garth had been a teacher before

her marriage; in which case an intimacy with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions was something like a

draper's discrimination of calico trademarks, or a courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman

who was better off needed that sort of thing. And since Mary had been keeping Mr. Featherstone's house,

Mrs. Vincy's want of liking for the Garths had been converted into something more positive, by alarm lest

Fred should engage himself to this plain girl, whose parents "lived in such a small way." Fred, being aware of

this, never spoke at home of his visits to Mrs. Garth, which had of late become more frequent, the increasing

ardor of his affection for Mary inclining him the more towards those who belonged to her.

Mr. Garth had a small office in the town, and to this Fred went with his request. He obtained it without much

difficulty, for a large amount of painful experience had not sufficed to make Caleb Garth cautious about his

own affairs, or distrustful of his fellowmen when they had not proved themselves untrustworthy; and he had

the highest opinion of Fred, was "sure the lad would turn out wellan open affectionate fellow, with a good

bottom to his characteryou might trust him for anything." Such was Caleb's psychological argument. He

was one of those rare men who are rigid to themselves and indulgent to others. He had a certain shame about

his neighbors' errors, and never spoke of them willingly; hence he was not likely to divert his mind from the

best mode of hardening timber and other ingenious devices in order to preconceive those errors. If he had to

blame any one, it was necessary for him to move all the papers within his reach, or describe various diagrams

with his stick, or make calculations with the odd money in his pocket, before he could begin; and he would

rather do other men's work than find fault with their doing. I fear he was a bad disciplinarian.

When Fred stated the circumstances of his debt, his wish to meet it without troubling his father, and the

certainty that the money would be forthcoming so as to cause no one any inconvenience, Caleb pushed his

spectacles upward, listened, looked into his favorite's clear young eyes, and believed him, not distinguishing

confidence about the future from veracity about the past; but he felt that it was an occasion for a friendly hint

as to conduct, and that before giving his signature he must give a rather strong admonition. Accordingly, he

took the paper and lowered his spectacles, measured the space at his command, reached his pen and examined

it, dipped it in the ink and examined it again, then pushed the paper a little way from him, lifted up his

spectacles again, showed a deepened depression in the outer angle of his bushy eyebrows, which gave his

face a peculiar mildness (pardon these details for onceyou would have learned to love them if you had

"It was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse's knees? And then, these exchanges, they don't answer when

Whereupon Caleb drew down his spectacles, and proceeded to write his signature with the care which he

always gave to that performance; for whatever he did in the way of business he did well. He contemplated the

large wellproportioned letters and final flourish, with his head a trifle on one side for an instant, then handed

it to Fred, said "Goodby," and returned forthwith to his absorption in a plan for Sir James Chettam's new

Either because his interest in this work thrust the incident of the signature from his memory, or for some

reason of which Caleb was more conscious, Mrs. Garth remained ignorant of the affair.

Since it occurred, a change had come over Fred's sky, which altered his view of the distance, and was the

reason why his uncle Featherstone's present of money was of importance enough to make his color come and

go, first with a too definite expectation, and afterwards with a proportionate disappointment. His failure in

passing his examination, had made his accumulation of college debts the more unpardonable by his father,

and there had been an unprecedented storm at home. Mr. Vincy had sworn that if he had anything more of

that sort to put up with, Fred should turn out and get his living how he could; and he had never yet quite

recovered his goodhumored tone to his son, who had especially enraged him by saying at this stage of

things that he did not want to be a clergyman, and would rather not "go on with that." Fred was conscious that

he would have been yet more severely dealt with if his family as well as himself had not secretly regarded

him as Mr. Featherstone's heir; that old gentleman's pride in him, and apparent fondness for him, serving in

the stead of more exemplary conductjust as when a youthful nobleman steals jewellery we call the act

kleptomania, speak of it with a philosophical smile, and never think of his being sent to the house of

correction as if he were a ragged boy who had stolen turnips. In fact, tacit expectations of what would be

done for him by uncle Featherstone determined the angle at which most people viewed Fred Vincy in

Middlemarch; and in his own consciousness, what uncle Featherstone would do for him in an emergency, or

what he would do simply as an incorporated luck, formed always an immeasurable depth of aerial

perspective. But that present of banknotes, once made, was measurable, and being applied to the amount of

the debt, showed a deficit which had still to be filled up either by Fred's "judgment" or by luck in some other

shape. For that little episode of the alleged borrowing, in which he had made his father the agent in getting

the Bulstrode certificate, was a new reason against going to his father for money towards meeting his actual

debt. Fred was keen enough to foresee that anger would confuse distinctions, and that his denial of having

borrowed expressly on the strength of his uncle's will would be taken as a falsehood. He had gone to his

father and told him one vexatious affair, and he had left another untold: in such cases the complete revelation

always produces the impression of a previous duplicity. Now Fred piqued himself on keeping clear of lies,

and even fibs; he often shrugged his shoulders and made a significant grimace at what he called Rosamond's

fibs (it is only brothers who can associate such ideas with a lovely girl); and rather than incur the accusation

of falsehood he would even incur some trouble and selfrestraint. It was under strong inward pressure of this

kind that Fred had taken the wise step of depositing the eighty pounds with his mother. It was a pity that he

had not at once given them to Mr. Garth; but he meant to make the sum complete with another sixty, and with

a view to this, he had kept twenty pounds in his own pocket as a sort of seedcorn, which, planted by

judgment, and watered by luck, might yield more than threefolda very poor rate of multiplication when the

Fred was not a gambler: he had not that specific disease in which the suspension of the whole nervous energy

on a chance or risk becomes as necessary as the dram to the drunkard; he had only the tendency to that

diffusive form of gambling which has no alcoholic intensity, but is carried on with the healthiest chylefed

blood, keeping up a joyous imaginative activity which fashions events according to desire, and having no

fears about its own weather, only sees the advantage there must be to others in going aboard with it.

Hopefulness has a pleasure in making a throw of any kind, because the prospect of success is certain; and

only a more generous pleasure in offering as many as possible a share in the stake. Fred liked play, especially

billiards, as he liked hunting or riding a steeplechase; and he only liked it the better because he wanted

money and hoped to win. But the twenty pounds' worth of seedcorn had been planted in vain in the

seductive green plotall of it at least which had not been dispersed by the roadsideand Fred found

himself close upon the term of payment with no money at command beyond the eighty pounds which he had

deposited with his mother. The brokenwinded horse which he rode represented a present which had been

made to him a long while ago by his uncle Featherstone: his father always allowed him to keep a horse, Mr.

Vincy's own habits making him regard this as a reasonable demand even for a son who was rather

exasperating. This horse, then, was Fred's property, and in his anxiety to meet the imminent bill he

determined to sacrifice a possession without which life would certainly be worth little. He made the

resolution with a sense of heroismheroism forced on him by the dread of breaking his word to Mr. Garth,

by his love for Mary and awe of her opinion. He would start for Houndsley horsefair which was to be held

the next morning, andsimply sell his horse, bringing back the money by coach?Well, the horse would

hardly fetch more than thirty pounds, and there was no knowing what might happen; it would be folly to balk

himself of luck beforehand. It was a hundred to one that some good chance would fall in his way; the longer

he thought of it, the less possible it seemed that he should not have a good chance, and the less reasonable

that he should not equip himself with the powder and shot for bringing it down. He would ride to Houndsley

with Bambridge and with Horrock "the vet," and without asking them anything expressly, he should virtually

get the benefit of their opinion. Before he set out, Fred got the eighty pounds from his mother.

Most of those who saw Fred riding out of Middlemarch in company with Bambridge and Horrock, on his

way of course to Houndsley horsefair, thought that young Vincy was pleasureseeking as usual; and but for

an unwonted consciousness of grave matters on hand, he himself would have had a sense of dissipation, and

of doing what might be expected of a gay young fellow. Considering that Fred was not at all coarse, that he

rather looked down on the manners and speech of young men who had not been to the university, and that he

had written stanzas as pastoral and unvoluptuous as his fluteplaying, his attraction towards Bambridge and

Horrock was an interesting fact which even the love of horseflesh would not wholly account for without that

mysterious influence of Naming which determinates so much of mortal choice. Under any other name than

"pleasure" the society of Messieurs Bambridge and Horrock must certainly have been regarded as

monotonous; and to arrive with them at Houndsley on a drizzling afternoon, to get down at the Red Lion in a

street shaded with coaldust, and dine in a room furnished with a dirtenamelled map of the county, a bad

portrait of an anonymous horse in a stable, His Majesty George the Fourth with legs and cravat, and various

leaden spittoons, might have seemed a hard business, but for the sustaining power of nomenclature which

In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent unfathomableness which offered play to the imagination.

Costume, at a glance, gave him a thrilling association with horses (enough to specify the hatbrim which

took the slightest upward angle just to escape the suspicion of bending downwards), and nature had given

him a face which by dint of Mongolian eyes, and a nose, mouth, and chin seeming to follow his hatbrim in a

moderate inclination upwards, gave the effect of a subdued unchangeable sceptical smile, of all expressions

the most tyrannous over a susceptible mind, and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to create the

reputation of an invincible understanding, an infinite fund of humor too dry to flow, and probably in a state

of immovable crust, and a critical judgment which, if you could ever be fortunate enough to know it,

would be THE thing and no other. It is a physiognomy seen in all vocations, but perhaps it has never been

Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's fetlock, turned sideways in his saddle, and watched the

horse's action for the space of three minutes, then turned forward, twitched his own bridle, and remained

The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective. A mixture of passions was excited in

Freda mad desire to thrash Horrock's opinion into utterance, restrained by anxiety to retain the advantage

of his friendship. There was always the chance that Horrock might say something quite invaluable at the right

Mr. Bambridge had more open manners, and appeared to give forth his ideas without economy. He was loud,

robust, and was sometimes spoken of as being "given to indulgence"chiefly in swearing, drinking, and

beating his wife. Some people who had lost by him called him a vicious man; but he regarded horsedealing

as the finest of the arts, and might have argued plausibly that it had nothing to do with morality. He was

undeniably a prosperous man, bore his drinking better than others bore their moderation, and, on the whole,

flourished like the green baytree. But his range of conversation was limited, and like the fine old tune,

"Drops of brandy," gave you after a while a sense of returning upon itself in a way that might make weak

heads dizzy. But a slight infusion of Mr. Bambridge was felt to give tone and character to several circles in

Middlemarch; and he was a distinguished figure in the bar and billiardroom at the Green Dragon. He knew

some anecdotes about the heroes of the turf, and various clever tricks of Marquesses and Viscounts which

seemed to prove that blood asserted its preeminence even among blacklegs; but the minute retentiveness of

his memory was chiefly shown about the horses he had himself bought and sold; the number of miles they

would trot you in no time without turning a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of passionate

asseveration, in which he would assist the imagination of his hearers by solemnly swearing that they never

saw anything like it. In short, Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.

Fred was subtle, and did not tell his friends that he was going to Houndsley bent on selling his horse: he

wished to get indirectly at their genuine opinion of its value, not being aware that a genuine opinion was the

last thing likely to be extracted from such eminent critics. It was not Mr. Bambridge's weakness to be a

gratuitous flatterer. He had never before been so much struck with the fact that this unfortunate bay was a

roarer to a degree which required the roundest word for perdition to give you any idea of it.

"You made a bad hand at swapping when you went to anybody but me, Vincy! Why, you never threw your

leg across a finer horse than that chestnut, and you gave him for this brute. If you set him cantering, he goes

on like twenty sawyers. I never heard but one worse roarer in my life, and that was a roan: it belonged to

Pegwell, the cornfactor; he used to drive him in his gig seven years ago, and he wanted me to take him, but I

said, `Thank you, Peg, I don't deal in windinstruments.' That was what I said. It went the round of the

country, that joke did. But, what the hell! the horse was a penny trumpet to that roarer of yours."

"Why, you said just now his was worse than mine," said Fred, more irritable than usual.

"I said a lie, then," said Mr. Bambridge, emphatically. "There wasn't a penny to choose between 'em."

Fred spurred his horse, and they trotted on a little way. When they slackened again, Mr. Bambridge said

"I'm quite satisfied with his paces, I know," said Fred, who required all the consciousness of being in gay

company to support him; "I say his trot is an uncommonly clean one, eh, Horrock?"

Mr. Horrock looked before him with as complete a neutrality as if he had been a portrait by a great master.

Fred gave up the fallacious hope of getting a genuine opinion; but on reflection he saw that Bambridge's

depreciation and Horrock's silence were both virtually encouraging, and indicated that they thought better of

That very evening, indeed, before the fair had set in, Fred thought he saw a favorable opening for disposing

advantageously of his horse, but an opening which made him congratulate himself on his foresight in

bringing with him his eighty pounds. A young farmer, acquainted with Mr. Bambridge, came into the Red

Lion, and entered into conversation about parting with a hunter, which he introduced at once as Diamond,

implying that it was a public character. For himself he only wanted a useful hack, which would draw upon

occasion; being about to marry and to give up hunting. The hunter was in a friend's stable at some little

distance; there was still time for gentlemen to see it before dark. The friend's stable had to be reached through

a back street where you might as easily have been poisoned without expense of drugs as in any grim street of

that unsanitary period. Fred was not fortified against disgust by brandy, as his companions were, but the hope

of having at last seen the horse that would enable him to make money was exhilarating enough to lead him

over the same ground again the first thing in the morning. He felt sure that if he did not come to a bargain

with the farmer, Bambridge would; for the stress of circumstances, Fred felt, was sharpening his acuteness

and endowing him with all the constructive power of suspicion. Bambridge had run down Diamond in a way

that he never would have done (the horse being a friend's) if he had not thought of buying it; every one who

looked at the animaleven Horrockwas evidently impressed with its merit. To get all the advantage of

being with men of this sort, you must know how to draw your inferences, and not be a spoon who takes

things literally. The color of the horse was a dappled gray, and Fred happened to know that Lord Medlicote's

man was on the lookout for just such a horse. After all his running down, Bambridge let it out in the course

of the evening, when the farmer was absent, that he had seen worse horses go for eighty pounds. Of course he

contradicted himself twenty times over, but when you know what is likely to be true you can test a man's

admissions. And Fred could not but reckon his own judgment of a horse as worth something. The farmer had

paused over Fred's respectable though brokenwinded steed long enough to show that he thought it worth

consideration, and it seemed probable that he would take it, with fiveandtwenty pounds in addition, as the

equivalent of Diamond. In that case Fred, when he had parted with his new horse for at least eighty pounds,

would be fiftyfive pounds in pocket by the transaction, and would have a hundred and thirtyfive pounds

towards meeting the bill; so that the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at the utmost be

twentyfive pounds. By the time he was hurrying on his clothes in the morning, he saw so clearly the

importance of not losing this rare chance, that if Bambridge and Horrock had both dissuaded him, he would

not have been deluded into a direct interpretation of their purpose: he would have been aware that those deep

hands held something else than a young fellow's interest. With regard to horses, distrust was your only clew.

But scepticism, as we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill: something

we must believe in and do, and whatever that something may be called, it is virtually our own judgment, even

when it seems like the most slavish reliance on another. Fred believed in the excellence of his bargain, and

even before the fair had well set in, had got possession of the dappled gray, at the price of his old horse and

But he felt a little worried and wearied, perhaps with mental debate, and without waiting for the further

gayeties of the horsefair, he set out alone on his fourteen miles' journey, meaning to take it very quietly and

I am sorry to say that only the third day after the propitious events at Houndsley Fred Vincy had fallen into

worse spirits than he had known in his life before. Not that he had been disappointed as to the possible market

for his horse, but that before the bargain could be concluded with Lord Medlicote's man, this Diamond, in

which hope to the amount of eighty pounds had been invested, had without the slightest warning exhibited in

the stable a most vicious energy in kicking, had just missed killing the groom, and had ended in laming

himself severely by catching his leg in a rope that overhung the stableboard. There was no more redress for

this than for the discovery of bad temper after marriage which of course old companions were aware of

before the ceremony. For some reason or other, Fred had none of his usual elasticity under this stroke of

illfortune: he was simply aware that he had only fifty pounds, that there was no chance of his getting any

more at present, and that the bill for a hundred and sixty would be presented in five days. Even if he had

applied to his father on the plea that Mr. Garth should be saved from loss, Fred felt smartingly that his father

would angrily refuse to rescue Mr. Garth from the consequence of what he would call encouraging

extravagance and deceit. He was so utterly downcast that he could frame no other project than to go straight

to Mr. Garth and tell him the sad truth, carrying with him the fifty pounds, and getting that sum at least safely

out of his own hands. His father, being at the warehouse, did not yet know of the accident: when he did, he

would storm about the vicious brute being brought into his stable; and before meeting that lesser annoyance

Fred wanted to get away with all his courage to face the greater. He took his father's nag, for he had made up

his mind that when he had told Mr. Garth, he would ride to Stone Court and confess all to Mary. In fact, it is

probable that but for Mary's existence and Fred's love for her, his conscience would hare been much less

active both in previously urging the debt on his thought and impelling him not to spare himself after his usual

fashion by deferring an unpleasant task, but to act as directly and simply as he could. Even much stronger

mortals than Fred Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love best. "The theatre of all

my actions is fallen," said an antique personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who

get a theatre where the audience demands their best. Certainly it would have made a considerable difference

to Fred at that time if Mary Garth had had no decided notions as to what was admirable in character.

Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which was a little way outside the towna

homely place with an orchard in front of it, a rambling, oldfashioned, halftimbered building, which before

the town had spread had been a farmhouse, but was now surrounded with the private gardens of the

townsmen. We get the fonder of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends have.

The Garth family, which was rather a large one, for Mary had four brothers and one sister, were very fond of

their old house, from which all the best furniture had long been sold. Fred liked it too, knowing it by heart

even to the attic which smelt deliciously of apples and quinces, and until today he had never come to it

without pleasant expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now with the sense that he should probably have to

make his confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom he was rather more in awe than of her husband. Not that she

was inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies, as Mary was. In her present matronly age at least, Mrs.

Garth never committed herself by overhasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth, and

learned selfcontrol. She had that rare sense which discerns what is unalterable, and submits to it without

murmuring. Adoring her husband's virtues, she had very early made up her mind to his incapacity of minding

his own interests, and had met the consequences cheerfully. She had been magnanimous enough to renounce

all pride in teapots or children's frilling, and had never poured any pathetic confidences into the ears of her

feminine neighbors concerning Mr. Garth's want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been

like other men. Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or eccentric, and sometimes spoke of her

to their husbands as "your fine Mrs. Garth." She was not without her criticism of them in return, being more

accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, andwhere is the blameless woman?apt to be a

little severe towards her own sex, which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate. On the other

hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings of men, and was often heard to say that these

were natural. Also, it must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in her resistance to what she

held to be follies: the passage from governess into housewife had wrought itself a little too strongly into her

consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent were above the town standard, she

wore a plain cap, cooked the family dinner, and darned all the stockings. She had sometimes taken pupils in a

peripatetic fashion, making them follow her about in the kitchen with their book or slate. She thought it good

for them to see that she could make an excellent lather while she corrected their blunders "without

looking," that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows might know all about the Subjunctive

Mood or the Torrid Zonethat, in short, she might possess "education" and other good things ending in

"tion," and worthy to be pronounced emphatically, without being a useless doll. When she made remarks to

this edifying effect, she had a firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not hinder her face from looking

benevolent, and her words which came forth like a procession were uttered in a fervid agreeable contralto.

Certainly, the exemplary Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her character sustained her oddities, as a very

Towards Fred Vincy she had a motherly feeling, and had always been disposed to excuse his errors, though

she would probably not have excused Mary for engaging herself to him, her daughter being included in that

more rigorous judgment which she applied to her own sex. But this very fact of her exceptional indulgence

towards him made it the harder to Fred that he must now inevitably sink in her opinion. And the

circumstances of his visit turned out to be still more unpleasant than he had expected; for Caleb Garth had

gone out early to look at some repairs not far off. Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in the kitchen, and

this morning she was carrying on several occupations at once theremaking her pies at the wellscoured

deal table on one side of that airy room, observing Sally's movements at the oven and doughtub through an

open door, and giving lessons to her youngest boy and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table

with their books and slates before them. A tub and a clotheshorse at the other end of the kitchen indicated an

Mrs. Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling her pastryapplying her rollingpin

and giving ornamental pinches, while she expounded with grammatical fervor what were the right views

about the concord of verbs and pronouns with "nouns of multitude or signifying many," was a sight agreeably

amusing. She was of the same curlyhaired, squarefaced type as Mary, but handsomer, with more delicacy

of feature, a pale skin, a solid matronly figure, and a remarkable firmness of glance. In her snowyfrilled cap

she reminded one of that delightful Frenchwoman whom we have all seen marketing, basket on arm. Looking

at the mother, you might hope that the daughter would become like her, which is a prospective advantage

equal to a dowrythe mother too often standing behind the daughter like a malignant prophecy "Such as I

"Now let us go through that once more," said Mrs. Garth, pinching an applepuff which seemed to distract

Ben, an energetic young male with a heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson. "`Not without regard to

the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea'tell me again what that means, Ben."

(Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient paths, and in a general wreck of society

"Ohit meansyou must think what you mean," said Ben, rather peevishly. "I hate grammar. What's the

"To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be understood," said Mrs. Garth, with severe

"Yes," said Ben, stoutly; "it's funnier. He says, `Yo goo' that's just as good as `You go.'"

"But he says, `A ship's in the garden,' instead of `a sheep,'" said Letty, with an air of superiority. "You might

"No, you mightn't, if you weren't silly," said Ben. "How could a ship off the sea come there?"

"These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of grammar," said Mrs. Garth. "That

applepeel is to be eaten by the pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty. Job has only to

speak about very plain things. How do you think you would write or speak about anything more difficult, if

you knew no more of grammar than he does? You would use wrong words, and put words in the wrong

places, and instead of making people understand you, they would turn away from you as a tiresome person.

"I shouldn't care, I should leave off," said Ben, with a sense that this was an agreeable issue where grammar

"I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben," said Mrs. Garth, accustomed to these obstructive arguments

from her male offspring. Having finished her pies, she moved towards the clotheshorse, and said, "Come

"Now, Ben, he was a Romanlet ME tell," said Letty, using her elbow contentiously.

"Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first," insisted Ben. "He was a wise man, like my father,

and that made the people want his advice. And he was a brave man, and could fight. And so could my

"Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us," said Letty, frowning. "Please, mother, tell

"Letty, I am ashamed of you," said her mother, wringing out the caps from the tub. "When your brother

began, you ought to have waited to see if he could not tell the story. How rude you look, pushing and

frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows! Cincinnatus, I am sure, would have been sorry to

see his daughter behave so." (Mrs. Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation, and

Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem, that of the Romans inclusive, life was

"Wellohwellwhy, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were all blockheads, andI can't tell it

just how you told it but they wanted a man to be captain and king and everything"

"Dictator, now," said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish to make her mother repent.

"Very well, dictator!" said Ben, contemptuously. "But that isn't a good word: he didn't tell them to write on

"Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that," said Mrs. Garth, carefully serious. "Hark, there is a

The knock was Fred's; and when Letty said that her father was not in yet, but that her mother was in the

kitchen, Fred had no alternative. He could not depart from his usual practice of going to see Mrs. Garth in the

kitchen if she happened to be at work there. He put his arm round Letty's neck silently, and led her into the

Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not a feeling that she was given to express,

"I want to speak to Mr. Garth," said Fred, not yet ready to say more "and to you also," he added, after a

little pause, for he had no doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the bill, and he must in the end speak

"Caleb will be in again in a few minutes," said Mrs. Garth, who imagined some trouble between Fred and his

father. "He is sure not to be long, because he has some work at his desk that must be done this morning. Do

"But we needn't go on about Cincinnatus, need we?" said Ben, who had taken Fred's whip out of his hand,

"No, go out now. But put that whip down. How very mean of you to whip poor old Tortoise! Pray take the

"Will you let me ride on your horse today?" said Ben, rendering up the whip, with an air of not being

"Enough, enough, Ben! run away," said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred was teased. . .

"Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?" said Fred, when the children were gone and it was

needful to say something that would pass the time. He was not yet sure whether he should wait for Mr. Garth,

or use any good opportunity in conversation to confess to Mrs. Garth herself, give her the money and ride

"Oneonly one. Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven. I am not getting a great income now," said Mrs.

Garth, smiling. "I am at a low ebb with pupils. But I have saved my little purse for Alfred's premium: I have

This did not lead well towards the news that Mr. Garth was on the brink of losing ninetytwo pounds and

more. Fred was silent. "Young gentlemen who go to college are rather more costly than that," Mrs. Garth

innocently continued, pulling out the edging on a capborder. "And Caleb thinks that Alfred will turn out a

distinguished engineer: he wants to give the boy a good chance. There he is! I hear him coming in. We will

When they entered the parlor Caleb had thrown down his hat and was seated at his desk.

"What! Fred, my boy!" he said, in a tone of mild surprise, holding his pen still undipped; "you are here

betimes." But missing the usual expression of cheerful greeting in Fred's face, he immediately added, "Is

"Yes, Mr. Garth, I am come to tell something that I am afraid will give you a bad opinion of me. I am come

to tell you and Mrs. Garth that I can't keep my word. I can't find the money to meet the bill after all. I have

been unfortunate; I have only got these fifty pounds towards the hundred and sixty."

While Fred was speaking, he had taken out the notes and laid them on the desk before Mr. Garth. He had

burst forth at once with the plain fact, feeling boyishly miserable and without verbal resources. Mrs. Garth

was mutely astonished, and looked at her husband for an explanation. Caleb blushed, and after a little pause

"Oh, I didn't tell you, Susan: I put my name to a bill for Fred; it was for a hundred and sixty pounds. He made

There was an evident change in Mrs. Garth's face, but it was like a change below the surface of water which

"I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money and he has refused you."

"No," said Fred, biting his lip, and speaking with more difficulty; "but I know it will be of no use to ask him;

and unless it were of use, I should not like to mention Mr. Garth's name in the matter."

"It has come at an unfortunate time," said Caleb, in his hesitating way, looking down at the notes and

nervously fingering the paper, "Christmas upon usI'm rather hard up just now. You see, I have to cut out

everything like a tailor with short measure. What can we do, Susan? I shall want every farthing we have in

"I must give you the ninetytwo pounds that I have put by for Alfred's premium," said Mrs. Garth, gravely

and decisively, though a nice ear might have discerned a slight tremor in some of the words. "And I have no

doubt that Mary has twenty pounds saved from her salary by this time. She will advance it."

Mrs. Garth had not again looked at Fred, and was not in the least calculating what words she should use to cut

him the most effectively. Like the eccentric woman she was, she was at present absorbed in considering what

was to be done, and did not fancy that the end could be better achieved by bitter remarks or explosions. But

she had made Fred feel for the first time something like the tooth of remorse. Curiously enough, his pain in

the affair beforehand had consisted almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonorable, and sink in

the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the inconvenience and possible injury that his

breach might occasion them, for this exercise of the imagination on other people's needs is not common with

hopeful young gentlemen. Indeed we are most of us brought up in the notion that the highest motive for not

doing a wrong is something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong. But at this moment he

suddenly saw himself as a pitiful rascal who was robbing two women of their savings.

"Yes, ultimately," said Mrs. Garth, who having a special dislike to fine words on ugly occasions, could not

now repress an epigram. "But boys cannot well be apprenticed ultimately: they should be apprenticed at

"I was the most in the wrong, Susan," said Caleb. "Fred made sure of finding the money. But I'd no business

to be fingering bills. I suppose you have looked all round and tried all honest means?" he added, fixing his

merciful gray eyes on Fred. Caleb was too delicate, to specify Mr. Featherstone.

"Yes, I have tried everythingI really have. I should have had a hundred and thirty pounds ready but for a

misfortune with a horse which I was about to sell. My uncle had given me eighty pounds, and I paid away

thirty with my old horse in order to get another which I was going to sell for eighty or moreI meant to go

without a horse but now it has turned out vicious and lamed itself. I wish I and the horses too had been at

the devil, before I had brought this on you. There's no one else I care so much for: you and Mrs. Garth have

always been so kind to me. However, it's no use saying that. You will always think me a rascal now."

Fred turned round and hurried out of the room, conscious that he was getting rather womanish, and feeling

confusedly that his being sorry was not of much use to the Garths. They could see him mount, and quickly

"I am disappointed in Fred Vincy," said Mrs. Garth. "I would not have believed beforehand that he would

have drawn you into his debts. I knew he was extravagant, but I did not think that he would be so mean as to

"That you were," said the wife, nodding and smiling. "But I should not have gone to publish it in the

marketplace. Why should you keep such things from me? It is just so with your buttons: you let them burst

off without telling me, and go out with your wristband hanging. If I had only known I might have been ready

"You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan," said Caleb, looking feelingly at her. "I can't abide your losing the

"It is very well that I HAD scraped it together; and it is you who will have to suffer, for you must teach the

boy yourself. You must give up your bad habits. Some men take to drinking, and you have taken to working

without pay. You must indulge yourself a little less in that. And you must ride over to Mary, and ask the child

Caleb had pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his head slowly, and fitting his

"Poor Mary!" he said. "Susan," he went on in a lowered tone, "I'm afraid she may be fond of Fred."

"Oh no! She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think of her in any other than a brotherly way."

Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up his chair to the desk, and said, "Deuce

take the bill I wish it was at Hanover! These things are a sad interruption to business!"

The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory expression, and was uttered with a

slight snarl easy to imagine. But it would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the word

"business," the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious regard, in which he wrapped it, as a

Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the indispensable might of that myriadheaded,

myriadhanded labor by which the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of his imagination

in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof or keel were amaking, the signalshouts of the

workmen, the roar of the furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to him; the

felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating starlike in the distance along the highway, the

crane at work on the wharf, the piledup produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of muscular effort

wherever exact work had to be turned out,all these sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without

the aid of the poets. had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers, a religion without the aid

of theology. His early ambition had been to have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which

was peculiarly dignified by him with the name of "business;" and though he had only been a short time under

a surveyor, and had been chiefly his own teacher, he knew more of land, building, and mining than most of

His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the categories of more celebrated men,

would not be acceptable in these advanced times. He divided them into "business, politics, preaching,

learning, and amusement." He had nothing to say against the last four; but he regarded them as a reverential

pagan regarded other gods than his own. In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he would not

himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such close contact with "business" as to get often

honorably decorated with marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of the woods

and fields. Though he had never regarded himself as other than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on

prevenient grace if the subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good practical

schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack

workman. But there was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to him that he was

ready to accept any number of systems, like any number of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere

with the best landdrainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring (for coal). In fact, he had

a reverential soul with a strong practical intelligence. But he could not manage finance: he knew values well,

but he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape of profit and loss: and having

ascertained this to his cost, he determined to give up all forms of his beloved "business" which required that

talent. He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of work which he could do without handling capital,

and was one of those precious men within his own district whom everybody would choose to work for them,

because he did his work well, charged very little, and often declined to charge at all. It is no wonder, then,

that the Garths were poor, and "lived in a small way." However, they did not mind it.

"Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care But for another gives its ease And builds a

heaven in hell's despair. . . . . . . . Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in

another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite." W. BLAKE: Songs of Experience

Fred Vincy wanted to arrive at Stone Court when Mary could not expect him, and when his uncle was not

downstairs in that case she might be sitting alone in the wainscoted parlor. He left his horse in the yard to

avoid making a noise on the gravel in front, and entered the parlor without other notice than the noise of the

doorhandle. Mary was in her usual corner, laughing over Mrs. Piozzi's recollections of Johnson, and looked

up with the fun still in her face. It gradually faded as she saw Fred approach her without speaking, and stand

before her with his elbow on the mantelpiece, looking ill. She too was silent, only raising her eyes to him

"I should think one of those epithets would do at a time," said Mary, trying to smile, but feeling alarmed.

"I know you will never think well of me any more. You will think me a liar. You will think me dishonest.

You will think I didn't care for you, or your father and mother. You always do make the worst of me, I

"I cannot deny that I shall think all that of you, Fred, if you give me good reasons. But please to tell me at

once what you have done. I would rather know the painful truth than imagine it."

"I owed moneya hundred and sixty pounds. I asked your father to put his name to a bill. I thought it would

not signify to him. I made sure of paying the money myself, and I have tried as hard as I could. And now, I

have been so unluckya horse has turned out badly I can only pay fifty pounds. And I can't ask my father

for the money: he would not give me a farthing. And my uncle gave me a hundred a little while ago. So what

can I do? And now your father has no ready money to spare, and your mother will have to pay away her

ninetytwo pounds that she has saved, and she says your savings must go too. You see what a"

"Oh, poor mother, poor father!" said Mary, her eyes filling with tears, and a little sob rising which she tried to

repress. She looked straight before her and took no notice of Fred, all the consequences at home becoming

present to her. He too remained silent for some moments, feeling more miserable than ever. "I wouldn't have

"What does it matter whether I forgive you?" said Mary, passionately. "Would that make it any better for my

mother to lose the money she has been earning by lessons for four years, that she might send Alfred to Mr.

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

Fred followed her with his eyes, hoping that they would meet hers, and in that way find access for his

"I do care about your mother's money going," he said, when she was seated again and sewing quickly. "I

wanted to ask you, Mary don't you think that Mr. Featherstoneif you were to tell him tell him, I

"My family is not fond of begging, Fred. We would rather work for our money. Besides, you say that Mr.

Featherstone has lately given you a hundred pounds. He rarely makes presents; he has never made presents to

us. I am sure my father will not ask him for anything; and even if I chose to beg of him, it would be of no

"I am so miserable, Maryif you knew how miserable I am, you would be sorry for me."

"There are other things to be more sorry for than that. But selfish people always think their own discomfort of

more importance than anything else in the world. I see enough of that every day."

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

"I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves without knowing how they shall pay,

must be selfish. They are always thinking of what they can get for themselves, and not of what other people

"Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when he meant it. There is not a better

"How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred?" said Mary, in a deep tone of

indignation. "He never got into trouble by thinking of his own idle pleasures, but because he was always

thinking of the work he was doing for other people. And he has fared hard, and worked hard to make good

"And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary. It is not generous to believe the worst of a

man. When you have got any power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better i but that is

what you never do. However, I'm going," Fred ended, languidly. "I shall never speak to you about anything

Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up. There is often something maternal even in a

girlish love, and Mary's hard experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different from that

hard slight thing which we call girlishness. At Fred's last words she felt an instantaneous pang, something

like what a mother feels at the imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which may lose itself and

get harm. And when, looking up, her eyes met his dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her

"Oh, Fred, how ill you look! Sit down a moment. Don't go yet. Let me tell uncle that you are here. He has

been wondering that he has not seen you for a whole week." Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words that

came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying them in a halfsoothing halfbeseeching

tone, and rising as if to go away to Mr. Featherstone. Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had parted and a

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

"As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you," said Mary, in a mournful tone. "As if it were not very

painful to me to see you an idle frivolous creature. How can you bear to be so contemptible, when others are

working and striving, and there are so many things to be donehow can you bear to be fit for nothing in the

world that is useful? And with so much good in your disposition, Fred, you might be worth a great deal."

"I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be hanging on others, and reckoning on

what they would do for him. What will you be when you are forty? Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose just as

idle, living in Mrs. Beck's front parlorfat and shabby, hoping somebody will invite you to

dinnerspending your morning in learning a comic songoh no! learning a tune on the flute."

Mary's lips had begun to curl with a smile as soon as she had asked that question about Fred's future (young

souls are mobile), and before she ended, her face had its full illumination of fun. To him it was like the

cessation of an ache that Mary could laugh at him, and with a passive sort of smile he tried to reach her hand;

but she slipped away quickly towards the door and said, "I shall tell uncle. You MUST see him for a moment

Fred secretly felt that his future was guaranteed against the fulfilment of Mary's sarcastic prophecies, apart

from that "anything" which he was ready to do if she would define it He never dared in Mary's presence to

approach the subject of his expectations from Mr. Featherstone, and she always ignored them, as if

everything depended on himself. But if ever he actually came into the property, she must recognize the

change in his position. All this passed through his mind somewhat languidly, before he went up to see his

uncle. He stayed but a little while, excusing himself on the ground that he had a cold; and Mary did not

reappear before he left the house. But as he rode home, he began to be more conscious of being ill, than of

When Caleb Garth arrived at Stone Court soon after dusk, Mary was not surprised, although he seldom had

leisure for paying her a visit, and was not at all fond of having to talk with Mr. Featherstone. The old man, on

the other hand, felt himself ill at ease with a brotherinlaw whom he could not annoy, who did not mind

about being considered poor, had nothing to ask of him, and understood all kinds of farming and mining

business better than he did. But Mary had felt sure that her parents would want to see her, and if her father

had not come, she would have obtained leave to go home for an hour or two the next day. After discussing

prices during tea with Mr. Featherstone Caleb rose to bid him goodby, and said, "I want to speak to you,

She took a candle into another large parlor, where there was no fire, and setting down the feeble light on the

dark mahogany table, turned round to her father, and putting her arms round his neck kissed him with

childish kisses which he delighted in,the expression of his large brows softening as the expression of a

great beautiful dog softens when it is caressed. Mary was his favorite child, and whatever Susan might say,

and right as she was on all other subjects, Caleb thought it natural that Fred or any one else should think

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

"Ay? how can that be? You see, I've been a bit of a fool again, and put my name to a bill, and now it comes to

paying; and your mother has got to part with her savings, that's the worst of it, and even they won't quite

make things even. We wanted a hundred and ten pounds: your mother has ninetytwo, and I have none to

"Oh yes; I have more than fourandtwenty pounds. I thought you would come, father, so I put it in my bag.

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

"Well, but howwe only want eighteenhere, put the rest back, child,but how did you know about it?"

said Caleb, who, in his unconquerable indifference to money, was beginning to be chiefly concerned about

"I'm afraid Fred is not to be trusted, Mary," said the father, with hesitating tenderness. "He means better than

he acts, perhaps. But I should think it a pity for any body's happiness to be wrapped up in him, and so would

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

"I don't want to pry, my dear. But I was afraid there might be something between you and Fred, and I wanted

to caution you. You see, Mary"here Caleb's voice became more tender; he had been pushing his hat about

on the table and looking at it, but finally he turned his eyes on his daughter"a woman, let her be as good as

she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her. Your mother has had to put up with a

"Well, well, nobody's perfect, but"here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the inadequacy of

words"what I am thinking of is what it must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when

he hasn't got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting

his own toes pinched. That's the long and the short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other

before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns

into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in

cottonwool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are

"Don't fear for me, father," said Mary, gravely meeting her father's eyes; "Fred has always been very good to

me; he is kindhearted and affectionate, and not false, I think, with all his selfindulgence. But I will never

engage myself to one who has no manly independence, and who goes on loitering away his time on the

chance that others will provide for him. You and my mother have taught me too much pride for that."

"That's rightthat's right. Then I am easy," said Mr. Garth, taking up his {hat or bet. ????} But it's hard to

"Father!" said Mary, in her deepest tone of remonstrance. "Take pocketfuls of love besides to them all at

"I suppose your father wanted your earnings," said old Mr. Featherstone, with his usual power of unpleasant

surmise, when Mary returned to him. "He makes but a tight fit, I reckon. You're of age now; you ought to be

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

Mr. Featherstone grunted: he could not deny that an ordinary sort of girl like her might be expected to be

useful, so he thought of another rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos. "If Fred Vincy comes

But Fred did not go to Stone Court the next day, for reasons that were quite peremptory. From those visits to

unsanitary Houndsley streets in search of Diamond, he had brought back not only a bad bargain in

horseflesh, but the further misfortune of some ailment which for a day or two had deemed mere depression

and headache, but which got so much worse when he returned from his visit to Stone Court that, going into

the diningroom, he threw himself on the sofa, and in answer to his mother's anxious question, said, "I feel

Wrench came, but did not apprehend anything serious, spoke of a "slight derangement," and did not speak of

coming again on the morrow. He had a due value for the Vincys' house, but the wariest men are apt to be

dulled by routine, and on worried mornings will sometimes go through their business with the zest of the

daily bellringer. Mr. Wrench was a small, neat, bilious man, with a welldressed wig: he had a laborious

practice, an irascible temper, a lymphatic wife and seven children; and he was already rather late before

setting out on a fourmiles drive to meet Dr. Minchin on the other side of Tipton, the decease of Hicks, a

rural practitioner, having increased Middlemarch practice in that direction. Great statesmen err, and why not

small medical men? Mr. Wrench did not neglect sending the usual white parcels, which this time had black

and drastic contents. Their effect was not alleviating to poor Fred, who, however, unwilling as he said to

believe that he was "in for an illness," rose at his usual easy hour the next morning and went downstairs

meaning to breakfast, but succeeded in nothing but in sitting and shivering by the fire. Mr. Wrench was again

sent for, but was gone on his rounds, and Mrs. Vincy seeing her darling's changed looks and general misery,

"Oh, nonsense, mother! It's nothing," said Fred, putting out his hot dry hand to her, "I shall soon be all right. I

"Mamma!" said Rosamond, who was seated near the window (the diningroom windows looked on that

highly respectable street called Lowick Gate), "there is Mr. Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one. If I were

you I would call him in. He has cured Ellen Bulstrode. They say he cures every one."

Mrs. Vincy sprang to the window and opened it in an instant, thinking only of Fred and not of medical

etiquette. Lydgate was only two yards off on the other side of some iron palisading, and turned round at the

sudden sound of the sash, before she called to him. In two minutes he was in the room, and Rosamond went

out, after waiting just long enough to show a pretty anxiety conflicting with her sense of what was becoming.

Lydgate had to hear a narrative in which Mrs. Vincy's mind insisted with remarkable instinct on every point

of minor importance, especially on what Mr. Wrench had said and had not said about coming again. That

there might be an awkward affair with Wrench, Lydgate saw at once; but the ease was serious enough to

make him dismiss that consideration: he was convinced that Fred was in the pinkskinned stage of typhoid

fever, and that he had taken just the wrong medicines. He must go to bed immediately, must have a regular

nurse, and various appliances and precautions must be used, about which Lydgate was particular. Poor Mrs.

Vincy's terror at these indications of danger found vent in such words as came most easily. She thought it

"very ill usage on the part of Mr. Wrench, who had attended their house so many years in preference to Mr.

Peacock, though Mr. Peacock was equally a friend. Why Mr. Wrench should neglect her children more than

others, she could not for the life of her understand. He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher's when they had the

measles, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that he should. And if anything should happen"

Here poor Mrs. Vincy's spirit quite broke down, and her Niobe throat and goodhumored face were sadly

convulsed. This was in the hall out of Fred's hearing, but Rosamond had opened the drawingroom door, and

now came forward anxiously. Lydgate apologized for Mr. Wrench, said that the symptoms yesterday might

have been disguising, and that this form of fever was very equivocal in its beginnings: he would go

immediately to the druggist's and have a prescription made up in order to lose no time, but he would write to

"But you must come againyou must go on attending Fred. I can't have my boy left to anybody who may

come or not. I bear nobody illwill, thank God, and Mr. Wrench saved me in the pleurisy, but he'd better

"I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?" said Lydgate, really believing that Wrench was not well

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

When Mr. Vincy came home he was very angry with Wrench, and did not care if he never came into his

house again. Lydgate should go on now, whether Wrench liked it or not. It was no joke to have fever in the

house. Everybody must be sent to now, not to come to dinner on Thursday. And Pritchard needn't get up any

wine: brandy was the best thing against infection. "I shall drink brandy," added Mr. Vincy, emphaticallyas

much as to say, this was not an occasion for firing with blankcartridges. "He's an uncommonly unfortunate

lad, is Fred. He'd need havesome luck byandby to make up for all thiselse I don't know who'd have

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

"It will worret you to death, Lucy; THAT I can see," said Mr. Vincy, more mildly. "However, Wrench shall

know what I think of the matter." (What Mr. Vincy thought confusedly was, that the fever might somehow

have been hindered if Wrench had shown the proper solicitude about his the Mayor'sfamily.) "I'm the

last man to give in to the cry about new doctors, or new parsons eitherwhether they're Bulstrode's men or

Wrench did not take it at all well. Lydgate was as polite as he could be in his offhand way, but politeness in a

man who has placed you at a disadvantage is only an additional exasperation, especially if he happens to have

been an object of dislike beforehand. Country practitioners used to be an irritable species, susceptible on the

point of honor; and Mr. Wrench was one of the most irritable among them. He did not refuse to meet Lydgate

in the evening, but his temper was somewhat tried on the occasion. He had to hear Mrs. Vincy say

"Oh, Mr. Wrench, what have I ever done that you should use me so? To go away, and never to come

Mr. Vincy, who had been keeping up a sharp fire on the enemy Infection, and was a good deal heated in

consequence, started up when he heard Wrench come in, and went into the hall to let him know what he

"I'll tell you what, Wrench, this is beyond a joke," said the Mayor, who of late had had to rebuke offenders

with an official air, and how broadened himself by putting his thumbs in his armholes. "To let fever get

unawares into a house like this. There are some things that ought to be actionable, and are not so that's my

But irrational reproaches were easier to bear than the sense of being instructed, or rather the sense that a

younger man, like Lydgate, inwardly considered him in need of instruction, for "in point of fact," Mr.

Wrench afterwards said, Lydgate paraded flighty, foreign notions, which would not wear. He swallowed his

ire for the moment, but he afterwards wrote to decline further attendance in the case. The house might be a

good one, but Mr. Wrench was not going to truckle to anybody on a professional matter. He reflected, with

much probability on his side, that Lydgate would byandby be caught tripping too, and that his

ungentlemanly attempts to discredit the sale of drugs by his professional brethren, would byandby recoil

on himself. He threw out biting remarks on Lydgate's tricks, worthy only of a quack, to get himself a

factitious reputation with credulous people. That cant about cures was never got up by sound practitioners.

This was a point on which Lydgate smarted as much as Wrench could desire. To be puffed by ignorance was

not only humiliating, but perilous, and not more enviable than the reputation of the weatherprophet. He was

impatient of the foolish expectations amidst which all work must be carried on, and likely enough to damage

However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, and the event was a subject of general

conversation in Middlemarch. Some said, that the Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy had

threatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused him of poisoning her son. Others were of opinion that

Mr. Lydgate's passing by was providential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that Bulstrode was

in the right to bring him forward. Many people believed that Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really

due to Bulstrode; and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her information in

misleading fragments caught between the rows of her knitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was a

natural son of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions of evangelical laymen.

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

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

"Why, mother," said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, "you know very well that Lydgate is of a good

"That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden," said the old lady, with an air of

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the

serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pierglass or extensive surface of

polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all

directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will

seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that

the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering

illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a

parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent of Miss Vincy,

for example. Rosamond had a Providence of her own who had kindly made her more charming than other

girls, and who seemed to have arranged Fred's illness and Mr. Wrench's mistake in order to bring her and

Lydgate within effective proximity. It would have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had

consented to go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do, especially since Mr.

Lydgate thought the precaution needless. Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the children were sent away to a

farmhouse the morning after Fred's illness had declared itself, Rosamond refused to leave papa and mamma.

Poor mamma indeed was an object to touch any creature born of woman; and Mr. Vincy, who doted on his

wife, was more alarmed on her account than on Fred's. But for his insistence she would have taken no rest:

her brightness was all bedimmed; unconscious of her costume which had always been se fresh and gay, she

was like a sick bird with languid eye and plumage ruffled, her senses dulled to the sights and sounds that used

most to interest her. Fred's delirium, in which he seemed to be wandering out of her reach, tore her heart.

After her first outburst againstMr. Wrench she went about very quietly: her one low cry was to Lydgate. She

would follow him out of the room and put her hand on his arm moaning out, "Save my boy." Once she

pleaded, "He has always been good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he never had a hard word for his mother," as if

poor Fred's suffering were an accusation against him. All the deepest fibres of the mother's memory were

stirred, and the young man whose voice took a gentler tone when he spoke to her, was one with the babe

"I have good hope, Mrs. Vincy," Lydgate would say. "Come down with me and let us talk about the food." In

that way he led her to the parlor where Rosamond was, and made a change for her, surprising her into taking

some tea or broth which had been prepared for her. There was a constant understanding between him and

Rosamond on these matters. He almost always saw her before going to the sickroom, and she appealed to him

as to what she could do for mamma. Her presence of mind and adroitness in carrying out his hints were

admirable, and it is not wonderful that the idea of seeing Rosamond began to mingle itself with his interest in

the case. Especially when the critical stage was passed, and he began to feel confident of Fred's recovery. In

the more doubtful time, he had advised calling in Dr. Sprague (who, if he could, would rather have remained

neutral on Wrench's account); but after two consultations, the conduct of the case was left to Lydgate, and

there was every reason to make him assiduous. Morning and evening he was at Mr. Vincy's, and gradually

the visits became cheerful as Fred became simply feeble, and lay not only in need of the utmost petting but

conscious of it, so that Mrs. Vincy felt as if, after all, the illness had made a festival for her tenderness.

Both father and mother held it an added reason for good spirits, when old Mr. Featherstone sent messages by

Lydgate, saying that Fredmust make haste and get well, as he, Peter Featherstone, could not do without him,

and missed his visits sadly. The old man himself was getting bedridden. Mrs. Vincy told these messages to

Fred when he could listen, and he turned towards her his delicate, pinched face, from which all the thick

blond hair had been cut away, and in which the eyes seemed to have got larger, yearning for some word about

Marywondering what she felt about his illness. No word passed his lips; but "to hear with eyes belongs to

love's rare wit," and the mother in the fulness of her heart not only divined Fred's longing, but felt ready for

"If I can only see my boy strong again," she said, in her loving folly; "and who knows?perhaps master of

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

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

She never left Fred's side when her husband was not in the house, and thus Rosamond was in the unusual

position of being much alone. Lydgate, naturally, never thought of staying long with her, yet it seemed that

the brief impersonal conversations they had together were creating that peculiar intimacy which consists in

shyness. They were obliged to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking could not be carried

through as the matter of course which it really was. Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness

unpleasant and one day looked down, or anywhere, like an illworked puppet. But this turned out badly: the

next day, Rosamond looked down, and the consequence was that when their eyes met again, both were more

conscious than before. There was no help for this in science, and as Lydgate did not want to flirt, there

seemed to be no help for it in folly. It was therefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered the house in

quarantine, and when the chances of seeing Rosamond alone were very much reduced.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having

once existed, its effect is not to be done away with. Talk about the weather and other wellbred topics is apt

to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy unless it frankly recognizes a mutual

fascinationwhich of course need not mean anything deep or serious. This was the way in which Rosamond

and Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse lively again. Visitors came and went as

usual, there was once more music in the drawingroom, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy's mayoralty

returned. Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by Rosamond's side, and lingered to hear her music,

calling himself her captivemeaning, all the while, not to be her captive. The preposterousness of the notion

that he could at once set up a satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee against

danger. This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and did not interfere with graver pursuits. Flirtation,

after all, was not necessarily a singeing process. Rosamond, for her part, had never enjoyed the days so much

in her life before: she was sure of being admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish

flirtation from love, either in herself or in another. She seemed to be sailing with a fair wind just whither she

would go, and her thoughts were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped

would byandby be vacant. She was quite determined, when she was married, to rid herself adroitly of all

the visitors who were not agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawingroom in her favorite

Certainly her thoughts were much occupied with Lydgate himself; he seemed to her almost perfect: if he had

known his notes so that his enchantment under her music had been less like an emotional elephant's, and if he

had been able to discriminate better the refinements of her taste in dress, she could hardly have mentioned a

deficiency in him. How different he was from young Plymdale or Mr. Caius Larcher! Those young men had

not a notion of French, and could speak on no subject with striking knowledge, except perhaps the dyeing and

carrying trades, which of course they were ashamed to mention; they were Middlemarch gentry, elated with

their silverheaded whips and satin stocks, but embarrassed in their manners, and timidly jocose: even Fred

was above them, having at least the accent and manner of a university man. Whereas Lydgate was always

listened to, bore himself with the careless politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right

clothes on by a certain natural affinity, without ever having to think about them. Rosamond was proud when

he entered the room, and when he approached her with a distinguishing smile, she had a delicious sense that

she was the object of enviable homage. If Lydgate had been aware of all the pride he excited in that delicate

bosom, he might have been just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant of humoral

pathology or fibrous tissue: he held it one of the prettiest attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's

preeminence without too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in. But Rosamond was not one of those

helpless girls who betray themselves unawares, and whose behavior is awkwardly driven by their impulses,

instead of being steered by wary grace and propriety. Do you imagine that her rapid forecast and rumination

concerning housefurniture and society were ever discernible in her conversation, even with her mamma? On

the contrary, she would have expressed the prettiest surprise and disapprobation if she had heard that another

young lady had been detected in that immodest prematurenessindeed, would probably have disbelieved in

its possibility. For Rosamond never showed any unbecoming knowledge, and was always that combination of

correct sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant notewriting, private album for extracted verse, and

perfect blond loveliness, which made the irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date. Think no unfair

evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money

except as something necessary which other people would always provide. She was not in the habit of

devising falsehoods, and if her statements were no direct clew to fact, why, they were not intended in that

light they were among her elegant accomplishments, intended to please. Nature had inspired many arts in

finishing Mrs. Lemon's favorite pupil, who by general consent (Fred's excepted) was a rare compound of

Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was no constraint now, there was a

delightful interchange of influence in their eyes, and what they said had that superfluity of meaning for them,

which is observable with some sense of flatness by a third person; still they had no interviews or asides from

which a third person need have been excluded. In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was secure in the belief that

they did nothing else. If a man could not love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time?

Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great bores, and Lydgate did not care about

commercial politics or cards: what was he to do for relaxation? He was often invited to the Bulstrodes'; but

the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and Mrs. Bulstrode's NAIVE way of conciliating piety and

worldliness, the nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy

rags and the best damask, was not a sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable seriousness.

The Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the pleasanter by contrast; besides, it nourished Rosamondsweet

to look at as a halfopened blushrose, and adorned with accomplishments for the refined amusement of

But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss Vincy. One evening he came into

the drawingroom rather late, when several other visitors were there. The cardtable had drawn off the

elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch, though not one of its leading

minds) was in teteatete with Rosamond. He had brought the last "Keepsake," the gorgeous wateredsilk

publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he considered himself very fortunate that he

could be the first to look over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny copperplate

cheeks and copperplate smiles, and pointing to comic verses as capital and sentimental stories as interesting.

Rosamond was gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in art and literature as a

medium for "paying addresses"the very thing to please a nice girl. He had also reasons, deep rather than

ostensible, for being satisfied with his own appearance. To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an

aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about

"I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you," said Mr. Ned. He kept the book open at the bewitching

"Her back is very large; she seems to have sat for that," said Rosamond, not meaning any satire, but thinking

how red young Plymdale's hands were, and wondering why Lydgate did not come. She went on with her

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

"I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer," said Rosamond, feeling sure that she should have to reject this

But now Lydgate came in; the book was closed before he reached Rosamond's corner, and as he took his seat

with easy confidence on the other side of her, young Plymdale's jaw fell like a barometer towards the

cheerless side of change. Rosamond enjoyed not only Lydgate's presence but its effect: she liked to excite

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

"As usual; going on well, but slowly. I want him to go away to Stone Court, for example. But your

"Poor fellow!" said Rosamond, prettily. "You will see Fred so changed," she added, turning to the other

suitor; "we have looked to Mr. Lydgate as our guardian angel during this illness."

Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the "Keepsake" towards him and opening it, gave a short

"I wonder which would turn out to be the silliestthe engravings or the writing here," said Lydgate, in his

most convinced tone, while he turned over the pages quickly, seeming to see all through the book in no time,

and showing his large white hands to much advantage, as Rosamond thought. "Do look at this bridegroom

coming out of church: did you ever see such a `sugared invention'as the Elizabethans used to say? Did any

haberdasher ever look so smirking? Yet I will answer for it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in

"You are so severe, I am frightened at you," said Rosamond, keeping her amusement duly moderate. Poor

young Plymdale had lingered with admiration over this very engraving, and his spirit was stirred.

"There are a great many celebrated people writing in the `Keepsake,' at all events," he said, in a tone at once

"I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth," said Rosamond, looking at Lydgate with a

smile. "I suspect you know nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L." Rosamond herself was not without

relish for these writers, but she did not readily commit herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest

"But Sir Walter ScottI suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him," said young Plymdale, a little cheered by this

"Oh, I read no literature now," said Lydgate, shutting the book, and pushing it away. "I read so much when I

was a lad, that I suppose it will last me all my life. I used to know Scott's poems by heart."

"I should like to know when you left off," said Rosamond, "because then I might be sure that I knew

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

"On the contrary," said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with exasperating confidence at Rosamond.

Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whistplaying, thinking that Lydgate was one of the most

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

"I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came herethat you are a bear, and want

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

To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged. That they were some time to be

engaged had long been an idea in her mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the

necessary materials being at hand. It is true, Lydgate had the counteridea of remaining unengaged; but this

was a mere negative, a shadow east by other resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking.

Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked

through watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a jellyfish which gets melted

That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a process of maceration was going on,

with undisturbed interest; and he wrote out his daily notes with as much precision as usual. The reveries from

which it was difficult for him to detach himself were ideal constructions of something else than Rosamond's

virtues, and the primitive tissue was still his fair unknown. Moreover, he was beginning to feel some zest for

the growing though halfsuppressed feud between him and the other medical men, which was likely to

become more manifest, now that Bulstrode's method of managing the new hospital was about to be declared;

and there were various inspiriting signs that his nonacceptance by some of Peacock's patients might be

counterbalanced by the impression he had produced in other quarters. Only a few days later, when he had

happened to overtake Rosamond on the Lowick road and had got down from his horse to walk by her side

until he had quite protected her from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant on horseback with a

message calling him in to a house of some importance where Peacock had never attended; and it was the

second instance of this kind. The servant was Sir James Chettam's, and the house was Lowick Manor.

Mr. and Mrs. Casaubon, returning from their wedding journey, arrived at Lowick Manor in the middle of

January. A light snow was falling as they descended at the door, and in the morning, when Dorothea passed

from her dressingroom avenue the bluegreen boudoir that we know of, she saw the long avenue of limes

lifting their trunks from a white earth, and spreading white branches against the dun and motionless sky. The

distant flat shrank in uniform whiteness and lowhanging uniformity of cloud. The very furniture in the room

seemed to have shrunk since she saw it before: the slag in the tapestry looked more like a ghost in his ghostly

bluegreen world; the volumes of polite literature in the bookcase looked morn like immovable imitations of

books. The bright fire of dry oakboughs burning on the dogs seemed an incongruous renewal of life and

glowlike the figure of Dorothea herself as she entered carrying the redleather cases containing the

She was glowing from her morning toilet as only healthful youth can glow: there was gemlike brightness on

her coiled hair and in her hazel eyes; there was warm red life in her lips; her throat had a breathing whiteness

above the differing white of the fur which itself seemed to wind about her neck and cling down her bluegray

pelisse with a tenderness gathered from her own, a sentient commingled innocence which kept its loveliness

against the crystalline purity of the outdoor snow. As she laid the cameo cases on the table in the

bowwindow, she unconsciously kept her hands on them, immediately absorbed in looking out on the still,

Mr. Casaubon, who had risen early complaining of palpitation, was in the library giving audience to his

curate Mr. Tucker. Byandby Celia would come in her quality of bridesmaid as well as sister, and through

the next weeks there would be wedding visits received and given; all in continuance of that transitional life

understood to correspond with the excitement of bridal felicity, and keeping up the sense of busy

ineffectiveness, as of a dream which the dreamer begins to suspect. The duties of her married life,

contemplated as so great beforehand, seemed to be shrinking with the furniture and the white vaporwalled

landscape. The clear heights where she expected to walk in full communion had become difficult to see even

in her imagination; the delicious repose of the soul on a complete superior had been shaken into uneasy effort

and alarmed with dim presentiment. When would the days begin of that active wifely devotion which was to

strengthen her husband's life and exalt her own? Never perhaps, as she had preconceived them; but

somehow still somehow. In this solemnly pledged union of her life, duty would present itself in some new

Meanwhile there was the snow and the low arch of dun vapor there was the stifling oppression of that

gentlewoman's world, where everything was done for her and none asked for her aid where the sense of

connection with a manifold pregnant existence had to be kept up painfully as an inward vision, instead of

coming from without in claims that would have shaped her energies. "What shall I do?" "Whatever you

please, my dear: "that had been her brief history since she had left off learning morning lessons and practising

silly rhythms on the hated piano. Marriage, which was to bring guidance into worthy and imperative

occupation, had not yet freed her from the gentlewoman's oppressive liberty: it had not even filled her leisure

with the ruminant joy of unchecked tenderness. Her blooming fullpulsed youth stood there in a moral

imprisonment which made itself one with the chill, colorless, narrowed landscape, with the shrunken

furniture, the neverread books, and the ghostly stag in a pale fantastic world that seemed to be vanishing

In the first minutes when Dorothea looked out she felt nothing but the dreary oppression; then came a keen

remembrance, and turning away from the window she walked round the room. The ideas and hopes which

were living in her mind when she first saw this room nearly three months before were present now only as

memories: she judged them as we judge transient and departed things. All existence seemed to beat with a

lower pulse than her own, and her religious faith was a solitary cry, the struggle out of a nightmare in which

every object was withering and shrinking away from her. Each remembered thing in the room was

disenchanted, was deadened as an unlit transparency, till her wandering gaze came to the group of miniatures,

and there at last she saw something which had gathered new breath and meaning: it was the miniature of Mr.

Casaubon's aunt Julia, who had made the unfortunate marriage of Will Ladislaw's grandmother. Dorothea

could fancy that it was alive nowthe delicate woman's face which yet had a headstrong look, a peculiarity

difficult to interpret. Was it only her friends who thought her marriage unfortunate? or did she herself find it

out to be a mistake, and taste the salt bitterness of her tears in the merciful silence of the night? What

breadths of experience Dorothea seemed to have passed over since she first looked at this miniature! She felt

a new companionship with it, as if it had an ear for her and could see how she was looking at it. Here was a

woman who had known some difficulty about marriage. Nay, the colors deepened, the lips and chin seemed

to get larger, the hair and eyes seemed to be sending out light, the face was masculine and beamed on her

with that full gaze which tells her on whom it falls that she is too interesting for the slightest movement of her

eyelid to pass unnoticed and uninterpreted. The vivid presentation came like a pleasant glow to Dorothea: she

felt herself smiling, and turning from the miniature sat down and looked up as if she were again talking to a

figure in front of her. But the smile disappeared as she went on meditating, and at last she said aloud

She rose quickly and went out of the room, hurrying along the corridor, with the irresistible impulse to go and

see her husband and inquire if she could do anything for him. Perhaps Mr. Tucker was gone and Mr.

Casaubon was alone in the library. She felt as if all her morning's gloom would vanish if she could see her

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

"Dodo!" said Celia, in her quiet staccato; then kissed her sister, whose arms encircled her, and said no more. I

think they both cried a little in a furtive manner, while Dorothea ran downstairs to greet her uncle.

"I need not ask how you are, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, after kissing her forehead. "Rome has agreed with

you, I seehappiness, frescos, the antiquethat sort of thing. Well, it's very pleasant to have you back

again, and you understand all about art now, eh? But Casaubon is a little pale, I tell hima little pale, you

know. Studying hard in his holidays is carrying it rather too far. I overdid it at one time"Mr. Brooke still

held Dorothea's hand, but had turned his face to Mr. Casaubon"about topography, ruins, templesI

thought I had a clew, but I saw it would carry me too far, and nothing might come of it. You may go any

Dorothea's eyes also were turned up to her husband's face with some anxiety at the idea that those who saw

"Nothing to alarm you, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, observing her expression. "A little English beef and

mutton will soon make a difference. It was all very well to look pale, sitting for the portrait of Aquinas, you

knowwe got your letter just in time. But Aquinas, nowhe was a little too subtle, wasn't he? Does

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

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

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

The bluegreen boudoir looked much more cheerful when Celia was seated there in a pelisse exactly like her

sister's, surveying the cameos with a placid satisfaction, while the conversation passed on to other topics.

"Do you think it nice to go to Rome on a wedding journey?" said Celia, with her ready delicate blush which

"It would not suit allnot you, dear, for example," said Dorothea, quietly. No one would ever know what

"Mrs. Cadwallader says it is nonsense, people going a long journey when they are married. She says they get

tired to death of each other, and can't quarrel comfortably, as they would at home. And Lady Chettam says

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

"It was because you went away, Dodo. Then there was nobody but me for Sir James to talk to," said Celia,

"I understand. It is as I used to hope and believe," said Dorothea, taking her sister's face between her hands,

and looking at her half anxiously. Celia's marriage seemed more serious than it used to do.

"Yes. We are not going to be married yet. Because every thing is to be got ready. And I don't want to be

married so very soon, because I think it is nice to be engaged. And we shall be married all our lives after."

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

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

"Only I was afraid you would be getting so learned," said Celia, regarding Mr. Casaubon's learning as a kind

One morning, some weeks after her arrival at Lowick, Dorothea but why always Dorothea? Was her point

of view the only possible one with regard to this marriage? protest against all our interest, all our effort at

understanding being given to the young skins that look blooming in spite of trouble; for these too will get

faded, and will know the older and more eating griefs which we are helping to neglect. In spite of the

blinking eyes and white moles objectionable to Celia, and the want of muscular curve which was morally

painful to Sir James, Mr. Casaubon had an intense consciousness within him, and was spiritually ahungered

like the rest of us. He had done nothing exceptional in marryingnothing but what society sanctions, and

considers an occasion for wreaths and bouquets. It had occurred to him that he must not any longer defer his

intention of matrimony, and he had reflected that in taking a wife, a man of good position should expect and

carefully choose a blooming young ladythe younger the better, because more educable and

submissiveof a rank equal to his own, of religious principles, virtuous disposition, and good understanding.

On such a young lady he would make handsome settlements, and he would neglect no arrangement for her

happiness: in return, he should receive family pleasures and leave behind him that copy of himself which

seemed so urgently required of a man to the sonneteers of the sixteenth century. Times had altered since

then, and no sonneteer had insisted on Mr. Casaubon's leaving a copy of himself; moreover, he had not yet

succeeded in issuing copies of his mythological key; but he had always intended to acquit himself by

marriage, and the sense that he was fast leaving the years behind him, that the world was getting dimmer and

that he felt lonely, was a reason to him for losing no more time in overtaking domestic delights before they

And when he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even more than he demanded: she might really

be such a helpmate to him as would enable him to dispense with a hired secretary, an aid which Mr.

Casaubon had never yet employed and had a suspicious dread of. (Mr. Casaubon was nervously conscious

that he was expected to manifest a powerful mind.) Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the

wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is

sure to think her husband's mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of Miss Brooke in

presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to him. Society never made the

preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming

girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy. As if a man could choose not only his wife hut his

wife's husband! Or as if he were bound to provide charms for his posterity in his own person! When

Dorothea accepted him with effusion, that was only natural; and Mr. Casaubon believed that his happiness

He had not had much foretaste of happiness in his previous life. To know intense joy without a strong bodily

frame, one must have an enthusiastic soul. Mr. Casaubon had never had a strong bodily frame, and his soul

was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of selfconsciousness into passionate

delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never

flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that it should be

known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into

sympathy, and quivers threadlike in small currents of selfpreoccupation or at best of an egoistic

scrupulosity. And Mr. Casaubon had many scruples: he was capable of a severe selfrestraint; he was

resolute in being a man of honor according to the code; he would be unimpeachable by any recognized

opinion. In conduct these ends had been attained; but the difficulty of making his Key to all Mythologies

unimpeachable weighed like lead upon his mind; and the pamphletsor "Parerga" as he called themby

which he tested his public and deposited small monumental records of his march, were far from having been

seen in all their significance. He suspected the Archdeacon of not having read them; he was in painful doubt

as to what was really thought of them by the leading minds of Brasenose, and bitterly convinced that his old

acquaintance Carp had been the writer of that depreciatory recension which was kept locked in a small

drawer of Mr. Casaubon's desk, and also in a dark closet of his verbal memory. These were heavy

impressions to struggle against, and brought that melancholy embitterment which is the consequence of all

excessive claim: even his religious faith wavered with his wavering trust in his own authorship, and the

consolations of the Christian hope in immortality seemed to lean on the immortality of the still unwritten Key

to all Mythologies. For my part I am very sorry for him. It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly

taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small

hungry shivering self never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness

rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardor of a passion, the energy of an action, but

always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dimsighted. Becoming a dean or

even a bishop would make little difference, I fear, to Mr. Casaubon's uneasiness. Doubtless some ancient

Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speakingtrumpet, there must always be our poor little

To this mental estate mapped out a quarter of a century before, to sensibilities thus fenced in, Mr. Casaubon

had thought of annexing happiness with a lovely young bride; but even before marriage, as we have seen, he

found himself under a new depression in the consciousness that the new bliss was not blissful to him.

Inclination yearned back to its old, easier custom. And the deeper he went in domesticity the more did the

sense of acquitting himself and acting with propriety predominate over any other satisfaction. Marriage, like

religion and erudition, nay, like authorship itself, was fated to become an outward requirement, and Edward

Casaubon was bent on fulfilling unimpeachably all requirements. Even drawing Dorothea into use in his

study, according to his own intention before marriage, was an effort which he was always tempted to defer,

and but for her pleading insistence it might never have begun. But she had succeeded in making it a matter of

course that she should take her place at an early hour in the library and have work either of reading aloud or

copying assigned her. The work had been easier to define because Mr. Casaubon had adopted an immediate

intention: there was to be a new Parergon, a small monograph on some lately traced indications concerning

the Egyptian mysteries whereby certain assertions of Warburton's could be corrected. References were

extensive even here, but not altogether shoreless; and sentences were actually to be written in the shape

wherein they would be scanned by Brasenose and a less formidable posterity. These minor monumental

productions were always exciting to Mr. Casaubon; digestion was made difficult by the interference of

citations, or by the rivalry of dialectical phrases ringing against each other in his brain. And from the first

there was to be a Latin dedication about which everything was uncertain except that it was not to be

addressed to Carp: it was a poisonous regret to Mr. Casaubon that he had once addressed a dedication to Carp

in which he had numbered that member of the animal kingdom among the viros nullo aevo perituros, a

mistake which would infallibly lay the dedicator open to ridicule in the next age, and might even be chuckled

Thus Mr. Casaubon was in one of his busiest epochs, and as I began to say a little while ago, Dorothea joined

him early in the library where he had breakfasted alone. Celia at this time was on a second visit to Lowick,

probably the last before her marriage, and was in the drawingroom expecting Sir James.

Dorothea had learned to read the signs of her husband's mood, and she saw that the morning had become

more foggy there during the last hour. She was going silently to her desk when he said, in that distant tone

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

"Mr. Ladislaw! What can he have to say to me?" she exclaimed, in a tone of pleased surprise. "But," she

added, looking at Mr. Casaubon, "I can imagine what he has written to you about."

"You can, if you please, read the letter," said Mr. Casaubon, severely pointing to it with his pen, and not

looking at her. "But I may as well say beforehand, that I must decline the proposal it contains to pay a visit

here. I trust I may be excused for desiring an interval of complete freedom from such distractions as have

been hitherto inevitable, and especially from guests whose desultory vivacity makes their presence a fatigue."

There had been no clashing of temper between Dorothea and her husband since that little explosion in Rome,

which had left such strong traces in her mind that it had been easier ever since to quell emotion than to incur

the consequence of venting it. But this illtempered anticipation that she could desire visits which might be

disagreeable to her husband, this gratuitous defence of himself against selfish complaint on her part, was too

sharp a sting to be meditated on until after it had been resented. Dorothea had thought that she could have

been patient with John Milton, but she had never imagined him behaving in this way; and for a moment Mr.

Casaubon seemed to be stupidly undiscerning and odiously unjust. Pity, that "newborn babe" which was

byandby to rule many a storm within her, did not "stride the blast" on this occasion. With her first words,

uttered in a tone that shook him, she startled Mr. Casaubon into looking at her, and meeting the flash of her

"Why do you attribute to me a wish for anything that would annoy you? You speak to me as if I were

something you had to contend against. Wait at least till I appear to consult my own pleasure apart from

Decidedly, this woman was too young to be on the formidable level of wifehoodunless she had been pale

"I think it was you who were first hasty in your false suppositions about my feeling," said Dorothea, in the

same tone. The fire was not dissipated yet, and she thought it was ignoble in her husband not to apologize to

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

Here Mr. Casaubon dipped his pen and made as if he would return to his writing, though his hand trembled so

much that the words seemed to be written in an unknown character. There are answers which, in turning

away wrath, only send it to the other end of the room, and to have a discussion coolly waived when you feel

that justice is all on your own side is even more exasperating in marriage than in philosophy.

Dorothea left Ladislaw's two letters unread on her husband's writingtable and went to her own place, the

scorn and indignation within her rejecting the reading of these letters, just as we hurl away any trash towards

which we seem to have been suspected of mean cupidity. She did not in the least divine the subtle sources of

her husband's bad temper about these letters: she only knew that they had caused him to offend her. She

began to work at once, and her hand did not tremble; on the contrary, in writing out the quotations which had

been given to her the day before, she felt that she was forming her letters beautifully, and it seemed to her that

she saw the construction of the Latin she was copying, and which she was beginning to understand, more

clearly than usual. In her indignation there was a sense of superiority, but it went out for the present in

firmness of stroke, and did not compress itself into an inward articulate voice pronouncing the once "affable

There had been this apparent quiet for half an hour, and Dorothea had not looked away from her own table,

when she heard the loud bang of a book on the floor, and turning quickly saw Mr. Casaubon on the library

steps clinging forward as if he were in some bodily distress. She started up and bounded towards him in an

instant: he was evidently in great straits for breath. Jumping on a stool she got close to his elbow and said

He was still for two or three minutes, which seemed endless to her, unable to speak or move, gasping for

breath. When at last he descended the three steps and fell backward in the large chair which Dorothea had

drawn close to the foot of the ladder, he no longer gasped but seemed helpless and about to faint. Dorothea

rang the bell violently, and presently Mr. Casaubon was helped to the couch: he did not faint, and was

gradually reviving, when Sir James Chettam came in, having been met in the hall with the news that Mr.

"Good God! this is just what might have been expected," was his immediate thought. If his prophetic soul had

been urged to particularize, it seemed to him that "fits" would have been the definite expression alighted

upon. He asked his informant, the butler, whether the doctor had been sent for. The butler never knew his

master want the doctor before; but would it not be right to send for a physician?

When Sir James entered the library, however, Mr. Casaubon could make some signs of his usual politeness,

and Dorothea, who in the reaction from her first terror had been kneeling and sobbing by his side now rose

"I recommend you to send for Lydgate," said Sir James. "My mother has called him in, and she has found

him uncommonly clever. She has had a poor opinion of the physicians since my father's death."

Dorothea appealed to her husband, and he made a silent sign of approval. So Mr. Lydgate was sent for and he

came wonderfully soon, for the messenger, who was Sir James Chettam's man and knew Mr. Lydgate, met

Celia, in the drawingroom, had known nothing of the trouble till Sir James told her of it. After Dorothea's

account, he no longer considered the illness a fit, but still something "of that nature."

"Poor dear Dodohow dreadful!" said Celia, feeling as much grieved as her own perfect happiness would

allow. Her little hands were clasped, and enclosed by Sir James's as a bud is enfolded by a liberal calyx. "It is

very shocking that Mr. Casaubon should be ill; but I never did like him. And I think he is not half fond

enough of Dorothea; and he ought to be, for I am sure no one else would have had him do you think they

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

"She is a noble creature," said the loyalhearted Sir James. He had just had a fresh impression of this kind, as

he had seen Dorothea stretching her tender arm under her husband's neck and looking at him with

"Yes," said Celia, thinking it was very well for Sir James to say so, but HE would not have been comfortable

"I think it would be well for you just to go and see her before Lydgate comes," said Sir James,

While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt about Dorothea's

engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader if every one

else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was wicked

to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long

ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he

had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of old chivalry?):

his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors floating memories that

clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her actions

Mr. Casaubon had no second attack of equal severity with the first, and in a few days began to recover his

usual condition. But Lydgate seemed to think the case worth a great deal of attention. He not only used his

stethoscope (which had not become a matter of course in practice at that time), but sat quietly by his patient

and watched him. To Mr. Casaubon's questions about himself, he replied that the source of the illness was the

common error of intellectual mena too eager and monotonous application: the remedy was, to be satisfied

with moderate work, and to seek variety of relaxation. Mr. Brooke, who sat by on one occasion, suggested

that Mr. Casaubon should go fishing, as Cadwallader did, and have a turningroom, make toys, tablelegs,

"In short, you recommend me to anticipate the arrival of my second childhood," said poor Mr. Casaubon,

with some bitterness. "These things," he added, looking at Lydgate, "would be to me such relaxation as

"I confess," said Lydgate, smiling, "amusement is rather an unsatisfactory prescription. It is something like

telling people to keep up their spirits. Perhaps I had better say, that you must submit to be mildly bored rather

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Brooke. "Get Dorothea to play back. gammon with you in the evenings. And

shuttlecock, nowI don't know a finer game than shuttlecock for the daytime. I remember it all the fashion.

To be sure, your eyes might not stand that, Casaubon. But you must unbend, you know. Why, you might take

to some light study: conchology, now: it always think that must be a light study. Or get Dorothea to read you

light things, Smollett`Roderick Random,' `Humphrey Clinker:' they are a little broad, but she may read

anything now she's married, you know. I remember they made me laugh uncommonlythere's a droll bit

about a postilion's breeches. We have no such humor now. I have gone through all these things, but they

"As new as eating thistles," would have been an answer to represent Mr. Casaubon's feelings. But he only

bowed resignedly, with due respect to his wife's uncle, and observed that doubtless the works he mentioned

"You see," said the able magistrate to Lydgate, when they were outside the door, "Casaubon has been a little

narrow: it leaves him rather at a loss when you forbid him his particular work, which I believe is something

very deep indeedin the line of research, you know. I would never give way to that; I was always versatile.

But a clergyman is tied a little tight. If they would make him a bishop, now!he did a very good pamphlet

for Peel. He would have more movement then, more show; he might get a little flesh. But I recommend you

to talk to Mrs. Casaubon. She is clever enough for anything, is my niece. Tell her, her husband wants

Without Mr. Brooke's advice, Lydgate had determined on speaking to Dorothea. She had not been present

while her uncle was throwing out his pleasant suggestions as to the mode in which life at Lowick might be

enlivened, but she was usually by her husband's side, and the unaffected signs of intense anxiety in her face

and voice about whatever touched his mind or health, made a drama which Lydgate was inclined to watch.

He said to himself that he was only doing right in telling her the truth about her husband's probable future,

but he certainly thought also that it would be interesting to talk confidentially with her. A medical man likes

to make psychological observations, and sometimes in the pursuit of such studies is too easily tempted into

momentous prophecy which life and death easily set at nought. Lydgate had often been satirical on this

He asked for Mrs. Casaubon, but being told that she was out walking, he was going away, when Dorothea

and Celia appeared, both glowing from their struggle with the March wind. When Lydgate begged to speak

with her alone, Dorothea opened the library door which happened to be the nearest, thinking of nothing at the

moment but what he might have to say about Mr. Casaubon. It was the first time she had entered this room

since her husband had been taken ill, and the servant had chosen not to open the shutters. But there was light

"You will not mind this sombre light," said Dorothea, standing in the middle of the room. "Since you forbade

books, the library has been out of the question. But Mr. Casaubon will soon be here again, I hope. Is he not

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

"You do not fear that the illness will return?" said Dorothea, whose quick ear had detected some significance

"Such cases are peculiarly difficult to pronounce upon," said Lydgate. "The only point on which I can be

confident is that it will be desirable to be very watchful on Mr. Casaubon's account, lest he should in any way

"I beseech you to speak quite plainly," said Dorothea, in an imploring tone. "I cannot bear to think that there

might be something which I did not know, and which, if I had known it, would have made me act

differently." The words came out like a cry: it was evident that they were the voice of some mental

"Sit down," she added, placing herself on the nearest chair, and throwing off her bonnet and gloves, with an

instinctive discarding of formality where a great question of destiny was concerned.

"What you say now justifies my own view," said Lydgate. "I think it is one's function as a medical man to

hinder regrets of that sort as far as possible. But I beg you to observe that Mr. Casaubon's case is precisely of

the kind in which the issue is most difficult to pronounce upon. He may possibly live for fifteen years or

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

"Yescareful against mental agitation of all kinds, and against excessive application."

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

"I am aware of that. The only course is to try by all means, direct and indirect, to moderate and vary his

occupations. With a happy concurrence of circumstances, there is, as I said, no immediate danger from that

affection of the heart, which I believe to have been the cause of his late attack. On the other hand, it is

possible that the disease may develop itself more rapidly: it is one of those eases in which death is sometimes

There was silence for a few moments, while Dorothea sat as if she had been turned to marble, though the life

within her was so intense that her mind had never before swept in brief time over an equal range of scenes

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

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

"Oh, that would not dothat would be worse than anything," she said with a more childlike despondency,

while the tears rolled down. "Nothing will be of any use that he does not enjoy."

"I wish that I could have spared you this pain," said Lydgate, deeply touched, yet wondering about her

"I wish you to understand that I shall not say anything to enlighten Mr. Casaubon himself. I think it desirable

for him to know nothing more than that he must not overwork him self, and must observe certain rules.

Lydgate rose, and Dorothea mechanically rose at the same time? unclasping her cloak and throwing it off as

if it stifled her. He was bowing and quitting her, when an impulse which if she had been alone would have

"Oh, you are a wise man, are you not? You know all about life and death. Advise me. Think what I can do.

He has been laboring all his life and looking forward. He minds about nothing else. And I mind about

For years after Lydgate remembered the impression produced in him by this involuntary appealthis cry

from soul to soul, without other consciousness than their moving with kindred natures in the same embroiled

medium, the same troublous fitfully illuminated life. But what could he say now except that he should see

When he was gone, Dorothea's tears gushed forth, and relieved her stifling oppression. Then she dried her

eyes, reminded that her distress must not be betrayed to her husband; and looked round the room thinking

that she must order the servant to attend to it as usual, since Mr. Casaubon might now at any moment wish to

enter. On his writingtable there were letters which had lain untouched since the morning when he was taken

ill, and among them, as Dorothea. well remembered, there were young Ladislaw's letters, the one addressed

to her still unopened. The associations of these letters had been made the more painful by that sudden attack

of illness which she felt that the agitation caused by her anger might have helped to bring on: it would be

time enough to read them when they were again thrust upon her, and she had had no inclination to fetch them

from the library. But now it occurred to her that they should be put out of her husband's sight: whatever might

have been the sources of his annoyance about them, he must, if possible, not be annoyed again; and she ran

her eyes first over the letter addressed to him to assure herself whether or not it would be necessary to write

Will wrote from Rome, and began by saying that his obligations to Mr. Casaubon were too deep for all

thanks not to seem impertinent. It was plain that if he were not grateful, he must be the poorestspirited

rascal who had ever found a generous friend. To expand in wordy thanks would be like saying, "I am honest."

But Will had come to perceive that his defectsdefects which Mr. Casaubon had himself often pointed

toneeded for their correction that more strenuous position which his relative's generosity had hitherto

prevented from being inevitable. He trusted that he should make the best return, if return were possible, by

showing the effectiveness of the education for which he was indebted, and by ceasing in future to need any

diversion towards himself of funds on which others might have a better claim. He was coming to England, to

try his fortune, as many other young men were obliged to do whose only capital was in their brains. His

friend Naumann had desired him to take charge of the "Dispute"the picture painted for Mr. Casaubon, with

whose permission, and Mrs. Casaubon's, Will would convey it to Lowick in person. A letter addressed to the

Poste Restante in Paris within the fortnight would hinder him, if necessary, from arriving at an inconvenient

moment. He enclosed a letter to Mrs. Casaubon in which he continued a discussion about art, begun with her

Opening her own letter Dorothea saw that it was a lively continuation of his remonstrance with her fanatical

sympathy and her want of sturdy neutral delight in things as they werean outpouring of his young vivacity

which it was impossible to read just now. She had immediately to consider what was to be done about the

other letter: there was still time perhaps to prevent Will from coming to Lowick. Dorothea ended by giving

the letter to her uncle, who was still in the house, and begging him to let Will know that Mr. Casaubon had

No one more ready than Mr. Brooke to write a letter: his only difficulty was to write a short one, and his

ideas in this case expanded over the three large pages and the inward foldings. He had simply said to

"To be sure, I will write, my dear. He's a very clever young fellow this young LadislawI dare say will

be a rising young man. It's a good lettermarks his sense of things, you know. However, I will tell him

But the end of Mr. Brooke's pen was a thinking organ, evolving sentences, especially of a benevolent kind,

before the rest of his mind could well overtake them. It expressed regrets and proposed remedies, which,

when Mr. Brooke read them, seemed felicitously worded surprisingly the right thing, and determined a

sequel which he had never before thought of. In this case, his pen found it such a pity young Ladislaw should

not have come into the neighborhood. just at that time, in order that Mr. Brooke might make his acquaintance

more fully, and that they might go over the longneglected Italian drawings togetherit also felt such an

interest in a young man who was starting in life with a stock of ideasthat by the end of the second page it

had persuaded Mr. Brooke to invite young Ladislaw, since he could not be received at Lowick, to come to

Tipton Grange. Why not? They could find a great many things to do together, and this was a period of

peculiar growththe political horizon was expanding, andin short, Mr. Brooke's pen went off into a little

speech which it had lately reported for that imperfectly edited organ the "Middlemarch Pioneer." While Mr.

Brooke was sealing this letter, he felt elated with an influx of dim projects:a young man capable of putting

ideas into form, the "Pioneer" purchased to clear the pathway for a new candidate, documents utilizedwho

knew what might come of it all? Since Celia was going to marry immediately, it would be very pleasant to

But he went away without telling Dorothea what he had put into the letter, for she was engaged with her

Lydgate that evening spoke to Miss Vincy of Mrs. Casaubon, and laid some emphasis on the strong feeling

she appeared to have for that formal studious man thirty years older than herself.

"Of course she is devoted to her husband," said Rosamond, implying a notion of necessary sequence which

the scientific man regarded as the prettiest possible for a woman; but she was thinking at the same time that it

was not so very melancholy to be mistress of Lowick Manor with a husband likely to die soon. "Do you think

"I suppose it would be unprofessional," said Rosamond, dimpling. "But how your practice is spreading! You

"Yes," said Lydgate, in a tone of compulsory admission. "But I don't really like attending such people so well

as the poor. The cases are more monotonous, and one has to go through more fuss and listen more

"Not more than in Middlemarch," said Rosamond. "And at least you go through wide corridors and have the

"That is true, Mademoiselle de Montmorenci," said Lydgate, just bending his head to the table and lifting

with his fourth finger her delicate handkerchief which lay at the mouth of her reticule, as if to enjoy its scent,

But this agreeable holiday freedom with which Lydgate hovered about the flower of Middlemarch, could not

continue indefinitely. It was not more possible to find social isolation in that town than elsewhere, and two

people persistently flirting could by no means escape from "the various entanglements, weights, blows,

clashings, motions, by which things severally go on." Whatever Miss Vincy did must be remarked, and she

was perhaps the more conspicuous to admirers and critics because just now Mrs. Vincy, after some struggle,

had gone with Fred to stay a little while at Stone Court, there being no other way of at once gratifying old

Featherstone and keeping watch against Mary Garth, who appeared a less tolerable daughterinlaw in

Aunt Bulstrode, for example, came a little oftener into Lowick Gate to see Rosamond, now she was alone.

For Mrs. Bulstrode had a true sisterly feeling for her brother; always thinking that he might have married

better, but wishing well to the children. Now Mrs. Bulstrode had a longstanding intimacy with Mrs.

Plymdale. They had nearly the same preferences in silks, patterns for underclothing, chinaware, and

clergymen; they confided their little troubles of health and household management to each other, and various

little points of superiority on Mrs. Bulstrode's side, namely, more decided seriousness, more admiration for

mind, and a house outside the town, sometimes served to give color to their conversation without dividing

Mrs. Bulstrode, paying a morning visit to Mrs. Plymdale, happened to say that she could not stay longer,

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

"She is so pretty, and has been brought up in such thoughtlessness. The mother, you know, had always that

"Well, Harriet, if I am to speak my mind," said Mrs. Plymdale, with emphasis, "I must say, anybody would

suppose you and Mr. Bulstrode would be delighted with what has happened, for you have done everything to

"Not but what I am truly thankful for Ned's sake," said Mrs. Plymdale. "He could certainly better afford to

keep such a wife than some people can; but I should wish him to look elsewhere. Still a mother has anxieties,

and some young men would take to a bad life in consequence. Besides, if I was obliged to speak, I should say

"I don't know, Selina," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with a little emphasis in her turn. "Mr. Bulstrode was a stranger

here at one time. Abraham and Moses were strangers in the land, and we are told to entertain strangers. And

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

"Oh, it is pride in Miss VincyI am sure it is nothing else," said Mrs. Plymdale, who had never before given

all her confidence to "Harriet" on this subject. "No young man in Middlemarch was good enough for her: I

have heard her mother say as much. That is not a Christian spirit, I think. But now, from all I hear, she has

"You don't mean that there is anything between Rosamond and Mr. Lydgate?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, rather

"Oh, I go about so little; and I am not fond of gossip; I really never hear any. You see so many people that I

"Well, but your own niece and Mr. Bulstrode's great favorite and yours too, I am sure, Harriet! I thought,

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

"Well, people have different ways, but I understand that nobody can see Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate

together without taking them to be engaged. However, it is not my business. Shall I put up the pattern of

After this Mrs. Bulstrode drove to her niece with a mind newly weighted. She was herself handsomely

dressed, but she noticed with a little more regret than usual that Rosamond, who was just come in and met her

in walkingdress, was almost as expensively equipped. Mrs. Bulstrode was a feminine smaller edition of her

brother, and had none of her husband's lowtoned pallor. She had a good honest glance and used no

"You are alone, I see, my dear," she said, as they entered the drawingroom together, looking round gravely.

Rosamond felt sure that her aunt had something particular to say, and they sat down near each other.

Nevertheless, the quilling inside Rosamond's bonnet was so charming that it was impossible not to desire the

same kind of thing for Kate, and Mrs. Bulstrode's eyes, which were rather fine, rolled round that ample

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

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

"I can hardly believe itthat you should be engaged without my knowing itwithout your father's telling

me." Here Mrs. Bulstrode's eyes finally rested on Rosamond's, who blushed deeply, and said

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

"Oh, my dear, be more thoughtful; don't despise your neighbors so. Remember you are turned twentytwo

now, and you will have no fortune: your father, I am sure, will not be able to spare you anything. Mr. Lydgate

is very intellectual and clever; I know there is an attraction in that. I like talking to such men myself; and your

uncle finds him very useful. But the profession is a poor one here. To be sure, this life is not everything; but it

is seldom a medical man has true religious viewsthere is too much pride of intellect. And you are not fit to

Rosamond looked down and played with her reticule. She was not a fiery young lady and had no sharp

"Then it is really true?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking very earnestly at her niece. "You are thinking of Mr.

Lydgatethere is some understanding between you, though your father doesn't know. Be open, my dear

Poor Rosamond's feelings were very unpleasant. She had been quite easy as to Lydgate's feeling and

intention, but now when her aunt put this question she did not like being unable to say Yes. Her pride was

"You would not give your heart to a man without a decided prospect, I trust, my dear. And think of the two

excellent offers I know of that you have refused!and one still within your reach, if you will not throw it

away. I knew a very great beauty who married badly at last, by doing so. Mr. Ned Plymdale is a nice young

man some might think goodlooking; and an only son; and a large business of that kind is better than a

profession. Not that marrying is everything I would have you seek first the kingdom of God. But a girl should

"I should never give it to Mr. Ned Plymdale, if it were. I have already refused him. If I loved, I should love at

once and without change," said Rosamond, with a great sense of being a romantic heroine, and playing the

"I see how it is, my dear," said Mrs. Bulstrode, in a melancholy voice, rising to go. "You have allowed your

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

Rosamond's cheeks by this time were persistently burning, and she felt much mortification. She chose to be

Mr. Bulstrode in things worldly and indifferent was disposed to do what his wife bade him, and she now,

without telling her reasons, desired him on the next opportunity to find out in conversation with Mr. Lydgate

whether he had any intention of marrying soon. The result was a decided negative. Mr. Bulstrode, on being

crossquestioned, showed that Lydgate had spoken as no man would who had any attachment that could

issue in matrimony. Mrs. Bulstrode now felt that she had a serious duty before her, and she soon managed to

arrange a teteatete with Lydgate, in which she passed from inquiries about Fred Vincy's health, and

expressions of her sincere anxiety for her brother's large family, to general remarks on the dangers which lay

before young people with regard to their settlement in life. Young men were often wild and disappointing,

making little return for the money spent on them, and a girl was exposed to many circumstances which might

"Especially when she has great attractions, and her parents see much company," said Mrs. Bulstrode

"Gentlemen pay her attention, and engross her all to themselves, for the mere pleasure of the moment, and

that drives off others. I think it is a heavy responsibility, Mr. Lydgate, to interfere with the prospects of any

girl." Here Mrs. Bulstrode fixed her eyes on him, with an unmistakable purpose of warning, if not of rebuke.

"Clearly," said Lydgate, looking at herperhaps even staring a little in return. "On the other hand, a man

must be a great coxcomb to go about with a notion that he must not pay attention to a young lady lest she

"Oh, Mr. Lydgate, you know well what your advantages are. You know that our young men here cannot cope

with you. Where you frequent a house it may militate very much against a girl's making a desirable

settlement in life, and prevent her from accepting offers even if they are made."

Lydgate was less flattered by his advantage over the Middlemarch Orlandos than he was annoyed by the

perception of Mrs. Bulstrode's meaning. She felt that she had spoken as impressively as it was necessary to

do, and that in using the superior word "militate" she had thrown a noble drapery over a mass of particulars

Lydgate was fuming a little, pushed his hair back with one hand, felt curiously in his waistcoatpocket with

the other, and then stooped to beckon the tiny black spaniel, which had the insight to decline his hollow

caresses. It would not have been decent to go away, because he had been dining with other guests, and had

just taken tea. But Mrs. Bulstrode, having no doubt that she had been understood, turned the conversation.

Solomon's Proverbs, I think, have omitted to say, that as the sore palate findeth grit, so an uneasy

consciousness heareth innuendoes. The next day Mr. Farebrother, parting from Lydgate in the street,

supposed that they should meet at Vincy's in the evening. Lydgate answered curtly, nohe had work to

"What! you are going to get lashed to the mast, eh, and are stopping your ears?" said the Vicar. "Well, if you

A few days before, Lydgate would have taken no notice of these words as anything more than the Vicar's

usual way of putting things. They seemed now to convey an innuendo which confirmed the impression that

he had been making a fool of himself and behaving so as to be misunderstood: not, he believed, by

Rosamond herself; she, he felt sure, took everything as lightly as he intended it. She had an exquisite tact and

insight in relation to all points of manners; but the people she lived among were blunderers and busybodies.

However, the mistake should go no farther. He resolvedand kept his resolutionthat he would not go to

Rosamond became very unhappy. The uneasiness first stirred by her aunt's questions grew and grew till at the

end of ten days that she had not seen Lydgate, it grew into terror at the blank that might possibly comeinto

foreboding of that ready, fatal sponge which so cheaply wipes out the hopes of mortals. The world would

have a new dreariness for her, as a wilderness that a magician's spells had turned for a little while into a

garden. She felt that she was beginning to know the pang of disappointed love, and that no other man could

be the occasion of such delightful aerial building as she had been enjoying for the last six months. Poor

Rosamond lost her appetite and felt as forlorn as Ariadne as a charming stage Ariadne left behind with all

There are many wonderful mixtures in the world which are all alike called love, and claim the privileges of a

sublime rage which is an apology for everything (in literature and the drama). Happily Rosamond did not

think of committing any desperate act: she plaited her fair hair as beautifully as usual, and kept herself

proudly calm. Her most cheerful supposition was that her aunt Bulstrode had interfered in some way to

hinder Lydgate's visits: everything was better than a spontaneous indifference in him. Any one who imagines

ten days too short a timenot for falling into leanness, lightness, or other measurable effects of passion,

but for the whole spiritual circuit of alarmed conjecture and disappointment, is ignorant of what can go on

On the eleventh day, however, Lydgate when leaving Stone Court was requested by Mrs. Vincy to let her

husband know that there was a marked change in Mr. Featherstone's health, and that she wished him to come

to Stone Court on that day. Now Lydgate might have called at the warehouse, or might have written a

message on a leaf of his pocketbook and left it at the door. Yet these simple devices apparently did not

occur to him, from which we may conclude that he had no strong objection to calling at the house at an hour

when Mr. Vincy was not at home, and leaving the message with Miss Vincy. A man may, from various

motives, decline to give his company, but perhaps not even a sage would be gratified that nobody missed

him. It would be a graceful, easy way of piecing on the new habits to the old, to have a few playful words

with Rosamond about his resistance to dissipation, and his firm resolve to take long fasts even from sweet

sounds. It must be confessed, also, that momentary speculations as to all the possible grounds for Mrs.

Bulstrode's hints had managed to get woven like slight clinging hairs into the more substantial web of his

Miss Vincy was alone, and blushed so deeply when Lydgate came in that he felt a corresponding

embarrassment, and instead of any playfulness, he began at once to speak of his reason for calling, and to beg

her, almost formally, to deliver the message to her father. Rosamond, who at the first moment felt as if her

happiness were returning, was keenly hurt by Lydgate's manner; her blush had departed, and she assented

coldly, without adding an unnecessary word, some trivial chainwork which she had in her hands enabling

her to avoid looking at Lydgate higher than his chin. In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the

whole. After sitting two long moments while he moved his whip and could say nothing, Lydgate rose to go,

and Rosamond, made nervous by her struggle between mortification and the wish not to betray it, dropped

her chain as if startled, and rose too, mechanically. Lydgate instantaneously stooped to pick up the chain.

When he rose he was very near to a lovely little face set on a fair long neck which he had been used to see

turning about under the most perfect management of selfcontented grace. But as he raised his eyes now he

saw a certain helpless quivering which touched him quite newly, and made him look at Rosamond with a

questioning flash. At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old: she

felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue

That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feathertouch: it shook flirtation into love. Remember that

the ambitious man who was looking at those Forgetmenots under the water was very warmhearted and

rash. He did not know where the chain went; an idea had thrilled through the recesses within him which had a

miraculous effect in raising the power of passionate love lying buried there in no sealed sepulchre, but under

the lightest, easily pierced mould. His words were quite abrupt and awkward; but the tone made them sound

Rosamond had never been spoken to in such tones before. I am not sure that she knew what the words were:

but she looked at Lydgate and the tears fell over her cheeks. There could have been no more complete answer

than that silence, and Lydgate, forgetting everything else, completely mastered by the outrush of tenderness

at the sudden belief that this sweet young creature depended on him for her joy, actually put his arms round

her, folding her gently and protectingly he was used to being gentle with the weak and sufferingand

kissed each of the two large tears. This was a strange way of arriving at an understanding, but it was a short

way. Rosamond was not angry, but she moved backward a little in timid happiness, and Lydgate could now

sit near her and speak less incompletely. Rosamond had to make her little confession, and he poured out

words of gratitude and tenderness with impulsive lavishment. In half an hour he left the house an engaged

He came again in the evening to speak with Mr. Vincy, who, just returned from Stone Court, was feeling sure

that it would not be long before he heard of Mr. Featherstone's demise. The felicitous word "demise," which

had seasonably occurred to him, had raised his spirits even above their usual evening pitch. The right word is

always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action. Considered as a demise, old Featherstone's

death assumed a merely legal aspect, so that Mr. Vincy could tap his snuffbox over it and be jovial, without

even an intermittent affectation of solemnity; and Mr. Vincy hated both solemnity and affectation. Who was

ever awe struck about a testator, or sang a hymn on the title to real property? Mr. Vincy was inclined to take a

jovial view of all things that evening: he even observed to Lydgate that Fred had got the family constitution

after all, and would soon be as fine a fellow as ever again; and when his approbation of Rosamond's

engagement was asked for, he gave it with astonishing facility, passing at once to general remarks on the

desirableness of matrimony for young men and maidens, and apparently deducing from the whole the

The triumphant confidence of the Mayor founded on Mr. Featherstone's insistent demand that Fred and his

mother should not leave him, was a feeble emotion compared with all that was agitating the breasts of the old

man's bloodrelations, who naturally manifested more their sense of the family tie and were more visibly

numerous now that he had become bedridden. Naturally: for when "poor Peter" had occupied his armchair

in the wainscoted parlor, no assiduous beetles for whom the cook prepares boiling water could have been less

welcome on a hearth which they had reasons for preferring, than those persons whose Featherstone blood was

illnourished, not from penuriousness on their part, but from poverty. Brother Solomon and Sister Jane were

rich, and the family candor and total abstinence from false politeness with which they were always received

seemed to them no argument that their brother in the solemn act of making his will would overlook the

superior claims of wealth. Themselves at least he had never been unnatural enough to banish from his house,

and it seemed hardly eccentric that he should hare kept away Brother Jonah, Sister Martha, and the rest, who

had no shadow of such claims. They knew Peter's maxim, that money was a good egg, and should be laid in a

But Brother Jonah, Sister Martha, and all the needy exiles, held a different point of view. Probabilities are as

various as the faces to be seen at will in fretwork or paperhangings: every form is there, from Jupiter to

Judy, if you only look with creative inclination. To the poorer and least favored it seemed likely that since

Peter had done nothing for them in his life, he would remember them at the last. Jonah argued that men liked

to make a surprise of their wills, while Martha said that nobody need be surprised if he left the best part of his

money to those who least expected it. Also it was not to be thought but that an own brother "lying there" with

dropsy in his legs must come to feel that blood was thicker than water, and if he didn't alter his will, he might

have money by him. At any rate some bloodrelations should be on the premises and on the watch against

those who were hardly relations at all. Such things had been known as forged wills and disputed wills, which

seemed to have the goldenhazy advantage of somehow enabling nonlegatees to live out of them. Again,

those who were no bloodrelations might be caught making away with thingsand poor Peter "lying there"

helpless! Somebody should be on the watch. But in this conclusion they were at one with Solomon and Jane;

also, some nephews, nieces, and cousins, arguing with still greater subtilty as to what might be done by a man

able to "will away" his property and give himself large treats of oddity, felt in a handsome sort of way that

there was a family interest to be attended to, and thought of Stone Court as a place which it would be nothing

but right for them to visit. Sister Martha, otherwise Mrs. Cranch, living with some wheeziness in the Chalky

Flats, could not undertake the journey; but her son, as being poor Peter's own nephew, could represent her

advantageously, and watch lest his uncle Jonah should make an unfair use of the improbable things which

seemed likely to happen. In fact there was a general sense running in the Featherstone blood that everybody

must watch everybody else, and that it would be well for everybody else to reflect that the Almighty was

Thus Stone Court continually saw one or other bloodrelation alighting or departing, and Mary Garth had the

unpleasant task of carrying their messages to Mr. Featherstone, who would see none of them, and sent her

down with the still more unpleasant task of telling them so. As manager of the household she felt bound to

ask them in good provincial fashion to stay and eat; but she chose to consult Mrs. Vincy on the point of extra

"Oh, my dear, you must do things handsomely where there's last illness and a property. God knows, I don't

grudge them every ham in the houseonly, save the best for the funeral. Have some stuffed veal always, and

a fine cheese in cut. You must expect to keep open house in these last illnesses," said liberal Mrs. Vincy, once

But some of the visitors alighted and did not depart after the handsome treating to veal and ham. Brother

Jonah, for example (there are such unpleasant people in most families; perhaps even in the highest aristocracy

there are Brobdingnag specimens, gigantically in debt and bloated at greater expense)Brother Jonah, I say,

having come down in the world, was mainly supported by a calling which he was modest enough not to boast

of, though it was much better than swindling either on exchange or turf, but which did not require his

presence at Brassing so long as he had a good corner to sit in and a supply of food. He chose the

kitchencorner, partly because he liked it best, and partly because he did not want to sit with Solomon,

concerning whom he had a strong brotherly opinion. Seated in a famous armchair and in his best suit,

constantly within sight of good cheer, he had a comfortable consciousness of being on the premises, mingled

with fleeting suggestions of Sunday and the bar at the Green Man; and he informed Mary Garth that he

should not go out of reach of his brother Peter while that poor fellow was above ground. The troublesome

ones in a family are usually either the wits or the idiots. Jonah was the wit among the Featherstones, and

joked with the maid servants when they came about the hearth, but seemed to consider Miss Garth a

Mary would have borne this one pair of eyes with comparative ease, but unfortunately there was young

Cranch, who, having come all the way from the Chalky Flats to represent his mother and watch his uncle

Jonah, also felt it his duty to stay and to sit chiefly in the kitchen to give his uncle company. Young Cranch

was not exactly the balancing point between the wit and the idiot, verging slightly towards the latter type,

and squinting so as to leave everything in doubt about his sentiments except that they were not of a forcible

character. When Mary Garth entered the kitchen and Mr. Jonah Featherstone began to follow her with his

cold detective eyes, young Cranch turning his head in the same direction seemed to insist on it that she should

remark how he was squinting, as if he did it with design, like the gypsies when Borrow read the New

Testament to them. This was rather too much for poor Mary; sometimes it made her bilious, sometimes it

upset her gravity. One day that she had an opportunity she could not resist describing the kitchen scene to

Fred, who would not be hindered from immediately going to see it, affecting simply to pass through. But no

sooner did he face the four eyes than he had to rush through the nearest door which happened to lead to the

dairy, and there under the high roof and among the pans he gave way to laughter which made a hollow

resonance perfectly audible in the kitchen. He fled by another doorway, but Mr. Jonah, who had not before

seen Fred's white complexion, long legs, and pinched delicacy of face, prepared many sarcasms in which

these points of appearance were wittily combined with the lowest moral attributes.

"Why, Tom, YOU don't wear such gentlemanly trousers you haven't got half such fine long legs," said

Jonah to his nephew, winking at the same time, to imply that there was something more in these statements

than their undeniableness. Tom looked at his legs, but left it uncertain whether he preferred his moral

advantages to a more vicious length of limb and reprehensible gentility of trouser.

In the large wainscoted parlor too there were constantly pairs of eyes on the watch, and own relatives eager to

be "sittersup." Many came, lunched, and departed, but Brother Solomon and the lady who had been Jane

Featherstone for twentyfive years before she was Mrs. Waule found it good to be there every day for hoars,

without other calculable occupation than that of observing the cunning Mary Garth (who was so deep that she

could be found out in nothing) and giving occasional dry wrinkly indications of crying as if capable of

torrents in a wetter seasonat the thought that they were not allowed to go into Mr. Featherstone's room. For

the old man's dislike of his own family seemed to get stronger as he got less able to amuse himself by saying

biting things to them. Too languid to sting, he had the more venom refluent in his blood.

Not fully believing the message sent through Mary Garth, they had presented themselves together within the

door of the bedroom, both in blackMrs. Waule having a white handkerchief partially unfolded in her

handand both with faces in a sort of halfmourning purple; while Mrs. Vincy with her pink cheeks and

pink ribbons flying was actually administering a cordial to their own brother, and the lightcomplexioned

Fred, his short hair curling as might be expected in a gambler's, was lolling at his ease in a large chair.

Old Featherstone no sooner caught sight of these funereal figures appearing in spite of his orders than rage

came to strengthen him more successfully than the cordial. He was propped up on a bedrest, and always had

his goldheaded stick lying by him. He seized it now and swept it backwards and forwards in as large an area

as he could, apparently to ban these ugly spectres, crying in a hoarse sort of screech

"Oh, Brother. Peter," Mrs. Waule beganbut Solomon put his hand before her repressingly. He was a

largecheeked man, nearly seventy, with small furtive eyes, and was not only of much blander temper but

thought himself much deeper than his brother Peter; indeed not likely to be deceived in any of his

fellowmen, inasmuch as they could not well be more greedy and deceitful than he suspected them of being.

Even the invisible powers, he thought, were likely to be soothed by a bland parenthesis here and

"Brother Peter," he said, in a wheedling yet gravely official tone, "It's nothing but right I should speak to you

about the Three Crofts and the Manganese. The Almighty knows what I've got on my mind"

"Then he knows more than I want to know," said Peter, laying down his stick with a show of truce which had

a threat in it too, for he reversed the stick so as to make the gold handle a club in case of closer fighting, and

"There's things you might repent of, Brother, for want of speaking to me," said Solomon, not advancing,

however. "I could sit up with you tonight, and Jane with me, willingly, and you might take your own time to

"But you can't take your own time to die in, Brother," began Mrs. Waule, with her usual woolly tone. "And

when you lie speechless you may be tired of having strangers about you, and you may think of me and my

children"but here her voice broke under the touching thought which she was attributing to her speechless

"No, I shan't," said old Featherstone, contradictiously. "I shan't think of any of you. I've made my will, I tell

you, I've made my will." Here he turned his head towards Mrs. Vincy, and swallowed some more of his

"Some people would be ashamed to fill up a place belonging by rights to others," said Mrs. Waule, turning

"Oh, sister," said Solomon, with ironical softness, "you and me are not fine, and handsome, and clever

Fred's spirit could not bear this: rising and looking at Mr. Featherstone, he said, "Shall my mother and I leave

"Sit down, I tell you," said old Featherstone, snappishly. "Stop where you are. Goodby, Solomon," he

added, trying to wield his stick again, but failing now that he had reversed the handle. "Goodby, Mrs.

"I shall be downstairs, Brother, whether or no," said Solomon. "I shall do my duty, and it remains to be seen

"Yes, in property going out of families," said Mrs. Waule, in continuation,"and where there's steady young

men to carry on. But I pity them who are not such, and I pity their mothers. Goodby, Brother Peter."

"Remember, I'm the eldest after you, Brother, and prospered from the first, just as you did, and have got land

already by the name of Featherstone," said Solomon, relying much on that reflection, as one which might be

Their exit was hastened by their seeing old Mr. Featherstone pull his wig on each side and shut his eyes with

None the less they came to Stone Court daily and sat below at the post of duty, sometimes carrying on a slow

dialogue in an undertone in which the observation and response were so far apart, that any one hearing them

might have imagined himself listening to speaking automata, in some doubt whether the ingenious

mechanism would really work, or wind itself up for a long time in order to stick and be silent. Solomon and

Jane would have been sorry to be quick: what that led to might be seen on the other side of the wall in the

But their watch in the wainscoted parlor was sometimes varied by the presence of other guests from far or

near. Now that Peter Featherstone was upstairs, his property could be discussed with all that local

enlightenment to be found on the spot: some rural and Middlemarch neighbors expressed much agreement

with the family and sympathy with their interest against the Vincys, and feminine visitors were even moved

to tears, in conversation with Mrs. Waule, when they recalled the fact that they themselves had been

disappointed in times past by codicils and marriages for spite on the part of ungrateful elderly gentlemen,

who, it might have been supposed, had been spared for something better. Such conversation paused suddenly,

like an organ when the bellows are let drop, if Mary Garth came into the room; and all eyes were turned on

But the younger men who were relatives or connections of the family, were disposed to admire her in this

problematic light, as a girl who showed much conduct, and who among all the chances that were flying might

turn out to be at least a moderate prize. Hence she had her share of compliments and polite attentions.

Especially from Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, a distinguished bachelor and auctioneer of those parts, much

concerned in the sale of land and cattle: a public character, indeed, whose name was seen on widely

distributed placards, and who might reasonably be sorry for those who did not know of him. He was second

cousin to Peter Featherstone, and had been treated by him with more amenity than any other relative, being

useful in matters of business; and in that programme of his funeral which the old man had himself dictated,

he had been named as a Bearer. There was no odious cupidity in Mr. Borthrop Trumbull nothing more

than a sincere sense of his own merit, which, he was aware, in case of rivalry might tell against competitors;

so that if Peter Featherstone, who so far as he, Trumbull, was concerned, had behaved like as good a soul as

ever breathed, should have done anything handsome by him, all he could say was, that he had never fished

and fawned, but had advised him to the best of his experience, which now extended over twenty years from

the time of his apprenticeship at fifteen, and was likely to yield a knowledge of no surreptitious kind. His

admiration was far from being confined to himself, but was accustomed professionally as well as privately to

delight in estimating things at a high rate. He was an amateur of superior phrases, and never used poor

language without immediately correcting himself which was fortunate, as he was rather loud, and given to

predominate, standing or walking about frequently, pulling down his waistcoat with the air of a man who is

very much of his own opinion, trimming himself rapidly with his forefinger, and marking each new series in

these movements by a busy play with his large seals. There was occasionally a little fierceness in his

demeanor, but it was directed chiefly against false opinion, of which there is so much to correct in the world

that a man of some reading and experience necessarily has his patience tried. He felt that the Featherstone

family generally was of limited understanding, but being a man of the world and a public character, took

everything as a matter of course, and even went to converse with Mr. Jonah and young Cranch in the kitchen,

not doubting that he had impressed the latter greatly by his leading questions concerning the Chalky Flats. If

anybody had observed that Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, being an auctioneer, was bound to know the nature of

everything, he would have smiled and trimmed himself silently with the sense that he came pretty near that.

On the whole, in an auctioneering way, he was an honorable man, not ashamed of his business, and feeling

that "the celebrated Peel, now Sir Robert," if introduced to him, would not fail to recognize his importance.

"I don't mind if I have a slice of that ham, and a glass of that ale, Miss Garth, if you will allow me," he said,

coming into the parlor at halfpast eleven, after having had the exceptional privilege of seeing old

Featherstone, and standing with his back to the fire between Mrs. Waule and Solomon.

"What! seeing the old man?" said the auctioneer, playing with his seals dispassionately. "Ah, you see he has

relied on me considerably." Here he pressed his lips together, and frowned meditatively.

"Might anybody ask what their brother has been saying?" said Solomon, in a soft tone of humility, in which

"Oh yes, anybody may ask," said Mr. Trumbull, with loud and goodhumored though cutting sarcasm.

"Anybody may interrogate. Any one may give their remarks an interrogative turn," he continued, his

sonorousness rising with his style. "This is constantly done by good speakers, even when they anticipate no

answer. It is what we call a figure of speechspeech at a high figure, as one may say." The eloquent

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

"Ah, there it is, you see, there it is," said Mr. Trumbull, significantly. "It can't be denied that undeserving

people have been legatees, and even residuary legatees. It is so, with testamentary dispositions." Again he

"Do you mean to say for certain, Mr. Trumbull, that my brother has left his land away from our family?" said

Mrs. Waule, on whom, as an unhopeful woman, those long words had a depressing effect.

"A man might as well turn his land into charity land at once as leave it to some people," observed Solomon,

"What, BlueCoat land?" said Mrs. Waule, again. "Oh, Mr. Trumbull, you never can mean to say that. It

While Mrs. Waule was speaking, Mr. Borthrop Trumbull walked away from the fireplace towards the

window, patrolling with his forefinger round the inside of his stock, then along his whiskers and the curves

of his hair. He now walked to Miss Garth's worktable, opened a book which lay there and read the title

"`Anne of Geierstein' (pronounced Jeersteen) or the `Maiden of the Mist, by the author of Waverley.'" Then

turning the page, he began sonorously"The course of four centuries has wellnigh elapsed since the series

of events which are related in the following chapters took place on the Continent." He pronounced the last

truly admirable word with the accent on the last syllable, not as unaware of vulgar usage, but feeling that this

novel delivery enhanced the sonorous beauty which his reading had given to the whole.

And now the servant came in with the tray, so that the moments for answering Mrs. Waule's question had

gone by safely, while she and Solomon, watching Mr. Trumbull's movements, were thinking that high

learning interfered sadly with serious affairs. Mr. Borthrop Trumbull really knew nothing about old

Featherstone's will; but he could hardly have been brought to declare any ignorance unless he had been

"I shall take a mere mouthful of ham and a glass of ale," he said, reassuringly. "As a man with public

business, I take a snack when I can. I will back this ham," he added, after swallowing some morsels with

alarming haste, "against any ham in the three kingdoms. In my opinion it is better than the hams at Freshitt

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

"If any person demands better, he is at liberty to do so; but, God bless me, what an aroma! I should be glad to

buy in that quality, I know. There is some gratification to a gentleman" here Mr. Trumbull's voice

conveyed an emotional remonstrance "in having this kind of ham set on his table."

He pushed aside his plate, poured out his glass of ale and drew his chair a little forward, profiting by the

occasion to look at the inner side of his legs, which he stroked approvingly Mr. Trumbull having all those

less frivolous airs and gestures which distinguish the predominant races of the north.

"You have an interesting work there, I see, Miss Garth," he observed, when Mary reentered. "It is by the

author of `Waverley': that is Sir Walter Scott. I have bought one of his works myself a very nice thing, a

very superior publication, entitled `Ivanhoe.' You will not get any writer to beat him in a hurry, I think he

will not, in my opinion, be speedily surpassed. I have just been reading a portion at the commencement of

`Anne of Jeersteen.' It commences well." (Things never began with Mr. Borthrop Trumbull: they al ways

commenced, both in private life and on his handbills.) "You are a reader, I see. Do you subscribe to our

"I am a great bookman myself," returned Mr. Trumbull. "I have no less than two hundred volumes in calf,

and I flatter myself they are well selected. Also pictures by Murillo, Rubens, Teniers, Titian, Vandyck, and

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

"I should say my brother has done something for HER in his will," said Mr. Solomon, in a very low

undertone, when she had shut the door behind her, pointing with his head towards the absent Mary.

"His first wife was a poor match for him, though," said Mrs. Waule. "She brought him nothing: and this

young woman is only her niece, and very proud. And my brother has always paid her wage."

"A sensible girl though, in my opinion," said Mr. Trumbull, finishing his ale and starting up with an emphatic

adjustment of his waistcoat. "I have observed her when she has been mixing medicine in drops. She minds

what she is doing, sir. That is a great point in a woman, and a great point for our friend upstairs, poor dear

old soul. A man whose life is of any value should think of his wife as a nurse: that is what I should do, if I

married; and I believe I have lived single long enough not to make a mistake in that line. Some men must

marry to elevate themselves a little, but when I am in need of that, I hope some one will tell me soI hope

some individual will apprise me of the fact. I wish you good morning, Mrs. Waule. Good morning, Mr.

When Mr. Trumbull had departed with a fine bow, Solomon, leaning forward, observed to his sister, "You

"Anybody would think so, from the way Mr. Trumbull talks," said Jane. Then, after a pause, "He talks as if

That night after twelve o'clock Mary Garth relieved the watch in Mr. Featherstone's room, and sat there alone

through the small hours. She often chose this task, in which she found some pleasure, notwithstanding the old

man's testiness whenever he demanded her attentions. There were intervals in which she could sit perfectly

still, enjoying the outer stillness and the subdued light. The red fire with its gently audible movement seemed

like a solemn existence calmly independent of the petty passions, the imbecile desires, the straining after

worthless uncertainties, which were daily moving her contempt. Mary was fond of her own thoughts, and

could amuse herself well sitting in twilight with her hands in her lap; for, having early had strong reason to

believe that things were not likely to be arranged for her peculiar satisfaction, she wasted no time in

astonishment and annoyance at that fact. And she had already come to take life very much as a comedy in

which she had a proud, nay, a generous resolution not to act the mean or treacherous part. Mary might have

become cynical if she had not had parents whom she honored, and a well of affectionate gratitude within her,

which was all the fuller because she had learned to make no unreasonable claims.

She sat tonight revolving, as she was wont, the scenes of the day, her lips often curling with amusement at

the oddities to which her fancy added fresh drollery: people were so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying

their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's were transparent, making

themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were

rosy. Yet there were some illusions under Mary's eyes which were not quite comic to her. She was secretly

convinced, though she had no other grounds than her close observation of old Featherstone's nature, that in

spite of his fondness for having the Vincys about him, they were as likely to be disappointed as any of the

relations whom he kept at a distance. She had a good deal of disdain for Mrs. Vincy's evident alarm lest she

and Fred should be alone together, but it did not hinder her from thinking anxiously of the way in which Fred

would be affected, if it should turn out that his uncle had left him as poor as ever. She could make a butt of

Yet she liked her thoughts: a vigorous young mind not overbalanced by passion, finds a good in making

acquaintance with life, and watches its own powers with interest. Mary had plenty of merriment within.

Her thought was not veined by any solemnity or pathos about the old man on the bed: such sentiments are

easier to affect than to feel about an aged creature whose life is not visibly anything but a remnant of vices.

She had always seen the most disagreeable side of Mr. Featherstone. he was not proud of her, and she was

only useful to him. To be anxious about a soul that is always snapping at you must be left to the saints of the

earth; and Mary was not one of them. She had never returned him a harsh word, and had waited on him

faithfully: that was her utmost. Old Featherstone himself was not in the least anxious about his soul, and had

Tonight he had not snapped, and for the first hour or two he lay remarkably still, until at last Mary heard

him rattling his bunch of keys against the tin box which he always kept in the bed beside him. About three

Mary obeyed, and found that he had already drawn the tin box from under the clothes, though he usually

asked to have this done for him; and he had selected the key. He now unlocked the box, and, drawing from it

another key, looked straight at her with eyes that seemed to have recovered all their sharpness and said, "How

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

"Oh ay, they stick, do they? and the restthey come every day, I'll warrantSolomon and Jane, and all the

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

The old man listened with a grimace while she spoke, and then said, relaxing his face, "The more fools they.

You hearken, missy. It's three o'clock in the morning, and I've got all my faculties as well as ever I had in my

life. I know all my property, and where the money's put out, and everything. And I've made everything ready

to change my mind, and do as I like at the last. Do you hear, missy? I've got my faculties."

He now lowered his tone with an air of deeper cunning. "I've made two wills, and I'm going to burn one. Now

you do as I tell you. This is the key of my iron chest, in the closet there. You push well at the side of the brass

plate at the top, till it goes like a bolt: then you can put the key in the front lock and turn it. See and do that;

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

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

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

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

"I cannot help that, sir. I will not let the close of your life soil the beginning of mine. I will not touch your

The old man paused with a blank stare for a little while, holding the one key erect on the ring; then with an

agitated jerk he began to work with his bony left hand at emptying the tin box before him.

"Missy," he began to say, hurriedly, "look here! take the money the notes and goldlook heretake

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

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

He let his hand fall, and for the first time in her life Mary saw old Peter Featherstone begin to cry childishly.

She said, in as gentle a tone as she could command, "Pray put up your money, sir;" and then went away to her

seat by the fire, hoping this would help to convince him that it was useless to say more. Presently he rallied

Mary's heart began to beat more quickly. Various ideas rushed through her mind as to what the burning of a

"Wait till broad daylight, sir, when every one is stirring. Or let me call Simmons now, to go and fetch the

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

"Let me call some one else, sir," said Mary, persuasively. She did not like her positionalone with the old

man, who seemed to show a strange flaring of nervous energy which enabled him to speak again and again

without falling into his usual cough; yet she desired not to push unnecessarily the contradiction which

"You let me alone, I say. Look here, missy. Take the money. You'll never have the chance again. It's pretty

nigh two hundred there's more in the box, and nobody knows how much there was. Take it and do as I tell

Mary, standing by the fire, saw its red light falling on the old man, propped up on his pillows and bedrest,

with his bony hand holding out the key, and the money lying on the quilt before him. She never forgot that

vision of a man wanting to do as he liked at the last. But the way in which he had put the offer of the money

"It is of no use, sir. I will not do it. Put up your money. I will not touch your money. I will do anything else I

"Anything else anything else!" said old Featherstone, with hoarse rage, which, as if in a nightmare, tried to be

loud, and yet was only just audible. "I want nothing else. You come hereyou come here."

Mary approached him cautiously, knowing him too well. She saw him dropping his keys and trying to grasp

his stick, while he looked at her like an aged hyena, the muscles of his face getting distorted with the effort of

"Let me give you some cordial," she said, quietly, "and try to compose yourself. You will perhaps go to sleep.

He lifted the stick, in spite of her being beyond his reach, and threw it with a hard effort which was but

impotence. It fell, slipping over the foot of the bed. Mary let it lie, and retreated to her chair by the fire.

Byandby she would go to him with the cordial. Fatigue would make him passive. It was getting towards

the chillest moment of the morning, the fire had got low, and she could see through the chink between the

moreen windowcurtains the light whitened by the blind. Having put some wood on the fire and thrown a

shawl over her, she sat down, hoping that Mr. Featherstone might now fall asleep. If she went near him the

irritation might be kept up. He had said nothing after throwing the stick, but she had seen him taking his keys

again and laying his right hand on the money. He did not put it up, however, and she thought that he was

But Mary herself began to be more agitated by the remembrance of what she had gone through, than she had

been by the reality questioning those acts of hers which had come imperatively and excluded all question

Presently the dry wood sent out a flame which illuminated every crevice, and Mary saw that the old man was

lying quietly with his head turned a little on one side. She went towards him with inaudible steps, and thought

that his face looked strangely motionless; but the next moment the movement of the flame communicating

itself to all objects made her uncertain. The violent beating of her heart rendered her perceptions so doubtful

that even when she touched him and listened for his breathing, she could not trust her conclusions. She went

to the window and gently propped aside the curtain and blind, so that the still light of the sky fell on the bed.

The next moment she ran to the bell and rang it energetically. In a very little while there was no longer any

doubt that Peter Featherstone was dead, with his right hand clasping the keys, and his left hand lying on the

It was on a morning of May that Peter Featherstone was buried. In the prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch,

May was not always warm and sunny, and on this particular morning a chill wind was blowing the blossoms

from the surrounding gardens on to the green mounds of Lowick churchyard. Swiftly moving clouds only

now and then allowed a gleam to light up any object, whether ugly or beautiful, that happened to stand within

its golden shower. In the churchyard the objects were remarkably various, for there was a little country crowd

waiting to see the funeral. The news had spread that it was to be a "big burying;" the old gentleman had left

written directions about everything and meant to have a funeral "beyond his betters." This was true; for old

Featherstone had not been a Harpagon whose passions had all been devoured by the everlean and

everhungry passion of saving, and who would drive a bargain with his undertaker beforehand. He loved

money, but he also loved to spend it in gratifying his peculiar tastes, and perhaps he loved it best of all as a

means of making others feel his power more or less uncomfortably. If any one will here contend that there

must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstone, I will not presume to deny this; but I must observe that

goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much privacy, elbowed in early life by

unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who

construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his

personal acquaintance. In any case, he had been bent on having a handsome funeral, and on having persons

"bid" to it who would rather have stayed at home. He had even desired that female relatives should follow

him to the grave, and poor sister Martha had taken a difficult journey for this purpose from the Chalky Flats.

She and Jane would have been altogether cheered (in a tearful manner) by this sign that a brother who

disliked seeing them while he was living had been prospectively fond of their presence when he should have

become a testator, if the sign had not been made equivocal by being extended to Mrs. Vincy, whose expense

in handsome crape seemed to imply the most presumptuous hopes, aggravated by a bloom of complexion

which told pretty plainly that she was not a bloodrelation, but of that generally objectionable class called

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the brood of desire; and poor old

Featherstone, who laughed much at the way in which others cajoled themselves, did not escape the fellowship

of illusion. In writing the programme for his burial he certainly did not make clear to himself that his pleasure

in the little drama of which it formed a part was confined to anticipation. In chuckling over the vexations he

could inflict by the rigid clutch of his dead hand, he inevitably mingled his consciousness with that livid

stagnant presence, and so far as he was preoccupied with a future life, it was with one of gratification inside

However, the three mourningcoaches were filled according to the written orders of the deceased. There were

pallbearers on horseback, with the richest scarfs and hatbands, and even the underbearers had trappings of

woe which were of a good wellpriced quality. The black procession, when dismounted, looked the larger for

the smallness of the churchyard; the heavy human faces and the black draperies shivering in the wind seemed

to tell of a world strangely incongruous with the lightly dropping blossoms and the gleams of sunshine on the

daisies. The clergyman who met the procession was Mr. Cadwalladeralso according to the request of Peter

Featherstone, prompted as usual by peculiar reasons. Having a contempt for curates, whom he always called

understrappers, he was resolved to be buried by a beneficed clergyman. Mr. Casaubon was out of the

question, not merely because he declined duty of this sort, but because Featherstone had an especial dislike to

him as the rector of his own parish, who had a lien on the land in the shape of tithe, also as the deliverer of

morning sermons, which the old man, being in his pew and not at all sleepy, had been obliged to sit through

with an inward snarl. He had an objection to a parson stuck up above his head preaching to him. But his

relations with Mr. Cadwallader had been of a different kind: the troutstream which ran through Mr.

Casaubon's land took its course through Featherstone's also, so that Mr. Cadwallader was a parson who had

had to ask a favor instead of preaching. Moreover, he was one of the high gentry living four miles away from

Lowick, and was thus exalted to an equal sky with the sheriff of the county and other dignities vaguely

regarded as necessary to the system of things. There would be a satisfaction in being buried by Mr.

Cadwallader, whose very name offered a fine opportunity for pronouncing wrongly if you liked.

This distinction conferred on the Rector of Tipton and Freshitt was the reason why Mrs. Cadwallader made

one of the group that watched old Featherstone's funeral from an upper window of the manor. She was not

fond of visiting that house, but she liked, as she said, to see collections of strange animals such as there

would be at this funeral; and she had persuaded Sir James and the young Lady Chettam to drive the Rector

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

"Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must accommodate your tastes: I did that very

early. When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very

much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn't have the end without them."

The upper window from which the funeral could be well seen was in the room occupied by Mr. Casaubon

when he had been forbidden to work; but he had resumed nearly his habitual style of life now in spite of

warnings and prescriptions, and after politely welcoming Mrs. Cadwallader had slipped again into the library

But for her visitors Dorothea too might have been shut up in the library, and would not have witnessed this

scene of old Featherstone's funeral, which, aloof as it seemed to be from the tenor of her life, always

afterwards came back to her at the touch of certain sensitive points in memory, just as the vision of St. Peter's

at Rome was inwoven with moods of despondency. Scenes which make vital changes in our neighbors' lot are

but the background of our own, yet, like a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for

us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of that unity which lies in the selection of our keenest

The dreamlike association of something alien and illunderstood with the deepest secrets of her experience

seemed to mirror that sense of loneliness which was due to the very ardor of Dorothea's nature. The country

gentry of old time lived in a rarefied social air: dotted apart on their stations up the mountain they looked

down with imperfect discrimination on the belts of thicker life below. And Dorothea was not at ease in the

"I shall not look any more," said Celia, after the train had entered the church, placing herself a little behind

her husband's elbow so that she could slyly touch his coat with her cheek. "I dare say Dodo likes it: she is

"I am fond of knowing something about the people I live among," said Dorothea, who had been watching

everything with the interest of a monk on his holiday tour. "It seems to me we know nothing of our

neighbors, unless they are cottagers. One is constantly wondering what sort of lives other people lead, and

how they take things. I am quite obliged to Mrs. Cadwallader for coming and calling me out of the library."

"Quite right to feel obliged to me," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Your rich Lowick farmers are as curious as any

buffaloes or bisons, and I dare say you don't half see them at church. They are quite different from your

uncle's tenants or Sir James'smonsters farmers without landlordsone can't tell how to class them."

"Most of these followers are not Lowick people," said Sir James; "I suppose they are legatees from a

distance, or from Middlemarch. Lovegood tells me the old fellow has left a good deal of money as well as

"Think of that now! when so many younger sons can't dine at their own expense," said Mrs. Cadwallader.

"Ah," turning round at the sound of the opening door, "here is Mr. Brooke. I felt that we were incomplete

before, and here is the explanation. You are come to see this odd funeral, of course?"

"No, I came to look after Casaubonto see how he goes on, you know. And to bring a little newsa little

news, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at Dorothea as she came towards him. "I looked into the library,

and I saw Casaubon over his books. I told him it wouldn't do: I said, `This will never do, you know: think of

your wife, Casaubon.' And he promised me to come up. I didn't tell him my news: I said, he must come up."

"Ah, now they are coming out of church," Mrs. Cadwallader exclaimed. "Dear me, what a wonderfully mixed

set! Mr. Lydgate as doctor, I suppose. But that is really a good looking woman, and the fair young man must

"I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife and son," said Sir James, looking

"Yes, a very decent familya very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to the manufacturing interest. You have

"And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom weavers in Tipton and Freshitt. That is

how his family look so fair and sleek," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Those dark, purplefaced people are an

excellent foil. Dear me, they are like a set of jugs! Do look at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly

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

"But I am not taking it in that light. I can't wear my solemnity too often, else it will go to rags. It was time the

"How piteous!" said Dorothea. "This funeral seems to me the most dismal thing I ever saw. It is a blot on the

morning I cannot bear to think that any one should die and leave no love behind."

She was going to say more, but she saw her husband enter and seat himself a little in the background. The

difference his presence made to her was not always a happy one: she felt that he often inwardly objected to

"Positively," exclaimed Mrs. Cadwallader, "there is a new face come out from behind that broad man queerer

than any of them: a little round head with bulging eyesa sort of frogfacedo look. He must be of another

"Let me see!" said Celia, with awakened curiosity, standing behind Mrs. Cadwallader and leaning forward

over her head. "Oh, what an odd face!" Then with a quick change to another sort of surprised expression, she

Dorothea felt a shock of alarm: every one noticed her sudden paleness as she looked up immediately at her

"He came with me, you know; he is my guestputs up with me at the Grange," said Mr. Brooke, in his

easiest tone, nodding at Dorothea, as if the announcement were just what she might have expected. "And we

have brought the picture at the top of the carriage. I knew you would be pleased with the surprise, Casaubon.

There you are to the very lifeas Aquinas, you know. Quite the right sort of thing. And you will hear young

Ladislaw talk about it. He talks uncommonly wellpoints out this, that, and the other knows art and

everything of that kindcompanionable, you knowis up with you in any trackwhat I've been wanting a

Mr. Casaubon bowed with cold politeness, mastering his irritation, but only so far as to be silent. He

remembered Will's letter quite as well as Dorothea did; he had noticed that it was not among the letters which

had been reserved for him on his recovery, and secretly concluding that Dorothea had sent word to Will not

to come to Lowick, he had shrunk with proud sensitiveness from ever recurring to the subject. He now

inferred that she had asked her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and she felt it impossible at that moment to

Mrs. Cadwallader's eyes, diverted from the churchyard, saw a good deal of dumb show which was not so

intelligible to her as she could have desired, and could not repress the question, "Who is Mr. Ladislaw?"

"A young relative of Mr. Casaubon's," said Sir James, promptly. His goodnature often made him quick and

clearseeing in personal matters, and he had divined from Dorothea's glance at her husband that there was

"A very nice young fellowCasaubon has done everything for him," explained Mr. Brooke. "He repays your

expense in him, Casaubon," he went on, nodding encouragingly. "I hope he will stay with me a long while

and we shall make something of my documents. I have plenty of ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he

is just the man to put them into shaperemembers what the right quotations are, omne tulit punctum, and

that sort of thinggives subjects a kind of turn. I invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon;

Dorothea said you couldn't have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to write."

Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle's was about as pleasant as a grain of sand in the eye to Mr.

Casaubon. It would be altogether unfitting now to explain that she had not wished her uncle to invite Will

Ladislaw. She could not in the least make clear to herself the reasons for her husband's dislike to his

presence a dislike painfully impressed on her by the scene in the library; but she felt the unbecomingness

of saying anything that might convey a notion of it to others. Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly

represented those mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of us, seeking rather for

justification than for selfknowledge. But he wished to repress outward signs, and only Dorothea could

discern the changes in her husband's face before he observed with more of dignified bending and singsong

"You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you acknowledgments for exercising your

"Now you can see him, Mrs. Cadwallader," said Celia. "He is just like a miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt

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

"Well, you know," interposed Mr. Brooke, "he is trying his wings. He is just the sort of young fellow to rise. I

should be glad to give him an opportunity. He would make a good secretary, now, like Hobbes, Milton,

"I'll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon?" said Mr. Brooke. "He wouldn't come in till I had announced him, you

know. And we'll go down and look at the picture. There you are to the life: a deep subtle sort of thinker with

his forefinger on the page, while Saint Bonaventure or somebody else, rather fat and florid, is looking up at

the Trinity. Everything is symbolical, you know the higher style of art: I like that up to a certain point, but

not too farit's rather straining to keep up with, you know. But you are at home in that, Casaubon. And your

painter's flesh is goodsolidity, transparency, everything of that sort. I went into that a great deal at one

When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied species made much private remark on

each other, and were tempted to think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were eminently

superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations. (I fear the part played by the vultures on that occasion would

be too painful for art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously naked about the gullet, and apparently

The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed Peter Featherstone's funeral

procession; most of them having their minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the

most of. The longrecognized bloodrelations and connections by marriage made already a goodly number,

which, multiplied by possibilities, presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and pathetic hopefulness.

Jealousy of the Vincys had created a fellowship in hostility among all persons of the Featherstone blood, so

that in the absence of any decided indication that one of themselves was to have more than the rest, the dread

lest that longlegged Fred Vincy should have the land was necessarily dominant, though it left abundant

feeling and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were entertained towards Mary Garth. Solomon found time

to reflect that Jonah was undeserving, and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder sister, held that

Martha's children ought not to expect so much as the young Waules; and Martha, more lax on the subject of

primogeniture, was sorry to think that Jane was so "having." These nearest of kin were naturally impressed

with the unreasonableness of expectations in cousins and second cousins, and used their arithmetic in

reckoning the large sums that small legacies might mount to, if there were too many of them. Two cousins

were present to hear the will, and a second cousin besides Mr. Trumbull. This second cousin was a

Middlemarch mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates. The two cousins were elderly men from

Brassing, one of them conscious of claims on the score of inconvenient expense sustained by him in presents

of oysters and other eatables to his rich cousin Peter; the other entirely saturnine, leaning his hands and chin

on a stick, and conscious of claims based on no narrow performance but on merit generally: both blameless

citizens of Brassing, who wished that Jonah Featherstone did not live there. The wit of a family is usually

"Why, Trumbull himself is pretty sure of five hundredTHAT you may depend,I shouldn't wonder if my

brother promised him," said Solomon, musing aloud with his sisters, the evening before the funeral.

"Dear, dear!" said poor sister Martha, whose imagination of hundreds had been habitually narrowed to the

But in the morning all the ordinary currents of conjecture were disturbed by the presence of a strange

mourner who had plashed among them as if from the moon. This was the stranger described by Mrs.

Cadwallader as frogfaced: a man perhaps about two or three and thirty, whose prominent eyes, thinlipped,

downwardcurved mouth, and hair sleekly brushed away from a forehead that sank suddenly above the ridge

of the eyebrows, certainly gave his face a batrachian unchangeableness of expression. Here, clearly, was a

new legatee; else why was he bidden as a mourner? Here were new possibilities, raising a new uncertainty,

which almost checked remark in the mourningcoaches. We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a

fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making

up our world entirely without it. No one had seen this questionable stranger before except Mary Garth, and

she knew nothing more of him than that he had twice been to Stone Court when Mr. Featherstone was

downstairs, and had sat alone with him for several hours. She had found an opportunity of mentioning this

to her father, and perhaps Caleb's were the only eyes, except the lawyer's, which examined the stranger with

more of inquiry than of disgust or suspicion. Caleb Garth, having little expectation and less cupidity, was

interested in the verification of his own guesses, and the calmness with which he half smilingly rubbed his

chin and shot intelligent glances much as if he were valuing a tree, made a fine contrast with the alarm or

scorn visible in other faces when the unknown mourner, whose name was understood to be Rigg, entered the

wainscoted parlor and took his seat near the door to make part of the audience when the will should be read.

Just then Mr. Solomon and Mr. Jonah were gone upstairs with the lawyer to search for the will; and Mrs.

Waule, seeing two vacant seats between herself and Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, had the spirit to move next to

that great authority, who was handling his watchseals and trimming his outlines with a determination not to

"I suppose you know everything about what my poor brother's done, Mr. Trumbull," said Mrs. Waule, in the

lowest of her woolly tones, while she turned her crapeshadowed bonnet towards Mr. Trumbull's ear.

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

"Them who've made sure of their goodluck may be disappointed yet," Mrs. Waule continued, finding some

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

"It's wonderful how close poor Peter was," she said, in the same undertones. "We none of us know what he

might have had on his mind. I only hope and trust he wasn't a worse liver than we think of, Martha."

Poor Mrs. Cranch was bulky, and, breathing asthmatically, had the additional motive for making her remarks

unexceptionable and giving them a general bearing, that even her whispers were loud and liable to sudden

"I never WAS covetious, Jane," she replied; "but I have six children and have buried three, and I didn't marry

into money. The eldest, that sits there, is but nineteenso I leave you to guess. And stock always short, and

land most awkward. But if ever I've begged and prayed; it's been to God above; though where there's one

brother a bachelor and the other childless after twice marrying anybody might think!"

Meanwhile, Mr. Vincy had glanced at the passive face of Mr. Rigg, and had taken out his snuffbox and

tapped it, but had put it again unopened as an indulgence which, however clarifying to the judgment, was

unsuited to the occasion. "I shouldn't wonder if Featherstone had better feelings than any of us gave him

credit for," he observed, in the ear of his wife. "This funeral shows a thought about everybody: it looks well

when a man wants to be followed by his friends, and if they are humble, not to be ashamed of them. I should

be all the better pleased if he'd left lots of small legacies. They may be uncommonly useful to fellows in a

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

But I am sorry to say that Fred was under some difficulty in repressing a laugh, which would have been more

unsuitable than his father's snuffbox. Fred had overheard Mr. Jonah suggesting something about a

"lovechild," and with this thought in his mind, the stranger's face, which happened to be opposite him,

affected him too ludicrously. Mary Garth, discerning his distress in the twitchings of his mouth, and his

recourse to a cough, came cleverly to his rescue by asking him to change seats with her, so that he got into a

shadowy corner. Fred was feeling as goodnaturedly as possible towards everybody, including Rigg; and

having some relenting towards all these people who were less lucky than he was aware of being himself, he

would not for the world have behaved amiss; still, it was particularly easy to laugh.

But the entrance of the lawyer and the two brothers drew every one's attention. The lawyer was Mr. Standish,

and he had come to Stone Court this morning believing that he knew thoroughly well who would be pleased

and who disappointed before the day was over. The will he expected to read was the last of three which he

had drawn up for Mr. Featherstone. Mr. Standish was not a man who varied his manners: he behaved with the

same deepvoiced, offhand civility to everybody, as if he saw no difference in them, and talked chiefly of

the haycrop, which would be "very fine, by God!" of the last bulletins concerning the King, and of the Duke

of Clarence, who was a sailor every inch of him, and just the man to rule over an island like Britain.

Old Featherstone had often reflected as he sat looking at the fire that Standish would be surprised some day:

it is true that if he had done as he liked at the last, and burnt the will drawn up by another lawyer, he would

not have secured that minor end; still he had had his pleasure in ruminating on it. And certainly Mr. Standish

was surprised, but not at all sorry; on the contrary, he rather enjoyed the zest of a little curiosity in his own

mind, which the discovery of a second will added to the prospective amazement on the part of the

As to the sentiments of Solomon and Jonah, they were held in utter suspense: it seemed to them that the old

will would have a certain validity, and that there might be such an interlacement of poor Peter's former and

latter intentions as to create endless "lawing" before anybody came by their ownan inconvenience which

would have at least the advantage of going all round. Hence the brothers showed a thoroughly neutral gravity

as they reentered with Mr. Standish; but Solomon took out his white handkerchief again with a sense that in

any case there would be affecting passages, and crying at funerals, however dry, was customarily served up

Perhaps the person who felt the most throbbing excitement at this moment was Mary Garth, in the

consciousness that it was she who had virtually determined the production of this second will, which might

have momentous effects on the lot of some persons present. No soul except herself knew what had passed on

"The will I hold in my hand," said Mr. Standish, who, seated at the table in the middle of the room, took his

time about everything, including the coughs with which he showed a disposition to clear his voice, "was

drawn up by myself and executed by our deceased friend on the 9th of August, 1825. But I find that there is a

subsequent instrument hitherto unknown to me, bearing date the 20th of July, 1826, hardly a year later than

the previous one. And there is farther, I see"Mr. Standish was cautiously travelling over the document with

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

"I shall begin by reading the earlier will," continued Mr. Standish, "since such, as appears by his not having

The preamble was felt to be rather long, and several besides Solomon shook their heads pathetically, looking

on the ground: all eyes avoided meeting other eyes, and were chiefly fixed either on the spots in the

tablecloth or on Mr. Standish's bald head; excepting Mary Garth's. When all the rest were trying to look

nowhere in particular, it was safe for her to look at them. And at the sound of the first "give and bequeath"

she could see all complexions changing subtly, as if some faint vibration were passing through them, save

that of Mr. Rigg. He sat in unaltered calm, and, in fact, the company, preoccupied with more important

problems, and with the complication of listening to bequests which might or might not be revoked, had

ceased to think of him. Fred blushed, and Mr. Vincy found it impossible to do without his snuffbox in his

The small bequests came first, and even the recollection that there was another will and that poor Peter might

have thought better of it, could not quell the rising disgust and indignation. One likes to be done well by in

every tense, past, present, and future. And here was Peter capable five years ago of leaving only two hundred

apiece to his own brothers and sisters, and only a hundred apiece to his own nephews and nieces: the Garths

were not mentioned, but Mrs. Vincy and Rosamond were each to have a hundred. Mr. Trumbull was to have

the goldheaded cane and fifty pounds; the other second cousins and the cousins present were each to have

the like handsome sum, which, as the saturnine cousin observed, was a sort of legacy that left a man nowhere;

and there was much more of such offensive dribbling in favor of persons not present problematical, and, it

was to be feared, low connections. Altogether, reckoning hastily, here were about three thousand disposed of.

Where then had Peter meant the rest of the money to go and where the land? and what was revoked and

what not revoked and was the revocation for better or for worse? All emotion must be conditional, and

might turn out to be the wrong thing. The men were strong enough to bear up and keep quiet under this

confused suspense; some letting their lower lip fall, others pursing it up, according to the habit of their

muscles. But Jane and Martha sank under the rush of questions, and began to cry; poor Mrs. Cranch being

half moved with the consolation of getting any hundreds at all without working for them, and half aware that

her share was scanty; whereas Mrs. Waule's mind was entirely flooded with the sense of being an own sister

and getting little, while somebody else was to have much. The general expectation now was that the "much"

would fall to Fred Vincy, but the Vincys themselves were surprised when ten thousand pounds in specified

investments were declared to be bequeathed to him:was the land coming too? Fred bit his lips: it was

difficult to help smiling, and Mrs. Vincy felt herself the happiest of womenpossible revocation shrinking

There was still a residue of personal property as well as the land, but the whole was left to one person, and

that person was O possibilities! O expectations founded on the favor of "close" old gentlemen! O endless

vocatives that would still leave expression slipping helpless from the measurement of mortal folly! that

residuary legatee was Joshua Rigg, who was also sole executor, and who was to take thenceforth the name of

There was a rustling which seemed like a shudder running round the room. Every one stared afresh at Mr.

"A most singular testamentary disposition!" exclaimed Mr. Trumbull, preferring for once that he should be

considered ignorant in the past. "But there is a second willthere is a further document. We have not yet

Mary Garth was feeling that what they had yet to hear were not the final wishes. The second will revoked

everything except the legacies to the low persons before mentioned (some alterations in these being the

occasion of the codicil), and the bequest of all the land lying in Lowick parish with all the stock and

household furniture, to Joshua Rigg. The residue of the property was to be devoted to the erection and

endowment of almshouses for old men, to be called Featherstone's AlmsHouses, and to be built on a piece

of land near Middlemarch already bought for the purpose by the testator, he wishingso the document

declaredto please God Almighty. Nobody present had a farthing; but Mr. Trumbull had the goldheaded

cane. It took some time for the company to recover the power of expression. Mary dared not look at Fred.

Mr. Vincy was the first to speakafter using his snuff box energeticallyand he spoke with loud

indignation. "The most unaccountable will I ever heard! I should say he was not in his right mind when he

made it. I should say this last will was void," added Mr. Vincy, feeling that this expression put the thing in

"Our deceased friend always knew what he was about, I think," said Mr. Standish. "Everything is quite

regular. Here is a letter from Clemmens of Brassing tied with the will. He drew it up. A very respectable

"I never noticed any alienation of mindany aberration of intellect in the late Mr. Featherstone," said

Borthrop Trumbull, "but I call this will eccentric. I was always willingly of service to the old soul; and he

intimated pretty plainly a sense of obligation which would show itself in his will. The goldheaded cane is

farcical considered as an acknowledgment to me; but happily I am above mercenary considerations."

"There's nothing very surprising in the matter that I can see," said Caleb Garth. "Anybody might have had

more reason for wondering if the will had been what you might expect from an openminded straightforward

"That's a strange sentiment to come from a Christian man, by God!" said the lawyer. "I should like to know

"Oh," said Caleb, leaning forward, adjusting his fingertips with nicety and looking meditatively on the

But here Mr. Jonah Featherstone made himself heard. "Well, he always was a fine hypocrite, was my brother

Peter. But this will cuts out everything. If I'd known, a wagon and six horses shouldn't have drawn me from

"Dear, dear," wept Mrs. Cranch, "and we've been at the expense of travelling, and that poor lad sitting idle

here so long! It's the first time I ever heard my brother Peter was so wishful to please God Almighty; but if I

"It'll do him no good where he's gone, that's my belief," said Solomon, with a bitterness which was

remarkably genuine, though his tone could not help being sly. "Peter was a bad liver, and almshouses won't

"And all the while had got his own lawful familybrothers and sisters and nephews and niecesand has sat

in church with 'em whenever he thought well to come," said Mrs. Waule. "And might have left his property

so respectable, to them that's never been used to extravagance or unsteadiness in no manner of wayand not

so poor but what they could have saved every penny and made more of it. And methe trouble I've been at,

times and times, to come here and be sisterlyand him with things on his mind all the while that might make

anybody's flesh creep. But if the Almighty's allowed it, he means to punish him for it. Brother Solomon, I

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

"It's a poor tale how luck goes in the world," said Jonah. "It never answers to have a bit of spirit in you. You'd

better be a dog in the manger. But those above ground might learn a lesson. One fool's will is enough in a

"There's more ways than one of being a fool," said Solomon. "I shan't leave my money to be poured down the

sink, and I shan't leave it to foundlings from Africay. I like Feather, stones that were brewed such, and not

Solomon addressed these remarks in a loud aside to Mrs. Waule as he rose to accompany her. Brother Jonah

felt himself capable of much more stinging wit than this, but he reflected that there was no use in offending

the new proprietor of Stone Court, until you were certain that he was quite without intentions of hospitality

Mr. Joshua Rigg, in fact, appeared to trouble himself little about any innuendoes, but showed a notable

change of manner, walking coolly up to Mr. Standish and putting business questions with much coolness. He

had a high chirping voice and a vile accent. Fred, whom he no longer moved to laughter, thought him the

lowest monster he had ever seen. But Fred was feeling rather sick. The Middlemarch mercer waited for an

opportunity of engaging Mr. Rigg in conversation: there was no knowing how many pairs of legs the new

proprietor might require hose for, and profits were more to be relied on than legacies. Also, the mercer, as a

Mr. Vincy, after his one outburst, had remained proudly silent, though too much preoccupied with unpleasant

feelings to think of moving, till he observed that his wife had gone to Fred's side and was crying silently

while she held her darling's hand. He rose immediately, and turning his back on the company while he said to

her in an undertone,"Don't give way, Lucy; don't make a fool of yourself, my dear, before these people,"

he added in his usual loud voice"Go and order the phaeton, Fred; I have no time to waste."

Mary Garth had before this been getting ready to go home with her father. She met Fred in the hall, and now

for the first time had the courage to look at him He had that withered sort of paleness which will sometimes

come on young faces, and his hand was very cold when she shook it. Mary too was agitated; she was

conscious that fatally, without will of her own, she had perhaps made a great difference to Fred's lot.

"Goodby," she said, with affectionate sadness. "Be brave, Fred. I do believe you are better without the

"That's all very fine," said Fred, pettishly. "What is a fellow to do? I must go into the Church now." (He knew

that this would vex Mary: very well; then she must tell him what else he could do.) "And I thought I should

be able to pay your father at once and make everything right. And you have not even a hundred pounds left

"Take another situation, of course, as soon as I can get one. My father has enough to do to keep the rest,

In a very short time Stone Court was cleared of wellbrewed Featherstones and other longaccustomed

visitors. Another stranger had been brought to settle in the neighborhood of Middlemarch, but in the case of

Mr. Rigg Featherstone there was more discontent with immediate visible consequences than speculation as to

the effect which his presence might have in the future. No soul was prophetic enough to have any foreboding

And here I am naturally led to reflect on the means of elevating a low subject. Historical parallels are

remarkably efficient in this way. The chief objection to them is, that the diligent narrator may lack space, or

(what is often the same thing) may not be able to think of them with any degree of particularity, though he

may have a philosophical confidence that if known they would be illustrative. It seems an easier and shorter

way to dignity, to observe that since there never was a true story which could not be told in parables,

where you might put a monkey for a margrave, and vice versa whatever has been or is to be narrated by

me about low people, may be ennobled by being considered a parable; so that if any bad habits and ugly

consequences are brought into view, the reader may have the relief of regarding them as not more than

figuratively ungenteel, and may feel himself virtually in company with persons of some style. Thus while I

tell the truth about loobies, my reader's imagination need not be entirely excluded from an occupation with

lords; and the petty sums which any bankrupt of high standing would be sorry to retire upon, may be lifted to

the level of high commercial transactions by the inexpensive addition of proportional ciphers.

As to any provincial history in which the agents are all of high moral rank, that must be of a date long

posterior to the first Reform Bill, and Peter Featherstone, you perceive, was dead and buried some months

Mr. Vincy went home from the reading of the will with his point of view considerably changed in relation to

many subjects. He was an openminded man, but given to indirect modes of expressing himself: when he

was disappointed in a market for his silk braids, he swore at the groom; when his brotherinlaw Bulstrode

had vexed him, he made cutting remarks on Methodism; and it was now apparent that he regarded Fred's

idleness with a sudden increase of severity, by his throwing an embroidered cap out of the smokingroom on

"Well, sir," he observed, when that young gentleman was moving off to bed, "I hope you've made up your

mind now to go up next term and pass your examination. I've taken my resolution, so I advise you to lose no

Fred made no answer: he was too utterly depressed. Twentyfour hours ago he had thought that instead of

needing to know what he should do, he should by this time know that he needed to do nothing: that he should

hunt in pink, have a firstrate hunter, ride to cover on a fine hack, and be generally respected for doing so;

moreover, that he should be able at once to pay Mr. Garth, and that Mary could no longer have any reason for

not marrying him. And all this was to have come without study or other inconvenience, purely by the favor of

providence in the shape of an old gentleman's caprice. But now, at the end of the twentyfour hours, all those

firm expectations were upset. It was "rather hard lines" that while he was smarting under this disappointment

he should be treated as if he could have helped it. But he went away silently and his mother pleaded for him.

"Don't be hard on the poor boy, Vincy. He'll turn out well yet, though that wicked man has deceived him. I

feel as sure as I sit here, Fred will turn out wellelse why was he brought back from the brink of the grave?

And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the land, to promise it; and what is promising, if making

everybody believe is not promising? And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then took it

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

"Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when he came. You were as proud as

"Who knows what babies will turn to? I was fool enough, I dare say," said the husbandmore mildly,

"But who has handsomer, better children than ours? Fred is far beyond other people's sons: you may hear it in

his speech, that he has kept college company. And Rosamondwhere is there a girl like her? She might

stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the better for it. You seeMr. Lydgate has kept the highest

company and been everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once. Not but what I could have wished

Rosamond had not engaged herself. She might have met somebody on a visit who would have been a far

better match; I mean at her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby's. There are relations in that family quite as high

"Damn relations!" said Mr. Vincy; "I've had enough of them. I don't want a soninlaw who has got nothing

"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, "you seemed as pleased as could be about it. It's true, I wasn't at home; but

Rosamond told me you hadn't a word to say against the engagement. And she has begun to buy in the best

"Not by my will," said Mr. Vincy. "I shall have enough to do this year, with an idle scamp of a son, without

paying for weddingclothes. The times are as tight as can be; everybody is being ruined; and I don't believe

Lydgate has got a farthing. I shan't give my consent to their marrying. Let 'em wait, as their elders have done

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

"Yes, I could. The sooner the engagement's off, the better. I don't believe he'll ever make an income, the way

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

"Please the deuce!" said Mr. Vincy. "Bulstrode won't pay for their keep. And if Lydgate thinks I'm going to

give money for them to set up housekeeping, he's mistaken, that's all. I expect I shall have to put down my

This was a not infrequent procedure with Mr. Vincyto be rash in jovial assent, and on becoming

subsequently conscious that he had been rash, to employ others in making the offensive retractation.

However, Mrs. Vincy, who never willingly opposed her husband, lost no time the next morning in letting

Rosamond know what he had said. Rosamond, examining some muslinwork, listened in silence, and at the

end gave a certain turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could teach you that it meant

"Papa does not mean anything of the kind," said Rosamond, quite calmly. "He has always said that he wished

me to marry the man I loved. And I shall marry Mr. Lydgate. It is seven weeks now since papa gave his

"Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa. You always do manage everybody. But if we ever do

go and get damask, Sadler's is the placefar better than Hopkins's. Mrs. Bretton's is very large, though: I

should love you to have such a house; but it will take a great deal of furniturecarpeting and everything,

besides plate and glass. And you hear, your papa says he will give no money. Do you think Mr. Lydgate

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

"But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of your having a pretty legacy as well

as Fred;and now everything is so dreadfulthere's no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor boy

"That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma. Fred must leave off being idle. I am going upstairs to

take this work to Miss Morgan: she does the open hemming very well. Mary Garth might do some work for

me now, I should think. Her sewing is exquisite; it is the nicest thing I know about Mary. I should so like to

Mrs. Vincy's belief that Rosamond could manage her papa was well founded. Apart from his dinners and his

coursing, Mr. Vincy, blustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a prime minister: the

force of circumstances was easily too much for him, as it is for most pleasureloving florid men; and the

circumstance called Rosamond was particularly forcible by means of that mild persistence which, as we

know, enables a white soft living substance to make its way in spite of opposing rock. Papa was not a rock:

he had no other fixity than that fixity of alternating impulses sometimes called habit, and this was altogether

unfavorable to his taking the only decisive line of conduct in relation to his daughter's engagementnamely,

to inquire thoroughly into Lydgate's circumstances, declare his own inability to furnish money, and forbid

alike either a speedy marriage or an engagement which must be too lengthy. That seems very simple and easy

in the statement; but a disagreeable resolve formed in the chill hours of the morning had as many conditions

against it as the early frost, and rarely persisted under the warming influences of the day. The indirect though

emphatic expression of opinion to which Mr. Vincy was prone suffered much restraint in this case: Lydgate

was a proud man towards whom innuendoes were obviously unsafe, and throwing his hat on the floor was out

of the question. Mr. Vincy was a little in awe of him, a little vain that he wanted to marry Rosamond, a little

indisposed to raise a question of money in which his own position was not advantageous, a little afraid of

being worsted in dialogue with a man better educated and more highly bred than himself, and a little afraid of

doing what his daughter would not like. The part Mr. Vincy preferred playing was that of the generous host

whom nobody criticises. In the earlier half of the day there was business to hinder any formal communication

of an adverse resolve; in the later there was dinner, wine, whist, and general satisfaction. And in the mean

while the hours were each leaving their little deposit and gradually forming the final reason for inaction,

namely, that action was too late. The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick Gate, and a

lovemaking not at all dependent on moneyadvances from fathersinlaw, or prospective income from a

profession, went on flourishingly under Mr. Vincy's own eyes. Young lovemakingthat gossamer web!

Even the points it clings tothe things whence its subtle interlacings are swung are scarcely perceptible:

momentary touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest

changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys,

yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning

that web from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience supposed to be finished off with

the drama of Laurein spite too of medicine and biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes

presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of scientific inquiry, are observed to be less

incompatible with poetic love than a native dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose. As for

Rosamond, she was in the waterlily's expanding wonderment at its own fuller life, and she too was spinning

industriously at the mutual web. All this went on in the corner of the drawingroom where the piano stood,

and subtle as it was, the light made it a sort of rainbow visible to many observers besides Mr. Farebrother.

The certainty that Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general in Middlemarch without the

Aunt Bulstrode was again stirred to anxiety; but this time she addressed herself to her brother, going to the

warehouse expressly to avoid Mrs. Vincy's volatility. His replies were not satisfactory.

"Walter, you never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go on without inquiry into Mr. Lydgate's

prospects?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, opening her eyes with wider gravity at her brother, who was in his peevish

warehouse humor. "Think of this girl brought up in luxuryin too worldly a way, I am sorry to say what

"Oh, confound it, Harriet I what can I do when men come into the town without any asking of mine? Did you

shut your house up against Lydgate? Bulstrode has pushed him forward more than anybody. I never made

any fuss about the young fellow. You should go and talk to your husband about it, not me."

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

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

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

"I don't know about mercy," said Mr. Vincy, testily. "I know I am worried more than I like with my family. I

was a good brother to you, Harriet, before you married Bulstrode, and I must say he doesn't always show that

friendly spirit towards your family that might have been expected of him." Mr. Vincy was very little like a

Jesuit, but no accomplished Jesuit could have turned a question more adroitly. Harriet had to defend her

husband instead of blaming her brother, and the conversation ended at a point as far from the beginning as

Mrs. Bulstrode did not repeat her brother's complaints to her husband, but in the evening she spoke to him of

Lydgate and Rosamond. He did not share her warm interest, however; and only spoke with resignation of the

risks attendant on the beginning of medical practice and the desirability of prudence.

"I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl brought up as she has been," said Mrs. Bulstrode,

"Truly, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, assentingly. "Those who are not of this world can do little else to arrest

the errors of the obstinately worldly. That is what we must accustom ourselves to recognize with regard to

your brother's family. I could have wished that Mr. Lydgate had not entered into such a union; but my

relations with him are limited to that use of his gifts for God's purposes which is taught us by the divine

Mrs. Bulstrode said no more, attributing some dissatisfaction which she felt to her own want of spirituality.

She believed that her husband was one of those men whose memoirs should be written when they died.

As to Lydgate himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept all the consequences which he

believed himself to foresee with perfect clearness. Of course he must be married in a year perhaps even in

half a year. This was not what he had intended; but other schemes would not be hindered: they would simply

adjust themselves anew. Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way. A house must be taken

instead of the rooms he at present occupied; and Lydgate, having heard Rosamond speak with admiration of

old Mrs. Bretton's house (situated in Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell vacant after the old lady's death,

He did this in an episodic way, very much as he gave orders to his tailor for every requisite of perfect dress,

without any notion of being extravagant. On the contrary, he would have despised any ostentation of expense;

his profession had familiarized him with all grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered

hardships. He would have behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served in a jug with the handle

off, and he would have remembered nothing about a grand dinner except that a man was there who talked

well. But it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what he would have called an

ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social

theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even extreme opinions with impunity

while our furniture, our dinnergiving, and preference for armorial bearings in our own ease, link us

indissolubly with the established order. And Lydgate's tendency was not towards extreme opinions: he would

have liked no barefooted doctrines, being particular about his boots: he was no radical in relation to anything

but medical reform and the prosecution of discovery. In the rest of practical life he walked by hereditary

habit; half from that personal pride and unreflecting egoism which I have already called commonness, and

Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement which had stolen upon him,

turned on the paucity of time rather than of money. Certainly, being in love and being expected continually

by some one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent her to be, did interfere with

the diligent use of spare hours which might serve some "plodding fellow of a German" to make the great,

imminent discovery. This was really an argument for not deferring the marriage too long, as he implied to

Mr. Farebrother, one day that the Vicar came to his room with some pondproducts which he wanted to

examine under a better microscope than his own, and, finding Lydgate's tableful of apparatus and specimens

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

"Yes, at some stages," said Lydgate, lifting his brows and smiling, while he began to arrange his microscope.

"I hope so, really. This unsettled state of affairs uses up the time, and when one has notions in science, every

moment is an opportunity. I feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to work

steadily. He has everything at home thenno teasing with personal speculationshe can get calmness and

"You are an enviable dog," said the Vicar, "to have such a prospect Rosamond, calmness and freedom, all

to your share. Here am I with nothing but my pipe and pondanimalcules. Now, are you ready?"

Lydgate did not mention to the Vicar another reason he had for wishing to shorten the period of courtship. It

was rather irritating to him, even with the wine of love in his veins, to be obliged to mingle so often with the

family party at the Vincys', and to enter so much into Middlemarch gossip, protracted good cheer,

whistplaying, and general futility. He had to be deferential when Mr. Vincy decided questions with

trenchant ignorance, especially as to those liquors which were the best inward pickle, preserving you from the

effects of bad air. Mrs. Vincy's openness and simplicity were quite unstreaked with suspicion as to the subtle

offence she might give to the taste of her intended soninlaw; and altogether Lydgate had to confess to

himself that he was descending a little in relation to Rosamond's family. But that exquisite creature herself

suffered in the same sort of way: it was at least one delightful thought that in marrying her, he could give

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

But I must first say that he had found her alone in the drawingroom, where the great oldfashioned window,

almost as large as the side of the room, was opened to the summer scents of the garden at the back of the

house. Her father and mother were gone to a party, and the rest were all out with the butterflies.

"Are they?" said Rosamond. "I wonder why." It was not in her nature to pour forth wishes or grievances.

"As if you could hide it from me!"? said Lydgate, laying his hand tenderly on both of hers. "Don't I see a tiny

drop on one of the lashes? Things trouble you, and you don't tell me. That is unloving."

"Why should I tell you what you cannot alter? They are everyday things:perhaps they have been a little

"Papa has been more irritable lately. Fred makes him angry, and this morning there was a fresh quarrel

because Fred threatens to throw his whole education away, and do something quite beneath him. And

Rosamond hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush. Lydgate had never seen her in trouble

since the morning of their engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at this moment.

"I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement," Rosamond continued, almost in a whisper; "and

he said last night that he should certainly speak to you and say it must be given up."

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

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

"It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be given up. You are of age, and I claim

you as mine. If anything is done to make you unhappy,that is a reason for hastening our marriage."

An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his, and the radiance seemed to light up all

his future with mild sunshine. Ideal happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you are

invited to step from the labor and discord of the street into a paradise where everything is given to you and

"Why should we defer it?" he said, with ardent insistence. "I have taken the house now: everything else can

soon be got ready can it not? You will not mind about new clothes. Those can be bought afterwards."

"What original notions you clever men have!" said Rosamond, dimpling with more thorough laughter than

usual at this humorous incongruity. "This is the first time I ever heard of weddingclothes being bought after

"But you don't mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for the sake of clothes?" said Lydgate,

half thinking that Rosamond was tormenting him prettily, and half fearing that she really shrank from speedy

marriage. "Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of happiness even than thisbeing continually

together, independent of others, and ordering our lives as we will. Come, dear, tell me how soon you can be

There was a serious pleading in Lydgate's tone, as if he felt that she would be injuring him by any fantastic

delays. Rosamond became serious too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many

intricacies of laceedging and hosiery and petticoattucking, in order to give an answer that would at least be

"Six weeks would be amplesay so, Rosamond," insisted Lydgate, releasing her hands to put his arm gently

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

"There would be the houselinen and the furniture to be prepared. Still, mamma could see to those while we

"Oh, more than that!" said Rosamond, earnestly. She was thinking of her evening dresses for the visit to Sir

Godwin Lydgate's, which she had long been secretly hoping for as a delightful employment of at least one

quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity

(also a pleasing though sober kind of rank, when sustained by blood). She looked at her lover with some

wondering remonstrance as she spoke, and he readily understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet

"Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed. But let us take a decided course, and put an end to

"I could certainly hasten the work," said Rosamond. "Will you, then, mention it to papa?I think it would be

better to write to him." She blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk forth

happily among them in the transcendent evening light: is there not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half

child, in those delicate petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?

He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and they sat quite still for many minutes

which flowed by them like a small gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it. Rosamond thought that

no one could be more in love than she was; and Lydgate thought that after all his wild mistakes and absurd

credulity, he had found perfect womanhoodfelt as If already breathed upon by exquisite wedded affection

such as would be bestowed by an accomplished creature who venerated his high musings and momentous

labors and would never interfere with them; who would create order in the home and accounts with still

magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and transform life into romance at any moment; who was

instructed to the true womanly limit and not a hair's breadth beyonddocile, therefore, and ready to carry

out behests which came from that limit. It was plainer now than ever that his notion of remaining much

longer a bachelor had been a mistake: marriage would not be an obstruction but a furtherance. And happening

the next day to accompany a patient to Brassing, he saw a dinnerservice there which struck him as so

exactly the right thing that he bought it at once. It saved time to do these things just when you thought of

them, and Lydgate hated ugly crockery. The dinnerservice in question was expensive, but that might be in

the nature of dinnerservices. Furnishing was necessarily expensive; but then it had to be done only once.

"It must be lovely," said Mrs. Vincy, when Lydgate mentioned his purchase with some descriptive touches.

"One must hire servants who will not break things," said Lydgate. (Certainly, this was reasoning with an

imperfect vision of sequences. But at that period there was no sort of reasoning which was not more or less

Of course it was unnecessary to defer the mention of anything to mamma, who did not readily take views that

were not cheerful, and being a happy wife herself, had hardly any feeling but pride in her daughter's

marriage. But Rosamond had good reasons for suggesting to Lydgate that papa should be appealed to in

writing. She prepared for the arrival of the letter by walking with her papa to the warehouse the next morning,

"Nonsense, my dear!" said Mr. Vincy. "What has he got to marry on? You'd much better give up the

engagement. I've told you so pretty plainly before this. What have you had such an education for, if you are

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

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

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

"I hope he knows I shan't give anythingwith this disappointment about Fred, and Parliament going to be

"A pretty deal to do with it! We may all be ruined for what I know the country's in that state! Some say it's

the end of the world, and be hanged if I don't think it looks like it! Anyhow, it's not a time for me to be

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

"I cannot give up my only prospect of happiness, papa Mr. Lydgate is a gentleman. I could never love any

one who was not a perfect gentleman. You would not like me to go into a consumption, as Arabella Hawley

"Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish. We shall never give each other up; and you know

There was a little more urgency of this kind, till Mr. Vincy said, "Well, well, child, he must write to me first

before I car answer him," and Rosamond was certain that she had gained her point.

Mr. Vincy's answer consisted chiefly in a demand that Lydgate should insure his lifea demand

immediately conceded. This was a delightfully reassuring idea supposing that Lydgate died, but in the mean

time not a selfsupporting idea. However, it seemed to make everything comfortable about Rosamond's

marriage; and the necessary purchases went on with much spirit. Not without prudential considerations,

however. A bride (who is going to visit at a baronet's) must have a few firstrate pockethandkerchiefs; but

beyond the absolutely necessary halfdozen, Rosamond contented herself without the very highest style of

embroidery and Valenciennes. Lydgate also, finding that his sum of eight hundred pounds had been

considerably reduced since he had come to Middlemarch, restrained his inclination for some plate of an old

pattern which was shown to him when he went into Kibble's establishment at Brassing to buy forks and

spoons. He was too proud to act as if he presupposed that Mr. Vincy would advance money to provide

furniture; and though, since it would not be necessary to pay for everything at once, some bills would be left

standing over, he did not waste time in conjecturing how much his fatherinlaw would give in the form of

dowry, to make payment easy. He was not going to do anything extravagant, but the requisite things must be

bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a poor quality. All these matters were by the bye.

Lydgate foresaw that science and his profession were the objects he should alone pursue enthusiastically; but

he could not imagine himself pursuing them in such a home as Wrench hadthe doors all open, the oilcloth

worn, the children in soiled pinafores, and lunch lingering in the form of bones, blackhandled knives, and

willowpattern. But Wrench had a wretched lymphatic wife who made a mummy of herself indoors in a large

Rosamond, however, was on her side much occupied with conjectures, though her quick imitative perception

"I shall like so much to know your family," she said one day, when the wedding journey was being discussed.

"We might perhaps take a direction that would allow us to see them as we returned. Which of your uncles do

"You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy, were you not? I should so like to

see the old spot and everything you were used to. Does he know you are going to be married?"

"Do send him word of it, you naughty undutiful nephew. He will perhaps ask you to take me to Quallingham;

and then you could show me about the grounds, and I could imagine you there when you were a boy.

Remember, you see me in my home, just as it has been since I was a child. It is not fair that I should be so

ignorant of yours. But perhaps you would be a little ashamed of me. I forgot that."

Lydgate smiled at her tenderly, and really accepted the suggestion that the proud pleasure of showing so

charming a bride was worth some trouble. And now he came to think of it, he would like to see the old spots

It seemed magnificent to Rosamond to be able to speak so slightingly of a baronet's family, and she felt much

contentment in the prospect of being able to estimate them contemptuously on her own account.

"I hope your uncle Sir Godwin will not look down on Rosy, Mr. Lydgate. I should think he would do

"Mamma!" said Rosamond, blushing deeply; and Lydgate pitied her so much that he remained silent and

went to the other end of the room to examine a print curiously, as if he had been absentminded. Mamma had

a little filial lecture afterwards, and was docile as usual. But Rosamond reflected that if any of those

highbred cousins who were bores, should be induced to visit Middlemarch, they would see many things in

her own family which might shock them. Hence it seemed desirable that Lydgate should byandby get

some firstrate position elsewhere than in Middlemarch; and this could hardly be difficult in the case of a

man who had a titled uncle and could make discoveries. Lydgate, you perceive, had talked fervidly to

Rosamond of his hopes as to the highest uses of his life, and had found it delightful to be listened to by a

creature who would bring him the sweet furtherance of satisfying affectionbeautyreposesuch help as

Lydgate relied much on the psychological difference between what for the sake of variety I will call goose

and gander: especially on the innate submissiveness of the goose as beautifully corresponding to the strength

The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general election or the end of the world that was

coming on, now that George the Fourth was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally

depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that

time. With the glowworm lights of country places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the

confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return

Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a

mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable

neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous position: during the

agitation on the Catholic Question many had given up the "Pioneer"which had a motto from Charles James

Fox and was in the van of progress because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus blotted

its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal; but they were illsatisfied with the "Trumpet,"

whichsince its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public mind (nobody knowing who

It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the "Pioneer," when the crying needs of the country might

well counteract a reluctance to public action on the part of men whose minds had from long experience

acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of judgment as well as tolerance, dispassionateness as

well as energy in fact, all those qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the

Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely than usual, and leaving much

uncertainty as to its ultimate channel, was heard to say in Mr. Hawley's office that the article in question

"emanated" from Brooke of Tipton, and that Brooke had secretly bought the "Pioneer" some months ago.

"That means mischief, eh?" said Mr. Hawley. "He's got the freak of being a popular man now, after dangling

about like a stray tortoise. So much the worse for him. I've had my eye on him for some time. He shall be

prettily pumped upon. He's a damned bad landlord. What business has an old county man to come currying

favor with a low set of darkblue freemen? As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing himself. It

"I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who can write the highest style of leading

article, quite equal to anything in the London papers. And he means to take very high ground on Reform."

"Let Brooke reform his rentroll. He's a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his estate are going to

"I know the sort," said Mr. Hawley; "some emissary. He'll begin with flourishing about the Rights of Man

"You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley," said Mr. Hackbutt, foreseeing some political

disagreement with his family lawyer. "I myself should never favor immoderate viewsin fact I take my

stand with Huskissonbut I cannot blind myself to the consideration that the nonrepresentation of large

"Large towns be damned!" said Mr. Hawley, impatient of exposition. "I know a little too much about

Middlemarch elections. Let 'em quash every pocket borough tomorrow, and bring in every mushroom town

in the kingdomthey'll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament. I go upon facts."

Mr. Hawley's disgust at the notion of the "Pioneer" being edited by an emissary, and of Brooke becoming

actively political as if a tortoise of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and

become rampantwas hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members of Mr. Brooke's own family.

The result had oozed forth gradually, like the discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of

manufacture which will be permanently under your nostrils without legal remedy. The "Pioneer" had been

secretly bought even before Will Ladislaw's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in the

readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which did not pay; and in the interval since Mr.

Brooke had written his invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world at large which

had been present in him from his younger years, but had hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting

The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which proved greater even than he had

anticipated. For it seemed that Will was not only at home in all those artistic and literary subjects which Mr.

Brooke had gone into at one time, but that he was strikingly ready at seizing the points of the political

situation, and dealing with them in that large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to

"He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know," Mr. Brooke took an opportunity of saying, for the

gratification of Mr. Casaubon. "I don't mean as to anything objectionablelaxities or atheism, or anything of

that kind, you knowLadislaw's sentiments in every way I am sure are goodindeed, we were talking a

great deal together last night. But he has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipationa

fine thing under guidance under guidance, you know. I think I shall be able to put him on the right tack;

If the right tack implied anything more precise than the rest of Mr. Brooke's speech, Mr. Casaubon silently

hoped that it referred to some occupation at a great distance from Lowick. He had disliked Will while he

helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will had declined his help. That is the way

with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind,

our honeysipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt

for us, and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves. Having the scruples of

rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of injuring him rather we meet all his claims on us by

active benefits; and the drawing of cheeks for him, being a superiority which he must recognize, gives our

bitterness a milder infusion. Now Mr. Casaubon had been deprived of that superiority (as anything more than

a remembrance) in a sudden, capricious manner. His antipathy to Will did not spring from the common

jealousy of a winterworn husband: it was something deeper, bred by his lifelong claims and discontents; but

Dorothea, now that she was presentDorothea, as a young wife who herself had shown an offensive

capability of criticism, necessarily gave concentration to the uneasiness which had before been vague.

Will Ladislaw on his side felt that his dislike was flourishing at the expense of his gratitude, and spent much

inward discourse in justifying the dislike. Casaubon hated himhe knew that very well; on his first entrance

he could discern a bitterness in the mouth and a venom in the glance which would almost justify declaring

war in spite of past benefits. He was much obliged to Casaubon in the past, but really the act of marrying this

wife was a setoff against the obligation It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for

one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another. And Casaubon had done a

wrong to Dorothea in marrying her. A man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to

grow gray crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship. "It is

the most horrible of virginsacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward

sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over

herif he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one

slave in the world, Will hadto use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase a "passionate prodigality" of statement

both to himself and others. The simple truth was that nothing then invited him so strongly as the presence of

Invitations of the formal kind had been wanting, however, for Will had never been asked to go to Lowick.

Mr. Brooke, indeed, confident of doing everything agreeable which Casaubon, poor fellow, was too much

absorbed to think of, had arranged to bring Ladislaw to Lowick several times (not neglecting meanwhile to

introduce him elsewhere on every opportunity as "a young relative of Casaubon's"). And though Will had not

seen Dorothea alone, their interviews had been enough to restore her former sense of young companionship

with one who was cleverer than herself, yet seemed ready to be swayed by her. Poor Dorothea before her

marriage had never found much room in other minds for what she cared most to say; and she had not, as we

know, enjoyed her husband's superior instruction so much as she had expected. If she spoke with any

keenness of interest to Mr. Casaubon, he heard her with an air of patience as if she had given a quotation

from the Delectus familiar to him from his tender years, and sometimes mentioned curtly what ancient sects

or personages had held similar ideas, as if there were too much of that sort in stock already; at other times he

would inform her that she was mistaken, and reassert what her remark had questioned.

But Will Ladislaw always seemed to see more in what she said than she herself saw. Dorothea had little

vanity, but she had the ardent woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul. Hence the

mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a

glimpse of the sunny air; and this pleasure began to nullify her original alarm at what her husband might

think about the introduction of Will as her uncle's guest. On this subject Mr. Casaubon had remained dumb.

But Will wanted to talk with Dorothea alone, and was impatient of slow circumstance. However slight the

terrestrial intercourse between Dante and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura, time changes the proportion of

things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets and more conversation. Necessity excused

stratagem, but stratagem was limited by the dread of offending Dorothea. He found out at last that he wanted

to take a particular sketch at Lowick; and one morning when Mr. Brooke had to drive along the Lowick road

on his way to the county town, Will asked to be set down with his sketchbook and campstool at Lowick,

and without announcing himself at the Manor settled himself to sketch in a position where he must see

Dorothea if she came out to walk and he knew that she usually walked an hour in the morning.

But the stratagem was defeated by the weather. Clouds gathered with treacherous quickness, the rain came

down, and Will was obliged to take shelter in the house. He intended, on the strength of relationship, to go

into the drawingroom and wait there without being announced; and seeing his old acquaintance the butler in

the hall, he said, "Don't mention that I am here, Pratt; I will wait till luncheon; I know Mr. Casaubon does not

"Master is out, sir; there's only Mrs. Casaubon in the library. I'd better tell her you're here, sir," said Pratt, a

redcheeked man given to lively converse with Tantripp, and often agreeing with her that it must be dull for

"Oh, very well; this confounded rain has hindered me from sketching," said Will, feeling so happy that he

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

"Mr. Casaubon has gone to the Archdeacon's," she said, at once. "I don't know whether he will be at home

again long before dinner. He was uncertain how long he should be. Did you want to say anything particular to

"No; I came to sketch, but the rain drove me in. Else I would not have disturbed you yet. I supposed that Mr.

"I am indebted to the rain, then. I am so glad to see you." Dorothea uttered these common words with the

"I really came for the chance of seeing you alone," said Will, mysteriously forced to be just as simple as she

was. He could not stay to ask himself, why not? "I wanted to talk about things, as we did in Rome. It always

"Yes," said Dorothea, in her clear full tone of assent. "Sit down." She seated herself on a dark ottoman with

the brown books behind her, looking in her plain dress of some thin woollenwhite material, without a single

ornament on her besides her weddingring, as if she were under a vow to be different from all other women;

and Will sat down opposite her at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and delicate but

rather petulant profile, with its defiant curves of lip and chin. Each looked at the other as if they had been two

flowers which had opened then and there. Dorothea for the moment forgot her husband's mysterious irritation

against Will: it seemed fresh water at her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had

found receptive; for in looking backward through sadness she exaggerated a past solace.

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

"I remember them all," said Will, with the unspeakable content in his soul of feeling that he was in the

presence of a creature worthy to be perfectly loved. I think his own feelings at that moment were perfect, for

we mortals have our divine moments, when love is satisfied in the completeness the beloved object.

"I have tried to learn a great deal since we were in Rome," said Dorothea. "I can read Latin a little, and I am

beginning to understand just a little Greek. I can help Mr. Casaubon better now. I can find out references for

him and save his eyes in many ways. But it is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out

on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired."

"If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit," said Will,

with irrepressible quickness. But through certain sensibilities Dorothea was as quick as he, and seeing her

face change, he added, immediately, "But it is quite true that the best minds have been sometimes

"You correct me," said Dorothea. "I expressed myself ill. I should have said that those who have great

thoughts get too much worn in working them out. I used to feel about that, even when I was a little girl; and it

always seemed to me that the use I should like to make of my life would be to help some one who did great

Dorothea was led on to this bit of autobiography without any sense of making a revelation. But she had never

before said anything to Will which threw so strong a light on her marriage. He did not shrug his shoulders;

and for want of that muscular outlet he thought the more irritably of beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and

other emptinesses ecclesiastically enshrined. Also he had to take care that his speech should not betray that

"But you may easily carry the help too far," he said, "and get overwrought yourself. Are you not too much

shut up? You already look paler. It would be better for Mr. Casaubon to have a secretary; he could easily get

a man who would do half his work for him. It would save him more effectually, and you need only help him

"How can you think of that?" said Dorothea, in a tone of earnest remonstrance. "I should have no happiness if

I did not help him in his work. What could I do? There is no good to be done in Lowick. The only thing I

desire is to help him more. And he objects to a secretary: please not to mention that again."

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

"Yes?" said Dorothea, "but they don't understandthey want me to be a great deal on horseback, and have

the garden altered and new conservatories, to fill up my days. I thought you could understand that one's mind

has other wants," she added, rather impatiently "besides, Mr. Casaubon cannot bear to hear of a secretary."

"My mistake is excusable," said Will. "In old days I used to hear Mr. Casaubon speak as if he looked forward

to having a secretary. Indeed he held out the prospect of that office to me. But I turned out to benot good

Dorothea was trying to extract out of this an excuse for her husband's evident repulsion, as she said, with a

"No," said Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of aspirited horse. And then, the old

irritable demon prompting him to give another good pinch at the mothwings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory,

he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any one to overlook his work. and know

thoroughly what he is doing. He is too doubtfultoo uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, but

Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have

usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear. And it was too intolerable that

Casaubon's dislike of him should not be fairly accounted for to Dorothea. Yet when he had spoken he was

But Dorothea was strangely quietnot immediately indignant, as she had been on a like occasion in Rome.

And the cause lay deep. She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to

their clearest perception; and now when she looked steadily at her husband's failure, still more at his possible

consciousness of failure, she seemed to be looking along the one tract where duty became tenderness. Will's

want of reticence might have been met with more severity, if he had not already been recommended to her

mercy by her husband's dislike, which must seem hard to her till she saw better reason for it.

She did not answer at once, but after looking down ruminatingly she said, with some earnestness, "Mr.

Casaubon must have overcome his dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is admirable."

"Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters. It was an abominable thing that my grandmother

should have been disinherited because she made what they called a mesalliance, though there was nothing to

be said against her husband except that he was a Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread."

"I wish I knew all about her!" said Dorothea. "I wonder how she bore the change from wealth to poverty: I

"No; only that my grandfather was a patriota bright fellow could speak many languagesmusicalgot

his bread by teaching all sorts of things. They both died rather early. And I never knew much of my father,

beyond what my mother told me; but he inherited the musical talents. I remember his slow walk and his long

thin hands; and one day remains with me when he was lying ill, and I was very hungry, and had only a little

"Ah, what a different life from mine!" said Dorothea, with keen interest, clasping her hands on her lap. "I

have always had too much of everything. But tell me how it was Mr. Casaubon could not have known

"No; but my father had made himself known to Mr. Casaubon, and that was my last hungry day. My father

died soon after, and my mother and I were well taken care of. Mr. Casaubon always expressly recognized it

as his duty to take care of us because of the harsh injustice which had been shown to his mother's sister. But

In his inmost soul Will was conscious of wishing to tell Dorothea what was rather new even in his own

construction of things namely, that Mr. Casaubon had never done more than pay a debt towards him. Will

was much too good a fellow to be easy under the sense of being ungrateful. And when gratitude has become a

"No," answered Dorothea; "Mr. Casaubon has always avoided dwelling on his own honorable actions." She

did not feel that her husband's conduct was depreciated; but this notion of what justice had required in his

relations with Will Ladislaw took strong hold on her mind. After a moment's pause, she added, "He had never

"No; she died by an accidenta fallfour years ago. It is curious that my mother, too, ran away from her

family, but not for the sake of her husband. She never would tell me anything about her family, except that

she forsook them to get her own livingwent on the stage, in fact. She was a darkeyed creature, with crisp

ringlets, and never seemed to be getting old. You see I come of rebellious blood on both sides," Will ended,

smiling brightly at Dorothea, while she was still looking with serious intentness before her, like a child seeing

But her face, too, broke into a smile as she said, "That is your apology, I suppose, for having yourself been

rather rebellious; I mean, to Mr. Casaubon's wishes. You must remember that you have not done what he

thought best for you. And if he dislikes you you were speaking of dislike a little while agobut I should

rather say, if he has shown any painful feelings towards you, you must consider how sensitive he has become

from the wearing effect of study. Perhaps," she continued, getting into a pleading tone, "my uncle has not told

you how serious Mr. Casaubon's illness was. It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to

"You teach me better," said Will. "I will never grumble on that subject again." There was a gentleness in his

tone which came from the unutterable contentment of perceivingwhat Dorothea was hardly conscious

ofthat she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity and loyalty towards her husband. Will was ready

to adore her pity and loyalty, if she would associate himself with her in manifesting them. "I have really

sometimes been a perverse fellow," he went on, "but I will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you

"That is very good of you," said Dorothea, with another open smile. "I shall have a little kingdom then, where

I shall give laws. But you will soon go away, out of my rule, I imagine. You will soon be tired of staying at

"That is a point I wanted to mention to youone of the reasons why I wished to speak to you alone. Mr.

Brooke proposes that I should stay in this neighborhood. He has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers,

"Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and not settling to anything. And here is

something offered to me. If you would not like me to accept it, I will give it up. Otherwise I would rather stay

"I should like you to stay very much," said Dorothea, at once, as simply and readily as she had spoken at

Rome. There was not the shadow of a reason in her mind at the moment why she should not say so.

"Then I WILL stay," said Ladislaw, shaking his head backward, rising and going towards the window, as if to

But the next moment, Dorothea, according to a habit which was getting continually stronger, began to reflect

that her husband felt differently from herself, and she colored deeply under the double embarrassment of

having expressed what might be in opposition to her husband's feeling, and of having to suggest this

opposition to Will. If is face was not turned towards her, and this made it easier to say

"But my opinion is of little consequence on such a subject. I think you should be guided by Mr. Casaubon. I

spoke without thinking of anything else than my own feeling, which has nothing to do with the real question.

But it now occurs to me perhaps Mr. Casaubon might see that the proposal was not wise. Can you not wait

"I can't wait today," said Will, inwardly seared by the possibility that Mr. Casaubon would enter. "The rain

is quite over now. I told Mr. Brooke not to call for me: I would rather walk the five miles. I shall strike across

He approached her to shake hands quite hurriedly, longing but not daring to say, "Don't mention the subject

to Mr. Casaubon." No, he dared not, could not say it. To ask her to be less simple and direct would be like

breathing on the crystal that you want to see the light through. And there was always the other great dread

"I wish you could have stayed," said Dorothea, with a touch of mournfulness, as she rose and put out her

hand. She also had her thought which she did not like to express:Will certainly ought to lose no time in

consulting Mr. Casaubon's wishes, but for her to urge this might seem an undue dictation.

So they only said "Goodby," and Will quitted the house, striking across the fields so as not to run any risk of

encountering Mr. Casaubon's carriage, which, however, did not appear at the gate until four o'clock. That was

an unpropitious hour for coming home: it was too early to gain the moral support under ennui of dressing his

person for dinner, and too late to undress his mind of the day's frivolous ceremony and affairs, so as to be

prepared for a good plunge into the serious business of study. On such occasions he usually threw into an

easychair in the library, and allowed Dorothea to read the London papers to him, closing his eyes the while.

Today, however, he declined that relief, observing that he had already had too many public details urged

upon him; but he spoke more cheerfully than usual, when Dorothea asked about his fatigue, and added with

that air of formal effort which never forsook him even when he spoke without his waistcoat and cravat

"I have had the gratification of meeting my former acquaintance, Dr. Spanning, today, and of being praised

by one who is himself a worthy recipient of praise. He spoke very handsomely of my late tractate on the

Egyptian Mysteries,using, in fact, terms which it would not become me to repeat." In uttering the last

clause, Mr. Casaubon leaned over the elbow of his chair, and swayed his head up and down, apparently as a

muscular outlet instead of that recapitulation which would not have been becoming.

"I am very glad you have had that pleasure," said Dorothea, delighted to see her husband less weary than

usual at this hour. "Before you came I had been regretting that you happened to be out today."

"Because Mr. Ladislaw has been here; and he has mentioned a proposal of my uncle's which I should like to

know your opinion of." Her husband she felt was really concerned in this question. Even with her ignorance

of the world she had a vague impression that the position offered to Will was out of keeping with his family

connections, and certainly Mr. Casaubon had a claim to be consulted. He did not speak, but merely bowed.

"Dear uncle, you know, has many projects. It appears that he has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers,

and he has asked Mr. Ladislaw to stay in this neighborhood and conduct the paper for him, besides helping

Dorothea looked at her husband while she spoke, but he had at first blinked and finally closed his eyes, as if

to save them; while his lips became more tense. "What is your opinion?" she added, rather timidly, after a

"Did Mr. Ladislaw come on purpose to ask my opinion?" said Mr. Casaubon, opening his eyes narrowly with

a knifeedged look at Dorothea. She was really uncomfortable on the point he inquired about, but she only

"No," she answered immediately, "he did not say that he came to ask your opinion. But when he mentioned

"I feared that you might feel some objection. But certainly a young man with so much talent might be very

useful to my uncle might help him to do good in a better way. And Mr. Ladislaw wishes to have some

fixed occupation. He has been blamed, he says, for not seeking something of that kind, and he would like to

Dorothea felt that this was a consideration to soften her husband. However, he did not speak, and she

presently recurred to Dr. Spanning and the Archdeacon's breakfast. But there was no longer sunshine on these

The next morning, without Dorothea's knowledge, Mr. Casaubon despatched the following letter, beginning

"Mrs. Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and (according to an inference by no

means stretched) has on your part been in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this

neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my own position in such a way as renders

it not only natural and warrantable IN me when that effect is viewed under the influence of legitimate feeling,

but incumbent on me when the same effect is considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once

that your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly offensive to me. That I have some

claim to the exercise of a veto here, would not, I believe, be denied by any reasonable person cognizant of the

relations between us: relations which, though thrown into the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby

annulled in their character of determining antecedents. I will not here make reflections on any person's

judgment. It is enough for me to point out to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties

which should hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any wise conspicuous in this vicinity

in a status not only much beneath my own, but associated at best with the sciolism of literary or political

adventurers. At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from further reception at my house. Yours

Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was innocently at work towards the further embitterment of her husband;

dwelling, with a sympathy that grew to agitation, on what Will had told her about his parents and

grandparents. Any private hours in her day were usually spent in her bluegreen boudoir, and she had come

to be very fond of its pallid quaintness. Nothing had been outwardly altered there; but while the summer had

gradually advanced over the western fields beyond the avenue of elms, the bare room had gathered within it

those memories of an inward life which fill the air as with a cloud of good or had angels, the invisible yet

active forms of our spiritual triumphs or our spiritual falls. She had been so used to struggle for and to find

resolve in looking along the avenue towards the arch of western light that the vision itself had gained a

communicating power. Even the pale stag seemed to have reminding glances and to mean mutely, "Yes, we

know." And the group of delicately touched miniatures had made an audience as of beings no longer

disturbed about their own earthly lot, but still humanly interested. Especially the mysterious "Aunt Julia"

And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had gathered round that Aunt Julia who was

Will's grandmother; the presence of that delicate miniature, so like a living face that she knew, helping to

concentrate her feelings. What a wrong, to cut off the girl from the family protection and inheritance only

because she had chosen a man who was poor! Dorothea, early troubling her elders with questions about the

facts around her, had wrought herself into some independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons

why eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed: those reasons, impressing her with a

certain awe, might be weightier than she knew, but here was a question of ties which left them uninfringed.

Here was a daughter whose child even according to the ordinary aping of aristocratic institutions by people

who are no more aristocratic than retired grocers, and who have no more land to "keep together" than a lawn

and a paddock would have a prior claim. Was inheritance a question of liking or of responsibility? All the

energy of Dorothea's nature went on the side of responsibilitythe fulfilment of claims founded on our own

It was true, she said to herself, that Mr. Casaubon had a debt to the Ladislawsthat he had to pay back what

the Ladislaws had been wronged of. And now she began to think of her husband's will, which had been made

at the time of their marriage, leaving the bulk of his property to her, with proviso in case of her having

children. That ought to be altered; and no time ought to be lost. This very question which had just arisen

about Will Ladislaw's occupation, was the occasion for placing things on a new, right footing. Her husband,

she felt sure, according to all his previous conduct, would be ready to take the just view, if she proposed

itshe, in whose interest an unfair concentration of the property had been urged. His sense of right had

surmounted and would continue to surmount anything that might be called antipathy. She suspected that her

uncle's scheme was disapproved by Mr. Casaubon, and this made it seem all the more opportune that a fresh

understanding should be begun, so that instead of Will's starting penniless and accepting the first function

that offered itself, he should find himself in possession of a rightful income which should be paid by her

husband during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of the will, should be secured at his death. The vision

of all this as what ought to be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of daylight, waking her from

her previous stupidity and incurious selfabsorbed ignorance about her husband's relation to others. Will

Ladislaw had refused Mr. Casaubon's future aid on a ground that no longer appeared right to her; and Mr.

Casaubon had never himself seen fully what was the claim upon him. "But he will!" said Dorothea. "The

great strength of his character lies here. And what are we doing with our money? We make no use of half of

There was a peculiar fascination for Dorothea in this division of property intended for herself, and always

regarded by her as excessive. She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to others likely to tread in

the wrong places, as Celia had warned her; yet her blindness to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose

carried her safely by the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear.

The thoughts which had gathered vividness in the solitude of her boudoir occupied her incessantly through

the day on which Mr. Casaubon had sent his letter to Will. Everything seemed hindrance to her till she could

find an opportunity of opening her heart to her husband. To his preoccupied mind all subjects were to be

approached gently, and she had never since his illness lost from her consciousness the dread of agitating him.

Bat when young ardor is set brooding over the conception of a prompt deed, the deed itself seems to start

forth with independent life, mastering ideal obstacles. The day passed in a sombre fashion, not unusual,

though Mr. Casaubon was perhaps unusually silent; but there were hours of the night which might be counted

on as opportunities of conversation; for Dorothea, when aware of her husband's sleeplessness, had established

a habit of rising, lighting a candle, and reading him to sleep again. And this night she was from the beginning

sleepless, excited by resolves. He slept as usual for a few hours, but she had risen softly and had sat in the

"No, not at all; but I shall be obliged, since you are up, if you will read me a few pages of Lowth."

"I have been thinking about money all daythat I have always had too much, and especially the prospect of

"But if one has too much in consequence of others being wronged, it seems to me that the divine voice which

"That you have been too liberal in arrangements for meI mean, with regard to property; and that makes me

"I have been led to think about your aunt Julia, and how she was left in poverty only because she married a

poor man, an act which was not disgraceful, since he was not unworthy. It was on that ground, I know, that

Dorothea waited a few moments for some answer that would help her onward. None came, and her next

"But surely we should regard his claim as a much greater one, even to the half of that property which I know

that you have destined for me. And I think he ought at once to be provided for on that understanding. It is not

right that he should be in the dependence of poverty while we are rich. And if there is any objection to the

proposal he mentioned, the giving him his true place and his true share would set aside any motive for his

"Mr. Ladislaw has probably been speaking to you on this subject?" said Mr. Casaubon, with a certain biting

"Indeed, no!" said Dorothea, earnestly. "How can you imagine it, since he has so lately declined everything

from you? I fear you think too hardly of him, dear. He only told me a little about his parents and

grandparents, and almost all in answer to my questions. You are so good, so justyou have done everything

you thought to be right. But it seems to me clear that more than that is right; and I must speak about it, since I

am the person who would get what is called benefit by that `more' not being done."

There was a perceptible pause before Mr. Casaubon replied, not quickly as before, but with a still more biting

"Dorothea, my love, this is not the first occasion, but it were well that it should be the last, on which you have

assumed a judgment on subjects beyond your scope. Into the question how far conduct, especially in the

matter of alliances, constitutes a forfeiture of family claims, I do not now enter. Suffice it, that you are not

here qualified to discriminate. What I now wish you to understand is, that I accept no revision, still less

dictation within that range of affairs which I have deliberated upon as distinctly and properly mine. It is not

for you to interfere between me and Mr. Ladislaw, and still less to encourage communications from him to

Poor Dorothea, shrouded in the darkness, was in a tumult of conflicting emotions. Alarm at the possible

effect on himself of her husband's strongly manifested anger, would have checked any expression of her own

resentment, even if she had been quite free from doubt and compunction under the consciousness that there

might be some justice in his last insinuation. Hearing him breathe quickly after he had spoken, she sat

listening, frightened, wretchedwith a dumb inward cry for help to bear this nightmare of a life in which

every energy was arrested by dread. But nothing else happened, except that they both remained a long while

"DEAR MR. CASAUBON,I have given all due consideration to your letter of yesterday, but I am unable

to take precisely your view of our mutual position. With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous

conduct to me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind cannot fairly fetter me as you

appear to expect that it should. Granted that a benefactor's wishes may constitute a claim; there must always

be a reservation as to the quality of those wishes. They may possibly clash with more imperative

considerations. Or a benefactor's veto might impose such a negation on a man's life that the consequent blank

might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous. I am merely using strong illustrations. In the present

case I am unable to take your view of the bearing which my acceptance of occupationnot enriching

certainly, but not dishonorable will have on your own position which seems to me too substantial to be

affected in that shadowy manner. And though I do not believe that any change in our relations will occur

(certainly none has yet occurred) which can nullify the obligations imposed on me by the past, pardon me for

not seeing that those obligations should restrain me from using the ordinary freedom of living where I

choose, and maintaining myself by any lawful occupation I may choose. Regretting that there exists this

difference between us as to a relation in which the conferring of benefits has been entirely on your side I

Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him a little?) that no man had juster

cause for disgust and suspicion than he. Young Ladislaw, he was sure, meant to defy and annoy him, meant

to win Dorothea's confidence and sow her mind with disrespect, and perhaps aversion, towards her husband.

Some motive beneath the surface had been needed to account for Will's sudden change of in rejecting Mr.

Casaubon's aid and quitting his travels; and this defiant determination to fix himself in the neighborhood by

taking up something so much at variance with his former choice as Mr. Brooke's Middlemarch projects,

revealed clearly enough that the undeclared motive had relation to Dorothea. Not for one moment did Mr.

Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little less

uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form opinions about her husband's conduct was

accompanied with a disposition to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said. His

own proud reticence had prevented him from ever being undeceived in the supposition that Dorothea had

And now, on receiving Will's letter, Mr. Casaubon had to consider his duty. He would never have been easy

to call his action anything else than duty; but in this case, contending motives thrust him back into negations.

Should he apply directly to Mr. Brooke, and demand of that troublesome gentleman to revoke his proposal?

Or should he consult Sir James Chettam, and get him to concur in remonstrance against a step which touched

the whole family? In either case Mr. Casaubon was aware that failure was just as probable as success. It was

impossible for him to mention Dorothea's name in the matter, and without some alarming urgency Mr.

Brooke was as likely as not, after meeting all representations with apparent assent, to wind up by saying,

"Never fear, Casaubon! Depend upon it, young Ladislaw will do you credit. Depend upon it, I have put my

finger on the right thing." And Mr. Casaubon shrank nervously from communicating on the subject with Sir

James Chettam, between whom and himself there had never been any cordiality, and who would immediately

Poor Mr. Casaubon was distrustful of everybody's feeling towards him, especially as a husband. To let any

one suppose that he was jealous would be to admit their (suspected) view of his disadvantages: to let them

know that he did not find marriage particularly blissful would imply his conversion to their (probably) earlier

disapproval. It would be as bad as letting Carp, and Brasenose generally, know how backward he was in

organizing the matter for his "Key to all Mythologies." All through his life Mr. Casaubon had been trying not

to admit even to himself the inward sores of selfdoubt and jealousy. And on the most delicate of all personal

Thus Mr. Casaubon remained proudly, bitterly silent. But he had forbidden Will to come to Lowick Manor,

Sir James Chettam could not look with any satisfaction on Mr. Brooke's new courses; but it was easier to

object than to hinder. Sir James accounted for his having come in alone one day to lunch with the

"I can't talk to you as I want, before Celia: it might hurt her. Indeed, it would not be right."

"I know what you meanthe `Pioneer' at the Grange!" darted in Mrs. Cadwallader, almost before the last

word was off her friend's tongue. "It is frightfulthis taking to buying whistles and blowing them in

everybody's hearing. Lying in bed all day and playing at dominoes, like poor Lord Plessy, would be more

"I see they are beginning to attack our friend Brooke in the `Trumpet,'" said the Rector, lounging back and

smiling easily, as he would have done if he had been attacked himself. "There are tremendous sarcasms

against a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents, and makes no

"I do wish Brooke would leave that off," said Sir James, with his little frown of annoyance.

"Is he really going to be put in nomination, though?" said Mr. Cadwallader. "I saw Farebrother yesterday

he's Whiggish himself, hoists Brougham and Useful Knowledge; that's the worst I know of him;and he

says that Brooke is getting up a pretty strong party. Bulstrode, the banker, is his foremost man. But he thinks

"Exactly," said Sir James, with earnestness. "I have been inquiring into the thing, for I've never known

anything about Middlemarch politics beforethe county being my business. What Brooke trusts to, is that

they are going to turn out Oliver because he is a Peelite. But Hawley tells me that if they send up a Whig at

all it is sure to be Bagster, one of those candidates who come from heaven knows where, but dead against

Ministers, and an experienced Parliamentary man. Hawley's rather rough: he forgot that he was speaking to

me. He said if Brooke wanted a pelting, he could get it cheaper than by going to the hustings."

"I warned you all of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her hands outward. "I said to Humphrey long ago,

"Well, he might have taken it into his head to marry," said the Rector. "That would have been a graver mess

"He may do that afterwards," said Mrs. Cadwallader"when he has come out on the other side of the mud

"What I care for most is his own dignity," said Sir James. "Of course I care the more because of the family.

But he's getting on in life now, and I don't like to think of his exposing himself. They will be raking up

"I suppose it's no use trying any persuasion," said the Rector. "There's such an odd mixture of obstinacy and

"Well, no," said Sir James; "I feel a delicacy in appearing to dictate. But I have been talking to this young

Ladislaw that Brooke is making a factotum of. Ladislaw seems clever enough for anything. I thought it as

well to hear what he had to say; and he is against Brooke's standing this time. I think he'll turn him round: I

"I know," said Mrs. Cadwallader, nodding. "The independent member hasn't got his speeches well enough by

"But this Ladislawthere again is a vexatious business," said Sir James. "We have had him two or three

times to dine at the Hall (you have met him, by the bye) as Brooke's guest and a relation of Casaubon's,

thinking he was only on a flying visit. And now I find he's in everybody's mouth in Middlemarch as the editor

of the `Pioneer.' There are stories going about him as a quilldriving alien, a foreign emissary, and what not."

"There IS some foreign blood in Ladislaw," returned Sir James. "I hope he won't go into extreme opinions

"Oh, he's a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Ladislaw," said Mrs. Cadwallader, "with his opera songs and his

ready tongue. A sort of Byronic heroan amorous conspirator, it strikes me. And Thomas Aquinas is not

"I don't like to begin on the subject with Casaubon," said Sir James. "He has more right to interfere than I.

But it's a disagreeable affair all round. What a character for anybody with decent connections to show himself

in!one of those newspaper fellows! You have only to look at Keck, who manages the `Trumpet.' I saw him

the other day with Hawley. His writing is sound enough, I believe, but he's such a low fellow, that I wished

"What can you expect with these peddling Middlemarch papers?" said the Rector. "I don't suppose you could

get a high style of man anywhere to be writing up interests he doesn't really care about, and for pay that

"Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Brooke should have put a man who has a sort of connection with the

family in a position of that kind. For my part, I think Ladislaw is rather a fool for accepting."

"It is Aquinas's fault," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Why didn't he use his interest to get Ladislaw made an attache

"There is no knowing to what lengths the mischief may go," said Sir James, anxiously. "But if Casaubon says

"Oh my dear Sir James," said the Rector, "don't let us make too much of all this. It is likely enough to end in

mere smoke. After a month or two Brooke and this Master Ladislaw will get tired of each other; Ladislaw

will take wing; Brooke will sell the `Pioneer,' and everything will settle down again as usual."

"There is one good chancethat he will not like to feel his money oozing away," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "If

I knew the items of election expenses I could scare him. It's no use plying him with wide words like

Expenditure: I wouldn't talk of phlebotomy, I would empty a pot of leeches upon him. What we good stingy

"And he will not like having things raked up against him," said Sir James. "There is the management of his

estate. they have begun upon that already. And it really is painful for me to see. It is a nuisance under one's

very nose. I do think one is bound to do the best for one's land and tenants, especially in these hard times."

"Perhaps the `Trumpet' may rouse him to make a change, and some good may come of it all," said the Rector.

"I know I should be glad. I should hear less grumbling when my tithe is paid. I don't know what I should do if

"I want him to have a proper man to look after thingsI want him to take on Garth again," said Sir James.

"He got rid of Garth twelve years ago, and everything has been going wrong since. I think of getting Garth to

manage for mehe has made such a capital plan for my buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark.

But Garth would not undertake the Tipton estate again unless Brooke left it entirely to him."

"In the right of it too," said the Rector. "Garth is an independent fellow: an original, simpleminded fellow.

One day, when he was doing some valuation for me, he told me pointblank that clergymen seldom

understood anything about business, and did mischief when they meddled; but he said it as quietly and

respectfully as if he had been talking to me about sailors. He would make a different parish of Tipton, if

Brooke would let him manage. I wish, by the help of the `Trumpet,' you could bring that round."

"If Dorothea had kept near her uncle, there would have been some chance," said Sir James. "She might have

got some power over him in time, and she was always uneasy about the estate. She had wonderfully good

notions about such things. But now Casaubon takes her up entirely. Celia complains a good deal. We can

hardly get her to dine with us, since he had that fit." Sir James ended with a look of pitying disgust, and Mrs.

Cadwallader shrugged her shoulders as much as to say that SHE was not likely to see anything new in that

"Poor Casaubon!" the Rector said. "That was a nasty attack. I thought he looked shattered the other day at the

"In point of fact," resumed Sir James, not choosing to dwell on "fits," "Brooke doesn't mean badly by his

tenants or any one else, but he has got that way of paring and clipping at expenses."

"Come, that's a blessing," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "That helps him to find himself in a morning. He may not

"Oh, stinginess may be abused like other virtues: it will not do to keep one's own pigs lean," said Mrs.

Cadwallader, who had risen to look out of the window. "But talk of an independent politician and he will

"Yes. Now, you ply him with the `Trumpet,' Humphrey; and I will put the leeches on him. What will you do,

"The fact is, I don't like to begin about it with Brooke, in our mutual position; the whole thing is so

unpleasant. I do wish people would behave like gentlemen," said the good baronet, feeling that this was a

"Here you all are, eh?" said Mr. Brooke, shuffling round and shaking hands. "I was going up to the Hall

byandby, Chettam. But it's pleasant to find everybody, you know. Well, what do you think of

things?going on a little fast! It was true enough, what Lafitte said`Since yesterday, a century has passed

away:' they're in the next century, you know, on the other side of the water. Going on faster than we are."

"Why, yes," said the Rector, taking up the newspaper. "Here is the `Trumpet' accusing you of lagging

"Eh? no," said Mr. Brooke, dropping his gloves into his hat and hastily adjusting his eyeglass. But Mr.

"Look here! all this is about a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents.

They say he is the most retrogressive man in the county. I think you must have taught them that word in the

"Oh, that is Keekan illiterate fellow, you know. Retrogressive, now! Come, that's capital. He thinks it

means destructive: they want to make me out a destructive, you know," said Mr. Brooke, with that

"I think he knows the meaning of the word. Here is a sharp stroke or two. If we had to describe a man who is

retrogressive in the most evil sense of the wordwe should say, he is one who would dub himself a reformer

of our constitution, while every interest for which he is immediately responsible is going to decay: a

philanthropist who cannot bear one rogue to be hanged, but does not mind five honest tenants being

halfstarved: a man who shrieks at corruption, and keeps his farms at rackrent: who roars himself red at

rotten boroughs, and does not mind if every field on his farms has a rotten gate: a man very openhearted to

Leeds and Manchester, no doubt; he would give any number of representatives who will pay for their seats

out of their own pockets: what he objects to giving, is a little return on rentdays to help a tenant to buy

stock, or an outlay on repairs to keep the weather out at a tenant's barndoor or make his house look a little

less like an Irish cottier's. But we all know the wag's definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity

increases directly as the square of the distance. And so on. All the rest is to show what sort of legislator a

philanthropist is likely to make," ended the Rector, throwing down the paper, and clasping his hands at the

back of his head, while he looked at Mr. Brooke with an air of amused neutrality.

"Come, that's rather good, you know," said Mr. Brooke, taking up the paper and trying to bear the attack as

easily as his neighbor did, but coloring and smiling rather nervously; "that about roaring himself red at rotten

boroughsI never made a speech about rotten boroughs in my life. And as to roaring myself red and that

kind of thing these men never understand what is good satire. Satire, you know, should be true up to a

certain point. I recollect they said that in `The Edinburgh' somewhereit must be true up to a certain point."

"Well, that is really a hit about the gates," said Sir James, anxious to tread carefully. "Dagley complained to

me the other day that he hadn't got a decent gate on his farm. Garth has invented a new pattern of gateI

"You go in for fancy farming, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, appearing to glance over the columns

"I thought the most expensive hobby in the world was standing for Parliament," said Mrs. Cadwallader.

"They said the last unsuccessful candidate at MiddlemarchGiles, wasn't his name? spent ten thousand

pounds and failed because he did not bribe enough. What a bitter reflection for a man!"

"Somebody was saying," said the Rector, laughingly, "that East Retford was nothing to Middlemarch, for

"Nothing of the kind," said Mr. Brooke. "The Tories bribe, you know: Hawley and his set bribe with treating,

hot codlings, and that sort of thing; and they bring the voters drunk to the poll. But they are not going to have

it their own way in future not in future, you know. Middlemarch is a little backward, I admit the

freemen are a little backward. But we shall educate them we shall bring them on, you know. The best

"Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm," remarked Sir James. "He says Bulstrode

"And that if you got pelted," interposed Mrs. Cadwallader, "half the rotten eggs would mean hatred of your

committeeman. Good heavens! Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions. And I seem to

remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him fall into a dustheap on purpose!"

"Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one's coat," said the Rector. "I confess that's what I should be

afraid of, if we parsons had to stand at the hustings for preferment. I should be afraid of their reckoning up all

my fishing days. Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with."

"The fact is," said Sir James, "if a man goes into public life he must be prepared for the consequences. He

"My dear Chettam, that is all very fine, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "But how will you make yourself proof

against calumny? You should read historylook at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of

thing. They always happen to the best men, you know. But what is that in Horace?'fiat justitia, ruat . . .

"Exactly," said Sir James, with a little more heat than usual. "What I mean by being proof against calumny is

"And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one's self," said Mrs. Cadwallader.

But it was Sir James's evident annoyance that most stirred Mr. Brooke. "Well, you know, Chettam," he said,

rising, taking up his hat and leaning on his stick, "you and I have a different system. You are all for outlay

with your farms. I don't want to make out that my system is good under all circumstancesunder all

"There ought to be a new valuation made from time to time," said Sir James. "Returns are very well

"I agree with you. If I were Brooke, I would choke the `Trumpet' at once by getting Garth to make a new

valuation of the farms, and giving him carte blanche about gates and repairs: that's my view of the political

situation," said the Rector, broadening himself by sticking his thumbs in his armholes, and laughing towards

"That's a showy sort of thing to do, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "But I should like you to tell me of another

landlord who has distressed his tenants for arrears as little as I have. I let the old tenants stay on. I'm

uncommonly easy, let me tell you, uncommonly easy. I have my own ideas, and I take my stand on them, you

know. A man who does that is always charged with eccentricity, inconsistency, and that kind of thing. When

After that, Mr. Brooke remembered that there was a packet which he had omitted to send off from the

"I didn't want to take a liberty with Brooke," said Sir James; "I see he is nettled. But as to what he says about

old tenants, in point of fact no new tenant would take the farms on the present terms."

"I have a notion that he will be brought round in time," said the Rector. "But you were pulling one way,

Elinor, and we were pulling another. You wanted to frighten him away from expense, and we want to frighten

him into it. Better let him try to be popular and see that his character as a landlord stands in his way. I don't

think it signifies two straws about the `Pioneer,' or Ladislaw, or Brooke's speechifying to the

Middlemarchers. But it does signify about the parishioners in Tipton being comfortable."

"Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "You should have proved to

him that he loses money by bad management, and then we should all have pulled together. If you put him

ahorseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and

Sir James Chettam's mind was not fruitful ill devices, but his growing anxiety to "act on Brooke," once

brought close to his constant belief in Dorothea's capacity for influence, became formative, and issued in a

little plan; namely, to plead Celia's indisposition as a reason for fetching Dorothea by herself to the Hall, and

to leave her at the Grange with the carriage on the way, after making her fully aware of the situation

In this way it happened that one day near four o'clock, when Mr. Brooke and Ladislaw were seated in the

Will, the moment before, had been low in the depths of boredom, and, obliged to help Mr. Brooke in

arranging "documents" about hanging sheepstealers, was exemplifying the power our minds have of riding

several horses at once by inwardly arranging measures towards getting a lodging for himself in Middlemarch

and cutting short his constant residence at the Grange; while there flitted through all these steadier images a

tickling vision of a sheepstealing epic written with Homeric particularity. When Mrs. Casaubon was

announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his fingerends. Any one observing

him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of

his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of

a magic touch. And so it had. For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety

of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man's passion for one woman

differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountaintop

differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels? Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff. The

bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his

point of view shifted as easily as his mood. Dorothea's entrance was the freshness of morning.

"Well, my dear, this is pleasant, now," said Mr. Brooke, meeting and kissing her. "You have left Casaubon

with his books, I suppose. That's right. We must not have you getting too learned for a woman, you know."

"There is no fear of that, uncle," said Dorothea, turning to Will and shaking hands with open cheerfulness,

while she made no other form of greeting, but went on answering her uncle. "I am very slow. When I want to

be busy with books, I am often playing truant among my thoughts. I find it is not so easy to be learned as to

She seated herself beside her uncle opposite to Will, and was evidently preoccupied with something that

made her almost unmindful of him. He was ridiculously disappointed, as if he had imagined that her coming

"Why, yes, my dear, it was quite your hobby to draw plans. But it was good to break that off a little. Hobbies

are apt to ran away with us, you know; it doesn't do to be run away with. We must keep the reins. I have

never let myself be run away with; I always pulled up. That is what I tell Ladislaw. He and I are alike, you

know: he likes to go into everything. We are working at capital punishment. We shall do a great deal

"Yes," said Dorothea, with characteristic directness, "Sir James has been telling me that he is in hope of

seeing a great change made soon in your management of the estatethat you are thinking of having the

farms valued, and repairs made, and the cottages improved, so that Tipton may look quite another place. Oh,

how happy!" she went on, clasping her hands, with a return to that more childlike impetuous manner,

which had been subdued since her marriage. "If I were at home still, I should take to riding again, that I might

go about with you and see all that! And you are going to engage Mr. Garth, who praised my cottages, Sir

"Chettam is a little hasty, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, coloring slightly; "a little hasty, you know. I never said

"He only feels confident that you will do it," said Dorothea, in a voice as clear and unhesitating as that of a

young chorister chanting a credo, "because you mean to enter Parliament as a member who cares for the

improvement of the people, and one of the first things to be made better is the state of the land and the

laborers. Think of Kit Downes, uncle, who lives with his wife and seven children in a house with one sitting

room and one bedroom hardly larger than this table!and those poor Dagleys, in their tumbledown

farmhouse, where they live in the back kitchen and leave the other rooms to the rats! That is one reason why I

did not like the pictures here, dear unclewhich you think me stupid about. I used to come from the village

with all that dirt and coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in the drawingroom

seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in what is false, while we don't mind how hard the truth is

for the neighbors outside our walls. I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for

Dorothea had gathered emotion as she went on, and had forgotten everything except the relief of pouring

forth her feelings, unchecked: an experience once habitual with her, but hardly ever present since her

marriage, which had been a perpetual struggle of energy with fear. For the moment, Will's admiration was

accompanied with a chilling sense of remoteness. A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a

woman so well when he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having intended greatness for men. But nature

has sometimes made sad oversights in carrying out her intention; as in the case of good Mr. Brooke, whose

masculine consciousness was at this moment in rather a stammering condition under the eloquence of his

niece. He could not immediately find any other mode of expressing himself than that of rising, fixing his

"There is something in what you say, my dear, something in what you saybut not everythingeh,

Ladislaw? You and I don't like our pictures and statues being found fault with. Young ladies are a little

ardent, you knowa little onesided, my dear. Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation

These interrogatives were addressed to the footman who had come in to say that the keeper had found one of

"I'll come, I'll come. I shall let him off easily, you know," said Mr. Brooke aside to Dorothea, shuffling away

"I hope you feel how right this change is that Ithat Sir James wishes for," said Dorothea to Will, as soon as

"I do, now I have heard you speak about it. I shall not forget what you have said. But can you think of

something else at this moment? I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you about what has

occurred," said Will, rising with a movement of impatience, and holding the back of his chair with both

"Pray tell me what it is," said Dorothea, anxiously, also rising and going to the open window, where Monk

was looking in, panting and wagging his tail. She leaned her back against the windowframe, and laid her

hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she was not fond of pets that must be held in the hands or

trodden on, she was always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to decline their

Will followed her only with his eyes and said, "I presume you know that Mr. Casaubon has forbidden me to

"No, I did not," said Dorothea, after a moment's pause. She was evidently much moved. "I am very, very

sorry," she added, mournfully. She was thinking of what Will had no knowledge ofthe conversation

between her and her husband in the darkness; and she was anew smitten with hopelessness that she could

influence Mr. Casaubon's action. But the marked expression of her sorrow convinced Will that it was not all

given to him personally, and that Dorothea had not been visited by the idea that Mr. Casaubon's dislike and

jealousy of him turned upon herself. He felt an odd mixture of delight and vexation: of delight that he could

dwell and be cherished in her thought as in a pure home, without suspicion and without stintof vexation

because he was of too little account with her, was not formidable enough, was treated with an unhesitating

benevolence which did not flatter him. But his dread of any change in Dorothea was stronger than his

"Mr. Casaubon's reason is, his displeasure at my taking a position here which he considers unsuited to my

rank as his cousin. I have told him that I cannot give way on this point. It is a little too hard on me to expect

that my course in life is to be hampered by prejudices which I think ridiculous. Obligation may be stretched

till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning. I

would not have accepted the position if I had not meant to make it useful and honorable. I am not bound to

Dorothea felt wretched. She thought her husband altogether in the wrong, on more grounds than Will had

"It is better for us not to speak on the subject," she said, with a tremulousness not common in her voice,

"since you and Mr. Casaubon disagree. You intend to remain?" She was looking out on the lawn, with

"Yes; but I shall hardly ever see you now," said Will, in a tone of almost boyish complaint.

"No," said Dorothea, turning her eyes full upon him, "hardly ever. But I shall hear of you. I shall know what

"I shall know hardly anything about you," said Will. "No one will tell me anything."

"Oh, my life is very simple," said Dorothea, her lips curling with an exquisite smile, which irradiated her

He did not speak, but she replied to some change in his expression. "I mean, for myself. Except that I should

like not to have so much more than my share without doing anything for others. But I have a belief of my

"That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we

would, we are part of the divine power against evilwidening the skirts of light and making the struggle

"Please not to call it by any name," said Dorothea, putting out her hands entreatingly. "You will say it is

Persian, or something else geographical. It is my life. I have found it out, and cannot part with it. I have

always been finding out my religion since I was a little girl. I used to pray so muchnow I hardly ever pray.

I try not to have desires merely for myself, because they may not be good for others, and I have too much

already. I only told you, that you might know quite well how my days go at Lowick."

"God bless you for telling me!" said Will, ardently, and rather wondering at himself. They were looking at

"What is YOUR religion?" said Dorothea. "I meannot what you know about religion, but the belief that

"To love what is good and beautiful when I see it," said Will. "But I am a rebel: I don't feel bound, as you do,

"But if you like what is good, that comes to the same thing," said Dorothea, smiling.

"Yes; Mr. Casaubon often says I am too subtle. I don't feel as if I were subtle," said Dorothea, playfully. "But

how long my uncle is! I must go and look for him. I must really go on to the Hall. Celia is expecting me."

Will offered to tell Mr. Brooke, who presently came and said that he would step into the carriage and go with

Dorothea as far as Dagley's, to speak about the small delinquent who had been caught with the Ieveret.

Dorothea renewed the subject of the estate as they drove along, but Mr. Brooke, not being taken unawares,

"Chettam, now," he replied; "he finds fault with me, my dear; but I should not preserve my game if it were

not for Chettam, and he can't say that that expense is for the sake of the tenants, you know. It's a little against

my feeling:poaching, now, if you come to look into itI have often thought of getting up the subject. Not

long ago, Flavell, the Methodist preacher, was brought up for knocking down a hare that came across his path

when he and his wife were walking out together. He was pretty quick, and knocked it on the neck."

"Well, now, it seemed rather black to me, I confess, in a Methodist preacher, you know. And Johnson said,

`You may judge what a hypoCRITE he is.' And upon my word, I thought Flavell looked very little like `the

highest style of man' as somebody calls the ChristianYoung, the poet Young, I think you know

Young? Well, now, Flavell in his shabby black gaiters, pleading that he thought the Lord had sent him and

his wife a good dinner, and he had a right to knock it down, though not a mighty hunter before the Lord, as

Nimrod wasI assure you it was rather comic: Fielding would have made something of itor Scott,

nowScott might have worked it up. But really, when I came to think of it, I couldn't help liking that the

fellow should have a bit of hare to say grace over. It's all a matter of prejudiceprejudice with the law on its

side, you knowabout the stick and the gaiters, and so on. However, it doesn't do to reason about things; and

law is law. But I got Johnson to be quiet, and I hushed the matter up. I doubt whether Chettam would not

have been more severe, and yet he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the county. But here we

Mr. Brooke got down at a farmyardgate, and Dorothea drove on. It is wonderful how much uglier things

will look when we only suspect that we are blamed for them. Even our own persons in the glass are apt to

change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark on their less admirable points; and on the

other hand it is astonishing how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never complain

or have nobody to complain for them. Dagley's homestead never before looked so dismal to Mr. Brooke as it

did today, with his mind thus sore about the faultfinding of the "Trumpet," echoed by Sir James.

It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people's hardships

picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End: the old house had

dormerwindows in the dark red roof, two of the chimneys were choked with ivy, the large porch was

blocked up with bundles of sticks, and half the windows were closed with gray wormeaten shutters about

which the jasmineboughs grew in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall with hollyhocks peeping

over it was a perfect study of highly mingled subdued color, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on

interesting superstitious grounds) lying against the open backkitchen door. The mossy thatch of the

cowshed, the broken gray barndoors, the pauper laborers in ragged breeches who had nearly finished

unloading a wagon of corn into the barn ready for early thrashing; the scanty dairy of cows being tethered for

milking and leaving one half of the shed in brown emptiness; the very pigs and white ducks seeming to

wander about the uneven neglected yard as if in low spirits from feeding on a too meagre quality of

rinsings, all these objects under the quiet light of a sky marbled with high clouds would have made a sort

of picture which we have all paused over as a "charming bit," touching other sensibilities than those which

are stirred by the depression of the agricultural interest, with the sad lack of farming capital, as seen

constantly in the newspapers of that time. But these troublesome associations were just now strongly present

to Mr. Brooke, and spoiled the scene for him. Mr. Dagley himself made a figure in the landscape, carrying a

pitchfork and wearing his milkinghata very old beaver flattened in front. His coat and breeches were the

best he had, and he would not have been wearing them on this weekday occasion if he had not been to market

and returned later than usual, having given himself the rare treat of dining at the public table of the Blue Bull.

How he came to fall into this extravagance would perhaps be matter of wonderment to himself on the

morrow; but before dinner something in the state of the country, a slight pause in the harvest before the Far

Dips were cut, the stories about the new King and the numerous handbills on the walls, had seemed to

warrant a little recklessness. It was a maxim about Middlemarch, and regarded as selfevident, that good

meat should have good drink, which last Dagley interpreted as plenty of table ale well followed up by

rumandwater. These liquors have so far truth in them that they were not false enough to make poor Dagley

seem merry: they only made his discontent less tonguetied than usual. He had also taken too much in the

shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism, which

consisted in holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse. He was flushed, and his

eyes had a decidedly quarrelsome stare as he stood still grasping his pitchfork, while the landlord approached

with his easy shuffling walk, one hand in his trouserpocket and the other swinging round a thin

"Dagley, my good fellow," began Mr. Brooke, conscious that he was going to be very friendly about the boy.

"Oh, ay, I'm a good feller, am I? Thank ye, sir, thank ye," said Dagley, with a loud snarling irony which made

Fag the sheepdog stir from his seat and prick his ears; but seeing Monk enter the yard after some outside

loitering, Fag seated himself again in an attitude of observation. "I'm glad to hear I'm a good feller."

Mr. Brooke reflected that it was marketday, and that his worthy tenant had probably been dining, but saw no

reason why he should not go on, since he could take the precaution of repeating what he had to say to Mrs.

"Your little lad Jacob has been caught killing a leveret, Dagley: I have told Johnson to lock him up in the

empty stable an hour or two, just to frighten him, you know. But he will be brought home byandby, before

night: and you'll just look after him, will you, and give him a reprimand, you know?"

"No, I woon't: I'll be dee'd if I'll leather my boy to please you or anybody else, not if you was twenty

Dagley's words were loud enough to summon his wife to the backkitchen doorthe only entrance ever

used, and one always open except in bad weatherand Mr. Brooke, saying soothingly, "Well, well, I'll speak

to your wifeI didn't mean beating, you know," turned to walk to the house. But Dagley, only the more

inclined to "have his say" with a gentleman who walked away from him, followed at once, with Fag

slouching at his heels and sullenly evading some small and probably charitable advances on the part of Monk.

"How do you do, Mrs. Dagley?" said Mr. Brooke, making some haste. "I came to tell you about your boy: I

don't want you to give him the stick, you know." He was careful to speak quite plainly this time.

Overworked Mrs. Dagleya thin, worn woman, from whose life pleasure had so entirely vanished that she

had not even any Sunday clothes which could give her satisfaction in preparing for church had already had

a misunderstanding with her husband since he had come home, and was in low spirits, expecting the worst.

"No, nor he woon't hev the stick, whether you want it or no," pursued Dagley, throwing out his voice, as if he

wanted it to hit hard. "You've got no call to come an' talk about sticks o' these primises, as you woon't give a

"You'd far better hold your tongue, Dagley," said the wife, "and not kick your own trough over. When a man

as is father of a family has been an' spent money at market and made himself the worse for liquor, he's done

enough mischief for one day. But I should like to know what my boy's done, sir."

"Niver do you mind what he's done," said Dagley, more fiercely, "it's my business to speak, an' not yourn.

An' I wull speak, too. I'll hev my saysupper or no. An' what I say is, as I've lived upo' your ground from

my father and grandfather afore me, an' hev dropped our money into't, an' me an' my children might lie an' rot

on the ground for topdressin' as we can't find the money to buy, if the King wasn't to put a stop."

"My good fellow, you're drunk, you know," said Mr. Brooke, confidentially but not judiciously. "Another

But Dagley immediately fronted him, and Fag at his heels growled low, as his master's voice grew louder and

more insulting, while Monk also drew close in silent dignified watch. The laborers on the wagon were

pausing to listen, and it seemed wiser to be quite passive than to attempt a ridiculous flight pursued by a

"I'm no more drunk nor you are, nor so much," said Dagley. "I can carry my liquor, an' I know what I meean.

An' I meean as the King 'ull put a stop to 't, for them say it as knows it, as there's to be a Rinform, and them

landlords as never done the right thing by their tenants 'ull be treated i' that way as they'll hev to scuttle off.

An' there's them i' Middlemarch knows what the Rinform isan' as knows who'll hev to scuttle. Says they, `I

know who YOUR landlord is.' An' says I, `I hope you're the better for knowin' him, I arn't.' Says they, `He's a

closefisted un.' `Ay ay,' says I. `He's a man for the Rinform,' says they. That's what they says. An' I made

out what the Rinform were an' it were to send you an' your likes ascuttlin' an' wi' pretty strongsmellin'

things too. An' you may do as you like now, for I'm none afeard on you. An' you'd better let my boy aloan, an'

look to yoursen, afore the Rinform has got upo' your back. That's what I'n got to say," concluded Mr. Dagley,

striking his fork into the ground with a firmness which proved inconvenient as he tried to draw it up again.

At this last action Monk began to bark loudly, and it was a moment for Mr. Brooke to escape. He walked out

of the yard as quickly as he could, in some amazement at the novelty of his situation. He had never been

insulted on his own land before, and had been inclined to regard himself as a general favorite (we are all apt

to do so, when we think of our own amiability more than of what other people are likely to want of us). When

he had quarrelled with Caleb Garth twelve years before he had thought that the tenants would be pleased at

Some who follow the narrative of his experience may wonder at the midnight darkness of Mr. Dagley; but

nothing was easier in those times than for an hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite somehow

of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who

preached more learnedly than the rector, a landlord who had gone into everything, especially fine art and

social improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only three miles off. As to the facility with which

mortals escape knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of London, and consider what

that eligible person for a dinnerparty would have been if he had learned scant skill in "summing" from the

parishclerk of Tipton, and read a chapter in the Bible with immense difficulty, because such names as Isaiah

or Apollos remained unmanageable after twice spelling. Poor Dagley read a few verses sometimes on a

Sunday evening, and the world was at least not darker to him than it had been before. Some things he knew

thoroughly, namely, the slovenly habits of farming, and the awkwardness of weather, stock and crops, at

Freeman's End so called apparently by way of sarcasm, to imply that a man was free to quit it if he chose,

In watching effects, if only of an electric battery, it is often necessary to change our place and examine a

particular mixture or group at some distance from the point where the movement we are interested in was set

up. The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth's breakfasttable in the large parlor where the maps and

desk were: father, mother, and five of the children. Mary was just now at home waiting for a situation, while

Christy, the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father's

The letters had comenine costly letters, for which the postman had been paid three and twopence, and Mr.

Garth was forgetting his tea and toast while he read his letters and laid them open one above the other,

sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes screwing up his mouth in inward debate, but not forgetting to

cut off a large red seal unbroken, which Letty snatched up like an eager terrier.

The talk among the rest went on unrestrainedly, for nothing disturbed Caleb's absorption except shaking the

Two letters of the nine had been for Mary. After reading them, she had passed them to her mother, and sat

playing with her teaspoon absently, till with a sudden recollection she returned to her sewing, which she had

"Oh, don't sew, Mary!" said Ben, pulling her arm down. "Make me a peacock with this breadcrumb." He

"No, no, Mischief!" said Mary, goodhumoredly, while she pricked his hand lightly with her needle. "Try

and mould it yourself: you have seen me do it often enough. I must get this sewing done. It is for Rosamond

Vincy: she is to be married next week, and she can't be married without this handkerchief." Mary ended

"Why can't she, Mary?" said Letty, seriously interested in this mystery, and pushing her head so close to her

"Because this is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be eleven," said Mary, with a grave air of

"Have you made up your mind, my dear?" said Mrs. Garth, laying the letters down.

"I shall go to the school at York," said Mary. "I am less unfit to teach in a school than in a family. I like to

teach classes best. And, you see, I must teach: there is nothing else to be done."

"Teaching seems to me the most delightful work in the world," said Mrs. Garth, with a touch of rebuke in her

tone. "I could understand your objection to it if you had not knowledge enough, Mary, or if you disliked

"I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like, mother," said Mary, rather curtly. "I

am not fond of a schoolroom: I like the outside world better. It is a very inconvenient fault of mine."

"It must be very stupid to be always in a girls' school," said Alfred. "Such a set of nincompoops, like Mrs.

"And they have no games worth playing at," said Jim. "They can neither throw nor leap. I don't wonder at

"What is that Mary doesn't like, eh?" said the father, looking over his spectacles and pausing before he

"Is it the situation you had heard of, Mary?" said Caleb, gently, looking at his daughter.

"Yes, father: the school at York. I have determined to take it. It is quite the best. Thirtyfive pounds ayear,

"Poor child! I wish she could stay at home with us, Susan," said Caleb, looking plaintively at his wife.

"Mary would not be happy without doing her duty," said Mrs. Garth, magisterially, conscious of having done

"It wouldn't make me happy to do such a nasty duty as that," said Alfredat which Mary and her father

"Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred, for everything that you think disagreeable. And suppose

"That seems to me a great shame. But she's an old brick," said Alfred, rising from his chair, and pulling

Mary colored and laughed, but could not conceal that the tears were coming. Caleb, looking on over his

spectacles, with the angles of his eyebrows falling, had an expression of mingled delight and sorrow as he

returned to the opening of his letter; and even Mrs. Garth, her lips curling with a calm contentment, allowed

that inappropriate language to pass without correction, although Ben immediately took it up, and sang, "She's

an old brick, old brick, old brick!" to a cantering measure, which he beat out with his fist on Mary's arm.

But Mrs. Garth's eyes were now drawn towards her husband, who was already deep in the letter he was

reading. His face had an expression of grave surprise, which alarmed her a little, but he did not like to be

questioned while he was reading, and she remained anxiously watching till she saw him suddenly shaken by a

little joyous laugh as he turned back to the beginning of the letter, and looking at her above his spectacles,

She went and stood behind him, putting her hand on his shoulder, while they read the letter together. It was

from Sir James Chettam, offering to Mr. Garth the management of the family estates at Freshitt and

elsewhere, and adding that Sir James had been requested by Mr. Brooke of Tipton to ascertain whether Mr.

Garth would be disposed at the same time to resume the agency of the Tipton property. The Baronet added in

very obliging words that he himself was particularly desirous of seeing the Freshitt and Tipton estates under

the same management, and he hoped to be able to show that the double agency might be held on terms

agreeable to Mr. Garth, whom he would be glad to see at the Hall at twelve o'clock on the following day.

"He writes handsomely, doesn't he, Susan?" said Caleb, turning his eyes upward to his wife, who raised her

hand from his shoulder to his ear, while she rested her chin on his head. "Brooke didn't like to ask me

"Here is an honor to your father, children," said Mrs. Garth, looking round at the five pair of eyes, all fixed

on the parents. "He is asked to take a post again by those who dismissed him long ago. That shows that he did

"Like Cincinnatushooray!" said Ben, riding on his chair, with a pleasant confidence that discipline was

"Will they come to fetch him, mother?" said Letty, thinking of the Mayor and Corporation in their robes.

Mrs. Garth patted Letty's head and smiled, but seeing that her husband was gathering up his letters and likely

soon to be out of reach in that sanctuary "business," she pressed his shoulder and said emphatically

"Oh yes," said Caleb, in a deep voice of assent, as if it would be unreasonable to suppose anything else of

him. "It'll come to between four and five hundred, the two together." Then with a little start of remembrance

he said, "Mary, write and give up that school. Stay and help your mother. I'm as pleased as Punch, now I've

No manner could have been less like that of Punch triumphant than Caleb's, but his talents did not lie in

finding phrases, though he was very particular about his letterwriting, and regarded his wife as a treasury of

There was almost an uproar among the children now, and Mary held up the cambric embroidery towards her

mother entreatingly, that it might be put out of reach while the boys dragged her into a dance. Mrs. Garth, in

placid joy, began to put the cups and plates together, while Caleb pushing his chair from the table, as if he

were going to move to the desk, still sat holding his letters in his hand and looking on the ground

meditatively, stretching out the fingers of his left hand, according to a mute language of his own. At last he

"It's a thousand pities Christy didn't take to business, Susan. I shall want help byandby. And Alfred must

go off to the engineering I've made up my mind to that." He fell into meditation and fingerrhetoric again

for a little while, and then continued: "I shall make Brooke have new agreements with the tenants, and I shall

draw up a rotation of crops. And I'll lay a wager we can get fine bricks out of the clay at Bott's corner. I must

look into that: it would cheapen the repairs. It's a fine bit of work, Susan! A man without a family would be

"No, no; but it's a fine thing to come to a man when he's seen into the nature of business: to have the chance

of getting a bit of the country into good fettle, as they say, and putting men into the right way with their

farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building donethat those who are living and those

who come after will be the better for. I'd sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work that

is." Here Caleb laid down his letters, thrust his fingers between the buttons of his waistcoat, and sat upright,

but presently proceeded with some awe in his voice and moving his head slowly aside"It's a great gift of

"That it is, Caleb," said his wife, with answering fervor. "And it will be a blessing to your children to have

had a father who did such work: a father whose good work remains though his name may be forgotten." She

In the evening, when Caleb, rather tired with his day's work, was seated in silence with his pocketbook open

on his knee, while Mrs. Garth and Mary were at their sewing, and Letty in a corner was whispering a

dialogue with her doll, Mr. Farebrother came up the orchard walk, dividing the bright August lights and

shadows with the tufted grass and the appletree boughs. We know that he was fond of his parishioners the

Garths, and had thought Mary worth mentioning to Lydgate. He used to the full the clergyman's privilege of

disregarding the Middlemarch discrimination of ranks, and always told his mother that Mrs. Garth was more

of a lady than any matron in the town. Still, you see, he spent his evenings at the Vincys', where the matron,

though less of a lady, presided over a welllit drawingroom and whist. In those days human intercourse was

not determined solely by respect. But the Vicar did heartily respect the Garths, and a visit from him was no

surprise to that family. Nevertheless he accounted for it even while he was shaking hands, by saying, "I come

as an envoy, Mrs. Garth: I have something to say to you and Garth on behalf of Fred Vincy. The fact is, poor

fellow," he continued, as he seated himself and looked round with his bright glance at the three who were

Mary's heart beat rather quickly: she wondered how far Fred's confidence had gone.

"We haven't seen the lad for months," said Caleb. "I couldn't think what was become of him."

"He has been away on a visit," said the Vicar, "because home was a little too hot for him, and Lydgate told

his mother that the poor fellow must not begin to study yet. But yesterday he came and poured himself out to

me. I am very glad he did, because I have seen him grow up from a youngster of fourteen, and I am so much

at home in the house that the children are like nephews and nieces to me. But it is a difficult case to advise

upon. However, he has asked me to come and tell you that he is going away, and that he is so miserable about

his debt to you, and his inability to pay, that he can't bear to come himself even to bid you good by."

"Tell him it doesn't signify a farthing," said Caleb, waving his hand. "We've had the pinch and have got over

"Which means," said Mrs. Garth, smiling at the Vicar, "that we are going to have enough to bring up the boys

"I'm going to be agent for two estates, Freshitt and Tipton; and perhaps for a pretty little bit of land in Lowick

besides: it's all the same family connection, and employment spreads like water if it's once set going. It makes

me very happy, Mr. Farebrother" here Caleb threw back his head a little, and spread his arms on the

elbows of his chair"that I've got an opportunity again with the letting of the land, and carrying out a notion

or two with improvements. It's a most uncommonly cramping thing, as I've often told Susan, to sit on

horseback and look over the hedges at the wrong thing, and not be able to put your hand to it to make it right.

What people do who go into politics I can't think: it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a

It was seldom that Caleb volunteered so long a speech, but his happiness had the effect of mountain air: his

"I congratulate you heartily, Garth," said the Vicar. "This is the best sort of news I could have had to carry to

Fred Vincy, for he dwelt a good deal on the injury he had done you in causing you to part with

moneyrobbing you of it, he saidwhich you wanted for other purposes. I wish Fred were not such an idle

"He means to try again for his degree, and he is going up to study before term. I have advised him to do that.

I don't urge him to enter the Churchon the contrary. But if he will go and work so as to pass, that will be

some guarantee that he has energy and a will; and he is quite at sea; he doesn't know what else to do. So far

he will please his father, and I have promised in the mean time to try and reconcile Vincy to his son's

adopting some other line of life. Fred says frankly he is not fit for a clergyman, and I would do anything I

could to hinder a man from the fatal step of choosing the wrong profession. He quoted to me what you said,

Miss Garth do you remember it?" (Mr. Farebrother used to say "Mary" instead of "Miss Garth," but it was

part of his delicacy to treat her with the more deference because, according to Mrs. Vincy's phrase, she

Mary felt uncomfortable, but, determined to take the matter lightly, answered at once, "I have said so many

"You said, according to him, that he would be one of those ridiculous clergymen who help to make the whole

clergy ridiculous. Really, that was so cutting that I felt a little cut myself."

Caleb laughed. "She gets her tongue from you, Susan," he said, with some enjoyment.

"Not its flippancy, father," said Mary, quickly, fearing that her mother would be displeased. "It is rather too

"It was certainly a hasty speech, my dear," said Mrs. Garth, with whom speaking evil of dignities was a high

misdemeanor. "We should not value our Vicar the less because there was a ridiculous curate in the next

"There's something in what she says, though," said Caleb, not disposed to have Mary's sharpness

undervalued. "A bad workman of any sort makes his fellows mistrusted. Things hang together," he added,

looking on the floor and moving his feet uneasily with a sense that words were scantier than thoughts.

"Clearly," said the Vicar, amused. "By being contemptible we set men's minds, to the tune of contempt. I

certainly agree with Miss Garth's view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not. But as to Fred

Vincy, it is only fair he should be excused a little: old Featherstone's delusive behavior did help to spoil him.

There was something quite diabolical in not leaving him a farthing after all. But Fred has the good taste not to

dwell on that. And what he cares most about is having offended you, Mrs. Garth; he supposes you will never

"I have been disappointed in Fred," said Mrs. Garth, with decision. "But I shall be ready to think well of him

"Oh, we must forgive young people when they're sorry," said Caleb, watching Mary close the door. "And as

Now Mary's gone out, I must tell you a thingit's only known to Susan and me, and you'll not tell it again.

The old scoundrel wanted Mary to burn one of the wills the very night he died, when she was sitting up with

him by herself, and he offered her a sum of money that he had in the box by him if she would do it. But

Mary, you understand, could do no such thingwould not be handling his iron chest, and so on. Now, you

see, the will he wanted burnt was this last, so that if Mary had done what he wanted, Fred Vincy would have

had ten thousand pounds. The old man did turn to him at the last. That touches poor Mary close; she couldn't

help it she was in the right to do what she did, but she feels, as she says, much as if she had knocked down

somebody's property and broken it against her will, when she was rightfully defending herself. I feel with her,

somehow, and if I could make any amends to the poor lad, instead of bearing him a grudge for the harm he

did us, I should be glad to do it. Now, what is your opinion, sir? Susan doesn't agree with me. She saystell

"Mary could not have acted otherwise, even if she had known what would be the effect on Fred," said Mrs.

"And she was quite ignorant of it. It seems to me, a loss which falls on another because we have done right is

The Vicar did not answer immediately, and Caleb said, "It's the feeling. The child feels in that way, and I feel

with her. You don't mean your horse to tread on a dog when you're backing out of the way; but it goes

"I am sure Mrs. Garth would agree with you there," said Mr. Farebrother, who for some reason seemed more

inclined to ruminate than to speak. "One could hardly say that the feeling you mention about Fred is

"Certainly not. But I shall carry the other good newsthat you can afford the loss he caused you."

Mr. Farebrother left the house soon after, and seeing Mary in the orchard with Letty, went to say goodby to

her. They made a pretty picture in the western light which brought out the brightness of the apples on the old

scantleaved boughsMary in her lavender gingham and black ribbons holding a basket, while Letty in her

wellworn nankin picked up the fallen apples. If you want to know more particularly how Mary looked, ten

to one you will see a face like hers in the crowded street tomorrow, if you are there on the watch: she will

not be among those daughters of Zion who are haughty, and walk with stretchedout necks and wanton eyes,

mincing as they go: let all those pass, and fix your eyes on some small plump brownish person of firm but

quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is looking at her. If she has a broad

face and square brow, wellmarked eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her

glance which her mouth keeps the secret of, and for the rest features entirely insignificant take that

ordinary but not disagreeable person for a portrait of Mary Garth. If you made her smile, she would show you

perfect little teeth; if you made her angry, she would not raise her voice, but would probably say one of the

bitterest things you have ever tasted the flavor of; if you did her a kindness, she would never forget it. Mary

admired the keenfaced handsome little Vicar in his wellbrushed threadbare clothes more than any man she

had had the opportunity of knowing. She had never heard him say a foolish thing, though she knew that he

did unwise ones; and perhaps foolish sayings were more objectionable to her than any of Mr. Farebrother's

unwise doings. At least, it was remarkable that the actual imperfections of the Vicar's clerical character never

seemed to call forth the same scorn and dislike which she showed beforehand for the predicted imperfections

of the clerical character sustained by Fred Vincy. These irregularities of judgment, I imagine, are found even

in riper minds than Mary Garth's: our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us

ever saw. Will any one guess towards which of those widely different men Mary had the peculiar woman's

"Have you any message for your old playfellow, Miss Garth?" said the Vicar, as he took a fragrant apple

from the basket which she held towards him, and put it in his pocket. "Something to soften down that harsh

"No," said Mary, shaking her head, and smiling. "If I were to say that he would not be ridiculous as a

clergyman, I must say that he would be something worse than ridiculous. But I am very glad to hear that he is

"On the other hand, I am very glad to hear that YOU are not going away to work. My mother, I am sure, will

be all the happier if you will come to see her at the vicarage: you know she is fond of having young people to

talk to, and she has a great deal to tell about old times. You will really be doing a kindness."

"I should like it very much, if I may," said Mary. "Everything seems too happy for me all at once. I thought it

would always be part of my life to long for home, and losing that grievance makes me feel rather empty: I

"May I go with you, Mary?" whispered Lettya most inconvenient child, who listened to everything. But

she was made exultant by having her chin pinched and her cheek kissed by Mr. Farebrother an incident

As the Vicar walked to Lowick, any one watching him closely might have seen him twice shrug his

shoulders. I think that the rare Englishmen who have this gesture are never of the heavy type for fear of

any lumbering instance to the contrary, I will say, hardly ever; they have usually a fine temperament and

much tolerance towards the smaller errors of men (themselves inclusive). The Vicar was holding an inward

dialogue in which he told himself that there was probably something more between Fred and Mary Garth than

the regard of old playfellows, and replied with a question whether that bit of womanhood were not a great

deal too choice for that crude young gentleman. The rejoinder to this was the first shrug. Then he laughed at

himself for being likely to have felt jealous, as if he had been a man able to marry, which, added he, it is as

What could two men, so different from each other, see in this "brown patch," as Mary called herself? It was

certainly not her plainness that attracted them (and let all plain young ladies be warned against the dangerous

encouragement given them by Society to confide in their want of beauty). A human being in this aged nation

of ours is a very wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences: and charm is a result of

When Mr. and Mrs. Garth were sitting alone, Caleb said, "Susan, guess what I'm thinking of."

"The rotation of crops," said Mrs. Garth, smiling at him, above her knitting, "or else the backdoors of the

"No," said Caleb, gravely; "I am thinking that I could do a great turn for Fred Vincy. Christy's gone, Alfred

will be gone soon, and it will be five years before Jim is ready to take to business. I shall want help, and Fred

might come in and learn the nature of things and act under me, and it might be the making of him into a

"I think, there is hardly anything honest that his family would object to more," said Mrs. Garth, decidedly.

"What care I about their objecting?" said Caleb, with a sturdiness which he was apt to show when he had an

opinion. "The lad is of age and must get his bread. He has sense enough and quickness enough; he likes being

on the land, and it's my belief that he could learn business well if he gave his mind to it."

"But would he? His father and mother wanted him to be a fine gentleman, and I think he has the same sort of

feeling himself. They all think us beneath them. And if the proposal came from you, I am sure Mrs. Vincy

"Life is a poor tale, if it is to be settled by nonsense of that sort," said Caleb, with disgust.

"I call it improper pride to let fools' notions hinder you from doing a good action. There's no sort of work,"

said Caleb, with fervor, putting out his hand and moving it up and down to mark his emphasis, "that could

ever be done well, if you minded what fools say. You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that

"I will not oppose any plan you have set your mind on, Caleb," said Mrs. Garth, who was a firm woman, but

knew that there were some points on which her mild husband was yet firmer. "Still, it seems to be fixed that

Fred is to go back to college: will it not be better to wait and see what he will choose to do after that? It is not

easy to keep people against their will. And you are not yet quite sure enough of your own position, or what

"Well, it may be better to wait a bit. But as to my getting plenty of work for two, I'm pretty sure of that. I've

always had my hands full with scattered things, and there's always something fresh turning up. Why, only

yesterdaybless me, I don't think I told you!it was rather odd that two men should have been at me on

different sides to do the same bit of valuing. And who do you think they were?" said Caleb, taking a pinch of

snuff and holding it up between his fingers, as if it were a part of his exposition. He was fond of a pinch when

it occurred to him, but he usually forgot that this indulgence was at his command.

"Why, that Rigg, or Rigg Featherstone, was one. But Bulstrode was before him, so I'm going to do it for

Bulstrode. Whether it's mortgage or purchase they're going for, I can't tell yet."

"Can that man be going to sell the land just left himwhich he has taken the name for?" said Mrs. Garth.

"Deuce knows," said Caleb, who never referred the knowledge of discreditable doings to any higher power

than the deuce. "But Bulstrode has long been wanting to get a handsome bit of land under his fingersthat I

Caleb scattered his snuff carefully instead of taking it, and then added, "The ins and outs of things are

curious. Here is the land they've been all along expecting for Fred, which it seems the old man never meant to

leave him a foot of, but left it to this sideslip of a son that he kept in the dark, and thought of his sticking

there and vexing everybody as well as he could have vexed 'em himself if he could have kept alive. I say, it

would be curious if it got into Bulstrode's hands after all. The old man hated him, and never would bank with

"What reason could the miserable creature have for hating a man whom he had nothing to do with?" said

"Pooh! where's the use of asking for such fellows' reasons? The soul of man," said Caleb, with the deep tone

and grave shake of the head which always came when he used this phrase"The soul of man, when it gets

fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toadstools, and no eye can see whence came the seed

It was one of Caleb's quaintnesses, that in his difficulty of finding speech for his thought, he caught, as it

were, snatches of diction which he associated with various points of view or states of mind; and whenever he

had a feeling of awe, he was haunted by a sense of Biblical phraseology, though he could hardly have given a

The transactions referred to by Caleb Garth as having gone forward between Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Joshua

Rigg Featherstone concerning the land attached to Stone Court, had occasioned the interchange of a letter or

Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? If it happens to have been cut in stone, though it lie face

downmost for ages on a forsaken beach, or "rest quietly under the drums and tramplings of many

conquests," it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and other scandals gossiped about long

empires ago: this world being apparently a huge whisperinggallery. Such conditions are often minutely

represented in our petty lifetimes. As the stone which has been kicked by generations of clowns may come by

curious little links of effect under the eyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at last fix the date of

invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or

stopgap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into the

opening of a catastrophe. To Uriel watching the progress of planetary history from the sun, the one result

Having made this rather lofty comparison I am less uneasy in calling attention to the existence of low people

by whose interference, however little we may like it, the course of the world is very much determined. It

would be well, certainly, if we could help to reduce their number, and something might perhaps be done by

not lightly giving occasion to their existence. Socially speaking, Joshua Rigg would have been generally

pronounced a superfluity. But those who like Peter Featherstone never had a copy of themselves demanded,

are the very last to wait for such a request either in prose or verse. The copy in this case bore more of outside

resemblance to the mother, in whose sex frogfeatures, accompanied with freshcolored cheeks and a

wellrounded figure, are compatible with much charm for a certain order of admirers. The result is

sometimes a frogfaced male, desirable, surely, to no order of intelligent beings. Especially when he is

suddenly brought into evidence to frustrate other people's expectations the very lowest aspect in which a

But Mr. Rigg Featherstone's low characteristics were all of the sober, waterdrinking kind. From the earliest

to the latest hour of the day he was always as sleek, neat, and cool as the frog he resembled, and old Peter had

secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more calculating, and far more imperturbable, than himself. I will

add that his fingernails were scrupulously attended to, and that he meant to marry a welleducated young

lady (as yet unspecified) whose person was good, and whose connections, in a solid middleclass way, were

undeniable. Thus his nails and modesty were comparable to those of most gentlemen; though his ambition

had been educated only by the opportunities of a clerk and accountant in the smaller commercial houses of a

seaport. He thought the rural Featherstones very simple absurd people, and they in their turn regarded his

"bringing up" in a seaport town as an exaggeration of the monstrosity that their brother Peter, and still more

The garden and gravel approach, as seen from the two windows of the wainscoted parlor at Stone Court, were

never in better trim than now, when Mr. Rigg Featherstone stood, with his hands behind him, looking out on

these grounds as their master. But it seemed doubtful whether he looked out for the sake of contemplation or

of turning his back to a person who stood in the middle of the room, with his legs considerably apart and his

hands in his trouserpockets: a person in all respects a contrast to the sleek and cool Rigg. He was a man

obviously on the way towards sixty, very florid and hairy, with much gray in his bushy whiskers and thick

curly hair, a stoutish body which showed to disadvantage the somewhat worn joinings of his clothes, and the

air of a swaggerer, who would aim at being noticeable even at a show of fireworks, regarding his own

remarks on any other person's performance as likely to be more interesting than the performance itself.

His name was John Raffles, and he sometimes wrote jocosely W.A.G. after his signature, observing when he

did so, that he was once taught by Leonard Lamb of Finsbury who wrote B.A. after his name, and that he,

Raffles, originated the witticism of calling that celebrated principal BaLamb. Such were the appearance and

mental flavor of Mr. Raffles, both of which seemed to have a stale odor of travellers' rooms in the

"Come, now, Josh," he was saying, in a full rumbling tone, "look at it in this light: here is your poor mother

going into the vale of years, and you could afford something handsome now to make her comfortable."

"Not while you live. Nothing would make her comfortable while you live," returned Rigg, in his cool high

"You bear me a grudge, Josh, that I know. But come, nowas between man and manwithout humbuga

little capital might enable me to make a firstrate thing of the shop. The tobacco trade is growing. I should

cut my own nose off in not doing the best I could at it. I should stick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own

sake. I should always be on the spot. And nothing would make your poor mother so happy. I've pretty well

done with my wild oats turned fiftyfive. I want to settle down in my chimneycorner. And if I once

buckled to the tobacco trade, I could bring an amount of brains and experience to bear on it that would not be

found elsewhere in a hurry. I don't want to be bothering you one time after another, but to get things once for

all into the right channel. Consider that, Joshas between man and manand with your poor mother to be

"Yes, I've done," said Raffles, taking hold of his hat which stood before him on the table, and giving it a sort

"Then just listen to me. The more you say anything, the less I shall believe it. The more you want me to do a

thing, the more reason I shall have for never doing it. Do you think I mean to forget your kicking me when I

was a lad, and eating all the best victual away from me and my mother? Do you think I forget your always

coming home to sell and pocket everything, and going off again leaving us in the lurch? I should be glad to

see you whipped at the carttail. My mother was a fool to you: she'd no right to give me a fatherinlaw, and

she's been punished for it. She shall have her weekly allowance paid and no more: and that shall be stopped if

you dare to come on to these premises again, or to come into this country after me again. The next time you

show yourself inside the gates here, you shall be driven off with the dogs and the wagoner's whip."

As Rigg pronounced the last words he turned round and looked at Raffles with his prominent frozen eyes.

The contrast was as striking as it could have been eighteen years before, when Rigg was a most unengaging

kickable boy, and Raffles was the rather thickset Adonis of barrooms and backparlors. But the advantage

now was on the side of Rigg, and auditors of this conversation might probably have expected that Raffles

would retire with the air of a defeated dog. Not at all. He made a grimace which was habitual with him

whenever he was "out" in a game; then subsided into a laugh, and drew a brandyflask from his pocket.

"Come, Josh," he said, in a cajoling tone, "give us a spoonful of brandy, and a sovereign to pay the way back,

"Mind," said Rigg, drawing out a bunch of keys, "if I ever see you again, I shan't speak to you. I don't own

you any more than if I saw a crow; and if you want to own me you'll get nothing by it but a character for

"That's a pity, now, Josh," said Raffles, affecting to scratch his head and wrinkle his brows upward as if he

were nonplussed. "I'm very fond of you; BY Jove, I am! There's nothing I like better than plaguing

youyou're so like your mother, and I must do without it. But the brandy and the sovereign's a bargain."

He jerked forward the flask and Rigg went to a fine old oaken bureau with his keys. But Raffles had

reminded himself by his movement with the flask that it had become dangerously loose from its leather

covering, and catching sight of a folded paper which had fallen within the fender, he took it up and shoved it

By that time Rigg came forward with a brandybottle, filled the flask, and handed Raffles a sovereign,

neither looking at him nor speaking to him. After locking up the bureau again, he walked to the window and

gazed out as impassibly as he had done at the beginning of the interview, while Raffles took a small

allowance from the flask, screwed it up, and deposited it in his sidepocket, with provoking slowness,

"Farewell, Joshand if forever!" said Raffles, turning back his head as he opened the door.

Rigg saw him leave the grounds and enter the lane. The gray day had turned to a light drizzling rain, which

freshened the hedgerows and the grassy borders of the byroads, and hastened the laborers who were loading

the last shocks of corn. Raffles, walking with the uneasy gait of a town loiterer obliged to do a bit of country

journeying on foot, looked as incongruous amid this moist rural quiet and industry as if he had been a baboon

escaped from a menagerie. But there were none to stare at him except the longweaned calves, and none to

show dislike of his appearance except the little waterrats which rustled away at his approach.

He was fortunate enough when he got on to the highroad to be overtaken by the stagecoach, which carried

him to Brassing; and there he took the newmade railway, observing to his fellowpassengers that he

considered it pretty well seasoned now it had done for Huskisson. Mr. Raffles on most occasions kept up the

sense of having been educated at an academy, and being able, if he chose, to pass well everywhere; indeed,

there was not one of his fellowmen whom he did not feel himself in a position to ridicule and torment,

confident of the entertainment which he thus gave to all the rest of the company.

He played this part now with as much spirit as if his journey had been entirely successful, resorting at

frequent intervals to his flask. The paper with which he had wedged it was a letter signed Nicholas Bulstrode,

One of the professional calls made by Lydgate soon after his return from his weddingjourney was to Lowick

Manor, in consequence of a letter which had requested him to fix a time for his visit.

Mr. Casaubon had never put any question concerning the nature of his illness to Lydgate, nor had he even to

Dorothea betrayed any anxiety as to how far it might be likely to cut short his labors or his life. On this point,

as on all others, he shrank from pity; and if the suspicion of being pitied for anything in his lot surmised or

known in spite of himself was embittering, the idea of calling forth a show of compassion by frankly

admitting an alarm or a sorrow was necessarily intolerable to him. Every proud mind knows something of

this experience, and perhaps it is only to be overcome by a sense of fellowship deep enough to make all

But Mr. Casaubon was now brooding over something through which the question of his health and life

haunted his silence with a more harassing importunity even than through the autumnal unripeness of his

authorship. It is true that this last might be called his central ambition; but there are some kinds of authorship

in which by far the largest result is the uneasy susceptibility accumulated in the consciousness of the author

one knows of the river by a few streaks amid a longgathered deposit of uncomfortable mud. That was the

way with Mr. Casaubon's hard intellectual labors. Their most characteristic result was not the "Key to all

Mythologies," but a morbid consciousness that others did not give him the place which he had not

demonstrably meriteda perpetual suspicious conjecture that the views entertained of him were not to his

advantage a melancholy absence of passion in his efforts at achievement, and a passionate resistance to the

Thus his intellectual ambition which seemed to others to have absorbed and dried him, was really no security

against wounds, least of all against those which came from Dorothea. And he had begun now to frame

possibilities for the future which were somehow more embittering to him than anything his mind had dwelt

Against certain facts he was helpless: against Will Ladislaw's existence his defiant stay in the neighborhood

of Lowick, and his flippant state of mind with regard to the possessors of authentic, wellstamped erudition:

against Dorothea's nature, always taking on some new shape of ardent activity, and even in submission and

silence covering fervid reasons which it was an irritation to think of: against certain notions and likings which

had taken possession of her mind in relation to subjects that he could not possibly discuss with her. "There

was no denying that Dorothea was as virtuous and lovely a young lady as he could have obtained for a wife;

but a young lady turned out to be something more troublesome than he had conceived. She nursed him, she

read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous about his feelings; but there had entered into the

husband's mind the certainty that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like a penitential

expiation of unbelieving thoughtswas accompanied with a power of comparison by which himself and his

doings were seen too luminously as a part of things in general. His discontent passed vaporlike through all

her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to that inappreciative world which she had only brought nearer to

Poor Mr. Casaubon! This suffering was the harder to bear because it seemed like a betrayal: the young

creature who had worshipped him with perfect trust had quickly turned into the critical wife; and early

instances of criticism and resentment had made an impression which no tenderness and submission

afterwards could remove. To his suspicious interpretation Dorothea's silence now was a suppressed rebellion;

a remark from her which he had not in any way anticipated was an assertion of conscious superiority; her

gentle answers had an irritating cautiousness in them; and when she acquiesced it was a selfapproved effort

of forbearance. The tenacity with which he strove to hide this inward drama made it the more vivid for him;

Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think it quite ordinary. Will not a tiny speck

very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I

know no speck so troublesome as self. And who, if Mr. Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents

his suspicions that he was not any longer adored without criticism could have denied that they were

founded on good reasons? On the contrary, there was a strong reason to be added, which he had not himself

taken explicitly into accountnamely, that he was not unmixedly adorable. He suspected this, however, as

he suspected other things, without confessing it, and like the rest of us, felt how soothing it would have been

This sore susceptibility in relation to Dorothea was thoroughly prepared before Will Ladislaw had returned to

Lowick, and what had occurred since then had brought Mr. Casaubon's power of suspicious construction into

exasperated activity. To all the facts which he knew, he added imaginary facts both present and future which

become more real to him than those because they called up a stronger dislike, a more predominating

bitterness. Suspicion and jealousy of Will Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's

impressions, were constantly at their weaving work. It would be quite unjust to him to suppose that he could

have entered into any coarse misinterpretation of Dorothea: his own habits of mind and conduct, quite as

much as the open elevation of her nature, saved him from any such mistake. What he was jealous of was her

opinion, the sway that might be given to her ardent mind in its judgments, and the future possibilities to

which these might lead her. As to Will, though until his last defiant letter he had nothing definite which he

would choose formally to allege against him, he felt himself warranted in believing that he was capable of

any design which could fascinate a rebellious temper and an undisciplined impulsiveness. He was quite sure

that Dorothea was the cause of Will's return from Rome, and his determination to settle in the neighborhood;

and he was penetrating enough to imagine that Dorothea had innocently encouraged this course. It was as

clear as possible that she was ready to be attached to Will and to be pliant to his suggestions: they had never

had a teteatete without her bringing away from it some new troublesome impression, and the last interview

that Mr. Casaubon was aware of (Dorothea, on returning from Freshitt Hall, had for the first time been silent

about having seen Will) had led to a scene which roused an angrier feeling against them both than he had

ever known before. Dorothea's outpouring of her notions about money, in the darkness of the night, had done

And there was the shock lately given to his health always sadly present with him. He was certainly much

revived; he had recovered all his usual power of work: the illness might have been mere fatigue, and there

might still be twenty years of achievement before him, which would justify the thirty years of preparation.

That prospect was made the sweeter by a flavor of vengeance against the hasty sneers of Carp Company; for

even when Mr. Casaubon was carrying his taper among the tombs of the past, those modern figures came

athwart the dim light, and interrupted his diligent exploration. To convince Carp of his mistake, so that he

would have to eat his own words with a good deal of indigestion, would be an agreeable accident of

triumphant authorship, which the prospect of living to future ages on earth and to all eternity in heaven could

not exclude from contemplation. Since, thus, the prevision of his own unending bliss could not nullify the

bitter savors of irritated jealousy and vindictiveness, it is the less surprising that the probability of a transient

earthly bliss for other persons, when he himself should have entered into glory, had not a potently sweetening

effect. If the truth should be that some undermining disease was at work within him, there might be large

opportunity for some people to be the happier when he was gone; and if one of those people should be Will

Ladislaw, Mr. Casaubon objected so strongly that it seemed as if the annoyance would make part of his

This is a very bare and therefore a very incomplete way of putting the case. The human soul moves in many

channels, and Mr. Casaubon, we know, had a sense of rectitude and an honorable pride in satisfying the

requirements of honor, which compelled him to find other reasons for his conduct than those of jealousy and

vindictiveness. The way in which Mr. Casaubon put the case was this:"In marrying Dorothea Brooke I had

to care for her wellbeing in case of my death. But wellbeing is not to be secured by ample, independent

possession of property; on the contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might expose her to

the more danger. She is ready prey to any man who knows how to play adroitly either on her affectionate

ardor or her Quixotic enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his minda man with no

other principle than transient caprice, and who has a personal animosity towards me I am sure of itan

animosity which is fed by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly vented in ridicule

of which I am as well assured as if I had heard it. Even if I live I shall not be without uneasiness as to what he

may attempt through indirect influence. This man has gained Dorothea's ear: he has fascinated her attention;

he has evidently tried to impress her mind with the notion that he has claims beyond anything I have done for

him. If I dieand he is waiting here on the watch for that he will persuade her to marry him. That would

be calamity for her and success for him. SHE would not think it calamity: he would make her believe

anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment which she inwardly reproaches me for not responding

to, and already her mind is occupied with his fortunes. He thinks of an easy conquest and of entering into my

nest. That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be fatal to Dorothea. Has he ever persisted in anything except

from contradiction? In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small cost. In religion he could be, as

long as it suited him, the facile echo of Dorothea's vagaries. When was sciolism ever dissociated from laxity?

I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to the utmost the fulfilment of his designs."

The arrangements made by Mr. Casaubon on his marriage left strong measures open to him, but in ruminating

on them his mind inevitably dwelt so much on the probabilities of his own life that the longing to get the

nearest possible calculation had at last overcome his proud reticence, and had determined him to ask

He had mentioned to Dorothea that Lydgate was coming by appointment at halfpast three, and in answer to

her anxious question, whether he had felt ill, replied,"No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning

some habitual symptoms. You need not see him, my dear. I shall give orders that he may be sent to me in the

When Lydgate entered the Yewtree Walk he saw Mr. Casaubon slowly receding with his hands behind him

according to his habit, and his head bent forward. It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty limes

were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the lights and shadows slept side by side: there was

no sound but the cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that last solemn lullaby, a

dirge. Lydgate, conscious of an energetic frame in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he

was likely soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more markedly than ever the

signs of premature agethe student's bent shoulders, the emaciated limbs, and the melancholy lines of the

mouth. "Poor fellow," he thought, "some men with his years are like lions; one can tell nothing of their age

"Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, with his invariably po lite air, "I am exceedingly obliged to you for your

punctuality. We will, if you please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro."

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

"Not immediatelyno. In order to account for that wish I must mention what it were otherwise needless

to refer tothat my life, on all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance from the

incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its best years. In short, I have long had on hand a

work which I would fain leave behind me in such a state, at least, that it might be committed to the press

byothers. Were I assured that this is the utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful

circumscription of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and negative determination of my course."

Here Mr. Casaubon paused, removed one hand from his back and thrust it between the buttons of his

singlebreasted coat. To a mind largely instructed in the human destiny hardly anything could be more

interesting than the inward conflict implied in his formal measured address, delivered with the usual

singsong and motion of the head. Nay, are there many situations more sublimely tragic than the struggle of

the soul with the demand to renounce a work which has been all the significance of its lifea significance

which is to vanish as the waters which come and go where no man has need of them? But there was nothing

to strike others as sublime about Mr. Casaubon, and Lydgate, who had some contempt at hand for futile

scholarship, felt a little amusement mingling with his pity. He was at present too ill acquainted with disaster

to enter into the pathos of a lot where everything is below the level of tragedy except the passionate egoism

"You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?" he said, wishing to help forward Mr. Casaubon's

"I do. You have not implied to me that the symptoms which I am bound to testifyyou watched with

scrupulous care, were those of a fatal disease. But were it so, Mr. Lydgate, I should desire to know the truth

without reservation, and I appeal to you for an exact statement of your conclusions: I request it as a friendly

service. If you can tell me that my life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary casualties, I shall

rejoice, on grounds which I have already indicated. If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to

"Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course," said Lydgate; "but the first thing I must impress on you is

that my conclusions are doubly uncertainuncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because diseases

of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on. In any ease, one can hardly increase appreciably

"I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty degeneration of the heart, a disease which was first

divined and explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the stethoscope, not so very many years ago. A good

deal of experiencea more lengthened observationis wanting on the subject. But after what you have

said, it is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is often sudden. At the same time, no such result can

be predicted. Your condition may be consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen years, or

even more. I could add no information to this beyond anatomical or medical details, which would leave

expectation at precisely the same point." Lydgate's instinct was fine enough to tell him that plain speech,

quite free from ostentatious caution, would be felt by Mr. Casaubon as a tribute of respect.

"I thank you, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Casaubon, after a moment's pause. "One thing more I have still to ask:

"PartlyI mean, as to the possible issues." Lydgate was going to explain why he had told Dorothea, but Mr.

Casaubon, with an unmistakable desire to end the conversation, waved his hand slightly, and said again, "I

Lydgate, certain that his patient wished to be alone, soon left him; and the black figure with hands behind and

head bent forward continued to pace the walk where the dark yewtrees gave him a mute companionship in

melancholy, and the little shadows of bird or leaf that fleeted across the isles of sunlight, stole along in

silence as in the presence of a sorrow. Here was a man who now for the first time found himself looking into

the eyes of death who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience when we feel the truth

of a commonplace, which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of waters upon the earth

is different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. When the

commonplace "We must all die" transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness "I must die and

soon," then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our

mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first. To Mr. Casaubon now, it was

as if he suddenly found himself on the dark riverbrink and heard the plash of the oncoming oar, not

discerning the forms, but expecting the summons. In such an hour the mind does not change its lifelong bias,

but carries it onward in imagination to the other side of death, gazing backward perhaps with the divine

calm of beneficence, perhaps with the petty anxieties of selfassertion. What was Mr. Casaubon's bias his

acts will give us a clew to. He held himself to be, with some private scholarly reservations, a believing

Christian, as to estimates of the present and hopes of the future. But what we strive to gratify, though we may

call it a distant hope, is an immediate desire: the future estate for which men drudge up city alleys exists

already in their imagination and love. And Mr. Casaubon's immediate desire was not for divine communion

and light divested of earthly conditions; his passionate longings, poor man, clung low and mistlike in very

Dorothea had been aware when Lydgate had ridden away, and she had stepped into the garden, with the

impulse to go at once to her husband. But she hesitated, fearing to offend him by obtruding herself; for her

ardor, continually repulsed, served, with her intense memory, to heighten her dread, as thwarted energy

subsides into a shudder; and she wandered slowly round the nearer clumps of trees until she saw him

advancing. Then she went towards him, and might have represented a heavensent angel coming with a

promise that the short hours remaining should yet be filled with that faithful love which clings the closer to a

comprehended grief. His glance in reply to hers was so chill that she felt her timidity increased; yet she

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

There was something horrible to Dorothea in the sensation which this unresponsive hardness inflicted on her.

That is a strong word, but not too strong: it is in these acts called trivialities that the seeds of joy are forever

wasted, until men and women look round with haggard faces at the devastation their own waste has made,

and say, the earth bears no harvest of sweetnesscalling their denial knowledge. You may ask why, in the

name of manliness, Mr. Casaubon should have behaved in that way. Consider that his was a mind which

shrank from pity: have you ever watched in such a mind the effect of a suspicion that what is pressing it as a

grief may be really a source of contentment, either actual or future, to the being who already offends by

pitying? Besides, he knew little of Dorothea's sensations, and had not reflected that on such an occasion as

the present they were comparable in strength to his own sensibilities about Carp's criticisms.

Dorothea did not withdraw her arm, but she could not venture to speak. Mr. Casaubon did not say, "I wish to

be alone," but he directed his steps in silence towards the house, and as they entered by the glass door on this

eastern side, Dorothea withdrew her arm and lingered on the matting, that she might leave her husband quite

She went up to her boudoir. The open bowwindow let in the serene glory of the afternoon lying in the

avenue, where the limetrees east long shadows. But Dorothea knew nothing of the scene. She threw herself

on a chair, not heeding that she was in the dazzling sunrays: if there were discomfort in that, how could she

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

"What have I donewhat am Ithat he should treat me so? He never knows what is in my mindhe never

She began to hear herself, and was checked into stillness. Like one who has lost his way and is weary, she sat

and saw as in one glance all the paths of her young hope which she should never find again. And just as

clearly in the miserable light she saw her own and her husband's solitudehow they walked apart so that she

was obliged to survey him. If he had drawn her towards him, she would never have surveyed himnever

have said, "Is he worth living for?" but would have felt him simply a part of her own life. Now she said

bitterly, "It is his fault, not mine." In the jar of her whole being, Pity was overthrown. Was it her fault that she

had believed in him had believed in his worthiness?And what, exactly, was he? She was able enough

to estimate himshe who waited on his glances with trembling, and shut her best soul in prison, paying it

only hidden visits, that she might be petty enough to please him. In such a crisis as this, some women begin

The sun was low when Dorothea was thinking that she would not go down again, but would send a message

to her husband saying that she was not well and preferred remaining upstairs. She had never deliberately

allowed her resentment to govern her in this way before, but she believed now that she could not see him

again without telling him the truth about her feeling, and she must wait till she could do it without

interruption. He might wonder and be hurt at her message. It was good that he should wonder and be hurt.

Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her that all heaven, though it were crowded with

spirits watching them, must be on her side. She had determined to ring her bell, when there came a rap at the

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

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

Dorothea sat almost motionless in her meditative struggle, while the evening slowly deepened into night. But

the struggle changed continually, as that of a man who begins with a movement towards striking and ends

with conquering his desire to strike. The energy that would animate a crime is not more than is wanted to

inspire a resolved, submission, when the noble habit of the soul reasserts itself. That thought with which

Dorothea had gone out to meet her husbandher conviction that he had been asking about the possible arrest

of all his work, and that the answer must have wrung his heart, could not be long without rising beside the

image of him, like a shadowy monitor looking at her anger with sad remonstrance. It cost her a litany of

pictured sorrows and of silent cries that she might be the mercy for those sorrows but the resolved

submission did come; and when the house was still, and she knew that it was near the time when Mr.

Casaubon habitually went to rest, she opened her door gently and stood outside in the darkness waiting for

his coming upstairs with a light in his hand. If he did not come soon she thought that she would go down

and even risk incurring another pang. She would never again expect anything else. But she did hear the

library door open, and slowly the light advanced up the staircase without noise from the footsteps on the

carpet. When her husband stood opposite to her, she saw that his face was more haggard. He started slightly

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

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

When the kind quiet melancholy of that speech fell on Dorothea's ears, she felt something like the

thankfulness that might well up in us if we had narrowly escaped hurting a lamed creature. She put her hand

Dorothea seldom left home without her husband, but she did occasionally drive into Middlemarch alone, on

little errands of shopping or charity such as occur to every lady of any wealth when she lives within three

miles of a town. Two days after that scene in the Yewtree Walk, she determined to use such an opportunity

in order if possible to see Lydgate, and learn from him whether her husband had really felt any depressing

change of symptoms which he was concealing from her, and whether he had insisted on knowing the utmost

about himself. She felt almost guilty in asking for knowledge about him from another, but the dread of being

without itthe dread of that ignorance which would make her unjust or hardovercame every scruple. That

there had been some crisis in her husband's mind she was certain: he had the very next day begun a new

method of arranging his notes, and had associated her quite newly in carrying out his plan. Poor Dorothea

It was about four o'clock when she drove to Lydgate's house in Lowick Gate, wishing, in her immediate

doubt of finding him at home, that she had written beforehand. And he was not at home.

"Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?" said Dorothea, who had never, that she knew of, seen Rosamond, but now

"I will go in and speak to her, if she will allow me. Will you ask her if she can see mesee Mrs. Casaubon,

When the servant had gone to deliver that message, Dorothea could hear sounds of music through an open

windowa few notes from a man's voice and then a piano bursting into roulades. But the roulades broke off

suddenly, and then the servant came back saying that Mrs. Lydgate would be happy to see Mrs. Casaubon.

When the drawingroom door opened and Dorothea entered, there was a sort of contrast not infrequent in

country life when the habits of the different ranks were less blent than now. Let those who know, tell us

exactly what stuff it was that Dorothea wore in those days of mild autumnthat thin white woollen stuff soft

to the touch and soft to the eye. It always seemed to have been lately washed, and to smell of the sweet

hedgeswas always in the shape of a pelisse with sleeves hanging all out of the fashion. Yet if she had

entered before a still audience as Imogene or Cato's daughter, the dress might have seemed right enough: the

grace and dignity were in her limbs and neck; and about her simply parted hair and candid eyes the large

round poke which was then in the fate of women, seemed no more odd as a headdress than the gold trencher

we call a halo. By the present audience of two persons, no dramatic heroine could have been expected with

more interest than Mrs. Casaubon. To Rosamond she was one of those county divinities not mixing with

Middlemarch mortality, whose slightest marks of manner or appearance were worthy of her study; moreover,

Rosamond was not without satisfaction that Mrs. Casaubon should have an opportunity of studying HER.

What is the use of being exquisite if you are not seen by the best judges? and since Rosamond had received

the highest compliments at Sir Godwin Lydgate's, she felt quite confident of the impression she must make

on people of good birth. Dorothea put out her hand with her usual simple kindness, and looked admiringly at

Lydgate's lovely brideaware that there was a gentleman standing at a distance, but seeing him merely as a

coated figure at a wide angle. The gentleman was too much occupied with the presence of the one woman to

reflect on the contrast between the twoa contrast that would certainly have been striking to a calm

observer. They were both tall, and their eyes were on a level; but imagine Rosamond's infantine blondness

and wondrous crown of hairplaits, with her paleblue dress of a fit and fashion so perfect that no

dressmaker could look at it without emotion, a large embroidered collar which it was to be hoped all

beholders would know the price of, her small hands duly set off with rings, and that controlled

"Thank you very much for allowing me to interrupt you," said Dorothea, immediately. "I am anxious to see

Mr. Lydgate, if possible, before I go home, and I hoped that you might possibly tell me where I could find

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

"Will you let me go and fetch him?" said Will Ladislaw, coming forward. He had already taken up his hat

before Dorothea entered. She colored with surprise, but put out her hand with a smile of unmistakable

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

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

Will was moving to the door when Dorothea, whose mind had flashed in an instant over many connected

memories, turned quickly and said, "I will go myself, thank you. I wish to lose no time before getting home

again. I will drive to the Hospital and see Mr. Lydgate there. Pray excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate. I am very much

Her mind was evidently arrested by some sudden thought, and she left the room hardly conscious of what was

immediately around her hardly conscious that Will opened the door for her and offered her his arm to lead

her to the carriage. She took the arm but said nothing. Will was feeling rather vexed and miserable, and found

nothing to say on his side. He handed her into the carriage in silence, they said goodby, and Dorothea drove

In the five minutes' drive to the Hospital she had time for some reflections that were quite new to her. Her

decision to go, and her preoccupation in leaving the room, had come from the sudden sense that there would

be a sort of deception in her voluntarily allowing any further intercourse between herself and Will which she

was unable to mention to her husband, and already her errand in seeking Lydgate was a matter of

concealment. That was all that had been explicitly in her mind; but she had been urged also by a vague

discomfort. Now that she was alone in her drive, she heard the notes of the man's voice and the

accompanying piano, which she had not noted much at the time, returning on her inward sense; and she found

herself thinking with some wonder that Will Ladislaw was passing his time with Mrs. Lydgate in her

husband's absence. And then she could not help remembering that he had passed some time with her under

like circumstances, so why should there be any unfitness in the fact? But Will was Mr. Casaubon's relative,

and one towards whom she was bound to show kindness. Still there had been signs which perhaps she ought

to have understood as implying that Mr. Casaubon did not like his cousin's visits during his own absence.

"Perhaps I have been mistaken in many things," said poor Dorothea to herself, while the tears came rolling

and she had to dry them quickly. She felt confusedly unhappy, and the image of Will which had been so clear

to her before was mysteriously spoiled. But the carriage stopped at the gate of the Hospital. She was soon

walking round the grass plots with Lydgate, and her feelings recovered the strong bent which had made her

Will Ladislaw, meanwhile, was mortified, and knew the reason of it clearly enough. His chances of meeting

Dorothea were rare; and here for the first time there had come a chance which had set him at a disadvantage.

It was not only, as it had been hitherto, that she was not supremely occupied with him, but that she had seen

him under circumstances in which he might appear not to be supremely occupied with her. He felt thrust to a

new distance from her, amongst the circles of Middlemarchers who made no part of her life. But that was not

his fault: of course, since he had taken his lodgings in the town, he had been making as many acquaintances

as he could, his position requiring that he should know everybody and everything. Lydgate was really better

worth knowing than any one else in the neighborhood, and he happened to have a wife who was musical and

altogether worth calling upon. Here was the whole history of the situation in which Diana had descended too

unexpectedly on her worshipper. It was mortifying. Will was conscious that he should not have been at

Middlemarch but for Dorothea; and yet his position there was threatening to divide him from her with those

barriers of habitual sentiment which are more fatal to the persistence of mutual interest than all the distance

between Rome and Britain. Prejudices about rank and status were easy enough to defy in the form of a

tyrannical letter from Mr. Casaubon; but prejudices, like odorous bodies, have a double existence both solid

and subtle solid as the pyramids, subtle as the twentieth echo of an echo, or as the memory of hyacinths

which once scented the darkness. And Will was of a temperament to feel keenly the presence of subtleties: a

man of clumsier perceptions would not have felt, as he did, that for the first time some sense of unfitness in

perfect freedom with him had sprung up in Dorothea's mind, and that their silence, as he conducted her to the

carriage, had had a chill in it. Perhaps Casaubon, in his hatred and jealousy, had been insisting to Dorothea

Will reentered the drawingroom, took up his hat, and looking irritated as he advanced towards Mrs.

"It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted. May I come another day and just finish about the

"I shall be happy to be taught," said Rosamond. "But I am sure you admit that the interruption was a very

beautiful one. I quite envy your acquaintance with Mrs. Casaubon. Is she very clever? She looks as if she

"That is just the answer Tertius gave me, when I first asked him if she were handsome. What is it that you

"Herself," said Will, not indisposed to provoke the charming Mrs. Lydgate. "When one sees a perfect woman,

"I shall be jealous when Tertius goes to Lowick," said Rosamond, dimpling, and speaking with aery

"That does not seem to have been the effect on Lydgate hitherto. Mrs. Casaubon is too unlike other women

"No," said Will, almost pettishly. "Worship is usually a matter of theory rather than of practice. But I am

"Pray come again some evening: Mr. Lydgate will like to hear the music, and I cannot enjoy it so well

When her husband was at home again, Rosamond said, standing in front of him and holding his coatcollar

with both her hands, "Mr. Ladislaw was here singing with me when Mrs. Casaubon came in. He seemed

vexed. Do you think he disliked her seeing him at our house? Surely your position is more than equal to

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

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

Rosamond felt herself beginning to know a great deal of the world, especially in discovering what when she

was in her unmarried girlhood had been inconceivable to her except as a dim tragedy in bygone costumes

that women, even after marriage, might make conquests and enslave men. At that time young ladies in the

country, even when educated at Mrs. Lemon's, read little French literature later than Racine, and public prints

had not cast their present magnificent illumination over the scandals of life. Still, vanity, with a woman's

whole mind and day to work in, can construct abundantly on slight hints, especially on such a hint as the

possibility of indefinite conquests. How delightful to make captives from the throne of marriage with a

husband as crownprince by your sidehimself in fact a subject while the captives look up forever

hopeless, losing their rest probably, and if their appetite too, so much the better! But Rosamond's romance

turned at present chiefly on her crownprince, and it was enough to enjoy his assured subjection. When he

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

"I am sure you do not neglect your work. You are always at the Hospital, or seeing poor patients, or thinking

about some doctor's quarrel; and then at home you always want to pore over your microscope and phials.

"Haven't you ambition enough to wish that your husband should be something better than a Middlemarch

doctor?" said Lydgate, letting his hands fall on to his wife's shoulders, and looking at her with affectionate

`Why should our pride make such a stir to be And be forgot? What good is like to this, To do worthy the

What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing,and to write out myself what I have done. A man must

"Of course, I wish you to make discoveries: no one could more wish you to attain a high position in some

better place than Middlemarch. You cannot say that I have ever tried to hinder you from working. But we

"Merely to ask about her husband's health. But I think she is going to be splendid to our New Hospital: I

When Dorothea, walking round the laurelplanted plots of the New Hospital with Lydgate, had learned from

him that there were no signs of change in Mr. Casaubon's bodily condition beyond the mental sign of anxiety

to know the truth about his illness, she was silent for a few moments, wondering whether she had said or

done anything to rouse this new anxiety. Lydgate, not willing to let slip an opportunity of furthering a

"I don't know whether your or Mr.Casaubon's attention has been drawn to the needs of our New Hospital.

Circumstances have made it seem rather egotistic in me to urge the subject; but that is not my fault: it is

because there is a fight being made against it by the other medical men. I think you are generally interested in

such things, for I remember that when I first had the pleasure of seeing you at Tipton Grange before your

marriage, you were asking me some questions about the way in which the health of the poor was affected by

"Yes, indeed," said Dorothea, brightening. "I shall be quite grateful to you if you will tell me how I can help

to make things a little better. Everything of that sort has slipped away from me since I have been married. I

mean," she said, after a moment's hesitation, "that the people in our village are tolerably comfortable, and my

mind has been too much taken up for me to inquire further. But herein such a place as

"There is everything to be done," said Lydgate, with abrupt energy. "And this Hospital is a capital piece of

work, due entirely to Mr. Bulstrode's exertions, and in a great degree to his money. But one man can't do

everything in a scheme of this sort. Of course he looked forward to help. And now there's a mean, petty feud

set up against the thing in the town, by certain persons who want to make it a failure."

"Chiefly Mr. Bulstrode's unpopularity, to begin with. Half the town would almost take trouble for the sake of

thwarting him. In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is

done by their own set. I had no connection with Bulstrode before I came here. I look at him quite impartially,

and I see that he has some notionsthat he has set things on foot which I can turn to good public purpose.

If a fair number of the better educated men went to work with the belief that their observations might

contribute to the reform of medical doctrine and practice, we should soon see a change for the better. That's

my point of view. I hold that by refusing to work with Mr. Bulstrode I should be turning my back on an

"I quite agree with you," said Dorothea, at once fascinated by the situation sketched in Lydgate's words. "But

what is there against Mr. Bulstrode? I know that my uncle is friendly with him."

"That is all the stronger reason for despising such an opposition," said Dorothea, looking at the affairs of

"To put the matter quite fairly, they have other objections to him: he is masterful and rather unsociable,

and he is concerned with trade, which has complaints of its own that I know nothing about. But what has that

to do with the question whether it would not be a fine thing to establish here a more valuable hospital than

any they have in the county? The immediate motive to the opposition, however, is the fact that Bulstrode has

put the medical direction into my hands. Of course I am glad of that. It gives me an opportunity of doing

some good work,and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me. But the consequence is, that the

whole profession in Middlemarch have set themselves tooth and nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse

to cooperate themselves, but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder subscriptions."

"I suppose one must expect to fight one's way: there is hardly anything to be done without it. And the

ignorance of people about here is stupendous. I don't lay claim to anything else than having used some

opportunities which have not come within everybody's reach; but there is no stifling the offence of being

young, and a newcomer, and happening to know something more than the old inhabitants. Still, if I believe

that I can set going a better method of treatment if I believe that I can pursue certain observations and

inquiries which may be a lasting benefit to medical practice, I should be a base truckler if I allowed any

consideration of personal comfort to hinder me. And the course is all the clearer from there being no salary in

"I am glad you have told me this, Mr. Lydgate," said Dorothea, cordially. "I feel sure I can help a little. I have

some money, and don't know what to do with itthat is often an uncomfortable thought to me. I am sure I

can spare two hundred ayear for a grand purpose like this. How happy you must be, to know things that you

feel sure will do great good! I wish I could awake with that knowledge every morning. There seems to be so

There was a melancholy cadence in Dorothea's voice as she spoke these last words. But she presently added,

more cheerfully, "Pray come to Lowick and tell us more of this. I will mention the subject to Mr. Casaubon. I

She did mention it that evening, and said that she should like to subscribe two hundred ayearshe had

seven hundred ayear as the equivalent of her own fortune, settled on her at her marriage. Mr. Casaubon

made no objection beyond a passing remark that the sum might be disproportionate in relation to other good

objects, but when Dorothea in her ignorance resisted that suggestion, he acquiesced. He did not care himself

about spending money, and was not reluctant to give it. If he ever felt keenly any question of money it was

Dorothea told him that she had seen Lydgate, and recited the gist of her conversation with him about the

Hospital. Mr. Casaubon did not question her further, but he felt sure that she had wished to know what had

passed between Lydgate and himself "She knows that I know," said the everrestless voice within; but that

increase of tacit knowledge only thrust further off any confidence between them. He distrusted her affection;

That opposition to the New Fever Hospital which Lydgate had sketched to Dorothea was, like other

oppositions, to be viewed in many different lights. He regarded it as a mixture of jealousy and dunderheaded

prejudice. Mr. Bulstrode saw in it not only medical jealousy but a determination to thwart himself, prompted

mainly by a hatred of that vital religion of which he had striven to be an effectual lay representativea

hatred which certainly found pretexts apart from religion such as were only too easy to find in the

entanglements of human action. These might be called the ministerial views. But oppositions have the

illimitable range of objections at command, which need never stop short at the boundary of knowledge, but

can draw forever on the vasts of ignorance. What the opposition in Middlemarch said about the New Hospital

and its administration had certainly a great deal of echo in it, for heaven has taken care that everybody shall

not be an originator; but there were differences which represented every social shade between the polished

moderation of Dr. Minchin and the trenchant assertion of Mrs. Dollop, the landlady of the Tankard in

Mrs. Dollop became more and more convinced by her own asseveration, that Dr. Lydgate meant to let the

people die in the Hospital, if not to poison them, for the sake of cutting them up without saying by your leave

or with your leave; for it was a known "fac" that he had wanted to cut up Mrs. Goby, as respectable a woman

as any in Parley Street, who had money in trust before her marriage a poor tale for a doctor, who if he was

good for anything should know what was the matter with you before you died, and not want to pry into your

inside after you were gone. If that was not reason, Mrs. Dollop wished to know what was; but there was a

prevalent feeling in her audience that her opinion was a bulwark, and that if it were overthrown there would

be no limits to the cuttingup of bodies, as had been well seen in Burke and Hare with their pitchplaisters

And let it not be supposed that opinion at the Tankard in Slaughter Lane was unimportant to the medical

profession: that old authentic publichousethe original Tankard, known by the name of Dollop's was

the resort of a great Benefit Club, which had some months before put to the vote whether its longstanding

medical man, "Doctor Gambit," should not be cashiered in favor of "this Doctor Lydgate," who was capable

of performing the most astonishing cures, and rescuing people altogether given up by other practitioners. But

the balance had been turned against Lydgate by two members, who for some private reasons held that this

power of resuscitating persons as good as dead was an equivocal recommendation, and might interfere with

providential favors. In the course of the year, however, there had been a change in the public sentiment, of

A good deal more than a year ago, before anything was known of Lydgate's skill, the judgments on it had

naturally been divided, depending on a sense of likelihood, situated perhaps in the pit of the stomach or in the

pineal gland, and differing in its verdicts, but not the less valuable as a guide in the total deficit of evidence.

Patients who had chronic diseases or whose lives had long been worn threadbare, like old Featherstone's, had

been at once inclined to try him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills, thought agreeably of

opening an account with a new doctor and sending for him without stint if the children's temper wanted a

dose, occasions when the old practitioners were often crusty; and all persons thus inclined to employ Lydgate

held it likely that he was clever. Some considered that he might do more than others "where there was

liver;"at least there would be no harm in getting a few bottles of "stuff" from him, since if these proved

useless it would still be possible to return to the Purifying Pills, which kept you alive if they did not remove

the yellowness. But these were people of minor importance. Good Middlemarch families were of course not

going to change their doctor without reason shown; and everybody who had employed Mr. Peacock did not

feel obliged to accept a new man merely in the character of his successor, objecting that he was "not likely to

But Lydgate had not been long in the town before there were particulars enough reported of him to breed

much more specific expectations and to intensify differences into partisanship; some of the particulars being

of that impressive order of which the significance is entirely hidden, like a statistical amount without a

standard of comparison, but with a note of exclamation at the end. The cubic feet of oxygen yearly swallowed

by a fullgrown man what a shudder they might have created in some Middlemarch circles! "Oxygen!

nobody knows what that may beis it any wonder the cholera has got to Dantzic? And yet there are people

One of the facts quickly rumored was that Lydgate did not dispense drugs. This was offensive both to the

physicians whose exclusive distinction seemed infringed on, and to the surgeonapothecaries with whom he

ranged himself; and only a little while before, they might have counted on having the law on their side

against a man who without calling himself a Londonmade M.D. dared to ask for pay except as a charge on

drugs. But Lydgate had not been experienced enough to foresee that his new course would be even more

offensive to the laity; and to Mr. Mawmsey, an important grocer in the Top Market, who, though not one of

his patients, questioned him in an affable manner on the subject, he was injudicious enough to give a hasty

popular explanation of his reasons, pointing out to Mr. Mawmsey that it must lower the character of

practitioners, and be a constant injury to the public, if their only mode of getting paid for their work was by

"It is in that way that hardworking medical men may come to be almost as mischievous as quacks," said

Lydgate, rather thoughtlessly. "To get their own bread they must overdose the king's lieges; and that's a bad

Mr. Mawmsey was not only an overseer (it was about a question of outdoor pay that he was having an

interview with Lydgate), he was also asthmatic and had an increasing family: thus, from a medical point of

view, as well as from his own, he was an important man; indeed, an exceptional grocer, whose hair was

arranged in a flamelike pyramid, and whose retail deference was of the cordial, encouraging kindjocosely

complimentary, and with a certain considerate abstinence from letting out the full force of his mind. It was

Mr. Mawmsey's friendly jocoseness in questioning him which had set the tone of Lydgate's reply. But let the

wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening

Lydgate smiled as he ended his speech, putting his foot into the stirrup, and Mr. Mawmsey laughed more

than he would have done if he had known who the king's lieges were, giving his "Good morning, sir,

goodmorning, sir," with the air of one who saw everything clearly enough. But in truth his views were

perturbed. For years he had been paying bills with strictly made items, so that for every halfcrown and

eighteenpence he was certain something measurable had been delivered. He had done this with satisfaction,

including it among his responsibilities as a husband and father, and regarding a longer bill than usual as a

dignity worth mentioning. Moreover, in addition to the massive benefit of the drugs to "self and family," he

had enjoyed the pleasure of forming an acute judgment as to their immediate effects, so as to give an

intelligent statement for the guidance of Mr. Gambit a practitioner just a little lower in status than Wrench

or Toller, and especially esteemed as an accoucheur, of whose ability Mr. Mawmsey had the poorest opinion

on all other points, but in doctoring, he was wont to say in an undertone, he placed Gambit above any of

Here were deeper reasons than the superficial talk of a new man, which appeared still flimsier in the

drawingroom over the shop, when they were recited to Mrs. Mawmsey, a woman accustomed to be made

much of as a fertile mother,generally under attendance more or less frequent from Mr. Gambit, and

"Does this Mr. Lydgate mean to say there is no use in taking medicine?" said Mrs. Mawmsey, who was

slightly given to drawling. "I should like him to tell me how I could bear up at Fair time, if I didn't take

strengthening medicine for a month beforehand. Think of what I have to provide for calling customers, my

dear!"here Mrs. Mawmsey turned to an intimate female friend who sat by"a large veal pie a stuffed

filleta round of beefham, tongue, et cetera, et cetera! But what keeps me up best is the pink mixture, not

the brown. I wonder, Mr. Mawmsey, with your experience, you could have patience to listen. I should have

"No, no, no," said Mr. Mawmsey; "I was not going to tell him my opinion. Hear everything and judge for

yourself is my motto. But he didn't know who he was talking to. I was not to be turned on HIS finger. People

often pretend to tell me things, when they might as well say, `Mawmsey, you're a fool.' But I smile at it: I

humor everybody's weak place. If physic had done harm to self and family, I should have found it out by this

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

"Indeed!" said he, lifting his eyebrows with cautious surprise. (He was a stout husky man with a large ring on

"That is what I say," returned Mrs. Mawmsey, who habitually gave weight to her speech by loading her

pronouns. "Does HE suppose that people will pay him only to come and sit with them and go away again?"

Mrs. Mawmsey had had a great deal of sitting from Mr. Gambit, including very full accounts of his own

habits of body and other affairs; but of course he knew there was no innuendo in her remark, since his spare

time and personal narrative had never been charged for. So he replied, humorously

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

Hence Mr. Gambit could go away from the chief grocer's without fear of rivalry, but not without a sense that

Lydgate was one of those hypocrites who try to discredit others by advertising their own honesty, and that it

might be worth some people's while to show him up. Mr. Gambit, however, had a satisfactory practice, much

pervaded by the smells of retail trading which suggested the reduction of cash payments to a balance. And he

did not think it worth his while to show Lydgate up until he knew how. He had not indeed great resources of

education, and had had to work his own way against a good deal of professional contempt; but he made none

Other medical men felt themselves more capable. Mr. Toller shared the highest practice in the town and

belonged to an old Middlemarch family: there were Tollers in the law and everything else above the line of

retail trade. Unlike our irascible friend Wrench, he had the easiest way in the world of taking things which

might be supposed to annoy him, being a wellbred, quietly facetious man, who kept a good house, was very

fond of a little sporting when he could get it, very friendly with Mr. Hawley, and hostile to Mr. Bulstrode. It

may seem odd that with such pleasant habits he should hare been given to the heroic treatment, bleeding and

blistering and starving his patients, with a dispassionate disregard to his personal example; but the

incongruity favored the opinion of his ability among his patients, who commonly observed that Mr. Toller

had lazy manners, but his treatment was as active as you could desire: no man, said they, carried more

seriousness into his profession: he was a little slow in coming, but when he came, he DID something. He was

a great favorite in his own circle, and whatever he implied to any one's disadvantage told doubly from his

He naturally got tired of smiling and saying, "Ah!" when he was told that Mr. Peacock's successor did not

mean to dispense medicines; and Mr. Hackbutt one day mentioning it over the wine at a dinnerparty, Mr.

Toller said, laughingly, "Dibbitts will get rid of his stale drugs, then. I'm fond of little DibbittsI'm glad he's

"I see your meaning, Toller," said Mr. Hackbutt, "and I am entirely of your opinion. I shall take an

opportunity of expressing myself to that effect. A medical man should be responsible for the quality of the

drugs consumed by his patients. That is the rationale of the system of charging which has hitherto obtained;

and nothing is more offensive than this ostentation of reform, where there is no real amelioration."

"Ostentation, Hackbutt?" said Mr. Toller, ironically. "I don't see that. A man can't very well be ostentatious of

what nobody believes in. There's no reform in the matter: the question is, whether the profit on the drugs is

paid to the medical man by the druggist or by the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay under the name

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

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

"As to humbug, Hawley," he said, "that's a word easy to fling about. But what I contend against is the way

medical men are fouling their own nest, and setting up a cry about the country as if a general practitioner who

dispenses drugs couldn't be a gentleman. I throw back the imputation with scorn. I say, the most

ungentlemanly trick a man can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession with innovations

which are a libel on their timehonored procedure. That is my opinion, and I am ready to maintain it against

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

"My dear fellow," said Mr. Toller, striking in pacifically! and looking at Mr. Wrench, "the physicians have

their toes trodden on more than we have. If you come to dignity it is a question for Minchin and Sprague."

"Does medical jurisprudence provide nothing against these infringements?" said Mr. Hackbutt, with a

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

"Pooh! no need of law," said Mr. Toller. "So far as practice is concerned the attempt is an absurdity. No

patient will like it certainly not Peacock's, who have been used to depletion. Pass the wine."

Mr. Toller's prediction was partly verified. If Mr. and Mrs. Mawmsey, who had no idea of employing

Lydgate, were made uneasy by his supposed declaration against drugs, it was inevitable that those who called

him in should watch a little anxiously to see whether he did "use all the means he might use" in the case.

Even good Mr. Powderell, who in his constant charity of interpretation was inclined to esteem Lydgate the

more for what seemed a conscientious pursuit of a better plan, had his mind disturbed with doubts during his

wife's attack of erysipelas, and could not abstain from mentioning to Lydgate that Mr. Peacock on a similar

occasion had administered a series of boluses which were not otherwise definable than by their remarkable

effect in bringing Mrs. Powderell round before Michaelmas from an illness which had begun in a remarkably

hot August. At last, indeed, in the conflict between his desire not to hurt Lydgate and his anxiety that no

"means" should be lacking, he induced his wife privately to take Widgeon's Purifying Bills, an esteemed

Middlemarch medicine, which arrested every disease at the fountain by setting to work at once upon the

blood. This cooperative measure was not to be mentioned to Lydgate, and Mr. Powderell himself had no

But in this doubtful stage of Lydgate's introduction he was helped by what we mortals rashly call good

fortune. I suppose no doctor ever came newly to a place without making cures that surprised somebody

cures which may be called fortune's testimonials, and deserve as much credit as the ten or printed kind.

Various patients got well while Lydgate was attending them, some even of dangerous illnesses; and it was

remarked that the new doctor with his new ways had at least the merit of bringing people back from the brink

of death. The trash talked on such occasions was the more vexatious to Lydgate, because it gave precisely the

sort of prestige which an incompetent and unscrupulous man would desire, and was sure to be imputed to him

by the simmering dislike of the other medical men as an encouragement on his own part of ignorant puffing.

But even his proud outspokenness was checked by the discernment that it was as useless to fight against the

interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog; and "good fortune" insisted on using those interpretations.

Mrs. Larcher having just become charitably concerned about alarming symptoms in her charwoman, when

Dr. Minchin called, asked him to see her then and there, and to give her a certificate for the Infirmary;

whereupon after examination he wrote a statement of the case as one of tumor, and recommended the bearer

Nancy Nash as an outpatient. Nancy, calling at home on her way to the Infirmary, allowed the stay maker

and his wife, in whose attic she lodged, to read Dr. Minchin's paper, and by this means became a subject of

compassionate conversation in the neighboring shops of Churchyard Lane as being afflicted with a tumor at

first declared to be as large and hard as a duck's egg, but later in the day to be about the size of "your fist."

Most hearers agreed that it would have to be cut out, but one had known of oil and another of "squitchineal"

as adequate to soften and reduce any lump in the body when taken enough of into the inside the oil by

Meanwhile when Nancy presented herself at the Infirmary, it happened to be one of Lydgate's days there.

After questioning and examining her, Lydgate said to the housesurgeon in an undertone, "It's not tumor: it's

cramp." He ordered her a blister and some steel mixture, and told her to go home and rest, giving her at the

same time a note to Mrs. Larcher, who, she said, was her best employer, to testify that she was in need of

But byandby Nancy, in her attic, became portentously worse, the supposed tumor having indeed given way

to the blister, but only wandered to another region with angrier pain. The staymaker's wife went to fetch

Lydgate, and he continued for a fortnight to attend Nancy in her own home, until under his treatment she got

quite well and went to work again. But the case continued to be described as one of tumor in Churchyard

Lane and other streetsnay, by Mrs. Larcher also; for when Lydgate's remarkable cure was mentioned to Dr.

Minchin, he naturally did not like to say, "The case was not one of tumor, and I was mistaken in describing it

as such," but answered, "Indeed! ah! I saw it was a surgical case, not of a fatal kind." He had been inwardly

annoyed, however, when he had asked at the Infirmary about the woman he had recommended two days

before, to hear from the housesurgeon, a youngster who was not sorry to vex Minchin with impunity,

exactly what had occurred: he privately pronounced that it was indecent in a general practitioner to contradict

a physician's diagnosis in that open manner, and afterwards agreed with Wrench that Lydgate was

disagreeably inattentive to etiquette. Lydgate did not make the affair a ground for valuing himself or (very

particularly) despising Minchin, such rectification of misjudgments often happening among men of equal

qualifications. But report took up this amazing case of tumor, not clearly distinguished from cancer, and

considered the more awful for being of the wandering sort; till much prejudice against Lydgate's method as to

drugs was overcome by the proof of his marvellous skill in the speedy restoration of Nancy Nash after she

had been rolling and rolling in agonies from the presence of a tumor both hard and obstinate, but nevertheless

How could Lydgate help himself? It is offensive to tell a lady when she is expressing her amazement at your

skill, that she is altogether mistaken and rather foolish in her amazement. And to have entered into the nature

of diseases would only have added to his breaches of medical propriety. Thus he had to wince under a

promise of success given by that ignorant praise which misses every valid quality.

In the case of a more conspicuous patient, Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, Lydgate was conscious of having shown

himself something better than an everyday doctor, though here too it was an equivocal advantage that he

won. The eloquent auctioneer was seized with pneumonia, and having been a patient of Mr. Peacock's, sent

for Lydgate, whom he had expressed his intention to patronize. Mr Trumbull was a robust man, a good

subject for trying the expectant theory upon watching the course of an interesting disease when left as

much as possible to itself, so that the stages might be noted for future guidance; and from the air with which

he described his sensations Lydgate surmised that he would like to be taken into his medical man's

confidence, and be represented as a partner in his own cure. The auctioneer heard, without much surprise, that

his was a constitution which (always with due watching) might be left to itself, so as to offer a beautiful

example of a disease with all its phases seen in clear delineation, and that he probably had the rare strength of

mind voluntarily to become the test of a rational procedure, and thus make the disorder of his pulmonary

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

"Never fear, sir; you are not speaking to one who is altogether ignorant of the vis medicatrix," said he, with

his usual superiority of expression, made rather pathetic by difficulty of breathing. And he went without

shrinking through his abstinence from drugs, much sustained by application of the thermometer which

implied the importance of his temperature, by the sense that he furnished objects for the microscope, and by

learning many new words which seemed suited to the dignity of his secretions. For Lydgate was acute

It may be imagined that Mr. Trumbull rose from his couch with a disposition to speak of an illness in which

he had manifested the strength of his mind as well as constitution; and he was not backward in awarding

credit to the medical man who had discerned the quality of patient he had to deal with. The auctioneer was

not an ungenerous man, and liked to give others their due, feeling that he could afford it. He had caught the

words "expectant method," and rang chimes on this and other learned phrases to accompany the assurance

that Lydgate "knew a thing or two more than the rest of the doctorswas far better versed in the secrets of

This had happened before the affair of Fred Vincy's illness had given to Mr. Wrench's enmity towards

Lydgate more definite personal ground. The newcomer already threatened to be a nuisance in the shape of

rivalry, and was certainly a nuisance in the shape of practical criticism or reflections on his harddriven

elders, who had had something else to do than to busy themselves with untried notions. His practice had

spread in one or two quarters, and from the first the report of his high family had led to his being pretty

generally invited, so that the other medical men had to meet him at dinner in the best houses; and having to

meet a man whom you dislike is not observed always to end in a mutual attachment. There was hardly ever so

much unanimity among them as in the opinion that Lydgate was an arrogant young fellow, and yet ready for

the sake of ultimately predominating to show a crawling subservience to Bulstrode. That Mr. Farebrother,

whose name was a chief flag of the antiBulstrode party, always defended Lydgate and made a friend of him,

Here was plenty of preparation for the outburst of professional disgust at the announcement of the laws Mr.

Bulstrode was laying down for the direction of the New Hospital, which were the more exasperating because

there was no present possibility of interfering with his will and pleasure, everybody except Lord Medlicote

having refused help towards the building, on the ground that they preferred giving to the Old Infirmary. Mr.

Bulstrode met all the expenses, and had ceased to be sorry that he was purchasing the right to carry out his

notions of improvement without hindrance from prejudiced coadjutors; but he had had to spend large sums,

and the building had lingered. Caleb Garth had undertaken it, had failed during its progress, and before the

interior fittings were begun had retired from the management of the business; and when referring to the

Hospital he often said that however Bulstrode might ring if you tried him, he liked good solid carpentry and

masonry, and had a notion both of drains and chimneys. In fact, the Hospital had become an object of intense

interest to Bulstrode, and he would willingly have continued to spare a large yearly sum that he might rule it

dictatorially without any Board; but he had another favorite object which also required money for its

accomplishment: he wished to bay some land in the neighborhood of Middlemarch, and therefore he wished

to get considerable contributions towards maintaining the Hospital. Meanwhile he framed his plan of

management. The Hospital was to be reserved for fever in all its forms; Lydgate was to be chief medical

superintendent, that he might have free authority to pursue all comparative investigations which his studies,

particularly in Paris, had shown him the importance of, the other medical visitors having a consultative

influence, but no power to contravene Lydgate's ultimate decisions; and the general management was to be

lodged exclusively in the hands of five directors associated with Mr. Bulstrode, who were to have votes in the

ratio of their contributions, the Board itself filling up any vacancy in its numbers, and no mob of small

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

"Very well," said Lydgate to Mr. Bulstrode, "we have a capital housesurgeon and dispenser, a clearheaded,

neathanded fellow; we'll get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a country practitioner as any of them, to come

over twice aweek, and in case of any exceptional operation, Protheroe will come from Brassing. I must

work the harder, that's all, and I have given up my post at the Infirmary. The plan will flourish in spite of

them, and then they'll be glad to come in. Things can't last as they are: there must be all sorts of reform soon,

and then young fellows may be glad to come and study here." Lydgate was in high spirits.

"I shall not flinch, you may depend upon it, Mr. Lydgate," said Mr. Bulstrode. "While I see you carrying out

high intentions with vigor, you shall have my unfailing support. And I have humble confidence that the

blessing which has hitherto attended my efforts against the spirit of evil in this town will not be withdrawn.

Suitable directors to assist me I have no doubt of securing. Mr. Brooke of Tipton has already given me his

concurrence, and a pledge to contribute yearly: he has not specified the sum probably not a great one. But

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

The medical aversion to Lydgate was hardly disguised now. Neither Dr. Sprague nor Dr. Minchin said that he

disliked Lydgate's knowledge, or his disposition to improve treatment: what they disliked was his arrogance,

which nobody felt to be altogether deniable. They implied that he was insolent, pretentious, and given to that

reckless innovation for the sake of noise and show which was the essence of the charlatan.

The word charlatan once thrown on the air could not be let drop. In those days the world was agitated about

the wondrous doings of Mr. St. John Long, "noblemen and gentlemen" attesting his extraction of a fluid like

Mr. Toller remarked one day, smilingly, to Mrs. Taft, that "Bulstrode had found a man to suit him in Lydgate;

"Yes, indeed, I can imagine," said Mrs. Taft, keeping the number of thirty stitches carefully in her mind all

the while; "there are so many of that sort. I remember Mr. Cheshire, with his irons, trying to make people

"No, no," said Mr. Toller, "Cheshire was all rightall fair and above board. But there's St. John

Longthat's the kind of fellow we call a charlatan, advertising cures in ways nobody knows anything about:

a fellow who wants to make a noise by pretending to go deeper than other people. The other day he was

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

After this, it came to be held in various quarters that Lydgate played even with respectable constitutions for

his own purposes, and how much more likely that in his flighty experimenting he should make sixes and

sevens of hospital patients. Especially it was to be expected, as the landlady of the Tankard had said, that he

would recklessly cut up their dead bodies. For Lydgate having attended Mrs. Goby, who died apparently of a

heartdisease not very clearly expressed in the symptoms, too daringly asked leave of her relatives to open

the body, and thus gave an offence quickly spreading beyond Parley Street, where that lady had long resided

on an income such as made this association of her body with the victims of Burke and Hare a flagrant insult

Affairs were in this stage when Lydgate opened the subject of the Hospital to Dorothea. We see that be was

bearing enmity and silly misconception with much spirit, aware that they were partly created by his good

"They will not drive me away," he said, talking confidentially in Mr. Farebrother's study. "I have got a good

opportunity here, for the ends I care most about; and I am pretty sure to get income enough for our wants.

Byandby I shall go on as quietly as possible: I have no seductions now away from home and work. And I

am more and more convinced that it will be possible to demonstrate the homogeneous origin of all the

tissues. Raspail and others are on the same track, and I have been losing time."

"I have no power of prophecy there," said Mr. Farebrother, who had been puffing at his pipe thoughtfully

while Lydgate talked; "but as to the hostility in the town, you'll weather it if you are prudent."

"How am I to be prudent?" said Lydgate, "I just do what comes before me to do. I can't help people's

ignorance and spite, any more than Vesalius could. It isn't possible to square one's conduct to silly

"Quite true; I didn't mean that. I meant only two things. One is, keep yourself as separable from Bulstrode as

you can: of course, you can go on doing good work of your own by his help; but don't get tied. Perhaps it

seems like personal feeling in me to say so and there's a good deal of that, I ownbut personal feeling is

not always in the wrong if you boil it down to the impressions which make it simply an opinion."

"Bulstrode is nothing to me," said Lydgate, carelessly, "except on public grounds. As to getting very closely

united to him, I am not fond enough of him for that. But what was the other thing you meant?" said Lydgate,

who was nursing his leg as comfortably as possible, and feeling in no great need of advice.

"Why, this. Take careexperto credetake care not to get hampered about money matters. I know, by a

word you let fall one day, that you don't like my playing at cards so much for money. You are right enough

there. But try and keep clear of wanting small sums that you haven't got. I am perhaps talking rather

superfluously; but a man likes to assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and

Lydgate took Mr. Farebrother's hints very cordially, though he would hardly have borne them from another

man. He could not help remembering that he had lately made some debts, but these had seemed inevitable,

and he had no intention now to do more than keep house in a simple way. The furniture for which he owed

Many thoughts cheered him at that timeand justly. A man conscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is

sustained under petty hostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their way not without

wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisibly helping. At home, that same evening when he

had been chatting with Mr. Farebrother, he had his long legs stretched on the sofa, his head thrown back, and

his hands clasped behind it according to his favorite ruminating attitude, while Rosamond sat at the piano,

and played one tune after another, of which her husband only knew (like the emotional elephant he was!) that

There was something very fine in Lydgate's look just then, and any one might have been encouraged to bet on

his achievement. In his dark eyes and on his mouth and brow there was that placidity which comes from the

fulness of contemplative thoughtthe mind not searching, but beholding, and the glance seeming to be filled

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

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

"Yes, dear, if you are tired," said Lydgate, gently, turning his eyes and resting them on her, but not otherwise

moving. Rosamond's presence at that moment was perhaps no more than a spoonful brought to the lake, and

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

"I am thinking of a great fellow, who was about as old as I am three hundred years ago, and had already

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

"I'll tell you. His name was Vesalius. And the only way he could get to know anatomy as he did, was by

"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a look of disgust on her pretty face, "I am very glad you are not Vesalius. I

"No, he couldn't," said Lydgate, going on too earnestly to take much notice of her answer. "He could only get

a complete skeleton by snatching the whitened bones of a criminal from the gallows, and burying them, and

"I hope he is not one of your great heroes," said Rosamond, half playfully, half anxiously, "else I shall have

you getting up in the night to go to St. Peter's churchyard. You know how angry you told me the people were

"So had Vesalius, Rosy. No wonder the medical fogies in Middlemarch are jealous, when some of the

greatest doctors living were fierce upon Vesalius because they had believed in Galen, and he showed that

Galen was wrong. They called him a liar and a poisonous monster. But the facts of the human frame were on

"Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last. And they did exasperate him enough at one time to make him

burn a good deal of his work. Then he got shipwrecked just as he was coming from Jerusalem to take a great

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

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

"Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you might easily have been something else. And your cousins

at Quallingham all think that you have sunk below them in your choice of a profession."

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

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

"It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond," said Lydgate, gravely. "And to say that you love me

without loving the medical man in me, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach but don't

"Very well, Doctor Graveface," said Rosy, dimpling, "I will declare in future that I dote on skeletons, and

bodysnatchers, and bits of things in phials, and quarrels with everybody, that end in your dying miserably."

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

While Lydgate, safely married and with the Hospital under his command, felt himself struggling for Medical

Reform against Middlemarch, Middlemarch was becoming more and more conscious of the national struggle

By the time that Lord John Russell's measure was being debated in the House of Commons, there was a new

political animation in Middlemarch, and a new definition of parties which might show a decided change of

balance if a new election came. And there were some who already predicted this event, declaring that a

Reform Bill would never be carried by the actual Parliament. This was what Will Ladislaw dwelt on to Mr.

Brooke as a reason for congratulation that he had not yet tried his strength at the hustings.

"Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will. "The public temper will soon get to a

cometary heat, now the question of Reform has set in. There is likely to be another election before long, and

by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its head. What we have to work at now is the

"Quite right, Ladislaw; we shall make a new thing of opinion here," said Mr. Brooke. "Only I want to keep

myself independent about Reform, you know; I don't want to go too far. I want to take up. Wilberforce's and

Romilly's line, you know, and work at Negro Emancipation, Criminal Lawthat kind of thing. But of course

"If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared to take what the situation offers," said Will.

"If everybody pulled for his own bit against everybody else, the whole question would go to tatters."

"Yes, yes, I agree with youI quite take that point of view. I should put it in that light. I should support

Grey, you know. But I don't want to change the balance of the constitution, and I don't think Grey would."

"But that is what the country wants,"said Will. "Else there would be no meaning in political unions or any

other movement that knows what it's about. It wants to have a House of Commons which is not weighted

with nominees of the landed class, but with representatives of the other interests. And as to contending for a

reform short of that, it is like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to thunder."

"That is fine, Ladislaw: that is the way to put it. Write that down, now. We must begin to get documents

about the feeling of the country, as well as the machinebreaking and general distress."

"As to documents," said Will, "a twoinch card will hold plenty. A few rows of figures are enough to deduce

misery from, and a few more will show the rate at which the political determination of the people is

"Good: draw that out a little more at length, Ladislaw. That is an idea, now: write it out in the `Pioneer.' Put

the figures and deduce the misery, you know; and put the other figures and deduce and so on. You have a

way of putting things. Burke, now:when I think of Burke, I can't help wishing somebody had a

pocketborough to give you, Ladislaw. You'd never get elected, you know. And we shall always want talent

in the House: reform as we will, we shall always want talent. That avalanche and the thunder, now, was really

a little like Burke. I want that sort of thingnot ideas, you know, but a way of putting them."

"Pocketboroughs would be a fine thing," said Ladislaw, "if they were always in the right pocket, and there

Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison, even from Mr. Brooke; for it is a little too

trying to human flesh to be conscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have it noticed,

and in the general dearth of admiration for the right thing, even a chance bray of applause falling exactly in

time is rather fortifying. Will felt that his literary refinements were usually beyond the limits of Middlemarch

perception; nevertheless, he was beginning thoroughly to like the work of which when he began he had said

to himself rather languidly, "Why not?"and he studied the political situation with as ardent an interest as he

had ever given to poetic metres or mediaevalism. It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Dorothea

was, and perhaps the want of knowing what else to do, Will would not at this time have been meditating on

the needs of the English people or criticising English statesmanship: he would probably have been rambling

in Italy sketching plans for several dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and finding it

too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures, leaving off because they were "no good," and

observing that, after all, selfculture was the principal point; while in politics he would have been

sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general. Our sense of duty must often wait for some work

which shall take the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of

Ladislaw had now accepted his bit of work, though it was not that indeterminate loftiest thing which he had

once dreamed of as alone worthy of continuous effort. His nature warmed easily in the presence of subjects

which were visibly mixed with life and action, and the easily stirred rebellion in him helped the glow of

public spirit. In spite of Mr. Casaubon and the banishment from Lowick, he was rather happy; getting a great

deal of fresh knowledge in a vivid way and for practical purposes, and making the "Pioneer" celebrated as far

as Brassing (never mind the smallness of the area; the writing was not worse than much that reaches the four

Mr. Brooke was occasionally irritating; but Will's impatience was relieved by the division of his time

between visits to the Grange and retreats to his Middlemarch lodgings, which gave variety to his life.

"Shift the pegs a little," he said to himself, "and Mr. Brooke might be in the Cabinet, while I was

UnderSecretary. That is the common order of things: the little waves make the large ones and are of the

same pattern. I am better here than in the sort of life Mr. Casaubon would have trained me for, where the

doing would be all laid down by a precedent too rigid for me to react upon. I don't care for prestige or high

As Lydgate had said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the sense of belonging to no class; he had

a feeling of romance in his position, and a pleasant consciousness of creating a little surprise wherever he

went. That sort of enjoyment had been disturbed when he had felt some new distance between himself and

Dorothea in their accidental meeting at Lydgate's, and his irritation had gone out towards Mr. Casaubon, who

had declared beforehand that Will would lose caste. "I never had any caste," he would have said, if that

prophecy had been uttered to him, and the quick blood would have come and gone like breath in his

transparent skin. But it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

Meanwhile, the town opinion about the new editor of the "Pioneer" was tending to confirm Mr. Casaubon's

view. Will's relationship in that distinguished quarter did not, like Lydgate's high connections, serve as an

advantageous introduction: if it was rumored that young Ladislaw was Mr. Casaubon's nephew or cousin, it

"Brooke has taken him up," said Mr. Hawley, "because that is what no man in his senses could have

expected. Casaubon has devilish good reasons, you may be sure, for turning the cold shoulder on a young

fellow whose bringingup he paid for. Just like Brooke one of those fellows who would praise a cat to sell

And some oddities of Will's, more or less poetical, appeared to support Mr. Keck, the editor of the

"Trumpet," in asserting that Ladislaw, if the truth were known, was not only a Polish emissary but

crackbrained, which accounted for the preternatural quickness and glibness of his speech when he got on to

a platformas he did whenever he had an opportunity, speaking with a facility which cast reflections on

solid Englishmen generally. It was disgusting to Keck to see a strip of a fellow, with light curls round his

head, get up and speechify by the hour against institutions "which had existed when he was in his cradle."

And in a leading article of the "Trumpet," Keck characterized Ladislaw's speech at a Reform meeting as "the

violence of an energumena miserable effort to shroud in the brilliancy of fireworks the daring of

irresponsible statements and the poverty of a knowledge which was of the cheapest and most recent

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

This dangerous aspect of Ladislaw was strangely contrasted with other habits which became matter of

remark. He had a fondness, half artistic, half affectionate, for little childrenthe smaller they were on

tolerably active legs, and the funnier their clothing, the better Will liked to surprise and please them. We

know that in Rome he was given to ramble about among the poor people, and the taste did not quit him in

He had somehow picked up a troop of droll children, little hatless boys with their galligaskins much worn and

scant shirting to hang out, little girls who tossed their hair out of their eyes to look at him, and guardian

brothers at the mature age of seven. This troop he had led out on gypsy excursions to Halsell Wood at

nuttingtime, and since the cold weather had set in he had taken them on a clear day to gather sticks for a

bonfire in the hollow of a hillside, where he drew out a small feast of gingerbread for them, and improvised a

PunchandJudy drama with some private homemade puppets. Here was one oddity. Another was, that in

houses where he got friendly, he was given to stretch himself at full length on the rug while he talked, and

was apt to be discovered in this attitude by occasional callers for whom such an irregularity was likely to

But Will's articles and speeches naturally recommended him in families which the new strictness of party

division had marked off on the side of Reform. He was invited to Mr. Bulstrode's; but here he could not lie

down on the rug, and Mrs. Bulstrode felt that his mode of talking about Catholic countries, as if there were

any truce with Antichrist, illustrated the usual tendency to unsoundness in intellectual men.

At Mr. Farebrother's, however, whom the irony of events had brought on the same side with Bulstrode in the

national movement, Will became a favorite with the ladies; especially with little Miss Noble, whom it was

one of his oddities to escort when he met her in the street with her little basket, giving her his arm in the eyes

of the town, and insisting on going with her to pay some call where she distributed her small filchings from

But the house where he visited oftenest and lay most on the rug was Lydgate's. The two men were not at all

alike, but they agreed none the worse. Lydgate was abrupt but not irritable, taking little notice of megrims in

healthy people; and Ladislaw did not usually throw away his susceptibilities on those who took no notice of

them. With Rosamond, on the other hand, he pouted and was waywardnay, often uncomplimentary, much

to her inward surprise; nevertheless he was gradually becoming necessary to her entertainment by his

companionship in her music, his varied talk, and his freedom from the grave preoccupation which, with all

her husband's tenderness and indulgence, often made his manners unsatisfactory to her, and confirmed her

Lydgate, inclined to be sarcastic on the superstitious faith of the people in the efficacy of "the bill," while

nobody cared about the low state of pathology, sometimes assailed Will with troublesome questions. One

evening in March, Rosamond in her cherrycolored dress with swansdown trimming about the throat sat at

the teatable; Lydgate, lately come in tired from his outdoor work, was seated sideways on an easychair by

the fire with one leg over the elbow, his brow looking a little troubled as his eyes rambled over the columns

of the "Pioneer," while Rosamond, having noticed that he was perturbed, avoided looking at him, and

inwardly thanked heaven that she herself had not a moody disposition. Will Ladislaw was stretched on the

rug contemplating the curtainpole abstractedly, and humming very low the notes of "When first I saw thy

face;" while the house spaniel, also stretched out with small choice of room, looked from between his paws at

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

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

"No matter; those who read the `Pioneer' don't read the `Trumpet,'" said Will, swallowing his tea and walking

about. "Do you suppose the public reads with a view to its own conversion? We should have a witches'

brewing with a vengeance then`Mingle, mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may'and nobody

"Farebrother says, he doesn't believe Brooke would get elected if the opportunity came: the very men who

profess to be for him would bring another member out of the bag at the right moment."

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

"They represent the local stupidity better," said Will, laughing, and shaking his curls; "and they are kept on

their best behavior in the neighborhood. Brooke is not a bad fellow, but he has done some good things on his

"He's not fitted to be a public man," said Lydgate, with contemptuous decision. "He would disappoint

everybody who counted on him: I can see that at the Hospital. Only, there Bulstrode holds the reins and

"That depends on how you fix your standard of public men," said Will. "He's good enough for the occasion:

when the people have made up their mind as they are making it up now, they don't want a man they only

"That is the way with you political writers, Ladislawcrying up a measure as if it were a universal cure, and

"Why not? Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land without knowing it," said Will, who

"That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of hopes about this particular measure,

helping the cry to swallow it whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing but to carry it.

You go against rottenness, and there is nothing more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that

"That's very fine, my dear fellow. But your cure must begin somewhere, and put it that a thousand things

which debase a population can never be reformed without this particular reform to begin with. Look what

Stanley said the other daythat the House had been tinkering long enough at small questions of bribery,

inquiring whether this or that voter has had a guinea when everybody knows that the seats have been sold

wholesale. Wait for wisdom and conscience in public agentsfiddlestick! The only conscience we can trust

to is the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work is the wisdom of balancing

claims. That's my text which side is injured? I support the man who supports their claims; not the virtuous

"That general talk about a particular case is mere question begging, Ladislaw. When I say, I go in for the dose

"I am not begging the question we are uponwhether we are to try for nothing till we find immaculate men

to work with. Should you go on that plan? If there were one man who would carry you a medical reform and

another who would oppose it, should you inquire which had the better motives or even the better brains?"

"Oh, of course," said Lydgate, seeing himself checkmated by a move which he had often used himself, "if

one did not work with such men as are at hand, things must come to a deadlock. Suppose the worst opinion

in the town about Bulstrode were a true one, that would not make it less true that he has the sense and the

resolution to do what I think ought to be done in the matters I know and care most about; but that is the only

ground on which I go with him," Lydgate added rather proudly, bearing in mind Mr. Farebrother's remarks.

"He is nothing to me otherwise; I would not cry him up on any personal groundI would keep clear of that."

"Do you mean that I cry up Brooke on any personal ground?" said Will Ladislaw, nettled, and turning sharp

round. For the first time he felt offended with Lydgate; not the less so, perhaps, because he would have

"Not at all," said Lydgate, "I was simply explaining my own action. I meant that a man may work for a

special end with others whose motives and general course are equivocal, if he is quite sure of his personal

independence, and that he is not working for his private interesteither place or money."

"Then, why don't you extend your liberality to others?" said Will, still nettled. "My personal independence is

as important to me as yours is to you. You have no more reason to imagine that I have personal expectations

from Brooke, than I have to imagine that you have personal expectations from Bulstrode. Motives are points

of honor, I suppose nobody can prove them. But as to money and place in the world." Will ended, tossing

back his head, "I think it is pretty clear that I am not determined by considerations of that sort."

"You quite mistake me, Ladislaw," said Lydgate, surprised. He had been preoccupied with his own

vindication, and had been blind to what Ladislaw might infer on his own account. "I beg your pardon for

unintentionally annoying you. In fact, I should rather attribute to you a romantic disregard of your own

worldly interests. On the political question, I referred simply to intellectual bias."

"How very unpleasant you both are this evening!" said Rosamond. "I cannot conceive why money should

have been referred to. Polities and Medicine are sufficiently disagreeable to quarrel upon. You can both of

you go on quarrelling with all the world and with each other on those two topics."

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

"Poor Rosy!" said Lydgate, putting out his hand to her as she was passing him. "Disputation is not amusing to

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

"But I mean, before that. Something had vexed you before you came in, you looked cross. And that made you

begin to dispute with Mr. Ladislaw. You hurt me very much when you look so, Tertius."

"Oh, outdoor thingsbusiness." It was really a letter insisting on the payment of a bill for furniture. But

Rosamond was expecting to have a baby, and Lydgate wished to save her from any perturbation.

It happened to be on a Saturday evening that Will Ladislaw had that little discussion with Lydgate. Its effect

when he went to his own rooms was to make him sit up half the night, thinking over again, under a new

irritation, all that he had before thought of his having settled in Middlemarch and harnessed himself with Mr.

Brooke. Hesitations before he had taken the step had since turned into susceptibility to every hint that he

would have been wiser not to take it; and hence came his heat towards Lydgatea heat which still kept him

restless. Was he not making a fool of himself? and at a time when he was more than ever conscious of

Well, for no definite end. True, he had dreamy visions of possibilities: there is no human being who having

both passions and thoughts does not think in consequence of his passionsdoes not find images rising in his

mind which soothe the passion with hope or sting it with dread. But this, which happens to us all, happens to

some with a wide difference; and Will was not one of those whose wit "keeps the roadway:" he had his

bypaths where there were little joys of his own choosing, such as gentlemen cantering on the highroad might

have thought rather idiotic. The way in which he made a sort of happiness for himself out of his feeling for

Dorothea was an example of this. It may seem strange, but it is the fact, that the ordinary vulgar vision of

which Mr. Casaubon suspected himnamely, that Dorothea might become a widow, and that the interest he

had established in her mind might turn into acceptance of him as a husband had no tempting, arresting

power over him; he did not live in the scenery of such an event, and follow it out, as we all do with that

imagined "otherwise" which is our practical heaven. It was not only that he was unwilling to entertain

thoughts which could be accused of baseness, and was already uneasy in the sense that he had to justify

himself from the charge of ingratitude the latent consciousness of many other barriers between himself and

Dorothea besides the existence of her husband, had helped to turn away his imagination from speculating on

what might befall Mr. Casaubon. And there were yet other reasons. Will, we know, could not bear the

thought of any flaw appearing in his crystal: he was at once exasperated and delighted by the calm freedom

with which Dorothea looked at him and spoke to him, and there was something so exquisite in thinking of her

just as she was, that he could not long for a change which must somehow change her. Do we not shun the

street version of a fine melody?or shrink from the news that the raritysome bit of chiselling or

engraving perhaps which we have dwelt on even with exultation in the trouble it has cost us to snatch

glimpses of it, is really not an uncommon thing, and may be obtained as an everyday possession? Our good

depends on the quality and breadth of our emotion; and to Will, a creature who cared little for what are called

the solid things of life and greatly for its subtler influences, to have within him such a feeling as he had

towards Dorothea, was like the inheritance of a fortune. What others might have called the futility of his

passion, made an additional delight for his imagination: he was conscious of a generous movement, and of

verifying in his own experience that higher lovepoetry which had charmed his fancy. Dorothea, he said to

himself, was forever enthroned in his soul: no other woman could sit higher than her footstool; and if he

could have written out in immortal syllables the effect she wrought within him, he might have boasted after

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

But this result was questionable. And what else could he do for Dorothea? What was his devotion worth to

her? It was impossible to tell. He would not go out of her reach. He saw no creature among her friends to

whom he could believe that she spoke with the same simple confidence as to him. She had once said that she

would like him to stay; and stay he would, whatever firebreathing dragons might hiss around her.

This had always been the conclusion of Will's hesitations. But he was not without contradictoriness and

rebellion even towards his own resolve. He had often got irritated, as he was on this particular night, by some

outside demonstration that his public exertions with Mr. Brooke as a chief could not seem as heroic as he

would like them to be, and this was always associated with the other ground of irritationthat

notwithstanding his sacrifice of dignity for Dorothea's sake, he could hardly ever see her. Whereupon, not

being able to contradict these unpleasant facts, he contradicted his own strongest bias and said, "I am a fool."

Nevertheless, since the inward debate necessarily turned on Dorothea, he ended, as he had done before, only

by getting a livelier sense of what her presence would be to him; and suddenly reflecting that the morrow

would be Sunday, he determined to go to Lowick Church and see her. He slept upon that idea, but when he

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

"Nonsense!" argued Inclination, "it would be too monstrous for him to hinder me from going out to a pretty

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

"It is not true that I go to annoy him, and why should I not go to see Dorothea? Is he to have everything to

himself and be always comfortable? Let him smart a little, as other people are obliged to do. I have always

liked the quaintness of the church and congregation; besides, I know the Tuckers: I shall go into their pew."

Having silenced Objection by force of unreason, Will walked to Lowick as if he had been on the way to

Paradise, crossing Halsell Common and skirting the wood, where the sunlight fell broadly under the budding

boughs, bringing out the beauties of moss and lichen, and fresh green growths piercing the brown. Everything

seemed to know that it was Sunday, and to approve of his going to Lowick Church. Will easily felt happy

when nothing crossed his humor, and by this time the thought of vexing Mr. Casaubon had become rather

amusing to him, making his face break into its merry smile, pleasant to see as the breaking of sunshine on the

waterthough the occasion was not exemplary. But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man

who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality

excites in ourselves. Will went along with a small book under his arm and a hand in each sidepocket, never

reading, but chanting a little, as he made scenes of what would happen in church and coming out. He was

experimenting in tunes to suit some words of his own, sometimes trying a readymade melody, sometimes

improvising. The words were not exactly a hymn, but they certainly fitted his Sunday experience:

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

"A dream of breath that might be near, An inlyechoed tone, The thought that one may think me dear, The

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

Sometimes, when he took off his hat, shaking his head backward, and showing his delicate throat as he sang,

he looked like an incarnation of the spring whose spirit filled the aira bright creature, abundant in uncertain

The bells were still ringing when he got to Lowick, and he went into the curate's pew before any one else

arrived there. But he was still left alone in it when the congregation had assembled. The curate's pew was

opposite the rector's at the entrance of the small chancel, and Will had time to fear that Dorothea might not

come while he looked round at the group of rural faces which made the congregation from year to year within

the whitewashed walls and dark old pews, hardly with more change than we see in the boughs of a tree

which breaks here and there with age, but yet has young shoots. Mr. Rigg's frogface was something alien

and unaccountable, but notwithstanding this shock to the order of things, there were still the Waules and the

rural stock of the Powderells in their pews side by side; brother Samuel's cheek had the same purple round as

ever, and the three generations of decent cottagers came as of old with a sense of duty to their betters

generally the smaller children regarding Mr. Casaubon, who wore the black gown and mounted to the

highest box, as probably the chief of all betters, and the one most awful if offended. Even in 1831 Lowick

was at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the Sunday sermon. The congregation

had been used to seeing Will at church in former days, and no one took much note of him except the choir,

Dorothea did at last appear on this quaint background, walking up the short aisle in her white beaver bonnet

and gray cloakthe same she had worn in the Vatican. Her face being, from her entrance, towards the

chancel, even her shortsighted eyes soon discerned Will, but there was no outward show of her feeling except

a slight paleness and a grave bow as she passed him. To his own surprise Will felt suddenly uncomfortable,

and dared not look at her after they had bowed to each other. Two minutes later, when Mr. Casaubon came

out of the vestry, and, entering the pew, seated himself in face of Dorothea, Will felt his paralysis more

complete. He could look nowhere except at the choir in the little gallery over the vestrydoor: Dorothea was

perhaps pained, and he had made a wretched blunder. It was no longer amusing to vex Mr. Casaubon, who

had the advantage probably of watching him and seeing that he dared not turn his head. Why had he not

imagined this beforehand? but he could not expect that he should sit in that square pew alone, unrelieved

by any Tuckers, who had apparently departed from Lowick altogether, for a new clergyman was in the desk.

Still he called himself stupid now for not foreseeing that it would be impossible for him to look towards

Dorotheanay, that she might feel his coming an impertinence. There was no delivering himself from his

cage, however; and Will found his places and looked at his book as if he had been a schoolmistress, feeling

that the morning service had never been so immeasurably long before, that he was utterly ridiculous, out of

temper, and miserable. This was what a man got by worshipping the sight of a woman! The clerk observed

with surprise that Mr. Ladislaw did not join in the tune of Hanover, and reflected that he might have a cold.

Mr. Casaubon did not preach that morning, and there was no change in Will's situation until the blessing had

been pronounced and every one rose. It was the fashion at Lowick for "the betters" to go out first. With a

sudden determination to break the spell that was upon him, Will looked straight at Mr. Casaubon. But that

gentleman's eyes were on the button of the pewdoor, which he opened, allowing Dorothea to pass, and

following her immediately without raising his eyelids. Will's glance had caught Dorothea's as she turned out

of the pew, and again she bowed, but this time with a look of agitation, as if she were repressing tears. Will

walked out after them, but they went on towards the little gate leading out of the churchyard into the

It was impossible for him to follow them, and he could only walk back sadly at midday along the same road

which he had trodden hopefully in the morning. The lights were all changed for him both without and within.

Dorothea's distress when she was leaving the church came chiefly from the perception that Mr. Casaubon was

determined not to speak to his cousin, and that Will's presence at church had served to mark more strongly

the alienation between them. Will's coming seemed to her quite excusable, nay, she thought it an amiable

movement in him towards a reconciliation which she herself had been constantly wishing for. He had

probably imagined, as she had, that if Mr. Casaubon and he could meet easily, they would shake hands and

friendly intercourse might return. But now Dorothea felt quite robbed of that hope. Will was banished further

than ever, for Mr. Casaubon must have been newly embittered by this thrusting upon him of a presence which

He had not been very well that morning, suffering from some difficulty in breathing, and had not preached in

consequence; she was not surprised, therefore, that he was nearly silent at luncheon, still less that he made no

allusion to Will Ladislaw. For her own part she felt that she could never again introduce that subject. They

usually spent apart the hours between luncheon and dinner on a Sunday; Mr. Casaubon in the library dozing

chiefly, and Dorothea in her boudoir, where she was wont to occupy herself with some of her favorite books.

There was a little heap of them on the table in the bowwindowof various sorts, from Herodotus, which

she was learning to read with Mr. Casaubon, to her old companion Pascal, and Keble's "Christian Year." But

today opened one after another, and could read none of them. Everything seemed dreary: the portents before

the birth of Cyrus Jewish antiquitiesoh dear!devout epigramsthe sacred chime of favorite

hymnsall alike were as flat as tunes beaten on wood: even the spring flowers and the grass had a dull

shiver in them under the afternoon clouds that hid the sun fitfully; even the sustaining thoughts which had

become habits seemed to have in them the weariness of long future days in which she would still live with

them for her sole companions. It was another or rather a fuller sort of companionship that poor Dorothea was

hungering for, and the hunger had grown from the perpetual effort demanded by her married life. She was

always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was. The

thing that she liked, that she spontaneously cared to have, seemed to be always excluded from her life; for if

it was only granted and not shared by her husband it might as well have been denied. About Will Ladislaw

there had been a difference between them from the first, and it had ended, since Mr. Casaubon had so

severely repulsed Dorothea's strong feeling about his claims on the family property, by her being convinced

that she was in the right and her husband in the wrong, but that she was helpless. This afternoon the

helplessness was more wretchedly benumbing than ever: she longed for objects who could be dear to her, and

to whom she could be dear. She longed for work which would be directly beneficent like the sunshine and the

rain, and now it appeared that she was to live more and more in a virtual tomb, where there was the apparatus

of a ghastly labor producing what would never see the light. Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and

seen Will Ladislaw receding into the distant world of warm activity and fellowship turning his face

Books were of no use. Thinking was of no use. It was Sunday, and she could not have the carriage to go to

Celia, who had lately had a baby. There was no refuge now from spiritual emptiness and discontent, and

After dinner, at the hour when she usually began to read aloud, Mr. Casaubon proposed that they should go

into the library, where, he said, he had ordered a fire and lights. He seemed to have revived, and to be

In the library Dorothea observed that he had newly arranged a row of his notebooks on a table, and now he

took up and put into her hand a wellknown volume, which was a table of contents to all the others.

"You will oblige me, my dear," he said, seating himself, "if instead of other reading this evening, you will go

through this aloud, pencil in hand, and at each point where I say `mark,' will make a cross with your pencil.

This is the first step in a sifting process which I have long had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to

indicate to you certain principles of selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent participation in my

This proposal was only one more sign added to many since his memorable interview with Lydgate, that Mr.

Casaubon's original reluctance to let Dorothea work with him had given place to the contrary disposition,

After she had read and marked for two hours, he said, "We will take the volume upstairsand the pencil, if

you please and in case of reading in the night, we can pursue this task. It is not wearisome to you, I trust,

"I prefer always reading what you like best to hear," said Dorothea, who told the simple truth; for what she

dreaded was to exert herself in reading or anything else which left him as joyless as ever.

It was a proof of the force with which certain characteristics in Dorothea impressed those around her, that her

husband, with all his jealousy and suspicion, had gathered implicit trust in the integrity of her promises, and

her power of devoting herself to her idea of the right and best. Of late he had begun to feel that these qualities

The reading in the night did come. Dorothea in her young weariness had slept soon and fast: she was

awakened by a sense of light, which seemed to her at first like a sudden vision of sunset after she had climbed

a steep hill: she opened her eyes and saw her husband wrapped in his warm gown seating himself in the

armchair near the fireplace where the embers were still glowing. He had lit two candles, expecting that

"I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture. I will sit here for a time." She threw wood on the fire, wrapped

"You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon, with a shade more meekness than

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

"No, I am not conscious of undue excitement. Thought is easy." Dorothea dared not insist, and she read for an

hour or more on the same plan as she had done in the evening, but getting over the pages with more

quickness. Mr. Casaubon's mind was more alert, and he seemed to anticipate what was coming after a very

slight verbal indication, saying, "That will domark that"or "Pass on to the next headI omit the second

excursus on Crete." Dorothea was amazed to think of the birdlike speed with which his mind was surveying

"Close the book now, my dear. We will resume our work tomorrow. I have deferred it too long, and would

gladly see it completed. But you observe that the principle on which my selection is made, is to give

adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the theses enumerated in my introduction, as at

"And now I think that I can take some repose," said Mr. Casaubon. He laid down again and begged her to put

out the lights. When she had lain down too, and there was a darkness only broken by a dull glow on the

"It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my death, you will carry out my wishes:

whether you will avoid doing what I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I should desire."

Dorothea was not taken by surprise: many incidents had been leading her to the conjecture of some intention

on her husband's part which might make a new yoke for her. She did not answer immediately.

"No, I do not yet refuse," said Dorothea, in a clear voice, the need of freedom asserting itself within her; "but

it is too solemn I think it is not rightto make a promise when I am ignorant what it will bind me to.

"No, dear, no!" said Dorothea, beseechingly, crushed by opposing fears. "But may I wait and reflect a little

while? I desire with my whole soul to do what will comfort you; but I cannot give any pledge suddenly

Soon she could hear that he was sleeping, but there was no more sleep for her. While she constrained herself

to lie still lest she should disturb him, her mind was carrying on a conflict in which imagination ranged its

forces first on one side and then on the other. She had no presentiment that the power which her husband

wished to establish over her future action had relation to anything else than his work. But it was clear enough

to her that he would expect her to devote herself to sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be

the doubtful illustration of principles still more doubtful. The poor child had become altogether unbelieving

as to the trustworthiness of that Key which had made the ambition and the labor of her husband's life. It was

not wonderful that, in spite of her small instruction, her judgment in this matter was truer than his: for she

looked with unbiassed comparison and healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked all his egoism.

And now she pictured to herself the days, and months, and years which she must spend in sorting what might

be called shattered mummies, and fragments of a tradition which was itself a mosaic wrought from crushed

ruinssorting them as food for a theory which was already withered in the birth like an elfin child.

Doubtless a vigorous error vigorously pursued has kept the embryos of truth abreathing: the quest of gold

being at the same time a questioning of substances, the body of chemistry is prepared for its soul, and

Lavoisier is born. But Mr. Casaubon's theory of the elements which made the seed of all tradition was not

likely to bruise itself unawares against discoveries: it floated among flexible conjectures no more solid than

those etymologies which seemed strong because of likeness in sound until it was shown that likeness in

sound made them impossible: it was a method of interpretation which was not tested by the necessity of

forming anything which had sharper collisions than an elaborate notion of Gog and Magog: it was as free

from interruption as a plan for threading the stars together. And Dorothea had so often had to check her

weariness and impatience over this questionable riddleguessing, as it revealed itself to her instead of the

fellowship in high knowledge which was to make life worthier! She could understand well enough now why

her husband had come to cling to her, as possibly the only hope left that his labors would ever take a shape in

which they could be given to the world. At first it had seemed that he wished to keep even her aloof from any

close knowledge of what he was doing; but gradually the terrible stringency of human needthe prospect of

And here Dorothea's pity turned from her own future to her husband's pastnay, to his present hard struggle

with a lot which had grown out of that past: the lonely labor, the ambition breathing hardly under the pressure

of selfdistrust; the goal receding, and the heavier limbs; and now at last the sword visibly trembling above

him! And had she not wished to marry him that she might help him in his life's labor?But she had thought

the work was to be something greater, which she could serve in devoutly for its own sake. Was it right, even

to soothe his griefwould it be possible, even if she promisedto work as in a treadmill fruitlessly?

And yet, could she deny him? Could she say, "I refuse to content this pining hunger?" It would be refusing to

do for him dead, what she was almost sure to do for him living. If he lived as Lydgate had said he might, for

fifteen years or more, her life would certainly be spent in helping him and obeying him.

Still, there was a deep difference between that devotion to the living and that indefinite promise of devotion

to the dead. While he lived, he could claim nothing that she would not still be free to remonstrate against, and

even to refuse. But the thought passed through her mind more than once, though she could not believe in

itmight he not mean to demand something more from her than she had been able to imagine, since he

wanted her pledge to carry out his wishes without telling her exactly what they were? No; his heart was

bound up in his work only: that was the end for which his failing life was to be eked out by hers.

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

For four hours Dorothea lay in this conflict, till she felt ill and bewildered, unable to resolve, praying mutely.

Helpless as a child which has sobbed and sought too long, she fell into a late morning sleep, and when she

waked Mr. Casaubon was already up. Tantripp told her that he had read prayers, breakfasted, and was in the

"I never saw you look so pale, madam," said Tantripp, a solidfigured woman who had been with the sisters

"Well, not to say highcolored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose. But always smelling those leather books,

what can be expected? Do rest a little this morning, madam. Let me say you are ill and not able to go into that

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

When she went down she felt sure that she should promise to fulfil his wishes; but that would be later in the

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

"I was waiting for your appearance, my dear. I had hoped to set to work at once this morning, but I find

myself under some indisposition, probably from too much excitement yesterday. I am going now to take a

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

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

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

"I shall be in the Yewtree Walk for the next halfhour," said Mr. Casaubon, and then he left her.

Dorothea, feeling very weary, rang and asked Tantripp to bring her some wraps. She had been sitting still for

a few minutes, but not in any renewal of the former conflict: she simply felt that she was going to say "Yes"

to her own doom: she was too weak, too full of dread at the thought of inflicting a keenedged blow on her

husband, to do anything but submit completely. She sat still and let Tantripp put on her bonnet and shawl, a

"God bless you, madam!" said Tantripp, with an irrepressible movement of love towards the beautiful, gentle

creature for whom she felt unable to do anything more, now that she had finished tying the bonnet.

This was too much for Dorothea's highlystrung feeling, and she burst into tears, sobbing against Tantripp's

arm. But soon she checked herself, dried her eyes, and went out at the glass door into the shrubbery.

"I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for your master," said Tantripp to Pratt, the butler,

finding him in the breakfastroom. She had been at Rome, and visited the antiquities, as we know; and she

always declined to call Mr. Casaubon anything but "your master," when speaking to the other servants.

When Dorothea was out on the gravel walks, she lingered among the nearer clumps of trees, hesitating, as she

had done once before, though from a different cause. Then she had feared lest her effort at fellowship should

be unwelcome; now she dreaded going to the spot where she foresaw that she must bind herself to a

fellowship from which she shrank. Neither law nor the world's opinion compelled her to thisonly her

husband's nature and her own compassion, only the ideal and not the real yoke of marriage. She saw clearly

enough the whole situation, yet she was fettered: she could not smite the stricken soul that entreated hers. If

that were weakness, Dorothea was weak. But the halfhour was passing, and she must not delay longer.

When she entered the Yewtree Walk she could not see her husband; but the walk had bends, and she went,

expecting to catch sight of his figure wrapped in a blue cloak, which, with a warm velvet cap, was his outer

garment on chill days for the garden. It occurred to her that he might be resting in the summerhouse,

towards which the path diverged a little. Turning the angle, she could see him seated on the bench, close to a

stone table. His arms were resting on the table, and his brow was bowed down on them, the blue cloak being

"He exhausted himself last night," Dorothea said to herself, thinking at first that he was asleep, and that the

summerhouse was too damp a place to rest in. But then she remembered that of late she had seen him take

that attitude when she was reading to him, as if he found it easier than any other; and that he would

sometimes speak, as well as listen, with his face down in that way. She went into the summerhouse and said,

He took no notice, and she thought that he must be fast asleep. She laid her hand on his shoulder, and

repeated, "I am ready!" Still he was motionless; and with a sudden confused fear, she leaned down to him,

took off his velvet cap, and leaned her cheek close to his head, crying in a distressed tone

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

Later in the day, Lydgate was seated by her bedside, and she was talking deliriously, thinking aloud, and

recalling what had gone through her mind the night before. She knew him, and called him by his name, but

appeared to think it right that she should explain everything to him; and again, and again, begged him to

"Tell him I shall go to him soon: I am ready to promise. Only, thinking about it was so dreadfulit has made

"I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this," said Sir James Chettam, with a little frown on

He was standing on the hearthrug in the library at Lowick Grange, and speaking to Mr. Brooke. It was the

day after Mr. Casaubon had been buried, and Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room.

"That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix, and she likes to go into these

thingsproperty, land, that kind of thing. She has her notions, you know," said Mr. Brooke, sticking his

eyeglasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a folded paper which he held in his hand; "and she

would like to act depend upon it, as an executrix Dorothea would want to act. And she was twentyone

Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr.

Brooke, saying, "I will tell you what we can do. Until Dorothea is well, all business must be kept from her,

and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to us. Being with Celia and the baby will be the best

thing in the world for her, and will pass away the time. And meanwhile you must get rid of Ladislaw: you

must send him out of the country." Here Sir James's look of disgust returned in all its intensity.

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

"My dear sir," persisted Sir James, restraining his indignation within respectful forms, "it was you who

brought him here, and you who keep him hereI mean by the occupation you give him."

"Yes, but I can't dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons, my dear Chettam. Ladislaw has been

invaluable, most satisfactory. I consider that I have done this part of the country a service by bringing

himby bringing him, you know." Mr. Brooke ended with a nod, turning round to give it.

"It's a pity this part of the country didn't do without him, that's all I have to say about it. At any rate, as

Dorothea's brotherinlaw, I feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being kept here by any action on the

part of her friends. You admit, I hope, that I have a right to speak about what concerns the dignity of my

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

"Not about this action of Casaubon's, I should hope," interrupted Sir James. "I say that he has most unfairly

compromised Dorothea. I say that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action than thisa codicil

of this sort to a will which he made at the time of his marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her

"Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw. Ladislaw has told me the reasondislike of

the bent he took, you know Ladislaw didn't think much of Casaubon's notions, Thoth and Dagon that

sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn't like the independent position Ladislaw had taken up. I saw the

letters between them, you know. Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books he didn't know the world."

"It's all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it," said Sir James. "But I believe Casaubon was only

jealous of him on Dorothea's account, and the world will suppose that she gave him some reason; and that is

"My dear Chettam, it won't lead to anything, you know," said Mr. Brooke, seating himself and sticking on his

eye glass again. "It's all of a piece with Casaubon's oddity. This paper, now, `Synoptical Tabulation' and so

on, `for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,' it was locked up in the desk with the will. I suppose he meant Dorothea to

publish his researches, eh? and she'll do it, you know; she has gone into his studies uncommonly."

"My dear sir," said Sir James, impatiently, "that is neither here nor there. The question is, whether you don't

"Well, no, not the urgency of the thing. Byandby, perhaps, it may come round. As to gossip, you know,

sending him away won't hinder gossip. People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter and verse

for," said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that lay on the side of his own wishes. "I might get rid

of Ladislaw up to a certain pointtake away the `Pioneer' from him, and that sort of thing; but I couldn't

Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the nature of last year's weather, and nodding

"Good God!" said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed, "let us get him a post; let us spend

money on him. If he could go in the suite of some Colonial Governor! Grampus might take him and I

"But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear fellow; Ladislaw has his ideas. It's my

opinion that if he were to part from me tomorrow, you'd only hear the more of him in the country. With his

talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are few men who could come up to him as an

"Agitator!" said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the syllables of this word properly repeated were

"But be reasonable, Chettam. Dorothea, now. As you say, she had better go to Celia as soon as possible. She

can stay under your roof, and in the mean time things may come round quietly. Don't let us be firing off our

guns in a hurry, you know. Standish will keep our counsel, and the news will be old before it's known.

Twenty things may happen to carry off Ladislaw without my doing anything, you know."

"Decline, Chettam?noI didn't say decline. But I really don't see what I could do. Ladislaw is a

"I am glad to hear It!" said Sir James, his irritation making him forget himself a little. "I am sure Casaubon

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

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

"But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did. I don't believe anything of the sort

about Dorothea," said Sir James then frowningly, "but I suspect Ladislaw. I tell you frankly, I suspect

"I couldn't take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam. In fact, if it were possible to pack him

offsend him to Norfolk Island that sort of thingit would look all the worse for Dorothea to those who

That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend to soothe Sir James. He put out his hand to

reach his hat, implying that he did not mean to contend further, and said, still with some heat

"Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once, because her friends were too careless. I shall

"You can't do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible, Chettam. I approve that plan altogether," said

Mr. Brooke, well pleased that he had won the argument. It would have been highly inconvenient to him to

part with Ladislaw at that time, when a dissolution might happen any day, and electors were to be convinced

of the course by which the interests of the country would be best served. Mr. Brooke sincerely believed that

this end could be secured by his own return to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the

Dorothea had been safe at Freshitt Hall nearly a week before she had asked any dangerous questions. Every

morning now she sat with Celia in the prettiest of upstairs sittingrooms, opening into a small

conservatory Celia all in white and lavender like a bunch of mixed violets, watching the remarkable acts of

the baby, which were so dubious to her inexperienced mind that all conversation was interrupted by appeals

for their interpretation made to the oracular nurse. Dorothea sat by in her widow's dress, with an expression

which rather provoked Celia, as being much too sad; for not only was baby quite well, but really when a

husband had been so dull and troublesome while he lived, and besides that hadwell, well! Sir James, of

course, had told Celia everything, with a strong representation how important it was that Dorothea should not

But Mr. Brooke had been right in predicting that Dorothea would not long remain passive where action had

been assigned to her; she knew the purport of her husband's will made at the time of their marriage, and her

mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her position, was silently occupied with what she ought to do

One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit, though with an unusual alacrity in his manner which he

accounted for by saying that it was now pretty certain Parliament would be dissolved forthwith, Dorothea

"Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have the living at Lowick. After Mr. Tucker had been

provided for, I never heard my husband say that he had any clergyman in his mind as a successor to himself. I

think I ought to have the keys now and go to Lowick to examine all my husband's papers. There may be

"No hurry, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, quietly. "Byandby, you know, you can go, if you like. But I cast my

eyes over things in the desks and drawersthere was nothingnothing but deep subjects, you

knowbesides the will. Everything can be done byandby. As to the living, I have had an application for

interest already I should say rather good. Mr. Tyke has been strongly recommended to meI had

something to do with getting him an appointment before. An apostolic man, I believethe sort of thing that

"I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge for myself, if Mr. Casaubon has not left

any expression of his wishes. He has perhaps made some addition to his willthere may be some

instructions for me," said Dorothea, who had all the while had this conjecture in her mind with relation to her

"Nothing about the rectory, my dearnothing," said Mr. Brooke, rising to go away, and putting out his hand

"Well, well, we shall see. But I must run away nowI have no end of work nowit's a crisisa political

crisis, you know. And here is Celia and her little manyou are an aunt, you know, now, and I am a sort of

grandfather," said Mr. Brooke, with placid hurry, anxious to get away and tell Chettam that it would not be

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

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

"What? why, his upper lip; see how he is drawing it down, as if he meant to make a face. Isn't it wonderful!

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

"Don't be sad, Dodo; kiss baby. What are you brooding over so? I am sure you did everything, and a great

"I wonder if Sir James would drive me to Lowick. I want to look over everythingto see if there were any

"You are not to go till Mr. Lydgate says you may go. And he has not said so yet (here you are, nurse; take

baby and walk up and down the gallery). Besides, you have got a wrong notion in your head as usual,

"Where am I wrong, Kitty?" said Dorothea, quite meekly. She was almost ready now to think Celia wiser

than herself, and was really wondering with some fear what her wrong notion was. Celia felt her advantage,

and was determined to use it. None of them knew Dodo as well as she did, or knew how to manage her. Since

Celia's baby was born, she had had a new sense of her mental solidity and calm wisdom. It seemed clear that

where there was a baby, things were right enough, and that error, in general, was a mere lack of that central

"I can see what you are thinking of as well as can be, Dodo," said Celia. "You are wanting to find out if there

is anything uncomfortable for you to do now, only because Mr. Casaubon wished it. As if you had not been

uncomfortable enough before. And he doesn't deserve it, and you will find that out. He has behaved very

badly. James is as angry with him as can be. And I had better tell you, to prepare you."

"Celia," said Dorothea, entreatingly, "you distress me. Tell me at once what you mean." It glanced through

her mind that' Mr. Casaubon had left the property away from herwhich would not be so very distressing.

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

"But if you married Mr. Ladislaw, not anybody else," Celia went on with persevering quietude. "Of course

that is of no consequence in one wayyou never WOULD marry Mr. Ladislaw; but that only makes it worse

The blood rushed to Dorothea's face and neck painfully. But Celia was administering what she thought a

sobering dose of fact. It was taking up notions that had done Dodo's health so much harm. So she went on in

"James says so. He says it is abominable, and not like a gentleman. And there never was a better judge than

James. It is as if Mr. Casaubon wanted to make people believe that you would wish to marry Mr.

Ladislawwhich is ridiculous. Only James says it was to hinder Mr. Ladislaw from wanting to marry you

for your money just as if he ever would think of making you an offer. Mrs. Cadwallader said you might as

well marry an Italian with white mice! But I must just go and look at baby," Celia added, without the least

Dorothea by this time had turned cold again, and now threw herself back helplessly in her chair. She might

have compared her experience at that moment to the vague, alarmed consciousness that her life was taking on

a new form that she was undergoing a metamorphosis in which memory would not adjust itself to the stirring

of new organs. Everything was changing its aspect: her husband's conduct, her own duteous feeling towards

him, every struggle between them and yet more, her whole relation to Will Ladislaw. Her world was in a

state of convulsive change; the only thing she could say distinctly to herself was, that she must wait and think

anew. One change terrified her as if it had been a sin; it was a violent shock of repulsion from her departed

husband, who had had hidden thoughts, perhaps perverting everything she said and did. Then again she was

conscious of another change which also made her tremulous; it was a sudden strange yearning of heart

towards Will Ladislaw. It had never before entered her mind that he could, under any circumstances, be her

lover: conceive the effect of the sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that light that perhaps

he himself had been conscious of such a possibility, and this with the hurrying, crowding vision of

It seemed a long whileshe did not know how longbefore she heard Celia saying, "That will do, nurse; he

will be quiet on my lap now. You can go to lunch, and let Garratt stay in the next room." "What I think,

Dodo," Celia went on, observing nothing more than that Dorothea was leaning back in her chair, and likely to

be passive, "is that Mr. Casaubon was spiteful. I never did like him, and James never did. I think the corners

of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful. And now he has behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not

require you to make yourself uncomfortable about him. If he has been taken away, that is a mercy, and you

ought to be grateful. We should not grieve, should we, baby?" said Celia confidentially to that unconscious

centre and poise of the world, who had the most remarkable fists all complete even to the nails, and hair

enough, really, when you took his cap off, to makeyou didn't know what: in short, he was Bouddha in a

At this crisis Lydgate was announced, and one of the first things he said was, "I fear you are not so well as

you were, Mrs. Casaubon; have you been agitated? allow me to feel your pulse." Dorothea's hand was of a

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

Lydgate did not speak for a few moments. Then he said, looking at Dorothea. "I hardly know. In my opinion

Mrs. Casaubon should do what would give her the most repose of mind. That repose will not always come

"Thank you;" said Dorothea, exerting herself, "I am sure that is wise. There are so many things which I ought

to attend to. Why should I sit here idle?" Then, with an effort to recall subjects not connected with her

agitation, she added, abruptly, "You know every one in Middlemarch, I think, Mr. Lydgate. I shall ask you to

tell me a great deal. I have serious things to do now. I have a living to give away. You know Mr. Tyke and all

the" But Dorothea's effort was too much for her; she broke off and burst into sobs. Lydgate made her drink

"Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes," he said to Sir James, whom he asked to see before quitting the house.

His attendance on Dorothea while her brain was excited, had enabled him to form some true conclusions

concerning the trials of her life. He felt sure that she had been suffering from the strain and conflict of

selfrepression; and that she was likely now to feel herself only in another sort of pinfold than that from

Lydgate's advice was all the easier for Sir James to follow when he found that Celia had already told

Dorothea the unpleasant fact about the will. There was no help for it nowno reason for any further delay in

the execution of necessary business. And the next day Sir James complied at once with her request that he

"I have no wish to stay there at present," said Dorothea; "I could hardly bear it. I am much happier at Freshitt

with Celia. I shall be able to think better about what should be done at Lowick by looking at it from a

distance. And I should like to be at the Grange a little while with my uncle, and go about in all the old walks

"Not yet, I think. Your uncle is having political company, and you are better out of the way of such doings,"

said Sir James, who at that moment thought of the Grange chiefly as a haunt of young Ladislaw's. But no

word passed between him and Dorothea about the objectionable part of the will; indeed, both of them felt that

the mention of it between them would be impossible. Sir James was shy, even with men, about disagreeable

subjects; and the one thing that Dorothea would have chosen to say, if she had spoken on the matter at all,

was forbidden to her at present because it seemed to be a further exposure of her husband's injustice. Yet she

did wish that Sir James could know what had passed between her and her husband about Will Ladislaw's

moral claim on the property: it would then, she thought, be apparent to him as it was to her, that her husband's

strange indelicate proviso had been chiefly urged by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and not merely

by personal feelings more difficult to talk about. Also, it must be admitted, Dorothea wished that this could

be known for Will's sake, since her friends seemed to think of him as simply an object of Mr. Casaubon's

charity. Why should he be compared with an Italian carrying white mice? That word quoted from Mrs.

Cadwallader seemed like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger.

At Lowick Dorothea searched desk and drawersearched all her husband's places of deposit for private

writing, but found no paper addressed especially to her, except that "Synoptical Tabulation," which was

probably only the beginning of many intended directions for her guidance. In carrying out this bequest of

labor to Dorothea, as in all else, Mr. Casaubon had been slow and hesitating, oppressed in the plan of

transmitting his work, as he had been in executing it, by the sense of moving heavily in a dim and clogging

medium: distrust of Dorothea's competence to arrange what he had prepared was subdued only by distrust of

any other redactor. But he had come at last to create a trust for himself out of Dorothea's nature: she could do

what she resolved to do: and he willingly imagined her toiling under the fetters of a promise to erect a tomb

with his name upon it. (Not that Mr. Casaubon called the future volumes a tomb; he called them the Key to

all Mythologies.) But the months gained on him and left his plans belated: he had only had time to ask for

The grasp had slipped away. Bound by a pledge given from the depths of her pity, she would have been

capable of undertaking a toil which her judgment whispered was vain for all uses except that consecration of

faithfulness which is a supreme use. But now her judgment, instead of being controlled by duteous devotion,

was made active by the imbittering discovery that in her past union there had lurked the hidden alienation of

secrecy and suspicion. The living, suffering man was no longer before her to awaken her pity: there remained

only the retrospect of painful subjection to a husband whose thoughts had been lower than she had believed,

whose exorbitant claims for himself had even blinded his scrupulous care for his own character, and made

him defeat his own pride by shocking men of ordinary honor. As for the property which was the sign of that

broken tie, she would have been glad to be free from it and have nothing more than her original fortune which

had been settled on her, if there had not been duties attached to ownership, which she ought not to flinch

from. About this property many troublous questions insisted on rising: had she not been right in thinking that

the half of it ought to go to Will Ladislaw? but was it not impossible now for her to do that act of justice?

Mr. Casaubon had taken a cruelly effective means of hindering her: even with indignation against him in her

After collecting papers of business which she wished to examine, she locked up again the desks and

drawersall empty of personal words for herempty of any sign that in her husband's lonely brooding his

heart had gone out to her in excuse or explanation; and she went back to Freshitt with the sense that around

his last hard demand and his last injurious assertion of his power, the silence was unbroken.

Dorothea tried now to turn her thoughts towards immediate duties, and one of these was of a kind which

others were determined to remind her of. Lydgate's ear had caught eagerly her mention of the living, and as

soon as he could, he reopened the subject, seeing here a possibility of making amends for the castingvote he

had once given with an illsatisfied conscience. "Instead of telling you anything about Mr. Tyke," he said, "I

should like to speak of another man Mr. Farebrother, the Vicar of St. Botolph's. His living is a poor one,

and gives him a stinted provision for himself and his family. His mother, aunt, and sister all live with him,

and depend upon him. I believe he has never married because of them. I never heard such good preaching as

hissuch plain, easy eloquence. He would have done to preach at St. Paul's Cross after old Latimer. His talk

is just as good about all subjects: original, simple, clear. I think him a remarkable fellow: he ought to have

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

"That's a hard question," said Lydgate. "I find myself that it's uncommonly difficult to make the right thing

work: there are so many strings pulling at once. Farebrother often hints that he has got into the wrong

profession; he wants a wider range than that of a poor clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him

on. He is very fond of Natural History and various scientific matters, and he is hampered in reconciling these

tastes with his position. He has no money to sparehardly enough to use; and that has led him into

cardplayingMiddlemarch is a great place for whist. He does play for money, and he wins a good deal. Of

course that takes him into company a little beneath him, and makes him slack about some things; and yet,

with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of the most blameless men I ever knew. He has

neither venom nor doubleness in him, and those often go with a more correct outside."

"I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit," said Dorothea; "I wonder whether he

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

"My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man," said Dorothea, meditatively. She was

wishing it were possible to restore the times of primitive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr. Farebrother with a

"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate. "His position is not quite like that of the

Apostles: he is only a parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better. Practically I find

that what is called being apostolic now, is an impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut the

principal figure. I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good deal of his doctrine is a sort of

pinching hard to make people uncomfortablyaware of him. Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!he

"True," said Dorothea. "It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our farmers and laborers get from their

teaching. I have been looking into a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would be of no use at

LowickI mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the Apocalypse. I have always been

thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a

wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truestI mean that which takes in the most good of all

kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn

"Do," said Lydgate; "I trust to the effect of that. He is very much beloved, but he has his enemies too: there

are always people who can't forgive an able man for differing from them. And that moneywinning business

is really a blot. You don't, of course, see many Middlemarch people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly

seeing Mr. Brooke, is a great friend of Mr. Farebrother's old ladies, and would be glad to sing the Vicar's

praises. One of the old ladiesMiss Noble, the auntis a wonderfully quaint picture of selfforgetful

goodness, and Ladislaw gallants her about sometimes. I met them one day in a back street: you know

Ladislaw's looka sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat; and this little old maid reaching up to his

armthey looked like a couple dropped out of a romantic comedy. But the best evidence about Farebrother

Happily Dorothea was in her private sittingroom when this conversation occurred, and there was no one

present to make Lydgate's innocent introduction of Ladislaw painful to her. As was usual with him in matters

of personal gossip, Lydgate had quite forgotten Rosamond's remark that she thought Will adored Mrs.

Casaubon. At that moment he was only caring for what would recommend the Farebrother family; and he had

purposely given emphasis to the worst that could be said about the Vicar, in order to forestall objections. In

the weeks. since Mr. Casaubon's death he had hardly seen Ladislaw, and he had heard no rumor to warn him

that Mr. Brooke's confidential secretary was a dangerous subject with Mrs. Casaubon. When he was gone, his

picture of Ladislaw lingered in her mind and disputed the ground with that question of the Lowick living.

What was Will Ladislaw thinking about her? Would he hear of that fact which made her cheeks burn as they

never used to do? And how would he feel when he heard it?But she could see as well as possible how he

smiled down at the little old maid. An Italian with white mice!on the contrary, he was a creature who

entered into every one's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with

No gossip about Mr. Casaubon's will had yet reached Ladislaw: the air seemed to be filled with the

dissolution of Parliament and the coming election, as the old wakes and fairs were filled with the rival clatter

of itinerant shows; and more private noises were taken little notice of. The famous "dry election" was at hand,

in which the depths of public feeling might be measured by the low floodmark of drink. Will Ladislaw was

one of the busiest at this time; and though Dorothea's widowhood was continually in his thought, he was so

far from wishing to be spoken to on the subject, that when Lydgate sought him out to tell him what had

"Why should you bring me into the matter? I never see Mrs. Casaubon, and am not likely to see her, since she

is at Freshitt. I never go there. It is Tory ground, where I and the `Pioneer' are no more welcome than a

The fact was that Will had been made the more susceptible by observing that Mr. Brooke, instead of wishing

him, as before, to come to the Grange oftener than was quite agreeable to himself, seemed now to contrive

that he should go there as little as possible. This was a shuffling concession of Mr. Brooke's to Sir James

Chettam's indignant remonstrance; and Will, awake to the slightest hint in this direction, concluded that he

was to be kept away from the Grange on Dorothea's account. Her friends, then, regarded him with some

suspicion? Their fears were quite superfluous: they were very much mistaken if they imagined that he would

put himself forward as a needy adventurer trying to win the favor of a rich woman.

Until now Will had never fully seen the chasm between himself and Dorotheauntil now that he was come

to the brink of it, and saw her on the other side. He began, not without some inward rage, to think of going

away from the neighborhood: it would be impossible for him to show any further interest in Dorothea without

subjecting himself to disagreeable imputationsperhaps even in her mind, which others might try to poison.

"We are forever divided," said Will. "I might as well be at Rome; she would be no farther from me." But

what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope. There were plenty of reasons why

he should not gopublic reasons why he should not quit his post at this crisis, leaving Mr. Brooke in the

lurch when he needed "coaching" for the election, and when there was so much canvassing, direct and

indirect, to be carried on. Will could not like to leave his own chessmen in the heat of a game; and any

candidate on the right side, even if his brain and marrow had been as soft as was consistent with a

gentlemanly bearing, might help to turn a majority. To coach Mr. Brooke and keep him steadily to the idea

that he must pledge himself to vote for the actual Reform Bill, instead of insisting on his independence and

power of pulling up in time, was not an easy task. Mr. Farebrother's prophecy of a fourth candidate "in the

bag" had not yet been fulfilled, neither the Parliamentary Candidate Society nor any other power on the watch

to secure a reforming majority seeing a worthy nodus for interference while there was a second reforming

candidate like Mr. Brooke, who might be returned at his own expense; and the fight lay entirely between

Pinkerton the old Tory member, Bagster the new Whig member returned at the last election, and Brooke the

future independent member, who was to fetter himself for this occasion only. Mr. Hawley and his party

would bend all their forces to the return of Pinkerton, and Mr. Brooke's success must depend either on

plumpers which would leave Bagster in the rear, or on the new minting of Tory votes into reforming votes.

This prospect of converting votes was a dangerous distraction to Mr. Brooke: his impression that waverers

were likely to be allured by wavering statements, and also the liability of his mind to stick afresh at opposing

"You know there are tactics in these things," said Mr. Brooke; "meeting people halfwaytempering your

ideassaying, `Well now, there's something in that,' and so on. I agree with you that this is a peculiar

occasionthe country with a will of its own political unionsthat sort of thingbut we sometimes cut

with rather too sharp a knife, Ladislaw. These tenpound householders, now: why ten? Draw the line

somewhereyes: but why just at ten? That's a difficult question, now, if you go into it."

"Of course it is," said Will, impatiently. "But if you are to wait till we get a logical Bill, you must put yourself

forward as a revolutionist, and then Middlemarch would not elect you, I fancy. As for trimming, this is not a

Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still appeared to him a sort of Burke with a leaven

of Shelley; but after an interval the wisdom of his own methods reasserted itself, and he was again drawn into

using them with much hopefulness. At this stage of affairs he was in excellent spirits, which even supported

him under large advances of money; for his powers of convincing and persuading had not yet been, tested by

anything more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing other orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch

voter, from which he came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it was a pity he had

not gone earlier into this kind of thing. He was a little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a

chief representative in Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail trader, and naturally one of the most

doubtful voters in the boroughwilling for his own part to supply an equal quality of teas and sugars to

reformer and antireformer, as well as to agree impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old

that this necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even if there were no danger in

holding out hopes to all parties beforehand, there would be the painful necessity at last of disappointing

respectable people whose names were on his books. He was accustomed to receive large orders from Mr.

Brooke of Tipton; but then, there were many of Pinkerton's committee whose opinions had a great weight of

grocery on their side. Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as not too "clever in his intellects," was the

more likely to forgive a grocer who gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential in his back

"As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light," he said, rattling the small silver in his pocket, and smiling affably.

"Will it support Mrs. Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children when I am no more? I put the

question FICTIOUSLY, knowing what must be the answer. Very well, sir. I ask you what, as a husband and a

father, I am to do when gentlemen come to me and say, `Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote against

us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere: when I sugar my liquor I like to feel that I am benefiting the country

by maintaining tradesmen of the right color.' Those very words have been spoken to me, sir, in the very chair

"No, no, nothat's narrow, you know. Until my butler complains to me of your goods, Mr. Mawmsey," said

Mr. Brooke, soothingly, "until I hear that you send bad sugars, spicesthat sort of thing I shall never

"Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged," said Mr. Mawmsey, feeling that politics were clearing

up a little. "There would be some pleasure in voting for a gentleman who speaks in that honorable manner."

"Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the right thing to put yourself on our side. This Reform

will touch everybody byandby a thoroughly popular measurea sort of A, B, C, you know, that must

come first before the rest can follow. I quite agree with you that you've got to look at the thing in a family

light: but public spirit, now. We're all one family, you know it's all one cupboard. Such a thing as a vote,

now: why, it may help to make men's fortunes at the Capethere's no knowing what may be the effect of a

vote," Mr. Brooke ended, with a sense of being a little out at sea, though finding it still enjoyable. But Mr.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I can't afford that. When I give a vote I must know what I am doing; I must look

to what will be the effects on my till and ledger, speaking respectfully. Prices, I'll admit, are what nobody can

know the merits of; and the sudden falls after you've bought in currants, which are a goods that will not

keep I've never; myself seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke to human pride. But as to one

family, there's debtor and creditor, I hope; they're not going to reform that away; else I should vote for things

staying as they are. Few men have less need to cry for change than I have, personally speakingthat is, for

self and family. I am not one of those who have nothing to lose: I mean as to respectability both in parish and

private business, and noways in respect of your honorable self and custom, which you was good enough to

say you would not withdraw from me, vote or no vote, while the article sent in was satisfactory."

After this conversation Mr. Mawmsey went up and boasted to his wife that he had been rather too many for

Mr. Brooke on this occasion abstained from boasting of his tactics to Ladislaw, who for his part was glad

enough to persuade himself that he had no concern with any canvassing except the purely argumentative sort,

and that he worked no meaner engine than knowledge. Mr. Brooke, necessarily, had his agents, who

understood the nature of the Middlemarch voter and the means of enlisting his ignorance on the side of the

Billwhich were remarkably similar to the means of enlisting it on the side against the Bill. Will stopped his

ears. Occasionally Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our eating and apparel, could hardly go on if

our imaginations were too active about processes. There were plenty of dirtyhanded men in the world to do

dirty business; and Will protested to himself that his share in bringing Mr. Brooke through would be quite

But whether he should succeed in that mode of contributing to the majority on the right side was very

doubtful to him. He had written out various speeches and memoranda for speeches, but he had begun to

perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had the burthen of remembering any train of thought, would let it drop,

run away in search of it, and not easily come back again. To collect documents is one mode of serving your

country, and to remember the contents of a document is another. No! the only way in which Mr. Brooke

could be coerced into thinking of the right arguments at the right time was to be well plied with them till they

took up all the room in his brain. But here there was the difficulty of finding room, so many things having

been taken in beforehand. Mr. Brooke himself observed that his ideas stood rather in his way when he was

However, Ladislaw's coaching was forthwith to be put to the test, for before the day of nomination Mr.

Brooke was to explain himself to the worthy electors of Middlemarch from the balcony of the White Hart,

which looked out advantageously at an angle of the marketplace, commanding a large area in front and two

converging streets. It was a fine May morning, and everything seemed hopeful: there was some prospect of

an understanding between Bagster's committee and Brooke's, to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish as a

Liberal lawyer, and such manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which almost

counterbalanced Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for Pinkerton at the Green Dragon. Mr. Brooke,

conscious of having weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet" against him, by his reforms as a landlord in the last

half year, and hearing himself cheered a little as he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his

buffcolored waistcoat. But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem

"This looks well, eh?" said Mr. Brooke as the crowd gathered. "I shall have a good audience, at any rate. I

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 thema political personage

from Brassing, who came to tell Middlemarch its dutyspoke 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

eyeglass, trifled with documents before him, and exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom

"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 illchosen; 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 Parliamentwhich, indeed, may also be done on private grounds, but being once

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,

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 breastpocket, his left hand on the rail of the balcony, and his right

trifling with his eyeglass. The striking points in his appearance were his buff waistcoat, shortclipped blond

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

This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for, unhappily, the pat opening had slipped

awayeven 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

"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friendsyou've known me on the bench a good whileI've

always gone a good deal into public questionsmachinery, now, and machinebreakingyou'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 staplesthat kind of

thingsince 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 saysJohnson, I think, `The Rambler,' you

know. That is what I have done up to a certain pointnot as far as Peru; but I've not always stayed at

homeI saw it wouldn't do. I've been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go and then,

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: buffcolored waistcoat, eyeglass, and neutral

physiognomy, painted on rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the air, like the note of the cuckoo, a

parrotlike, Punchvoiced 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

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 sidepocket, with an easy air, "if I wanted a

precedent, you knowbut we never want a precedent for the right thingbut 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

"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

"There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we meet for but to speak our

mindsfreedom of opinion, freedom of the press, libertythat kind of thing? The Bill, nowyou shall

have the Bill"here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his eyeglass and take the paper from his

breastpocket, 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,

Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eyeglass fall, and looking about him confusedly,

saw the image of himself, which had come nearer. The next moment he saw it dolorously bespattered with

"Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truthall 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 reentered the committeeroom, saying, as carelessly as he could, "This is a little too bad, you

know. I should have got the ear of the people byandbybut they didn't give me time. I should have gone

into the Bill byandby, you know," he added, glancing at Ladislaw. "However, things will come all right at

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

"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

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 halfformed 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

himselfthen he could go away easily, and begin a career which at fiveandtwenty 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.

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 chestit 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 workthis 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

"Do you wish me to give it up?" said Will, the quick color coming in his face, as he rose from the

writingtable, and took a turn of three steps with his hands in his pockets. "I am ready to do so whenever you

"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 handsindemnify me to a certain extentcarry 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 knowto Althorpe and people of that

"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

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

"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

"Now, aunt," he went on, rubbing his hands and looking at Miss Noble, who was making tender little

beaverlike noises, "There shall be sugarcandy 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

Miss Noble nodded at her nephew with a subdued halffrightened 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

bachelorMr. 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

"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

"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 whistplayer." (Mrs. Farebrother always called her tiny old sister by that magnificent name.)

"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

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

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

"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

"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

"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 wellbeneficed point of view,

The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. But Duty has a trick of behaving

unexpectedlysomething like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his

Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from

"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

"Sit down, Fred, I'm ready to hear and do anything I can," said the Vicar, who was busy packing some small

"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

"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

"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

"Have you any difficulties about doctrinesabout the Articles?" he said, trying hard to think of the question

"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

"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

"For going into the Church under the circumstances? That depends on your conscience, Fredhow far you

have counted the cost, and seen what your position will require of you. I can only tell you about myself, that I

"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

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

"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

"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 herI 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

"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

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

"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

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

That very day Mr. Farebrother went to Lowick parsonage on the nag which he had just set up. "Decidedly I

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

blackandtan terrier, which would persist in walking on the sheet and smelling at the roseleaves as Mary

sprinkled them. She took his forepaws 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.

"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

"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

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

"He has asked me to consult you about his going into the Church. I hope you will not think that I consented to

"On the contrary, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, giving up the roses, and folding her arms, but unable to look

"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 deathhow you refused to

burn the will; and he said that you had some heartprickings 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 sinoffering is demanded from

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

"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

"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 timenot, 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

"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 Christianityas

if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteellyas if" Mary checked herself. She had been carried

"Young women are severe: they don't feel the stress of action as men do, though perhaps I ought to make you

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

"But if he braved all the difficulties of getting his bread in some other waywill you give him the support of

"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

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, Maryyou know I used to catechise you under that namebut when the state of a woman's affections

touches the happiness of another lifeof more lives than oneI think it would be the nobler course for her

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 determinedher 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

"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

"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.

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.

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 frogfaced legatee enjoying the fine old place to the

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 errandboy in a seaport, he had looked through the windows of the moneychangers as

other boys look through the windows of the pastrycooks; 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 moneychanger's shop on a muchfrequented 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

himselfit 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

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

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 hayricks 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 rickyard.

Mr. Bulstrode was conscious of being in a good spiritual frame and more than usually serene, under the

influence of his innocent recreation. He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in

himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when the sense of demerit does not take a

distinct shape in memory and revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse. Nay, it may be held with

intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a measure for the depth of 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 faroff 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

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 hatband. 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

"By Jove, Nick, it's you! I couldn't be mistaken, though the fiveandtwenty 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

"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, forlook 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

"You didn't put your full address to this letter," Raffles continued. "That was not like the firstrate man of

business you used to be. `The Shrubs,'they may be anywhere: you live near at hand, eh? have cut the

London concern altogetherperhaps 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 whilegone 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

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.

"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

"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 coachroad. 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 occasionyou'd such a gift for

Mr. Raffles seemed greatly to enjoy his own wit, and Swung his leg in a swaggering manner which was

"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

"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

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

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,

"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 tomorrow morningbefore

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

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 committedhad 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 lifelong 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

It was not more than halfpast 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

"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 Nickwe

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

"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

"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

"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 lineor 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

"That could be supplied to you, if you would engage to keep at a distance," said Mr. Bulstrode, perhaps with

"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 downchange of linengenuinehonor bright more than fronts and

wristbands; and with this suit of mourning, straps and everything, I should do you credit among the nobs

here." Mr. Raffles had pushed away hit chair and looked down at himself, particularly at his straps His chief

intention was to annoy Bulstrode, but he really thought that his appearance now would produce a good effect,

and that he was not only handsome and witty, but clad in a mourning style which implied solid connections.

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

"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 supposeit'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

This time Mr. Raffles' slow wink and slight protrusion of his tongue was worse than a nightmare, because it

held the certitude that it was not a nightmare, but a waking misery. Mr. Bulstrode felt a shuddering nausea,

and did not speak, but was considering diligently whether he should not leave Raffles to do as he would, and

simply defy him as a slanderer. The man would soon show himself disreputable enough to make people

disbelieve him. "But not when he tells any uglylooking truth about YOU," said discerning consciousness.

And again: it seemed no wrong to keep Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode shrank from the direct

falsehood of denying true statements. It was one thing to look back on forgiven sins, nay, to explain

questionable conformity to lax customs, and another to enter deliberately on the necessity of falsehood.

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

"I've not had such fine luck as you, by Jove! Things went confoundedly with me in New York; those Yankees

are cool hands, and a man of gentlemanly feelings has no chance with them. I married when I came backa

nice woman in the tobacco tradevery fond of me but the trade was restricted, as we say. She had been

settled there a good many years by a friend; but there was a son too much in the case. Josh and I never hit it

off. However, I made the most of the position, and I've always taken my glass in good company. It's been all

on the square with me; I'm as open as the day. You won't take it ill of me that I didn't look you up before. I've

got a complaint that makes me a little dilatory. I thought you were trading and praying away in London still,

and didn't find you there. But you see I was sent to you, Nickperhaps for a blessing to both of us."

Mr. Raffles ended with a jocose snuffle: no man felt his intellect more superior to religious cant. And if the

cunning which calculates on the meanest feelings in men could be, called intellect, he had his share, for under

the blurting rallying tone with which he spoke to Bulstrode, there was an evident selection of statements, as if

they had been so many moves at chess. Meanwhile Bulstrode had determined on his move, and he said, with

"You will do well to reflect, Mr. Raffles, that it is possible for a man to overreach himself in the effort to

secure undue advantage. Although I am not in any way bound to you, I am willing to supply you with a

regular annuityin quarterly paymentsso long as you fulfil a promise to remain at a distance from this

neighborhood. It is in your power to choose. If you insist on remaining here, even for a short time, you will

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

"Your allusions are lost on me sir," said Bulstrode, with white heat; "the law has no hold on me either

"You can't understand a joke, my good fellow. I only meant that I should never decline to know you. But let

Here Raffles rose and stalked once or twice up and down the room, swinging his leg, and assuming an air of

masterly meditation. At last he stopped opposite Bulstrode, and said, "I'll tell you what! Give us a couple of

hundredscome, that's modest and I'll go awayhonor bright!pick up my portmanteau and go away.

But I shall not give up my Liberty for a dirty annuity. I shall come and go where I like. Perhaps it may suit

me to stay away, and correspond with a friend; perhaps not. Have you the money with you?"

"No, I have one hundred," said Bulstrode, feeling the immediate riddance too great a relief to be rejected on

the ground of future uncertainties. "I will forward you the other if you will mention an address."

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

Mr. Bulstrode's sickly body, shattered by the agitations he had gone through since the last evening, made him

feel abjectly in the power of this loud invulnerable man. At that moment he snatched at a temporary repose to

be won on any terms. He was rising to do what Raffles suggested, when the latter said, lifting up his finger as

"I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn't tell you; I'd a tender conscience about that pretty

young woman. I didn't find her, but I found out her husband's name, and I made a note of it. But hang it, I lost

my pocketbook. However, if I heard it, I should know it again. I've got my faculties as if I was in my prime,

but names wear out, by Jove! Sometimes I'm no better than a confounded taxpaper before the names are

filled in. However, if I hear of her and her family, you shall know, Nick. You'd like to do something for her,

"Doubtless," said Mr. Bulstrode, with the usual steady look of his lightgray eyes; "though that might reduce

As he walked out of the room, Raffles winked slowly at his back, and then turned towards the window to

watch the banker riding away virtually at his command. His lips first curled with a smile and then opened

"But what the deuce was the name?" he presently said, half aloud, scratching his head, and wrinkling his

brows horizontally. He had not really cared or thought about this point of forgetfulness until it occurred to

"It began with L; it was almost all l's I fancy," he went on, with a sense that he was getting hold of the

slippery name. But the hold was too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental chase; for few men were more

impatient of private occupation or more in need of making themselves continually heard than Mr. Raffles. He

preferred using his time in pleasant conversation with the bailiff and the housekeeper, from whom he

gathered as much as he wanted to know about Mr. Bulstrode's position in Middlemarch.

After all, however, there was a dull space of time which needed relieving with bread and cheese and ale, and

when he was seated alone with these resources in the wainscoted parlor, he suddenly slapped his knee, and

exclaimed, "Ladislaw!" That action of memory which he had tried to set going, and had abandoned in

despair, had suddenly completed itself without conscious efforta common experience, agreeable as a

completed sneeze, even if the name remembered is of no value. Raffles immediately took out his

pocketbook, and wrote down the name, not because he expected to use it, but merely for the sake of not

being at a loss if he ever did happen to want it. He was not going to tell Bulstrode: there was no actual good

in telling, and to a mind like that of Mr. Raffles there is always probable good in a secret.

He was satisfied with his present success, and by three o'clock that day he had taken up his portmanteau at

the turnpike and mounted the coach, relieving Mr. Bulstrode's eyes of an ugly black spot on the landscape at

Stone Court, but not relieving him of the dread that the black spot might reappear and become inseparable

By that delightful morning when the hayricks at Stone Court were scenting the air quite impartially, as if

Mr. Raffles had been a guest worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had again taken up her abode at Lowick

Manor. After three months Freshitt had become rather oppressive: to sit like a model for Saint Catherine

looking rapturously at Celia's baby would not do for many hours in the day, and to remain in that momentous

babe's presence with persistent disregard was a course that could not have been tolerated in a childless sister.

Dorothea would have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a mile if there had been need, and of loving

it the more tenderly for that labor; but to an aunt who does not recognize her infant nephew as Bouddha, and

has nothing to do for him but to admire, his behavior is apt to appear monotonous, and the interest of

watching him exhaustible. This possibility was quite hidden from Celia, who felt that Dorothea's childless

widowhood fell in quite prettily with the birth of little Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke).

"Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her own children or anything!" said Celia

to her husband. "And if she had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur. Could it, James?

"Not if it had been like Casaubon," said Sir James, conscious of some indirectness in his answer, and of

"No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy," said Celia; "and I think it is very nice for Dodo to be a widow. She

can be just as fond of our baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own as she

"But what should we have been then? We must have been something else," said Celia, objecting to so

Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her final departure to Lowick, Celia

raised her eyebrows with disappointment, and in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needlearrow of sarcasm.

"What will you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say yourself there is nothing to be done there: everybody is so

clean and well off, it makes you quite melancholy. And here you have been so happy going all about Tipton

with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards. And now uncle is abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your

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

"But you will never see him washed," said Celia; "and that is quite the best part of the day." She was almost

pouting: it did seem to her very hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay.

"Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose," said Dorothea; "but I want to be alone now, and in

my own home. I wish to know the Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother about what there is to be

Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all converted into resolute submission. She had a great

yearning to be at Lowick, and was simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all her reasons. But

every one around her disapproved. Sir James was much pained, and offered that they should all migrate to

Cheltenham for a few months with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that period a man could hardly

The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter in town, wished, at least, that Mrs.

Vigo should be written to, and invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon: it was not

credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think of living alone in the house at Lowick. Mrs. Vigo had

been reader and secretary to royal personages, and in point of knowledge and sentiments even Dorothea could

Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see

visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other

people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to

go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I dare say you are a little bored here with

our good dowager; but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellowcreatures if you were

always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may

fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told

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

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

Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her. "No," she said, "I still think that the greater part of

the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of

Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her husband she remarked, "It will be well

for her to marry again as soon as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people. Of course the

Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly a husband is the best thing to keep her in order. If we were not

so poor I would invite Lord Triton. He will be marquis some day, and there is no denying that she would

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

"No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and women together? And it is a shame that her

uncle should have run away and shut up the Grange just now. There ought to be plenty of eligible matches

invited to Freshitt and the Grange. Lord Triton is precisely the man: full of plans for making the people happy

"That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose if she has no variety to choose from? A

woman's choice usually means taking the only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey. If her friends

don't exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon business yet."

"For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore point with Sir James He would be deeply

"I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands. "Celia told me all about the will at the

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

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

Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion. So by the end of June the shutters were

all opened at Lowick Manor, and the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of

notebooks as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones, the mute memorial of a forgotten faith;

and the evening laden with roses entered silently into the bluegreen boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest

to sit. At first she walked into every room, questioning the eighteen months of her married life, and carrying

on her thoughts as if they were a speech to be heard by her husband. Then, she lingered in the library and

could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all the notebooks as she imagined that he would wish to see

them, in orderly sequence. The pity which had been the restraining compelling motive in her life with him

still clung about his image, even while she remonstrated with him in indignant thought and told him that he

was unjust. One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as superstitious. The Synoptical Tabulation for the

use of Mrs. Casaubon, she carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope, "I could not use it. Do

you not see now that I could not submit my soul to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief

That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because underneath and through it all there was

always the deep longing which had really determined her to come to Lowick. The longing was to see Will

Ladislaw. She did not know any good that could come of their meeting: she was helpless; her hands had been

tied from making up to him for any unfairness in his lot. But her soul thirsted to see him. How could it be

otherwise? If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a fourfooted creature from among those which

live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with choice and

beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what would she look for when the herds passed her?

Surely for the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again. Life would be no better than

candlelight tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing

and constancy. It was true that Dorothea wanted to know the Farebrothers better, and especially to talk to the

new rector, but also true that remembering what Lydgate had told her about Will Ladislaw and little Miss

Noble, she counted on Will's coming to Lowick to see the Farebrother family. The very first Sunday,

BEFORE she entered the church, she saw him as she had seen him the last time she was there, alone in the

In the weekdays when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory, she listened in vain for some word that they

might let fall about Will; but it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother talked of every one else in the

"Probably some of Mr. Farebrother's Middlemarch hearers may follow him to Lowick sometimes. Do you not

think so?" said Dorothea, rather despising herself for having a secret motive in asking the question.

"If they are wise they will, Mrs. Casaubon," said the old lady. "I see that you set a right value on my son's

preaching. His grandfather on my side was an excellent clergyman, but his father was in the law: most

exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our never being rich. They say Fortune is a woman

and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman and gives to those who merit, which has been the case

Mrs. Farebrother recurred to her knitting with a dignified satisfaction in her neat little effort at oratory, but

this was not what Dorothea wanted to hear. Poor thing! she did not even know whether Will Ladislaw was

still at Middlemarch, and there was no one whom she dared to ask, unless it were Lydgate. But just now she

could not see Lydgate without sending for him or going to seek him. Perhaps Will Ladislaw, having heard of

that strange ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon, had felt it better that he and she should not meet again,

and perhaps she was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good reasons against. Still "I

do wish it" came at the end of those wise reflections as naturally as a sob after holding the breath. And the

One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seated in her boudoir with a map of the land attached to the manor

and other papers before her, which were to help her in making an exact statement for herself of her income

and affairs. She had not yet applied herself to her work, but was seated with her hands folded on her lap,

looking out along the avenue of limes to the distant fields. Every leaf was at rest in the sunshine, the familiar

scene was changeless, and seemed to represent the prospect of her life, full of motiveless easemotiveless,

if her own energy could not seek out reasons for ardent action. The widow's cap of those times made an oval

frame for the face, and had a crown standing up; the dress was an experiment in the utmost laying on of

crape; but this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the younger, with its recovered bloom, and

Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to say that Mr. Ladislaw was below, and begged permission

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

The drawingroom was the most neutral room in the house to her the one least associated with the trials of

her married life: the damask matched the woodwork, which was all white and gold; there were two tall

mirrors and tables with nothing on them in brief, it was a room where you had no reason for sitting in one

place rather than in another. It was below the boudoir, and had also a bowwindow looking out on the

avenue. But when Pratt showed Will Ladislaw into it the window was open; and a winged visitor, buzzing in

and out now and then without minding the furniture, made the room look less formal and uninhabited.

"I am only come to say goodby, Pratt," said Will, who wished even the butler to know that he was too proud

"Very sorry to hear it, sir," said Pratt, retiring. Of course, as a servant who was to be told nothing, he knew

the fact of which Ladislaw was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences; indeed, had not differed from his

betrothed Tantripp when she said, "Your master was as jealous as a fiendand no reason. Madam would

look higher than Mr. Ladislaw, else I don't know her. Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's a lord coming

There were not many moments for Will to walk about with his hat in his hand before Dorothea entered. The

meeting was very different from that first meeting in Rome when Will had been embarrassed and Dorothea

calm. This time he felt miserable but determined, while she was in a state of agitation which could not be

hidden. Just outside the door she had felt that this longedfor meeting was after all too difficult, and when

she saw Will advancing towards her, the deep blush which was rare in her came with painful suddenness.

Neither of them knew how it was, but neither of them spoke. She gave her hand for a moment, and then they

went to sit down near the window, she on one settee and he on another opposite. Will was peculiarly uneasy:

it seemed to him not like Dorothea that the mere fact of her being a widow should cause such a change in her

manner of receiving him; and he knew of no other condition which could have affected their previous relation

to each other except that, as his imagination at once told him, her friends might have been poisoning her

"I hope I have not presumed too much in calling," said Will; "I could not bear to leave the neighborhood and

"Presumed? Surely not. I should have thought it unkind if you had not wished to see me," said Dorothea, her

habit of speaking with perfect genuineness asserting itself through all her uncertainty and agitation. "Are you

"Very soon, I think. I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a barrister, since, they say, that is the

preparation for all public business. There will be a great deal of political work to be done byandby, and I

mean to try and do some of it. Other men have managed to win an honorable position for themselves without

"And that will make it all the more honorable," said Dorothea, ardently. "Besides, you have so many talents. I

have heard from my uncle how well you speak in public, so that every one is sorry when you leave off, and

how clearly you can explain things. And you care that justice should be done to every one. I am so glad.

When we were in Rome, I thought you only cared for poetry and art, and the things that adorn life for us who

While she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment, and had become like her former self.

"You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here again till I have made myself of

some mark in the world?" said Will, trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to get an

She was not aware how long it was before she answered. She had turned her head and was looking out of the

window on the rosebushes, which seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will would be

away. This was not judicious behavior. But Dorothea never thought of studying her manners: she thought

only of bowing to a sad necessity which divided her from Will. Those first words of his about his intentions

had seemed to make everything clear to her: he knew, she supposed, all about Mr. Casaubon's final conduct

in relation to him, and it had come to him with the same sort of shock as to herself. He had never felt more

than friendship for her had never had anything in his mind to justify what she felt to be her husband's

outrage on the feelings of both: and that friendship he still felt. Something which may be called an inward

silent sob had gone on in Dorothea before she said with a pure voice, just trembling in the last words as if

"Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say. I shall be very happy when I hear that you have made your

Will never quite knew how it was that he saved himself from falling down at her feet, when the "long while"

came forth with its gentle tremor. He used to say that the horrible hue and surface of her crape dress was most

"No," said Dorothea, "I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten any one whom I once knew. My life

has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so. And I have a great deal of space for memory at

"Good God!" Will burst out passionately, rising, with his hat still in his hand, and walking away to a marble

table, where he suddenly turned and leaned his back against it. The blood had mounted to his face and neck,

and he looked almost angry. It had seemed to him as if they were like two creatures slowly turning to marble

in each other's presence, while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning. But there was no

help for it. It should never be true of him that in this meeting to which he had come with bitter resolution he

had ended by a confession which might be interpreted into asking for her fortune. Moreover, it was actually

true that he was fearful of the effect which such confessions might have on Dorothea herself.

She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that there might hate been an offence in her

words. But all the while there was a current of thought in her about his probable want of money, and the

impossibility of her helping him. If her uncle had been at home, something might have been done through

him! It was this preoccupation with the hardship of Will's wanting money, while she had what ought to have

been his share, which led her to say, seeing that he remained silent and looked away from her

"I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature which hangs upstairsI mean that beautiful

miniature OF your grandmother. I think it is not right for me to keep it, if you would wish to have it. It is

"You are very good," said Will, irritably. "No; I don't mind about it. It is not very consoling to have one's

"I thought you would like to cherish her memoryI thought "Dorothea broke off an instant, her

imagination suddenly warning her away from Aunt Julia's history"you would surely like to have the

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

Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance; it was a little too exasperating to have his

grandmother's portrait offered him at that moment. But to Dorothea's feeling his words had a peculiar sting.

Will was startled. Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed like a dismissal; and quitting his leaning

posture, he walked a little way towards her. Their eyes met, but with a strange questioning gravity.

Something was keeping their minds aloof, and each was left to conjecture what was in the other. Will had

really never thought of himself as having a claim of inheritance on the property which was held by Dorothea,

"I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said. "But poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it

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

"Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that I mean of the unexpected way in

which trouble comes, and ties our hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak. I used to despise

women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things. I was very fond of doing as I liked,

"I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it," said Will. He was standing two yards from

her with his mind full of contradictory desires and resolvesdesiring some unmistakable proof that she

loved him, and yet dreading the position into which such a proof might bring him. "The thing one most longs

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

"Ask Sir James to come in here," said Dorothea, immediately. It was as if the same electric shock had passed

through her and Will. Each of them felt proudly resistant, and neither looked at the other, while they awaited

After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible to Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness

Dorothea put out her hand and said her goodby cordially. The sense that Sir James was depreciating Will,

and behaving rudely to him, roused her resolution and dignitythere was no touch of confusion in her

manner. And when Will had left the room, she looked with such calm selfpossession at Sir James, saying,

"How is Celia?" that he was obliged to behave as if nothing had annoyed him. And what would be the use of

behaving otherwise? Indeed, Sir James shrank with so much dislike from the association even in thought of

Dorothea with Ladislaw as her possible lover, that he would himself have wished to avoid an outward show

of displeasure which would have recognized the disagreeable possibility. If any one had asked him why he

shrank in that way, I am not sure that he would at first have said anything fuller or more precise than "THAT

Ladislaw!" though on reflection he might have urged that Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's

marriage with Will, except under a penalty, was enough to cast unfitness over any relation at all between

them. His aversion was all the stronger because he felt himself unable to interfere.

But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by himself. Entering at that moment, he was an incorporation

of the strongest reasons through which Will's pride became a repellent force, keeping him asunder from

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is

so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final,

simply because it is new. We are told that the oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the

earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that there are plenty more to come.

To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes with their long full lashes look out after their rain of

tears unsoiled and unwearied as a freshly opened passionflower, that morning's parting with Will Ladislaw

seemed to be the close of their personal relations. He was going away into the distance of unknown years, and

if ever he came back he would be another man. The actual state of his mind his proud resolve to give the

lie beforehand to any suspicion that he would play the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman lay quite

out of her imagination, and she had interpreted all his behavior easily enough by her supposition that Mr.

Casaubon's codicil seemed to him, as it did to her, a gross and cruel interdict on any active friendship

between them. Their young delight in speaking to each other, and saying what no one else would care to hear,

was forever ended, and become a treasure of the past. For this very reason she dwelt on it without inward

check. That unique happiness too was dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber she might vent the passionate

grief which she herself wondered at. For the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and kept it

before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardly judged with the grandson whom her own

heart and judgment defended. Can any one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a reproach to her

that she took the little oval picture in her palm and made a bed for it there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if

that would soothe the creatures who had suffered unjust condemnation? She did not know then that it was

Love who had come to her briefly, as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings

that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigor of

irresistible day. She only felt that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot, and her thoughts

about the future were the more readily shapen into resolve. Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming

One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of staying all night and seeing baby washed, Mrs.

Cadwallader came to dine, the Rector being gone on a fishing excursion. It was a warm evening, and even in

the delightful drawingroom, where the fine old turf sloped from the open window towards a lilied pool and

wellplanted mounds, the heat was enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls reflect with pity

on what Dodo must feel in her black dress and close cap. But this was not until some episodes with baby

were over, and had left her mind at leisure. She had seated herself and taken up a fan for some time before

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

"I am so used to the capit has become a sort of shell," said Dorothea, smiling. "I feel rather bare and

"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said Celia, throwing down her fan, and going to Dorothea.

It was a pretty picture to see this little lady in white muslin unfastening the widow's cap from her more

majestic sister, and tossing it on to a chair. Just as the coils and braids of darkbrown hair had been set free,

Sir James entered the room. He looked at the released head, and said, "Ah!" in a tone of satisfaction.

"It was I who did it, James," said Celia. "Dodo need not make such a slavery of her mourning; she need not

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

"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader, who had some pleasure in startling her

good friend the Dowager. Sir James was annoyed, and leaned forward to play with Celia's Maltese dog.

"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a tone intended to guard against such events. "No friend of

ours ever committed herself in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was very painful to Lord Grinsell when

she did so. Her first husband was objectionable, which made it the greater wonder. And severely she was

punished for it. They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair, and held up loaded pistols at her."

"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, who was in a decidedly wicked mood. "Marriage is

always bad then, first or second. Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other. I

"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam. "I am sure you would be the last

"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy. It is lawful to marry again, I suppose; else we might

as well be Hindoos instead of Christians. Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man, she must take the

consequences, and one who does it twice over deserves her fate. But if she can marry blood, beauty, and

"I think the subject of our conversation is very illchosen," said Sir James, with a look of disgust. "Suppose

"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose the opportunity of freeing herself

from certain oblique references to excellent matches. "If you are speaking on my behalf, I can assure you that

no question can be more indifferent and impersonal to me than second marriage. It is no more to me than if

you talked of women going foxhunting: whether it is admirable in them or not, I shall not follow them. Pray

"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her stateliest way, "you do not, I hope, think there was any

allusion to you in my mentioning Mrs. Beevor. It was only an instance that occurred to me. She was

stepdaughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroy for his second wife. There could be no possible

"Oh no," said Celia. "Nobody chose the subject; it all came out of Dodo's cap. Mrs. Cadwallader only said

"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "I will not offend again. I will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia.

Only what are we to talk about? I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature, because that is the

Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone, Celia said privately to Dorothea, "Really, Dodo,

taking your cap off made you like yourself again in more ways than one. You spoke up just as you used to do,

when anything was said to displease you. But I could hardly make out whether it was James that you thought

"Neither," said Dorothea. "James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he was mistaken in supposing that I

minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said. I should only mind if there were a law obliging me to take any piece of

"But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be all the better to have blood and beauty," said Celia,

reflecting that Mr. Casaubon had not been richly endowed with those gifts, and that it would be well to

"Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life. I shall never marry again," said Dorothea,

touching her sister's chin, and looking at her with indulgent affection. Celia was nursing her baby, and

"Reallyquite?" said Celia. "Not anybody at allif he were very wonderful indeed?"

Dorothea shook her head slowly. "Not anybody at all. I have delightful plans. I should like to take a great

deal of land, and drain it, and make a little colony, where everybody should work, and all the work should be

done well. I should know every one of the people and be their friend. I am going to have great consultations

"Then you WILL be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo?" said Celia. "Perhaps little Arthur will like plans when

Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was really quite set against marrying anybody at all,

and was going to take to "all sorts of plans," just like what she used to have. Sir James made no remark. To

his secret feeling there was something repulsive in a woman's second marriage, and no match would prevent

him from feeling it a sort of desecration for Dorothea. He was aware that the world would regard such a

sentiment as preposterous, especially in relation to a woman of oneandtwenty; the practice of "the world"

being to treat of a young widow's second marriage as certain and probably near, and to smile with meaning if

the widow acts accordingly. But if Dorothea did choose to espouse her solitude, he felt that the resolution

Dorothea's confidence in Caleb Garth's knowledge, which had begun on her hearing that he approved of her

cottages, had grown fast during her stay at Freshitt, Sir James having induced her to take rides over the two

estates in company with himself and Caleb, who quite returned her admiration, and told his wife that Mrs.

Casaubon had a head for business most uncommon in a woman. It must be remembered that by "business"

"Most uncommon!" repeated Caleb. "She said a thing I often used to think myself when I was a lad:`Mr.

Garth, I should like to feel, if I lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece of land and built a great

many good cottages, because the work is of a healthy kind while it is being done, and after it is done, men are

the better for it.' Those were the very words: she sees into things in that way."

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

"Oh, you can't think!" said Caleb, shaking his head. "You would like to hear her speak, Susan. She speaks in

such plain words, and a voice like music. Bless me! it reminds me of bits in the `Messiah'`and straightway

there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying;' it has a tone with it that satisfies

Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear an oratorio that came within his

reach, returning from it with a profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him sit

meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable language into his outstretched hands.

With this good understanding between them, it was natural that Dorothea asked Mr. Garth to undertake any

business connected with the three farms and the numerous tenements attached to Lowick Manor; indeed, his

expectation of getting work for two was being fast fulfilled. As he said, "Business breeds." And one form of

business which was beginning to breed just then was the construction of railways. A projected line was to run

through Lowick parish where the cattle had hitherto grazed in a peace unbroken by astonishment; and thus it

happened that the infant struggles of the railway system entered into the affairs of Caleb Garth, and

determined the course of this history with regard to two persons who were dear to him. The submarine

railway may have its difficulties; but the bed of the sea is not divided among various landed proprietors with

claims for damages not only measurable but sentimental. In the hundred to which Middlemarch belonged

railways were as exciting a topic as the Reform Bill or the imminent horrors of Cholera, and those who held

the most decided views on the subject were women and landholders. Women both old and young regarded

travelling by steam as presumptuous and dangerous, and argued against it by saying that nothing should

induce them to get into a railway carriage; while proprietors, differing from each other in their arguments as

much as Mr. Solomon Featherstone differed from Lord Medlicote, were yet unanimous in the opinion that in

selling land, whether to the Enemy of mankind or to a company obliged to purchase, these pernicious

agencies must be made to pay a very high price to landowners for permission to injure mankind.

But the slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule, who both occupied land of their own, took a long

time to arrive at this conclusion, their minds halting at the vivid conception of what it would be to cut the Big

Pasture in two, and turn it into threecornered bits, which would be "nohow;" while accommodationbridges

"The cows will all cast their calves, brother," said Mrs. Waule, in a tone of deep melancholy, "if the railway

comes across the Near Close; and I shouldn't wonder at the mare too, if she was in foal. It's a poor tale if a

widow's property is to be spaded away, and the law say nothing to it. What's to hinder 'em from cutting right

"The best way would be to say nothing, and set somebody on to send 'em away with a flea in their ear, when

they came spying and measuring," said Solomon. "Folks did that about Brassing, by what I can understand.

It's all a pretence, if the truth was known, about their being forced to take one way. Let 'em go cutting in

another parish. And I don't believe in any pay to make amends for bringing a lot of ruffians to trample your

"Brother Peter, God forgive him, got money out of a company," said Mrs. Waule. "But that was for the

"Well, there's this to be said, Jane," Mr. Solomon concluded, lowering his voice in a cautious manner"the

more spokes we put in their wheel, the more they'll pay us to let 'em go on, if they must come whether or

This reasoning of Mr. Solomon's was perhaps less thorough than he imagined, his cunning bearing about the

same relation to the course of railways as the cunning of a diplomatist bears to the general chill or catarrh of

the solar system. But he set about acting on his views in a thoroughly diplomatic manner, by stimulating

suspicion. His side of Lowick was the most remote from the village, and the houses of the laboring people

were either lone cottages or were collected in a hamlet called Frick, where a watermill and some stonepits

In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public opinion in Frick was against them; for the

human mind in that grassy corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding rather that

it was likely to be against the poor man, and that suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it. Even

the rumor of Reform had not yet excited any millennial expectations in Frick, there being no definite promise

in it, as of gratuitous grains to fatten Hiram Ford's pig, or of a publican at the "Weights and Scales" who

would brew beer for nothing, or of an offer on the part of the three neighboring farmers to raise wages during

winter. And without distinct good of this kind in its promises, Reform seemed on a footing with the bragging

of pedlers, which was a hint for distrust to every knowing person. The men of Frick were not illfed, and

were less given to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion; less inclined to believe that they were

peculiarly cared for by heaven, than to regard heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in a disposition

Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for Mr. Solomon Featherstone to work upon, he having more

plenteous ideas of the same order, with a suspicion of heaven and earth which was better fed and more

entirely at leisure. Solomon was overseer of the roads at that time, and on his slowpaced cob often took his

rounds by Frick to look at the workmen getting the stones there, pausing with a mysterious deliberation,

which might have misled you into supposing that he had some other reason for staying than the mere want of

impulse to move. After looking for a long while at any work that was going on, he would raise his eyes a

little and look at the horizon; finally he would shake his bridle, touch his horse with the whip, and get it to

move slowly onward. The hourhand of a clock was quick by comparison with Mr. Solomon, who had an

agreeable sense that he could afford to be slow. He was in the habit of pausing for a cautious, vaguely

designing chat with every hedger or ditcher on his way, and was especially willing to listen even to news

which he had heard before, feeling himself at an advantage over all narrators in partially disbelieving them.

One day, however, he got into a dialogue with Hiram Ford, a wagoner, in which he himself contributed

information. He wished to know whether Hiram had seen fellows with staves and instruments spying about:

they called themselves railroad people, but there was no telling what they were or what they meant to do. The

least they pretended was that they were going to cut Lowick Parish into sixes and sevens.

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

"Not a bit," said Mr. Solomon. "And cutting up fine land such as this parish! Let 'em go into Tipton, say I.

But there's no knowing what there is at the bottom of it. Traffic is what they put for'ard; but it's to do harm to

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

"Ay, to be sure. And in some parts against Brassing, by what I've heard say, the folks fell on 'em when they

were spying, and broke their peepholes as they carry, and drove 'em away, so as they knew better than come

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

"Well, I wouldn't meddle with 'em myself," said Solomon. "But some say this country's seen its best days,

and the sign is, as it's being overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut it up into

railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the little, so as there shan't be a team left on the land, nor a

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

Nettleseed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by railroads was discussed, not only at the

"Weights and Scales," but in the hayfield, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for talk

One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and Mary Garth, in which she confessed

to him her feeling for Fred Vincy, it happened that her father had some business which took him to Yoddrell's

farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick

Manor, which Caleb expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it must be confessed that his bias

was towards getting the best possible terms from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell's, and in

walking with his assistant and measuringchain to the scene of his work, he encountered the party of the

company's agents, who were adjusting their spiritlevel. After a little chat he left them, observing that

byandby they would reach him again where he was going to measure. It was one of those gray mornings

after light rains, which become delicious about twelve o'clock, when the clouds part a little, and the scent of

The 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 workingday 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

smockfrocks with hayforks 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 smockfrocks, whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing after swallowing

their midday beer, were driving the men in coats before them with their hayforks; while Caleb Garth's

assistant, a lad of seventeen, who had snatched up the spiritlevel 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 smockfrocks 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 gateway into their hayfield, and Fred had checked his horse,

when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a safe challenging distance, turned back and shouted a defiance

"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

The lad's ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he was no further hurt, and Fred placed

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

"No, no," said Caleb, "here's a breakage. They'll have to give up for today, 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

"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. "Butdeuce take itthis is what comes of men being foolsI'm

hindered of my day's work. I can't get along without somebody to help me with the measuringchain.

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 today, young fellow?"

"Nothing, Mr. Garth. I'll help you with pleasurecan I?" said Fred, with a sense that he should be courting

"I don't mind anything. Only I want to go first and have a round with that hulky fellow who turned to

"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."

"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 himwhich came from his having always been a hardworking man himselfof 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 everyday mild air when he

"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

"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

"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

"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 unthe 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 neamean' it's been all aloike to the poor mon. What's the canells

been t' him? They'n brought him neyther meat nor beacon, 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 stockingfoot,

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 manbad 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

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

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

"No, but the rest. Come, I'm as hard at work as any of you today, and I can't spare much time. Say you'll be

"Aw, we wooant meddlethey may do as they loike for oos" were the forms in which Caleb got his

pledges; and then he hastened back to Fred, who had followed him, and watched him in the gateway.

They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously. His spirits had risen, and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in

the moist earth under the hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer trousers. Was it his successful onset

which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping Mary's father? Something more. The accidents of the

morning had helped his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself which had several

attractions. I am not sure that certain fibres in Mr. Garth's mind had not resumed their old vibration towards

the very end which now revealed itself to Fred. For the effective accident is but the touch of fire where there

is oil and tow; and it al ways appeared to Fred that the railway brought the needed touch. But they went on in

silence except when their business demanded speech. At last, when they had finished and were walking away,

"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 thatif I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man isI 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 rickthatcher, 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

"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

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

"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 knowthough you will think me rather foolish for itthat I

should have land of my own. I am sure knowledge of that sort would come easily to me, especially if I could

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

"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

fourandtwenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what it would be right for me to do now? My

"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

positionI 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 claimindeed, I have already a debt to you which will never be discharged, even when I

"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 fellowfeeling's sake. But I must consider. Come

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 fourroomed 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 ninetynine 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

"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

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

"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

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

"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 selfindulgent 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

"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

"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

"I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known," said Mrs. Garth, convinced that SHE would never have

"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,

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.

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

"That signifies nothingwhat 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

Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards his wife. She rose and kissed him,

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 ither 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

"Now Fred," said Caleb, "you will have some deskwork. 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 deskwork; 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

"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

"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

Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have wondered what was the drama between the

indignant man of business, and the finelooking 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 deskworkin fact, like the majority of

young gentlemen, he wanted an occupation which should be free from disagreeables. I cannot tell what might

have been the consequences if he had not distinctly promised himself that he would go to Lowick to see Mary

and tell her that he was engaged to work under her father. He did not like to disappoint himself there.

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

"We must make the best of it, Fred," he began, with a return to his usual quiet tone. "Every man can learn to

write. I taught myself. Go at it with a will, and sit up at night if the daytime isn't enough. We'll be patient,

my boy. 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

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

"Very well; stick to it. I've no more to say. You've thrown away your education, and gone down a step in life,

"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

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

"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

"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

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

"Come, Lucy, my dear, don't be so downhearted. You always have spoiled the boy, and you must go on

"Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy," said the wife, her fair throat and chin beginning to tremble again,

"Pooh, pooh, never mind! We must expect to have trouble with our children. Don't make it worse by letting

"Well, I won't," said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting herself with a little shake as of a bird

"It won't do to begin making a fuss about one," said Mr. Vincy, wishing to combine a little grumbling with

"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 tomorrow."

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

He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great appletree 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

holidayChristy, 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 objectlesson given to

him by the educational mother. Christy himself, a squarebrowed, broadshouldered masculine edition of his

mother not much higher than Fred's shoulderwhich made it the harder that he should be held

superiorwas 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

activeminded but probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled Newfoundland lying in the sun looked on

with the dulleyed 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 coralheap on the

But the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fred Vincy. When, seating himself on a

gardenstool, he said that he was on his way to Lowick Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown down his bow, and

snatched up a reluctant halfgrown kitten instead, strode across Fred's outstretched leg, and said "Take me!"

"Yes, I can. Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty, whose life was much checkered by resistance to

"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.

"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

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

"Children, run away," said Mrs. Garth; "it is too warm to hang about your friends. Take your brother and

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

"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

"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

"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

chosealways 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

"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

"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,

"She never did give me anynot 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

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 selfcontrol that this blooming youngster should flourish on the

disappointments of sadder and wiser peoplemaking a meal of a nightingale and never knowing itand

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,

"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,

"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

"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

"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

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

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 appletree where the teathings 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 teatable and upset the milk,

then jumped down again and swept half the cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the halfknitted socktop,

fitted it over the kitten's head as a new source of madness, while Letty arriving cried out to her mother against

this crueltyit 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 teteatete 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

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

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

He did not feel easier when he found her looking cheerful with the three ladies in the drawingroom. 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

"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.

"Now why, my dear?" said Mrs. Farebrother, pausing on her large wooden knittingneedles and looking at

Mary. "You have always a good reason for your opinions, but this astonishes me. Of course I put out of the

"Oh dear," said Mary, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to consider a moment, "I don't like

"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

"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 jealouswas 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,

"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

"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

"What do you mean, Fred?" Mary exclaimed indignantly, blushing deeply, and surprised out of all her

"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

Fred was rather deep, in spite of his irritation. If Mary had really been unsuspicious, there was no good in

"It follows as a matter of course," he replied. "When you are continually seeing a man who beats me in

"You are very ungrateful, Fred," said Mary. "I wish I had never told Mr. Farebrother that I cared for you in

"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,

"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

"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

"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,"

"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 drawingroom 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

"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 kindnew 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

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

What led her particularly to desire horseexercise 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 weddingtour, 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

As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on one side, and his rather heavy

utterance, might have been disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing and

mustache to give him what is doted on by some flowerlike blond heads as "style." He had, moreover, that

sort of highbreeding which consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middleclass gentility, and he

was a great critic of feminine charms. Rosamond delighted in his admiration now even more than she had

done at Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in flirting with her. The visit

altogether was one of the pleasantest larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected that

his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have

died than have failed in polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended generally not to hear

what the gallant officer said, consigning the task of answering him to Rosamond. For he was not at all a

jealous husband, and preferred leaving a featherheaded young gentleman alone with his wife to bearing him

"I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius," said Rosamond, one evening when the

important guest was gone to Loamford to see some brother officers stationed there. "You really look so

absent sometimesyou seem to be seeing through his head into something behind it, instead of looking at

"My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass as that, I hope," said Lydgate,

brusquely. "If he got his head broken, I might look at it with interest, not before."

"I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so contemptuously," said Rosamond, her fingers

moving at her work while she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.

"Ask Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he ever met with. Ladislaw has almost

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

"It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she answered, "but in my opinion Captain Lydgate

is a thorough gentleman, and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him with neglect."

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

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

your sense; his profession is different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on his subjects. _I_

think his conversation is quite agreeable. And he is anything but an unprincipled man."

"The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy," said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned

murmur, with a smile which was not exactly tender, and certainly not merry. Rosamond was silent and did

not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked goodtempered enough without smiling.

Those words of Lydgate's were like a sad milestone marking how far he had travelled from his old

dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence

her husband's mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and lookingglass and

singing her song for the relaxation of his adored wisdom alone. He had begun to distinguish between that

imagined adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent because it gives him prestige, and is like an

It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she had found the pointless conversation

of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a

stupidity which is altogether acceptable else, indeed, what would become of social bonds? Captain

Lydgate's stupidity was delicately scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good accent, and was

closely related to Sir Godwin. Rosamond found it quite agreeable and caught many of its phrases.

Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were plenty of reasons why she should

be tempted to resume her riding when Captain Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow

him and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray which he warranted to be gentle and

trained to carry a ladyindeed, he had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham. Rosamond

went out the first time without telling her husband, and came back before his return; but the ride had been so

thorough a success, and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was informed of it

On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurthe was utterly confounded that she had risked herself on a

strange horse without referring the matter to his wish. After the first almost thundering exclamations of

astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he was silent for some moments.

"However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive tone. "You will not go again, Rosy; that

is understood. If it were the quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be the chance of

accident. And you know very well that I wished you to give up riding the roan on that account."

"My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Lydgate, in an imploring tone; "surely I am the person to judge for

Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of her head in the glass showed no change

in its loveliness except a little turning aside of the long neck. Lydgate had been moving about with his hands

"I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Rosamond, letting her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to

make a husband ashamed of standing there like a brute. Lydgate had often fastened the plaits before, being

among the deftest of men with his large finely formed fingers. He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and

fastened in the tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but kiss the exquisite nape

which was shown in all its delicate curves? But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a

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

"I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius," said Rosamond, looking at him with something more

marked than usual in her speech. "It will be treating me as if I were a child. Promise that you will leave the

There did seem to be some truth in her objection. Lydgate said, "Very well," with a surly obedience, and thus

the discussion ended with his promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him.

In fact, she had been determined not to promise. Rosamond had that victorious obstinacy which never wastes

its energy in impetuous resistance. What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all her cleverness was

directed to getting the means of doing it. She meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the

next opportunity of her husband's absence, not intending that he should know until it was late enough not to

signify to her. The temptation was certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the gratification of

riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir Godwin's son, on another fine horse by her side, and of

being met in this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her dreams before marriage:

moreover she was riveting the connection with the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do.

But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took

fright, and caused a worse fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the loss of her baby. Lydgate could not

show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an

In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain that the ride had made no difference,

and that if she had stayed at home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the

Lydgate could only say, "Poor, poor darling!"but he secretly wondered over the terrible tenacity of this

mild creature. There was gathering within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond. His

superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all

occasions, was simply set aside on every practical question. He had regarded Rosamond's cleverness as

precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman. He was now beginning to find out what that

cleverness waswhat was the shape into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent. No

one quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the track of her own tastes and

interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively

tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his

professional and scientific ambition had no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the

fortunate discovery of an illsmelling oil. And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course she

believed in her own opinion more than she did in his. Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless trifling

matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding, that affection did not make her compliant. He had no

doubt that the affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything to repel it. For his own

part he said to himself that he loved her as tenderly as ever, and could make up his mindto her negations;

butwell! Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in his life as noxious to him as an

inlet of mud to a creature that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in the

Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her father's phaeton and

thinking it likely that she might be invited to Quallingham. She knew that she was a much more exquisite

ornament to the drawingroom there than any daughter of the family, and in reflecting that the gentlemen

were aware of that, did not perhaps sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see themselves

Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she inwardly called his moodinessa name

which to her covered his thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as that uneasy

look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really

made a sort of weatherglass to his vexation and foreboding. These latter states of mind had one cause

amongst others, which he had generously but mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should

affect her health and spirits. Between him and her indeed there was that total missing of each other's mental

track, which is too evidently possible even between persons who are continually thinking of each other. To

Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in sacrificing more than half of his best

intent and best power to his tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions without

impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of bitterness to look through less and less of interfering

illusion at the blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more impersonal ends of his

profession and his scientific study, an ardor which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship

as sublime, though not in the least knowing why. But his endurance was mingled with a selfdiscontent

which, if we know how to be candid, we shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under

grievances, wife or husband included. It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would

have been less strong against us. Lydgate was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more

than the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is out of

adjustment to a constant portion of our lives. And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not

a simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading care, such as casts the blight of irony

This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to Rosamond; and he believed, with some

wonder, that it had never entered her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious. It was an

inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate

was in debt; and he could not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was every day

getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and

verdure. It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin therein a condition in which, spite of himself,

he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the universe in his soul.

Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager want of small sums, and felt rather a

burning contempt for any one who descended a step in order to gain them. He was now experiencing

something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar hateful trials of a man who has bought

and used a great many things which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for, though

How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or knowledge of prices. When a man in

setting up a house and preparing for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come to

between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay for; when at the end of a year it

appears that his household expenses, horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds

of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a summer

pond and make hardly five hundred, chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he minds it

or not, he is in debt. Those were less expensive times than our own, and provincial life was comparatively

modest; but the ease with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought that he was

obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and

a high rent for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts, can be conceived by any one

who does not think these details beneath his consideration. Rosamond, accustomed from her to an

extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the best of

everythingnothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed that "if things were done at all, they must be

done properly" he did not see how they were to live otherwise. If each head of household expenditure had

been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have probably observed that "it could hardly come to much,"

and if any one had suggested a saving on a particular article for example, the substitution of cheap fish for

dear it would have appeared to him simply a pennywise, mean notion. Rosamond, even without such an

occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations, and Lydgate, though he often thought the

guests tiresome, did not interfere. This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional prudence, and the

entertainment must be suitable. It is true Lydgate was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting

his prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be

remarkableis it not rather that we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience

lying side by side and never compare them with each other? Expenditurelike ugliness and

errorsbecomes a totally new thing when we attach our own personality to it, and measure it by that wide

difference which is manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others. Lydgate believed himself

to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to

him only a matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments such things were naturally ordered in

sheaves. It must be remembered that he had never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked

Its novelty made it the more irritating. He was amazed, disgusted that conditions so foreign to all his

purposes, so hatefully disconnected with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in

ambush and clutched him when he was unaware. And there was not only the actual debt; there was the

certainty that in his present position he must go on deepening it. Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing,

whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever since

prevented him from paying, had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves on his

attention. This could hardly have been more galling to any disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense

pridehis dislike of asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one. He had scorned even to form

conjectures about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters, and nothing but extremity could have induced

him to apply to his fatherinlaw, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect ways since his

marriage that Mr. Vincy's own affairs were not flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would

be resented. Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had never in the former part of his life

occurred to Lydgate that he should need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but

now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather incur any other hardship. In the mean time

he had no money or prospects of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative.

No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward trouble during the last few months,

and now that Rosamond was regaining brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on his

difficulties. New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced his reasoning into a new channel of

comparison: he had begun to consider from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in

goods ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits. How could such a change be made

without Rosamond's concurrence? The immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced

Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security could possibly be given by a man

in his position, Lydgate had offered the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who

was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself the upholsterer's credit also, accepting

interest for a given term. The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his house, which might

make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the

silversmith, Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the plate and any other article

which was as good as new. "Any other article" was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more

particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Lydgate had bought as a bridal present.

Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that it was a graceful

attention to be expected from a man like Lydgate, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in

the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered no conveniences for professional people

whose fortune was not proportioned to their tastes; also, in Lydgate's ridiculous fastidiousness about asking

However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine morning when he went to give a final

order for plate: in the presence of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of which

the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond's

neck and arms could hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed. But at this crisis

Lydgate's imagination could not help dwelling on the possibility of letting the amethysts take their place

again among Mr. Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to Rosamond. Having been

roused to discern consequences which he had never been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on

this discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have applied in pursuing experiment.

He was nerving himself to this rigor as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must

It was evening when he got home. He was intensely miserable, this strong man of nineandtwenty and of

many gifts. He was not saying angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the mistake

was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling its uneasy importunities with every prospect,

and enfeebling every thought. As he went along the passage to the drawingroom, he heard the piano and

singing. Of course, Ladislaw was there. It was some weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he was

still at the old post in Middlemarch. Lydgate had no objection in general to Ladislaw's coming, but just now

he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth free. When he opened the door the two singers went on

towards the keynote, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not regarding his entrance as an

interruption. To a man galled with his harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people

warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has still pains in store. His face, already

paler than usual, took on a scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair.

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

"Have you dined, Tertius? I expected you much earlier," said Rosamond, who had already seen that her

husband was in a "horrible humor." She seated herself in her usual place as she spoke.

"I have dined. I should like some tea, please," said Lydgate, curtly, still scowling and looking markedly at his

"Yes, Lydgate is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of Lydgate than Rosamond had, and was

"There is the more need for you to stay," said Rosamond, playfully, and in her lightest accent; "he will not

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

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

"There! you see," said Will. "I'm going to the meeting about the Mechanics' Institute. Goodby;" and he went

Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her place before the teatray. She was

thinking that she had never seen him so disagreeable. Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her as

she delicately handled the teaservice with her taper fingers, and looked at the objects immediately before

her with no curve in her face disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all people with

unpleasant manners. For the moment he lost the sense of his wound in a sudden speculation about this new

form of feminine impassibility revealing itself in the sylphlike frame which he had once interpreted as the

sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness. His mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he

said inwardly, "Would SHE kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is the way with all women." But

this power of generalizing which gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was

immediately thwarted by Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from the behavior of another

woman from Dorothea's looks and tones of emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend

himfrom her passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose sake it seemed as if

she must quell every impulse in her except the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. These revived

impressions succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the tea was being brewed.

He had shut his eyes in the last instant of reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, "Advise methink what I

can dohe has been all his life laboring and looking forward. He minds about nothing elseand I mind

That voice of deepsouled womanhood had remained within him as the enkindling conceptions of dead and

sceptred genius had remained within him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over

human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from which he was falling awayhe had really

fallen into a momentary doze, when Rosamond said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea, Tertius,"

setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved back to her place without looking at him. Lydgate

was too hasty in attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was sensitive enough, and took

lasting impressions. Her impression now was one of offence and repulsion. But then, Rosamond had no

scowls and had never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly find fault with her.

Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off each other before; but there were strong reasons for not

deferring his revelation, even if he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of the

angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account which had prompted him to speak prematurely,

still mingled with his pain in the prospect of her pain. But he waited till the tray was gone, the candles were

lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on: the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into

"Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently, pushing away the table, and

Rosamond obeyed. As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet

round figure never looked more graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his chair,

at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of

that untarnished beauty which touches as in springtime and infancy and all sweet freshness. It touched

Lydgate now, and mingled the early moments of his love for her with all the other memories which were

stirred in this crisis of deep trouble. He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying

"Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word. Rosamond too was still under the

power of that same past, and her husband was still in part the Lydgate whose approval had stirred delight. She

put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving

"I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy. But there are things which husband and wife must think of

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

"I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were married, and there have been expenses

since which I have been obliged to meet. The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassingthree

hundred and eighty poundswhich has been pressing on me a good while, and in fact we are getting deeper

every day, for people don't pay me the faster because others want the money. I took pains to keep it from you

while you were not well; but now we must think together about it, and you must help me."

"What canIdo, Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning her eyes on him again. That little speech of four

words, like so many others in all languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all states of

mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative perception, from the completest selfdevoting

fellowship to the most neutral aloofness. Rosamond's thin utterance threw into the words "What

canIdo!" as much neutrality as they could hold. They fell like a mortal chill on Lydgate's roused

tenderness. He did not storm in indignation he felt too sad a sinking of the heart. And when he spoke again

"It is necessary for you to know, because I have to give security for a time, and a man must come to make an

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

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

"No, Rosy," said Lydgate, decisively. "It is too late to do that. The inventory will be begun tomorrow.

Remember it is a mere security: it will make no difference: it is a temporary affair. I insist upon it that your

father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him," added Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis.

This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil expectation as to what she would do

in the way of quiet steady disobedience. The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her: she was not given to

weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips began to tremble and the tears welled up. Perhaps it was

not possible for Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of his own proud

resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine fully what this sudden trial was to a young creature who

had known nothing but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more exactly to her

taste. But he did wish to spare her as much as he could, and her tears cut him to the heart. He could not speak

again immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing: she tried to conquer her agitation and wiped away

"Try not to grieve, darling," said Lydgate, turning his eyes up towards her. That she had chosen to move

away from him in this moment of her trouble made everything harder to say, but he must absolutely go on.

"We must brace ourselves to do what is necessary. It is I who have been in fault: I ought to have seen that I

could not affordto live in this way. But many things have told against me in my practice, and it really just

now has ebbed to a low point. I may recover it, but in the mean time we must pull upwe must change our

way of living. We shall weather it. When I have given this security I shall have time to look about me; and

you are so clever that if you turn your mind to managing you will school me into carefulness. I have been a

thoughtless rascal about squaring pricesbut come, dear, sit down and forgive me."

Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who had talons, but who had Reason too, which

often reduces us to meekness. When he had spoken the last words in an imploring tone, Rosamond returned

to the chair by his side. His selfblame gave her some hope that he would attend to her opinion, and she

"Why can you not put off having the inventory made? You can send the men away tomorrow when they

"I shall not send them away," said Lydgate, the peremptoriness rising again. Was it of any use to explain?

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

"I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to do so. Why can we not go to London? Or near Durham, where

"Your friends would not wish you to be without money. And surely these odious tradesmen might be made to

understand that, and to wait, if you would make proper representations to them."

"This is idle Rosamond," said Lydgate, angrily. "You must learn to take my judgment on questions you don't

understand. I have made necessary arrangements, and they must be carried out. As to friends, I have no

Rosamond sat perfectly still. The thought in her mind was that if she had known how Lydgate would behave,

"We have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, dear," said Lydgate, trying to be gentle again. "There

are some details that I want to consider with you. Dover says he will take a good deal of the plate back again,

"Are we to go without spoons and forks then?" said Rosamond, whose very lips seemed to get thinner with

the thinness of her utterance. She was determined to make no further resistance or suggestions.

"Oh no, dear!" said Lydgate. "But look here," he continued, drawing a paper from his pocket and opening it;

"here is Dover's account. See, I have marked a number of articles, which if we returned them would reduce

the amount by thirty pounds. and more. I have not marked any of the jewellery." Lydgate had really felt this

point of the jewellery very bitter to himself; but he had overcome the feeling by severe argument. He could

not propose to Rosamond that she should return any particular present of his, but he had told himself that he

was bound to put Dover's offer before her, and her inward prompting might make the affair easy.

"It is useless for me to look, Tertius," said Rosamond, calmly; "you will return what you please." She would

not turn her eyes on the paper, and Lydgate, flushing up to the roots of his hair, drew it back and let it fall on

his knee. Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of the room, leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering. Was

she not coming back? It seemed that she had no more identified herself with him than if they had been

creatures of different species and opposing interests. He tossed his head and thrust his hands deep into his

pockets with a sort of vengeance. There was still science there were still good objects to work for. He must

But the door opened and Rosamond reentered. She carried the leather box containing the amethysts, and a

tiny ornamental basket which contained other boxes, and laying them on the chair where she had been sitting,

"This is all the jewellery you ever gave me. You can return what you like of it, and of the plate also. You will

To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would have been more terrible than one of anger: it had in it a

"And when shall you come back again?" he said, with a bitter edge on his accent.

"Oh, in the evening. Of course I shall not mention the subject to mamma." Rosamond was convinced that no

woman could behave more irreproachably than she was behaving; and she went to sit down at her

worktable. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the result was that he said, with some of the old

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

"It is not right that the thing should be left to servants, or that I should have to speak to them about it. And I

shall be obliged to go outI don't know how early. I understand your shrinking from the humiliation of these

money affairs. But, my dear Rosamond, as a question of pride, which I feel just as much as you can, it is

surely better to manage the thing ourselves, and let the servants see as little of it as possible; and since you

are my wife, there is no hindering your share in my disgracesif there were disgraces."

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

"I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy. Take them away again. But I will write out a list of plate that we may

"The servants will know THAT," said Rosamond, with the slightest touch of sarcasm.

"Well, we must meet some disagreeables as necessities. Where is the ink, I wonder?" said Lydgate, rising,

Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after setting it on the table was going to turn away, when Lydgate,

who was standing close by, put his arm round her and drew her towards him, saying

"Come, darling, let us make the best of things. It will only be for a time, I hope, that we shall have to be

His native warmheartedness took a great deal of quenching, and it is a part of manliness for a husband to

feel keenly the fact that an inexperienced girl has got into trouble by marrying him. She received his kiss and

returned it faintly, and in this way an appearance of accord was recovered for the time. But Lydgate could not

help looking forward with dread to the inevitable future discussions about expenditure and the necessity for a

News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen which the bees carry off (having no

idea how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar. This fine comparison

has reference to Fred Vincy, who on that evening at Lowick Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the

ladies on the news which their old servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Casaubon's strange mention

of Mr. Ladislaw in a codicil to his will made not long before his death. Miss Winifred was astounded to find

that her brother had known the fact before, and observed that Camden was the most wonderful man for

knowing things and not telling them; whereupon Mary Garth said that the codicil had perhaps got mixed up

with the habits of spiders, which Miss Winifred never would listen to. Mrs. Farebrother considered that the

news had something to do with their having only once seen Mr. Ladislaw at Lowick, and Miss Noble made

Fred knew little and cared less about Ladislaw and the Casaubons, and his mind never recurred to that

discussion till one day calling on Rosamond at his mother's request to deliver a message as he passed, he

happened to see Ladislaw going away. Fred and Rosamond had little to say to each other now that marriage

had removed her from collision with the unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now that he had taken

what she held the stupid and even reprehensible step of giving up the Church to take to such a business as Mr.

Garth's. Hence Fred talked by preference of what he considered indifferent news, and "a propos of that young

Now Lydgate, like Mr. Farebrother, knew a great deal more than he told, and when he had once been set

thinking about the relation between Will and Dorothea his conjectures had gone beyond the fact. He imagined

that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and this struck him as much too serious to gossip about.

He remembered Will's irritability when he had mentioned Mrs. Casaubon, and was the more circumspect. On

the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance

towards Ladislaw, and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Middlemarch after he had said

that he should go away. It was significant of the separateness be tween Lydgate's mind and Rosamond's that

he had no impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did not quite trust her reticence towards Will.

And he was right there; though he had no vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to

When she repeated Fred's news to Lydgate, he said, "Take care you don't drop the faintest hint to Ladislaw,

Rosy. He is likely to fly out as if you insulted him. Of course it is a painful affair."

Rosamond turned her neck and patted her hair, looking the image of placid indifference. But the next time

Will came when Lydgate was away, she spoke archly about his not going to London as he had threatened.

"I know all about it. I have a confidential little bird," said she, showing very pretty airs of her head over the

bit of work held high between her active fingers. "There is a powerful magnet in this neighborhood."

"To be sure there is. Nobody knows that better than you," said Will, with light gallantry, but inwardly

"It is really the most charming romance: Mr. Casaubon jealous, and foreseeing that there was no one else

whom Mrs. Casaubon would so much like to marry, and no one who would so much like to marry her as a

certain gentleman; and then laying a plan to spoil all by making her forfeit her property if she did marry that

gentleman and thenand thenand thenoh, I have no doubt the end will be thoroughly romantic."

"Great God! what do you mean?" said Will, flushing over face and ears, his features seeming to change as if

"You don't really know?" said Rosamond, no longer playful, and desiring nothing better than to tell in order

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

"My brother Fred heard it from the Farebrothers." Will started up from his chair and reached his hat.

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

"Pray don't say any more about it," said Will, in a hoarse undertone extremely unlike his usual light voice. "It

is a foul insult to her and to me." Then he sat down absently, looking before him, but seeing nothing.

"Now you are angry with ME," said Rosamond. "It is too bad to bear ME malice. You ought to be obliged to

"So I am," said Will, abruptly, speaking with that kind of double soul which belongs to dreamers who answer

With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to Rosamond, still with the air of a

When he was gone, Rosamond left her chair and walked to the other end of the room, leaning when she got

there against a chiffonniere, and looking out of the window wearily. She was oppressed by ennui, and by that

dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring to no real

claims, springing from no deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of

impelling action as well as speech. "There really is nothing to care for much," said poor Rosamond inwardly,

thinking of the family at Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Tertius when he came home

would tease her about expenses. She had already secretly disobeyed him by asking her father to help them,

A few days afterwardsit was already the end of Augustthere was an occasion which caused some

excitement in Middlemarch: the public, if it chose, was to have the advantage of buying, under the

distinguished auspices of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, the furniture, books, and pictures which anybody might see

by the handbills to be the best in every kind, belonging to Edwin Larcher, Esq. This was not one of the sales

indicating the depression of trade; on the contrary, it was due to Mr. Larcher's great success in the carrying

business, which warranted his purchase of a mansion near Riverston already furnished in high style by an

illustrious Spa physicianfurnished indeed with such large framefuls of expensive fleshpainting in the

diningroom, that Mrs. Larcher was nervous until reassured by finding the subjects to be Scriptural. Hence

the fine opportunity to purchasers which was well pointed out in the handbills of Mr. Borthrop Trumbull,

whose acquaintance with the history of art enabled him to state that the hall furniture, to be sold without

At Middlemarch in those times a large sale was regarded as a kind of festival. There was a table spread with

the best cold eatables, as at a superior funeral; and facilities were offered for that generousdrinking of

cheerful glasses which might lead to generous and cheerful bidding for undesirable articles. Mr. Larcher's

sale was the more attractive in the fine weather because the house stood just at the end of the town, with a

garden and stables attached, in that pleasant issue from Middlemarch called the London Road, which was

also the road to the New Hospital and to Mr. Bulstrode's retired residence, known as the Shrubs. In short, the

auction was as good as a fair, and drew all classes with leisure at command: to some, who risked making bids

in order simply to raise prices, it was almost equal to betting at the races. The second day, when the best

furniture was to be sold, "everybody" was there; even Mr. Thesiger, the rector of St. Peter's, had looked in for

a short time, wishing to buy the carved table, and had rubbed elbows with Mr. Bambridge and Mr. Horrock.

There was a wreath of Middlemarch ladies accommodated with seats round the large table in the

diningroom, where Mr. Borthrop Trumbull was mounted with desk and hammer; but the rows chiefly of

masculine faces behind were often varied by incomings and outgoings both from the door and the large

"Everybody" that day did not include Mr. Bulstrode, whose health could not well endure crowds and

draughts. But Mrs. Bulstrode had particularly wished to have a certain picturea "Supper at Emmaus,"

attributed in the catalogue to Guido; and at the last moment before the day of the sale Mr. Bulstrode had

called at the office of the "Pioneer," of which he was now one of the proprietors, to beg of Mr. Ladislaw as a

great favor that he would obligingly use his remarkable knowledge of pictures on behalf of Mrs. Bulstrode,

and judge of the value of this particular painting"if," added the scrupulously polite banker, attendance at

the sale would not interfere with the arrangements for your departure, which I know is imminent."

This proviso might have sounded rather satirically in Will's ear if he had been in a mood to care about such

satire. It referred to an understanding entered into many weeks before with the proprietors of the paper, that

he should be at liberty any day he pleased to hand over the management to the subeditor whom he had been

training; since he wished finally to quit Middlemarch. But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the

ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a

resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most

incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be

fulfilled, still very wonderful things have happened! Will did not confess this weakness to himself, but he

lingered. What was the use of going to London at that time of the year? The Rugby men who would

remember him were not there; and so far as political writing was concerned, he would rather for a few weeks

go on with the "Pioneer." At the present moment, however, when Mr. Bulstrode was speaking to him, he had

both a strengthened resolve to go and an equally strong resolve not to go till he had once more seen Dorothea.

Hence he replied that he had reasons for deferring his departure a little, and would be happy to go to the sale.

Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with the thought that the people who

looked at him probably knew a fact tantamount to an accusation against him as a fellow with low designs

which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property. Like most people who assert their freedom with regard

to conventional distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any one who might hint

that he had personal reasons for that assertion that there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his

character to which he gave the mask of an opinion. When he was under an irritating impression of this kind

he would go about for days with a defiant look, the color changing in his transparent skin as if he were on the

This expression was peculiarly noticeable in him at the sale, and those who had only seen him in his moods

of gentle oddity or of bright enjoyment would have been struck with a contrast. He was not sorry to have this

occasion for appearing in public before the Middlemarch tribes of Toller, Hackbutt, and the rest, who looked

down on him as an adventurer, and were in a state of brutal ignorance about Dantewho sneered at his

Polish blood, and were themselves of a breed very much in need of crossing. He stood in a conspicuous place

not far from the auctioneer, with a forefinger in each sidepocket and his head thrown backward, not caring

to speak to anybody, though he had been cordially welcomed as a connoissURE by Mr. Trumbull, who was

And surely among all men whose vocation requires them to exhibit their powers of speech, the happiest is a

prosperous provincial auctioneer keenly alive to his own jokes and sensible of his encyclopedic knowledge.

Some saturnine, sourblooded persons might object to be constantly insisting on the merits of all articles

from bootjacks to "Berghems;" but Mr. Borthrop Trumbull had a kindly liquid in his veins; he was an

admirer by nature, and would have liked to have the universe under his hammer, feeling that it would go at a

Meanwhile Mrs. Larcher's drawingroom furniture was enough for him. When Will Ladislaw had come in, a

second fender, said to have been forgotten in its right place, suddenly claimed the auctioneer's enthusiasm,

which he distributed on the equitable principle of praising those things most which were most in need of

praise. The fender was of polished steel, with much lancetshaped openwork and a sharp edge

"Now, ladies," said he, "I shall appeal to you. Here is a fender which at any other sale would hardly be

offered with out reserve, being, as I may say, for quality of steel and quaintness of design, a kind of

thing"here Mr. Trumbull dropped his voice and became slightly nasal, trimming his outlines with his left

finger "that might not fall in with ordinary tastes. Allow me to tell you that byandby this style of

workmanship will be the only one in voguehalfacrown, you said? thank yougoing at halfacrown,

this characteristic fender; and I have particular information that the antique style is very much sought after in

high quarters. Three shillingsthreeandsixpencehold it well up, Joseph! Look, ladies, at the chastity of

the design I have no doubt myself that it was turned out in the last century! Four shillings, Mr.

"It's not a thing I would put in MY drawingroom," said Mrs. Mawmsey, audibly, for the warning of the rash

husband. "I wonder AT Mrs. Larcher. Every blessed child's head that fell against it would be cut in two. The

"Quite true," rejoined Mr. Trumbull, quickly, "and most uncommonly useful to have a fender at hand that

will cut, if you have a leather shoetie or a bit of string that wants cutting and no knife at hand: many a man

has been left hanging because there was no knife to cut him down. Gentlemen, here's a fender that if you had

celerityfourandsixpencefivefiveandsixpencean appropriate thing for a spare bedroom where

there was a fourposter and a guest a little out of his mindsix shillingsthank you, Mr. Clintup going

at six shillingsgoinggone!" The auctioneer's glance, which had been searching round him with a

preternatural susceptibility to all signs of bidding, here dropped on the paper before him, and his voice too

dropped into a tone of indifferent despatch as he said, "Mr. Clintup. Be handy, Joseph."

"It was worth six shillings to have a fender you could always tell that joke on," said Mr. Clintup, laughing

low and apologetically to his next neighbor. He was a diffident though distinguished nurseryman, and feared

Meanwhile Joseph had brought a trayful of small articles. "Now, ladies," said Mr. Trumbull, taking up one of

the articles, "this tray contains a very recherchy lota collection of trifles for the drawingroom tableand

trifles make the sum OF human thingsnothing more important than trifles(yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes,

byandby)but pass the tray round, Josephthese bijoux must be examined, ladies. This I have in my

hand is an ingenious contrivance a sort of practical rebus, I may call it: here, you see, it looks like an

elegant heartshaped box, portablefor the pocket; there, again, it becomes like a splendid double

floweran ornament for the table; and now"Mr. Trumbull allowed the flower to fall alarmingly into

strings of heartshaped leaves"a book of riddles! No less than five hundred printed in a beautiful red.

Gentlemen, if I had less of a conscience, I should not wish you to bid high for this lot I have a longing for

it myself. What can promote innocent mirth, and I may say virtue, more than a good riddle?it hinders

profane language, and attaches a man to the society of refined females. This ingenious article itself, without

the elegant dominobox, cardbasket, ought alone to give a high price to the lot. Carried in the pocket it

might make an individual welcome in any society. Four shillings, sir?four shillings for this remarkable

collection of riddles with the et caeteras. Here is a sample: `How must you spell honey to make it catch

ladybirds? Answer money.' You hear?ladybirdshoney money. This is an amusement to sharpen the

intellect; it has a stingit has what we call satire, and wit without indecency. Fourandsixpencefive

The bidding ran on with warming rivalry. Mr. Bowyer was a bidder, and this was too exasperating. Bowyer

couldn't afford it, and only wanted to hinder every other man from making a figure. The current carried even

Mr. Horrock with it, but this committal of himself to an opinion fell from him with so little sacrifice of his

neutral expression, that the bid might not have been detected as his but for the friendly oaths of Mr.

Bambridge, who wanted to know what Horrock would do with blasted stuff only fit for haberdashers given

over to that state of perdition which the horsedealer so cordially recognized in the majority of earthly

existences. The lot was finally knocked down at a guinea to Mr. Spilkins, a young Slender of the

neighborhood, who was reckless with his pocketmoney and felt his want of memory for riddles.

"Come, Trumbull, this is too badyou've been putting some old maid's rubbish into the sale," murmured Mr.

Toller, getting close to the auctioneer. "I want to see how the prints go, and I must be off soon."

"IMmediately, Mr. Toller. It was only an act of benevolence which your noble heart would approve. Joseph!

quick with the prints Lot 235. Now, gentlemen, you who are connoissURES, you are going to have a treat.

Here is an engraving of the Duke of Wellington surrounded by his staff on the Field of Waterloo; and

notwithstanding recent events which have, as it were, enveloped our great Hero in a cloud, I will be bold to

say for a man in my line must not be blown about by political winds that a finer subjectof the modern

order, belonging to our own time and epochthe understanding of man could hardly conceive: angels might,

"It is a proof before the letter, Mr. Powderellthe painter is not known," answered Trumbull, with a certain

gaspingness in his last words, after which he pursed up his lips and stared round him.

"I'll bid a pound!" said Mr. Powderell, in a tone of resolved emotion, as of a man ready to put himself in the

Next came two Dutch prints which Mr. Toller had been eager for, and after he had secured them he went

away. Other prints, and afterwards some paintings, were sold to leading Middlemarchers who had come with

a special desire for them, and there was a more active movement of the audience in and out; some, who had

bought what they wanted, going away, others coming in either quite newly or from a temporary visit to the

refreshments which were spread under the marquee on the lawn. It was this marquee that Mr. Bambridge was

bent on buying, and he appeared to like looking inside it frequently, as a foretaste of its possession. On the

last occasion of his return from it he was observed to bring with him a new companion, a stranger to Mr.

Trumbull and every one else, whose appearance, however, led to the supposition that he might be a relative of

the horsedealer's also "given to indulgence." His large whiskers, imposing swagger, and swing of the leg,

made him a striking figure; but his suit of black, rather shabby at the edges, caused the prejudicial inference

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

Mr. Horrock eyed the stranger, who was leaning back against his stick with one hand, using his toothpick

with the other, and looking about him with a certain restlessness apparently under the silence imposed on him

At length the "Supper at Emmaus" was brought forward, to Wills immense relief, for he was getting so tired

of the proceedings that he had drawn back a little and leaned his shoulder against the wall just behind the

auctioneer. He now came forward again, and his eye caught the conspicuous stranger, who, rather to his

surprise, was staring at him markedly. But Will was immediately appealed to by Mr. Trumbull.

"Yes, Mr. Ladislaw, yes; this interests you as a connoissURE, I think. It is some pleasure," the auctioneer

went on with a rising fervor, "to have a picture like this to show to a company of ladies and gentlemena

picture worth any sum to an individual whose means were on a level with his judgment. It is a painting of the

Italian schoolby the celebrated Guydo, the greatest painter in the world, the chief of the Old Masters, as

they are called I take it, because they were up to a thing or two beyond most of us in possession of

secrets now lost to the bulk of mankind. Let me tell you, gentlemen, I have seen a great many pictures by the

Old Masters, and they are not all up to this marksome of them are darker than you might like and not

family subjects. But here is a Guydothe frame alone is worth poundswhich any lady might be proud to

hang upa suitable thing for what we call a refectory in a charitable institution, if any gentleman of the

Corporation wished to show his munifiCENCE. Turn it a little, sir? yes. Joseph, turn it a little towards Mr.

LadislawMr. Ladislaw, having been abroad, understands the merit of these things, you observe."

All eyes were for a moment turned towards Will, who said, coolly, "Five pounds." The auctioneer burst out in

"Ah! Mr. Ladislaw! the frame alone is worth that. Ladies and gentlemen, for the credit of the town! Suppose

it should be discovered hereafter that a gem of art has been amongst us in this town, and nobody in

Middlemarch awake to it. Five guineasfive sevensix five ten. Still, ladies, still! It is a gem, and `Full

many a gem,' as the poet says, has been allowed to go at a nominal pride because the public knew no better,

because it was offered in circles where there wasI was going to say a low feeling, but no!Six pounds

six guineasa Guydo of the first order going at six guineas it is an insult to religion, ladies; it touches us

all as Christians, gentlemen, that a subject like this should go at such a low figure six pounds

The bidding was brisk, and Will continued to share in it, remembering that Mrs. Bulstrode had a strong wish

for the picture, and thinking that he might stretch the price to twelve pounds. But it was knocked down to him

at ten guineas, whereupon he pushed his way towards the bowwindow and went out. He chose to go under

the marquee to get a glass of water, being hot and thirsty: it was empty of other visitors, and he asked the

woman in attendance to fetch him some fresh water; but before she was well gone he was annoyed to see

entering the florid stranger who had stared at him. It struck Will at this moment that the man might be one of

those political parasitic insects of the bloated kind who had once or twice claimed acquaintance with him as

having heard him speak on the Reform question, and who might think of getting a shilling by news. In this

light his person, already rather heating to behold on a summer's day, appeared the more disagreeable; and

Will, halfseated on the elbow of a gardenchair, turned his eyes carefully away from the comer. But this

signified little to our acquaintance Mr. Raffles, who never hesitated to thrust himself on unwilling

observation, if it suited his purpose to do so. He moved. a step or two till he was in front of Will, and said

with fullmouthed haste, "Excuse me, Mr. Ladislaw was your mother's name Sarah Dunkirk?"

Will, starting to his feet, moved backward a step, frowning, and saying with some fierceness, "Yes, sir, it

It was in Will's nature that the first spark it threw out was a direct answer of the question and a challenge of

the consequences. To have said, "What is that to you?" in the first instance, would have seemed like

Raffles on his side had not the same eagerness for a collision which was implied in Ladislaw's threatening air.

The slim young fellow with his girl's complexion looked like a tigercat ready to spring on him. Under such

circumstances Mr. Raffles's pleasure in annoying his company was kept in abeyance.

"No offence, my good sir, no offence! I only remember your mother knew her when she was a girl. But it

is your father that you feature, sir. I had the pleasure of seeing your father too. Parents alive, Mr. Ladislaw?"

"Should be glad to do you a service, Mr. Ladislawby Jove, I should! Hope to meet again."

Hereupon Raffles, who had lifted his hat with the last words, turned himself round with a swing of his leg and

walked away. Will looked after him a moment, and could see that he did not reenter the auctionroom, but

appeared to be walking towards the road. For an instant he thought that he had been foolish not to let the man

go on talking;but no! on the whole he preferred doing without knowledge from that source.

Later in the evening, however, Raffles overtook him in the street, and appearing either to have forgotten the

roughness of his former reception or to intend avenging it by a forgiving familiarity, greeted him jovially and

walked by his side, remarking at first on the pleasantness of the town and neighbor hood. Will suspected that

the man had been drinking and was considering how to shake him off when Raffles said

"I've been abroad myself, Mr. LadislawI've seen the world used to parleyvous a little. It was at

Boulogne I saw your father a most uncommon likeness you are of him, by Jove! mouthnoseeyes

hair turned off your brow just like hisa little in the foreign style. John Bull doesn't do much of that. But

your father was very ill when I saw him. Lord, lord! hands you might see through. You were a small

"Ah! Well! I've often wondered what became of your mother. She ran away from her friends when she was a

young lass a proudspirited lass, and pretty, by Jove! I knew the reason why she ran away," said Raffles,

"You know nothing dishonorable of her, sir," said Will, turning on him rather savagely. But Mr. Raffles just

"Not a bit!" said he, tossing his head decisively "She was a little too honorable to like her friendsthat was

it!" Here Raffles again winked slowly. "Lord bless you, I knew all about 'em a little in what you may call

the respectable thieving line the high style of receivinghousenone of your holes and corners

firstrate. Slapup shop, high profits and no mistake. But Lord! Sarah would have known nothing about

ita dashing young lady she was fine boardingschoolfit for a lord's wifeonly Archie Duncan threw

it at her out of spite, because she would have nothing to do with him. And so she ran away from the whole

concern. I travelled for 'em, sir, in a gentlemanly wayat a high salary. They didn't mind her running away

at firstgodly folks, sir, very godlyand she was for the stage. The son was alive then, and the daughter

was at a discount. Hallo! here we are at the Blue Bull. What do you say, Mr. Ladislaw?shall we turn in and

"No, I must say good evening," said Will, dashing up a passage which led into Lowick Gate, and almost

He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of the starlit darkness when it came.

He felt as if he had had dirt cast on him amidst shouts of scorn. There was this to confirm the fellow's

statementthat his mother never would tell him the reason why she had run away from her family.

Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truth about that family to be the ugliest? His

mother had braved hardship in order to separate herself from it. But if Dorothea's friends had known this

storyif the Chettams had known it they would have had a fine color to give their suspicions a welcome

ground for thinking him unfit to come near her. However, let them suspect what they pleased, they would

find themselves in the wrong. They would find out that the blood in his veins was as free from the taint of

The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey to Brassing on business, his good wife met him

"Nicholas," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously, "there has been such a disagreeable man

"What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain of the answer.

"A redfaced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner. He declared he was an old friend

of yours, and said you would be sorry not to see him. He wanted to wait for you here, but I told him he could

see you at the Bank tomorrow morning. Most impudent he was!stared at me, and said his friend Nick had

luck in wives. I don't believe he would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened to break his chain and

come running round on the gravel for I was in the garden; so I said, `You'd better go awaythe dog is

"I believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, in his usual subdued voice, "an unfortunate

dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much in days gone by. However, I presume you will not be troubled by

No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrode had returned from the town and was

dressing for dinner. His wife, not sure that he was come home, looked into his dressingroom and saw him

with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm on a chest of drawers and staring absently at the ground. He

"I have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr. Bulstrode, who was so frequently ailing that his wife was

Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally the affectionate attention soothed him.

Though always polite, it was his habit to receive such services with marital coolness, as his wife's duty. But

today, while she was bending over him, he said, "You are very good, Harriet," in a tone which had

something new in it to her ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was, but her woman's solicitude

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

"Is he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but for certain reasons she refrained from adding, "It

was very disagreeable to hear him calling himself a friend of yours." At that moment she would not have

liked to say anything which implied her habitual consciousness that her husband's earlier connections were

not quite on a level with her own. Not that she knew much about them. That her husband had at first been

employed in a bank, that he had afterwards entered into what he called city business and gained a fortune

before he was threeandthirty, that he had married a widow who was much older than himselfa

Dissenter, and in other ways probably of that disadvantageous quality usually perceptible in a first wife if

inquired into with the dispassionate judgment of a secondwas almost as much as she had cared to learn

beyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's narrative occasionally gave of his early bent towards religion, his

inclination to be a preacher, and his association with missionary and philanthropic efforts. She believed in

him as an excellent man whose piety carried a peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman, whose influence

had turned her own mind toward seriousness, and whose share of perishable good had been the means of

raising her own position. But she also liked to think that it was well in every sense for Mr. Bulstrode to have

won the hand of Harriet Vincy; whose family was undeniable in a Middlemarch lighta better light surely

than any thrown in London thoroughfares or dissenting chapelyards. The unreformed provincial mind

distrusted London; and while true religion was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrode was convinced that

to be saved in the Church was more respectable. She so much wished to ignore towards others that her

husband had ever been a London Dissenter, that she liked to keep it out of sight even in talking to him. He

was quite aware of this; indeed in some respects he was rather afraid of this ingenuous wife, whose imitative

piety and native worldliness were equally sincere, who had nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had

married out of a thorough inclination still subsisting. But his fears were such as belong to a man who cares to

maintain his recognized supremacy: the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from every one else who

did not clearly hate him out of enmity to the truth, would be as the beginning of death to him. When she

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

But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust. In the interview at the Bank, Raffles had

made it evident that his eagerness to torment was almost as strong in him as any other greed. He had frankly

said that he had turned out of the way to come to Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether the

neighborhood would suit him to live in. He had certainly had a few debts to pay more than he expected, but

the two hundred pounds were not gone yet: a cool fiveandtwenty would suffice him to go away with for

the present. What he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and know all about the

prosperity of a man to whom he was so much attached. Byandby he might come back for a longer stay.

This time Raffles declined to be "seen off the premises," as he expressed itdeclined to quit Middlemarch

Bulstrode felt himself helpless. Neither threats nor coaxing could avail: he could not count on any persistent

fear nor on any promise. On the contrary, he felt a cold certainty at his heart that Rafflesunless providence

sent death to hinder him would come back to Middlemarch before long. And that certainty was a terror.

It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he was in danger only of seeing disclosed

to the judgment of his neighbors and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his past life which

would render him an object of scorn and an opprobrium of the religion with which he had diligently

associated himself. The terror of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over that

longunvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in general phrases. Even without memory, the

life is bound into one by a zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man to own

his blameworthy past. With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead

history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still

quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only the pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality.

Night and day, without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic

present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when

we look through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before us, instead

of the grass and the trees The successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though each

Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with an agreeable person, as clever in figures as he was

fluent in speech and fond of theological definition: an eminent though young member of a Calvinistic

dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking experience in conviction of sin and sense of pardon.

Again he heard himself called for as Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings, speaking on religious platforms,

preaching in private houses. Again he felt himself thinking of the ministry as possibly his vocation, and

inclined towards missionary labor. That was the happiest time of his life: that was the spot he would have

chosen now to awake in and find the rest a dream. The people among whom Brother Bulstrode was

distinguished were very few, but they were very near to him, and stirred his satisfaction the more; his power

stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its effect the more intensely. He believed without effort in the

peculiar work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for special instrumentality.

Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotion he had when he, an orphan educated

at a commercial charityschool, was invited to a fine villa belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest man in the

congregation. Soon he became an intimate there, honored for his piety by the wife, marked out for his ability

by the husband, whose wealth was due to a flourishing city and westend trade. That was the settingin of a

new current for his ambition, directing his prospects of "instrumentality" towards the uniting of distinguished

Byandby came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinate partner died, and nobody seemed to

the principal so well fitted to fill the severely felt vacancy as his young friend Bulstrode, if he would become

confidential accountant. The offer was accepted. The business was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent

sort both in extent and profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode became aware that one source of

magnificent profit was the easy reception of any goods offered, without strict inquiry as to where they came

from. But there was a branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or dinginess to give suggestions of

He remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were private, and were filled with arguments; some of

these taking the form of prayer. The business was established and had old roots; is it not one thing to set up a

new ginpalace and another to accept an investment in an old one? The profits made out of lost souls

where can the line be drawn at which they begin in human transactions? Was it not even God's way of saving

His chosen? "Thou knowest," the young Bulstrode had said then, as the older Bulstrode was saying now

"Thou knowest how loose my soul sits from these thingshow I view them all as implements for tilling Thy

Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual experiences were not wanting which at last

made the retention of his position seem a service demanded of him: the vista of a fortune had already opened

itself, and Bulstrode's shrinking remained private. Mr. Dunkirk had never expected that there would be any

shrinking at all: he had never conceived that trade had anything to do with the scheme of salvation. And it

was true that Bulstrode found himself carrying on two distinct lives; his religious activity could not be

incompatible with his business as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it incompatible.

Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the same pleasindeed, the years had been

perpetually spinning them into intricate thickness, like masses of spiderweb, padding the moral sensibility;

nay, as age made egoism more eager but less enjoying, his soul had become more saturated with the belief

that he did everything for God's sake, being indifferent to it for his own. And yetif he could be back in that

faroff spot with his youthful povertywhy, then he would choose to be a missionary.

But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on. There was trouble in the fine villa at

Highbury. Years before, the only daughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage; and now

the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also. The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all

the wealth in and out of the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature, had come to

believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as women often adore their priest or "manmade" minister. It

was natural that after a time marriage should have been thought of between them. But Mrs. Dunkirk had

qualms and yearnings about her daughter, who had long been regarded as lost both to God and her parents. It

was known that the daughter had married, but she was utterly gone out of sight. The mother, having lost her

boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in a double sense to reclaim her daughter. If she were found, there

would be a channel for property perhaps a wide onein the provision for several grandchildren. Efforts to

find her must be made before Mrs. Dunkirk would marry again. Bulstrode concurred; but after advertisement

as well as other modes of inquiry had been tried, the mother believed that her daughter was not to be found,

The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrode knew it, and he was paid for keeping

That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in the rigid outline with which acts present

themselves onlookers. But for himself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory, the fact was

broken into little sequences, each justified as it came by reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous.

Bulstrode's course up to that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences, appearing to

point the way for him to be the agent in making the best use of a large property and withdrawing it from

perversion. Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine trustfulness, had come; and Bulstrode

would have adopted Cromwell's words "Do you call these bare events? The Lord pity you!" The events

were comparatively small, but the essential condition was there namely, that they were in favor of his own

ends. It was easy for him to settle what was due from him to others by inquiring what were God's intentions

with regard to himself. Could it be for God's service that this fortune should in any considerable proportion

go to a young woman and her husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits, and might scatter it abroad

in triviality people who seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable providences? Bulstrode had never

said to himself beforehand, "The daughter shall not be found"nevertheless when the moment came he kept

her existence hidden; and when other moments followed, he soothed the mother with consolation in the

There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action was unrighteous; but how could he go back? He had

mental exercises, called himself nought laid hold on redemption, and went on in his course of instrumentality.

And after five years Death again came to widen his path, by taking away his wife. He did gradually withdraw

his capital, but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the business, which was carried on for

thirteen years afterwards before it finally collapsed. Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred

thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly importanta banker, a Churchman, a public

benefactor; also a sleeping partner in trading concerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the

raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk. And now, when this respectability had

lasted undisturbed for nearly thirty years when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the

consciousness that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with the terrible irruption of a new sense

Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something momentous, something which entered

actively into the struggle of his longings and terrors. There, he thought, lay an opening towards spiritual,

The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him. There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously

affect beliefs and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was

simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the

gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process

which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the

future perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the world; whether we regard the earth

as a putrefying nidus for a saved remnant, including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the solidarity of

The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life the ground he alleged to himself for his

choice of action: it had been the motive which he had poured out in his prayers. Who would use money and

position better than he meant to use them? Who could surpass him in selfabhorrence and exaltation of God's

cause? And to Mr. Bulstrode God's cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct: it

enforced a discrimination of God's enemies, who were to be used merely as instruments, and whom it would

be as well if possible to keep out of money and consequent influence. Also, profitable investments in trades

where the power of the prince of this world showed its most active devices, became sanctified by a right

This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical belief than the use of wide phrases for

narrow motives is peculiar to Englishmen. There is no general doctrine which is not capable of eating out our

morality if unchecked by the deepseated habit of direct fellowfeeling with individual fellowmen.

But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has necessarily a conscience or standard to

which he more or less adapts himself. Bulstrode's standard had been his serviceableness to God's cause: "I am

sinful and noughta vessel to be consecrated by usebut use me!"had been the mould into which he had

constrained his immense need of being something important and predominating. And now had come a

moment in which that mould seemed in danger of being broken and utterly cast away.

What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a stronger instrument of the divine

glory, were to become the pretext of the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory? If this were to be the ruling of

Providence, he was cast out from the temple as one who had brought unclean offerings.

He had long poured out utterances of repentance. But today a repentance had come which was of a bitterer

flavor, and a threatening Providence urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply a doctrinal

transaction. The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for him; selfprostration was no longer enough, and

he must bring restitution in his hand. It was really before his God that Bulstrode was about to attempt such

restitution as seemed possible: a great dread had seized his susceptible frame, and the scorching approach of

shame wrought in him a new spiritual need. Night and day, while the resurgent threatening past was making a

conscience within him, he was thinking by what means he could recover peace and trust by what sacrifice

he could stay the rod. His belief in these moments of dread was, that if he spontaneously did something right,

God would save him from the consequences of wrongdoing. For religion can only change when the

emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.

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

the pressure of an immediate dread, but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to win

protection. At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the

Shrubs that evening for a private interview at nine o'clock. Will had felt no particular surprise at the request,

and connected it with some new notions about the "Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode's

private room, he was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was going to say, "Are you

ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness, he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction

"Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters this evening. I begged you to come,

Mr. Ladislaw, because I have a communication of a very privateindeed, I will say, of a sacredly

confidential nature, which I desire to make to you. Nothing, I dare say, has been farther from your thoughts

than that there had been important ties in the past which could connect your history with mine."

Will felt something like an electric shock. He was already in a state of keen sensitiveness and hardly allayed

agitation on the subject of ties in the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable. It seemed like the

fluctuations of a dreamas if the action begun by that loud bloated stranger were being carried on by this

paleeyed sickly looking piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of speech were at

this moment almost as repulsive to him as their remembered contrast. He answered, with a marked change of

"You see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken. But for the urgency of conscience and the

knowledge that I am before the bar of One who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under no compulsion to

make the disclosure which has been my object in asking you to come here tonight. So far as human laws go,

Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering. Mr. Bulstrode had paused, leaning his head on his hand,

and looking at the floor. But he now fixed his examining glance on Will and said

"I am told that your mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she ran away from her friends to go on the

stage. Also, that your father was at one time much emaciated by illness. May I ask if you can confirm these

"Yes, they are all true," said Will, struck with the order in which an inquiry had come, that might have been

expected to be preliminary to the banker's previous hints. But Mr. Bulstrode had tonight followed the order

of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity for restitution had come, and he had an

overpowering impulse towards the penitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.

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

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

"I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the reason of her running away. She said

"That mother became my wife," said Bulstrode, and then paused a moment before he added, "you have a

claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I said before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes. I

was enriched by that marriagea result which would probably not have taken placecertainly not to the

same extentif your grandmother could have discovered her daughter. That daughter, I gather, is no longer

"No," said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly within him, that without quite knowing

what he did, he took his hat from the floor and stood up. The impulse within him was to reject the disclosed

"Pray be seated, Mr. Ladislaw," said Bulstrode, anxiously. "Doubtless you are startled by the suddenness of

this discovery. But I entreat your patience with one who is already bowed down by inward trial."

Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for this voluntary selfabasement of an

"It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation which befell your mother. I know that you

are without fortune, and I wish to supply you adequately from a store which would have probably already

been yours had your grandmother been certain of your mother's existence and been able to find her."

Mr. Bulstrode paused. He felt that he was performing a striking piece of scrupulosity in the judgment of his

auditor, and a penitential act in the eyes of God. He had no clew to the state of Will Ladislaw's mind,

smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles, and with its natural quickness in construction stimulated by

the expectation of discoveries which he would have been glad to conjure back into darkness. Will made no

answer for several moments, till Mr. Bulstrode, who at the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor,

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

Bulstrode shrankthere was a visible quivering in his face and hands. He was totally unprepared to have his

advances met in this way, or to find himself urged into more revelation than he had beforehand set down as

needful. But at that moment he dared not tell a lie, and he felt suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had

"I will not deny that you conjecture rightly," he answered, with a faltering in his tone. "And I wish to make

atonement to you as the one still remaining who has suffered a loss through me. You enter, I trust, into my

purpose, Mr. Ladislaw, which has a reference to higher than merely human claims, and as I have already said,

is entirely independent of any legal compulsion. I am ready to narrow my own resources and the prospects of

my family by binding myself to allow you five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a

proportional capital at my deathnay, to do still more, if more should be definitely necessary to any

laudable project on your part." Mr. Bulstrode had gone on to particulars in the expectation that these would

But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting and his fingers in his sidepockets. He was

"Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Bulstrode, I must beg you to answer a question or two.

Were you connected with the business by which that fortune you speak of was originally made?"

Mr. Bulstrode's thought was, "Raffles has told him." How could he refuse to answer when he had volunteered

"And was that businessor was it nota thoroughly dishonorable one nay, one that, if its nature had

been made public, might have ranked those concerned in it with thieves and convicts?"

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

Bulstrode reddened with irrepressible anger. He had been prepared for a scene of selfabasement, but his

intense pride and his habit of supremacy overpowered penitence, and even dread, when this young man,

"The business was established before I became connected with it, sir; nor is it for you to institute an inquiry

of that kind," he answered, not raising his voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.

"Yes, it is," said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand. "It is eminently mine to ask such questions,

when I have to decide whether I will have transactions with you and accept your money. My unblemished

honor is important to me. It is important to me to have no stain on my birth and connections. And now I find

there is a stain which I can't help. My mother felt it, and tried to keep as clear of it as she could, and so will I.

You shall keep your illgotten money. If I had any fortune of my own, I would willingly pay it to any one

who could disprove what you have told me. What I have to thank you for is that you kept the money till now,

when I can refuse it. It ought to lie with a man's self that he is a gentleman. Goodnight, sir."

Bulstrode was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness, was out of the room in an instant, and in

another the halldoor had closed behind him. He was too strongly possessed with passionate rebellion against

this inherited blot which had been thrust on his knowledge to reflect at present whether he had not been too

hard on Bulstrodetoo arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty, who was making efforts at retrieval

No third person listening could have thoroughly understood the impetuosity of Will's repulse or the bitterness

of his words. No one but himself then knew how everything connected with the sentiment of his own dignity

had an immediate bearing for him on his relation to Dorothea and to Mr. Casaubon's treatment of him. And in

the rush of impulses by which he flung back that offer of Bulstrode's there was mingled the sense that it

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

As for Bulstrodewhen Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction, and wept like a woman. It was the first

time he had encountered an open expression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles; and with that scorn

hurrying like venom through his system, there was no sensibility left to consolations. Rut the relief of

weeping had to be checked. His wife and daughters soon came home from hearing the address of an Oriental

missionary, and were full of regret that papa had not heard, in the first instance, the interesting things which

Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed most comfort was, that Will Ladislaw at

Will Ladislaw's mind was now wholly bent on seeing Dorothea again, and forthwith quitting Middlemarch.

The morning after his agitating scene with Bulstrode he wrote a brief letter to her, saying that various causes

had detained him in the neighborhood longer than he had expected, and asking her permission to call again at

Lowick at some hour which she would mention on the earliest possible day, he being anxious to depart, but

unwilling to do so until she had granted him an interview. He left the letter at the office, ordering the

Ladislaw felt the awkwardness of asking for more last words. His former farewell had been made in the

hearing of Sir James Chettam, and had been announced as final even to the butler. It is certainly trying to a

man's dignity to reappear when he is not expected to do so: a first farewell has pathos in it, but to come back

for a second lends an opening to comedy, and it was possible even that there might be bitter sneers afloat

about Will's motives for lingering. Still it was on the whole more satisfactory to his feeling to take the

directest means of seeing Dorothea, than to use any device which might give an air of chance to a meeting of

which he wished her to understand that it was what he earnestly sought. When he had parted from her before,

he had been in ignorance of facts which gave a new aspect to the relation between them, and made a more

absolute severance than he had then believed in. He knew nothing of Dorothea's private fortune, and being

little used to reflect on such matters, took it for granted that according to Mr. Casaubon's arrangement

marriage to him, Will Ladislaw, would mean that she consented to be penniless. That was not what he could

wish for even in his secret heart, or even if she had been ready to meet such hard contrast for his sake. And

then, too, there was the fresh smart of that disclosure about his mother's family, which if known would be an

added reason why Dorothea's friends should look down upon him as utterly below her. The secret hope that

after some years he might come back with the sense that he had at least a personal value equal to her wealth,

seemed now the dreamy continuation of a dream. This change would surely justify him in asking Dorothea to

But Dorothea on that morning was not at home to receive Will's note. In consequence of a letter from her

uncle announcing his intention to be at home in a week, she had driven first to Freshitt to carry the news,

meaning to go on to the Grange to deliver some orders with which her uncle had intrusted herthinking, as

If Will Ladislaw could have overheard some of the talk at Freshitt that morning, he would have felt all his

suppositions confirmed as to the readiness of certain people to sneer at his lingering in the neighborhood. Sir

James, indeed, though much relieved concerning Dorothea, had been on the watch to learn Ladislaw's

movements, and had an instructed informant in Mr. Standish, who was necessarily in his confidence on this

matter. That Ladislaw had stayed in Middlemarch nearly two months after he had declared that he was going

immediately, was a fact to embitter Sir James's suspicions, or at least to justify his aversion to a "young

fellow" whom he represented to himself as slight, volatile, and likely enough to show such recklessness as

naturally went along with a position unriveted by family ties or a strict profession. But he had just heard

something from Standish which, while it justified these surmises about Will, offered a means of nullifying all

Unwonted circumstances may make us all rather unlike ourselves: there are conditions under which the most

majestic person is obliged to sneeze, and our emotions are liable to be acted on in the same incongruous

manner. Good Sir James was this morning so far unlike himself that he was irritably anxious to say

something to Dorothea on a subject which he usually avoided as if it had been a matter of shame to them

both. He could not use Celia as a medium, because he did not choose that she should know the kind of gossip

he had in his mind; and before Dorothea happened to arrive he had been trying to imagine how, with his

shyness and unready tongue, he could ever manage to introduce his communication. Her unexpected presence

brought him to utter hopelessness in his own power of saying anything unpleasant; but desperation suggested

a resource; he sent the groom on an unsaddled horse across the park with a pencilled note to Mrs.

Cadwallader, who already knew the gossip, and would think it no compromise of herself to repeat it as often

Dorothea was detained on the good pretext that Mr. Garth, whom she wanted to see, was expected at the hall

within the hour, and she was still talking to Caleb on the gravel when Sir James, on the watch for the rector's

"Enough! I understand,"said Mrs. Cadwallader. "You shall be innocent. I am such a blackamoor that I

"I don't mean that it's of any consequence," said Sir James, disliking that Mrs. Cadwallader should understand

too much. "Only it is desirable that Dorothea should know there are reasons why she should not receive him

It came very lightly indeed. When Dorothea quitted Caleb and turned to meet them, it appeared that Mrs.

Cadwallader had stepped across the park by the merest chance in the world, just to chat with Celia in a

matronly way about the baby. And so Mr. Brooke was coming back? Delightful!coming back, it was to be

hoped, quite cured of Parliamentary fever and pioneering. Apropos of the "Pioneer"somebody had

prophesied that it would soon be like a dying dolphin, and turn all colors for want of knowing how to help

itself, because Mr. Brooke's protege, the brilliant young Ladislaw, was gone or going. Had Sir James heard

The three were walking along the gravel slowly, and Sir James, turning aside to whip a shrub, said he had

"All false!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "He is not gone, or going, apparently; the `Pioneer' keeps its color, and

Mr. Orlando Ladislaw is making a sad darkblue scandal by warbling continually with your Mr. Lydgate's

wife, who they tell me is as pretty as pretty can be. It seems nobody ever goes into the house without finding

this young gentleman lying on the rug or warbling at the piano. But the people in manufacturing towns are

"You began by saying that one report was false, Mrs. Cadwallader, and I believe this is false too," said

Dorothea, with indignant energy; "at least, I feel sure it is a misrepresentation. I will not hear any evil spoken

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

able to reflect, she would have held it petty to keep silence at injurious words about Will from fear of being

Sir James, glancing at her, repented of his stratagem; but Mrs. Cadwallader, equal to all occasions, spread the

palms of her hands outward and said"Heaven grant it, my dear!I mean that all bad tales about anybody

may be false. But it is a pity that young Lydgate should have married one of these Middlemarch girls.

Considering he's a son of somebody, he might have got a woman with good blood in her veins, and not too

young, who would have put up with his profession. There's Clara Harfager, for instance, whose friends don't

know what to do with her; and she has a portion. Then we might have had her among us. However!it's no

"I am going on immediately to Tipton," said Dorothea, rather haughtily. "Goodby."

Sir James could say nothing as he accompanied her to the carriage. He was altogether discontented with the

Dorothea drove along between the berried hedgerows and the shorn cornfields, not seeing or hearing

anything around. The tears came and rolled down her cheeks, but she did not know it. The world, it seemed,

was turning ugly and hateful, and there was no place for her trustfulness. "It is not trueit is not true!" was

the voice within her that she listened to; but all the while a remembrance to which there had always clung a

vague uneasiness would thrust itself on her attentionthe remembrance of that day when she had found Will

"He said he would never do anything that I disapprovedI wish I could have told him that I disapproved of

that," said poor Dorothea, inwardly, feeling a strange alternation between anger with Will and the passionate

defence of him. "They all try to blacken him before me; but I will care for no pain, if he is not to blame. I

always believed he was good."These were her last thoughts before she felt that the carriage was passing

under the archway of the lodgegate at the Grange, when she hurriedly pressed her handkerchief to her face

and began to think of her errands. The coachman begged leave to take out the horses for half an hour as there

was something wrong with a shoe; and Dorothea, having the sense that she was going to rest, took off her

gloves and bonnet, while she was leaning against a statue in the entrancehall, and talking to the

"I must stay here a little, Mrs. Kell. I will go into the library and write you some memoranda from my uncle's

"The shutters are open, madam," said Mrs. Kell, following Dorothea, who had walked along as she spoke.

(Will had come to fetch a portfolio of his own sketches which he had missed in the act of packing his

Dorothea's heart seemed to turn over as if it had had a blow, but she was not perceptibly checked: in truth, the

sense that Will was there was for the moment allsatisfying to her, like the sight of something precious that

Will had found his portfolio, and had laid it on the table at the far end of the room, to turn over the sketches

and please himself by looking at the memorable piece of art which had a relation to nature too mysterious for

Dorothea. He was smiling at it still, and shaking the sketches into order with the thought that he might find a

letter from her awaiting him at Middlemarch, when Mrs. Kell close to his elbow said

Will turned round quickly, and the next moment Dorothea was entering. As Mrs. Kell closed the door behind

her they met: each was looking at the other, and consciousness was overflowed by something that suppressed

utterance. It was not confusion that kept them silent, for they both felt that parting was near, and there is no

She moved automatically towards her uncle's chair against the writingtable, and Will, after drawing it out a

"Pray sit down," said Dorothea, crossing her hands on her lap; "I am very glad you were here." Will thought

that her face looked just as it did when she first shook hands with him in Rome; for her widow's cap, fixed in

her bonnet, had gone off with it, and he could see that she had lately been shedding tears. But the mixture of

anger in her agitation had vanished at the sight of him; she had been used, when they were face to face,

always to feel confidence and the happy freedom which comes with mutual understanding, and how could

other people's words hinder that effect on a sudden? Let the music which can take possession of our frame

and fill the air with joy for us, sound once morewhat does it signify that we heard it found fault with in its

"I have sent a letter to Lowick Manor today, asking leave to see you," said Will, seating himself opposite to

her. "I am going away immediately, and I could not go without speaking to you again."

"I thought we had parted when you came to Lowick many weeks ago you thought you were going then,"

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

the future. When I saw you before, I was dreaming that I might come back some day. I don't think I ever

"Yes," said Will, impetuously, shaking his head backward, and looking away from her with irritation in his

face. "Of course I must wish it. I have been grossly insulted in your eyes and in the eyes of others. There has

been a mean implication against my character. I wish you to know that under no circumstances would I have

lowered myself by under no circumstances would I have given men the chance of saying that I sought

money under the pretext of seekingsomething else. There was no need of other safeguard against methe

Will rose from his chair with the last word and wenthe hardly knew where; but it was to the projecting

window nearest him, which had been open as now about the same season a year ago, when he and Dorothea

had stood within it and talked together. Her whole heart was going out at this moment in sympathy with

Will's indignation: she only wanted to convince him that she had never done him injustice, and he seemed to

"It would be very unkind of you to suppose that I ever attributed any meanness to you," she began. Then in

her ardent way, wanting to plead with him, she moved from her chair and went in front of him to her old

When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the window, without meeting her

glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement following up the previous anger of his tone. She was ready to

say that it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those strange particulars of their

relation which neither of them could explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much. At this

moment she had no belief that Will would in any case have wanted to marry her, and she feared using words

which might imply such a belief. She only said earnestly, recurring to his last word

Will did not answer. In the stormy fluctuation of his feelings these words of hers seemed to him cruelly

neutral, and he looked pale and miserable after his angry outburst. He went to the table and fastened up his

portfolio, while Dorothea looked at him from the distance. They were wasting these last moments together in

wretched silence. What could he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was the

passionate love for her which he forbade himself to utter? What could she say, since she might offer him no

help since she was forced to keep the money that ought to have been his? since today he seemed not to

But Will at last turned away from his portfolio and approached the window again.

"I must go," he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which sometimes accompanies bitter feeling, as if

"What shall you do in life?" said Dorothea, timidly. "Have your intentions remained just the same as when

"Yes," said Will, in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as uninteresting. "I shall work away at the first

thing that offers. I suppose one gets a habit of doing without happiness or hope."

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

"I have not spoken too strongly now," said Will, leaning back against the angle of the wall. "There are certain

things which a man can only go through once in his life; and he must know some time or other that the best is

over with him. This experience has happened to me while I am very youngthat is all. What I care more for

than I can ever care for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me I don't mean merely by being out of my

reach, but forbidden me, even if it were within my reach, by my own pride and honor by everything I

respect myself for. Of course I shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in a trance."

Will paused, imagining that it would be impossible for Dorothea to misunderstand this; indeed he felt that he

was contradicting himself and offending against his selfapproval in speaking to her so plainly; but stillit

could not be fairly called wooing a woman to tell her that he would never woo her. It must be admitted to be

But Dorothea's mind was rapidly going over the past with quite another vision than his. The thought that she

herself might be what Will most cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt: the memory

of the little they had lived through together turned pale and shrank before the memory which suggested how

much fuller might have been the intercourse between Will and some one else with whom he had had constant

companionship. Everything he had said might refer to that other relation, and whatever had passed between

him and herself was thoroughly explained by what she had always regarded as their simple friendship and the

cruel obstruction thrust upon it by her husband's injurious act. Dorothea stood silent, with her eyes cast down

dreamily, while images crowded upon her which left the sickening certainty that Will was referring to Mrs.

Lydgate. But why sickening? He wanted her to know that here too his conduct should be above suspicion.

Will was not surprised at her silence. His mind also was tumultuously busy while he watched her, and he was

feeling rather wildly that something must happen to hinder their partingsome miracle, clearly nothing in

their own deliberate speech. Yet, after all, had she any love for him?he could not pretend to himself that he

would rather believe her to be without that pain. He could not deny that a secret longing for the assurance that

Neither of them knew how long they stood in that way. Dorothea was raising her eyes, and was about to

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

"I must go," said Will, when the door had closed againadvancing towards her. "The day after tomorrow I

"You have acted in every way rightly," said Dorothea, in a low tone, feeling a pressure at her heart which

She put out her hand, and Will took it for an instant with. out speaking, for her words had seemed to him

cruelly cold and unlike herself. Their eyes met, but there was discontent in his, and in hers there was only

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

"Why should you say that?" said Will, with irritation. "As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything

He had really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it impelled him to go away without pause.

It was all one flash to Dorothea his last wordshis distant bow to her as he reached the door the sense

that he was no longer there. She sank into the chair, and for a few moments sat like a statue, while images and

emotions were hurrying upon her. Joy came first, in spite of the threatening train behind itjoy in the

impression that it was really herself whom Will loved and was renouncing, that there was really no other love

less permissible, more blameworthy, which honor was hurrying him away from. They were parted all the

same, butDorothea drew a deep breath and felt her strength returnshe could think of him unrestrainedly.

At that moment the parting was easy to bear: the first sense of loving and being loved excluded sorrow. It was

as if some hard icy pressure had melted, and her consciousness had room to expand: her past was come back

to her with larger interpretation. The joy was not the lessperhaps it was the more complete just then

because of the irrevocable parting; for there was no reproach, no contemptuous wonder to imagine in any eye

or from any lips. He had acted so as to defy reproach, and make wonder respectful.

Any one watching her might have seen that there was a fortifying thought within her. Just as when inventive

power is working with glad ease some small claim on the attention is fully met as if it were only a cranny

opened to the sunlight, it was easy now for Dorothea to write her memoranda. She spoke her last words to the

housekeeper in cheerful tones, and when she seated herself in the carriage her eyes were bright and her

cheeks blooming under the dismal bonnet. She threw back the heavy "weepers," and looked before her,

wondering which road Will had taken. It was in her nature to be proud that he was blameless, and through all

The coachman was used to drive his grays at a good pane, Mr. Casaubon being unenjoying and impatient in

everything away from his desk, and wanting to get to the end of all journeys; and Dorothea was now bowled

along quickly. Driving was pleasant, for rain in the night had laid the dust, and the blue sky looked far off,

away from the region of the great clouds that sailed in masses. The earth looked like a happy place under the

vast heavens, and Dorothea was wishing that she might overtake Will and see him once more.

After a turn of the road, there he was with the portfolio under his arm; but the next moment she was passing

him while he raised his hat, and she felt a pang at being seated there in a sort of exaltation, leaving him

behind. She could not look back at him. It was as if a crowd of indifferent objects had thrust them asunder,

and forced them along different paths, taking them farther and farther away from each other, and making it

useless to look back. She could no more make any sign that would seem to say, "Need we part?" than she

could stop the carriage to wait for him. Nay, what a world of reasons crowded upon her against any

movement of her thought towards a future that might reverse the decision of this day!

"I only wish I had known beforeI wish he knewthen we could be quite happy in thinking of each other,

though we are forever parted. And if I could but have given him the money, and made things easier for

him!"were the longings that came back the most persistently. And yet, so heavily did the world weigh on

her in spite of her independent energy, that with this idea of Will as in need of such help and at a

disadvantage with the world, there came always the vision of that unfittingness of any closer relation between

them which lay in the opinion of every one connected with her. She felt to the full all the imperativeness of

the motives which urged Will's conduct. How could he dream of her defying the barrier that her husband had

Will's certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much more bitterness in it. Very slight

matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he

felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a world which in his present temper offered

him little that he coveted, made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the sustainment

of resolve. After all, he had no assurance that she loved him: could any man pretend that he was simply glad

"Have you seen much of your scientific phoenix, Lydgate, lately?" said Mr. Toller at one of his Christmas

"Not much, I am sorry to say," answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry Mr. Toller's banter about his belief in

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

"He gives a great deal of time to the New Hospital," said Mr. Farebrother, who had his reasons for continuing

the subject: "I hear of that from my neighbor, Mrs. Casaubon, who goes there often. She says Lydgate is

indefatigable, and is making a fine thing of Bulstrode's institution. He is preparing a new ward in case of the

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

"Come, Toller, be candid," said Mr. Farebrother. "You are too clever not to see the good of a bold fresh mind

in medicine, as well as in everything else; and as to cholera, I fancy, none of you are very sure what you

ought to do. If a man goes a little too far along a new road, it is usually himself that he harms more than any

"I am sure you and Wrench ought to be obliged to him," said Dr. Minchin, looking towards Toller, "for he

"Lydgate has been living at a great rate for a young beginner," said Mr. Harry Toller, the brewer. "I suppose

"I hope so," said Mr. Chichely, "else he ought not to have married that nice girl we were all so fond of. Hang

it, one has a grudge against a man who carries off the prettiest girl in the town."

"My friend Vincy didn't half like the marriage, I know that," said Mr. Chichely. "HE wouldn't do much. How

the relations on the other side may have come down I can't say." There was an emphatic kind of reticence in

"Oh, I shouldn't think Lydgate ever looked to practice for a living," said Mr. Toller, with a slight touch of

This was not the first time that Mr. Farebrother had heard hints of Lydgate's expenses being obviously too

great to be met by his practice, but he thought it not unlikely that there were resources or expectations which

excused the large outlay at the time of Lydgate's marriage, and which might hinder any bad consequences

from the disappointment in his practice. One evening, when he took the pains to go to Middlemarch on

purpose to have a chat with Lydgate as of old, he noticed in him an air of excited effort quite unlike his usual

easy way of keeping silence or breaking it with abrupt energy whenever he had anything to say. Lydgate

talked persistently when they were in his workroom, putting arguments for and against the probability of

certain biological views; but he had none of those definite things to say or to show which give the waymarks

of a patient uninterrupted pursuit, such as he used himself to insist on, saying that "there must be a systole

and diastole in all inquiry," and that "a man's mind must be continually expanding and shrinking between the

whole human horizon and the horizon of an objectglass." That evening he seemed to be talking widely for

the sake of resisting any personal bearing; and before long they went into the drawing room, where Lydgate,

having asked Rosamond to give them music, sank back in his chair in silence, but with a strange light in his

eyes. "He may have been taking an opiate," was a thought that crossed Mr. Farebrother's

It did not occur to him that Lydgate's marriage was not delightful: he believed, as the rest did, that Rosamond

was an amiable, docile creature, though he had always thought her rather uninteresting a little too much

the patterncard of the finishingschool; and his mother could not forgive Rosamond because she never

seemed to see that Henrietta Noble was in the room. "However, Lydgate fell in love with her," said the Vicar

Mr. Farebrother was aware that Lydgate was a proud man, but having very little corresponding fibre in

himself, and perhaps too little care about personal dignity, except the dignity of not being mean or foolish, he

could hardly allow enough for the way in which Lydgate shrank, as from a burn, from the utterance of any

word about his private affairs. And soon after that conversation at Mr. Toller's, the Vicar learned something

which made him watch the more eagerly for an opportunity of indirectly letting Lydgate know that if he

The opportunity came at Mr. Vincy's, where, on New Year's Day, there was a party, to which Mr. Farebrother

was irresistibly invited, on the plea that he must not forsake his old friends on the first new year of his being a

greater man, and Rector as well as Vicar. And this party was thoroughly friendly: all the ladies of the

Farebrother family were present; the Vincy children all dined at the table, and Fred had persuaded his mother

that if she did not invite Mary Garth, the Farebrothers would regard it as a slight to themselves, Mary being

their particular friend. Mary came, and Fred was in high spirits, though his enjoyment was of a checkered

kind triumph that his mother should see Mary's importance with the chief personages in the party being

much streaked with jealousy when Mr. Farebrother sat down by her. Fred used to be much more easy about

his own accomplishments in the days when he had not begun to dread being "bowled out by Farebrother,"

and this terror was still before him. Mrs. Vincy, in her fullest matronly bloom, looked at Mary's little figure,

rough wavy hair, and visage quite without lilies and roses, and wondered; trying unsuccessfully to fancy

herself caring about Mary's appearance in wedding clothes, or feeling complacency in grandchildren who

would "feature" the Garths. However, the party was a merry one, and Mary was particularly bright; being

glad, for Fred's sake, that his friends were getting kinder to her, and being also quite willing that they should

Mr. Farebrother noticed that Lydgate seemed bored, and that Mr. Vincy spoke as little as possible to his

soninlaw. Rosamond was perfectly graceful and calm, and only a subtle observation such as the Vicar had

not been roused to bestow on her would have perceived the total absence of that interest in her husband's

presence which a loving wife is sure to betray, even if etiquette keeps her aloof from him. When Lydgate was

taking part in the conversation, she never looked towards him any more than if she had been a sculptured

Psyche modelled to look another way: and when, after being called out for an hour or two, he reentered the

room, she seemed unconscious of the fact, which eighteen months before would have had the effect of a

numeral before ciphers. In reality, however, she was intensely aware of Lydgate's voice and movements; and

her pretty goodtempered air of unconsciousness was a studied negation by which she satisfied her inward

opposition to him without compromise of propriety. When the ladies were in the drawingroom after Lydgate

had been called away from the dessert, Mrs. Farebrother, when Rosamond happened to be near her,

"Yes, the life of a medical man is very arduous: especially when he is so devoted to his profession as Mr.

Lydgate is," said Rosamond, who was standing, and moved easily away at the end of this correct little speech.

"It is dreadfully dull for her when there is no company," said Mrs. Vincy, who was seated at the old lady's

side. "I am sure I thought so when Rosamond was ill, and I was staying with her. You know, Mrs.

Farebrother, ours is a cheerful house. I am of a cheerful disposition myself, and Mr. Vincy always likes

something to be going on. That is what Rosamond has been used to. Very different from a husband out at odd

hours, and never knowing when he will come home, and of a close, proud disposition, _I_ think"indiscreet

Mrs. Vincy did lower her tone slightly with this parenthesis. "But Rosamond always had an angel of a

temper; her brothers used very often not to please her, but she was never the girl to show temper; from a baby

she was always as good as good, and with a complexion beyond anything. But my children are all

This was easily credible to any one looking at Mrs. Vincy as she threw back her broad capstrings, and

smiled towards her three little girls, aged from seven to eleven. But in that smiling glance she was obliged to

include Mary Garth, whom the three girls had got into a corner to make her tell them stories. Mary was just

finishing the delicious tale of Rumpelstiltskin, which she had well by heart, because Letty was never tired of

communicating it to her ignorant elders from a favorite red volume. Louisa, Mrs. Vincy's darling, now ran to

her with wideeyed serious excitement, crying, "Oh mamma, mamma, the little man stamped so hard on the

"Bless you, my cherub!" said mamma; "you shall tell me all about it tomorrow. Go and listen!" and then, as

her eyes followed Louisa back towards the attractive corner, she thought that if Fred wished her to invite

But presently the corner became still more animated, for Mr. Farebrother came in, and seating himself behind

Louisa, took her on his lap; whereupon the girls all insisted that he must hear Rumpelstiltskin, and Mary must

tell it over again. He insisted too, and Mary, without fuss, began again in her neat fashion, with precisely the

same words as before. Fred, who had also seated himself near, would have felt unmixed triumph in Mary's

effectiveness if Mr. Farebrother had not been looking at her with evident admiration, while he dramatized an

"You will never care any more about my oneeyed giant, Loo," said Fred at the end.

"Yes," added Mary; "ask Mr. Farebrother to tell you about the ants whose beautiful house was knocked down

by a giant named Tom, and he thought they didn't mind because he couldn't hear them cry, or see them use

"No, no, I am a grave old parson. If I try to draw a story out of my bag a sermon comes instead. Shall I

preach you a sermon?" said he, putting on his shortsighted glasses, and pursing up his lips.

"Let me see, then. Against cakes: how cakes are bad things, especially if they are sweet and have plums in

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

"Ah, I see it will not do to preach on New Year's Day," said Mr. Farebrother, rising and walkingaway. He

had discovered of late that Fred had become jealous of him, and also that he himself was not losing his

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

"Yes," said Mrs. Vincy, obliged to reply, as the old lady turned to her expectantly. "It is a pity she is not

"I cannot say that," said Mrs. Farebrother, decisively. "I like her countenance. We must not always ask for

beauty, when a good God has seen fit to make an excellent young woman without it. I put good manners first,

The old lady was a little sharp in her tone, having a prospective reference to Mary's becoming her

daughterinlaw; for there was this inconvenience in Mary's position with regard to Fred, that it was not

suitable to be made public, and hence the three ladies at Lowick Parsonage were still hoping that Camden

New visitors entered, and the drawingroom was given up to music and games, while whisttables were

prepared in the quiet room on the other side of the hall. Mr. Farebrother played a rubber to satisfy his mother,

who regarded her occasional whist as a protest against scandal and novelty of opinion, in which light even a

revoke had its dignity. But at the end he got Mr. Chichely to take his place, and left the room. As he crossed

"You are the man I was going to look for," said the Vicar; and instead of entering the drawingroom, they

walked along the hall and stood against the fireplace, where the frosty air helped to make a glowing bank.

"You see, I can leave the whisttable easily enough," he went on, smiling at Lydgate, "now I don't play for

"Ah, you didn't mean me to know it; I call that ungenerous reticence. You should let a man have the pleasure

of feeling that you have done him a good turn. I don't enter into some people's dislike of being under an

obligation: upon my word, I prefer being under an obligation to everybody for behaving well to me."

"I can't tell what you mean," said Lydgate, "unless it is that I once spoke of you to Mrs. Casaubon. But I did

not think that she would break her promise not to mention that I had done so," said Lydgate, leaning his back

"It was Brooke who let it out, only the other day. He paid me the compliment of saying that he was very glad

I had the living though you had come across his tactics, and had praised me up as a lien and a Tillotson, and

"Well, I was glad of the leakiness then. I don't see why you shouldn't like me to know that you wished to do

me a service, my dear fellow. And you certainly have done me one. It's rather a strong check to one's

selfcomplacency to find how much of one's right doing depends on not being in want of money. A man will

not be tempted to say the Lord's Prayer backward to please the devil, if he doesn't want the devil's services. I

"I don't see that there's any moneygetting without chance," said Lydgate; "if a man gets it in a profession,

Mr. Farebrother thought he could account for this speech, in striking contrast with Lydgate's former way of

talking, as the perversity which will often spring from the moodiness of a man ill at ease in his affairs. He

"Ah, there's enormous patience wanted with the way of the world. But it is the easier for a man to wait

patiently when he has friends who love him, and ask for nothing better than to help him through, so far as it

"Oh yes," said Lydgate, in a careless tone, changing his attitude and looking at his watch. "People make much

He knew as distinctly as possible that this was an offer of help to himself from Mr. Farebrother, and he could

not bear it. So strangely determined are we mortals, that, after having been long gratified with the sense that

he had privately done the Vicar a service, the suggestion that the Vicar discerned his need of a service in

return made him shrink into unconquerable reticence. Besides, behind all making of such offers what else

must come?that he should "mention his case," imply that he wanted specific things. At that moment,

Mr. Farebrother was too keen a man not to know the meaning of that reply, and there was a certain

massiveness in Lydgate's manner and tone, corresponding with his physique, which if he repelled your

advances in the first instance seemed to put persuasive devices out of question.

Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs, he knew that it would have hardly been

in Mr. Farebrother's power to give him the help he immediately wanted. With the year's bills coming in from

his tradesmen, with Dover's threatening hold on his furniture, and with nothing to depend on but slow

dribbling payments from patients who must not be offendedfor the handsome fees he had had from Freshitt

Hall and Lowick Manor had been easily absorbednothing less than a thousand pounds would have freed

him from actual embarrassment, and left a residue which, according to the favorite phrase of hopefulness in

Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year, when fellowcitizens expect to be paid for the

trouble and goods they have smilingly bestowed on their neighbors, had so tightened the pressure of sordid

cares on Lydgate's mind that it was hardly possible for him to think unbrokenly of any other subject, even the

most habitual and soliciting. He was not an illtempered man; his intellectual activity, the ardent kindness of

his heart, as well as his strong frame, would always, under tolerably easy conditions, have kept him above the

petty uncontrolled susceptibilities which make bad temper. But he was now a prey to that worst irritation

which arises not simply from annoyances, but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances,

of wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the reverse of all his former purposes. "THIS is

what I am thinking of; and THAT is what I might have been thinking of," was the bitter incessant murmur

Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap

of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an

insignificant world may have its consolations. Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear: it was the sense

that there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying around him, while his self was being

narrowed into the miserable isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might allay such

fears. His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid, and beneath the attention of lofty persons who can

know nothing of debt except on a magnificent scale. Doubtless they were sordid; and for the majority, who

are not lofty, there is no escape from sordidness but by being free from moneycraving, with all its base

hopes and temptations, its watching for death, its hinted requests. its horsedealer's desire to make bad work

pass for good, its seeking for function which ought to be another's, its compulsion often to long for Luck in

It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen

into a bitter moody state which was continually widening Rosamond's alienation from him. After the first

disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made many efforts to draw her into sympathy with him about possible

measures for narrowing their expenses, and with the threatening approach of Christmas his propositions grew

more and more definite. "We two can do with only one servant, and live on very little," he said, "and I shall

manage with one horse." For Lydgate, as we have seen, had begun to reason, with a more distinct vision,

about the expenses of living, and any share of pride he had given to appearances of that sort was meagre

compared with the pride which made him revolt from exposure as a debtor, or from asking men to help him

"Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like," said Rosamond; "but I should have thought it

would be very injurious to your position for us to live in a poor way. You must expect your practice to be

"My dear Rosamond, it is not a question of choice. We have begun too expensively. Peacock, you know,

lived in a much smaller house than this. It is my fault: I ought to have known better, and I deserve a

thrashingif there were anybody who had a right to give it mefor bringing you into the necessity of living

in a poorer way than you have been used to. But we married because we loved each other, I suppose. And

that may help us to pull along till things get better. Come, dear, put down that work and come to me."

He was really in chill gloom about her at that moment, but he dreaded a future without affection, and was

determined to resist the oncoming of division between them. Rosamond obeyed him, and he took her on his

knee, but in her secret soul she was utterly aloof from him. The poor thing saw only that the world was not

ordered to her liking, and Lydgate was part of that world. But he held her waist with one hand and laid the

other gently on both of hers; for this rather abrupt man had much tenderness in his manners towards women,

seeming to have always present in his imagination the weakness of their frames and the delicate poise of their

"I find, now I look into things a little, Rosy, that it is wonderful what an amount of money slips away in our

housekeeping. I suppose the servants are careless, and we have had a great many people coming. But there

must be many in our rank who manage with much less: they must do with commoner things, I suppose, and

look after the scraps. It seems, money goes but a little way in these matters, for Wrench has everything as

"Oh, if you think of living as the Wrenches do!" said Rosamond, with a little turn of her neck. "But I have

"Yes, they have bad taste in everythingthey make economy look ugly. We needn't do that. I only meant

"Why should not you have a good practice, Tertius? Mr. Peacock had. You should be more careful not to

offend people, and you should send out medicines as the others do. I am sure you began well, and you got

several good houses. It cannot answer to be eccentric; you should think what will be generally liked," said

Lydgate's anger rose: he was prepared to be indulgent towards feminine weakness, but not towards feminine

dictation. The shallowness of a waternixie's soul may have a charm until she becomes didactic. But he

"What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge. That is not the question between us. It is enough

for you to know that our income is likely to be a very narrow one hardly four hundred, perhaps less, for a

long time to come, and we must try to rearrange our lives in accordance with that fact."

Rosamond was silent for a moment or two, looking before her, and then said, "My uncle Bulstrode ought to

allow you a salary for the time you give to the Hospital: it is not right that you should work for nothing."

"It was understood from the beginning that my services would be gratuitous. That, again, need not enter into

our discussion. I have pointed out what is the only probability," said Lydgate, impatiently. Then checking

"I think I see one resource which would free us from a good deal of the present difficulty. I hear that young

Ned Plymdale is going to be married to Miss Sophy Toller. They are rich, and it is not often that a good

house is vacant in Middlemarch. I feel sure that they would be glad to take this house from us with most of

our furniture, and they would be willing to pay handsomely for the lease. I can employ Trumbull to speak to

Rosamond left her husband's knee and walked slowly to the other end of the room; when she turned round

and walked towards him it was evident that the tears had come, and that she was biting her underlip and

clasping her hands to keep herself from crying. Lydgate was wretchedshaken with anger and yet feeling

"I thought, at least, when I had borne to send the plate back and have that man taking an inventory of the

"I explained it to you at the time, dear. That was only a security and behind that Security there is a debt. And

that debt must be paid within the next few months, else we shall have our furniture sold. If young Plymdale

will take our house and most of our furniture, we shall be able to pay that debt, and some others too, and we

shall be quit of a place too expensive for us. We might take a smaller house: Trumbull, I know, has a very

decent one to let at thirty pounds ayear, and this is ninety." Lydgate uttered this speech in the curt

hammering way with which we usually try to nail down a vague mind to imperative facts. Tears rolled

silently down Rosamond's cheeks; she just pressed her handkerchief against them, and stood looking al; the

large vase on the mantelpiece. It was a moment of more intense bitterness than she had ever felt before. At

"Like it?" burst out Lydgate, rising from his chair, thrusting his hands in his pockets and stalking away from

the hearth; "it's not a question of liking. Of course, I don't like it; it's the only thing I can do." He wheeled

"I should have thought there were many other means than that," said Rosamond. "Let us have a sale and leave

"To do what? What is the use of my leaving my work in Middlemarch to go where I have none? We should

be just as penniless elsewhere as we are here," said Lydgate still more angrily.

"If we are to be in that position it will be entirely your own doing, Tertius," said Rosamond, turning round to

speak with the fullest conviction. "You will not behave as you ought to do to your own family. You offended

Captain Lydgate. Sir Godwin was very kind to me when we were at Quallingham, and I am sure if you

showed proper regard to him and told him your affairs, he would do anything for you. But rather than that,

There was something like fierceness in Lydgate's eyes, as he answered with new violence, "Well, then, if you

will have it so, I do like it. I admit that I like it better than making a fool of myself by going to beg where it's

There was a tone in the last sentence which was equivalent to the clutch of his strong hand on Rosamond's

delicate arm. But for all that, his will was not a whit stronger than hers. She immediately walked out of the

room in silence, but with an intense determination to hinder what Lydgate liked to do.

He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled he felt that the chief result of the discussion was a deposit

of dread within him at the idea of opening with his wife in future subjects which might again urge him to

violent speech. It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any movement that

might mate it fatal. His marriage would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on loving each

other. He had long ago made up his mind to what he thought was her negative characterher want of

sensibility, which showed itself in disregard both of his specific wishes and of his general aims. The first

great disappointment had been borne: the tender devotedness and docile adoration of the ideal wife must be

renounced, and life must be taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by men who have lost their

limbs. But the real wife had not only her claims, she had still a hold on his heart, and it was his intense desire

that the hold should remain strong. In marriage, the certainty, "She will never love me much," is easier to

bear than the fear, "I shall love her no more." Hence, after that outburst, his inward effort was entirely to

excuse her, and to blame the hard circumstances which were partly his fault. He tried that evening, by petting

her, to heal the wound he had made in the morning, and it was not in Rosamond's nature to be repellent or

sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that her husband loved her and was under control. But this was

something quite distinct from loving HIM. Lydgate would not have chosen soon to recur to the plan of

parting with the house; he was resolved to carry it out, and say as little more about it as possible. But

"No," said Lydgate, "but I shall call on him as I go by this morning. No time must be lost." He took

Rosamond's question as a sign that she withdrew her inward opposition, and kissed her head caressingly

As soon as it was late enough to make a call, Rosamond went to Mrs. Plymdale, Mr. Ned's mother, and

entered with pretty congratulations into the of the coming marriage. Mrs. Plymdale's maternal view was, that

Rosamond might possibly now have retrospective glimpses of her own folly; and feeling the advantages to be

at present all on the side of her son, was too kind a woman not to behave graciously.

"Yes, Ned is most happy, I must say. And Sophy Toller is all I could desire in a daughterinlaw. Of course

her father is able to do something handsome for herthat is only what would be expected with a brewery

like his. And the connection is everything we should desire. But that is not what I look at. She is such a very

nice girlno airs, no pretensions, though on a level with the first. I don't mean with the titled aristocracy. I

see very little good in people aiming out of their own sphere. I mean that Sophy is equal to the best in the

"I look upon it as a reward for Ned, who never held his head too high, that he should have got into the very

best connection," continued Mrs. Plymdale, her native sharpness softened by a fervid sense that she was

taking a correct view. "And such particular people as the Tollers are, they might have objected because some

of our friends are not theirs. It is well known that your aunt Bulstrode and I have been intimate from our

youth, and Mr. Plymdale has been always on Mr. Bulstrode's side. And I myself prefer serious opinions. But

"I am sure he is a very deserving, wellprincipled young man," said Rosamond, with a neat air of patronage

"Oh, he has not the style of a captain in the army, or that sort of carriage as if everybody was beneath him, or

that showy kind of talking, and singing, and intellectual talent. But I am thankful he has not. It is a poor

"Oh dear, yes; appearances have very little to do with happiness," said Rosamond. "I think there is every

"Oh, as for that, they must put up with what they can get. They have been looking at the house in St. Peter's

Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's; it belongs to him, and he is putting it nicely in repair. I suppose they are not

"Well, it is near the Church, and a genteel situation. But the windows are narrow, and it is all ups and downs.

You don't happen to know of any other that would be at liberty?" said Mrs. Plymdale, fixing her round black

Rosamond had not foreseen that question and answer in setting out to pay her visit; she had simply meant to

gather any information which would help her to avert the parting with her own house under circumstances

thoroughly disagreeable to her. As to the untruth in her reply, she no more reflected on it than she did on the

untruth there was in her saying that appearances had very little to do with happiness. Her object, she was

convinced, was thoroughly justifiable: it was Lydgate whose intention was inexcusable; and there was a plan

in her mind which, when she had carried it out fully, would prove how very false a step it would have been

She returned home by Mr. Borthrop Trumbull's office, meaning to call there. It was the first time in her life

that Rosamond had thought of doing anything in the form of business, but she felt equal to the occasion. That

she should be obliged to do what she intensely disliked, was an idea which turned her quiet tenacity into

active invention. Here was a case in which it could not be enough simply to disobey and be serenely, placidly

obstinate: she must act according to her judgment, and she said to herself that her judgment was

Mr. Trumbull was in the backroom of his office, and received Rosamond with his finest manners, not only

because he had much sensibility to her charms, but because the goodnatured fibre in him was stirred by his

certainty that Lydgate was in difficulties, and that this uncommonly pretty womanthis young lady with the

highest personal attractionswas likely to feel the pinch of trouble to find herself involved in

circumstances beyond her control. He begged her to do him the honor to take a seat, and stood before her

trimming and comporting himself with an eager solicitude, which was chiefly benevolent. Rosamond's first

question was, whether her husband had called on Mr. Trumbull that morning, to speak about disposing of

"Yes, ma'am, yes, he did; he did so," said the good auctioneer, trying to throw something soothing into his

iteration. "I was about to fulfil his order, if possible, this afternoon. He wished me not to procrastinate."

"I called to tell you not to go any further, Mr. Trumbull; and I beg of you not to mention what has been said

"Certainly I will, Mrs. Lydgate, certainly. Confidence is sacred with me on business or any other topic. I am

then to consider the commission withdrawn?" said Mr. Trumbull, adjusting the long ends of his blue cravat

"Yes, if you please. I find that Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house the one in St. Peter's Place next to Mr.

Hackbutt's. Mr. Lydgate would be annoyed that his orders should be fulfilled uselessly. And besides that,

"Very good, Mrs. Lydgate, very good. I am at your commands, whenever you require any service of me,"

said Mr. Trumbull, who felt pleasure in conjecturing that some new resources had been opened. "Rely on me,

That evening Lydgate was a little comforted by observing that Rosamond was more lively than she had

usually been of late, and even seemed interested in doing what would please him without being asked. He

thought, "If she will be happy and I can rub through, what does it all signify? It is only a narrow swamp that

we have to pass in a long journey. If I can get my mind clear again, I shall do."

He was so much cheered that he began to search for an account of experiments which he had long ago meant

to look up, and had neglected out of that creeping selfdespair which comes in the train of petty anxieties. He

felt again some of the old delightful absorption in a farreaching inquiry, while Rosamond played the quiet

music which was as helpful to his meditation as the plash of an oar on the evening lake. It was rather late; he

had pushed away all the books, and was looking at the fire with his hands clasped behind his head in

forgetfulness of everything except the construction of a new controlling experiment, when Rosamond, who

Lydgate, startled and jarred, looked up in silence for a moment, like a man who has been disturbed in his

"I called at Mrs. Plymdale's this morning, and she told me that he had taken the house in St. Peter's Place,

Lydgate was silent. He drew his hands from behind his head and pressed them against the hair which was

hanging, as it was apt to do, in a mass on his forehead, while he rested his elbows on his knees. He was

feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had opened a door out of a suffocating place and had found it walled

up; but he also felt sure that Rosamond was pleased with the cause of his disappointment. He preferred not

looking at her and not speaking, until he had got over the first spasm of vexation. After all, he said in his

bitterness, what can a woman care about so much as house and furniture? a husband without them is an

absurdity. When he looked up and pushed his hair aside, his dark eyes had a miserable blank nonexpectance

"Perhaps some one else may turn up. I told Trumbull to be on the lookout if he failed with Plymdale."

Rosamond made no remark. She trusted to the chance that nothing more would pass between her husband and

the auctioneer until some issue should have justified her interference; at any rate, she had hindered the event

"Those who took the listand the others. I mean, how much money would satisfy them so that you need not

Lydgate surveyed her for a moment, as if he were looking for symptoms, and then said, "Oh, if I could have

got six hundred from Plymdale for furniture and as premium, I might have managed. I could have paid off

Dover, and given enough on account to the others to make them wait patiently, if we contracted our

"More than I am likely to get anywhere," said Lydgate, with rather a grating sarcasm in his tone. It angered

him to perceive that Rosamond's mind was wandering over impracticable wishes instead of facing possible

"Why should you not mention the sum?" said Rosamond, with a mild indication that she did not like his

"Well," said Lydgate in a guessing tone, "it would take at least a thousand to set me at ease. But," he added,

But the next day she carried out her plan of writing to Sir Godwin Lydgate. Since the Captain's visit, she had

received a letter from him, and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his married sister, condoling with her on the loss

of her baby, and expressing vaguely the hope that they should see her again at Quallingham. Lydgate had told

her that this politeness meant nothing; but she was secretly convinced that any backwardness in Lydgate's

family towards him was due to his cold and contemptuous behavior, and she had answered the letters in her

most charming manner, feeling some confidence that a specific invitation would follow. But there had been

total silence. The Captain evidently was not a great penman, and Rosamond reflected that the sisters might

have been abroad. However, the season was come for thinking of friends at home, and at any rate Sir

Godwin, who had chucked her under the chin, and pronounced her to be like the celebrated beauty, Mrs.

Croly, who had made a conquest of him in 1790, would be touched by any appeal from her, and would find it

pleasant for her sake to behave as he ought to do towards his nephew. Rosamond was naively convinced of

what an old gentleman ought to do to prevent her from suffering annoyance. And she wrote what she

considered the most judicious letter possible one which would strike Sir Godwin as a proof of her

excellent sense pointing out how desirable it was that Tertius should quit such a place as Middlemarch for

one more fitted to his talents, how the unpleasant character of the inhabitants had hindered his professional

success, and how in consequence he was in money difficulties, from which it would require a thousand

pounds thoroughly to extricate him. She did not say that Tertius was unaware of her intention to write; for she

had the idea that his supposed sanction of her letter would be in accordance with what she did say of his great

regard for his uncle Godwin as the relative who had always been his best friend. Such was the force of Poor

This had happened before the party on New Year's Day, and no answer had yet come from Sir Godwin. But

on the morning of that day Lydgate had to learn that Rosamond had revoked his order to Borthrop Trumbull.

Feeling it necessary that she should be gradually accustomed to the idea of their quitting the house in Lowick

Gate, he overcame his reluctance to speak to her again on the subject, and when they were breakfasting

"I shall try to see Trumbull this morning, and tell him to. advertise the house in the `Pioneer' and the

`Trumpet.' If the thing were advertised, some one might be inclined to take it who would not otherwise have

thought of a change. In these country places many people go on in their old houses when their families are

too large for them, for want of knowing where they can find another. And Trumbull seems to have got no bite

Rosamond knew that the inevitable moment was come. "I ordered Trumbull not to inquire further," she said,

Lydgate stared at her in mute amazement. Only half an hour before he had been fastening up her plaits for

her, and talking the "little language" of affection, which Rosamond, though not returning it, accepted as if she

had been a serene and lovely image, now and then miraculously dimpling towards her votary. With such

fibres still astir in him, the shock he received could not at once be distinctly anger; it was confused pain. He

laid down the knife and fork with which he was carving, and throwing himself back in his chair, said at last,

"When I knew that the Plymdales had taken a house, I called to tell him not to mention ours to them; and at

the same time I told him not to let the affair go on any further. I knew that it would be very injurious to you if

it were known that you wished to part with your house and furniture, and I had a very strong objection to it. I

"It was of no consequence then that I had told you imperative reasons of another kind; of no consequence that

I had come to a different conclusion, and given an order accordingly?" said Lydgate, bitingly, the thunder and

The effect of any one's anger on Rosamond had always been to make her shrink in cold dislike, and to

become all the more calmly correct, in the conviction that she was not the person to misbehave whatever

"I think I had a perfect right to speak on a subject which concerns me at least as much as you."

"Clearlyyou had a right to speak, but only to me. You had no right to contradict my orders secretly, and

treat me as if I were a fool," said Lydgate, in the same tone as before. Then with some added scorn, "Is it

possible to make you understand what the consequences will be? Is it of any use for me to tell you again why

"It is not necessary for you to tell me again," said Rosamond, in a voice that fell and trickled like cold

waterdrops. "I remembered what you said. You spoke just as violently as you do now. But that does not

alter my opinion that you ought to try every other means rather than take a step which is so painful to me.

And as to advertising the house, I think it would be perfectly degrading to you."

"You can do so, of course. But I think you ought to have told me before we were married that you would

Lydgate did not speak, but tossed his head on one side, and twitched the corners of his mouth in despair.

Rosamond, seeing that he was not looking at her, rose and set his cup of coffee before him; but he took no

notice of it, and went on with an inward drama and argument, occasionally moving in his seat, resting one

arm on the table, and rubbing his hand against his hair. There was a conflux of emotions and thoughts in him

that would not let him either give thorough way to his anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve.

"When we were married everyone felt that your position was very high. I could not have imagined then that

you would want to sell our furniture, and take a house in Bride Street, where the rooms are like cages. If we

"These would be very strong considerations," said Lydgate, half ironicallystill there was a withered

paleness about his lips as he looked at his coffee, and did not drink"these would be very strong

"Many persons must have been in debt in the same way, but if they are respectable, people trust them. I am

sure I have heard papa say that the Torbits were in debt, and they went on very well It cannot be good to act

Lydgate sat paralyzed by opposing impulses: since no reasoning he could apply to Rosamond seemed likely

to conquer her assent, he wanted to smash and grind some object on which he could at least produce an

impression, or else to tell her brutally that he was master, and she must obey. But he not only dreaded the

effect of such extremities on their mutual lifehe had a growing dread of Rosamond's quiet elusive

obstinacy, which would not allow any assertion of power to be final; and again, she had touched him in a spot

of keenest feeling by implying that she had been deluded with a false vision of happiness in marrying him. As

to saying that he was master, it was not the fact. The very resolution to which he had wrought himself by dint

of logic and honorable pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo contact. He swallowed half his cup of

"I may at least request that you will not go to Trumbull at present until it has been seen that there are no

other means," said Rosamond. Although she was not subject to much fear, she felt it safer not to betray that

she had written to Sir Godwin. "Promise me that you will not go to him for a few weeks, or without telling

Lydgate gave a short laugh. "I think it is I who should exact a promise that you will do nothing without

telling me," he said, turning his eyes sharply upon her, and then moving to the door.

"You remember that we are going to dine at papa's," said Rosamond, wishing that he should turn and make a

more thorough concession to her. But he only said "Oh yes," impatiently, and went away. She held it to be

very odious in him that he did not think the painful propositions he had had to make to her were enough,

without showing so unpleasant a temper. And when she put the moderate request that he would defer going to

Trumbull again, it was cruel in him not to assure her of what he meant to do. She was convinced of her

having acted in every way for the best; and each grating or angry speech of Lydgate's served only as an

addition to the register of offences in her mind. Poor Rosamond for months had begun to associate her

husband with feelings of disappointment, and the terribly inflexible relation of marriage had lost its charm of

encouraging delightful dreams. It had freed her from the disagreeables of her father's house, but it had not

given her everything that she had wished and hoped. The Lydgate with whom she had been in love had been

a group of airy conditions for her, most of which had disappeared, while their place had been taken by

everyday details which must be lived through slowly from hour to hour, not floated through with a rapid

selection of favorable aspects. The habits of Lydgate's profession, his home preoccupation with scientific

subjects, which seemed to her almost like a morbid vampire's taste, his peculiar views of things which had

never entered into the dialogue of courtship all these continually alienating influences, even without the

fact of his having placed himself at a disadvantage in the town, and without that first shock of revelation

about Dover's debt, would have made his presence dull to her. There was another presence which ever since

the early days of her marriage, until four months ago, had been an agreeable excitement, but that was gone:

Rosamond would not confess to herself how much the consequent blank had to do with her utter ennui; and it

seemed to her (perhaps she was right) that an invitation to Quallingham, and an opening for Lydgate to settle

elsewhere than in Middlemarchin London, or somewhere likely to be free from unpleasantnesswould

satisfy her quite well, and make her indifferent to the absence of Will Ladislaw, towards whom she felt some

That was the state of things with Lydgate and Rosamond on the New Year's Day when they dined at her

father's, she looking mildly neutral towards him in remembrance of his illtempered behavior at breakfast,

and he carrying a much deeper effect from the inward conflict in which that morning scene was only one of

many epochs. His flushed effort while talking to Mr. Farebrotherhis effort after the cynical pretence that

all ways of getting money are essentially the same, and that chance has an empire which reduces choice to a

fool's illusionwas but the symptom of a wavering resolve, a benumbed response to the old stimuli of

What was he to do? He saw even more keenly than Rosamond did the dreariness of taking her into the small

house in Bride Street, where she would have scanty furniture around her and discontent within: a life of

privation and life with Rosamond were two images which had become more and more irreconcilable ever

since the threat of privation had disclosed itself. But even if his resolves had forced the two images into

combination, the useful preliminaries to that hard change were not visibly within reach. And though he had

not given the promise which his wife had asked for, he did not go again to Trumbull. He even began to think

of taking a rapid journey to the North and seeing Sir Godwin. He had once believed that nothing would urge

him into making an application for money to his uncle, but he had not then known the full pressure of

alternatives yet more disagreeable. He could not depend on the effect of a letter; it was only in an interview,

however disagreeable this might be to himself, that he could give a thorough explanation and could test the

effectiveness of kinship. No sooner had Lydgate begun to represent this step to himself as the easiest than

there was a reaction of anger that hehe who had long ago determined to live aloof from such abject

calculations, such selfinterested anxiety about the inclinations and the pockets of men with whom he had

been proud to have no aims in commonshould have fallen not simply to their level, but to the level of

The bias of human nature to be slow in correspondence triumphs even over the present quickening in the

general pace of things: what wonder then that in 1832 old Sir Godwin Lydgate was slow to write a letter

which was of consequence to others rather than to himself? Nearly three weeks of the new year were gone,

and Rosamond, awaiting an answer to her winning appeal, was every day disappointed. Lydgate, in total

ignorance of her expectations, was seeing the bills come in, and feeling that Dover's use of his advantage over

other creditors was imminent. He had never mentioned to Rosamond his brooding purpose of going to

Quallingham: he did not want to admit what would appear to her a concession to her wishes after indignant

refusal, until the last moment; but he was really expecting to set off soon. A slice of the railway would enable

But one morning after Lydgate had gone out, a letter came addressed to him, which Rosamond saw clearly to

be from Sir Godwin. She was full of hope. Perhaps there might be a particular note to her enclosed; but

Lydgate was naturally addressed on the question of money or other aid, and the fact that he was written to,

nay, the very delay in writing at all, seemed to certify that the answer was thoroughly compliant. She was too

much excited by these thoughts to do anything but light stitching in a warm corner of the diningroom, with

the outside of this momentous letter lying on the table before her. About twelve she heard her husband's step

in the passage, and tripping to open the door, she said in her lightest tones, "Tertius, come in here here is a

"Ah?" he said, not taking off his hat, but just turning her round within his arm to walk towards the spot where

the letter lay. "My uncle Godwin!" he exclaimed, while Rosamond reseated herself, and watched him as he

While Lydgate's eyes glanced rapidly over the brief letter, she saw his face, usually of a pale brown, taking

on a dry whiteness; with nostrils and lips quivering he tossed down the letter before her, and said violently

"It will be impossible to endure life with you, if you will always be acting secretlyacting in opposition to

He checked his speech and turned his back on herthen wheeled round and walked about, sat down, and got

up again restlessly, grasping hard the objects deep down in his pockets. He was afraid of saying something

"DEAR TERTIUS,Don't set your wife to write to me when you have anything to ask. It is a roundabout

wheedling sort of thing which I should not have credited you with. I never choose to write to a woman on

matters of business. As to my supplying you with a thousand pounds, or only half that sum, I can do nothing

of the sort. My own family drains me to the last penny. With two younger sons and three daughters, I am not

likely to have cash to spare. You seem to have got through your own money pretty quickly, and to have made

a mess where you are; the sooner you go somewhere else the better. But I have nothing to do with men of

your profession, and can't help you there. I did the best I could for you as guardian, and let you have your

own way in taking to medicine. You might have gone into the army or the Church. Your money would have

held out for that, and there would have been a surer ladder before you. Your uncle Charles has had a grudge

against you for not going into his profession, but not I. I have always wished you well, but you must consider

yourself on your own legs entirely now. Your affectionate uncle, GODWIN LYDGATE."

When Rosamond had finished reading the letter she sat quite still, with her hands folded before her,

restraining any show of her keen disappointment, and intrenching herself in quiet passivity under her

husband's wrath Lydgate paused in his movements, looked at her again, and said, with biting severity

"Will this be enough to convince you of the harm you may do by secret meddling? Have you sense enough to

recognize now your incompetence to judge and act for meto interfere with your ignorance in affairs which

The words were hard; but this was not the first time that Lydgate had been frustrated by her. She did not look

"I had nearly resolved on going to Quallingham. It would have cost me pain enough to do it, yet it might have

been of some use. But it has been of no use for me to think of anything. You have always been counteracting

me secretly. You delude me with a false assent, and then I am at the mercy of your devices. If you mean to

resist every wish I express, say so and defy me. I shall at least know what I am doing then."

It is a terrible moment in young lives when the closeness of love's bond has turned to this power of galling. In

spite of Rosamond's selfcontrol a tear fell silently and rolled over her lips. She still said nothing; but under

that quietude was hidden an intense effect: she was in such entire disgust with her husband that she wished

she had never seen him. Sir Godwin's rudeness towards her and utter want of feeling ranged him with Dover

and all other creditors disagreeable people who only thought of themselves, and did not mind how

annoying they were to her. Even her father was unkind, and might have done more for them. In fact there was

but one person in Rosamond's world whom she did not regard as blameworthy, and that was the graceful

creature with blond plaits and with little hands crossed before her, who had never expressed herself

unbecomingly, and had always acted for the bestthe best naturally being what she best liked.

Lydgate pausing and looking at her began to feel that halfmaddening sense of helplessness which comes

over passionate people when their passion is met by an innocentlooking silence whose meek victimized air

seems to put them in the wrong, and at last infects even the justest indignation with a doubt of its justice. He

needed to recover the full sense that he was in the right by moderating his words.

"Can you not see, Rosamond," he began again, trying to be simply grave and not bitter, "that nothing can be

so fatal as a want of openness and confidence between us? It has happened again and again that I have

expressed a decided wish, and you have seemed to assent, yet after that you have secretly disobeyed my wish.

In that way I can never know what I have to trust to. There would be some hope for us if you would admit

this. Am I such an unreasonable, furious brute? Why should you not be open with me?" Still silence.

"Will you only say that you have been mistaken, and that I may depend on your not acting secretly in future?"

said Lydgate, urgently, but with something of request in his tone which Rosamond was quick to perceive. She

"I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in answer to such words as you have used towards me. I

have not been accustomed to language of that kind. You have spoken of my `secret meddling,' and my

`interfering ignorance,' and my `false assent.' I have never expressed myself in that way to you, and I think

that you ought to apologize. You spoke of its being impossible to live with me. Certainly you have not made

my life pleasant to me of late. I think it was to be expected that I should try to avert some of the hardships

which our marriage has brought on me." Another tear fell as Rosamond ceased speaking, and she pressed it

Lydgate flung himself into a chair, feeling checkmated. What place was there in her mind for a remonstrance

to lodge in? He laid down his hat, flung an arm over the back of his chair, and looked down for some

moments without speaking. Rosamond had the double purchase over him of insensibility to the point of

justice in his reproach, and of sensibility to the undeniable hardships now present in her married life.

Although her duplicity in the affair of the house had exceeded what he knew, and had really hindered the

Plymdales from knowing of it, she had no consciousness that her action could rightly be called false. We are

not obliged to identify our own acts according to a strict classification, any more than the materials of our

grocery and clothes. Rosamond felt that she was aggrieved, and that this was what Lydgate had to recognize.

As for him, the need of accommodating himself to her nature, which was inflexible in proportion to its

negations, held him as with pincers. He had begun to have an alarmed foresight of her irrevocable loss of love

for him, and the consequent dreariness of their life. The ready fulness of his emotions made this dread

alternate quickly with the first violent movements of his anger. It would assuredly have been a vain boast in

"You have not made my life pleasant to me of late""the hardships which our marriage has brought on

me"these words were stinging his imagination as a pain makes an exaggerated dream. If he were not only

to sink from his highest resolve, but to sink into the hideous fettering of domestic hate?

"Rosamond," he said, turning his eyes on her with a melancholy look, "you should allow for a man's words

when he is disappointed and provoked. You and I cannot have opposite interests. I cannot part my happiness

from yours. If I am angry with you, it is that you seem not to see how any concealment divides us. How could

I wish to make anything hard to you either by my words or conduct? When I hurt you, I hurt part of my own

"I have only wished to prevent you from hurrying us into wretchedness without any necessity," said

Rosamond, the tears coming again from a softened feeling now that her husband had softened. "It is so very

hard to be disgraced here among all the people we know, and to live in such a miserable way. I wish I had

She spoke and wept with that gentleness which makes such words and tears omnipotent over a

lovinghearted man. Lydgate drew his chair near to hers and pressed her delicate head against his cheek with

his powerful tender hand. He only caressed her; he did not say anything; for what was there to say? He could

not promise to shield her from the dreaded wretchedness, for he could see no sure means of doing so. When

he left her to go out again, he told himself that it was ten times harder for her than for him: he had a life away

from home, and constant appeals to his activity on behalf of others. He wished to excuse everything in her if

he could but it was inevitable that in that excusing mood he should think of her as if she were an animal of

Lydgate certainly had good reason to reflect on the service his practice did him in counteracting his personal

cares. He had no longer free energy enough for spontaneous research and speculative thinking, but by the

bedside of patients, the direct external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added impulse

needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly

men to live respectably and unhappy men to live calmlyit was a perpetual claim on the immediate fresh

application of thought, and on the consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back through

life would say that the kindest man we have ever known has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon

whose fine tact, directed by deeply informed perception, has come to us in our need with a more sublime

beneficence than that of miracleworkers. Some of that twiceblessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his

work at the Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet and sustain him under his

Mr. Farebrother's suspicion as to the opiate was true, however. Under the first galling pressure of foreseen

difficulties, and the first perception that his marriage, if it were not to be a yoked loneliness, must be a state

of effort to go on loving without too much care about being loved, he had once or twice tried a dose of

opium. But he had no hereditary constitutional craving after such transient escapes from the hauntings of

misery. He was strong, could drink a great deal of wine, but did not care about it; and when the men round

him were drinking spirits, he took sugar and water, having a contemptuous pity even for the earliest stages of

excitement from drink. It was the same with gambling. He had looked on at a great deal of gambling in Paris,

watching it as if it had been a disease. He was no more tempted by such winning than he was by drink. He

had said to himself that the only winning he cared for must be attained by a conscious process of high,

difficult combination tending towards a beneficent result. The power he longed for could not be represented

by agitated fingers clutching a heap of coin, or by the halfbarbarous, halfidiotic triumph in the eyes of a

But just as he had tried opium, so his thought now began to turn upon gamblingnot with appetite for its

excitement, but with a sort of wistful inward gaze after that easy way of getting money, which implied no

asking and brought no responsibility. If he had been in London or Paris at that time, it is probable that such

thoughts, seconded by opportunity, would have taken him into a gamblinghouse, no longer to watch the

gamblers, but to watch with them in kindred eagerness. Repugnance would have been surmounted by the

immense need to win, if chance would be kind enough to let him. An incident which happened not very long

after that airy notion of getting aid from his uncle had been excluded, was a strong sign of the effect that

The billiardroom at the Green Dragon was the constant resort of a certain set, most of whom, like our

acquaintance Mr. Bambridge, were regarded as men of pleasure. It was here that poor Fred Vincy had made

part of his memorable debt, having lost money in betting, and been obliged to borrow of that gay companion.

It was generally known in Middlemarch that a good deal of money was lost and won in this way; and the

consequent repute of the Green Dragon as a place of dissipation naturally heightened in some quarters the

temptation to go there. Probably its regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry, wished that there were

something a little more tremendous to keep to themselves concerning it; but they were not a closed

community, and many decent seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into the billiardroom to see what

was going on. Lydgate, who had the muscular aptitude for billiards, and was fond of the game, had once or

twice in the early days after his arrival in Middlemarch taken his turn with the cue at the Green Dragon; but

afterwards he had no leisure for the game, and no inclination for the socialities there. One evening, however,

he had occasion to seek Mr. Bambridge at that resort. The horsedealer had engaged to get him a customer for

his remaining good horse, for which Lydgate had determined to substitute a cheap hack, hoping by this

reduction of style to get perhaps twenty pounds; and he cared now for every small sum, as a help towards

feeding the patience of his tradesmen. To run up to the billiardroom, as he was passing, would save time.

Mr. Bambridge was not yet come, bat would be sure to arrive byandby, said his friend Mr. Horrock; and

Lydgate stayed, playing a game for the sake of passing the time. That evening he had the peculiar light in the

eyes and the unusual vivacity which had been once noticed in him by Mr. Farebrother. The exceptional fact

of his presence was much noticed in the room, where there was a good deal of Middlemarch company; and

several lookerson, as well as some of the players, were betting with animation. Lydgate was playing well,

and felt confident; the bets were dropping round him, and with a swift glancing thought of the probable gain

which might double the sum he was saving from his horse, he began to bet on his own play, and won again

and again. Mr. Bambridge had come in, but Lydgate did not notice him. He was not only excited with his

play, but visions were gleaming on him of going the next day to Brassing, where there was gambling on a

grander scale to be had, and where, by one powerful snatch at the devil's bait, he might carry it off without

He was still winning when two new visitors entered. One of them was a young Hawley, just come from his

law studies in town, and the other was Fred Vincy, who had spent several evenings of late at this old haunt of

his. Young Hawley, an accomplished billiardplayer, brought a cool fresh hand to the cue. But Fred Vincy,

startled at seeing Lydgate, and astonished to see him betting with an excited air, stood aside, and kept out of

Fred had been rewarding resolution by a little laxity of late. He had been working heartily for six months at

all outdoor occupations under Mr. Garth, and by dint of severe practice had nearly mastered the defects of his

handwriting, this practice being, perhaps, a little the less severe that it was often carried on in the evening at

Mr. Garth's under the eyes of Mary. But the last fortnight Mary had been staying at Lowick Parsonage with

the ladies there, during Mr. Farebrother's residence in Middlemarch, where he was carrying out some

parochial plans; and Fred, not seeing anything more agreeable to do, had turned into the Green Dragon, partly

to play at billiards, partly to taste the old flavor of discourse about horses, sport, and things in general,

considered from a point of view which was not strenuously correct. He had not been out hunting once this

season, had had no horse of his own to ride, and had gone from place to place chiefly with Mr. Garth in his

gig, or on the sober cob which Mr. Garth could lend him. It was a little too bad, Fred began to think, that he

should be kept in the traces with more severity than if he had been a clergyman. "I will tell you what,

Mistress Maryit will be rather harder work to learn surveying and drawing plans than it would have been

to write sermons," he had said, wishing her to appreciate what he went through for her sake; "and as to

Hercules and Theseus, they were nothing to me. They had sport, and never learned to write a bookkeeping

hand." And now, Mary being out of the way for a little while, Fred, like any other strong dog who cannot slip

his collar, had pulled up the staple of his chain and made a small escape, not of course meaning to go fast or

far. There could be no reason why he should not play at billiards, but he was determined not to bet. As to

money just now, Fred had in his mind the heroic project of saving almost all of the eighty pounds that Mr.

Garth offered him, and returning it, which he could easily do by giving up all futile moneyspending, since

he had a superfluous stock of clothes, and no expense in his board. In that way he could, in one year, go a

good way towards repaying the ninety pounds of which he had deprived Mrs. Garth, unhappily at a time

when she needed that sum more than she did now. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that on this

evening, which was the fifth of his recent visits to the billiardroom, Fred had, not in his pocket, but in his

mind, the ten pounds which he meant to reserve for himself from his halfyear's salary (having before him

the pleasure of carrying thirty to Mrs. Garth when Mary was likely to be come home again) he had those

ten pounds in his mind as a fund from which he might risk something, if there were a chance of a good bet.

Why? Well, when sovereigns were flying about, why shouldn't he catch a few? He would never go far along

that road again; but a man likes to assure himself, and men of pleasure generally, what he could do in the way

of mischief if he chose, and that if he abstains from making himself ill, or beggaring himself, or talking with

the utmost looseness which the narrow limits of human capacity will allow, it is not because he is a spooney.

Fred did not enter into formal reasons, which are a very artificial, inexact way of representing the tingling

returns of old habit, and the caprices of young blood: but there was lurking in him a prophetic sense that

evening, that when he began to play he should also begin to betthat he should enjoy some punchdrinking,

and in general prepare himself for feeling "rather seedy" in the morning. It is in such indefinable movements

But the last thing likely to have entered Fred's expectation was that he should see his brotherinlaw

Lydgateof whom he had never quite dropped the old opinion that he was a prig, and tremendously

conscious of his superioritylooking excited and betting, just as he himself might have done. Fred felt a

shock greater than he could quite account for by the vague knowledge that Lydgate was in debt, and that his

father had refused to help him; and his own inclination to enter into the play was suddenly checked. It was a

strange reversal of attitudes: Fred's blond face and blue eyes, usually bright and careless, ready to give

attention to anything that held out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarily grave and almost

embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting; while Lydgate, who had habitually an air of

selfpossessed strength, and a certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind his most observant attention,

was acting, watching, speaking with that excited narrow consciousness which reminds one of an animal with

Lydgate, by betting on his own strokes, had won sixteen pounds; but young Hawley's arrival had changed the

poise of things. He made firstrate strokes himself, and began to bet against Lydgate's strokes, the strain of

whose nerves was thus changed from simple confidence in his own movements to defying another person's

doubt in them. The defiance was more exciting than the confidence, but it was less sure. He continued to bet

on his own play, but began often to fail. Still he went on, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that

precipitous crevice of play as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there. Fred observed that Lydgate was

losing fast, and found himself in the new situation of puzzling his brains to think of some device by which,

without being offensive, he could withdraw Lydgate's attention, and perhaps suggest to him a reason for

quitting the room. He saw that others were observing Lydgate's strange unlikeness to himself, and it occurred

to him that merely to touch his elbow and call him aside for a moment might rouse him from his absorption.

He could think of nothing cleverer than the daring improbability of saying that he wanted to see Rosy, and

wished to know if she were at home this evening; and he was going desperately to carry out this weak device,

when a waiter came up to him with a message, saying that Mr. Farebrother was below, and begged to speak

Fred was surprised, not quite comfortably, but sending word that he would be down immediately, he went

with a new impulse up to Lydgate, said, "Can I speak to you a moment?" and drew him aside.

"Farebrother has just sent up a message to say that he wants to speak to me. He is below. I thought you might

Fred had simply snatched up this pretext for speaking, because he could not say, "You are losing

confoundedly, and are making everybody stare at you; you had better come away." But inspiration could

hardly have served him better. Lydgate had not before seen that Fred was present, and his sudden appearance

"No, no," said Lydgate; "I have nothing particular to say to him. Butthe game is upI must be goingI

"Bambridge is over there, but he is making a rowI don't think he's ready for business. Come down with me

to Farebrother. I expect he is going to blow me up, and you will shield me," said Fred, with some adroitness.

Lydgate felt shame, but could not bear to act as if he felt it, by refusing to see Mr. Farebrother; and he went

down. They merely shook hands, however, and spoke of the frost; and when all three had turned into the

street, the Vicar seemed quite willing to say goodby to Lydgate. His present purpose was clearly to talk with

Fred alone, and he said, kindly, "I disturbed you, young gentleman, because I have some pressing business

It was a fine night, the sky thick with stars, and Mr. Farebrother proposed that they should make a circuit to

Fred had not meant to tell this, but he was obliged now to say, "Yes, he was. But I suppose it was an

"Yes. You know all about it," said Fred, not liking to be catechised in this way. "I made a clean breast to

"I suppose that gives me a warrant to speak about the matter now. It is understood between us, is it

not?that we are on a footing of open friendship: I have listened to you, and you will be willing to listen to

"I am under the deepest obligation to you, Mr. Farebrother," said Fred, in a state of uncomfortable surmise.

"I will not affect to deny that you are under some obligation to me. But I am going to confess to you, Fred,

that I have been tempted to reverse all that by keeping silence with you just now. When somebody said to me,

`Young Vincy has taken to being at the billiardtable every night againhe won't bear the curb long;' I was

tempted to do the opposite of what I am doingto hold my tongue and wait while you went down the ladder

"Glad to hear it. But I say, my prompting was to look on and see you take the wrong turning, wear out Garth's

patience, and lose the best opportunity of your lifethe opportunity which you made some rather difficult

effort to secure. You can guess the feeling which raised that temptation in meI am sure you know it. I am

sure you know that the satisfaction of your affections stands in the way of mine."

There was a pause. Mr. Farebrother seemed to wait for a recognition of the fact; and the emotion perceptible

in the tones of his fine voice gave solemnity to his words. But no feeling could quell Fred's alarm.

"I could not be expected to give her up," he said, after a moment's hesitation: it was not a case for any

"Clearly not, when her affection met yours. But relations of this sort, even when they are of long standing, are

always liable to change. I can easily conceive that you might act in a way to loosen the tie she feels towards

youit must be remembered that she is only conditionally bound to youand that in that ease, another man,

who may flatter himself that he has a hold on her regard, might succeed in winning that firm place in her love

as well as respect which you had let slip. I can easily conceive such a result," repeated Mr. Farebrother,

emphatically. "There is a companionship of ready sympathy, which might get the advantage even over the

longest associations." It seemed to Fred that if Mr. Farebrother had had a beak and talons instead of his very

capable tongue, his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel. He had a horrible conviction that behind all

this hypothetic statement there was a knowledge of some actual change in Mary's feeling.

"Of course I know it might easily be all up with me," he said, in a troubled voice. "If she is beginning to

compare" He broke off, not liking to betray all he felt, and then said, by the help of a little bitterness, "But

"So I am; that is why we are here. But I have had a strong disposition to be otherwise. I have said to myself,

`If there is a likelihood of that youngster doing himself harm, why should you interfere? Aren't you worth as

much as he is, and don't your sixteen years over and above his, in which you have gone rather hungry, give

you more right to satisfaction than he has? If there's a chance of his going to the dogs, let himperhaps you

There was a pause, in which Fred was seized by a most uncomfortable chill. What was coming next? He

dreaded to hear that something had been said to Maryhe felt as if he were listening to a threat rather than a

warning. When the Vicar began again there was a change in his tone like the encouraging transition to a

"But I had once meant better than that, and I am come back to my old intention. I thought that I could hardly

SECURE MYSELF in it better, Fred, than by telling you just what had gone on in me. And now, do you

understand me? want you to make the happiness of her life and your own, and if there is any chance that a

word of warning from me may turn aside any risk to the contrarywell, I have uttered it."

There was a drop in the Vicar's voice when he spoke the last words He pausedthey were standing on a

patch of green where the road diverged towards St. Botolph's, and he put out his hand, as if to imply that the

conversation was closed. Fred was moved quite newly. Some one highly susceptible to the contemplation of a

fine act has said, that it produces a sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and makes one feel ready

to begin a new life. A good degree of that effect was just then present in Fred Vincy.

"I will try to be worthy," he said, breaking off before he could say "of you as well as of her." And meanwhile

"You must not imagine that I believe there is at present any decline in her preference of you, Fred. Set your

"I shall never forget what you have done," Fred answered. "I can't say anything that seems worth

In that way they parted. But both of them walked about a long while before they went out of the starlight.

Much of Fred's rumination might be summed up in the words, "It certainly would have been a fine thing for

Perhaps Mr. Farebrother's might be concentrated into a single shrug and one little speech. "To think of the

part one little woman can play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation of

Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiardroom, and brought away no encouragement to make a

raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt unmixed disgust with himself the next day when he had to pay four or

five pounds over and above his gains, and he carried about with him a most unpleasant vision of the figure he

had made, not only rubbing elbows with the men at the Green Dragon but behaving just as they did. A

philosopher fallen to betting is hardly distinguishable from a Philistine under the same circumstances: the

difference will chiefly be found in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very disagreeable cud in

that way. His reason told him how the affair might have been magnified into ruin by a slight change of

sceneryif it had been a gamblinghouse that he had turned into, where chance could be clutched with both

hands instead of being picked up with thumb and forefinger. Nevertheless, though reason strangled the

desire to gamble, there remained the feeling that, with an assurance of luck to the needful amount, he would

have liked to gamble, rather than take the alternative which was beginning to urge itself as inevitable.

That alternative was to apply to Mr. Bulstrode. Lydgate had so many times boasted both to himself and others

that he was totally independent of Bulstrode, to whose plans he had lent himself solely because they enabled

him to carry out his own ideas of professional work and public benefithe had so constantly in their

personal intercourse had his pride sustained by the sense that he was making a good social use of this

predominating banker, whose opinions he thought contemptible and whose motives often seemed to him an

absurd mixture of contradictory impressions that he had been creating for himself strong ideal obstacles to

Still, early in March his affairs were at that pass in which men begin to say that their oaths were delivered in

ignorance, and to perceive that the act which they had called impossible to them is becoming manifestly

possible. With Dover's ugly security soon to be put in force, with the proceeds of his practice immediately

absorbed in paying back debts, and with the chance, if the worst were known, of daily supplies being refused

on credit, above all with the vision of Rosamond's hopeless discontent continually haunting him, Lydgate had

begun to see that he should inevitably bend himself to ask help from somebody or other. At first he had

considered whether he should write to Mr. Vincy; but on questioning Rosamond he found that, as he had

suspected, she had already applied twice to her father, the last time being since the disappointment from Sir

Godwin; and papa had said that Lydgate must look out for himself. "Papa said he had come, with one bad

year after another, to trade more and more on borrowed capital, and had had to give up many indulgences; he

could not spare a single hundred from the charges of his family. He said, let Lydgate ask Bulstrode: they have

Indeed, Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion that if he must end by asking for a free loan, his relations

with Bulstrode, more at least than with any other man, might take the shape of a claim which was not purely

personal. Bulstrode had indirectly helped to cause the failure of his practice, and had also been highly

gratified by getting a medical partner in his plans: but who among us ever reduced himself to the sort of

dependence in which Lydgate now stood, without trying to believe that he had claims which diminished the

humiliation of asking? It was true that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of interest in Bulstrode

about the Hospital; but his health had got worse, and showed signs of a deepseated nervous affection. In

other respects he did not appear to be changed: he had always been highly polite, but Lydgate had observed

in him from the first a marked coldness about his marriage and other private circumstances, a coldness which

he had hitherto preferred to any warmth of familiarity between them. He deferred the intention from day to

day, his habit of acting on his conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every possible conclusion

and its consequent act. He saw Mr. Bulstrode often, but he did not try to use any occasion for his private

purpose. At one moment he thought, "I will write a letter: I prefer that to any circuitous talk;" at another he

thought, "No; if I were talking to him, I could make a retreat before any signs of disinclination."

Still the days passed and no letter was written, no special interview sought. In his shrinking from the

humiliation of a dependent attitude towards Bulstrode, he began to familiarize his imagination with another

step even more unlike his remembered self. He began spontaneously to consider whether it would be possible

to carry out that puerile notion of Rosamond's which had often made him angry, namely, that they should quit

Middlemarch without seeing anything beyond that preface. The question came"Would any man buy the

practice of me even now, for as little as it is worth? Then the sale might happen as a necessary preparation for

But against his taking this step, which he still felt to be a contemptible relinquishment of present work, a

guilty turning aside from what was a real and might be a widening channel for worthy activity, to start again

without any justified destination, there was this obstacle, that the purchaser, if procurable at all, might not be

quickly forthcoming. And afterwards? Rosamond in a poor lodging, though in the largest city or most distant

town, would not find the life that could save her from gloom, and save him from the reproach of having

plunged her into it. For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes, he may stay a long while there in

spite of professional accomplishment. In the British climate there is no incompatibility between scientific

insight and furnished lodgings: the incompatibility is chiefly between scientific ambition and a wife who

But in the midst of his hesitation, opportunity came to decide him. A note from Mr. Bulstrode requested

Lydgate to call on him at the Bank. A hypochondriacal tendency had shown itself in the banker's constitution

of late; and a lack of sleep, which was really only a slight exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic symptom,

had been dwelt on by him as a sign of threatening insanity. He wanted to consult Lydgate without delay on

that particular morning, although he had nothing to tell beyond what he had told before. He listened eagerly

to what Lydgate had to say in dissipation of his fears, though this too was only repetition; and this moment in

which Bulstrode was receiving a medical opinion with a sense of comfort, seemed to make the

communication of a personal need to him easier than it had been in Lydgate's contemplation beforehand. He

had been insisting that it would be well for Mr. Bulstrode to relax his attention to business.

"One sees how any mental strain, however slight, may affect a delicate frame," said Lydgate at that stage of

the consultation when the remarks tend to pass from the personal to the general, "by the deep stamp which

anxiety will make for a time even on the young and vigorous. I am naturally very strong; yet I have been

"I presume that a constitution in the susceptible state in which mine at present is, would be especially liable to

fall a victim to cholera, if it visited our district. And since its appearance near London, we may well besiege

the Mercyseat for our protection," said Mr. Bulstrode, not intending to evade Lydgate's allusion, but really

"You have at all events taken your share in using good practical precautions for the town, and that is the best

mode of asking for protection," said Lydgate, with a strong distaste for the broken metaphor and bad logic of

the banker's religion, somewhat increased by the apparent deafness of his sympathy. But his mind had taken

up its longprepared movement towards getting help, and was not yet arrested. He added, "The town has

done well in the way of cleansing, and finding appliances; and I think that if the cholera should come, even

our enemies will admit that the arrangements in the Hospital are a public good."

"Truly," said Mr. Bulstrode, with some coldness. "With regard to what you say, Mr. Lydgate, about the

relaxation of my mental labor, I have for some time been entertaining a purpose to that effect a purpose of

a very decided character. I contemplate at least a temporary withdrawal from the management of much

business, whether benevolent or commercial. Also I think of changing my residence for a time: probably I

shall close or let `The Shrubs,' and take some place near the coastunder advice of course as to salubrity.

"Oh yes," said Lydgate, falling backward in his chair, with illrepressed impatience under the banker's pale

"I have for some time felt that I should open this subject with you in relation to our Hospital," continued

Bulstrode. "Under the circumstances I have indicated, of course I must cease to have any personal share in

the management, and it is contrary to my views of responsibility to continue a large application of means to

an institution which I cannot watch over and to some extent regulate. I shall therefore, in case of my ultimate

decision to leave Middlemarch, consider that I withdraw other support to the New Hospital than that which

will subsist in the fact that I chiefly supplied the expenses of building it, and have contributed further large

Lydgate's thought, when Bulstrode paused according to his wont, was, "He has perhaps been losing a good

deal of money." This was the most plausible explanation of a speech which had caused rather a startling

"Hardly," returned Bulstrode, in the same deliberate, silvery tone; "except by some changes of plan. The only

person who may be certainly counted on as willing to increase her contributions is Mrs. Casaubon. I have had

an interview with her on the subject, and I have pointed out to her, as I am about to do to you, that it will be

desirable to win a more general support to the New Hospital by a change of system." Another pause, but

"The change I mean is an amalgamation with the Infirmary, so that the New Hospital shall be regarded as a

special addition to the elder institution, having the same directing board. It will be necessary, also, that the

medical management of the two shall be combined. In this way any difficulty as to the adequate maintenance

of our new establishment will be removed; the benevolent interests of the town will cease to be divided."

Mr. Bulstrode had lowered his eyes from Lydgate's face to the buttons of his coat as he again paused.

"No doubt that is a good device as to ways and means," said Lydgate, with an edge of irony in his tone. "But I

can't be expected to rejoice in it at once, since one of the first results will be that the other medical men will

"I myself, as you know, Mr. Lydgate, highly valued the opportunity of new and independent procedure which

you have diligently employed: the original plan, I confess, was one which I had much at heart, under

submission to the Divine Will. But since providential indications demand a renunciation from me, I

Bulstrode showed a rather exasperating ability in this conversation. The broken metaphor and bad logic of

motive which had stirred his hearer's contempt were quite consistent with a mode of putting the facts which

made it difficult for Lydgate to vent his own indignation and disappointment. After some rapid reflection, he

"That was the further statement which I wished to make to you," said Bulstrode, who had thoroughly

prepared his ministerial explanation. "She is, you are aware, a woman of most munificent disposition, and

happily in possessionnot I presume of great wealth, but of funds which she can well spare. She has

informed me that though she has destined the chief part of those funds to another purpose, she is willing to

consider whether she cannot fully take my place in relation to the Hospital. But she wishes for ample time to

mature her thoughts on the subject, and I have told her that there is no need for hastethat, in fact, my own

Lydgate was ready to say, "If Mrs. Casaubon would take your place, there would be gain, instead of loss."

But there was still a weight on his mind which arrested this cheerful candor. He replied, "I suppose, then, that

"Precisely; that is what she expressly desires. Her decision, she says, will much depend on what you can tell

her. But not at present: she is, I believe, just setting out on a journey. I have her letter here," said Mr.

Bulstrode, drawing it out, and reading from it. "`I am immediately otherwise engaged,' she says. `I am going

into Yorkshire with Sir James and Lady Chettam; and the conclusions I come to about some land which I am

to see there may affect my power of contributing to the Hospital.' Thus, Mr. Lydgate, there is no haste

necessary in this matter; but I wished to apprise you beforehand of what may possibly occur."

Mr. Bulstrode returned the letter to his sidepocket, and changed his attitude as if his business were closed.

Lydgate, whose renewed hope about the Hospital only made him more conscious of the facts which poisoned

his hope, felt that his effort after help, if made at all, must be made now and vigorously.

"I am much obliged to you for giving me full notice," he said, with a firm intention in his tone, yet with an

interruptedness in his delivery which showed that he spoke unwillingly. "The highest object to me is my

profession, and I had identified the Hospital with the best use I can at present make of my profession. But the

best use is not always the same with monetary success. Everything which has made the Hospital unpopular

has helped with other causes I think they are all connected with my professional zealto make me

unpopular as a practitioner. I get chiefly patients who can't pay me. I should like them best, if I had nobody to

pay on my own side." Lydgate waited a little, but Bulstrode only bowed, looking at him fixedly, and he went

on with the same interrupted enunciation as if he were biting an objectional leek.

"I have slipped into money difficulties which I can see no way out of, unless some one who trusts me and my

future will advance me a sum without other security. I had very little fortune left when I came here. I have no

prospects of money from my own family. My expenses, in consequence of my marriage, have been very

much greater than I had expected. The result at this moment is that it would take a thousand pounds to clear

me. I mean, to free me from the risk of having all my goods sold in security of my largest debt as well as

to pay my other debtsand leave anything to keep us a little beforehand with our small income. I find that it

is out of the question that my wife's father should make such an advance. That is why I mention my position

toto the only other man who may be held to have some personal connection with my prosperity or ruin."

Lydgate hated to hear himself. But he had spoken now, and had spoken with unmistakable directness. Mr.

"I am grieved, though, I confess, not surprised by this information, Mr. Lydgate. For my own part, I regretted

your alliance with my brotherinlaw's family, which has always been of prodigal habits, and which has

already been much indebted to me for sustainment in its present position. My advice to you, Mr. Lydgate,

would be, that instead of involving yourself in further obligations, and continuing a doubtful struggle, you

"That would not improve my prospect," said Lydgate, rising and speaking bitterly, "even if it were a more

"It is always a trial," said Mr. Bulstrode; "but trial, my dear sir, is our portion here, and is a needed corrective.

"Thank you," said Lydgate, not quite knowing what he said. "I have occupied you too long. Goodday."

That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or betrayed in his conversation with

Lydgate, had been determined in him by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch

of Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw, and when the banker had in vain

attempted an act of restitution which might move Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences.

His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return to Middlemarch before long, had been justified.

On Christmas Eve he had reappeared at The Shrubs. Bulstrode was at home to receive him, and hinder his

communication with the rest of the family, but he could not altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit

from compromising himself and alarming his wife. Raffles proved more unmanageable than he had shown

himself to be in his former appearances, his chronic state of mental restlessness, the growing effect of

habitual intemperance, quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him. He insisted on

staying in the house, and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of evils, felt that this was at least not a worse

alternative than his going into the town. He kept him in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed,

Raffles all the while amusing himself with the annoyance he was causing this decent and highly prosperous

fellowsinner, an amusement which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend's pleasure in

entertaining a man who had been serviceable to him, and who had not had all his earnings. There was a

cunning calculation under this noisy jokinga cool resolve to extract something the handsomer from

Bulstrode as payment for release from this new application of torture. But his cunning had a little overcast its

Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles could enable him to imagine. He had told

his wife that he was simply taking care of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might otherwise

injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of falsehood, that there was a family tie which bound him

to this care, and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged caution. He would himself

drive the unfortunate being away the next morning. In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs.

Bulstrode with precautionary information for his daughters and servants, and accounting for his allowing no

one but himself to enter the room even with food and drink. But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles should

be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts lest Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to

listen at the door. How could he hinder her, how betray his terror by opening the door to detect her? She was

a woman of honest direct habits, and little likely to take so low a course in order to arrive at painful

In this way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and produced an effect which had not been in his plan. By

showing himself hopelessly unmanageable he had made Bulstrode feel that a strong defiance was the only

resource left. After taking Raffles to bed that night the banker ordered his closed carriage to be ready at

halfpast seven the next morning. At six o'clock he had already been long dressed, and had spent some of his

wretchedness in prayer, pleading his motives for averting the worst evil if in anything he had used falsity and

spoken what was not true before God. For Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie with an intensity

disproportionate to the number of his more indirect misdeeds. But many of these misdeeds were like the

subtle muscular movements which are not taken account of in the consciousness, though they bring about the

end that we fix our mind on and desire. And it is only what we are vividly conscious of that we can vividly

Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles, who was apparently in a painful dream. He stood silent,

hoping that the presence of the light would serve to waken the sleeper gradually and gently, for he feared

some noise as the consequence of a too sudden awakening. He had watched for a couple of minutes or more

the shudderings and pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when Raffles, with a long halfstifled

moan, started up and stared round him in terror, trembling and gasping. But he made no further noise, and

It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a cold peremptoriness of manner which he had not

before shown, said, "I came to call you thus early, Mr. Raffles, because I have ordered the carriage to be

ready at halfpast seven, and intend myself to conduct you as far as Ilsely, where you can either take the

railway or await a coach." Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him imperiously with the

words, "Be silent, sir, and hear what I have to say. I shall supply you with money now, and I will furnish you

with a reasonable sum from time to time, on your application to me by letter; but if you choose to present

yourself here again, if you return to Middlemarch, if you use your tongue in a manner injurious to me, you

will have to live on such fruits as your malice can bring you, without help from me. Nobody will pay you

well for blasting my name: I know the worst you can do against me, and I shall brave it if you dare to thrust

yourself upon me again. Get up, sir, and do as I order you, without noise, or I will send for a policeman to

take you off my premises, and you may carry your stories into every pothouse in the town, but you shall have

Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such nervous energy: he had been deliberating on this speech and

its probable effects through a large part of the night; and though he did not trust to its ultimately saving him

from any return of Raffles, he had concluded that it was the best throw he could make. It succeeded in

enforcing submission from the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system at this moment quailed before

Bulstrode's cold, resolute bearing, and he was taken off quietly in the carriage before the family breakfast

time. The servants imagined him to be a poor relation, and were not surprised that a strict man like their

master, who held his head high in the world, should be ashamed of such a cousin and want to get rid of him.

The banker's drive of ten miles with his hated companion was a dreary beginning of the Christmas day; but at

the end of the drive, Raffles had recovered his spirits, and parted in a contentment for which there was the

good reason that the banker had given him a hundred pounds. Various motives urged Bulstrode to this

openhandedness, but he did not himself inquire closely into all of them. As he had stood watching Raffles in

his uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his mind that the man had been much shattered since the first gift of

He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve not to be played on any more; and had tried

to penetrate Raffles with the fact that he had shown the risks of bribing him to be quite equal to the risks of

defying him. But when, freed from his repulsive presence, Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought

with him no confidence that he had secured more than a respite. It was as if he had had a loathsome dream,

and could not shake off its images with their hateful kindred of sensationsas if on all the pleasant

Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the thoughts he believes other men to have

Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a deposit of uneasy presentiment in his wife's mind,

because she carefully avoided any allusion to it. He had been used every day to taste the flavor of supremacy

and the tribute of complete deference: and the certainty that he was watched or measured with a hidden

suspicion of his having some discreditable secret, made his voice totter when he was speaking to edification.

Foreseeing, to men of Bulstrode's anxious temperament, is often worse than seeing; and his imagination

continually heightened the anguish of an imminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his defiance of Raffles did

not keep the man awayand though he prayed for this result he hardly hoped for itthe disgrace was

certain. In vain he said to himself that, if permitted, it would be a divine visitation, a chastisement, a

preparation; he recoiled from the imagined burning; and he judged that it must be more for the Divine glory

that he should escape dishonor. That recoil had at last urged him to make preparations for quitting

Middlemarch. If evil truth must be reported of him, he would then be at a less scorching distance from the

contempt of his old neighbors; and in a new scene, where his life would not have gathered the same wide

sensibility, the tormentor, if he pursued him, would be less formidable. To leave the place finally would, he

knew, be extremely painful to his wife, and on other grounds he would have preferred to stay where he had

struck root. Hence he made his preparations at first in a conditional way, wishing to leave on all sides an

opening for his return after brief absence, if any favorable intervention of Providence should dissipate his

fears. He was preparing to transfer his management of the Bank, and to give up any active control of other

commercial affairs in the neighborhood, on the ground of his failing health, but without excluding his future

resumption of such work. The measure would cause him some added expense and some diminution of

income beyond what he had already undergone from the general depression of trade; and the Hospital

presented itself as a principal object of outlay on which he could fairly economize.

This was the experience which had determined his conversation with Lydgate. But at this time his

arrangements had most of them gone no farther than a stage at which he could recall them if they proved to

be unnecessary. He continually deferred the final steps; in the midst of his fears, like many a man who is in

danger of shipwreck or of being dashed from his carriage by runaway horses, he had a clinging impression

that something would happen to hinder the worst, and that to spoil his life by a late transplantation might be

overhastyespecially since it was difficult to account satisfactorily to his wife for the project of their

Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the management of the farm at Stone Court in case of his

absence; and on this as well as on all other matters connected with any houses and land he possessed in or

about Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth. Like every one else who had business of that sort, he

wanted to get the agent who was more anxious for his employer's interests than his own. With regard to Stone

Court, since Bulstrode wished to retain his hold on the stock, and to have an arrangement by which he

himself could, if he chose, resume his favorite recreation of superintendence, Caleb had advised him not to

trust to a mere bailiff, but to let the land, stock, and implements yearly, and take a proportionate share of the

"May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms, Mr. Garth?" said Bulstrode. "And will you mention to

me the yearly sum which would repay you for managing these affairs which we have discussed together?"

"I'll think about it," said Caleb, in his blunt way. "I'll see how I can make it out."

If it had not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy's future, Mr. Garth would not probably have been glad

of any addition to his work, of which his wife was always fearing an excess for him as he grew older. But on

quitting Bulstrode after that conversation, a very alluring idea occurred to him about this said letting of Stone

Court. What if Bulstrode would agree to his placing Fred Vincy there on the understanding that he, Caleb

Garth, should be responsible for the management? It would be an excellent schooling for Fred; he might

make a modest income there, and still have time left to get knowledge by helping in other business. He

mentioned his notion to Mrs. Garth with such evident delight that she could not bear to chill his pleasure by

"The lad would be as happy as two," he said, throwing himself back in his chair, and looking radiant, "if I

could tell him it was all settled. Think; Susan! His mind had been running on that place for years before old

Featherstone died. And it would be as pretty a turn of things as could be that he should hold the place in a

good industrious way after allby his taking to business. For it's likely enough Bulstrode might let him go

on, and gradually buy the stock. He hasn't made up his mind, I can see, whether or not he shall settle

somewhere else as a lasting thing. I never was better pleased with a notion in my life. And then the children

"You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until you are sure that Bulstrode would agree to the plan?"

said Mrs. Garth, in a tone of gentle caution. "And as to marriage, Caleb, we old people need not help to

"Oh, I don't know," said Caleb, swinging his head aside. "Marriage is a taming thing. Fred would want less of

my bit and bridle. However, I shall say nothing till I know the ground I'm treading on. I shall speak to

He took his earliest opportunity of doing so. Bulstrode had anything but a warm interest in his nephew Fred

Vincy, but he had a strong wish to secure Mr. Garth's services on many scattered points of business at which

he was sure to be a considerable loser, if they were under less conscientious management. On that ground he

made no objection to Mr. Garth's proposal; and there was also another reason why he was not sorry to give a

consent which was to benefit one of the Vincy family. It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heard of Lydgate's

debts, had been anxious to know whether her husband could not do something for poor Rosamond, and had

been much troubled on learning from him that Lydgate's affairs were not easily remediable, and that the

wisest plan was to let them "take their course." Mrs. Bulstrode had then said for the first time, "I think you

are always a little hard towards my family, Nicholas. And I am sure I have no reason to deny any of my

relatives. Too worldly they may be, but no one ever had to say that they were not respectable."

"My dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife's eyes, which were filling with tears, "I have

supplied your brother with a great deal of capital. I cannot be expected to take care of his married children."

That seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode's remonstrance subsided into pity for poor Rosamond, whose

But remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that when he had to talk to his wife fully about his plan of

quitting Middlemarch, he should be glad to tell her that he had made an arrangement which might be for the

good of her nephew Fred. At present he had merely mentioned to her that he thought of shutting up The

Hence Mr. Garth got the assurance he desired, namely, that in case of Bulstrode's departure from

Middlemarch for an indefinite time, Fred Vincy should be allowed to have the tenancy of Stone Court on the

Caleb was so elated with his hope of this "neat turn" being given to things, that if his selfcontrol had not

been braced by a little affectionate wifely scolding, he would have betrayed everything to Mary, wanting "to

give the child comfort." However, he restrained himself, and kept in strict privacy from Fred certain visits

which he was making to Stone Court, in order to look more thoroughly into the state of the land and stock,

and take a preliminary estimate. He was certainly more eager in these visits than the probable speed of events

required him to be; but he was stimulated by a fatherly delight in occupying his mind with this bit of probable

"But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a castle in the air?" said Mrs. Garth.

Mr. Bulstrode was still seated in his manager's room at the Bank, about three o'clock of the same day on

which he had received Lydgate there, when the clerk entered to say that his horse was waiting, and also that

"By all means," said Bulstrode; and Caleb entered. "Pray sit down, Mr. Garth," continued the banker, in his

"I am glad that you arrived just in time to find me here. I know you count your minutes."

"Oh," said Caleb, gently, with a slow swing of his head on one side, as he seated himself and laid his hat on

He looked at the ground, leaning forward and letting his long fingers droop between his legs, while each

finger moved in succession, as if it were sharing some thought which filled his large quiet brow.

Mr. Bulstrode, like every one else who knew Caleb, was used to his slowness in beginning to speak on any

topic which he felt to be important, and rather expected that he was about to recur to the buying of some

houses in Blindman's Court, for the sake of pulling them down, as a sacrifice of property which would be

well repaid by the influx of air and light on that spot. It was by propositions of this kind that Caleb was

sometimes troublesome to his employers; but he had usually found Bulstrode ready to meet him in projects of

improvement, and they had got on well together. When he spoke again, however, it was to say, in rather a

"You found nothing wrong there, I hope," said the banker; "I was there myself yesterday. Abel has done well

"Why, yes," said Caleb, looking up gravely, "there is something wrong a stranger, who is very ill, I think.

He saw the shock of his words passing through Bulstrode's frame. On this subject the banker had thought that

his fears were too constantly on the watch to be taken by surprise; but he had been mistaken.

"Poor wretch!" he said in a compassionate tone, though his lips trembled a little. "Do you know how he came

"I took him myself," said Caleb, quietly"took him up in my gig. He had got down from the coach, and was

walking a little beyond the turning from the tollhouse, and I overtook him. He remembered seeing me with

you once before, at Stone Court, and he asked me to take him on. I saw he was ill: it seemed to me the right

thing to do, to carry him under shelter. And now I think you should lose no time in getting advice for him."

Caleb took up his hat from the floor as he ended, and rose slowly from his seat.

"Certainly," said Bulstrode, whose mind was very active at this moment. "Perhaps you will yourself oblige

me, Mr. Garth, by calling at Mr. Lydgate's as you passor stay! he may at this hour probably be at the

Hospital. I will first send my man on the horse there with a note this instant, and then I will myself ride to

Bulstrode quickly wrote a note, and went out himself to give the commission to his man. When he returned,

Caleb was standing as before with one hand on the back of the chair, holding his hat with the other. In

Bulstrode's mind the dominant thought was, "Perhaps Raffles only spoke to Garth of his illness. Garth may

wonder, as he must have done before, at this disreputable fellow's claiming intimacy with me; but he will

He longed for some confirmation of this hopeful conjecture, but to have asked any question as to what

"I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Garth," he said, in his usual tone of politeness. "My servant will be

back in a few minutes, and I shall then go myself to see what can be done for this unfortunate man. Perhaps

"Thank you," said Caleb, making a slight gesture with his right hand to waive the invitation. "I wish to say,

Mr. Bulstrode, that I must request you to put your business into some other hands than mine. I am obliged to

you for your handsome way of meeting me about the letting of Stone Court, and all other business. But I

He spoke with a firmness which was very gentle, and yet he could see that Bulstrode seemed to cower under

that gentleness, his face looking dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him.

Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts to account for his resolve, even if they

"You have been led to this, I apprehend, by some slanders concerning me uttered by that unhappy creature,"

"You are a conscientious man, Mr. Gartha man, I trust, who feels himself accountable to God. You would

not wish to injure me by being too ready to believe a slander," said Bulstrode, casting about for pleas that

might be adapted to his hearer's mind. "That is a poor reason for giving up a connection which I think I may

"I would injure no man if I could help it," said Caleb; "even if I thought God winked at it. I hope I should

have a feeling for my fellowcreature. But, sirI am obliged to believe that this Raffles has told me the

truth. And I can't be happy in working with you, or profiting by you. It hurts my mind. I must beg you to seek

"Very well, Mr. Garth. But I must at least claim to know the worst that he has told you. I must know what is

the foul speech that I am liable to be the victim of," said Bulstrode, a certain amount of anger beginning to

"That's needless," said Caleb, waving his hand, bowing his head slightly, and not swerving from the tone

which had in it the merciful intention to spare this pitiable man. "What he has said to me will never pass from

my lips, unless something now unknown forces it from me. If you led a harmful life for gain, and kept others

out of their rights by deceit, to get the more for yourself, I dare say you repent you would like to go back,

and can't: that must be a bitter thing" Caleb paused a moment and shook his head"it is not for me to

"But you doyou do make it harder to me," said Bulstrode constrained into a genuine, pleading cry. "You

"That I'm forced to do," said Caleb, still more gently, lifting up his hand. "I am sorry. I don't judge you and

say, he is wicked, and I am righteous. God forbid. I don't know everything. A man may do wrong, and his

will may rise clear out of it, though he can't get his life clear. That's a bad punishment. If it is so with you,

well, I'm very sorry for you. But I have that feeling inside me, that I can't go on working with you. That's all,

Mr. Bulstrode. Everything else is buried, so far as my will goes. And I wish you goodday."

"One moment, Mr. Garth!" said Bulstrode, hurriedly. "I may trust then to your solemn assurance that you will

not repeat either to man or woman whateven if it have any degree of truth in it is yet a malicious

"Why should I have said it if I didn't mean it? I am in no fear of you. Such tales as that will never tempt my

"Stop a bit! you have got to consider whether you didn't help to make him worse, when you profited by his

"You are wronging me by too readily believing him," said Bulstrode, oppressed, as by a nightmare, with the

inability to deny flatly what Raffles might have said; and yet feeling it an escape that Caleb had not so stated

"No," said Caleb, lifting his hand deprecatingly; "I am ready to believe better, when better is proved. I rob

you of no good chance. As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a man's sin unless I'm clear it must be done

to save the innocent. That is my way of thinking, Mr. Bulstrode, and what I say, I've no need to swear. I wish

Some hours later, when he was at home, Caleb said to his wife, incidentally, that he had had some little

differences with Bulstrode, and that in consequence, he had given up all notion of taking Stone Court, and

"He was disposed to interfere too much, was he?" said Mrs. Garth, imagining that her husband had been

touched on his sensitive point, and not been allowed to do what he thought right as to materials and modes of

"Oh," said Caleb, bowing his head and waving his hand gravely. And Mrs. Garth knew that this was a sign of

As for Bulstrode, he had almost immediately mounted his horse and set off for Stone Court, being anxious to

His mind was crowded with images and conjectures, which were a language to his hopes and fears, just as we

hear tones from the vibrations which shake our whole system. The deep humiliation with which he had

winced under Caleb Garth's knowledge of his past and rejection of his patronage, alternated with and almost

gave way to the sense of safety in the fact that Garth, and no other, had been the man to whom Raffles had

spoken. It seemed to him a sort of earnest that Providence intended his rescue from worse consequences; the

way being thus left open for the hope of secrecy. That Raffles should be afflicted with illness, that he should

have been led to Stone Court rather than elsewhereBulstrode's heart fluttered at the vision of probabilities

which these events conjured up. If it should turn out that he was freed from all danger of disgrace if he

could breathe in perfect libertyhis life should be more consecrated than it had ever been before. He

mentally lifted up this vow as if it would urge the result he longed for he tried to believe in the potency of

that prayerful resolution its potency to determine death. He knew that he ought to say, "Thy will be done;"

and he said it often. But the intense desire remained that the will of God might be the death of that hated man.

Yet when he arrived at Stone Court he could not see the change in Raffles without a shock. But for his pallor

and feebleness, Bulstrode would have called the change in him entirely mental. Instead of his loud tormenting

mood, he showed an intense, vague terror, and seemed to deprecate Bulstrode's anger, because the money

was all gonehe had been robbedit had half of it been taken from him. He had only come here because he

was ill and somebody was hunting him somebody was after him he had told nobody anything, he had kept

his mouth shut. Bulstrode, not knowing the significance of these symptoms, interpreted this new nervous

susceptibility into a means of alarming Raffles into true confessions, and taxed him with falsehood in saying

that he had not told anything, since he had just told the man who took him up in his gig and brought him to

Stone Court. Raffles denied this with solemn adjurations; the fact being that the links of consciousness were

interrupted in him, and that his minute terrorstricken narrative to Caleb Garth had been delivered under a set

Bulstrode's heart sank again at this sign that he could get no grasp over the wretched man's mind, and that no

word of Raffles could be trusted as to the fact which he most wanted to know, namely, whether or not he had

really kept silence to every one in the neighborhood except Caleb Garth. The housekeeper had told him

without the least constraint of manner that since Mr. Garth left, Raffles had asked her for beer, and after that

had not spoken, seeming very ill. On that side it might be concluded that there had been no betrayal. Mrs.

Abel thought, like the servants at The Shrubs, that the strange man belonged to the unpleasant "kin" who are

among the troubles of the rich; she had at first referred the kinship to Mr. Rigg, and where there was property

left, the buzzing presence of such large bluebottles seemed natural enough. How he could be "kin" to

Bulstrode as well was not so clear, but Mrs. Abel agreed with her husband that there was "no knowing," a

proposition which had a great deal of mental food for her, so that she shook her head over it without further

In less than an hour Lydgate arrived. Bulstrode met him outside the wainscoted parlor, where Raffles was,

"I have called you in, Mr. Lydgate, to an unfortunate man who was once in my employment, many years ago.

Afterwards he went to America, and returned I fear to an idle dissolute life. Being destitute, he has a claim on

me. He was slightly connected with Rigg, the former owner of this place, and in consequence found his way

here. I believe he is seriously ill: apparently his mind is affected. I feel bound to do the utmost for him."

Lydgate, who had the remembrance of his last conversation with Bulstrode strongly upon him, was not

disposed to say an unnecessary word to him, and bowed slightly in answer to this account; but just before

entering the room he turned automatically and said, "What is his name?"to know names being as much a

"Raffles, John Raffles," said Bulstrode, who hoped that whatever became of Raffles, Lydgate would never

When he had thoroughly examined and considered the patient, Lydgate ordered that he should go to bed, and

be kept there in as complete quiet as possible, and then went with Bulstrode into another room.

"It is a serious case, I apprehend," said the banker, before Lydgate began to speak.

"Noand yes," said Lydgate, half dubiously. "It is difficult to decide as to the possible effect of

longstanding complications; but the man had a robust constitution to begin with. I should not expect this

attack to be fatal, though of course the system is in a ticklish state. He should be well watched and attended

"I will remain here myself," said Bulstrode. "Mrs. Abel and her husband are inexperienced. I can easily

remain here for the night, if you will oblige me by taking a note for Mrs. Bulstrode."

"I should think that is hardly necessary," said Lydgate. "He seems tame and terrified enough. He might

"I have more than once stayed here a few nights for the sake of seclusion," said Bulstrode, indifferently; "I

am quite disposed to do so now. Mrs. Abel and her husband can relieve or aid me, if necessary."

"Very well. Then I need give my directions only to you," said Lydgate, not feeling surprised at a little

"You think, then, that the case is hopeful?" said Bulstrode, when Lydgate had ended giving his orders.

"Unless there turn out to be further complications, such as I have not at present detectedyes," said Lydgate.

"He may pass on to a worse stage; but I should not wonder if ho got better in a few days, by adhering to the

treatment I have prescribed. There must be firmness. Remember, if he calls for liquors of any sort, not to give

them to him. In my opinion, men in his condition are oftener killed by treatment than by the disease. Still,

After waiting for the note to be carried to Mrs. Bulstrode, Lydgate rode away, forming no conjectures, in the

first instance, about the history of Raffles, but rehearsing the whole argument, which had lately been much

stirred by the publication of Dr. Ware's abundant experience in America, as to the right way of treating cases

of alcoholic poisoning such as this. Lydgate, when abroad, had already been interested in this question: he

was strongly convinced against the prevalent practice of allowing alcohol and persistently administering large

doses of opium; and he had repeatedly acted on this conviction with a favorable result.

"The man is in a diseased state," he thought, "but there's a good deal of wear in him still. I suppose he is an

object of charity to Bulstrode. It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men's

dispositions. Bulstrode seems the most unsympathetic fellow I ever saw about some people, and yet he has

taken no end of trouble, and spent a great deal of money, on benevolent objects. I suppose he has some test

by which he finds out whom Heaven cares forhe has made up his mind that it doesn't care for me."

This streak of bitterness came from a plenteous source, and kept widening in the current of his thought as he

neared Lowick Gate. He had not been there since his first interview with Bulstrode in the morning, having

been found at the Hospital by the banker's messenger; and for the first time he was returning to his home

without the vision of any expedient in the background which left him a hope of raising money enough to

deliver him from the coming destitution of everything which made his married life tolerable everything

which saved him and Rosamond from that bare isolation in which they would be forced to recognize how

little of a comfort they could be to each other. It was more bearable to do without tenderness for himself than

to see that his own tenderness could make no amends for the lack of other things to her. The sufferings of his

own pride from humiliations past and to come were keen enough, yet they were hardly distinguishable to

himself from that more acute pain which dominated themthe pain of foreseeing that Rosamond would

come to regard him chiefly as the cause of disappointment and unhappiness to her. He had never liked the

makeshifts of poverty, and they had never before entered into his prospects for himself; but he was beginning

now to imagine how two creatures who loved each other, and had a stock of thoughts in common, might

laugh over their shabby furniture, and their calculations how far they could afford butter and eggs. But the

glimpse of that poetry seemed as far off from him as the carelessness of the golden age; in poor Rosamond's

mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look small in. He got down from his horse in a very sad

mood, and went into the house, not expecting to be cheered except by his dinner, and reflecting that before

the evening closed it would be wise to tell Rosamond of his application to Bulstrode and its failure. It would

But his dinner waited long for him before he was able to eat it. For on entering he found that Dover's agent

had already put a man in the house, and when he asked where Mrs. Lydgate was, he was told that she was in

her bedroom. He went up and found her stretched on the bed pale and silent, without an answer even in her

face to any word or look of his. He sat down by the bed and leaning over her said with almost a cry of

She looked at him silently, still with the blank despair on her face; but then the tears began to fill her blue

eyes, and her lip trembled. The strong man had had too much to bear that day. He let his head fall beside hers

He did not hinder her from going to her father early in the morning it seemed now that he ought not to

hinder her from doing as she pleased. In half an hour she came back, and said that papa and mamma wished

her to go and stay with them while things were in this miserable state. Papa said he could do nothing about

the debtif he paid this, there would be halfadozen more. She had better come back home again till

"Do as you like," said Lydgate. "But things are not coming to a crisis immediately. There is no hurry."

"I should not go till tomorrow," said Rosamond; "I shall want to pack my clothes."

"Oh, I would wait a little longer than tomorrowthere is no knowing what may happen," said Lydgate,

with bitter irony. "I may get my neck broken, and that may make things easier to you."

It was Lydgate's misfortune and Rosamond's too, that his tenderness towards her, which was both an

emotional prompting and a wellconsidered resolve, was inevitably interrupted by these outbursts of

indignation either ironical or remonstrant. She thought them totally unwarranted, and the repulsion which this

exceptional severity excited in her was in danger of making the more persistent tenderness unacceptable.

"I see you do not wish me to go," she said, with chill mildness; "why can you not say so, without that kind of

Lydgate said no more, but went out on his rounds. He felt bruised and shattered, and there was a dark line

under his eyes which Rosamond had not seen before. She could not bear to look at him. Tertius had a way of

Bulstrode's first object after Lydgate had left Stone Court was to examine Raffles's pockets, which he

imagined were sure to carry signs in the shape of hotelbills of the places he had stopped in, if he had not

told the truth in saying that he had come straight from Liverpool because he was ill and had no money. There

were various bills crammed into his pocketbook, but none of a later date than Christmas at any other place,

except one, which bore date that morning. This was crumpled up with a handbill about a horsefair in one

of his tailpockets, and represented the cost of three days' stay at an inn at Bilkley, where the fair was held

a town at least forty miles from Middlemarch. The bill was heavy, and since Raffles had no luggage with

him, it seemed probable that he had left his portmanteau behind in payment, in order to save money for his

travelling fare; for his purse was empty, and he had only a couple of sixpences and some loose pence in his

Bulstrode gathered a sense of safety from these indications that Raffles had really kept at a distance from

Middlemarch since his memorable visit at Christmas. At a distance and among people who were strangers to

Bulstrode, what satisfaction could there be to Raffles's tormenting, selfmagnifying vein in telling old

scandalous stories about a Middlemarch banker? And what harm if he did talk? The chief point now was to

keep watch over him as long as there was any danger of that intelligible raving, that unaccountable impulse to

tell, which seemed to have acted towards Caleb Garth; and Bulstrode felt much anxiety lest some such

impulse should come over him at the sight of Lydgate. He sat up alone with him through the night, only

ordering the housekeeper to lie down in her clothes, so as to be ready when he called her, alleging his own

indisposition to sleep, and his anxiety to carry out the doctor's orders. He did carry them out faithfully,

although Raffles was incessantly asking for brandy, and declaring that he was sinking away that the earth

was sinking away from under him. He was restless and sleepless, but still quailing and manageable. On the

offer of the food ordered by Lydgate, which he refused, and the denial of other things which he demanded, he

seemed to concentrate all his terror on Bulstrode, imploringly deprecating his anger, his revenge on him by

starvation, and declaring with strong oaths that he had never told any mortal a word against him. Even this

Bulstrode felt that he would not have liked Lydgate to hear; but a more alarming sign of fitful alternation in

his delirium was, that inthe morning twilight Raffles suddenly seemed to imagine a doctor present,

addressing him and declaring that Bulstrode wanted to starve him to death out of revenge for telling, when he

Bulstrode's native imperiousness and strength of determination served him well. This delicatelooking man,

himself nervously perturbed, found the needed stimulus in his strenuous circumstances, and through that

difficult night and morning, while he had the air of an animated corpse returned to movement without

warmth, holding the mastery by its chill impassibility his mind was intensely at work thinking of what he had

to guard against and what would win him security. Whatever prayers he might lift up, whatever statements he

might inwardly make of this man's wretched spiritual condition, and the duty he himself was under to submit

to the punishment divinely appointed for him rather than to wish for evil to anotherthrough all this effort to

condense words into a solid mental state, there pierced and spread with irresistible vividness the images of

the events he desired. And in the train of those images came their apology. He could not but see the death of

Raffles, and see in it his own deliverance. What was the removal of this wretched creature? He was

impenitent but were not public criminals impenitent?yet the law decided on their fate. Should

Providence in this case award death, there was no sin in contemplating death as the desirable issue if he

kept his hands from hastening itif he scrupulously did what was prescribed. Even here there might be a

mistake: human prescriptions were fallible things: Lydgate had said that treatment had hastened death,why

not his own method of treatment? But of course intention was everything in the question of right and wrong.

And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention separate from his desire. He inwardly declared that he

intended to obey orders. Why should he have got into any argument about the validity of these orders? It was

only the common trick of desirewhich avails itself of any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for

itself in all uncertainty about effects, in every obscurity that looks like the absence of law. Still, he did obey

His anxieties continually glanced towards Lydgate, and his remembrance of what had taken place between

them the morning before was accompanied with sensibilities which had not been roused at all during the

actual scene. He had then cared but little about Lydgate's painful impressions with regard to the suggested

change in the Hospital, or about the disposition towards himself which what he held to be his justifiable

refusal of a rather exorbitant request might call forth. He recurred to the scene now with a perception that he

had probably made Lydgate his enemy, and with an awakened desire to propitiate him, or rather to create in

him a strong sense of personal obligation. He regretted that he had not at once made even an unreasonable

moneysacrifice. For in case of unpleasant suspicions, or even knowledge gathered from the raving of

Raffles, Bulstrode would have felt that he had a defence in Lydgate's mind by having conferred a momentous

Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man, who had longed for years to be better than he

waswho had taken his selfish passions into discipline and clad them in severe robes, so that he had walked

with them as a devout choir, till now that a terror had risen among them, and they could chant no longer, but

It was nearly the middle of the day before Lydgate arrived: he had meant to come earlier, but had been

detained, he said; and his shattered looks were noticed by Balstrode. But he immediately threw himself into

the consideration of the patient, and inquired strictly into all that had occurred. Raffles was worse, would take

hardly any food, was persistently wakeful and restlessly raving; but still not violent. Contrary to Bulstrode's

alarmed expectation, he took little notice of Lydgate's presence, and continued to talk or murmur

"No; I still think he may come round. Are you going to stay here yourself?" said Lydgate, looking at

Bulstrode with an abrupt question, which made him uneasy, though in reality it was not due to any suspicious

"Yes, I think so," said Bulstrode, governing himself and speaking with deliberation. "Mrs. Bulstrode is

advised of the reasons which detain me. Mrs. Abel and her husband are not experienced enough to be left

quite alone, and this kind of responsibility is scarcely included in their service of me. You have some fresh

The chief new instruction that Lydgate had to give was on the administration of extremely moderate doses of

opium, in case of the sleeplessness continuing after several hours. He had taken the precaution of bringing

opium in his pocket, and he gave minute directions to Bulstrode as to the doses, and the point at which they

should cease. He insisted on the risk of not ceasing; and repeated his order that no alcohol should be given.

"From what I see of the case," he ended, "narcotism is the only thing I should be much afraid of. He may

"You look ill yourself, Mr. Lydgatea most unusual, I may say unprecedented thing in my knowledge of

you," said Bulstrode, showing a solicitude as unlike his indifference the day before, as his present

recklessness about his own fatigue was unlike his habitual selfcherishing anxiety. "I fear you are harassed."

"No, thank you," said Lydgate, with some hauteur. "I mentioned to you yesterday what was the state of my

affairs. There is nothing to add, except that the execution has since then been actually put into my house. One

"Stay, Mr. Lydgate, stay," said Bulstrode; "I have been reconsidering this subject. I was yesterday taken by

surprise, and saw it superficially. Mrs. Bulstrode is anxious for her niece, and I myself should grieve at a

calamitous change in your position. Claims on me are numerous, but on reconsideration, I esteem it right that

I should incur a small sacrifice rather than leave you unaided. You said, I think, that a thousand pounds

would suffice entirely to free you from your burthens, and enable you to recover a firm stand?"

"Yes," said Lydgate, a great leap of joy within him surmounting every other feeling; "that would pay all my

debts, and leave me a little on hand. I could set about economizing in our way of living. And byandby my

"If you will wait a moment, Mr. Lydgate, I will draw a cheek to that amount. I am aware that help, to be

While Bulstrode wrote, Lydgate turned to the window thinking of his home thinking of his life with its

"You can give me a note of hand for this, Mr. Lydgate," said the banker, advancing towards him with the

check. "And byandby, I hope, you may be in circumstances gradually to repay me. Meanwhile, I have

"I am deeply obliged to you," said Lydgate. "You have restored to me the prospect of working with some

It appeared to him a very natural movement in Bulstrode that he should have reconsidered his refusal: it

corresponded with the more munificent side of his character. But as he put his hack into a canter, that he

might get the sooner home, and tell the good news to Rosamond, and get cash at the bank to pay over to

Dover's agent, there crossed his mind, with an unpleasant impression, as from a darkwinged flight of evil

augury across his vision, the thought of that contrast in himself which a few months had broughtthat he

should be overjoyed at being under a strong personal obligation that he should be overjoyed at getting

The banker felt that he had done something to nullify one cause of uneasiness, and yet he was scarcely the

easier. He did not measure the quantity of diseased motive which had made him wish for Lydgate's

goodwill, but the quantity was none the less actively there, like an irritating agent in his blood. A man vows,

and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all;

but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and

relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow. Raffles,

recovering quickly, returning to the free use of his odious powershow could Bulstrode wish for that?

Raffles dead was the image that brought release, and indirectly he prayed for that way of release, beseeching

that, if it were possible, the rest of his days here below might be freed from the threat of an ignominy which

would break him utterly as an instrument of God's service. Lydgate's opinion was not on the side of promise

that this prayer would be fulfilled; and as the day advanced, Bulstrode felt himself getting irritated at the

persistent life in this man, whom he would fain have seen sinking into the silence of death imperious will

stirred murderous impulses towards this brute life, over which will, by itself, had no power. He said inwardly

that he was getting too much worn; he would not sit up with the patient tonight, but leave him to Mrs. Abel,

At six o'clock, Raffles, having had only fitful perturbed snatches of sleep, from which he waked with fresh

restlessness and perpetual cries that he was sinking away, Bulstrode began to administer the opium according

to Lydgate's directions. At the end of half an hour or more he called Mrs. Abel and told her that he found

himself unfit for further watching. He must now consign the patient to her care; and he proceeded to repeat to

her Lydgate's directions as to the quantity of each dose. Mrs. Abel had not before known anything of

Lydgate's prescriptions; she had simply prepared and brought whatever Bulstrode ordered, and had done what

he pointed out to her. She began now to ask what else she should do besides administering the opium.

"Nothing at present, except the offer of the soup or the sodawater: you can come to me for further

directions. Unless there is any important change, I shall not come into the room again tonight. You will ask

"You've much need, sir, I'm sure," said Mrs. Abel, "and to take something more strengthening than what

Bulstrode wentaway now without anxiety as to what Raffles might say in his raving, which had taken on a

muttering incoherence not likely to create any dangerous belief. At any rate he must risk this. He went down

into the wainscoted parlor first, and began to consider whether he would not have his horse saddled and go

home by the moonlight, and give up caring for earthly consequences. Then, he wished that he had begged

Lydgate to come again that evening. Perhaps he might deliver a different opinion, and think that Raffles was

getting into a less hopeful state. Should he send for Lydgate? If Raffles were really getting worse, and slowly

dying, Bulstrode felt that he could go to bed and sleep in gratitude to Providence. But was he worse? Lydgate

might come and simply say that he was going on as he expected, and predict that he would byandby fall

into a good sleep, and get well. What was the use of sending for him? Bulstrode shrank from that result. No

ideas or opinions could hinder him from seeing the one probability to be, that Raffles recovered would be just

the same man as before, with his strength as a tormentor renewed, obliging him to drag away his wife to

spend her years apart from her friends and native place, carrying an alienating suspicion against him in her

He had sat an hour and a half in this conflict by the firelight only, when a sudden thought made him rise and

light the bedcandle, which he had brought down with him. The thought was, that he had not told Mrs. Abel

He took hold of the candlestick, but stood motionless for a long while. She might already have given him

more than Lydgate had prescribed. But it was excusable in him, that he should forget part of an order, in his

present wearied condition. He walked upstairs, candle in hand, not knowing whether he should straightway

enter his own room and go to bed, or turn to the patient's room and rectify his omission. He paused in the

passage, with his face turned towards Raffles's room, and he could hear him moaning and murmuring. He

was not asleep, then. Who could know that Lydgate's prescription would not be better disobeyed than

He turned into his own room. Before he had quite undressed, Mrs. Abel rapped at the door; he opened it an

"If you please, sir, should I have no brandy nor nothing to give the poor creetur? He feels sinking away, and

nothing else will he swallerand but little strength in it, if he didonly the opium. And he says more and

To her surprise, Mr. Bulstrode did not answer. A struggle was going on within him.

"I think he must die for want o' support, if he goes on in that way. When I nursed my poor master, Mr.

Robisson, I had to give him portwine and brandy constant, and a big glass at a time," added Mrs. Abel, with

But again Mr. Bulstrode did not answer immediately, and she continued, "It's not a time to spare when people

are at death's door, nor would you wish it, sir, I'm sure. Else I should give him our own bottle o' rum as we

keep by us. But a sitterup so as you've been, and doing everything as laid in your power"

Here a key was thrust through the inch of doorway, and Mr. Bulstrode said huskily, "That is the key of the

Early in the morningabout sixMr. Bulstrode rose and spent some time in prayer. Does any one suppose

that private prayer is necessarily candidnecessarily goes to the roots of action? Private prayer is inaudible

speech, and speech is representative: who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?

Bulstrode had not yet unravelled in his thought the confused promptings of the last fourandtwenty hours.

He listened in the passage, and could hear hard stertorous breathing. Then he walked out in the garden, and

looked at the early rime on the grass and fresh spring leaves. When he reentered the house, he felt startled at

"How is your patientasleep, I think?" he said, with an attempt at cheerfulness in his tone.

"He's gone very deep, sir," said Mrs. Abel. "He went off gradual between three and four o'clock. Would you

please to go and look at him? I thought it no harm to leave him. My man's gone afield, and the little girl's

Bulstrode went up. At a glance he knew that Raffles was not in the sleep which brings revival, but in the

He looked round the room and saw a bottle with some brandy in it, and the almost empty opium phial. He put

the phial out of sight, and carried the brandybottle downstairs with him, locking it again in the

While breakfasting he considered whether he should ride to Middlemarch at once, or wait for Lydgate's

arrival. He decided to wait, and told Mrs. Abel that she might go about her work he could watch in the

As he sat there and beheld the enemy of his peace going irrevocably into silence, he felt more at rest than he

had done for many months. His conscience was soothed by the enfolding wing of secrecy, which seemed just

then like an angel sent down for his relief. He drew out his pocketbook to review various memoranda there

as to the arrangements he had projected and partly carried out in the prospect of quitting Middlemarch, and

considered how far he would let them stand or recall them, now that his absence would be brief. Some

economies which he felt desirable might still find a suitable occasion in his temporary withdrawal from

management, and he hoped still that Mrs. Casaubon would take a large share in the expenses of the Hospital.

In that way the moments passed, until a change in the stertorous breathing was marked enough to draw his

attention wholly to the bed, and forced him to think of the departing life, which had once been subservient to

his ownwhich he had once been glad to find base enough for him to act on as he would. It was his gladness

And who could say that the death of Raffles had been hastened? Who knew what would have saved him?

Lydgate arrived at halfpast ten, in time to witness the final pause of the breath. When he entered the room

Bulstrode observed a sudden expression in his face, which was not so much surprise as a recognition that he

had not judged correctly. He stood by the bed in silence for some time, with his eyes turned on the dying

man, but with that subdued activity of expression which showed that he was carrying on an inward debate.

"I did not watch by him last night," said Bulstrode. "I was overworn, and left him under Mrs. Abel's care.

She said that he sank into sleep between three and four o'clock. When I came in before eight he was nearly in

Lydgate did not ask another question, but watched in silence until he said, "It's all over."

This morning Lydgate was in a state of recovered hope and freedom. He had set out on his work with all his

old animation, and felt himself strong enough to bear all the deficiencies of his married life. And he was

conscious that Bulstrode had been a benefactor to him. But he was uneasy about this case. He had not

expected it to terminate as it had done. Yet he hardly knew how to put a question on the subject to Bulstrode

without appearing to insult him; and if he examined the housekeeperwhy, the man was dead. There seemed

to be no use in implying that somebody's ignorance or imprudence had killed him. And after all, he himself

He and Bulstrode rode back to Middlemarch together, talking of many thingschiefly cholera and the

chances of the Reform Bill in the House of Lords, and the firm resolve of the political Unions. Nothing was

said about Raffles, except that Bulstrode mentioned the necessity of having a grave for him in Lowick

churchyard, and observed that, so far as he knew, the poor man had no connections, except Rigg, whom he

On returning home Lydgate had a visit from Mr. Farebrother. The Vicar had not been in the town the day

before, but the news that there was an execution in Lydgate's house had got to Lowick by the evening, having

been carried by Mr. Spicer, shoemaker and parishclerk, who had it from his brother, the respectable

bellhanger in Lowick Gate. Since that evening when Lydgate had come down from the billiard room with

Fred Vincy, Mr. Farebrother's thoughts about him had been rather gloomy. Playing at the Green Dragon once

or oftener might have been a trifle in another man; but in Lydgate it was one of several signs that he was

getting unlike his former self. He was beginning to do things for which he had formerly even an excessive

scorn. Whatever certain dissatisfactions in marriage, which some silly tinklings of gossip had given him hints

of, might have to do with this change, Mr. Farebrother felt sure that it was chiefly connected with the debts

which were being more and more distinctly reported, and he began to fear that any notion of Lydgate's having

resources or friends in the background must be quite illusory. The rebuff he had met with in his first attempt

to win Lydgate's confidence, disinclined him to a second; but this news of the execution being actually in the

Lydgate had just dismissed a poor patient, in whom he was much interested, and he came forward to put out

his handwith an open cheerfulness which surprised Mr. Farebrother. Could this too be a proud rejection of

"How are you, Lydgate? I came to see you because I had heard something which made me anxious about

you," said the Vicar, in the tone of a good brother, only that there was no reproach in it. They were both

"I think I know what you mean. You had heard that there was an execution in the house?"

"It was true," said Lydgate, with an air of freedom, as if he did not mind talking about the affair now. "But

the danger is over; the debt is paid. I am out of my difficulties now: I shall be freed from debts, and able, I

"I am very thankful to hear it," said the Vicar, falling back in his chair, and speaking with that lowtoned

quickness which often follows the removal of a load. "I like that better than all the news in the `Times.' I

"Thank you for coming," said Lydgate, cordially. "I can enjoy the kindness all the more because I am

happier. I have certainly been a good deal crushed. I'm afraid I shall find the bruises still painful byand by,"

he added, smiling rather sadly; "but just now I can only feel that the torturescrew is off."

Mr. Farebrother was silent for a moment, and then said earnestly, "My dear fellow, let me ask you one

"Thenthis is necessary to set my heart quite at restyou have not have you?in order to pay your

"No," said Lydgate, coloring slightly. "There is no reason why I should not tell yousince the fact is

sothat the person to whom I am indebted is Bulstrode. He has made me a very handsome advance a

"Well, that is generous," said Mr. Farebrother, compelling himself to approve of the man whom he disliked.

His delicate feeling shrank from dwelling even in his thought on the fact that he had always urged Lydgate to

avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode. He added immediately, "And Bulstrode must naturally feel

an interest in your welfare, after you have worked with him in a way which has probably reduced your

income instead of adding to it. I am glad to think that he has acted accordingly."

Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly suppositions. They made more distinct within him the uneasy

consciousness which had shown its first dim stirrings only a few hours before, that Bulstrode's motives for his

sudden beneficence following close upon the chillest indifference might be merely selfish. He let the kindly

suppositions pass. He could not tell the history of the loan, but it was more vividly present with him than

ever, as well as the fact which the Vicar delicately ignoredthat this relation of personal indebtedness to

He began, instead of answering, to speak of his projected economies, and of his having come to look at his

"I shall set up a surgery," he said. "I really think I made a mistaken effort in that respect. And if Rosamond

will not mind, I shall take an apprentice. I don't like these things, but if one carries them out faithfully they

are not really lowering. I have had a severe galling to begin with: that will make the small rubs seem easy."

Poor Lydgate! the "if Rosamond will not mind," which had fallen from him involuntarily as part of his

thought, was a significant mark of the yoke he bore. But Mr. Farebrother, whose hopes entered strongly into

the same current with Lydgate's, and who knew nothing about him that could now raise a melancholy

Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was standing at his leisure under the large archway

leading into the yard of the Green Dragon. He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he had only just

come out of the house, and any human figure standing at ease under the archway in the early afternoon was as

certain to attract companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth peeking at. In this case there

was no material object to feed upon, but the eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the shape

of gossip. Mr. Hopkins, the meekmannered draper opposite, was the first to act on this inward vision, being

the more ambitious of a little masculine talk because his customers were chiefly women. Mr. Bambridge was

rather curt to the draper, feeling that Hopkins was of course glad to talk to HIM, but that he was not going to

waste much of his talk on Hopkins. Soon, however, there was a small cluster of more important listeners,

who were either deposited from the passersby, or had sauntered to the spot expressly to see if there were

anything going on at the Green Dragon; and Mr. Bambridge was finding it worth his while to say many

impressive things about the fine studs he had been seeing and the purchases he had made on a journey in the

north from which he had just returned. Gentlemen present were assured that when they could show him

anything to cut out a blood mare, a bay, rising four, which was to be seen at Doncaster if they chose to go and

look at it, Mr. Bambridge would gratify them by being shot "from here to Hereford." Also, a pair of blacks

which he was going to put into the break recalled vividly to his mind a pair which he had sold to Faulkner in

'19, for a hundred guineas, and which Faulkner had sold for a hundred and sixty two months laterany gent

who could disprove this statement being offered the privilege of calling Mr. Bambridge by a very ugly name

When the discourse was at this point of animation, came up Mr. Frank Hawley. He was not a man to

compromise his dignity by lounging at the Green Dragon, but happening to pass along the High Street and

seeing Bambridge on the other side, he took some of his long strides across to ask the horsedealer whether he

had found the firstrate gighorse which he had engaged to look for. Mr. Hawley was requested to wait until

he had seen a gray selected at Bilkley: if that did not meet his wishes to a hair, Bambridge did not know a

horse when he saw it, which seemed to be the highest conceivable unlikelihood. Mr. Hawley, standing with

his back to the street, was fixing a time for looking at the gray and seeing it tried, when a horseman passed

"Bulstrode!" said two or three voices at once in a low tone, one of them, which was the draper's, respectfully

prefixing the "Mr.;" but nobody having more intention in this interjectural naming than if they had said "the

Riverston coach" when that vehicle appeared in the distance. Mr. Hawley gave a careless glance round at

Bulstrode's back, but as Bambridge's eyes followed it he made a sarcastic grimace.

"By jingo! that reminds me," he began, lowering his voice a little, "I picked up something else at Bilkley

besides your gighorse, Mr. Hawley. I picked up a fine story about Bulstrode. Do you know how he came by

his fortune? Any gentleman wanting a bit of curious information, I can give it him free of expense. If

everybody got their deserts, Bulstrode might have had to say his prayers at Botany Bay."

"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into his pockets, and pushing a little forward

under the archway. If Bulstrode should turn out to be a rascal, Frank Hawley had a prophetic soul.

"I had it from a party who was an old chum of Bulstrode's. I'll tell you where I first picked him up," said

Bambridge, with a sudden gesture of his forefinger. "He was at Larcher's sale, but I knew nothing of him

thenhe slipped through my fingers was after Bulstrode, no doubt. He tells me he can tap Bulstrode to

any amount, knows all his secrets. However, he blabbed to me at Bilkley: he takes a stiff glass. Damme if I

think he meant to turn king's evidence; but he's that sort of bragging fellow, the bragging runs over hedge and

ditch with him, till he'd brag of a spavin as if it 'ud fetch money. A man should know when to pull up." Mr.

Bambridge made this remark with an air of disgust, satisfied that his own bragging showed a fine sense of the

"As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the Saracen's Head; but his name is Raffles."

"Raffles!" exclaimed Mr. Hopkins. "I furnished his funeral yesterday. He was buried at Lowick. Mr.

Bulstrode followed him. A very decent funeral." There was a strong sensation among the listeners. Mr.

Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which "brimstone" was the mildest word, and Mr. Hawley, knitting his

"At Stone Court," said the draper. "The housekeeper said he was a relation of the master's. He came there ill

"Yes. Mr. Lydgate. Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night. He died the third morning."

"Go on, Bambridge," said Mr. Hawley, insistently. "What did this fellow say about Bulstrode?"

The group had already become larger, the townclerk's presence being a guarantee that something worth

listening to was going on there; and Mr. Bambridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven. It was

mainly what we know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw, with some local color and circumstance

added: it was what Bulstrode had dreaded the betrayal ofand hoped to have buried forever with the corpse

of Rafflesit was that haunting ghost of his earlier life which as he rode past the archway of the Green

Dragon he was trusting that Providence had delivered him from. Yes, Providence. He had not confessed to

himself yet that he had done anything in the way of contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed to

have been offered. It was impossible to prove that he had done anything which hastened the departure of that

But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like the smell of fire. Mr. Frank Hawley

followed up his information by sending a clerk whom he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext of inquiring

about hay, but really to gather all that could be learned about Raffles and his illness from Mrs. Abel. In this

way it came to his knowledge that Mr. Garth had carried the man to Stone Court in his gig; and Mr. Hawley

in consequence took an opportunity of seeing Caleb, calling at his office to ask whether he had time to

undertake an arbitration if it were required, and then asking him incidentally about Raffles. Caleb was

betrayed into no word injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which he was forced to admit, that he had given

up acting for him within the last week. Mr Hawley drew his inferences, and feeling convinced that Raffles

had told his story to Garth, and that Garth had given up Bulstrode's affairs in consequence, said so a few

hours later to Mr. Toller. The statement was passed on until it had quite lost the stamp of an inference, and

was taken as information coming straight from Garth, so that even a diligent historian might have concluded

Mr. Hawley was not slow to perceive that there was no handle for the law either in the revelations made by

Raffles or in the circumstances of his death. He had himself ridden to Lowick village that he might look at the

that an ugly secret should have come to light about Bulstrode, though he had always had justice enough in

him to hinder his antipathy from turning into conclusions. But while they were talking another combination

was silently going forward in Mr. Farebrother's mind, which foreshadowed what was soon to be loudly

spoken of in Middlemarch as a necessary "putting of two and two together." With the reasons which kept

Bulstrode in dread of Raffles there flashed the thought that the dread might have something to do with his

munificence towards his medical man; and though he resisted the suggestion that it had been consciously

accepted in any way as a bribe, he had a foreboding that this complication of things might be of malignant

effect on Lydgate's reputation. He perceived that Mr. Hawley knew nothing at present of the sudden relief

from debt, and he himself was careful to glide away from all approaches towards the subject.

"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up the illimitable discussion of what might have been,

though nothing could be legally proven, "it is a strange story. So our mercurial Ladislaw has a queer

genealogy! A highspirited young lady and a musical Polish patriot made a likely enough stock for him to

spring from, but I should never have suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker. However, there's no

knowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand. Some sorts of dirt serve to clarify."

"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr. Hawley, mounting his horse. "Any cursed alien blood, Jew,

"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley. But he is really a disinterested, unworldly fellow," said Mr.

"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley, who had been in the habit of saying apologetically

that Farebrother was such a damned pleasant goodhearted fellow you would mistake him for a Tory.

Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance on Raffles in any other light than as a piece

of evidence on the side of Bulstrode. But the news that Lydgate had all at once become able not only to get

rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round

it conjectures and comments which gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears of other persons

besides Mr. Hawley, who were not slow to see a significant relation between this sudden command of money

and Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles. That the money came from Bulstrode would infallibly

have been guessed even if there had been no direct evidence of it; for it had beforehand entered into the

gossip about Lydgate's affairs, that neither his fatherinlaw nor his own family would do anything for him,

and direct evidence was furnished not only by a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs. Bulstrode herself,

who mentioned the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who mentioned it to her daughterinlaw of the house of Toller,

who mentioned it generally. The business was felt to be so public and important that it required dinners to

feed it, and many invitations were just then issued and accepted on the strength of this scandal concerning

Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took their work and went out to tea oftener than

usual; and all public conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which could not be won

For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or other was at the bottom of Bulstrode's liberality

to Lydgate. Mr. Hawley indeed, in the first instance, invited a select party, including the two physicians, with

Mr Toller and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold a close discussion as to the probabilities of Raffles's illness,

reciting to them all the particulars which had been gathered from Mrs. Abel in connection with Lydgate's

certificate, that the death was due to delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who all stood

undisturbedly on the old paths in relation to this disease, declared that they could see nothing in these

particulars which could be transformed into a positive ground of suspicion. But the moral grounds of

suspicion remained: the strong motives Bulstrode clearly had for wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact that

at this critical moment he had given Lydgate the help which he must for some time have known the need for;

the disposition, moreover, to believe that Bulstrode would be unscrupulous, and the absence of any

indisposition to believe that Lydgate might be as easily bribed as other haughtyminded men when they have

found themselves in want of money. Even if the money had been given merely to make him hold his tongue

about the scandal of Bulstrode's earlier life, the fact threw an odious light on Lydgate, who had long been

sneered at as making himself subservient to the banker for the sake of working himself into predominance,

and discrediting the elder members of his profession. Hence, in spite of the negative as to any direct sign of

guilt in relation to the death at Stone Court, Mr. Hawley's select party broke up with the sense that the affair

But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough to keep up much headshaking and

biting innuendo even among substantial professional seniors, had for the general mind all the superior power

of mystery over fact. Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it; for

conjecture soon became more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the

incompatible. Even the more definite scandal concerning Bulstrode's earlier life was, for some minds, melted

into the mass of mystery, as so much lively metal to be poured out in dialogue, and to take such fantastic

This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by Mrs. Dollop, the spirited landlady of the Tankard in

Slaughter Lane, who had often to resist the shallow pragmatism of customers disposed to think that their

reports from the outer world were of equal force with what had "come up" in her mind. How it had been

brought to her she didn't know, but it was there before her as if it had been scored with the chalk on the

chimneyboard" as Bulstrode should say, his inside was THAT BLACK as if the hairs of his head knowed

"That's odd," said Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker, with weak eyes and a piping voice. "Why, I read in the

`Trumpet' that was what the Duke of Wellington said when he turned his coat and went over to the Romans."

"Very like," said Mrs. Dollop. "If one raskill said it, it's more reason why another should. But hypoCRITE as

he's been, and holding things with that high hand, as there was no parson i' the country good enough for him,

he was forced to take Old Harry into his counsel, and Old Harry's been too many for him."

"Ay, ay, he's a 'complice you can't send out o' the country," said Mr. Crabbe, the glazier, who gathered much

news and groped among it dimly. "But by what I can make out, there's them says Bulstrode was for running

"He'll be drove away, whether or no," said Mr. Dill, the barber, who had just dropped in. "I shaved Fletcher,

Hawley's clerk, this morninghe's got a bad fingerand he says they're all of one mind to get rid of

Bulstrode. Mr. Thesiger is turned against him, and wants him out o' the parish. And there's gentlemen in this

town says they'd as soon dine with a fellow from the hulks. `And a deal sooner I would,' says Fletcher; `for

what's more against one's stomach than a man coming and making himself bad company with his religion,

and giving out as the Ten Commandments are not enough for him, and all the while he's worse than half the

"It'll be a bad thing for the town though, if Bulstrode's money goes out of it," said Mr. Limp, quaveringly.

"Ah, there's better folks spend their money worse," said a firmvoiced dyer, whose crimson hands looked out

"But he won't keep his money, by what I can make out," said the glazier. "Don't they say as there's somebody

can strip it off him? By what I can understan', they could take every penny off him, if they went to lawing."

"No such thing!" said the barber, who felt himself a little above his company at Dollop's, but liked it none the

worse. "Fletcher says it's no such thing. He says they might prove over and over again whose child this young

Ladislaw was, and they'd do no more than if they proved I came out of the Fenshe couldn't touch a penny."

"Look you there now!" said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly. "I thank the Lord he took my children to Himself, if

that's all the law can do for the motherless. Then by that, it's o' no use who your father and mother is. But as

to listening to what one lawyer says without asking anotherI wonder at a man o' your cleverness, Mr. Dill.

It's well known there's always two sides, if no more; else who'd go to law, I should like to know? It's a poor

tale, with all the law as there is up and down, if it's no use proving whose child you are. Fletcher may say that

Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at Mrs. Dollop, as a woman who was more than a match

for the lawyers; being disposed to submit to much twitting from a landlady who had a long score against him.

"If they come to lawing, and it's all true as folks say, there's more to be looked to nor money," said the

glazier. "There's this poor creetur as is dead and gone; by what I can make out, he'd seen the day when he was

"Finer gentleman! I'll warrant him," said Mrs. Dollop; "and a far personabler man, by what I can hear. As I

said when Mr. Baldwin, the taxgatherer, comes in, astanding where you sit, and says, `Bulstrode got all his

money as he brought into this town by thieving and swindling,'I said, `You don't make me no wiser, Mr.

Baldwin: it's set my blood acreeping to look at him ever sin' here he came into Slaughter Lane awanting to

buy the house over my head: folks don't look the color o' the doughtub and stare at you as if they wanted to

see into your backbone for nothingk.' That was what I said, and Mr. Baldwin can bear me witness."

"And in the rights of it too," said Mr. Crabbe. "For by what I can make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was

a lusty, freshcolored man as you'd wish to see, and the best o' companythough dead he lies in Lowick

churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan', there's them knows more than they SHOULD know

"I'll believe you!" said Mrs. Dallop, with a touch of scorn at Mr. Crabbe's apparent dimness. "When a man's

been 'ticed to a lone house, and there's them can pay for hospitals and nurses for half the countryside choose

to be sittersup night and day, and nobody to come near but a doctor as is known to stick at nothingk, and as

poor as he can hang together, and after that so flush o' money as he can pay off Mr. Byles the butcher as his

bill has been running on for the best o' joints since last Michaelmas was a twelvemonthI don't want

anybody to come and tell me as there's been more going on nor the Prayerbook's got a service for I don't

Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed to dominate her company. There was a

chorus of adhesion from the more courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his fiat hands

together and pressed them hard between his knees, looking down at them with bleareyed contemplation, as

if the scorching power of Mrs. Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified his wits until they could be

"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the Crowner?" said the dyer. "It's been done many and many's

"Not they, Mr. Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically."I know what doctors are. They're a deal too cunning to

be found out. And this Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting up everybody before the breath was well out o'

their bodyit's plain enough what use he wanted to make o' looking into respectable people's insides. He

knows drugs, you may be sure, as you can neither smell nor see, neither before they're swallowed nor after.

Why, I've seen drops myself ordered by Doctor Gambit, as is our club doctor and a good charikter, and has

brought more live children into the world nor ever another i' MiddlemarchI say I've seen drops myself as

made no difference whether they was in the glass or out, and yet have griped you the next day. So I'll leave

your own sense to judge. Don't tell me! All I say is, it's a mercy they didn't take this Doctor Lydgate on to our

The heads of this discussion at "Dollop's" had been the common theme among all classes in the town, had

been carried to Lowick Parsonage on one side and to Tipton Grange on the other, had come fully to the ears

of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with sad reference to "poor Harriet" by all Mrs. Bulstrode's

friends, before Lydgate knew distinctly why people were looking strangely at him, and before Bulstrode

himself suspected the betrayal of his secrets. He had not been accustomed to very cordial relations with his

neighbors, and hence he could not miss the signs of cordiality; moreover, he had been taking journeys on

business of various kinds, having now made up his mind that he need not quit Middlemarch, and feeling able

"We will make a journey to Cheltenham in the course of a month or two," he had said to his wife. "There are

great spiritual advantages to be had in that town along with the air and the waters, and six weeks there will be

He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and meant that his life henceforth should be the more devoted

because of those later sins which he represented to himself as hypothetic, praying hypothetically for their

pardon:"if I have herein transgressed." as to the Hospital, he avoided saying anything further to Lydgate,

fearing to manifest a too sudden change of plans immediately on the death of Raffles. In his secret soul he

believed that Lydgate suspected his orders to have been intentionally disobeyed, and suspecting this he must

also suspect a motive. But nothing had been betrayed to him as to the history of Raffles, and Bulstrode was

anxious not to do anything which would give emphasis to his undefined suspicions. As to any certainty that a

particular method of treatment would either save or kill, Lydgate himself was constantly arguing against such

dogmatism; he had no right to speak, and he had every motive for being silent. Hence Bulstrode felt himself

providentially secured. The only incident he had strongly winced under had been an occasional encounter

Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen a strong determination was growing against him.

A meeting was to be held in the TownHall on a sanitary question which had risen into pressing importance

by the occurrence of a cholera case in the town. Since the Act of Parliament, which had been hurriedly

passed, authorizing assessments for sanitary measures, there had been a Board for the superintendence of

such measures appointed in Middlemarch, and much cleansing and preparation had been concurred in by

Whigs and Tories. The question now was, whether a piece of ground outside the town should be secured as a

burialground by means of assessment or by private subscription. The meeting was to be open, and almost

Mr. Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just before twelve o'clock he started from the Bank with the

intention of urging the plan of private subscription. Under the hesitation of his projects, he had for some time

kept himself in the background, and he felt that he should this morning resume his old position as a man of

action and influence in the public affairs of the town where he expected to end his days. Among the various

persons going in the same direction, he saw Lydgate; they joined, talked over the object of the meeting, and

It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier than they. But there were still spaces left near the head of

the large central table, and they made their way thither. Mr. Farebrother sat opposite, not far from Mr.

Hawley; all the medical men were there; Mr. Thesiger was in the chair, and Mr. Brooke of Tipton was on his

Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances when he and Bulstrode took their seats.

After the business had been fully opened by the chairman, who pointed out the advantages of purchasing by

subscription a piece of ground large enough to be ultimately used as a general cemetery, Mr. Bulstrode,

whose rather highpitched but subdued and fluent voice the town was used to at meetings of this sort, rose

and asked leave to deliver his opinion. Lydgate could see again the peculiar interchange of glances before Mr.

Hawley started up, and said in his firm resonant voice, "Mr. Chairman, I request that before any one delivers

his opinion on this point I may be permitted to speak on a question of public feeling, which not only by

Mr. Hawley's mode of speech, even when public decorum repressed his "awful language," was formidable in

its curtness and selfpossession. Mr. Thesiger sanctioned the request, Mr. Bulstrode sat down, and Mr.

"In what I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking simply on my own behalf: I am speaking with the

concurrence and at the express request of no fewer than eight of my fellowtownsmen, who are immediately

around us. It is our united sentiment that Mr. Bulstrode should be called uponand I do now call upon

him to resign public positions which he holds not simply as a taxpayer, but as a gentleman among

gentlemen. There are practices and there are acts which, owing to circumstances, the law cannot visit, though

they may be worse than many things which are legally punishable. Honest men and gentlemen, if they don't

want the company of people who perpetrate such acts, have got to defend themselves as they best can, and

that is what I and the friends whom I may call my clients in this affair are determined to do. I don't say that

Mr. Bulstrode has been guilty of shameful acts, but I call upon him either publicly to deny and confute the

scandalous statements made against him by a man now dead, and who died in his housethe statement that

he was for many years engaged in nefarious practices, and that he won his fortune by dishonest

proceduresor else to withdraw from positions which could only have been allowed him as a gentleman

All eyes in the room were turned on Mr. Bulstrode, who, since the first mention of his name, had been going

through a crisis of feeling almost too violent for his delicate frame to support. Lydgate, who himself was

undergoing a shock as from the terrible practical interpretation of some faint augury, felt, nevertheless, that

his own movement of resentful hatred was checked by that instinct of the Healer which thinks first of

bringing rescue or relief to the sufferer, when he looked at the shrunken misery of Bulstrode's livid face.

The quick vision that his life was after all a failure, that he was a dishonored man, and must quail before the

glance of those towards whom he had habitually assumed the attitude of a reproverthat God had disowned

him before men and left him unscreened to the triumphant scorn of those who were glad to have their hatred

justifiedthe sense of utter futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing with the life of his

accomplice, an equivocation which now turned venomously upon him with the fullgrown fang of a

discovered lie: all this rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails to kill, and leaves the ears

still open to the returning wave of execration. The sudden sense of exposure after the reestablished sense of

safety camenot to the coarse organization of a criminal but to the susceptible nerve of a man whose

intensest being lay in such mastery and predominance as the conditions of his life had shaped for him.

But in that intense being lay the strength of reaction. Through all his bodily infirmity there ran a tenacious

nerve of ambitious selfpreserving will, which had continually leaped out like a flame, scattering all doctrinal

fears, and which, even while he sat an object of compassion for the merciful, was beginning to stir and glow

under his ashy paleness. Before the last words were out of Mr. Hawley's mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should

answer, and that his answer would be a retort. He dared not get up and say, "I am not guilty, the whole story

is false"even if he had dared this, it would have seemed to him, under his present keen sense of betrayal, as

vain as to pull, for covering to his nakedness, a frail rag which would rend at every little strain.

For a few moments there was total silence, while every man in the room was looking at Bulstrode. He sat

perfectly still, leaning hard against the back of his chair; he could not venture to rise, and when he began to

speak he pressed his hands upon the seat on each side of him. But his voice was perfectly audible, though

hoarser than usual, and his words were distinctly pronounced, though he paused between sentence as if short

of breath. He said, turning first toward Mr. Thesiger, and then looking at Mr. Hawley

"I protest before you, sir, as a Christian minister, against the sanction of proceedings towards me which are

dictated by virulent hatred. Those who are hostile to me are glad to believe any libel uttered by a loose tongue

against me. And their consciences become strict against me. Say that the evilspeaking of which I am to be

made the victim accuses me of malpractices" here Bulstrode's voice rose and took on a more biting accent,

till it seemed a low cry "who shall be my accuser? Not men whose own lives are unchristian, nay,

scandalousnot men who themselves use low instruments to carry out their endswhose profession is a

tissue of chicanery who have been spending their income on their own sensual enjoyments, while I have

been devoting mine to advance the best objects with regard to this life and the next."

After the word chicanery there was a growing noise, half of murmurs and half of hisses, while four persons

started up at onceMr. Hawley, Mr. Toller, Mr. Chichely, and Mr. Hackbutt; but Mr. Hawley's outburst was

"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to the inspection of my professional life. As to Christian or

unchristian, I repudiate your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I spend my income,

it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat offspring of their due inheritance in order to support

religion and set myself up as a saintly Killjoy. I affect no niceness of conscienceI have not found any nice

standards necessary yet to measure your actions by, sir. And I again call upon you to enter into satisfactory

explanations concerning the scandals against you, or else to withdraw from posts in which we at any rate

decline you as a colleague. I say, sir, we decline to cooperate with a man whose character is not cleared

"Allow me, Mr. Hawley," said the chairman; and Mr. Hawley, still fuming, bowed half impatiently, and sat

"Mr. Bulstrode, it is not desirable, I think, to prolong the present discussion," said Mr. Thesiger, turning to

the pallid trembling man; "I must so far concur with what has fallen from Mr. Hawley in expression of a

general feeling, as to think it due to your Christian profession that you should clear yourself, if possible, from

unhappy aspersions. I for my part should be willing to give you full opportunity and hearing. But I must say

that your present attitude is painfully inconsistent with those principles which you have sought to identify

yourself with, and for the honor of which I am bound to care. I recommend you at present, as your

clergyman, and one who hopes for your reinstatement in respect, to quit the room, and avoid further

Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his hat from the floor and slowly rose, but he grasped the corner

of the chair so totteringly that Lydgate felt sure there was not strength enough in him to walk away without

support. What could he do? He could not see a man sink close to him for want of help. He rose and gave his

arm to Bulstrode, and in that way led him out of the room; yet this act, which might have been one of gentle

duty and pure compassion, was at this moment unspeakably bitter to him. It seemed as if he were putting his

signmanual to that association of himself with Bulstrode, of which he now saw the full meaning as it must

have presented itself to other minds. He now felt the conviction that this man who was leaning tremblingly on

his arm, had given him the thousand pounds as a bribe, and that somehow the treatment of Raffles had been

tampered with from an evil motive. The inferences were closely linked enough; the town knew of the loan,

Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible clutch of this revelation, was all the while morally forced

to take Mr. Bulstrode to the Bank, send a man off for his carriage, and wait to accompany him home.

Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched, and fringed off into eager discussion among various

Mr. Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect hints of it, and was very uneasy that he had "gone a little

too far" in countenancing Bulstrode, now got himself fully informed, and felt some benevolent sadness in

talking to Mr. Farebrother about the ugly light in which Lydgate had come to be regarded. Mr. Farebrother

"Step into my carriage," said Mr. Brooke. "I am going round to see Mrs. Casaubon. She was to come back

So they drove along, Mr. Brooke chatting with goodnatured hope that there had not really been anything

black in Lydgate's behavior a young fellow whom he had seen to be quite above the common mark, when

he brought a letter from his uncle Sir Godwin. Mr. Farebrother said little: he was deeply mournful: with a

keen perception of human weakness, he could not be confident that under the pressure of humiliating needs

When the carriage drove up to the gate of the Manor, Dorothea was out on the gravel, and came to greet

"Well, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have just come from a meeting a sanitary meeting, you know."

"Was Mr. Lydgate there?" said Dorothea, who looked full of health and animation, and stood with her head

bare under the gleaming April lights. "I want to see him and have a great consultation with him about the

"Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing bad news bad news, you know."

They walked through the garden towards the churchyard gate, Mr. Farebrother wanting to go on to the

She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear twice over the facts and impressions concerning Lydgate.

After a short silence, pausing at the churchyard gate, and addressing Mr. Farebrother, she said

"You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of anything base? I will not believe it. Let us find out the truth

Dorothea's impetuous generosity, which would have leaped at once to the vindication of Lydgate from the

suspicion of having accepted money as a bribe, underwent a melancholy check when she came to consider all

"It is a delicate matter to touch," he said. "How can we begin to inquire into it? It must be either publicly by

setting the magistrate and coroner to work, or privately by questioning Lydgate. As to the first proceeding

there is no solid ground to go upon, else Hawley would have adopted it; and as to opening the subject with

Lydgate, I confess I should shrink from it. He would probably take it as a deadly insult. I have more than

once experienced the difficulty of speaking to him on personal matters. Andone should know the truth

"I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that people are almost always better than their

neighbors think they are," said Dorothea. Some of her intensest experience in the last two years had set her

mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable construction of others; and for the first time she felt rather

discontented with Mr. Farebrother. She disliked this cautious weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent

faith in efforts of justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force. Two days afterwards, he

was dining at the Manor with her uncle and the Chettams, and when the dessert was standing uneaten, the

servants were out of the room, and Mr. Brooke was nodding in a nap, she returned to the subject with

"Mr. Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny about him their first wish must be to justify

him. What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the

Dorothea's tone and manner were not more energetic than they had been when she was at the head of her

uncle's table nearly three years before, and her experience since had given her more right to express a decided

opinion. But Sir James Chettam was no longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious

brotherinlaw, with a devout admiration for his sister, but with a constant alarm lest she should fall under

some new illusion almost as bad as marrying Casaubon. He smiled much less; when he said "Exactly" it was

more often an introduction to a dissentient opinion than in those submissive bachelor days; and Dorothea

found to her surprise that she had to resolve not to be afraid of himall the more because he was really her

"But, Dorothea," he said, remonstrantly, "you can't undertake to manage a man's life for him in that way.

Lydgate must know at least he will soon come to know how he stands. If he can clear himself, he will. He

"I think his friends must wait till they find an opportunity," added Mr. Farebrother. "It is possibleI have

often felt so much weakness in myself that I can conceive even a man of honorable disposition, such as I have

always believed Lydgate to be, succumbing to such a temptation as that of accepting money which was

offered more or less indirectly as a bribe to insure his silence about scandalous facts long gone by. I say, I can

conceive this, if he were under the pressure of hard circumstancesif he had been harassed as I feel sure

Lydgate has been. I would not believe anything worse of him except under stringent proof. But there is the

terrible Nemesis following on some errors, that it is always possible for those who like it to interpret them

into a crime: there is no proof in favor of the man outside his own consciousness and assertion."

"Oh, how cruel!" said Dorothea, clasping her hands. "And would you not like to be the one person who

believed in that man's innocence, if the rest of the world belied him? Besides, there is a man's character

"But, my dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling gently at her ardor, "character is not cut in

marbleit is not something solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing, and may become

"Then it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea "I should not be afraid of asking Mr. Lydgate to tell me

the truth, that I might help him. Why should I be afraid? Now that I am not to have the land, James, I might

do as Mr. Bulstrode proposed, and take his place in providing for the Hospital; and I have to consult Mr.

Lydgate, to know thoroughly what are the prospects of doing good by keeping up the present plans. There is

the best opportunity in the world for me to ask for his confidence; and he would be able to tell me things

which might make all the circumstances clear. Then we would all stand by him and bring him out of his

trouble. People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might show on behalf of their nearest

neighbors." Dorothea's eyes had a moist brightness in them, and the changed tones of her voice roused her

"It is true that a woman may venture on some efforts of sympathy which would hardly succeed if we men

"Surely, a woman is bound to be cautious and listen to those who know the world better than she does." said

Sir James, with his little frown. "Whatever you do in the end, Dorothea, you should really keep back at

present, and not volunteer any meddling with this Bulstrode business. We don't know yet what may turn up.

"Yes, yes, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, not quite knowing at what point the discussion had arrived, but coming

up to it with a contribution which was generally appropriate. "It is easy to go too far, you know. You must not

let your ideas run away with you. And as to being in a hurry to put money into schemesit won't do, you

know. Garth has drawn me in uncommonly with repairs, draining, that sort of thing: I'm uncommonly out of

pocket with one thing or another. I must pull up. As for you, Chettam, you are spending a fortune on those

Dorothea, submitting uneasily to this discouragement, went with Celia into the library, which was her usual

"Now, Dodo, do listen to what James says," said Celia, "else you will be getting into a scrape. You always

did, and you always will, when you set about doing as you please. And I think it is a mercy now after all that

you have got James to think for you. He lets you have your plans, only he hinders you from being taken in.

And that is the good of having a brother instead of a husband. A husband would not let you have your plans."

"As if I wanted a husband!" said Dorothea. "I only want not to have my feelings checked at every turn." Mrs.

"Now, really, Dodo," said Celia, with rather a deeper guttural than usual, "you ARE contradictory: first one

thing and then another. You used to submit to Mr. Casaubon quite shamefully: I think you would have given

"Of course I submitted to him, because it was my duty; it was my feeling for him," said Dorothea, looking

"Then why can't you think it your duty to submit a little to what James wishes?" said Celia, with a sense of

stringency in her argument. "Because he only wishes what is for your own good. And, of course, men know

best about everything, except what women know better." Dorothea laughed and forgot her tears.

"Well, I mean about babies and those things," explained Celia. "I should not give up to James when I knew

When Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode's anxiety by telling her that her husband had been seized with

faintness at the meeting, but that he trusted soon to see him better and would call again the next day, unless

shesent for him earlier, he went directly home, got on his horse, and rode three miles out of the town for the

He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse

the day on which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that bad happened to him there seemed a mere

preparation for this hateful fatality, which had come as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make

even people who had only vulgar standards regard his reputation as irrevocably damaged. In such moments a

man can hardly escape being unloving. Lydgate thought of himself as the sufferer, and of others as the agents

who had injured his lot. He had meant everything to turn out differently; and others had thrust themselves

into his life and thwarted his purposes. His marriage seemed an unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of

going to Rosamond before he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the mere sight of her should

exasperate him and make him behave unwarrantably. There are episodes in most men's lives in which their

highest qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill their inward vision: Lydgate's

tenderheartedness was present just then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an emotion that

swayed him to tenderness. For he was very miserable. Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual

life the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it can understand the grief of one

who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soulwasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

How was he to live on without vindicating himself among people who suspected him of baseness? How

could he go silently away from Middlemarch as if he were retreating before a just condemnation? And yet

For that scene at the meeting, which he had just witnessed, although it had told him no particulars, had been

enough to make his own situation thoroughly clear to him. Bulstrode had been in dread of scandalous

disclosures on the part of Raffles. Lydgate could now construct all the probabilities of the case. "He was

afraid of some betrayal in my hearing: all he wanted was to bind me to him by a strong obligation: that was

why he passed on a sudden from hardness to liberality. And he may have tampered with the patienthe may

have disobeyed my orders. I fear he did. But whether he did or not, the world believes that he somehow or

other poisoned the man and that I winked at the crime, if I didn't help in it. And yetand yet he may not be

guilty of the last offence; and it is just possible that the change towards me may have been a genuine

relentingthe effect of second thoughts such as he alleged. What we call the `just possible' is sometimes true

and the thing we find it easier to believe is grossly false. In his last dealings with this man Bulstrode may

There was a benumbing cruelty in his position. Even if he renounced every other consideration than that of

justifying himself if he met shrugs, cold glances, and avoidance as an accusation, and made a public

statement of all the facts as he knew them, who would be convinced? It would be playing the part of a fool to

offer his own testimony on behalf of himself, and say, "I did not take the money as a bribe." The

circumstances would always be stronger than his assertion. And besides, to come forward and tell everything

about himself must include declarations about Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of others against

him. He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's existence when he first mentioned his pressing need of

money to Bulstrode, and that he took the money innocently as a result of that communication, not knowing

that a new motive for the loan might have arisen on his being called in to this man. And after all, the

But then came the question whether he should have acted in precisely the same way if he had not taken the

money? Certainly, if Raffles had continued alive and susceptible of further treatment when he arrived, and he

had then imagined any disobedience to his orders on the part of Bulstrode, he would have made a strict

inquiry, and if his conjecture had been verified he would have thrown up the case, in spite of his recent heavy

obligation. But if he had not received any money if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation

of bankruptcy would he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding the man dead?would

the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode would the dubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument

that his own treatment would pass for the wrong with most members of his professionhave had just the

That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness while he was reviewing the facts and resisting all

reproach. If he had been independent, this matter of a patient's treatment and the distinct rule that he must do

or see done that which he believed best for the life committed to him, would have been the point on which he

would have been the sturdiest. As it was, he had rested in the consideration that disobedience to his orders,

however it might have arisen, could not be considered a crime, that in the dominant opinion obedience to his

orders was just as likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one of etiquette. Whereas, again and again,

in his time of freedom, he had denounced the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt and had

said "the purest experiment in treatment may still be conscientious: my business is to take care of life, and

to do the best I can think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to

mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive." Alas!

the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of money obligation and selfish respects.

"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate,

with a renewed outburst of rebellion against the oppression of his lot. "And yet they will all feel warranted in

making a wide space between me and them, as if I were a leper! My practice and my reputation are utterly

damned I can see that. Even if I could be cleared by valid evidence, it would make little difference to the

blessed world here. I have been set down as tainted and should be cheapened to them all the same."

Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him, that just when he had been paying off

his debts and getting cheerfully on his feet, the townsmen were avoiding him or looking strangely. at him,

and in two instances it came to his knowledge that patients of his had called in another practitioner. The

No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a hopeless misconstruction easily turned into a

dogged resistance. The scowl which occasionally showed itself on his square brow was not a meaningless

accident. Already when he was reentering the town after that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain, he

was setting his mind on remaining in Middlemarch in spite of the worst that could be done against him. He

would not retreat before calumny, as if he submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no act of his

should show that he was afraid. It belonged to the generosity as well as defiant force of his nature that he

resolved not to shrink from showing to the full his sense of obligation to Bulstrode. It was true that the

association with this man had been fatal to him true that if he had had the thousand pounds still in his

hands with all his debts unpaid he would have returned the money to Bulstrode, and taken beggary rather than

the rescue which had been sullied with the suspicion of a bribe (for, remember, he was one of the proudest

among the sons of men)nevertheless, he would not turn away from this crushed fellowmortal whose aid

he had used, and make a pitiful effort to get acquittal for himself by howling against another. "I shall do as I

think right, and explain to nobody. They will try to starve me out, but" he was going on with an obstinate

resolve, but he was getting near home, and the thought of Rosamond urged itself again into that chief place

from which it had been thrust by the agonized struggles of wounded honor and pride.

How would Rosamond take it all? Here was another weight of chain to drag, and poor Lydgate was in a bad

mood for bearing her dumb mastery. He had no impulse to tell her the trouble which must soon be common

to them both. He preferred waiting for the incidental disclosure which events must soon bring about.

In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town held a bad opinion of her husband. No

feminine intimate might carry her friendship so far as to make a plain statement to the wife of the unpleasant

fact known or believed about her husband; but when a woman with her thoughts much at leisure got them

suddenly employed on something grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moral impulses were

called into play which tended to stimulate utterance. Candor was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch

phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful

view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for its

opinion. Then, again, there was the love of trutha wide phrase, but meaning in this relation, a lively

objection to seeing a wife look happier than her husband's character warranted, or manifest too much

satisfaction in her lotthe poor thing should have some hint given her that if she knew the truth she would

have less complacency in her bonnet, and in light dishes for a supperparty. Stronger than all, there was the

regard for a friend's moral improvement, sometimes called her soul, which was likely to be benefited by

remarks tending to gloom, uttered with the accompaniment of pensive staring at the furniture and a manner

implying that the speaker would not tell what was on her mind, from regard to the feelings of her hearer. On

the whole, one might say that an ardent charity was at work setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbor

There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial misfortunes would in different ways be

likely to call forth more of this moral activity than Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs. Bulstrode was not

an object of dislike, and had never consciously injured any human being. Men had always thought her a

handsome comfortable woman, and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's hypocrisy that he had

chosen a redblooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly and melancholy person suited to his low esteem for earthly

pleasure. When the scandal about her husband was disclosed they remarked of her"Ah, poor woman! She's

as honest as the daySHE never suspected anything wrong in him, you may depend on it." Women, who

were intimate with her, talked together much of "poor Harriet," imagined what her feelings must be when she

came to know everything, and conjectured how much she had already come to know. There was no spiteful

disposition towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain what it would be well for

her to feel and do under the circumstances, which of course kept the imagination occupied with her character

and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now. With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her

position it was inevitable to associate Rosamond, whose prospects were under the same blight with her aunt's.

Rosamond was more severely criticised and less pitied, though she too, as one of the good old Vincy family

who had always been known in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage with an interloper. The

Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they lay on the surface: there was never anything bad to be "found out"

concerning them. Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from any resemblance to her husband. Harriet's faults were

"She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for a small party, "though she has got into the

way of putting her religion forward, to conform to her husband; she has tried to hold her head up above

Middlemarch by making it known that she invites clergymen and heavenknowswho from Riverston and

"We can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "because few of the best people in the town cared to

"Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "I think he must be sorry now."

"But he was never fond of him in his heartthat every one knows," said Mrs. Tom Toller. "Mr. Thesiger

never goes into extremes. He keeps to the truth in what is evangelical. It is only clergymen like Mr. Tyke,

who want to use Dissenting hymnbooks and that low kind of religion, who ever found Bulstrode to their

"I understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "And well he may be: they say

"And of coarse it is a discredit to his doctrines," said Mrs. Sprague, who was elderly, and oldfashioned in

"People will not make a boast of being methodistical in Middlemarch for a good while to come."

"I think we must not set down people's bad actions to their religion," said falconfaced Mrs. Plymdale, who

"Oh, my dear, we are forgetting," said Mrs. Sprague. "We ought not to be talking of this before you."

"I am sure I have no reason to be partial," said Mrs. Plymdale, coloring. "It's true Mr. Plymdale has always

been on good terms with Mr. Bulstrode, and Harriet Vincy was my friend long before she married him. But I

have always kept my own opinions and told her where she was wrong, poor thing. Still, in point of religion, I

must say, Mr. Bulstrode might have done what he has, and worse, and yet have been a man of no religion. I

don't say that there has not been a little too much of thatI like moderation myself. But truth is truth. The

"Well," said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, "all I can say is, that I think she ought to separate from him."

"I can't say that," said Mrs. Sprague. "She took him for better or worse, you know."

"But `worse' can never mean finding out that your husband is fit for Newgate," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "Fancy

"Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if such men are to be taken care of and waited on by

"And a good wife poor Harriet has been," said Mrs. Plymdale. "She thinks her husband the first of men. It's

"Well, we shall see what she will do," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "I suppose she knows nothing yet, poor creature. I

do hope and trust I shall not see her, for I should be frightened to death lest I should say anything about her

"I should hardly think so," said Mrs. Tom Toller. "We hear that he is ill, and has never stirred out of the

house since the meeting on Thursday; but she was with her girls at church yesterday, and they had new

Tuscan bonnets. Her own had a feather in it. I have never seen that her religion made any difference in her

"She wears very neat patterns always," said Mrs. Plymdale, a little stung. "And that feather I know she got

dyed a pale lavender on purpose to be consistent. I must say it of Harriet that she wishes to do right."

"As to her knowing what has happened, it can't be kept from her long," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "The Vincys

know, for Mr. Vincy was at the meeting. It will he a great blow to him. There is his daughter as well as his

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Sprague. "Nobody supposes that Mr. Lydgate can go on holding up his head in

Middlemarch, things look so black about the thousand pounds he took just at that man's death. It really makes

"I am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as I am for her aunt," said Mrs. Plymdale. "She needed a

"I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere," said Mrs. Sprague. "That is what is generally

"And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet," said Mrs. Plymdale. "If ever a woman was crushed, she will

be. I pity her from my heart. And with all her faults, few women are better. From a girl she had the neatest

ways, and was always goodhearted, and as open as the day. You might look into her drawers when you

wouldalways the same. And so she has brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how hard it will be for

"The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do," said Mrs. Sprague. "He says

"That would suit HER well enough, I dare say," said Mrs. Plymdale; "there is that kind of lightness about her.

But she got that from her mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always gave her good advice,

Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication of feeling. There had been not only her

intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode, but also a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing house with

Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined her to desire that the mildest view of his character

should be the true one, but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming to palliate his culpability.

Again, the late alliance of her family with the Tollers had brought her in connection with the best circle,

which gratified her in every direction except in the inclination to those serious views which she believed to be

the best in another sense. The sharp little woman's conscience was somewhat troubled in the adjustment of

these opposing "bests," and of her griefs and satisfactions under late events, which were likely to humble

those who needed humbling, but also to fall heavily on her old friend whose faults she would have preferred

Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the oncoming tread of calamity than in the

busier stirring of that secret uneasiness which had always been present in her since the last visit of Raffles to

The Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill to Stone Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain

there and watch over him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that Raffles had been employed and aided

in earlierdays, and that this made a tie of benevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness; and she

had been since then innocently cheered by her husband's more hopeful speech about his own health and

ability to continue his attention to business. The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had brought him home ill

from the meeting, and in spite of comforting assurances during the next few days, she cried in private from

the conviction that her husband was not suffering from bodily illness merely, but from something that

afflicted his mind. He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sit with him, alleging nervous

susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet she suspected that in shutting himself up in his private room he

wanted to be busy with his papers. Something, she felt sure, had happened. Perhaps it was some great loss of

money; and she was kept in the dark. Not daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth

"Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth. Has anything happened to Mr. Bulstrode?"

"Some little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively. He felt that it was not for him to make the painful

"But what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly at him with her large dark eyes.

"There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms," said Lydgate. "Strong men can stand it, but

it tells on people in proportion to the delicacy of their systems. It is often impossible to account for the

precise moment of an attackor rather, to say why the strength gives way at a particular moment."

Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer. There remained in her the belief that some calamity had

befallen her husband, of which she was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in her nature strongly to object to

such concealment. She begged leave for her daughters to sit with their father, and drove into the town to pay

some visits, conjecturing that if anything were known to have gone wrong in Mr. Bulstrode's affairs, she

She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then drove to Mrs. Hackbutt's on the other side of the

churchyard. Mrs. Hackbutt saw her coming from an upstairs window, and remembering her former alarm

lest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost bound in consistency to send word that she was not at home;

but against that, there was a sudden strong desire within her for the excitement of an interview in which she

was quite determined not to make the slightest allusion to what was in her mind.

Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawingroom, and Mrs. Hackbutt went to her, with more

tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted

"I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week," said Mrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory

remarks. "But Mr. Bulstrode was taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday that I have not liked to leave the

Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other held against her chest, and let her eyes

"Yes, he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude. "The land is to be bought by subscription, I

"Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be buried in it," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "It is an

awful visitation. But I always think Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it is being used to it from a

child; but I never saw the town I should like to live at better, and especially our end."

"I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch, Mrs. Bulstrode," said Mrs. Hackbutt,

with a slight sigh. "Still, we must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be east. Though I am sure

Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, "if you take my advice you will part from your husband," but it seemed clear to

her that the poor woman knew nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on her head, and she herself could do no

more than prepare her a little. Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly rather chill and trembling: there was evidently

something unusual behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's; but though she had set out with the desire to be

fully informed, she found herself unable now to pursue her brave purpose, and turning the conversation by an

inquiry about the young Hackbutts, she soon took her leave saying that she was going to see Mrs. Plymdale.

On her way thither she tried to imagine that there might have been some unusually warm sparring at the

meeting between Mr. Bulstrode and some of his frequent opponentsperhaps Mr. Hackbutt might have been

But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting explanation seemed no longer tenable.

"Selina" received her with a pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on the

commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary quarrel of which the most important

consequence was a perturbation of Mr. Bulstrode's health. Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought that she

would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else; but she found to her surprise that an old friend is not

always the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there was the barrier of remembered

communication under other circumstances there was the dislike of being pitied and informed by one who

had been long wont to allow her the superiority. For certain words of mysterious appropriateness that Mrs.

Plymdale let fall about her resolution never to turn her back on her friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode that

what had happened must be some kind of misfortune, and instead of being able to say with her native

directness, "What is it that you have in your mind?" she found herself anxious to get away before she had

heard anything more explicit. She began to have an agitating certainty that the misfortune was something

more than the mere loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact that Selina now, just as Mrs. Hackbutt

had done before, avoided noticing what she said about her husband, as they would have avoided noticing a

She said goodby with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive to Mr. Vincy's warehouse. In that short

drive her dread gathered so much force from the sense of darkness, that when she entered the private

countinghouse where her brother sat at his desk, her knees trembled and her usually florid face was deathly

pale. Something of the same effect was produced in him by the sight of her: he rose from his seat to meet her,

That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained that concentrated experience which

in great crises of emotion reveals the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate act which will end an

intermediate struggle. Without that memory of Raffles she might still have thought only of monetary ruin, but

now along with her brother's look and words there darted into her mind the idea of some guilt in her

husbandthen, under the working of terror came the image of her husband exposed to disgrace and then,

after an instant of scorching shame in which she felt only the eyes of the world, with one leap of her heart she

was at his side in mournful but unreproaching fellowship with shame and isolation. All this went on within

her in a mere flash of time while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes to her brother, who stood over

He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments, making her aware that the scandal went much

"People will talk," he said. "Even if a man has been acquitted by a jury, they'll talk, and nod and winkand

as far as the world goes, a man might often as well be guilty as not. It's a breakdown blow, and it damages

Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don't pretend to say what is the truth. I only wish we had never heard the

name of either Bulstrode or Lydgate. You'd better have been a Vincy all your life, and so had Rosamond."

"But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet. People don't blame YOU. And I'll stand by you whatever

you make up your mind to do," said the brother, with rough but wellmeaning affectionateness.

"Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "I feel very weak."

And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am not well, my dear; I must go and lie

She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped

life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on her

husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: the twenty years in which she had believed in him

and venerated him by virtue of his concealments came back with particulars that made them seem an odious

deceit. He had married her with that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith left to protest his

innocence of the worst that was imputed to him. Her honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of a merited

But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit

within her. The man whose prosperity she had shared through nearly half a life, and who had unvaryingly

cherished hernow that punishment had befallen him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him.

There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies on the same couch with the forsaken soul,

withering it the more by unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she should unlock it

ready to go down to her unhappy husband and espouse his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not

reproach. But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to sob out her farewell to all the gladness

and pride of her life. When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by some little acts which might

seem mere folly to a hard onlooker; they were her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible that

she had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation. She took off all her ornaments and put on a

plain black gown, and instead of wearing her muchadorned cap and large bows of hair, she brushed her hair

down and put on a plain bonnetcap, which made her look suddenly like an early Methodist.

Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in saying that she was not well, had spent the

time in an agitation equal to hers. He had looked forward to her learning the truth from others, and had

acquiesced in that probability, as something easier to him than any confession. But now that he imagined the

moment of her knowledge come, he awaited the result in anguish. His daughters had been obliged to consent

to leave him, and though he had allowed some food to be brought to him, he had not touched it. He felt

himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery. Perhaps he should never see his wife's face with affection in it

again. And if he turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the pressure of retribution.

It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his wife entered. He dared not look up at her.

He sat with his eyes bent down, and as she went towards him she thought he looked smaller he seemed so

withered and shrunken. A movement of new compassion and old tenderness went through her like a great

wave, and putting one hand on his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other on his shoulder, she

He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half amazed for a moment: her pale face, her changed,

mourning dress, the trembling about her mouth, all said, "I know;" and her hands and eyes rested gently on

him. He burst out crying and they cried together, she sitting at his side. They could not yet speak to each

other of the shame which she was bearing with him, or of the acts which had brought it down on them. His

confession was silent, and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Openminded as she was, she nevertheless

shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness, as she would have shrunk

from flakes of fire. She could not say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not say, "I

Rosamond had a gleam of returning cheerfulness when the house was freed from the threatening figure, and

when all the disagreeable creditors were paid. But she was not joyous: her married life had fulfilled none of

her hopes, and had been quite spoiled for her imagination. In this brief interval of calm, Lydgate,

remembering that he had often been stormy in his hours of perturbation, and mindful of the pain Rosamond

had had to bear, was carefully gentle towards her; but he, too, had lost some of his old spirit, and he still felt

it necessary to refer to an economical change in their way of living as a matter of course, trying to reconcile

her to it gradually, and repressing his anger when she answered by wishing that he would go to live in

London. When she did not make this answer, she listened languidly, and wondered what she had that was

worth living for. The hard and contemptuous words which had fallen from her husband in his anger had

deeply offended that vanity which he had at first called into active enjoyment; and what she regarded as his

perverse way of looking at things, kept up a secret repulsion, which made her receive all his tenderness as a

poor substitute for the happiness he had failed to give her. They were at a disadvantage with their neighbors,

and there was no longer any outlook towards Quallinghamthere was no outlook anywhere except in an

occasional letter from Will Ladislaw. She had felt stung and disappointed by Will's resolution to quit

Middlemarch, for in spite of what she knew and guessed about his admiration for Dorothea, she secretly

cherished the belief that he had, or would necessarily come to have, much more admiration for herself;

Rosamond being one of those women who live much in the idea that each man they meet would have

preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless. Mrs. Casaubon was all very well; but Will's interest in

her dated before he knew Mrs. Lydgate. Rosamond took his way of talking to herself, which was a mixture of

playful faultfinding and hyperbolical gallantry, as the disguise of a deeper feeling; and in his presence she

felt that agreeable titillation of vanity and sense of romantic drama which Lydgate's presence had no longer

the magic to create. She even fanciedwhat will not men and women fancy in these matters? that Will

exaggerated his admiration for Mrs. Casaubon in order to pique herself. In this way poor Rosamond's brain

had been busy before Will's departure. He would have made, she thought, a much more suitable husband for

her than she had found in Lydgate. No notion could have been falser than this, for Rosamond's discontent in

her marriage was due to the conditions of marriage itself, to its demand for selfsuppression and tolerance,

and not to the nature of her husband; but the easy conception of an unreal Better had a sentimental charm

which diverted her ennui. She constructed a little romance which was to vary the flatness of her life: Will

Ladislaw was always to be a bachelor and live near her, always to be at her command, and have an

understood though never fully expressed passion for her, which would be sending out lambent flames every

now and then in interesting scenes. His departure had been a proportionate disappointment, and had sadly

increased her weariness of Middlemarch; but at first she had the alternative dream of pleasures in store from

her intercourse with the family at Quallingham. Since then the troubles of her married life had deepened, and

the absence of other relief encouraged her regretful rumination over that thin romance which she had once fed

on. Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings,

sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love. Will Ladislaw had written

chatty letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had replied: their separation, she felt, was not likely to

be final, and the change she now most longed for was that Lydgate should go to live in London; everything

would be agreeable in London; and she had set to work with quiet determination to win this result, when

It came shortly before the memorable meeting at the townhall, and was nothing less than a letter from Will

Ladislaw to Lydgate, which turned indeed chiefly on his new interest in plans of colonization, but mentioned

incidentally, that he might find it necessary to pay a visit to Middlemarch within the next few weeksa very

pleasant necessity, he said, almost as good as holidays to a schoolboy. He hoped there was his old place on

the rug, and a great deal of music in store for him. But he was quite uncertain as to the time. While Lydgate

was reading the letter to Rosamond, her face looked like a reviving flowerit grew prettier and more

blooming. There was nothing unendurable now: the debts were paid, Mr. Ladislaw was coming, and Lydgate

would be persuaded to leave Middlemarch and settle in London, which was "so different from a provincial

That was a bright bit of morning. But soon the sky became black over poor Rosamond. The presence of a

new gloom in her husband, about which he was entirely reserved towards herfor he dreaded to expose his

lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception soon received a painfully strange explanation, alien

to all her previous notions of what could affect her happiness. In the new gayety of her spirits, thinking that

Lydgate had merely a worse fit of moodiness than usual, causing him to leave her remarks unanswered, and

evidently to keep out of her way as much as possible, she chose, a few days after the meeting, and without

speaking to him on the subject, to send out notes of invitation for a small evening party, feeling convinced

that this was a judicious step, since people seemed to have been keeping aloof from them, and wanted

restoring to the old habit of intercourse. When the invitations had been accepted, she would tell Lydgate, and

give him a wise admonition as to how a medical man should behave to his neighbors; for Rosamond had the

gravest little airs possible about other people's duties. But all the invitations were declined, and the last

"This is Chichely's scratch. What is he writing to you about?" said Lydgate, wonderingly, as he handed the

note to her. She was obliged to let him see it, and, looking at her severely, he said

"Why on earth have you been sending out invitations without telling me, Rosamond? I beg, I insist that you

will not invite any one to this house. I suppose you have been inviting others, and they have refused too." She

"Yes, certainly I hear you," said Rosamond, turning her head aside with the movement of a graceful

Lydgate tossed his head without any grace and walked out of the room, feeling himself dangerous.

Rosamond's thought was, that he was getting more and more unbearablenot that there was any new special

reason for this peremptoriness His indisposition to tell her anything in which he was sure beforehand that she

would not be interested was growing into an unreflecting habit, and she was in ignorance of everything

connected with the thousand pounds except that the loan had come from her uncle Bulstrode. Lydgate's

odious humors and their neighbors' apparent avoidance of them had an unaccountable date for her in their

relief from money difficulties. If the invitations had been accepted she would have gone to invite her mamma

and the rest, whom she had seen nothing of for several days; and she now put on her bonnet to go and inquire

what had become of them all, suddenly feeling as if there were a conspiracy to leave her in isolation with a

husband disposed to offend everybody. It was after the dinner hour, and she found her father and mother

seated together alone in the drawingroom. They greeted her with sad looks, saying "Well, my dear!" and no

more. She had never seen her father look so downcast; and seating herself near him she said

He did not answer, but Mrs. Vincy said, "Oh, my dear, have you heard nothing? It won't be long before it

"Is it anything about Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning pale. The idea of trouble immediately connected itself

"Oh, my dear, yes. To think of your marrying into this trouble. Debt was bad enough, but this will be worse."

"Stay, stay, Lucy," said Mr. Vincy. "Have you heard nothing about your uncle Bulstrode, Rosamond?"

"No, papa," said the poor thing, feeling as if trouble were not anything she had before experienced, but some

Her father told her everything, saying at the end, "It's better for you to know, my dear. I think Lydgate must

leave the town. Things have gone against him. I dare say he couldn't help it. I don't accuse him of any harm,"

said Mr. Vincy. He had always before been disposed to find the utmost fault with Lydgate.

The shock to Rosamond was terrible. It seemed to her that no lot could be so cruelly hard as hers to have

married a man who had become the centre of infamous suspicions. In many cases it is inevitable that the

shame is felt to be the worst part of crime; and it would have required a great deal of disentangling reflection,

such as had never entered into Rosamond's life, for her in these moments to feel that her trouble was less than

if her husband had been certainly known to have done something criminal. All the shame seemed to be there.

And she had innocently married this man with the belief that he and his family were a glory to her! She

showed her usual reticence to her parents, and only said, that if Lydgate had done as she wished he would

But Rosamond went home with a sense of justified repugnance towards her husband. What had he really

donehow had he really acted? She did not know. Why had he not told her everything? He did not speak to

her on the subject, and of course she could not speak to him. It came into her mind once that she would ask

her father to let her go home again; but dwelling on that prospect made it seem utter dreariness to her: a

married woman gone back to live with her parents life seemed to have no meaning for her in such a

The next two days Lydgate observed a change in her, and believed that she had heard the bad news. Would

she speak to him about it, or would she go on forever in the silence which seemed to imply that she believed

him guilty? We must remember that he was in a morbid state of mind, in which almost all contact was pain.

Certainly Rosamond in this case had equal reason to complain of reserve and want of confidence on his part;

but in the bitterness of his soul he excused himself; was he not justified in shrinking from the task of

telling her, since now she knew the truth she had no impulse to speak to him? But a deeperlying

consciousness that he was in fault made him restless, and the silence between them became intolerable to

him; it was as if they were both adrift on one piece of wreck and looked away from each other.

He thought, "I am a fool. Haven't I given up expecting anything? I have married care, not help." And that

"Yes," she answered, laying down her work, which she had been carrying on with a languid

There was silence. Lydgate thought, "If she has any trust in me any notion of what I am, she ought to

But Rosamond on her side went on moving her fingers languidly. Whatever was to be said on the subject she

expected to come from Tertius. What did she know? And if he were innocent of any wrong, why did he not

This silence of hers brought a new rush of gall to that bitter mood in which Lydgate had been saying to

himself that nobody believed in himeven Farebrother had not come forward. He had begun to question her

with the intent that their conversation should disperse the chill fog which had gathered between them, but he

felt his resolution checked by despairing resentment. Even this trouble, like the rest, she seemed to regard as

if it were hers alone. He was always to her a being apart, doing what she objected to. He started from his

chair with an angry impulse, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, walked up and down the room. There was

an underlying consciousness all the while that he should have to master this anger, and tell her everything,

and convince her of the facts. For he had almost learned the lesson that he must bend himself to her nature,

and that because she came short in her sympathy, he must give the more. Soon he recurred to his intention of

opening himself: the occasion must not be lost. If he could bring her to feel with some solemnity that here

was a slander which must be met and not run away from, and that the whole trouble had come out of his

desperate want of money, it would be a moment for urging powerfully on her that they should be one in the

resolve to do with as little money as possible, so that they might weather the bad time and keep themselves

independent. He would mention the definite measures which he desired to take, and win her to a willing

He did not know how long he had been walking uneasily backwards and forwards, but Rosamond felt that it

was long, and wished that he would sit down. She too had begun to think this an opportunity for urging on

Tertius what he ought to do. Whatever might be the truth about all this misery, there was one dread which

Lydgate at last seated himself, not in his usual chair, but in one nearer to Rosamond, leaning aside in it

towards her, and looking at her gravely before he reopened the sad subject. He had conquered himself so far,

and was about to speak with a sense of solemnity, as on an occasion which was not to be repeated. He had

even opened his lips, when Rosamond, letting her hands fall, looked at him and said

"Surely now at last you have given up the idea of staying in Middlemarch. I cannot go on living here. Let us

go to London. Papa, and every one else, says you had better go. Whatever misery I have to put up with, it will

Lydgate felt miserably jarred. Instead of that critical outpouring for which he had prepared himself with

effort, here was the old round to be gone through again. He could not bear it. With a quick change of

Perhaps if he had been strong enough to persist in his determination to be the more because she was less, that

evening might have had a better issue. If his energy could have borne down that check, he might still have

wrought on Rosamond's vision and will. We cannot be sure that any natures, however inflexible or peculiar,

will resist this effect from a more massive being than their own. They may be taken by storm and for the

moment converted, becoming part of the soul which enwraps them in the ardor of its movement. But poor

Lydgate had a throbbing pain within him, and his energy had fallen short of its task.

The beginning of mutual understanding and resolve seemed as far off as ever; nay, it seemed blocked out by

the sense of unsuccessful effort. They lived on from day to day with their thoughts still apart, Lydgate going

about what work he had in a mood of despair, and Rosamond feeling, with some justification, that he was

behaving cruelly. It was of no use to say anything to Tertius; but when Will Ladislaw came, she was

determined to tell him everything. In spite of her general reticence, she needed some one who would

Some days later, Lydgate was riding to Lowick Manor, in consequence of a summons from Dorothea. The

summons had not been unexpected, since it had followed a letter from Mr. Bulstrode, in which he stated that

he had resumed his arrangements for quitting Middlemarch, and must remind Lydgate of his previous

communications about the Hospital, to the purport of which he still adhered. It had been his duty, before

taking further steps, to reopen the subject with Mrs. Casaubon, who now wished, as before, to discuss the

question with Lydgate. "Your views may possibly have undergone some change," wrote Mr. Bulstrode; "but,

Dorothea awaited his arrival with eager interest. Though, in deference to her masculine advisers, she had

refrained from what Sir James had called "interfering in this Bulstrode business," the hardship of Lydgate's

position was continually in her mind, and when Bulstrode applied to her again about the hospital, she felt that

the opportunity was come to her which she had been hindered from hastening. In her luxurious home,

wandering under the boughs of her own great trees, her thought was going out over the lot of others, and her

emotions were imprisoned. The idea of some active good within her reach, "haunted her like a passion," and

another's need having once come to her as a distinct image, preoccupied her desire with the yearning to give

relief, and made her own ease tasteless. She was full of confident hope about this interview with Lydgate,

never heeding what was said of his personal reserve; never heeding that she was a very young woman.

Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence on her youth and sex when she was

As she sat waiting in the library, she could do nothing but live through again all the past scenes which had

brought Lydgate into her memories. They all owed their significance to her marriage and its troubles but

no; there were two occasions in which the image of Lydgate had come painfully in connection with his wife

and some one else. The pain had been allayed for Dorothea, but it had left in her an awakened conjecture as

to what Lydgate's marriage might be to him, a susceptibility to the slightest hint about Mrs. Lydgate. These

thoughts were like a drama to her, and made her eyes bright, and gave an attitude of suspense to her whole

frame, though she was only looking out from the brown library on to the turf and the bright green buds which

When Lydgate came in, she was almost shocked at the change in his face, which was strikingly perceptible to

her who had not seen him for two months. It was not the change of emaciation, but that effect which even

young faces will very soon show from the persistent presence of resentment and despondency. Her cordial

look, when she put out her hand to him, softened his expression, but only with melancholy.

"I have wished very much to see you for a long while, Mr. Lydgate," said Dorothea when they were seated

opposite each other; "but I put off asking you to come until Mr. Bulstrode applied to me again about the

Hospital. I know that the advantage of keeping the management of it separate from that of the Infirmary

depends on you, or, at least, on the good which you are encouraged to hope for from having it under your

"You want to decide whether you should give a generous support to the Hospital," said Lydgate. "I cannot

conscientiously advise you to do it in dependence on any activity of mine. I may be obliged to leave the

He spoke curtly, feeling the ache of despair as to his being able to carry out any purpose that Rosamond had

"Not because there is no one to believe in you?" said Dorothea, pouring out her words in clearness from a full

heart. "I know the unhappy mistakes about you. I knew them from the first moment to be mistakes. You have

It was the first assurance of belief in him that had fallen on Lydgate's ears. He drew a deep breath, and said,

"Thank you." He could say no more: it was something very new and strange in his life that these few words

"I beseech you to tell me how everything was," said Dorothea, fearlessly. "I am sure that the truth would clear

Lydgate started up from his chair and went towards the window, forgetting where he was. He had so often

gone over in his mind the possibility of explaining everything without aggravating appearances that would

tell, perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode, and had so often decided against ithe had so often said to himself

that his assertions would not change people's impressions that Dorothea's words sounded like a temptation

"Tell me, pray," said Dorothea, with simple earnestness; "then we can consult together. It is wicked to let

Lydgate turned, remembering where he was, and saw Dorothea's face looking up at him with a sweet trustful

gravity. The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us:

we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged

in the wholeness of our character. That influence was beginning to act on Lydgate, who had for many days

been seeing all life as one who is dragged and struggling amid the throng. He sat down again, and felt that he

was recovering his old self in the consciousness that he was with one who believed in it.

"I don't want," he said, "to bear hard on Bulstrode, who has lent me money of which I was in needthough I

would rather have gone without it now. He is hunted down and miserable, and has only a poor thread of life

in him. But I should like to tell you everything. It will be a comfort to me to speak where belief has gone

beforehand, and where I shall not seem to be offering assertions of my own honesty. You will feel what is

"Do trust me," said Dorothea; "I will not repeat anything without your leave. But at the very least, I could say

that you have made all the circumstances clear to me, and that I know you are not in any way guilty. Mr.

Farebrother would believe me, and my uncle, and Sir James Chettam. Nay, there are persons in Middlemarch

to whom I could go; although they don't know much of me, they would believe me. They would know that I

could have no other motive than truth and justice. I would take any pains to clear you. I have very little to do.

Dorothea's voice, as she made this childlike picture of what she would do, might have been almost taken as a

proof that she could do it effectively. The searching tenderness of her woman's tones seemed made for a

defence against ready accusers. Lydgate did not stay to think that she was Quixotic: he gave himself up, for

the first time in his life, to the exquisite sense of leaning entirely on a generous sympathy, without any check

of proud reserve. And he told her everything, from the time when, under the pressure of his difficulties, he

unwillingly made his first application to Bulstrode; gradually, in the relief of speaking, getting into a more

thorough utterance of what had gone on in his mind entering fully into the fact that his treatment of the

patient was opposed to the dominant practice, into his doubts at the last, his ideal of medical duty, and his

uneasy consciousness that the acceptance of the money had made some difference in his private inclination

and professional behavior, though not in his fulfilment of any publicly recognized obligation.

"It has come to my knowledge since," he added, "that Hawley sent some one to examine the housekeeper at

Stone Court, and she said that she gave the patient all the opium in the phial I left, as well as a good deal of

brandy. But that would not have been opposed to ordinary prescriptions, even of firstrate men. The

suspicions against me had no hold there: they are grounded on the knowledge that I took money, that

Bulstrode had strong motives for wishing the man to die, and that he gave me the money as a bribe to concur

in some malpractices or other against the patientthat in any case I accepted a bribe to hold my tongue.

They are just the suspicions that cling the most obstinately, because they lie in people's inclination and can

never be disproved. How my orders came to be disobeyed is a question to which I don't know the answer. It

is still possible that Bulstrode was innocent of any criminal intentioneven possible that he had nothing to

do with the disobedience, and merely abstained from mentioning it. But all that has nothing to do with the

public belief. It is one of those cases on which a man is condemned on the ground of his character it is

believed that he has committed a crime in some undefined way, because he had the motive for doing it; and

Bulstrode's character has enveloped me, because I took his money. I am simply blighted like a damaged

"Oh, it is hard!" said Dorothea. "I understand the difficulty there is in your vindicating yourself. And that all

this should have come to you who had meant to lead a higher life than the common, and to find out better

waysI cannot bear to rest in this as unchangeable. I know you meant that. I remember what you said to me

when you first spoke to me about the hospital. There is no sorrow I have thought more about than thatto

"Yes," said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found room for the full meaning of his grief. "I had some

ambition. I meant everything to be different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But the most

"Suppose," said Dorothea, meditatively,"suppose we kept on the Hospital according to the present plan,

and you stayed here though only with the friendship and support of a few, the evil feeling towards you would

gradually die out; there would come opportunities in which people would be forced to acknowledge that they

had been unjust to you, because they would see that your purposes were pure. You may still win a great fame

like the Louis and Laennec I have heard you speak of, and we shall all be proud of you," she ended, with a

"That might do if I had my old trust in myself," said Lydgate, mournfully. "Nothing galls me more than the

notion of turning round and running away before this slander, leaving it unchecked behind me. Still, I can't

"It would be quite worth my while," said Dorothea, simply. "Only think. I am very uncomfortable with my

money, because they tell me I have too little for any great scheme of the sort I like best, and yet I have too

much. I don't know what to do. I have seven hundred ayear of my own fortune, and nineteen hundred ayear

that Mr. Casaubon left me, and between three and four thousand of ready money in the bank. I wished to raise

money and pay it off gradually out of my income which I don't want, to buy land with and found a village

which should be a school of industry; but Sir James and my uncle have convinced me that the risk would be

too great. So you see that what I should most rejoice at would be to have something good to do with my

money: I should like it to make other people's lives better to them. It makes me very uneasycoming all to

A smile broke through the gloom of Lydgate's face. The childlike graveeyed earnestness with which

Dorothea said all this was irresistibleblent into an adorable whale with her ready understanding of high

experience. (Of lower experience such as plays a great part in the world, poor Mrs. Casaubon had a very

blurred shortsighted knowledge, little helped by her imagination.) But she took the smile as encouragement

"I think you see now that you spoke too scrupulously," she said, in a tone of persuasion. "The hospital would

Lydgate's smile had died away. "You have the goodness as well as the money to do all that; if it could be

He hesitated a little while, looking vaguely towards the window; and she sat in silent expectation. At last he

"Why should I not tell you?you know what sort of bond marriage is. You will understand everything."

Dorothea felt her heart beginning to beat faster. Had he that sorrow too? But she feared to say any word, and

"It is impossible for me now to do anythingto take any step without considering my wife's happiness. The

thing that I might like to do if I were alone, is become impossible to me. I can't see her miserable. She

married me without knowing what she was going into, and it might have been better for her if she had not

"I know, I knowyou could not give her pain, if you were not obliged to do it," said Dorothea, with keen

"And she has set her mind against staying. She wishes to go. The troubles she has had here have wearied

"But when she saw the good that might come of staying"said Dorothea, remonstrantly, looking at Lydgate

as if he had forgotten the reasons which had just been considered. He did not speak immediately.

"She would not see it," he said at last, curtly, feeling at first that this statement must do without explanation.

"And, indeed, I have lost all spirit about carrying on my life here." He paused a moment and then, following

the impulse to let Dorothea see deeper into the difficulty of his life, he said, "The fact is, this trouble has

come upon her confusedly. We have not been able to speak to each other about it. I am not sure what is in her

mind about it: she may fear that I have really done something base. It is my fault; I ought to be more open.

"May I go and see her?" said Dorothea, eagerly. "Would she accept my sympathy? I would tell her that you

have not been blamable before any one's judgment but your own. I would tell her that you shall be cleared in

every fair mind. I would cheer her heart. Will you ask her if I may go to see her? I did see her once."

"I am sure you may," said Lydgate, seizing the proposition with some hope. "She would feel

honoredcheered, I think, by the proof that you at least have some respect for me. I will not speak to her

about your comingthat she may not connect it with my wishes at all. I know very well that I ought not to

He broke off, and there was a moment's silence. Dorothea refrained from saying what was in her mindhow

well she knew that there might be invisible barriers to speech between husband and wife. This was a point on

which even sympathy might make a wound. She returned to the more outward aspect of Lydgate's position,

"And if Mrs. Lydgate knew that there were friends who would believe in you and support you, she might then

be glad that you should stay in your place and recover your hopesand do what you meant to do. Perhaps

then you would see that it was right to agree with what I proposed about your continuing at the Hospital.

Surely you would, if you still have faith in it as a means of making your knowledge useful?"

"You need not decide immediately," she said, gently. "A few days hence it will be early enough for me to

"No; I prefer that there should be no interval left for wavering. I am no longer sure enough of myselfI

mean of what it would be possible for me to do under the changed circumstances of my life. It would be

dishonorable to let others engage themselves to anything serious in dependence on me. I might be obliged to

go away after all; I see little chance of anything else. The whole thing is too problematic; I cannot consent to

be the cause of your goodness being wasted. Nolet the new Hospital be joined with the old Infirmary, and

everything go on as it might have done if I had never come. I have kept a valuable register since I have been

there; I shall send it to a man who will make use of it," he ended bitterly. "I can think of nothing for a long

"It hurts me very much to hear you speak so hopelessly," said Dorothea. "It would be a happiness to your

friends, who believe in your future, in your power to do great things, if you would let them save you from

that. Think how much money I have; it would be like taking a burthen from me if you took some of it every

year till you got free from this fettering want of income. Why should not people do these things? It is so

"God bless you, Mrs. Casaubon!" said Lydgate, rising as if with the same impulse that made his words

energetic, and resting his arm on the back of the great leather chair he had been sitting in. "It is good that you

should have such feelings. But I am not the man who ought to allow himself to benefit by them. I have not

given guarantees enough. I must not at least sink into the degradation of being pensioned for work that I

never achieved. It is very clear to me that I must not count on anything else than getting away from

Middlemarch as soon as I can manage it. I should not be able for a long while, at the very best, to get an

income here, and and it is easier to make necessary changes in a new place. I must do as other men do, and

think what will please the world and bring in money; look for a little opening in the London crowd, and push

myself; set up in a wateringplace, or go to some southern town where there are plenty of idle English, and

get myself puffed, that is the sort of shell I must creep into and try to keep my soul alive in."

"No, it is not brave," said Lydgate, "but if a man is afraid of creeping paralysis?" Then, in another tone, "Yet

you have made a great difference in my courage by believing in me. Everything seems more bearable since I

have talked to you; and if you can clear me in a few other minds, especially in Farebrother's, I shall be deeply

grateful. The point I wish you not to mention is the fact of disobedience to my orders. That would soon get

distorted. After all, there is no evidence for me but people's opinion of me beforehand. You can only repeat

"Mr. Farebrother will believeothers will believe," said Dorothea. "I can say of you what will make it

"I don't know," said Lydgate, with something like a groan in his voice. "I have not taken a bribe yet. But there

is a pale shade of bribery which is sometimes called prosperity. You will do me another great kindness, then,

"Yes, I will. I remember how pretty she is," said Dorothea, into whose mind every impression about

As Lydgate rode away, he thought, "This young creature has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary. She

evidently thinks nothing of her own future, and would pledge away half her income at once, as if she wanted

nothing for herself but a chair to sit in from which she can look down with those clear eyes at the poor

mortals who pray to her. She seems to have what I never saw in any woman before a fountain of friendship

towards mena man can make a friend of her. Casaubon must have raised some heroic hallucination in her.

I wonder if she could have any other sort of passion for a man? Ladislaw?there was certainly an unusual

feeling between them. And Casaubon must have had a notion of it. Wellher love might help a man more

Dorothea on her side had immediately formed a plan of relieving Lydgate from his obligation to Bulstrode,

which she felt sure was a part, though small, of the galling pressure he had to bear. She sat down at once

under the inspiration of their interview, and wrote a brief note, in which she pleaded that she had more claim

than Mr. Bulstrode had to the satisfaction of providing the money which had been serviceable to

Lydgatethat it would be unkind in Lydgate not to grant her the position of being his helper in this small

matter, the favor being entirely to her who had so little that was plainly marked out for her to do with her

superfluous money. He might call her a creditor or by any other name if it did but imply that he granted her

request. She enclosed a check for a thousand pounds, and determined to take the letter with her the next day

The next day Lydgate had to go to Brassing, and told Rosamond that he should be away until the evening. Of

late she had never gone beyond her own house and garden, except to church, and once to see her papa, to

whom she said, "If Tertius goes away, you will help us to move, will you not, papa? I suppose we shall have

very little money. I am sure I hope some one will help us." And Mr. Vincy had said, "Yes, child, I don't mind

a hundred or two. I can see the end of that." With these exceptions she had sat at home in languid melancholy

and suspense, fixing her mind on Will Ladislaw's coming as the one point of hope and interest, and

associating this with some new urgency on Lydgate to make immediate arrangements for leaving

Middlemarch and going to London, till she felt assured that the coming would be a potent cause of the going,

without at all seeing how. This way of establishing sequences is too common to be fairly regarded as a

peculiar folly in Rosamond. And it is precisely this sort of sequence which causes the greatest shock when it

is sundered: for to see how an effect may be produced is often to see possible missings and checks; but to see

nothing except the desirable cause, and close upon it the desirable effect, rids us of doubt and makes our

minds strongly intuitive. That was the process going on in poor Rosamond, while she arranged all objects

around her with the same nicety as ever, only with more slowness or sat down to the piano, meaning to

play, and then desisting, yet lingering on the music stool with her white fingers suspended on the wooden

front, and looking before her in dreamy ennui. Her melancholy had become so marked that Lydgate felt a

strange timidity before it, as a perpetual silent reproach, and the strong man, mastered by his keen

sensibilities towards this fair fragile creature whose life he seemed somehow to have bruised, shrank from her

look, and sometimes started at her approach, fear of her and fear for her rushing in only the more forcibly

But this morning Rosamond descended from her room upstairs where she sometimes sat the whole day

when Lydgate was out equipped for a walk in the town. She had a letter to posta letter addressed to Mr.

Ladislaw and written with charming discretion, but intended to hasten his arrival by a hint of trouble. The

servantmaid, their sole houseservant now, noticed her coming downstairs in her walking dress, and

Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was filled with her project of going to Rosamond, and with the many thoughts,

both of the past and the probable future, which gathered round the idea of that visit. Until yesterday when

Lydgate had opened to her a glimpse of some trouble in his married life, the image of Mrs. Lydgate had

always been associated for her with that of Will Ladislaw. Even in her most uneasy momentseven when

she had been agitated by Mrs. Cadwallader's painfully graphic report of gossip her effort, nay, her

strongest impulsive prompting, had been towards the vindication of Will from any sullying surmises; and

when, in her meeting with him afterwards, she had at first interpreted his words as a probable allusion to a

feeling towards Mrs. Lydgate which he was determined to cut himself off from indulging, she had had a

quick, sad, excusing vision of the charm there might be in his constant opportunities of companionship with

that fair creature, who most likely shared his other tastes as she evidently did his delight in music. But there

had followed his parting words the few passionate words in which he had implied that she herself was the

object of whom his love held him in dread, that it was his love for her only which he was resolved not to

declare but to carry away into banishment. From the time of that parting, Dorothea, believing in Will's love

for her, believing with a proud delight in his delicate sense of honor and his determination that no one should

impeach him justly, felt her heart quite at rest as to the regard he might have for Mrs. Lydgate. She was sure

There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious of having a sort of baptism and consecration:

they bind us over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us; and our sins become that worst kind of

sacrilege which tears down the invisible altar of trust. "If you are not good, none is good" those little words

may give a terrific meaning to responsibility, may hold a vitriolic intensity for remorse.

Dorothea's nature was of that kind: her own passionate faults lay along the easily counted open channels of

her ardent character; and while she was full of pity for the, visible mistakes of others, she had not yet any

material within her experience for subtle constructions and suspicions of hidden wrong. But that simplicity of

hers, holding up an ideal for others in her believing conception of them, was one of the great powers of her

womanhood. And it had from the first acted strongly on Will Ladislaw. He felt, when he parted from her, that

the brief words by which he had tried to convey to her his feeling about herself and the division which her

fortune made between them, would only profit by their brevity when Dorothea had to interpret them: he felt

And he was right there. In the months since their parting Dorothea had felt a delicious though sad repose in

their relation to each other, as one which was inwardly whole and without blemish. She had an active force of

antagonism within her, when the antagonism turned on the defence either of plans or persons that she

believed in; and the wrongs which she felt that Will had received from her husband, and the external

conditions which to others were grounds for slighting him, only gave the more tenacity to her affection and

admiring judgment. And now with the disclosures about Bulstrode had come another fact affecting Will's

social position, which roused afresh Dorothea's inward resistance to what was said about him in that part of

"Young Ladislaw the grandson of a thieving Jew pawnbroker" was a phrase which had entered emphatically

into the dialogues about the Bulstrode business, at Lowick, Tipton, and Freshitt, and was a worse kind of

placard on poor Will's back than the "Italian with white mice." Upright Sir James Chettam was convinced

that his own satisfaction was righteous when he thought with some complacency that here was an added

league to that mountainous distance between Ladislaw and Dorothea, which enabled him to dismiss any

anxiety in that direction as too absurd. And perhaps there had been some pleasure in pointing Mr. Brooke's

attention to this ugly bit of Ladislaw's genealogy, as a fresh candle for him to see his own folly by. Dorothea

had observed the animus with which Will's part in the painful story had been recalled more than once; but she

had uttered no word, being checked now, as she had not been formerly in speaking of Will, by the

consciousness of a deeper relation between them which must always remain in consecrated secrecy. But her

silence shrouded her resistant emotion into a more thorough glow; and this misfortune in Will's lot which, it

seemed, others were wishing to fling at his back as an opprobrium, only gave something more of enthusiasm

She entertained no visions of their ever coming into nearer union, and yet she had taken no posture of

renunciation. She had accepted her whole relation to Will very simply as part of her marriage sorrows, and

would have thought it very sinful in her to keep up an inward wail because she was not completely happy,

being rather disposed to dwell on the superfluities of her lot. She could bear that the chief pleasures of her

tenderness should lie in memory, and the idea of marriage came to her solely as a repulsive proposition from

some suitor of whom she at present knew nothing, but whose merits, as seen by her friends, would be a

source of torment to her: "somebody who will manage your property for you, my dear," was Mr. Brooke's

attractive suggestion of suitable characteristics. "I should like to manage it myself, if I knew what to do with

it," said Dorothea. Noshe adhered to her declaration that she would never be married again, and in the long

valley of her life which looked so flat and empty of waymarks, guidance would come as she walked along the

This habitual state of feeling about Will Ladislaw had been strong. in all her waking hours since she had

proposed to pay a visit to Mrs. Lydgate, making a sort of background against which she saw Rosamond's

figure presented to her without hindrances to her interest and compassion. There was evidently some mental

separation, some barrier to complete confidence which had arisen between this wife and the husband who had

yet made her happiness a law to him. That was a trouble which no third person must directly touch. But

Dorothea thought with deep pity of the loneliness which must have come upon Rosamond from the

suspicions cast on her husband; and there would surely be help in the manifestation of respect for Lydgate

"I shall talk to her about her husband," thought Dorothea, as she was being driven towards the town. The

clear spring morning, the scent of the moist earth, the fresh leaves just showing their creasedup wealth of

greenery from out their halfopened sheaths, seemed part of the cheerfulness she was feeling from a long

conversation with Mr. Farebrother, who had joyfully accepted the justifying explanation of Lydgate's

conduct. "I shall take Mrs. Lydgate good news, and perhaps she will like to talk to me and make a friend of

Dorothea had another errand in Lowick Gate: it was about a new finetoned bell for the schoolhouse, and as

she had to get out of her carriage very near to Lydgate's, she walked thither across the street, having told the

coachman to wait for some packages. The street door was open, and the servant was taking the opportunity of

looking out at the carriage which was pausing within sight when it became apparent to her that the lady who

"I'm not sure, my lady; I'll see, if you'll please to walk in," said Martha, a little confused on the score of her

kitchen apron, but collected enough to be sure that "mum" was not the right title for this queenly young

widow with a carriage and pair. "Will you please to walk in, and I'll go and see."

"Say that I am Mrs. Casaubon," said Dorothea, as Martha moved forward intending to show her into the

drawingroom and then to go upstairs to see if Rosamond had returned from her walk.

They crossed the broader part of the entrancehall, and turned up the passage which led to the garden. The

drawingroom door was unlatched, and Martha, pushing it without looking into the room, waited for Mrs.

Casaubon to enter and then turned away, the door having swung open and swung back again without noise.

Dorothea had less of outward vision than usual this morning, being filled with images of things as they had

been and were going to be. She found herself on the other side of the door without seeing anything

remarkable, but immediately she heard a voice speaking in low tones which startled her as with a sense of

dreaming in daylight, and advancing unconsciously a step or two beyond the projecting slab of a bookcase,

she saw, in the terrible illumination of a certainty which filled up all outlines, something which made her

Seated with his back towards her on a sofa which stood against the wall on a line with the door by which she

had entered, she saw Will Ladislaw: close by him and turned towards him with a flushed tearfulness which

gave a new brilliancy to her face sat Rosamond, her bonnet hanging back, while Will leaning towards her

Rosamond in her agitated absorption had not noticed the silently advancing figure; but when Dorothea, after

the first immeasurable instant of this vision, moved confusedly backward and found herself impeded by some

piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly aware of her presence, and with a spasmodic movement snatched

away her hands and rose, looking at Dorothea who was necessarily arrested. Will Ladislaw, starting up,

looked round also, and meeting Dorothea's eyes with a new lightning in them, seemed changing to marble:

But she immediately turned them away from him to Rosamond and said in a firm voice

"Excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate, the servant did not know that you were here. I called to deliver an important letter

She laid down the letter on the small table which had checked her retreat, and then including Rosamond and

Will in one distant glance and bow, she went quickly out of the room, meeting in the passage the surprised

Martha, who said she was sorry the mistress was not at home, and then showed the strange lady out with an

Dorothea walked across the street with her most elastic step and was quickly in her carriage again.

"Drive on to Freshitt Hall," she said to the coachman, and any one looking at her might have thought that

though she was paler than usual she was never animated by a more selfpossessed energy. And that was

really her experience. It was as if she had drunk a great draught of scorn that stimulated her beyond the

susceptibility to other feelings. She had seen something so far below her belief, that her emotions rushed back

from it and made an excited throng without an object. She needed something active to turn her excitement out

upon. She felt power to walk and work for a day, without meat or drink. And she would carry out the purpose

with which she had started in the morning, of going to Freshitt and Tipton to tell Sir James and her uncle all

that she wished them to know about Lydgate, whose married loneliness under his trial now presented itself to

her with new significance, and made her more ardent in readiness to be his champion. She had never felt

anything like this triumphant power of indignation in the struggle of her married life, in which there had

"Dodo, how very bright your eyes are!" said Celia, when Sir James was gone out of the room. "And you don't

see anything you look at, Arthur or anything. You are going to do something uncomfortable, I know. Is it all

about Mr. Lydgate, or has something else happened?" Celia had been used to watch her sister with

"I wonder what," said Celia, folding her arms cozily and leaning forward upon them.

"Oh, all the troubles of all people on the face of the earth," said Dorothea, lifting her arms to the back of her

"Dear me, Dodo, are you going to have a scheme for them?" said Celia, a little uneasy at this Hamletlike

But Sir James came in again, ready to accompany Dorothea to the Grange, and she finished her expedition

Rosamond and Will stood motionlessthey did not know how long he looking towards the spot where

Dorothea had stood, and she looking towards him with doubt. It seemed an endless time to Rosamond, in

whose inmost soul there was hardly so much annoyance as gratification from what had just happened.

Shallow natures dream of an easy sway over the emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own petty

magic to turn the deepest streams, and confident, by pretty gestures and remarks, of making the thing that is

not as though it were. She knew that Will had received a severe blow, but she had been little used to

imagining other people's states of mind except as a material cut into shape by her own wishes; and she

believed in her own power to soothe or subdue. Even Tertius, that most perverse of men, was always subdued

in the longrun: events had been obstinate, but still Rosamond would have said now, as she did before her

"Don't touch me!" he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash, darting from her, and changing from pink

to white and back again, as if his whole frame were tingling with the pain of the sting. He wheeled round to

the other side of the room and stood opposite to her, with the tips of his fingers in his pockets and his head

thrown back, looking fiercely not at Rosamond but at a point a few inches away from her.

She was keenly offended, but the Signs she made of this were such as only Lydgate was used to interpret. She

became suddenly quiet and seated herself, untying her hanging bonnet and laying it down with her shawl. Her

It would have been safer for Will in the first instance to have taken up his hat and gone away; but he had felt

no impulse to do this; on the contrary, he had a horrible inclination to stay and shatter Rosamond with his

anger. It seemed as impossible to bear the fatality she had drawn down on him without venting his fury as it

would be to a panther to bear the javelinwound without springing and biting. And yethow could he tell a

woman that he was ready to curse her? He was fuming under a repressive law which he was forced to

acknowledge: he was dangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the decisive vibration. In

"Go after her!" he burst out, with a sharp edge in his voice. "Do you think she would turn to look at me, or

value any word I ever uttered to her again at more than a dirty feather?Explain! How can a man explain at

"Do you suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you? She is not a woman to be flattered because I

made myself despicable to believe that I must be true to her because I was a dastard to you."

He began to move about with the restlessness of a wild animal that sees prey but cannot reach it. Presently he

"I had no hope beforenot muchof anything better to come. But I had one certaintythat she believed in

me. Whatever people had said or done about me, she believed in me.That's gone! She'll never again think

me anything but a paltry pretence too nice to take heaven except upon flattering conditions, and yet selling

myself for any devil's change by the sly. She'll think of me as an incarnate insult to her, from the first moment

Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something that must not be thrown and shattered. He found

another vent for his rage by snatching up Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles to be throttled and

"Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a

PREFERENCE for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side

of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living."

Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was almost losing the sense of her

identity, and seemed to be waking into some new terrible existence. She had no sense of chill resolute

repulsion, of reticent selfjustification such as she had known under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all

her sensibility was turned into a bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash never

experienced before. What another nature felt in opposition to her own was being burnt and bitten into her

consciousness. When Will had ceased to speak she had become an image of sickened misery: her lips were

pale, and her eyes had a tearless dismay in them. If it had been Tertius who stood opposite to her, that look of

misery would have been a pang to him, and he would have sunk by her side to comfort her, with that

Let it be forgiven to Will that he had no such movement of pity. He had felt no bond beforehand to this

woman who had spoiled the ideal treasure of his life, and he held himself blameless. He knew that he was

After he had done speaking, he still moved about, half in absence of mind, and Rosamond sat perfectly still.

At length Will, seeming to bethink himself, took up his hat, yet stood some moments irresolute. He had

spoken to her in a way that made a phrase of common politeness difficult to utter; and yet, now that he had

come to the point of going away from her without further speech, he shrank from it as a brutality; he felt

checked and stultified in his anger. He walked towards the mantelpiece and leaned his arm on it, and waited

in silence forhe hardly knew what. The vindictive fire was still burning in him, and he could utter no word

of retractation; but it was nevertheless in his mind that having come back to this hearth where he had enjoyed

a caressing friendship he had found. calamity seated therehe had had suddenly revealed to him a trouble

that lay outside the home as well as within it. And what seemed a foreboding was pressing upon him as with

slow pincers:that his life might come to be enslaved by this helpless woman who had thrown herself upon

him in the dreary sadness of her heart. But he was in gloomy rebellion against the fact that his quick

apprehensiveness foreshadowed to him, and when his eyes fell on Rosamond's blighted face it seemed to him

that he was the more pitiable of the two; for pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn

And so they remained for many minutes, opposite each other, far apart, in silence; Will's face still possessed

by a mute rage, and Rosamond's by a mute misery. The poor thing had no force to fling out any passion in

return; the terrible collapse of the illusion towards which all her hope had been strained was a stroke which

had too thoroughly shaken her: her little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering in the midst as a

Will wished that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadow across his own cruel speech, which

seemed to stand staring at them both in mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship. But she said nothing,

and at last with a desperate effort over himself, he asked, "Shall I come in and see Lydgate this evening?"

After he was gone, Rosamond tried to get up from her seat, but fell back fainting. When she came to herself

again, she felt too ill to make the exertion of rising to ring the bell, and she remained helpless until the girl,

surprised at her long absence, thought for the first time of looking for her in all the downstairs rooms.

Rosamond said that she had felt suddenly sick and faint, and wanted to be helped upstairs. When there she

threw herself on the bed with her clothes on, and lay in apparent torpor, as she had done once before on a

Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected, about halfpast five, and found her there. The perception

that she was ill threw every other thought into the background. When he felt her pulse, her eyes rested on him

with more persistence than they had done for a long while, as if she felt some content that he was there. He

perceived the difference in a moment, and seating himself by her put his arm gently under her, and bending

over her said, "My poor Rosamond! has something agitated you?" Clinging to him she fell into hysterical

sobbings and cries, and for the next hour he did nothing but soothe and tend her. He imagined that Dorothea

had been to see her, and that all this effect on her nervous system, which evidently involved some new

turning towards himself, was due to the excitement of the new impressions which that visit had raised.

When Rosamond was quiet, and Lydgate had left her, hoping that she might soon sleep under the effect of an

anodyne, he went into the drawingroom to fetch a book which he had left there, meaning to spend the

evening in his workroom, and he saw on the table Dorothea's letter addressed to him. He had not ventured to

ask Rosamond if Mrs. Casaubon had called, but the reading of this letter assured him of the fact, for Dorothea

When Will Ladislaw came in a little later Lydgate met him with a surprise which made it clear that he had not

been told of the earlier visit, and Will could not say, "Did not Mrs. Lydgate tell you that I came this

"Noonly a slight nervous shockthe effect of some agitation. She has been overwrought lately. The truth

is, Ladislaw, I am an unlucky devil. We have gone through several rounds of purgatory since you left, and I

have lately got on to a worse ledge of it than ever. I suppose you are only just come downyou look rather

"I travelled all night and got to the White Hart at eight o'clock this morning. I have been shutting myself up

and resting," said Will, feeling himself a sneak, but seeing no alternative to this evasion.

And then he heard Lydgate's account of the troubles which Rosamond had already depicted to him in her

way. She had not mentioned the fact of Will's name being connected with the public story this detail not

"I thought it better to tell you that your name is mixed up with the disclosures," said Lydgate, who could

understand better than most men how Ladislaw might be stung by the revelation. "You will be sure to hear it

as soon as you turn out into the town. I suppose it is true that Raffles spoke to you."

"Yes," said Will, sardonically. "I shall be fortunate if gossip does not make me the most disreputable person

in the whole affair. I should think the latest version must be, that I plotted with Raffles to murder Bulstrode,

He was thinking "Here is a new ring in the sound of my name to recommend it in her hearing;

But he said nothing of Bulstrode's offer to him. Will was very open and careless about his personal affairs,

but it was among the more exquisite touches in nature's modelling of him that he had a delicate generosity

which warned him into reticence here. He shrank from saying that he had rejected Bulstrode's money, in the

moment when he was learning that it was Lydgate's misfortune to have accepted it.

Lydgate too was reticent in the midst of his confidence. He made no allusion to Rosamond's feeling under

their trouble, and of Dorothea he only said, "Mrs. Casaubon has been the one person to come forward and say

that she had no belief in any of the suspicions against me." Observing a change in Will's face, he avoided any

further mention of her, feeling himself too ignorant of their relation to each other not to fear that his words

might have some hidden painful bearing on it. And it occurred to him that Dorothea was the real cause of the

The two men were pitying each other, but it was only Will who guessed the extent of his companion's

trouble. When Lydgate spoke with desperate resignation of going to settle in London, and said with a faint

smile, "We shall have you again, old fellow." Will felt inexpressibly mournful, and said nothing. Rosamond

had that morning entreated him to urge this step on Lydgate; and it seemed to him as if he were beholding in

a magic panorama a future where he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding to the small

solicitations of circumstance, which is a commoner history of perdition than any single momentous bargain.

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures

led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement. Poor Lydgate was inwardly groaning on

that margin, and Will was arriving at it. It seemed to him this evening as if the cruelty of his outburst to

Rosamond had made an obligation for him, and he dreaded the obligation: he dreaded Lydgate's unsuspecting

goodwill: he dreaded his own distaste for his spoiled life, which would leave him in motiveless levity.

When Dorothea had seen Mr. Farebrother in the morning, she had promised to go and dine at the parsonage

on her return from Freshitt. There was a frequent interchange of visits between her and the Farebrother

family, which enabled her to say that she was not at all lonely at the Manor, and to resist for the present the

severe prescription of a lady companion. When she reached home and remembered her engagement, she was

glad of it; and finding that she had still an hour before she could dress for dinner, she walked straight to the

schoolhouse and entered into a conversation with the master and mistress about the new bell, giving eager

attention to their small details and repetitions, and getting up a dramatic sense that her life was very busy. She

paused on her way back to talk to old Master Bunney who was putting in some gardenseeds, and discoursed

wisely with that rural sage about the crops that would make the most return on a perch of ground, and the

result of sixty years' experience as to soilsnamely, that if your soil was pretty mellow it would do, but if

Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into being rather late, she dressed hastily and went over to the

parsonage rather earlier than was necessary. That house was never dull, Mr. Farebrother, like another White

of Selborne, having continually something new to tell of his inarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was

teaching the boys not to torment; and he had just set up a pair of beautiful goats to be pets of the village in

general, and to walk at large as sacred animals. The evening went by cheerfully till after tea, Dorothea talking

more than usual and dilating with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of creatures that converse

compendiously with their antennae, and for aught we know may hold reformed parliaments; when suddenly

"Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sister moving about the furniturelegs

"I have lost my tortoiseshell lozengebox. I fear the kitten has rolled it away," said the tiny old lady,

"Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up his glasses and looking at the carpet.

"Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble. "A German box very pretty, but if it falls it always spins

"Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present," said Mr. Farebrother, in a deep tone of comprehension, getting up and

hunting. The box was found at last under a chiffonier, and Miss Noble grasped it with delight, saying, "it was

"That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling at Dorothea, as he reseated

"If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon," said his mother, emphatically,"she is

Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return. She was surprised and annoyed to find that her heart was

palpitating violently, and that it was quite useless to try after a recovery of her former animation. Alarmed at

herselffearing some further betrayal of a change so marked in its occasion, she rose and said in a low voice

Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true; you must have halfexhausted yourself in

talking about Lydgate. That sort of work tells upon one after the excitement is over."

He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt to speak, even when he said

The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helpless within the clutch of inescapable anguish.

Dismissing Tantripp with a few faint words, she locked her door, and turning away from it towards the vacant

Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly to leave any power of thought.

She could only cry in loud whispers, between her sobs, after her lost belief which she had planted and kept

alive from a very little seed since the days in Romeafter her lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith

to one who, misprized by others, was worthy in her thought after her lost woman's pride of reigning in his

memoryafter her sweet dim perspective of hope, that along some pathway they should meet with

In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles

of man she besought hardness and coldness and aching weariness to bring her relief from the mysterious

incorporeal might of her anguish: she lay on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her; while her

There were two imagestwo living forms that tore her heart in two, as if it had been the heart of a mother

who seems to see her child divided by the sword, and presses one bleeding half to her breast while her gaze

goes forth in agony towards the half which is carried away by the lying woman that has never known the

Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within the vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the

bright creature whom she had trustedwho had come to her like the spirit of morning visiting the dim vault

where she sat as the bride of a wornout life; and now, with a full consciousness which had never awakened

before, she stretched out her arms towards him and cried with bitter cries that their nearness was a parting

vision: she discovered her passion to herself in the unshrinking utterance of despair.

And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever she moved, was the Will Ladislaw' who was a

changed belief exhausted of hope, a detected illusionno, a living man towards whom there could not yet

struggle any wail of regretful pity, from the midst of scorn and indignation and jealous offended pride. The

fire of Dorothea's anger was not easily spent, and it flamed out in fitful returns of spurning reproach. Why

had he come obtruding his life into hers, hers that might have been whole enough without him? Why had he

brought his cheap regard and his lipborn words to her who had nothing paltry to give in exchange? He knew

that he was deluding herwished, in the very moment of farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the

whole price of her heart, and knew that he had spent it half before. Why had he not stayed among the crowd

But she lost energy at last even for her loudwhispered cries and moans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and

In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around her, she awokenot with any amazed

wondering where she was or what had happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking

into the eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and seated

herself in a great chair where she had often watched before. She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard

night without feeling ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked to a new condition: she

felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but

could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. For now the thoughts

came thickly. It was not in Dorothea's nature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm, to sit in the narrow

cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousness that only sees another's lot as an accident of its

She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberately again, forcing herself to dwell on every

detail and its possible meaning. Was she alone in that scene? Was it her event only? She forced herself to

think of it as bound up with another woman's lifea woman towards whom she had set out with a longing to

carry some clearness and comfort into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap of jealous indignation and

disgust, when quitting the hateful room, she had flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that

visit. She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it seemed to her as if Rosamond

were burned out of her sight forever. But that base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival

than to a faithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence in Dorothea when the dominant spirit of justice

within her had once overcome the tumult and had once shown her the truer measure of things. All the active

thought with which she had before been representing to herself the trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young

marriage union which, like her own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles all this vivid

sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power: it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself

and will not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said to her own irremediable grief, that it

And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose contact with hers laid an obligation on her as if

they had been suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects of her rescue were not to be sought out by

her fancy: they were chosen for her. She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a throne

within her, and rule her errant will. "What should I do how should I act now, this very day, if I could

It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was light piercing into the room. She opened her

curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside the

entrancegates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in

the field she could see figures movingperhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was

the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and

endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her

luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.

What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve

stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness. She took off the clothes

which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them, and began to make her toilet.

"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night," burst out Tantripp, looking first at the bed and

then at Dorothea's face, which in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a mater dolorosa.

"You'll kill yourself, you WILL. Anybody might think now you had a right to give yourself a little comfort."

"Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling. "I have slept; I am not ill. I shall be glad of a cup of

coffee as soon as possible. And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall want my new

"They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam, and most thankful I shall be to see you with a

couple o' pounds' worth less of crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire. "There's a reason in mourning,

as I've always said; and three folds at the bottom of your skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet and if

ever anybody looked like an angel, it's you in a net quilling is what's consistent for a second year. At least,

that's MY thinking," ended Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire; "and if anybody was to marry me

flattering himself I should wear those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be deceived by his own vanity,

"The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she used to do in the old Lausanne days, only

She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp

went away wondering at this strange contrariness in her young mistressthat just the morning when she had

more of a widow's face than ever, she should have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived

before. Tantripp would never have found the clew to this mystery. Dorothea wished to acknowledge that she

had not the less an active life before her because she had buried a private joy; and the tradition that fresh

garments belonged to all initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that slight outward help

Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch, having made up her mind that she

would make as quietly and unnoticeably as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.

When Dorothea was again at Lydgate's door speaking to Martha, he was in the room close by with the door

"Do you think that Mrs. Lydgate can receive me this morning?" she said, having reflected that it would be

"I have no doubt she will," said Lydgate, suppressing his thought about Dorothea's looks, which were as

much changed as Rosamond's, "if you will be kind enough to come in and let me tell her that you are here.

She has not been very well since you were here yesterday, but she is better this morning, and I think it is very

It was plain that Lydgate, as Dorothea had expected, knew nothing about the circumstances of her yesterday's

visit; nay, he appeared to imagine that she had carried it out according to her intention. She had prepared a

little note asking Rosamond to see her, which she would have given to the servant if he had not been in the

After leading her into the drawingroom, he paused to take a letter from his pocket and put it into her hands,

saying, "I wrote this last night, and was going to carry it to Lowick in my ride. When one is grateful for

something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech one does not at least

Dorothea's face brightened. "It is I who have most to thank for, since you have let me take that place. You

He said no more, but went upstairs to Rosamond, who had but lately finished dressing herself, and sat

languidly wondering what she should do next, her habitual industry in small things, even in the days of her

sadness, prompting her to begin some kind of occupation, which she dragged through slowly or paused in

from lack of interest. She looked ill, but had recovered her usual quietude of manner, and Lydgate had feared

to disturb her by any questions. He had told her of Dorothea's letter containing the check, and afterwards he

had said, "Ladislaw is come, Rosy; he sat with me last night; I dare say he will be here again today. I

thought he looked rather battered and depressed." And Rosamond had made no reply.

Now, when he came up, he said to her very gently, "Rosy, dear, Mrs. Casaubon is come to see you again; you

would like to see her, would you not?" That she colored and gave rather a startled movement did not surprise

him after the agitation produced by the interview yesterdaya beneficent agitation, he thought, since it

Rosamond dared not say no. She dared not with a tone of her voice touch the facts of yesterday. Why had

Mrs. Casaubon come again? The answer was a blank which Rosamond could only fill up with dread, for Will

Ladislaw's lacerating words had made every thought of Dorothea a fresh smart to her. Nevertheless, in her

new humiliating uncertainty she dared do nothing but comply. She did not say yes, but she rose and let

Lydgate put a light shawl over her shoulders, while he said, "I am going out immediately." Then something

crossed her mind which prompted her to say, "Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else into the

drawingroom." And Lydgate assented, thinking that he fully understood this wish. He led her down to the

drawingroom door, and then turned away, observing to himself that he was rather a blundering husband to

Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as she walked towards Dorothea, was inwardly wrapping her

soul in cold reserve. Had Mrs. Casaubon come to say anything to her about Will? If so, it was a liberty that

Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself to meet every word with polite impassibility. Will had bruised

her pride too sorely for her to feel any compunction towards him and Dorothea: her own injury seemed much

the greater. Dorothea was not only the "preferred" woman, but had also a formidable advantage in being

Lydgate's benefactor; and to poor Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed that this Mrs. Casaubon

this woman who predominated in all things concerning hermust have come now with the sense of having

the advantage, and with animosity prompting her to use it. Indeed, not Rosamond only, but any one else,

knowing the outer facts of the case, and not the simple inspiration on which Dorothea acted, might well have

Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful slimness wrapped in her soft white shawl, the rounded

infantine mouth and cheek inevitably suggesting mildness and innocence, Rosamond paused at three yards'

distance from her visitor and bowed. But Dorothea, who had taken off her gloves, from an impulse which she

could never resist when she wanted a sense of freedom, came forward, and with her face full of a sad yet

sweet openness, put out her hand. Rosamond could not avoid meeting her glance, could not avoid putting her

small hand into Dorothea's, which clasped it with gentle motherliness; and immediately a doubt of her own

prepossessions began to stir within her. Rosamond's eye was quick for faces; she saw that Mrs. Casaubon's

face looked pale and changed since yesterday, yet gentle, and like the firm softness of her hand. But Dorothea

had counted a little too much on her own strength: the clearness and intensity of her mental action this

morning were the continuance of a nervous exaltation which made her frame as dangerously responsive as a

bit of finest Venetian crystal; and in looking at Rosamond, she suddenly found her heart swelling, and was

unable to speakall her effort was required to keep back tears. She succeeded in that, and the emotion only

passed over her face like the spirit of a sob; but it added to Rosamond's impression that Mrs. Casaubon's state

So they sat down without a word of preface on the two chairs that happened to be nearest, and happened also

to be close together; though Rosamond's notion when she first bowed was that she should stay a long way off

from Mrs. Casaubon. But she ceased thinking how anything would turn outmerely wondering what would

come. And Dorothea began to speak quite simply, gathering firmness as she went on.

"I had an errand yesterday which I did not finish; that is why I am here again so soon. You will not think me

too troublesome when I tell you that I came to talk to you about the injustice that has been shown towards

Mr. Lydgate. It will cheer youwill it not? to know a great deal about him, that he may not like to speak

about himself just because it is in his own vindication and to his own honor. You will like to know that your

husband has warm friends, who have not left off believing in his high character? You will let me speak of this

The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow with generous heedlessness above all the facts which had

filled Rosamond's mind as grounds of obstruction and hatred between her and this woman, came as

soothingly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears. Of course Mrs. Casaubon had the facts in her mind, but

she was not going to speak of anything connected with them. That relief was too great for Rosamond to feel

"I know you have been very good. I shall like to hear anything you will say to me about Tertius."

"The day before yesterday," said Dorothea, "when I had asked him to come to Lowick to give me his opinion

on the affairs of the Hospital, he told me everything about his conduct and feelings in this sad event which

has made ignorant people cast suspicions on him. The reason he told me was because I was very bold and

asked him. I believed that he had never acted dishonorably, and I begged him to tell me the history. He

confessed to me that he had never told it before, not even to you, because he had a great dislike to say, `I was

not wrong,' as if that were proof, when there are guilty people who will say so. The truth is, he knew nothing

of this man Raffles, or that there were any bad secrets about him; and he thought that Mr. Bulstrode offered

him the money because he repented, out of kindness, of having refused it before. All his anxiety about his

patient was to treat him rightly, and he was a little uncomfortable that the case did not end as he had

expected; but he thought then and still thinks that there may have been no wrong in it on any one's part. And I

have told Mr. Farebrother, and Mr. Brooke, and Sir James Chettam: they all believe in your husband. That

Dorothea's face had become animated, and as it beamed on Rosamond very close to her, she felt something

like bashful timidity before a superior, in the presence of this selfforgetful ardor. She said, with blushing

"And he felt that he had been so wrong not to pour out everything about this to you. But you will forgive him.

It was because he feels so much more about your happiness than anything else he feels his life bound into

one with yours, and it hurts him more than anything, that his misfortunes must hurt you. He could speak to

me because I am an indifferent person. And then I asked him if I might come to see you; because I felt so

much for his trouble and yours. That is why I came yesterday, and why I am come today. Trouble is so hard

to bear, is it not? How can we live and think that any one has troublepiercing trouble and we could

Dorothea, completely swayed by the feeling that she was uttering, forgot everything but that she was

speaking from out the heart of her own trial to Rosamond's. The emotion had wrought itself more and more

into her utterance, till the tones might have gone to one's very marrow, like a low cry from some suffering

creature in the darkness. And she had unconsciously laid her hand again on the little hand that she had

Rosamond, with an overmastering pang, as if a wound within her had been probed, burst into hysterical

crying as she had done the day before when she clung to her husband. Poor Dorothea was feeling a great

wave of her own sorrow returning over her her thought being drawn to the possible share that Will

Ladislaw might have in Rosamond's mental tumult. She was beginning to fear that she should not be able to

suppress herself enough to the end of this meeting, and while her hand was still resting on Rosamond's lap,

though the hand underneath it was withdrawn, she was struggling against her own rising sobs. She tried to

master herself with the thought that this might be a turningpoint in three lives not in her own; no, there

the irrevocable had happened, but in those three lives which were touching hers with the solemn

neighborhood of danger and distress. The fragile creature who was crying close to herthere might still be

time to rescue her from the misery of false incompatible bonds; and this moment was unlike any other: she

and Rosamond could never be together again with the same thrilling consciousness of yesterday within them

both. She felt the relation between them to be peculiar enough to give her a peculiar influence, though she

had no conception that the way in which her own feelings were involved was fully known to Mrs. Lydgate.

It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea could imagine: she was under the first

great shock that had shattered her dreamworld in which she had been easily confident of herself and critical

of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation of feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a

shrinking aversion and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred towards her, made her soul

totter all the more with a sense that she had been walking in an unknown world which had just broken in

When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she withdrew the handkerchief with which

she had been hiding her face, her eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers. What

was the use of thinking about behavior after this crying? And Dorothea looked almost as childish, with the

"We were talking about your husband," Dorothea said, with some timidity. "I thought his looks were sadly

changed with suffering the other day. I had not seen him for many weeks before. He said he had been feeling

very lonely in his trial; but I think he would have borne it all better if he had been able to be quite open with

"Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say anything," said Rosamond, imagining that he had been complaining

of her to Dorothea. "He ought not to wonder that I object to speak to him on painful subjects."

"It was himself he blamed for not speaking," said Dorothea. "What he said of you was, that he could not be

happy in doing anything which made you unhappythat his marriage was of course a bond which must

affect his choice about everything; and for that reason he refused my proposal that he should keep his

position at the Hospital, because that would bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not undertake to

do anything which would be painful to you. He could say that to me, because he knows that I had much trial

in my marriage, from my husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him; and he knows that I

have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear of hurting another who is tied to us."

Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing over Rosamond's face. But there was no

answer, and she went on, with a gathering tremor, "Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something

even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved some one else better thanthan those we were married

to, it would be no use"poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language

brokenly"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love.

I know it may be very dearbut it murders our marriage and then the marriage stays with us like a

murderand everything else is gone. And then our husbandif he loved and trusted us, and we have not

Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming too far, and of speaking as if she

herself were perfection addressing error. She was too much preoccupied with her own anxiety, to be aware

that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the need to express pitying fellowship rather than rebuke,

she put her hands on Rosamond's, and said with more agitated rapidity,"I know, I know that the feeling

may be very dearit has taken hold of us unawaresit is so hard, it may seem like death to part with

The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling to save another, rushed over Dorothea

with conquering force. She stopped in speechless agitation. not crying, but feeling as if she were being

inwardly grappled. Her face had become of a deathlier paleness, her lips trembled, and she pressed her hands

Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own hurried along in a new movement which

gave all things some new, awful, undefined aspectcould find no words, but involuntarily she put her lips to

Dorothea's forehead which was very near her, and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if

"You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager halfwhisper, while she was still feeling

Dorothea's arms round her urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself from something that oppressed

"When you came in yesterdayit was not as you thought," said Rosamond in the same tone.

There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea She expected a vindication of Rosamond herself.

"He was telling me how he loved another woman, that I might know he could never love me," said

Rosamond, getting more and more hurried as she went on. "And now I think he hates me because because

you mistook him yesterday. He says it is through me that you will think ill of himthink that he is a false

person. But it shall not be through me. He has never had any love for me I know he has nothe has

always thought slightly of me. He said yesterday that no other woman existed for him beside you. The blame

of what happened is entirely mine. He said he could never explain to youbecause of me. He said you could

never think well of him again. But now I have told you, and he cannot reproach me any more."

Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses which she had not known before. She had begun her

confession under the subduing influence of Dorothea's emotion; and as she went on she had gathered the

sense that she was repelling Will's reproaches, which were still like a knifewound within her.

The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy. It was a tumult in which the terrible

strain of the night and morning made a resistant pain:she could only perceive that this would be joy when

she had recovered her power of feeling it. Her immediate consciousness was one of immense sympathy

without cheek; she cared for Rosamond without struggle now, and responded earnestly to her last words

With her usual tendency to overestimate the good in others, she felt a great outgoing of her heart towards

Rosamond, for the generous effort which had redeemed her from suffering, not counting that the effort was a

"No, you have been very good to me," said Rosamond. "I did not think that you would be so good. I was very

"But better days will come. Your husband will be rightly valued. And he depends on you for comfort. He

loves you best. The worst loss would be to lose thatand you have not lost it," said Dorothea.

She tried to thrust away the too overpowering thought of her own relief, lest she should fail to win some sign

"Tertius did not find fault with me, then?" said Rosamond, understanding now that Lydgate might have said

anything to Mrs. Casaubon, and that she certainly was different from other women. Perhaps there was a faint

taste of jealousy in the question. A smile began to play over Dorothea's face as she said

"No, indeed! How could you imagine it?" But here the door opened, and Lydgate entered.

"I am come back in my quality of doctor," he said. "After I went away, I was haunted by two pale faces: Mrs.

Casaubon looked as much in need of care as you, Rosy. And I thought that I had not done my duty in leaving

you together; so when I had been to Coleman's I came home again. I noticed that you were walking, Mrs.

Casaubon, and the sky has changedI think we may have rain. May I send some one to order your carriage

"Oh, no! I am strong: I need the walk," said Dorothea, rising with animation in her face. "Mrs. Lydgate and I

have chatted a great deal, and it is time for me to go. I have always been accused of being immoderate and

She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet goodby without kiss or other show of

effusion: there had been between them too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it superficially.

As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing of Rosamond, but told him of Mr. Farebrother and the other

When he came back to Rosamond, she had already thrown herself on the sofa, in resigned fatigue.

"Well, Rosy," he said, standing over her, and touching her hair, "what do you think of Mrs. Casaubon now

"I think she must be better than any one," said Rosamond, "and she is very beautiful. If you go to talk to her

Lydgate laughed at the "so often." "But has she made you any less discontented with me?"

"I think she has," said Rosamond, looking up in his face. "How heavy your eyes are, Tertiusand do push

your hair back." He lifted up his large white hand to obey her, and felt thankful for this little mark of interest

in him. Poor Rosamond's vagrant fancy had come back terribly scourgedmeek enough to nestle under the

old despised shelter. And the shelter was still there: Lydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with sad

resignation. He had chosen this fragile creature, and had taken the burthen of her life upon his arms. He must

Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely to stay in banishment unless they are obliged. When

Will Ladislaw exiled himself from Middlemarch he had placed no stronger obstacle to his return than his own

resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier, but simply a state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with

other states of mind, and to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving place with polite facility. As the months

went on, it had seemed more and more difficult to him to say why he should not run down to

Middlemarchmerely for the sake of hearing something about Dorothea; and if on such a flying visit he

should chance by some strange coincidence to meet with her, there was no reason for him to be ashamed of

having taken an innocent journey which he had beforehand supposed that he should not take. Since he was

hopelessly divided from her, he might surely venture into her neighborhood; and as to the suspicious friends

who kept a dragon watch over her their opinions seemed less and less important with time and change of

And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, which seemed to make a journey to

Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty. Will had given a disinterested attention to an intended settlement

on a new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to carry out a good design had set him on

debating with himself whether it would not be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode, to urge the

application of that money which had been offered to himself as a means of carrying out a scheme likely to be

largely beneficial. The question seemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance to again entering into

any relation with the banker might have made him dismiss it quickly, if there had not arisen in his

imagination the probability that his judgment might be more safely determined by a visit to Middlemarch.

That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason for coming down. He had meant to confide in

Lydgate, and discuss the money question with him, and he had meant to amuse himself for the few evenings

of his stay by having a great deal of music and badinage with fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends

at Lowick Parsonage:if the Parsonage was close to the Manor, that was no fault of his. He had neglected

the Farebrothers before his departure, from a proud resistance to the possible accusation of indirectly seeking

interviews with Dorothea; but hunger tames us, and Will had become very hungry for the vision of a certain

form and the sound of a certain voice. Nothing, had done instead not the opera, or the converse of zealous

politicians, or the flattering reception (in dim corners) of his new hand in leading articles.

Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost everything would be in his familiar little

world; fearing, indeed, that there would be no surprises in his visit. But he had found that humdrum world in

a terribly dynamic condition, in which even badinage and lyrism had turned explosive; and the first day of

this visit had become the most fatal epoch of his life. The next morning he felt so harassed with the nightmare

of consequences he dreaded so much the immediate issues before himthat seeing while he breakfasted

the arrival of the Riverston coach, he went out hurriedly and took his place on it, that he might be relieved, at

least for a day, from the necessity of doing or saying anything in Middlemarch. Will Ladislaw was in one of

those tangled crises which are commoner in experience than one might imagine, from the shallow

absoluteness of men's judgments. He had found Lydgate, for whom he had the sincerest respect, under

circumstances which claimed his thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the reason why, in spite of

that claim, it would have been better for Will to have avoided all further intimacy, or even contact, with

Lydgate, was precisely of the kind to make such a course appear impossible. To a creature of Will's

susceptible temperamentwithout any neutral region of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything

that befell him into the collisions of a passionate dramathe revelation that Rosamond had made her

happiness in any way dependent on him was a difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had

immeasurably increased for him. He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded to show the fulness of his

relenting: he must go to her again; the friendship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness was a

power which he dreaded. And all the while there was no more foretaste of enjoyment in the life before him

than if his limbs had been lopped off and he was making his fresh start on crutches. In the night he had

debated whether he should not get on the coach, not for Riverston, but for London, leaving a note to Lydgate

which would give a makeshift reason for his retreat. But there were strong cords pulling him back from that

abrupt departure: the blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing of that chief hope which

had remained in spite of the acknowledged necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery for him to

Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach. He came back again by it while it was

still daylight, having made up his mind that he must go to Lydgate's that evening. The Rubicon, we know,

was a very insignificant stream to look at; its significance lay entirely in certain invisible conditions. Will felt

as if he were forced to cross his small boundary ditch, and what he saw beyond it was not empire, but

But it is given to us sometimes even in our everyday life to witness the saving influence of a noble nature,

the divine efficacy of rescue that may lie in a selfsubduing act of fellowship. If Dorothea, after her night's

anguish, had not taken that walk to Rosamondwhy, she perhaps would have been a woman who gained a

higher character for discretion, but it would certainly not have been as well for those three who were on one

Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received him with a languid coldness which Lydgate

accounted for by her nervous exhaustion, of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to Will. And

when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he innocently apologized for her in an indirect way by

begging her to lean backward and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the part of a friend

who was making his first appearance and greeting to Rosamond, while his thoughts were busy about her

feeling since that scene of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both, like the painful

vision of a double madness. It happened that nothing called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond

poured out the tea, and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded paper in his saucer. He saw it

and secured it quickly, but as he went back to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper. What

Rosamond had written to him would probably deepen the painful impressions of the evening. Still, he opened

and read it by his bedcandle. There were only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:

"I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you. I told her because she came to see me

and was very kind. You will have nothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any difference to

The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelt on them with excited imagination, he felt

his cheeks and ears burning at the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond at the

uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity wounded in having an explanation of his conduct

offered to her. There might still remain in her mind a changed association with him which made an

irremediable differencea lasting flaw. With active fancy he wrought himself into a state of doubt little

more easy than that of the man who has escaped from wreck by night and stands on unknown ground in the

darkness. Until that wretched yesterday except the moment of vexation long ago in the very same room

and in the very same presenceall their vision, all their thought of each other, had been as in a world apart,

where the sunshine fell on tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered. But nowwould

On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosamond, she had had two nights of sound sleep, and had

not only lost all traces of fatigue, but felt as if she had a great deal of superfluous strength that is to say,

more strength than she could manage to concentrate on any occupation. The day before, she had taken long

walks outside the grounds, and had paid two visits to the Parsonage; but she never in her life told any one the

reason why she spent her time in that fruitless manner, and this morning she was rather angry with herself for

her childish restlessness. Today was to be spent quite differently. What was there to be done in the village?

Oh dear! nothing. Everybody was well and had flannel; nobody's pig had died; and it was Saturday morning,

when there was a general scrubbing of doors and doorstones, and when it was useless to go into the school.

But there were various subjects that Dorothea was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved to throw herself

energetically into the gravest of all. She sat down in the library before her particular little heap of books on

political economy and kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light as to the best way of spending

money so as not to injure one's neighbors, or what comes to the same thingso as to do them the most

good. Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of it, would certainly keep her mind

steady. Unhappily her mind slipped off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading sentences

twice over with an intense consciousness of many things, but not of any one thing contained in the text. This

was hopeless. Should she order the carriage and drive to Tipton? No; for some reason or other she preferred

staying at Lowick. But her vagrant mind must be reduced to order: there was an art in selfdiscipline; and she

walked round and round the brown library considering by what sort of manoeuvre she could arrest her

wandering thoughts. Perhaps a mere task was the best meanssomething to which she must go doggedly.

Was there not the geography of Asia Minor, in which her slackness had often been rebuked by Mr.

Casaubon? She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one: this morning she might make herself finally

sure that Paphlagonia was not on the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the Chalybes firmly on

the shores of the Euxine. A map was a fine thing to study when you were disposed to think of something else,

being made up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them. Dorothea set earnestly to

work, bending close to her map, and uttering the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a

chime. She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience nodding her head and marking the

names off on her fingers, with a little pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her hands on

There was no reason why this should end any more than a merrygoround; but it was at last interrupted by

The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea's shoulder, was warmly welcomed, but while her

hand was being pressed she made many of her beaverlike noises, as if she had something difficult to say.

"Do sit down," said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward. "Am I wanted for anything? I shall be so glad if I can

"I will not stay," said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her small basket, and holding some article inside it

nervously; "I have left a friend in the churchyard." She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds, and unconsciously

drew forth the article which she was fingering. It was the tortoiseshell lozengebox, and Dorothea felt the

"Mr. Ladislaw," continued the timid little woman. "He fears he has offended you, and has begged me to ask if

Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mind that she could not receive him in this library,

where her husband's prohibition seemed to dwell. She looked towards the window. Could she go out and

meet him in the grounds? The sky was heavy, and the trees had begun to shiver as at a coming storm.

"Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon," said Miss Noble, pathetically; "else I must go back and say No, and that will

What else was there to be done? There was nothing that she longed for at that moment except to see Will: the

possibility of seeing him had thrust itself insistently between her and every other object; and yet she had a

throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her a sense that she was doing something daringly defiant for his

When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood in the middle of the library with her

hands falling clasped before her, making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude of dignified

unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of just then was her own body: she was thinking of what was

likely to be in Will's mind, and of the hard feelings that others had had about him. How could any duty bind

her to hardness? Resistance to unjust dispraise had mingled with her feeling for him from the very first, and

now in the rebound of her heart after her anguish the resistance was stronger than ever. "If I love him too

much it is because he has been used so ill:"there was a voice within her saying this to some imagined

She did not move, and he came towards her with more doubt and timidity in his face than she had ever seen

before. He was in a state of uncertainty which made him afraid lest some look or word of his should condemn

him to a new distance from her; and Dorothea was afraid of her OWN emotion. She looked as if there were a

spell upon her, keeping her motionless and hindering her from unclasping her hands, while some intense,

grave yearning was imprisoned within her eyes. Seeing that she did not put out her hand as usual, Will paused

a yard from her and said with embarrassment, "I am so grateful to you for seeing me."

"I wanted to see you," said Dorothea, having no other words at command. It did not occur to her to sit down,

and Will did not give a cheerful interpretation to this queenly way of receiving him; but he went on to say

"I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for coming back so soon. I have been punished for my

impatience. You know every one knows nowa painful story about my parentage. I knew of it before I

There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she unclasped her hands, but immediately folded them over

"But the affair is matter of gossip now," Will continued. "I wished you to know that something connected

with itsomething which happened before I went away, helped to bring me down here again. At least I

thought it excused my coming. It was the idea of getting Bulstrode to apply some money to a public

purposesome money which he had thought of giving me. Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode's credit that he

privately offered me compensation for an old injury: he offered to give me a good income to make amends;

Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner was gathering some of the defiant courage with which he

always thought of this fact in his destiny. He added, "You know that it must be altogether painful to me."

"I did not choose to accept an income from such a source. I was sure that you would not think well of me if I

did so," said Will. Why should he mind saying anything of that sort to her now? She knew that he had

"You acted as I should have expected you to act," said Dorothea, her face brightening and her head becoming

"I did not believe that you would let any circumstance of my birth create a prejudice in you against me,

though it was sure to do so in others," said Will, shaking his head backward in his old way, and looking with

"If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason for me to cling to you," said Dorothea, fervidly. "Nothing

could have changed me but"her heart was swelling, and it was difficult to go on; she made a great effort

over herself to say in a low tremulous voice, "but thinking that you were differentnot so good as I had

"You are sure to believe me better than I am in everything but one," said Will, giving way to his own feeling

in the evidence of hers. "I mean, in my truth to you. When I thought you doubted of that, I didn't care about

anything that was left. I thought it was all over with me, and there was nothing to try foronly things to

"I don't doubt you any longer," said Dorothea, putting out her hand; a vague fear for him impelling her

He took her hand and raised it to his lips with something like a sob. But he stood with his hat and gloves in

the other hand, and might have done for the portrait of a Royalist. Still it was difficult to loose the hand, and

Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion that distressed her, looked and moved away.

"See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed," she said, walking towards the window,

Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned against the tall back of a leather chair, on which he ventured

now to lay his hat and gloves, and free himself from the intolerable durance of formality to which he had

been for the first time condemned in Dorothea's presence. It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that

moment leaning on the chair. He was not much afraid of anything that she might feel now.

They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking at the evergreens which were being tossed, and were

showing the pale underside of their leaves against the blackening sky. Will never enjoyed the prospect of a

storm so much: it delivered him from the necessity of going away. Leaves and little branches were hurled

about, and the thunder was getting nearer. The light was more and more sombre, but there came a flash of

lightning which made them start and look at each other, and then smile. Dorothea began to say what she had

"That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have had nothing to try for. If we had lost our own

chief good, other people's good would remain, and that is worth trying for. Some can be happy. I seemed to

see that more clearly than ever, when I was the most wretched. I can hardly think how I could have borne the

"You have never felt the sort of misery I felt," said Will; "the misery of knowing that you must despise me."

"But I have felt worseit was worse to think ill" Dorothea had begun impetuously, but broke off.

Will colored. He had the sense that whatever she said was uttered in the vision of a fatality that kept them

"We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each other without disguise. Since I must go awaysince

While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit each of them up for the otherand the

light seemed to be the terror of a hopeless love. Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window; Will

followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement; and so they stood, with their hands clasped, like

two children, looking out on the storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack and roll above them, and

the rain began to pour down. Then they turned their faces towards each other, with the memory of his last

"There is no hope for me," said Will. "Even if you loved me as well as I love youeven if I were everything

to you I shall most likely always be very poor: on a sober calculation, one can count on nothing but a

creeping lot. It is impossible for us ever to belong to each other. It is perhaps base of me to have asked for a

word from you. I meant to go away into silence, but I have not been able to do what I meant."

"Don't be sorry," said Dorothea, in her clear tender tones. "I would rather share all the trouble of our parting."

Her lips trembled, and so did his. It was never known which lips were the first to move towards the other lips;

The rain was dashing against the windowpanes as if an angry spirit were within it, and behind it was the

great swoop of the wind; it was one of those moments in which both the busy and the idle pause with a

Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a long low ottoman in the middle of the room, and with her

hands folded over each other on her lap, looked at the drear outer world. Will stood still an instant looking at

her, then seated himself beside her, and laid his hand on hers, which turned itself upward to be clasped. They

sat in that way without looking at each other, until the rain abated and began to fall in stillness. Each had been

But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to look at Will. With passionate exclamation, as if some torture

He went and leaned on the back of the chair again, and seemed to be battling with his own anger, while she

"It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that divides people," he burst out again; "it is more

"Yes, it must," said Will, angrily. "It is cruel of you to speak in that wayas if there were any comfort. You

may see beyond the misery of it, but I don't. It is unkindit is throwing back my love for you as if it were a

"When?" said Will, bitterly. "What is the use of counting on any success of mine? It is a mere toss up

whether I shall ever do more than keep myself decently, unless I choose to sell myself as a mere pen and a

mouthpiece. I can see that clearly enough. I could not offer myself to any woman, even if she had no luxuries

There was silence. Dorothea's heart was full of something that she wanted to say, and yet the words were too

difficult. She was wholly possessed by them: at that moment debate was mute within her. And it was very

hard that she could not say what she wanted to say. Will was looking out of the window angrily. If he would

have looked at her and not gone away from her side, she thought everything would have been easier. At last

he turned, still resting against the chair, and stretching his hand automatically towards his hat, said with a sort

"Oh, I cannot bear itmy heart will break," said Dorothea, starting from her seat, the flood of her young

passion bearing down all the obstructions which had kept her silentthe great tears rising and falling in an

In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms round her, but she drew her head back and held his away

gently that she might go on speaking, her large tearfilled eyes looking at his very simply, while she said in a

sobbing childlike way, "We could live quite well on my own fortuneit is too muchseven hundred

It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill: that explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be

walking on the slope of the lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall, holding the "Times" in his

hands behind him, while he talked with a troutfisher's dispassionateness about the prospects of the country

to Sir James Chettam. Mrs. Cadwallader, the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were sometimes seated on

gardenchairs, sometimes walking to meet little Arthur, who was being drawn in his chariot, and, as became

the infantine Bouddha, was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome silken fringe.

The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully. Mrs. Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation of

peers: she had it for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone over to the other side entirely at the

instigation of his wife, who had scented peerages in the air from the very first introduction of the Reform

question, and would sign her soul away to take precedence of her younger sister, who had married a baronet.

Lady Chettam thought that such conduct was very reprehensible, and remembered that Mrs. Truberry's

mother was a Miss Walsingham of Melspring. Celia confessed it was nicer to be "Lady" than "Mrs.," and that

Dodo never minded about precedence if she could have her own way. Mrs. Cadwallader held that it was a

poor satisfaction to take precedence when everybody about you knew that you had not a drop of good blood

in your veins; and Celia again, stopping to look at Arthur, said, "It would be very nice, though, if he were a

Viscount and his lordship's little tooth coming through! He might have been, if James had been an Earl."

"My dear Celia," said the Dowager, "James's title is worth far more than any new earldom. I never wished his

"Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth," said Celia, comfortably. "But see, here is my uncle coming."

She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James and Mr. Cadwallader came forward to make one group

with the ladies. Celia had slipped her arm through her uncle's, and he patted her hand with a rather

melancholy "Well, my dear!" As they approached, it was evident that Mr. Brooke was looking dejected, but

this was fully accounted for by the state of politics; and as he was shaking hands all round without more

"Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke; you've got all the riffraff of the country

"The Bill, eh? ah!" said Mr. Brooke, with a mild distractedness of manner. "Thrown out, you know, eh? The

Lords are going too far, though. They'll have to pull up. Sad news, you know. I mean, here at homesad

"What is the matter?" said Sir James. "Not another gamekeeper shot, I hope? It's what I should expect, when

"Gamekeeper? No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at the

Cadwalladers, to show that he included them in his confidence. "As to poachers like Trapping Bass, you

know, Chettam," he continued, as they were entering, "when you are a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to

commit. Severity is all very well, but it's a great deal easier when you've got somebody to do it for you. You

have a soft place in your heart yourself, you knowyou're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort of thing."

Mr. Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation. When he had something painful to tell, it was

usually his way to introduce it among a number of disjointed particulars, as if it were a medicine that would

get a milder flavor by mixing He continued his chat with Sir James about the poachers until they were all

"I'm dying to know the sad news. The gamekeeper is not shot: that is settled. What is it, then?"

"Well, it's a very trying thing, you know," said Mr. Brooke. "I'm glad you and the Rector are here; it's a

family matter but you will help us all to bear it, Cadwallader. I've got to break it to you, my dear." Here

Mr. Brooke looked at Celia "You've no notion what it is, you know. And, Chettam, it will annoy you

uncommonlybut, you see, you have not been able to hinder it, any more than I have. There's something

"It must be about Dodo," said Celia, who had been used to think of her sister as the dangerous part of the

family machinery. She had seated herself on a low stool against her husband's knee.

"Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's will: it was a sort of will to make things worse."

"Dorothea is going to be married again, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards Celia, who

immediately looked up at her husband with a frightened glance, and put her hand on his knee. Sir James was

Mr. Brooke nodded, saying, "Yes; to Ladislaw," and then fell into a prudential silence.

"You see, Humphrey!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her arm towards her husband. "Another time you will

admit that I have some foresight; or rather you will contradict me and be just as blind as ever. YOU supposed

"When did you learn this?" said Sir James, not liking to hear any one else speak, though finding it difficult to

"Yesterday," said Mr. Brooke, meekly. "I went to Lowick. Dorothea sent for me, you know. It had come

about quite suddenly neither of them had any idea two days agonot any idea, you know. There's

something singular in things. But Dorothea is quite determinedit is no use opposing. I put it strongly to

"It would have been better if I had called him out and shot him a year ago," said Sir James, not from

"Be reasonable, Chettam. Look at the affair more quietly," said Mr. Cadwallader, sorry to see his

"That is not so very easy for a man of any dignitywith any sense of rightwhen the affair happens to be in

his own family," said Sir James, still in his white indignation. "It is perfectly scandalous. If Ladislaw had had

a spark of honor he would have gone out of the country at once, and never shown his face in it again.

However, I am not surprised. The day after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to be done. But I was not

"You wanted what was impossible, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke. "You wanted him shipped off. I

told you Ladislaw was not to be done as we liked with: he had his ideas. He was a remarkable fellow I

"Yes," said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, "it is rather a pity you formed that high opinion of him. We

are indebted to that for his being lodged in this neighborhood. We are indebted to that for seeing a woman

like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying him." Sir James made little stoppages between his clauses, the

words not coming easily. "A man so marked out by her husband's will, that delicacy ought to have forbidden

her from seeing him again who takes her out of her proper rankinto povertyhas the meanness to

accept such a sacrificehas always had an objectionable position a bad originand, I BELIEVE, is a

man of little principle and light character. That is my opinion." Sir James ended emphatically, turning aside

"I pointed everything out to her," said Mr. Brooke, apologetically "I mean the poverty, and abandoning her

position. I said, `My dear, you don't know what it is to live on seven hundred ayear, and have no carriage,

and that kind of thing, and go amongst people who don't know who you are.' I put it strongly to her. But I

advise you to talk to Dorothea herself. The fact is, she has a dislike to Casaubon's property. You will hear

"Noexcuse meI shall not," said Sir James, with more coolness. "I cannot bear to see her again; it is too

painful. It hurts me too much that a woman like Dorothea should have done what is wrong."

"Be just, Chettam," said the easy, largelipped Rector, who objected to all this unnecessary discomfort. "Mrs.

Casaubon may be acting imprudently: she is giving up a fortune for the sake of a man, and we men have so

poor an opinion of each other that we can hardly call a woman wise who does that. But I think you should not

"Yes, I do," answered Sir James. "I think that Dorothea commits a wrong action in marrying Ladislaw."

"My dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it is unpleasant to us," said the Rector,

quietly. Like many men who take life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth occasionally to those

who felt themselves virtuously out of temper. Sir James took out his handkerchief and began to bite the

"It is very dreadful of Dodo, though," said Celia, wishing to justify her husband. "She said she NEVER

"I heard her say the same thing myself," said Lady Chettam, majestically, as if this were royal evidence.

"Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The only wonder to me is, that

any of you are surprised. You did nothing to hinder it. If you would have had Lord Triton down here to woo

her with his philanthropy, he might have carried her off before the year was over. There was no safety in

anything else. Mr. Casaubon had prepared all this as beautifully as possible. He made himself

disagreeableor it pleased God to make him soand then he dared her to contradict him. It's the way to

"I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cadwallader," said Sir James, still feeling a little stung, and turning

round in his chair towards the Rector. "He's not a man we can take into the family. At least, I must speak for

myself," he continued, carefully keeping his eyes off Mr. Brooke. "I suppose others will find his society too

"Well, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, goodhumoredly, nursing his leg, "I can't turn my back on

Dorothea. I must be a father to her up to a certain point. I said, `My dear, I won't refuse to give you away.' I

had spoken strongly before. But I can cut off the entail, you know. It will cost money and be troublesome; but

Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing his own force of resolution and

propitiating what was just in the Baronet's vexation. He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than he

was aware of. He had touched a motive of which Sir James was ashamed. The mass of his feeling about

Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was due partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion, partly to a

jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladislaw's case than in Casaubon's. He was convinced that the marriage

was a fatal one for Dorothea. But amid that mass ran a vein of which he was too good and honorable a man to

like the avowal even to himself: it was undeniable that the union of the two estatesTipton and Freshitt

lying charmingly within a ringfence, was a prospect that flattered him for his son and heir. Hence when Mr.

Brooke noddingly appealed to that motive, Sir James felt a sudden embarrassment; there was a stoppage in

his throat; he even blushed. He had found more words than usual in the first jet of his anger, but Mr. Brooke's

propitiation was more clogging to his tongue than Mr. Cadwallader's caustic hint.

But Celia was glad to have room for speech after her uncle's suggestion of the marriage ceremony, and she

said, though with as little eagerness of manner as if the question had turned on an invitation to dinner, "Do

"In three weeks, you know," said Mr. Brooke, helplessly. "I can do nothing to hinder it, Cadwallader," he

"Ishould not make any fuss about it. If she likes to be poor, that is her affair. Nobody would have said

anything if she had married the young fellow because he was rich. Plenty of beneficed clergy are poorer than

they will be. Here is Elinor," continued the provoking husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly a

thousand ayearI was a loutnobody could see anything in me my shoes were not the right cutall

the men wondered how a woman could like me. Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I hear more

"Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife. "Everything is all onethat is the

beginning and end with you. As if you had not been a Cadwallader! Does any one suppose that I would have

"And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation. "Elinor cannot be said to have descended

Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less respectful than his usual mode of answering his mother. Celia

"It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The Casaubon cuttlefish

fluid to begin with, and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or dancingmaster, was it? and then an old clo"

"After all, he is a pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, rising too, and wishing to make amends. "He is like

"I'll go with you," said Mr. Brooke, starting up with alacrity. "You must all come and dine with me

"Oh, of course, if you like," said Sir James, pulling down his waistcoat, but unable yet to adjust his face

"No, no, no," said Mr. Brooke, understanding the condition. "Dorothea would not come, you know, unless

When Sir James and Celia were alone, she said, "Do you mind about my having the carriage to go to,

"What is the use of saying that?however, I'm going to the stables. I'll tell Briggs to bring the carriage

Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least to take a journey to Lowick in order to influence

Dorothea's mind. All through their girlhood she had felt that she could act on her sister by a word judiciously

placedby opening a little window for the daylight of her own understanding to enter among the strange

colored lamps by which Dodo habitually saw. And Celia the matron naturally felt more able to advise her

childless sister. How could any one understand Dodo so well as Celia did or love her so tenderly?

Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure at the sight of her sister so soon after the revelation of

her intended marriage. She had prefigured to herself, even with exaggeration, the disgust of her friends, and

"O Kitty, I am delighted to see you!" said Dorothea, putting her hands on Celia's shoulders, and beaming on

"I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry," said Celia, and they sat down on two small chairs

"You know, Dodo, it is very bad," said Celia, in her placid guttural, looking as prettily free from humors as

possible. "You have disappointed us all so. And I can't think that it ever WILL beyou never can go and

live in that way. And then there are all your plans! You never can have thought of that. James would have

taken any trouble for you, and you might have gone on all your life doing what you liked."

"On the contrary, dear," said Dorothea, "I never could do anything that I liked. I have never carried out any

"Because you always wanted things that wouldn't do. But other plans would have come. And how can you

marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of us ever thought you COULD marry? It shocks James so dreadfully. And

then it is all so different from what you have always been. You would have Mr. Casaubon because he had

such a great soul, and was so and dismal and learned; and now, to think of marrying Mr. Ladislaw, who has

got no estate or anything. I suppose it is because you must be making yourself uncomfortable in some way or

"Well, it is very serious, Dodo," said Celia, becoming more impressive. "How will you live? and you will go

away among queer people. And I shall never see youand you won't mind about little Arthur and I

Celia's rare tears had got into her eyes, and the corners of her mouth were agitated.

"Dear Celia," said Dorothea, with tender gravity, "if you don't ever see me, it will not be my fault."

"Yes, it will," said Celia, with the same touching distortion of her small features. "How can I come to you or

have you with me when James can't bear it?that is because he thinks it is not right he thinks you are so

wrong, Dodo. But you always were wrong: only I can't help loving you. And nobody can think where you

"How can you always live in a street? And you will be so poor. I could give you half my things, only how can

"Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth. "Take comfort: perhaps James will forgive me some

"But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia, drying her eyes, and returning to her

argument; "then there would be nothing uncomfortable. And you would not do what nobody thought you

could do. James always said you ought to be a queen; but this is not at all being like a queen. You know what

mistakes you have always been making, Dodo, and this is another. Nobody thinks Mr. Ladislaw a proper

"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said Dorothea, "and that I might have done something

better, if I had been better. But this is what I am going to do. I have promised to marry Mr. Ladislaw; and I

The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long learned to recognize. She was silent a

few moments, and then said, as if she had dismissed all contest, "Is he very fond of you, Dodo?"

"That is nice," said Celia, comfortably. "Only I rather you had such a sort of husband as James is, with a

Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative. Presently she said, "I cannot think how it all came

"I dare say not," saidDorothea, pinching her sister's chin. "If you knew how it came about, it would not

When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions bringing in their verdict of guilty, who

pities Faithful? That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained, to know ourselves

guiltless before a condemning crowd to be sure that what we are denounced for is solely the good in us.

The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to persuade

himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions incarnatewho knows that he is stoned, not for

This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he made his preparations for departing

from Middlemarch, and going to end his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces. The

duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from one dread, but it could not hinder her presence

from being still a tribunal before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy. His equivocations

with himself about the death of Raffles had sustained the conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to,

yet he had a terror upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by a full confession to his

wife: the acts which he had washed and diluted with inward argument and motive, and for which it seemed

comparatively easy to win invisible pardonwhat name would she call them by? That she should ever

silently call his acts Murder was what he could not bear. He felt shrouded by her doubt: he got strength to

face her from the sense that she could not yet feel warranted in pronouncing that worst condemnation on him.

Some time, perhapswhen he was dyinghe would tell her all: in the deep shadow of that time, when she

held his hand in the gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling from his touch. Perhaps: but

concealment had been the habit of his life, and the impulse to confession had no power against the dread of a

He was full of timid care for his wife, not only because he deprecated any harshness of judgment from her,

but because he felt a deep distress at the sight of her suffering. She had sent her daughters away to board at a

school on the coast, that this crisis might be hidden from them as far as possible. Set free by their absence

from the intolerable necessity of accounting for her grief or of beholding their frightened wonder, she could

live unconstrainedly with the sorrow that was every day streaking her hair with whiteness and making her

"Tell me anything that you would like to have me do, Harriet," Bulstrode had said to her; "I mean with regard

to arrangements of property. It is my intention not to sell the land I possess in this neighborhood, but to leave

it to you as a safe provision. If you have any wish on such subjects, do not conceal it from me."

A few days afterwards, when she had returned from a visit to her brother's, she began to speak to her husband

"I SHOULD like to do something for my brother's family, Nicholas; and I think we are bound to make some

amends to Rosamond and her husband. Walter says Mr. Lydgate must leave the town, and his practice is

almost good for nothing, and they have very little left to settle anywhere with. I would rather do without

Mrs. Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the facts than in the phrase "make some amends;" knowing that

her husband must understand her. He had a particular reason, which she was not aware of, for wincing under

"It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way you propose, my dear. Mr. Lydgate has virtually rejected

any further service from me. He has returned the thousand pounds which I lent him. Mrs. Casaubon advanced

The letter seemed to cut Mrs. Bulstrode severely. The mention of Mrs. Casaubon's loan seemed a reflection

of that public feeling which held it a matter of course that every one would avoid a connection with her

husband. She was silent for some time; and the tears fell one after the other, her chin trembling as she wiped

them away. Bulstrode, sitting opposite to her, ached at the sight of that griefworn face, which two months

before had been bright and blooming. It had aged to keep sad company with his own withered features. Urged

"There is another means, Harriet, by which I might do a service to your brother's family, if you like to act in

it. And it would, I think, be beneficial to you: it would be an advantageous way of managing the land which I

"Garth once thought of undertaking the management of Stone Court in order to place your nephew Fred there.

The stock was to remain as it is, and they were to pay a certain share of the profits instead of an ordinary rent.

That would be a desirable beginning for the young man, in conjunction with his employment under Garth.

"Yes, it would," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with some return of energy. "Poor Walter is so cast down; I would try

anything in my power to do him some good before I go away. We have always been brother and sister."

"You must make the proposal to Garth yourself, Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, not liking what he had to say,

but desiring the end he had in view, for other reasons besides the consolation of his wife. "You must state to

him that the land is virtually yours, and that he need have no transactions with me. Communications can be

made through Standish. I mention this, because Garth gave up being my agent. I can put into your hands a

paper which he himself drew up, stating conditions; and you can propose his renewed acceptance of them. I

think it is not unlikely that he will accept when you propose the thing for the sake of your nephew."

Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about teatime, opened the parlordoor and said, "There you are,

Caleb. Have you had your dinner?" (Mr. Garth's meals were much subordinated to "business.")

"No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?" said Mrs. Garth, seeing that her absentminded

Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing loftily hung between two peartrees. She

had a pink kerchief tied over her head, making a little poke to shade her eyes from the level sunbeams, while

Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him, pushing back the pink kerchief and smiling afar

"I came to look for you, Mary," said Mr. Garth. "Let uswalk about a bit." Mary knew quite well that her

father had something particular to say: his eyebrows made their pathetic angle, and there was a tender gravity

in his voice: these things had been signs to her when she was Letty's age. She put her arm within his, and they

"It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary," said her father, not looking at her, but at the end of

"Not a sad while, fatherI mean to be merry," said Mary, laughingly. "I have been single and merry for

fourandtwenty years and more: I suppose it will not be quite as long again as that." Then, after a little

pause, she said, more gravely, bending her face before her father's, "If you are contented with Fred?"

"Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday. You said he had an uncommon notion of stock, and a good

"Yes, I put it all down, and the date, anno Domini, and everything," said Mary. "You like things to be neatly

booked. And then his behavior to you, father, is really good; he has a deep respect for you; and it is

"Oh, dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a

"Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?" said Caleb, returning to his first tone. "There's no other wish come

into it since things have been going on as they have been of late?" (Caleb meant a great deal in that vague

phrase;) "because, better late than never. A woman must not force her heartshe'll do a man no good by

"My feelings have not changed, father," said Mary, calmly. "I shall be constant to Fred as long as he is

constant to me. I don't think either of us could spare the other, or like any one else better, however much we

might admire them. It would make too great a difference to uslike seeing all the old places altered, and

changing the name for everything. We must wait for each other a long while; but Fred knows that."

Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood still and screwed his stick on the grassy walk. Then he said,

with emotion in his voice, "Well, I've got a bit of news. What do you think of Fred going to live at Stone

"He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode. The poor woman has been to me begging and praying. She

wants to do the lad good, and it might be a fine thing for him. With saving, he might gradually buy the stock,

"Ah, but mind you," said Caleb, turning his head warningly, "I must take it on MY shoulders, and be

responsible, and see after everything; and that will grieve your mother a bit, though she mayn't say so. Fred

"Perhaps it is too much, father," said Mary, checked in her joy. "There would be no happiness in bringing you

"Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it doesn't vex your mother. And then, if you and Fred get

married," here Caleb's voice shook just perceptibly, "he'll be steady and saving; and you've got your mother's

cleverness, and mine too, in a woman's sort of way; and you'll keep him in order. He'll be coming

byandby, so I wanted to tell you first, because I think you'd like to tell HIM by yourselves. After that, I

could talk it well over with him, and we could go into business and the nature of things."

"Oh, you dear good father!" cried Mary, putting her hands round her father's neck, while he bent his head

placidly, willing to be caressed. "I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world!"

"Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; "husbands are an inferior class of men, who require

When they were entering the house with Letty, who had run to join them, Mary saw Fred at the orchardgate,

"What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant youth!" said Mary, as Fred stood still and raised his hat to her

"Now that is too bad, Mary," said Fred. "Just look at the edges of these coatcuffs! It is only by dint of good

brushing that I look respectable. I am saving up three suitsone for a weddingsuit."

"Two years! be reasonable, Fred," said Mary, turning to walk. "Don't encourage flattering expectations."

"Why not? One lives on them better than on unflattering ones. If we can't be married in two years, the truth

"I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged flattering expectations, and they did him

"Mary, if you've got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt; I shall go into the house to Mr. Garth. I

am out of spirits. My father is so cut uphome is not like itself. I can't bear any more bad news."

"Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live at Stone Court, and manage the farm, and be

remarkably prudent, and save money every year till all the stock and furniture were your own, and you were a

distinguished agricultural character, as Mr. Borthrop Trumbull saysrather stout, I fear, and with the Greek

"You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?" said Fred, coloring slightly nevertheless.

"That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen, and he never talks nonsense," said Mary,

looking up at Fred now, while he grasped her hand as they walked, till it rather hurt her; but she would not

"Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could be married directly."

"Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer our marriage for some years? That would

leave you time to misbehave, and then if I liked some one else better, I should have an excuse for jilting you."

"Pray don't joke, Mary," said Fred, with strong feeling. "Tell me seriously that all this is true, and that you are

"It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of itbecause I love you best," said Mary, in a tone of obedient

They lingered on the doorstep under the steeproofed porch, and Fred almost in a whisper said

The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary's eyes, but the fatal Ben came running to the door

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with

them, and not desire to know what befell them in their afteryears? For the fragment of a life, however

typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by

declension; latent powers may find their longwaited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and

Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the

wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epicthe gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that

complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in

Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the

All who have oared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that these two made no such failure, but

achieved a solid mutual happiness. Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways. He became rather

distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic and practical farmer, and produced a work on the

"Cultivation of Green Crops and the Economy of CattleFeeding" which won him high congratulations at

agricultural meetings. In Middlemarch admiration was more reserved: most persons there were inclined to

believe that the merit of Fred's authorship was due to his wife, since they had never expected Fred Vincy to

But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories of Great Men, taken from Plutarch," and had

it printed and published by Gripp Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing to give the credit of

this work to Fred, observing that he had been to the University, "where the ancients were studied," and might

In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived, and that there was no need to praise

Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady. Some years after his marriage he told Mary that his happiness

was half owing to Farebrother, who gave him a strong pullup at the right moment. I cannot say that he was

never again misled by his hopefulness: the yield of crops or the profits of a cattle sale usually fell below his

estimate; and he was always prone to believe that he could make money by the purchase of a horse which

turned out badly though this, Mary observed, was of course the fault of the horse, not of Fred's judgment.

He kept his love of horsemanship, but he rarely allowed himself a day's hunting; and when he did so, it was

remarkable that he submitted to be laughed at for cowardliness at the fences, seeming to see Mary and the

boys sitting on the fivebarred gate, or showing their curly heads between hedge and ditch.

There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought forth menchildren only; and when Fred

wished to have a girl like her, she said, laughingly, "that would be too great a trial to your mother." Mrs.

Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished lustre of her housekeeping, was much comforted by her

perception that two at least of Fred's boys were real Vincys, and did not "feature the Garths." But Mary

secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three was very much what her father must have been when he wore

a round jacket, and showed a marvellous nicety of aim in playing at marbles, or in throwing stones to bring

Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well in their teens, disputed much as to

whether nephews or nieces were more desirable; Ben contending that it was clear girls were good for less

than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats, which showed how little they were meant for;

whereupon Letty, who argued much from books, got angry in replying that God made coats of skins for both

Adam and Eve alikealso it occurred to her that in the East the men too wore petticoats. But this latter

argument, obscuring the majesty of the former, was one too many, for Ben answered contemptuously, "The

more spooneys they!" and immediately appealed to his mother whether boys were not better than girls. Mrs.

Garth pronounced that both were alike naughty, but that boys were undoubtedly stronger, could run faster,

and throw with more precision to a greater distance. With this oracular sentence Ben was well satisfied, not

minding the naughtiness; but Letty took it ill, her feeling of superiority being stronger than her muscles.

Fred never became richhis hopefulness had not led him to expect that; but he gradually saved enough to

become owner of the stock and furniture at Stone Court, and the work which Mr. Garth put into his hands

carried him in plenty through those "bad times" which are always present with farmers. Mary, in her matronly

days, became as solid in figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little formal teaching, so that

Mrs. Garth was alarmed lest they should never be well grounded in grammar and geography. Nevertheless,

they were found quite forward enough when they went to school; perhaps, because they had liked nothing so

well as being with their mother. When Fred was riding home on winter evenings he had a pleasant vision

beforehand of the bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor, and was sorry for other men who could not have

Mary for their wife; especially for Mr. Farebrother. "He was ten times worthier of you than I was," Fred

could now say to her, magnanimously. "To be sure he was," Mary answered; "and for that reason he could do

better without me. But youI shudder to think what you would have been a curate in debt for horsehire

On inquiry it might possibly be found that Fred and Mary still inhabit Stone Courtthat the creeping plants

still cast the foam of their blossoms over the fine stonewall into the field where the walnuttrees stand in

stately rowand that on sunny days the two lovers who were first engaged with the umbrellaring may be

seen in whitehaired placidity at the open window from which Mary Garth, in the days of old Peter

Lydgate's hair never became white. He died when he was only fifty, leaving his wife and children provided

for by a heavy insurance on his life. He had gained an excellent practice, alternating, according to the season,

between London and a Continental bathingplace; having written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a

good deal of wealth on its side. His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he always regarded

himself as a failure: he had not done what he once meant to do. His acquaintances thought him enviable to

have so charming a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion. Rosamond never committed a second

compromising indiscretion. She simply continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment,

disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him by stratagem. As the years went on he opposed

her less and less, whence Rosamond concluded that he had learned the value of her opinion; on the other

hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents now that he gained a good income, and instead of the

threatened cage in Bride Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the bird of paradise that she

resembled. In brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful man. But he died prematurely of diphtheria, and

Rosamond afterwards married an elderly and wealthy physician, who took kindly to her four children. She

made a very pretty show with her daughters, driving out in her carriage, and often spoke of her happiness as

"a reward"she did not say for what, but probably she meant that it was a reward for her patience with

Tertius, whose temper never became faultless, and to the last occasionally let slip a bitter speech which was

more memorable than the signs he made of his repentance. He once called her his basil plant; and when she

asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's

brains. Rosamond had a placid but strong answer to such speeches. Why then had he chosen her? It was a

pity he had not had Mrs. Ladislaw, whom he was always praising and placing above her. And thus the

conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's side. But it would be unjust not to tell, that she never

uttered a word in depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance the generosity which had come

Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women, feeling that there was always

something better which she might have done, if she had only been better and known better. Still, she never

repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry Will Ladislaw, and he would have held it the

greatest shame as well as sorrow to him if she had repented. They were bound to each other by a love

stronger than any impulses which could have marred it. No life would have been possible to Dorothea which

was not filled with emotion, and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she had not

the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself. Will became an ardent public man, working

well in those times when reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has been

much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses.

Dorothea could have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick

of a struggle against them, and that she should give him wifely help. Many who knew her, thought it a pity

that so substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another, and be only known

in a certain circle as a wife and mother. But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought

rather to have donenot even Sir James Chettam, who went no further than the negative prescription that

But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the way in which the family was made whole

again was characteristic of all concerned. Mr. Brooke could not resist the pleasure of corresponding with Will

and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen had been remarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal

Reform, it ran off into an invitation to the Grange, which, once written, could not be done away with at less

cost than the sacrifice (hardly to be conceived) of the whole valuable letter. During the months of this

correspondence Mr. Brooke had continually, in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been presupposing or hinting

that the intention of cutting off the entail was still maintained; and the day on which his pen gave the daring

invitation, he went to Freshitt expressly to intimate that he had a stronger sense than ever of the reasons for

taking that energetic step as a precaution against any mixture of low blood in the heir of the Brookes.

But that morning something exciting had happened at the Hall. A letter had come to Celia which made her

cry silently as she read it; and when Sir James, unused to see her in tears, asked anxiously what was the

"Dorothea has a little boy. And you will not let me go and see her. And I am sure she wants to see me. And

she will not know what to do with the babyshe will do wrong things with it. And they thought she would

die. It is very dreadful! Suppose it had been me and little Arthur, and Dodo had been hindered from coming

"Good heavens, Celia!" said Sir James, much wrought upon, "what do you wish? I will do anything you like.

It was after this that Mr. Brooke came, and meeting the Baronet in the grounds, began to chat with him in

ignorance of the news, which Sir James for some reason did not care to tell him immediately. But when the

entail was touched on in the usual way, he said, "My dear sir, it is not for me to dictate to you, but for my part

Mr. Brooke felt so much surprised that he did not at once find out how much he was relieved by the sense

Such being the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James should consent to a reconciliation with

Dorothea and her husband. Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike. Sir

James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to have Sir James's company mixed with another

kind: they were on a footing of reciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when Dorothea and

It became an understood thing that Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaw should pay at least two visits during the year to the

Grange, and there came gradually a small row of cousins at Freshitt who enjoyed playing with the two

cousins Visiting Tipton as much as if the blood of these cousins had been less dubiously mixed.

Mr. Brooke lived to a good old age, and his estate was inherited by Dorothea's son, who might have

represented Middlemarch, but declined, thinking that his opinions had less chance of being stifled if he

Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a mistake; and indeed this remained the

tradition concerning it in Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine girl who

married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and in little more than a year after his death gave up

her estate to marry his cousinyoung enough to have been his son, with no property, and not wellborn.

Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually observed that she could not have been "a nice woman,"

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young

and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will

often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward

being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the

opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in

daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever

gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas,

some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that

river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But

the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is

partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is

half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.