MIDDLEMARCH
PART 5
CHAPTER X.
"He
had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to wear than the skin of
a bear not yet killed."—FULLER.
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 note-books, 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 self-conceit 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 mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.
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 middle-aged 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 self-delusion 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
neighbour 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, claims some of our pity.
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 to 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
noble-hearted 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 for their
personal application.
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 honoured; 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 pressure of Tartarean shades.
For to
Dorothea, after that toy-box 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 come—Mr. 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 knowledge—to 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 kept the
only oil; and who more learned than Mr. Casaubon?
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, Dorothea, for I shall be constrained to make the utmost use of my
time during our stay in Rome, and I should feel more at liberty if you had a
companion."
The words
"I should feel more at liberty" grated on Dorothea. For the first
time in speaking to Mr. Casaubon she colored from annoyance.
"You
must have misunderstood me very much," she said, "if you think I
should not enter into the value of your time—if you think that I should not
willingly give up whatever interfered with your using it to the best
purpose."
"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 could thus achieve
two purposes in the same space of time."
"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 dinner-party 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 herself; 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 so much above me without knowing that he
needs me less than I need him?"
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
drawing-room in her silver-gray dress—the simple lines of her dark-brown 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 speech and emotion the more remarked when some outward appeal had
touched her.
She was
naturally the subject of many observations this evening, for the dinner-party
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 brother-in-law, 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 tithe-dinner, 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 inordinate travel and habit of taking too much in the form of ideas.
Already,
as Miss Brooke passed out of the dining-room, opportunity was found for some
interjectional "asides."
"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 deep-mouthed manner
as a sort of armorial bearings, stamping the speech of a man who held a good
position.
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 middle-aged bachelor and coursing celebrity, who had a complexion
something like an Easter egg, a few hairs carefully arranged, and a carriage
implying the consciousness of a distinguished appearance.
"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 woman—something of the
coquette. A man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a dead set she makes at
you the better."
"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 devil."
"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 were a marrying man I should choose Miss Vincy before either
of them."
"Well,
make up, make up," said Mr. Standish, jocosely; "you see the
middle-aged fellows early the day."
Mr.
Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to incur the
certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose.
The Miss
Vincy who had the honour 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 home-made 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 Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively, when Mrs. Renfrew's
attention was called away.
"It
strengthens the disease," said the Rector's wife, much too well-born not
to be an amateur in medicine. "Everything depends on the constitution:
some people make fat, some blood, and some bile—that's my view of the matter;
and whatever they take is a sort of grist to the mill."
"Then
she ought to take medicines that would reduce—reduce the disease, you know, if
you are right, my dear. And I think what you say is reasonable."
"Certainly
it is reasonable. You have two sorts of potatoes, fed on the same soil. One of
them grows more and more watery—"
"Ah!
like this poor Mrs. Renfrew—that is what I think. Dropsy! There is no swelling
yet—it is inward. I should say she ought to take drying medicines, shouldn't
you?—or a dry hot-air bath. Many things might be tried, of a drying
nature."
"Let
her try a certain person's pamphlets," said Mrs. Cadwallader in an
undertone, seeing the gentlemen enter. "He does not want drying."
"Who,
my dear?" said Lady Chettam, a charming woman, not so quick as to nullify
the pleasure of explanation.
"The
bridegroom—Casaubon. He has certainly been drying up faster since the
engagement: the flame of passion, I suppose."
"I
should think he is far from having a good constitution," said Lady
Chettam, with a still deeper undertone. "And then his studies—so very dry,
as you say."
"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 by-and-by she will be at the other
extreme. All flightiness!"
"How
very shocking! I fear she is headstrong. But tell me—you know all about him—is
there anything very bad? What is the truth?"
"The
truth? he is as bad as the wrong physic—nasty 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 hear nothing against
Miss Brooke. He says she is the mirror of women still."
"That
is a generous make-believe of his. Depend upon it, he likes little Celia
better, and she appreciates him. I hope you like my little Celia?"
"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 certainly looks it—a fine brow
indeed."
"He
is a gentleman. I heard him talking to Humphrey. He talks well."
"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 butcher-like, 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. Lydgate!"
"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 test him."
The
affable dowager declared herself delighted with this opportunity of making Mr.
Lydgate's acquaintance, having heard of his success in treating fever on a new
plan.
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 insight of agreement, that
she formed the most cordial opinion of his talents.
"I
am quite pleased with your protege," she said to Mr. Brooke before going
away.
"My
protege?—dear me!—who is that?" said Mr. Brooke.
"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 first-rate—has
studied in Paris, knew Broussais; has ideas, you know—wants to raise the
profession."
"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 they are?" said Mr. Standish.
"Medical
knowledge is at a low ebb among us," said Mr. Bulstrode, who spoke in a
subdued tone, and had rather a sickly air. "I, for my part, hail the
advent of Mr. Lydgate. I hope to find good reason for confiding the new
hospital to his management."
"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 little."
"Well,
you know, Standish, every dose you take is an experiment-an experiment, you
know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards the lawyer.
"Oh,
if you talk in that sense!" said Mr. Standish, with as much disgust at
such non-legal quibbling as a man can well betray towards a valuable client.
"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 socially useful, gave her the piquancy of an unusual combination.
"She
is a good creature—that fine girl—but 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 back 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 mind 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 the most excellent things in woman.
Miss
Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of these gentlemen under her
maiden name. Not long after that dinner-party she had become Mrs. Casaubon, and
was on her way to Rome.
CHAPTER XI.
"But deeds and language such as
men do use,
And persons such as comedy would
choose,
When she would show an image of the
times,
And sport with human follies, not
with crimes."
—BEN JONSON.
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
half-century 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 bird-notes, and
blue eyes for a heaven.
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 connection—gradually, as the old
stocking gave way to the savings-bank, 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 starting-point; 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 nymph-like figure and pure blindness which give the
largest range to choice in the flow and colour 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 female—even 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 enough with most judges
to dispel any prejudice excited by Mrs. Lemon's praise.
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 good-fellowship 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 to—the 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 by-and-by enlarge
his dinner-parties, but at present there were plenty of guests at his
well-spread table.
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 work-table with an air of more
entire placidity, until, the clock again giving notice that it was going to
strike, she looked up from the lace-mending which was occupying her plump
fingers and rang the bell.
"Knock
at Mr. Fred's door again, Pritchard, and tell him it has struck half-past
ten."
This was
said without any change in the radiant good-humour of Mrs. Vincy's face, in
which forty-five years had delved neither angles nor parallels; and pushing
back her pink capstrings, she let her work rest on her lap, while she looked
admiringly at her daughter.
"Mamma,"
said Rosamond, "when Fred comes down I wish you would not let him have red
herrings. I cannot bear the smell of them all over the house at this hour of
the morning."
"Oh,
my dear, you are so hard on your brothers! It is the only fault I have to find
with you. You are the sweetest temper in the world, but you are so tetchy with
your brothers."
"Not
tetchy, mamma: you never hear me speak in an unladylike way."
"Well,
but you want to deny them things."
"Brothers
are so unpleasant."
"Oh,
my dear, you must allow for young men. Be thankful if they have good hearts. A
woman must learn to put up with little things. You will be married some
day."
"Not
to any one who is like Fred."
"Don't
decry your own brother, my dear. Few young men have less against them, although
he couldn't take his degree—I'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 Fred."
"Oh
no, mamma, only because he is Bob."
"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 young man."
"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 sure there's no girl better deserves it."
"Excuse
me, mamma—I wish you would not say, 'the pick of them.'"
"Why,
what else are they?"
"I
mean, mamma, it is rather a vulgar expression."
"Very
likely, my dear; I never was a good speaker. What should I say?"
"The
best of them."
"Why,
that seems just as plain and common. If I had had time to think, I should have
said, 'the most superior young men.' But with your education you must
know."
"What
must Rosy know, mother?" said Mr. Fred, who had slid in unobserved through
the half-open door while the ladies were bending over their work, and now going
up to the fire stood with his back towards it, warming the soles of his
slippers.
"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."
"Are
you beginning to dislike slang, then?" said Rosamond, with mild gravity.
"Only
the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class."
"There
is correct English: that is not slang."
"I
beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and
essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets."
"You
will say anything, Fred, to gain your point."
"Well,
tell me whether it is slang or poetry to call an ox a leg-plaiter."
"Of
course you can call it poetry if you like."
"Aha,
Miss Rosy, you don't know Homer from slang. I shall invent a new game; I shall
write bits of slang and poetry on slips, and give them to you to
separate."
"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 an air of
silent rejection, and polite forbearance from signs of disgust.
"Should
you like eggs, sir?"
"Eggs,
no! Bring me a grilled bone."
"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 understand why you find it so
difficult to get up on other mornings."
"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 composure.
"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 feelings and not my actions."
"I
think it describes the smell of grilled bone."
"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 she does herself.
She is my notion of a pleasant woman."
"Bless
you both, my dears, and don't quarrel," said Mrs. Vincy, with motherly
cordiality. "Come, Fred, tell us all about the new doctor. How is your
uncle pleased with him?"
"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."
"Oh,
I dined at Plymdale's. We had whist. Lydgate was there too."
"And
what do you think of him? He is very gentlemanly, I suppose. They say he is of
excellent family—his relations quite county people."
"Yes,"
said Fred. "There was a Lydgate at John's who spent no end of money. I
find this man is a second cousin of his. But rich men may have very poor devils
for second cousins."
"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 good-humoured
landlady, accustomed to the most capricious orders of gentlemen.
"I
thought it was odd his name was Tertius," said the bright-faced matron,
"but of course it's a name in the family. But now, tell us exactly what
sort of man he is."
"Oh,
tallish, dark, clever—talks well—rather a prig, I think."
"I
never can make out what you mean by a prig," said Rosamond.
"A
fellow who wants to show that he has opinions."
"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 opinions."
"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 arm-chair.
"If you are jealous of her, go oftener to Stone Court yourself and eclipse
her."
"I
wish you would not be so vulgar, Fred. If you have finished, pray ring the
bell."
"It
is true, though—what 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 much of my uncle's cough
and his ugly relations."
"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 ill-will 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 Garth a dreadful plain girl—more fit for a
governess."
"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 studies,
my dear; for I must go and do some shopping."
"Fred's
studies are not very deep," said Rosamond, rising with her mamma, "he
is only reading a novel."
"Well,
well, by-and-by he'll go to his Latin and things," said Mrs. Vincy,
soothingly, stroking her son's head. "There's a fire in the smoking-room
on purpose. It's your father's wish, you know—Fred, my dear—and I always tell
him you will be good, and go to college again to take your degree."
Fred drew
his mother's hand down to his lips, but said nothing.
"I
suppose you are not going out riding to-day?" said Rosamond, lingering a
little after her mamma was gone.
"No;
why?"
"Papa
says I may have the chestnut to ride now."
"You
can go with me to-morrow, 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, of all other places.
"Oh,
I say, Rosy," said Fred, as she was passing out of the room, "if you
are going to the piano, let me come and play some airs with you."
"Pray
do not ask me this morning."
"Why
not this morning?"
"Really,
Fred, I wish you would leave off playing the flute. A man looks very silly playing
the flute. And you play so out of tune."
"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 oblige me by not playing it?"
"And
why should you expect me to take you out riding?"
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 favourite airs from his
"Instructor on the Flute;" a wheezy performance, into which he threw
much ambition and an irrepressible hopefulness.
To be continued
