MIDDLEMARCH
PART 12
BOOK III.
WAITING FOR DEATH.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"Your horses of the Sun,"
he said,
"And first-rate whip Apollo!
Whate'er they be, I'll eat my head,
But I will beat them hollow."
Fred
Vincy, we have seen, had a debt on his mind, and though no such immaterial
burthen could depress that buoyant-hearted 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
horse-dealer 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 habits—spent money on coursing, on his cellar, and on
dinner-giving, 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 good-tempered 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 an agreeable young gentleman.
With a
favour 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 position—wear trousers shrunk with washing, eat cold
mutton, have to walk for want of a horse, or to "duck under" in any sort
of way—was 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 kindest—namely, 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
honourable 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 dinner-service. 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 ardour 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 fellow-men when they had not proved themselves untrustworthy; and he had
the highest opinion of Fred, was "sure the lad would turn out well—an open
affectionate fellow, with a good bottom to his character—you 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 once—you would have learned
to love them if you had known Caleb Garth), and said in a comfortable tone—
"It
was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse's knees? And then, these
exchanges, they don't answer when you have 'cute jockeys to deal with. You'll
be wiser another time, my boy."
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 well-proportioned letters
and final flourish, with his head a trifle on one side for an instant, then
handed it to Fred, said "Good-by," and returned forthwith to his
absorption in a plan for Sir James Chettam's new farm-buildings.
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 colour 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 good-humoured 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 conduct—just 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
bank-notes, 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 self-restraint. 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 seed-corn,
which, planted by judgment, and watered by luck, might yield more than
threefold—a very poor rate of multiplication when the field is a young gentleman's
infinite soul, with all the numerals at command.
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 chyle-fed
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
steeple-chase; and he only liked it the better because he wanted money and
hoped to win. But the twenty pounds' worth of seed-corn had been planted in
vain in the seductive green plot—all of it at least which had not been
dispersed by the roadside—and 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 broken-winded 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 heroism—heroism 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 horse-fair which was to be
held the next morning, and—simply 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 horse-fair, thought that young Vincy
was pleasure-seeking 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 flute-playing, his attraction towards Bambridge and
Horrock was an interesting fact which even the love of horse-flesh 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
coal-dust, and dine in a room furnished with a dirt-enamelled 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
determined that the pursuit of these things was "gay."
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 hat-brim 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 hat-brim 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 humour—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 more powerful over the youth of England than in a judge of
horses.
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 silent with a profile
neither more nor less sceptical than it had been.
The part
thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective. A mixture of
passions was excited in Fred—a 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 moment.
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
horse-dealing 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 bay-tree. 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 billiard-room 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 pre-eminence even among black-legs; 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 corn-factor; 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
wind-instruments.' 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—
"Not
but what the roan was a better trotter than yours."
"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 the horse than they
chose to say.
That very
evening, indeed, before the fair had set in, Fred thought he saw a favourable
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 animal—even Horrock—was
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 colour of the horse was a dappled gray, and Fred
happened to know that Lord Medlicote's man was on the look-out 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 broken-winded steed long enough to
show that he thought it worth consideration, and it seemed probable that he
would take it, with five-and-twenty 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 fifty-five pounds in pocket by the transaction, and
would have a hundred and thirty-five pounds towards meeting the bill; so that
the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at the utmost be twenty-five
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 thirty pounds in addition—only five pounds more than he had expected
to give.
But he
felt a little worried and wearied, perhaps with mental debate, and without
waiting for the further gayeties of the horse-fair, he set out alone on his
fourteen miles' journey, meaning to take it very quietly and keep his horse
fresh.
CHAPTER XXIV.
"The offender's sorrow brings
but small relief
To him who wears the strong offence's
cross."
—SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
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 stable-board. 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 ill-fortune: 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 have 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 town—a homely place with an orchard in front of it, a rambling,
old-fashioned, half-timbered building, which before the town had spread had
been a farm-house, 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 to-day 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 over-hasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth, and
learned self-control. 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,
and—where 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 Zone—that, 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 fine wine sustains a
flavour of skin.
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
there—making her pies at the well-scoured deal table on one side of that airy
room, observing Sally's movements at the oven and dough-tub 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 clothes-horse at the other end of the kitchen indicated an intermittent wash
of small things also going on.
Mrs.
Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling her
pastry—applying her rolling-pin 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 curly-haired, square-faced
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
snowy-frilled 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
dowry—the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a malignant
prophecy—"Such as I am, she will shortly be."
"Now
let us go through that once more," said Mrs. Garth, pinching an apple-puff
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 would have tried to hold her "Lindley
Murray" above the waves.)
"Oh—it
means—you must think what you mean," said Ben, rather peevishly. "I
hate grammar. What's the use of it?"
"To
teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be understood,"
said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision. "Should you like to speak as old
Job does?"
"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 think he meant a ship off the sea."
"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 apple-peel 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. What would
you do then?"
"I
shouldn't care, I should leave off," said Ben, with a sense that this was
an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.
"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 clothes-horse, and said, "Come here and tell me the
story I told you on Wednesday, about Cincinnatus."
"I
know! he was a farmer," said Ben.
"Now,
Ben, he was a Roman—let me tell," said Letty, using her elbow
contentiously.
"You
silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing."
"Yes,
but before that—that didn't come first—people wanted him," said Letty.
"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 father—couldn't he,
mother?"
"Now,
Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us," said Letty,
frowning. "Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak."
"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 already a painful
affair.) "Now, Ben."
"Well—oh—well—why,
there was a great deal of fighting, and they were all blockheads, and—I 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 slates."
"Come,
come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that," said Mrs. Garth, carefully
serious. "Hark, there is a knock at the door! Run, Letty, and open
it."
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 kitchen without his usual jokes and caresses.
Mrs.
Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not a feeling
that she was given to express, and she only said, quietly continuing her work—
"You,
Fred, so early in the day? You look quite pale. Has anything happened?"
"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 of it before her, if not to her solely.
"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 you mind
staying with me, while I finish my matters here?"
"But
we needn't go on about Cincinnatus, need we?" said Ben, who had taken
Fred's whip out of his hand, and was trying its efficiency on the cat.
"No,
go out now. But put that whip down. How very mean of you to whip poor old
Tortoise! Pray take the whip from him, Fred."
"Come,
old boy, give it me," said Fred, putting out his hand.
"Will
you let me ride on your horse to-day?" said Ben, rendering up the whip,
with an air of not being obliged to do it.
"Not
to-day—another time. I am not riding my own horse."
"Shall
you see Mary to-day?"
"Yes,
I think so," said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.
"Tell
her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun."
"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 away.
"One—only
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 ninety-two pounds. He
can go to Mr. Hanmer's now; he is just at the right age."
This did
not lead well towards the news that Mr. Garth was on the brink of losing
ninety-two 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 cap-border. "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 go to him in the parlour,
shall we?"
When they
entered the parlour 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 there anything
up at home?—anything the matter?"
"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 said—
"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 sure he could meet it himself."
There was
an evident change in Mrs. Garth's face, but it was like a change below the
surface of water which remains smooth. She fixed her eyes on Fred, saying—
"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 us—I'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 the bank. It's a hundred and ten pounds, the deuce take it!"
"I
must give you the ninety-two 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 dishonourable, 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.
"I
shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth—ultimately," he stammered out.
"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 fifteen." She had
never been so little inclined to make excuses for Fred.
"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 everything—I 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 more—I 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 pass through the gate.
"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 hang his risks
on his oldest friend, who could the least afford to lose."
"I
was a fool, Susan:"
"That
you were," said the wife, nodding and smiling. "But I should not have
gone to publish it in the market-place. 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 with some better plan."
"You
are sadly cut up, I know, Susan," said Caleb, looking feelingly at her.
"I can't abide your losing the money you've scraped together for
Alfred."
"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 what money she has."
Caleb had
pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his head slowly, and
fitting his finger-tips together with much nicety.
"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 consecrated symbol is wrapped in its gold-fringed linen.
Caleb
Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the indispensable might
of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labour 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 a-making, the signal-shouts 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 star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the
wharf, the piled-up 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 the special men in the county.
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 honourably 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 land-drainage, 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.
To be
continued
