MIDDLEMARCH
PART 30
CHAPTER LVII.
They numbered scarce eight summers when
a name
Rose on their souls and stirred
such motions there
As thrill the buds and shape their
hidden frame
At penetration of the quickening
air:
His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian
Vor,
Making the little world their childhood
knew
Large with a land of mountain lake
and scaur,
And larger yet with wonder love belief
Toward Walter Scott who living far
away
Sent them this wealth of joy and noble
grief.
The book and they must part, but
day by day,
In lines that thwart like
portly spiders ran
They wrote the tale, from Tully
Veolan.
The
evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to see that
this was a world in which even a spirited young man must sometimes walk for
want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five o'clock and called on Mrs.
Garth by the way, wishing to assure himself that she accepted their new
relations willingly.
He
found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great apple-tree in
the orchard. It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her eldest son, Christy,
her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a short holiday—Christy, who held
it the most desirable thing in the world to be a tutor, to study all
literatures and be a regenerate Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on
poor Fred, a sort of object-lesson given to him by the educational mother.
Christy himself, a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his
mother not much higher than Fred's shoulder—which made it the harder that he
should be held superior—was always as simple as possible, and thought no more
of Fred's disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe's, wishing that he
himself were more of the same height. He was lying on the ground now by his
mother's chair, with his straw hat laid flat over his eyes, while Jim on the
other side was reading aloud from that beloved writer who has made a chief part
in the happiness of many young lives. The volume was "Ivanhoe," and
Jim was in the great archery scene at the tournament, but suffered much interruption
from Ben, who had fetched his own old bow and arrows, and was making himself
dreadfully disagreeable, Letty thought, by begging all present to observe his
random shots, which no one wished to do except Brownie, the active-minded but
probably shallow mongrel, while the grizzled Newfoundland lying in the sun
looked on with the dull-eyed neutrality of extreme old age. Letty herself,
showing as to her mouth and pinafore some slight signs that she had been
assisting at the gathering of the cherries which stood in a coral-heap on the
tea-table, was now seated on the grass, listening open-eyed to the reading.
But
the centre of interest was changed for all by the arrival of Fred Vincy. When,
seating himself on a garden-stool, he said that he was on his way to Lowick
Parsonage, Ben, who had thrown down his bow, and snatched up a reluctant
half-grown kitten instead, strode across Fred's outstretched leg, and said
"Take me!"
"Oh,
and me too," said Letty.
"You
can't keep up with Fred and me," said Ben.
"Yes,
I can. Mother, please say that I am to go," urged Letty, whose life was
much checkered by resistance to her depreciation as a girl.
"I
shall stay with Christy," observed Jim; as much as to say that he had the
advantage of those simpletons; whereupon Letty put her hand up to her head and
looked with jealous indecision from the one to the other.
"Let
us all go and see Mary," said Christy, opening his arms.
"No,
my dear child, we must not go in a swarm to the parsonage. And that old Glasgow
suit of yours would never do. Besides, your father will come home. We must let
Fred go alone. He can tell Mary that you are here, and she will come back
to-morrow."
Christy
glanced at his own threadbare knees, and then at Fred's beautiful white
trousers. Certainly Fred's tailoring suggested the advantages of an English
university, and he had a graceful way even of looking warm and of pushing his
hair back with his handkerchief.
"Children,
run away," said Mrs. Garth; "it is too warm to hang about your
friends. Take your brother and show him the rabbits."
The
eldest understood, and led off the children immediately. Fred felt that Mrs.
Garth wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he had to say, but
he could only begin by observing—
"How
glad you must be to have Christy here!"
"Yes;
he has come sooner than I expected. He got down from the coach at nine o'clock,
just after his father went out. I am longing for Caleb to come and hear what
wonderful progress Christy is making. He has paid his expenses for the last
year by giving lessons, carrying on hard study at the same time. He hopes soon
to get a private tutorship and go abroad."
"He
is a great fellow," said Fred, to whom these cheerful truths had a
medicinal taste, "and no trouble to anybody." After a slight pause,
he added, "But I fear you will think that I am going to be a great deal of
trouble to Mr. Garth."
"Caleb
likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more than any one
would have thought of asking them to do," answered Mrs. Garth. She was
knitting, and could either look at Fred or not, as she chose—always an
advantage when one is bent on loading speech with salutary meaning; and though
Mrs. Garth intended to be duly reserved, she did wish to say something that
Fred might be the better for.
"I
know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good reason,"
said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of something like a
disposition to lecture him. "I happen to have behaved just the worst to
the people I can't help wishing for the most from. But while two men like Mr.
Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given me up, I don't see why I should give
myself up." Fred thought it might be well to suggest these masculine
examples to Mrs. Garth.
"Assuredly,"
said she, with gathering emphasis. "A young man for whom two such elders
had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he threw himself away and
made their sacrifices vain."
Fred
wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, "I hope it will
not be so with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some encouragement to believe that
I may win Mary. Mr. Garth has told you about that? You were not surprised, I
dare say?" Fred ended, innocently referring only to his own love as probably
evident enough.
"Not
surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?" returned Mrs. Garth, who
thought it would be well for Fred to be more alive to the fact that Mary's
friends could not possibly have wished this beforehand, whatever the Vincys
might suppose. "Yes, I confess I was surprised."
"She
never did give me any—not the least in the world, when I talked to her
myself," said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary. "But when I asked Mr.
Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a hope."
The
power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not yet
discharged itself. It was a little too provoking even for her
self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the
disappointments of sadder and wiser people—making a meal of a nightingale and
never knowing it—and that all the while his family should suppose that hers was
in eager need of this sprig; and her vexation had fermented the more actively
because of its total repression towards her husband. Exemplary wives will
sometimes find scapegoats in this way. She now said with energetic decision,
"You made a great mistake, Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak for
you."
"Did
I?" said Fred, reddening instantaneously. He was alarmed, but at a loss to
know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone, "Mr.
Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I knew, would
listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite readily."
"Yes,
young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom
imagine how much those wishes cost others," said Mrs. Garth. She did not
mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation
into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand
air.
"I
cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother," said Fred,
who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning to form
themselves.
"Precisely;
you cannot conceive," said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as neatly as
possible.
For
a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and then turning
with a quick movement said almost sharply—
"Do
you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with Mary?"
"And
if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to be
surprised," returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her and
folding her arms. It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that she should put
her work out of her hands. In fact her feelings were divided between the
satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the sense of having gone a
little too far. Fred took his hat and stick and rose quickly.
"Then
you think I am standing in his way, and in Mary's too?" he said, in a tone
which seemed to demand an answer.
Mrs.
Garth could not speak immediately. She had brought herself into the unpleasant
position of being called on to say what she really felt, yet what she knew
there were strong reasons for concealing. And to her the consciousness of
having exceeded in words was peculiarly mortifying. Besides, Fred had given out
unexpected electricity, and he now added, "Mr. Garth seemed pleased that
Mary should be attached to me. He could not have known anything of this."
Mrs.
Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the fear that Caleb
might think her in the wrong not being easily endurable. She answered, wanting
to check unintended consequences—
"I
spoke from inference only. I am not aware that Mary knows anything of the
matter."
But
she hesitated to beg that he would keep entire silence on a subject which she
had herself unnecessarily mentioned, not being used to stoop in that way; and
while she was hesitating there was already a rush of unintended consequences
under the apple-tree where the tea-things stood. Ben, bouncing across the grass
with Brownie at his heels, and seeing the kitten dragging the knitting by a
lengthening line of wool, shouted and clapped his hands; Brownie barked, the
kitten, desperate, jumped on the tea-table and upset the milk, then jumped down
again and swept half the cherries with it; and Ben, snatching up the
half-knitted sock-top, fitted it over the kitten's head as a new source of
madness, while Letty arriving cried out to her mother against this cruelty—it
was a history as full of sensation as "This is the house that Jack
built." Mrs. Garth was obliged to interfere, the other young ones came up
and the tete-a-tete with Fred was ended. He got away as soon as he could, and
Mrs. Garth could only imply some retractation of her severity by saying
"God bless you" when she shook hands with him.
She
was unpleasantly conscious that she had been on the verge of speaking as
"one of the foolish women speaketh"—telling first and entreating
silence after. But she had not entreated silence, and to prevent Caleb's blame
she determined to blame herself and confess all to him that very night. It was
curious what an awful tribunal the mild Caleb's was to her, whenever he set it
up. But she meant to point out to him that the revelation might do Fred Vincy a
great deal of good.
No
doubt it was having a strong effect on him as he walked to Lowick. Fred's light
hopeful nature had perhaps never had so much of a bruise as from this
suggestion that if he had been out of the way Mary might have made a thoroughly
good match. Also he was piqued that he had been what he called such a stupid
lout as to ask that intervention from Mr. Farebrother. But it was not in a
lover's nature—it was not in Fred's, that the new anxiety raised about Mary's
feeling should not surmount every other. Notwithstanding his trust in Mr.
Farebrother's generosity, notwithstanding what Mary had said to him, Fred could
not help feeling that he had a rival: it was a new consciousness, and he
objected to it extremely, not being in the least ready to give up Mary for her
good, being ready rather to fight for her with any man whatsoever. But the
fighting with Mr. Farebrother must be of a metaphorical kind, which was much
more difficult to Fred than the muscular. Certainly this experience was a
discipline for Fred hardly less sharp than his disappointment about his uncle's
will. The iron had not entered into his soul, but he had begun to imagine what
the sharp edge would be. It did not once occur to Fred that Mrs. Garth might be
mistaken about Mr. Farebrother, but he suspected that she might be wrong about
Mary. Mary had been staying at the parsonage lately, and her mother might know
very little of what had been passing in her mind.
He
did not feel easier when he found her looking cheerful with the three ladies in
the drawing-room. They were in animated discussion on some subject which was dropped
when he entered, and Mary was copying the labels from a heap of shallow cabinet
drawers, in a minute handwriting which she was skilled in. Mr. Farebrother was
somewhere in the village, and the three ladies knew nothing of Fred's peculiar
relation to Mary: it was impossible for either of them to propose that they
should walk round the garden, and Fred predicted to himself that he should have
to go away without saying a word to her in private. He told her first of
Christy's arrival and then of his own engagement with her father; and he was
comforted by seeing that this latter news touched her keenly. She said
hurriedly, "I am so glad," and then bent over her writing to hinder
any one from noticing her face. But here was a subject which Mrs. Farebrother
could not let pass.
"You
don't mean, my dear Miss Garth, that you are glad to hear of a young man giving
up the Church for which he was educated: you only mean that things being so,
you are glad that he should be under an excellent man like your father."
"No,
really, Mrs. Farebrother, I am glad of both, I fear," said Mary, cleverly
getting rid of one rebellious tear. "I have a dreadfully secular mind. I
never liked any clergyman except the Vicar of Wakefield and Mr.
Farebrother."
"Now
why, my dear?" said Mrs. Farebrother, pausing on her large wooden
knitting-needles and looking at Mary. "You have always a good reason for
your opinions, but this astonishes me. Of course I put out of the question
those who preach new doctrine. But why should you dislike clergymen?"
"Oh
dear," said Mary, her face breaking into merriment as she seemed to
consider a moment, "I don't like their neckcloths."
"Why,
you don't like Camden's, then," said Miss Winifred, in some anxiety.
"Yes,
I do," said Mary. "I don't like the other clergymen's neckcloths,
because it is they who wear them."
"How
very puzzling!" said Miss Noble, feeling that her own intellect was
probably deficient.
"My
dear, you are joking. You would have better reasons than these for slighting so
respectable a class of men," said Mrs. Farebrother, majestically.
"Miss
Garth has such severe notions of what people should be that it is difficult to
satisfy her," said Fred.
"Well,
I am glad at least that she makes an exception in favour of my son," said
the old lady.
Mary
was wondering at Fred's piqued tone, when Mr. Farebrother came in and had to
hear the news about the engagement under Mr. Garth. At the end he said with
quiet satisfaction, "That is right;" and then bent to look at
Mary's labels and praise her handwriting. Fred felt horribly jealous—was glad,
of course, that Mr. Farebrother was so estimable, but wished that he had been
ugly and fat as men at forty sometimes are. It was clear what the end would be,
since Mary openly placed Farebrother above everybody, and these women were all
evidently encouraging the affair. He was feeling sure that he should have no
chance of speaking to Mary, when Mr. Farebrother said—
"Fred,
help me to carry these drawers back into my study—you have never seen my fine
new study. Pray come too, Miss Garth. I want you to see a stupendous spider I
found this morning."
Mary
at once saw the Vicar's intention. He had never since the memorable evening
deviated from his old pastoral kindness towards her, and her momentary wonder
and doubt had quite gone to sleep. Mary was accustomed to think rather
rigorously of what was probable, and if a belief flattered her vanity she felt
warned to dismiss it as ridiculous, having early had much exercise in such
dismissals. It was as she had foreseen: when Fred had been asked to admire the
fittings of the study, and she had been asked to admire the spider, Mr.
Farebrother said—
"Wait
here a minute or two. I am going to look out an engraving which Fred is tall
enough to hang for me. I shall be back in a few minutes." And then he went
out. Nevertheless, the first word Fred said to Mary was—
"It
is of no use, whatever I do, Mary. You are sure to marry Farebrother at
last." There was some rage in his tone.
"What
do you mean, Fred?" Mary exclaimed indignantly, blushing deeply, and
surprised out of all her readiness in reply.
"It
is impossible that you should not see it all clearly enough—you who see
everything."
"I
only see that you are behaving very ill, Fred, in speaking so of Mr.
Farebrother after he has pleaded your cause in every way. How can you have
taken up such an idea?"
Fred
was rather deep, in spite of his irritation. If Mary had really been
unsuspicious, there was no good in telling her what Mrs. Garth had said.
"It
follows as a matter of course," he replied. "When you are continually
seeing a man who beats me in everything, and whom you set up above everybody, I
can have no fair chance."
"You
are very ungrateful, Fred," said Mary. "I wish I had never told Mr.
Farebrother that I cared for you in the least."
"No,
I am not ungrateful; I should be the happiest fellow in the world if it were
not for this. I told your father everything, and he was very kind; he treated
me as if I were his son. I could go at the work with a will, writing and
everything, if it were not for this."
"For
this? for what?" said Mary, imagining now that something specific must
have been said or done.
"This
dreadful certainty that I shall be bowled out by Farebrother." Mary was
appeased by her inclination to laugh.
"Fred,"
she said, peeping round to catch his eyes, which were sulkily turned away from
her, "you are too delightfully ridiculous. If you were not such a charming
simpleton, what a temptation this would be to play the wicked coquette, and let
you suppose that somebody besides you has made love to me."
"Do
you really like me best, Mary?" said Fred, turning eyes full of affection
on her, and trying to take her hand.
"I
don't like you at all at this moment," said Mary, retreating, and putting
her hands behind her. "I only said that no mortal ever made love to me
besides you. And that is no argument that a very wise man ever will," she
ended, merrily.
"I
wish you would tell me that you could not possibly ever think of him,"
said Fred.
"Never
dare to mention this any more to me, Fred," said Mary, getting serious
again. "I don't know whether it is more stupid or ungenerous in you not to
see that Mr. Farebrother has left us together on purpose that we might speak
freely. I am disappointed that you should be so blind to his delicate
feeling."
There
was no time to say any more before Mr. Farebrother came back with the
engraving; and Fred had to return to the drawing-room still with a jealous
dread in his heart, but yet with comforting arguments from Mary's words and
manner. The result of the conversation was on the whole more painful to Mary:
inevitably her attention had taken a new attitude, and she saw the possibility
of new interpretations. She was in a position in which she seemed to herself to
be slighting Mr. Farebrother, and this, in relation to a man who is much
honoured, is always dangerous to the firmness of a grateful woman. To have a
reason for going home the next day was a relief, for Mary earnestly desired to
be always clear that she loved Fred best. When a tender affection has been
storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept
any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. And we can set a
watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures.
"Fred
has lost all his other expectations; he must keep this," Mary said to
herself, with a smile curling her lips. It was impossible to help fleeting visions
of another kind—new dignities and an acknowledged value of which she had often
felt the absence. But these things with Fred outside them, Fred forsaken and
looking sad for the want of her, could never tempt her deliberate thought.
CHAPTER LVIII.
"For there can live no hatred in
thine eye,
Therefore in that I cannot know thy
change:
In many's looks the false heart's
history
Is writ in moods and frowns and
wrinkles strange:
But Heaven in thy creation did decree
That in thy face sweet love should
ever dwell:
Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's
workings be
Thy looks should nothing thence but
sweetness tell."
—SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
At
the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond, she herself
had never had the idea that she should be driven to make the sort of appeal
which he foresaw. She had not yet had any anxiety about ways and means,
although her domestic life had been expensive as well as eventful. Her baby had
been born prematurely, and all the embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by
in darkness. This misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in
going out on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so;
but it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or
rudely told him that she would do as she liked.
What
led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from Captain Lydgate,
the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our Tertius of
that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair from brow to nape in a
despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius himself), and showing an ignorant
security that he knew the proper thing to say on every topic. Lydgate inwardly
cursed his own folly that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to
his uncle's on the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to
Rosamond by saying so in private. For to Rosamond this visit was a source of
unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation. She was so intensely
conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying in the house, that
she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by his presence to be diffused
through all other minds; and when she introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests,
she had a placid sense that his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor.
The satisfaction was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in
the conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed now
that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above the
Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and visits to and
from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence for Tertius. Especially
as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had
come with her maid, and stayed two nights on her way from town. Hence it was
clearly worth while for Rosamond to take pains with her music and the careful
selection of her lace.
As
to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on one side,
and his rather heavy utterance, might have been disadvantageous in any young
gentleman who had not a military bearing and mustache to give him what is doted
on by some flower-like blond heads as "style." He had, moreover, that
sort of high-breeding which consists in being free from the petty solicitudes
of middle-class gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms.
Rosamond delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at
Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in flirting
with her. The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest larks he had ever
had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected that his queer cousin Tertius
wished him away: though Lydgate, who would rather (hyperbolically speaking)
have died than have failed in polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and
only pretended generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning
the task of answering him to Rosamond. For he was not at all a jealous husband,
and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone with his wife to
bearing him company.
"I
wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius," said
Rosamond, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to see some
brother officers stationed there. "You really look so absent sometimes—you
seem to be seeing through his head into something behind it, instead of looking
at him."
"My
dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass as that, I
hope," said Lydgate, brusquely. "If he got his head broken, I might
look at it with interest, not before."
"I
cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so contemptuously,"
said Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while she spoke with a mild
gravity which had a touch of disdain in it.
"Ask
Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he ever met with.
Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came."
Rosamond
thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the Captain: he was
jealous, and she liked his being jealous.
"It
is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she answered,
"but in my opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman, and I think
you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him with neglect."
"No,
dear; but we have had dinners for him. And he comes in and goes out as he
likes. He doesn't want me."
"Still,
when he is in the room, you might show him more attention. He may not be a
phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is different; but it would
be all the better for you to talk a little on his subjects. I think his
conversation is quite agreeable. And he is anything but an unprincipled
man."
"The
fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy," said
Lydgate, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not exactly
tender, and certainly not merry. Rosamond was silent and did not smile again;
but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered enough without smiling.
Those
words of Lydgate's were like a sad milestone marking how far he had travelled
from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared to be that perfect
piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband's mind after the fashion of
an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and looking-glass and singing her song
for the relaxation of his adored wisdom alone. He had begun to distinguish
between that imagined adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent
because it gives him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an
Honourable before his name.
It
might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she had found
the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly wearisome; but to most
mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is
altogether acceptable—else, indeed, what would become of social bonds? Captain
Lydgate's stupidity was delicately scented, carried itself with
"style," talked with a good accent, and was closely related to Sir
Godwin. Rosamond found it quite agreeable and caught many of its phrases.
Therefore
since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were plenty of reasons
why she should be tempted to resume her riding when Captain Lydgate, who had
ordered his man with two horses to follow him and put up at the "Green
Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray which he warranted to be gentle
and trained to carry a lady—indeed, he had bought it for his sister, and was
taking it to Quallingham. Rosamond went out the first time without telling her
husband, and came back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a
success, and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he
was informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go riding
again.
On
the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt—he was utterly confounded that she had
risked herself on a strange horse without referring the matter to his wish.
After the first almost thundering exclamations of astonishment, which
sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he was silent for some
moments.
"However,
you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive tone.
"You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood. If it were the quietest,
most familiar horse in the world, there would always be the chance of accident.
And you know very well that I wished you to give up riding the roan on that
account."
"But
there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius."
"My
darling, don't talk nonsense," said Lydgate, in an imploring tone;
"surely I am the person to judge for you. I think it is enough that I say
you are not to go again."
Rosamond
was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of her head in the
glass showed no change in its loveliness except a little turning aside of the
long neck. Lydgate had been moving about with his hands in his pockets, and now
paused near her, as if he awaited some assurance.
"I
wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Rosamond, letting her arms
fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of standing there like
a brute. Lydgate had often fastened the plaits before, being among the deftest
of men with his large finely formed fingers. He swept up the soft festoons of
plaits and fastened in the tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what
could he do then but kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its
delicate curves? But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a
difference. Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point.
"I
shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer you his
horse," he said, as he moved away.
"I
beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius," said Rosamond, looking
at him with something more marked than usual in her speech. "It will be
treating me as if I were a child. Promise that you will leave the subject to
me."
There
did seem to be some truth in her objection. Lydgate said, "Very
well," with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his
promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him.
In
fact, she had been determined not to promise. Rosamond had that victorious
obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous resistance. What she liked
to do was to her the right thing, and all her cleverness was directed to
getting the means of doing it. She meant to go out riding again on the gray,
and she did go on the next opportunity of her husband's absence, not intending
that he should know until it was late enough not to signify to her. The
temptation was certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the
gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir Godwin's
son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in this position by
any one but her husband, was something as good as her dreams before marriage:
moreover she was riveting the connection with the family at Quallingham, which
must be a wise thing to do.
But
the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being felled on
the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse fright to Rosamond,
leading finally to the loss of her baby. Lydgate could not show his anger
towards her, but he was rather bearish to the Captain, whose visit naturally
soon came to an end.
In
all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain that the
ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at home the same
symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the same way, because she
had felt something like them before.
Lydgate
could only say, "Poor, poor darling!"—but he secretly wondered over
the terrible tenacity of this mild creature. There was gathering within him an
amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond. His superior knowledge and
mental force, instead of being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all
occasions, was simply set aside on every practical question. He had regarded
Rosamond's cleverness as precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman.
He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness was—what was the shape
into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent. No one
quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the track of
her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's preeminence in
Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable
social effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his
professional and scientific ambition had no other relation to these desirable
effects than if they had been the fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil.
And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in
her own opinion more than she did in his. Lydgate was astounded to find in
numberless trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the
riding, that affection did not make her compliant. He had no doubt that the
affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything to repel
it. For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as tenderly as ever,
and could make up his mind to her negations; but—well! Lydgate was much
worried, and conscious of new elements in his life as noxious to him as an
inlet of mud to a creature that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart
after its illuminated prey in the clearest of waters.
To
be continued
