MIDDLEMARCH
PART 37
CHAPTER LXVII.
Now
is there civil war within the soul:
Resolve is thrust from off the sacred throne
By
clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand-vizier
Makes
humble compact, plays the supple part
Of
envoy and deft-tongued apologist
For
hungry rebels.
Happily
Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, and brought away no
encouragement to make a raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt unmixed disgust
with himself the next day when he had to pay four or five pounds over and above
his gains, and he carried about with him a most unpleasant vision of the figure
he had made, not only rubbing elbows with the men at the Green Dragon but
behaving just as they did. A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly
distinguishable from a Philistine under the same circumstances: the difference
will chiefly be found in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very
disagreeable cud in that way. His reason told him how the affair might have
been magnified into ruin by a slight change of scenery—if it had been a
gambling-house that he had turned into, where chance could be clutched with
both hands instead of being picked up with thumb and fore-finger. Nevertheless,
though reason strangled the desire to gamble, there remained the feeling that,
with an assurance of luck to the needful amount, he would have liked to gamble,
rather than take the alternative which was beginning to urge itself as
inevitable.
That
alternative was to apply to Mr. Bulstrode. Lydgate had so many times boasted
both to himself and others that he was totally independent of Bulstrode, to
whose plans he had lent himself solely because they enabled him to carry out
his own ideas of professional work and public benefit—he had so constantly in
their personal intercourse had his pride sustained by the sense that he was
making a good social use of this predominating banker, whose opinions he
thought contemptible and whose motives often seemed to him an absurd mixture of
contradictory impressions—that he had been creating for himself strong ideal
obstacles to the proffering of any considerable request to him on his own
account.
Still,
early in March his affairs were at that pass in which men begin to say that
their oaths were delivered in ignorance, and to perceive that the act which
they had called impossible to them is becoming manifestly possible. With
Dover's ugly security soon to be put in force, with the proceeds of his
practice immediately absorbed in paying back debts, and with the chance, if the
worst were known, of daily supplies being refused on credit, above all with the
vision of Rosamond's hopeless discontent continually haunting him, Lydgate had
begun to see that he should inevitably bend himself to ask help from somebody
or other. At first he had considered whether he should write to Mr. Vincy; but
on questioning Rosamond he found that, as he had suspected, she had already
applied twice to her father, the last time being since the disappointment from
Sir Godwin; and papa had said that Lydgate must look out for himself.
"Papa said he had come, with one bad year after another, to trade more and
more on borrowed capital, and had had to give up many indulgences; he could not
spare a single hundred from the charges of his family. He said, let Lydgate ask
Bulstrode: they have always been hand and glove."
Indeed,
Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion that if he must end by asking for a
free loan, his relations with Bulstrode, more at least than with any other man,
might take the shape of a claim which was not purely personal. Bulstrode had
indirectly helped to cause the failure of his practice, and had also been highly
gratified by getting a medical partner in his plans:—but who among us ever
reduced himself to the sort of dependence in which Lydgate now stood, without
trying to believe that he had claims which diminished the humiliation of
asking? It was true that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of
interest in Bulstrode about the Hospital; but his health had got worse, and
showed signs of a deep-seated nervous affection. In other respects he did not
appear to be changed: he had always been highly polite, but Lydgate had
observed in him from the first a marked coldness about his marriage and other
private circumstances, a coldness which he had hitherto preferred to any warmth
of familiarity between them. He deferred the intention from day to day, his
habit of acting on his conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every
possible conclusion and its consequent act. He saw Mr. Bulstrode often, but he
did not try to use any occasion for his private purpose. At one moment he
thought, "I will write a letter: I prefer that to any circuitous
talk;" at another he thought, "No; if I were talking to him, I could
make a retreat before any signs of disinclination."
Still the
days passed and no letter was written, no special interview sought. In his
shrinking from the humiliation of a dependent attitude towards Bulstrode, he
began to familiarize his imagination with another step even more unlike his
remembered self. He began spontaneously to consider whether it would be
possible to carry out that puerile notion of Rosamond's which had often made
him angry, namely, that they should quit Middlemarch without seeing anything
beyond that preface. The question came—"Would any man buy the practice of
me even now, for as little as it is worth? Then the sale might happen as a
necessary preparation for going away."
But
against his taking this step, which he still felt to be a contemptible
relinquishment of present work, a guilty turning aside from what was a real and
might be a widening channel for worthy activity, to start again without any
justified destination, there was this obstacle, that the purchaser, if
procurable at all, might not be quickly forthcoming. And afterwards? Rosamond
in a poor lodging, though in the largest city or most distant town, would not
find the life that could save her from gloom, and save him from the reproach of
having plunged her into it. For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his
fortunes, he may stay a long while there in spite of professional
accomplishment. In the British climate there is no incompatibility between
scientific insight and furnished lodgings: the incompatibility is chiefly
between scientific ambition and a wife who objects to that kind of residence.
But in
the midst of his hesitation, opportunity came to decide him. A note from Mr.
Bulstrode requested Lydgate to call on him at the Bank. A hypochondriacal
tendency had shown itself in the banker's constitution of late; and a lack of
sleep, which was really only a slight exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic
symptom, had been dwelt on by him as a sign of threatening insanity. He wanted
to consult Lydgate without delay on that particular morning, although he had
nothing to tell beyond what he had told before. He listened eagerly to what
Lydgate had to say in dissipation of his fears, though this too was only
repetition; and this moment in which Bulstrode was receiving a medical opinion
with a sense of comfort, seemed to make the communication of a personal need to
him easier than it had been in Lydgate's contemplation beforehand. He had been
insisting that it would be well for Mr. Bulstrode to relax his attention to
business.
"One
sees how any mental strain, however slight, may affect a delicate frame,"
said Lydgate at that stage of the consultation when the remarks tend to pass
from the personal to the general, "by the deep stamp which anxiety will
make for a time even on the young and vigorous. I am naturally very strong; yet
I have been thoroughly shaken lately by an accumulation of trouble."
"I
presume that a constitution in the susceptible state in which mine at present
is, would be especially liable to fall a victim to cholera, if it visited our
district. And since its appearance near London, we may well besiege the
Mercy-seat for our protection," said Mr. Bulstrode, not intending to evade
Lydgate's allusion, but really preoccupied with alarms about himself.
"You
have at all events taken your share in using good practical precautions for the
town, and that is the best mode of asking for protection," said Lydgate,
with a strong distaste for the broken metaphor and bad logic of the banker's
religion, somewhat increased by the apparent deafness of his sympathy. But his
mind had taken up its long-prepared movement towards getting help, and was not
yet arrested. He added, "The town has done well in the way of cleansing,
and finding appliances; and I think that if the cholera should come, even our
enemies will admit that the arrangements in the Hospital are a public
good."
"Truly,"
said Mr. Bulstrode, with some coldness. "With regard to what you say, Mr.
Lydgate, about the relaxation of my mental labor, I have for some time been
entertaining a purpose to that effect—a purpose of a very decided character. I
contemplate at least a temporary withdrawal from the management of much
business, whether benevolent or commercial. Also I think of changing my
residence for a time: probably I shall close or let 'The Shrubs,' and take some
place near the coast—under advice of course as to salubrity. That would be a
measure which you would recommend?"
"Oh
yes," said Lydgate, falling backward in his chair, with ill-repressed
impatience under the banker's pale earnest eyes and intense preoccupation with
himself.
"I
have for some time felt that I should open this subject with you in relation to
our Hospital," continued Bulstrode. "Under the circumstances I have
indicated, of course I must cease to have any personal share in the management,
and it is contrary to my views of responsibility to continue a large
application of means to an institution which I cannot watch over and to some
extent regulate. I shall therefore, in case of my ultimate decision to leave
Middlemarch, consider that I withdraw other support to the New Hospital than
that which will subsist in the fact that I chiefly supplied the expenses of
building it, and have contributed further large sums to its successful
working."
Lydgate's
thought, when Bulstrode paused according to his wont, was, "He has perhaps
been losing a good deal of money." This was the most plausible explanation
of a speech which had caused rather a startling change in his expectations. He
said in reply—
"The
loss to the Hospital can hardly be made up, I fear."
"Hardly,"
returned Bulstrode, in the same deliberate, silvery tone; "except by some
changes of plan. The only person who may be certainly counted on as willing to
increase her contributions is Mrs. Casaubon. I have had an interview with her
on the subject, and I have pointed out to her, as I am about to do to you, that
it will be desirable to win a more general support to the New Hospital by a
change of system." Another pause, but Lydgate did not speak.
"The
change I mean is an amalgamation with the Infirmary, so that the New Hospital
shall be regarded as a special addition to the elder institution, having the
same directing board. It will be necessary, also, that the medical management
of the two shall be combined. In this way any difficulty as to the adequate
maintenance of our new establishment will be removed; the benevolent interests
of the town will cease to be divided."
Mr.
Bulstrode had lowered his eyes from Lydgate's face to the buttons of his coat
as he again paused.
"No
doubt that is a good device as to ways and means," said Lydgate, with an
edge of irony in his tone. "But I can't be expected to rejoice in it at
once, since one of the first results will be that the other medical men will
upset or interrupt my methods, if it were only because they are mine."
"I
myself, as you know, Mr. Lydgate, highly valued the opportunity of new and
independent procedure which you have diligently employed: the original plan, I
confess, was one which I had much at heart, under submission to the Divine
Will. But since providential indications demand a renunciation from me, I
renounce."
Bulstrode
showed a rather exasperating ability in this conversation. The broken metaphor
and bad logic of motive which had stirred his hearer's contempt were quite
consistent with a mode of putting the facts which made it difficult for Lydgate
to vent his own indignation and disappointment. After some rapid reflection, he
only asked—
"What
did Mrs. Casaubon say?"
"That
was the further statement which I wished to make to you," said Bulstrode,
who had thoroughly prepared his ministerial explanation. "She is, you are
aware, a woman of most munificent disposition, and happily in possession—not I
presume of great wealth, but of funds which she can well spare. She has
informed me that though she has destined the chief part of those funds to
another purpose, she is willing to consider whether she cannot fully take my
place in relation to the Hospital. But she wishes for ample time to mature her
thoughts on the subject, and I have told her that there is no need for
haste—that, in fact, my own plans are not yet absolute."
Lydgate
was ready to say, "If Mrs. Casaubon would take your place, there would be
gain, instead of loss." But there was still a weight on his mind which
arrested this cheerful candourr. He replied, "I suppose, then, that I may
enter into the subject with Mrs. Casaubon."
"Precisely;
that is what she expressly desires. Her decision, she says, will much depend on
what you can tell her. But not at present: she is, I believe, just setting out
on a journey. I have her letter here," said Mr. Bulstrode, drawing it out,
and reading from it. "'I am immediately otherwise engaged,' she says. 'I
am going into Yorkshire with Sir James and Lady Chettam; and the conclusions I
come to about some land which I am to see there may affect my power of
contributing to the Hospital.' Thus, Mr. Lydgate, there is no haste necessary
in this matter; but I wished to apprise you beforehand of what may possibly
occur."
Mr.
Bulstrode returned the letter to his side-pocket, and changed his attitude as
if his business were closed. Lydgate, whose renewed hope about the Hospital
only made him more conscious of the facts which poisoned his hope, felt that
his effort after help, if made at all, must be made now and vigorously.
"I
am much obliged to you for giving me full notice," he said, with a firm
intention in his tone, yet with an interruptedness in his delivery which showed
that he spoke unwillingly. "The highest object to me is my profession, and
I had identified the Hospital with the best use I can at present make of my
profession. But the best use is not always the same with monetary success.
Everything which has made the Hospital unpopular has helped with other causes—I
think they are all connected with my professional zeal—to make me unpopular as
a practitioner. I get chiefly patients who can't pay me. I should like them
best, if I had nobody to pay on my own side." Lydgate waited a little, but
Bulstrode only bowed, looking at him fixedly, and he went on with the same
interrupted enunciation—as if he were biting an objectional leek.
"I
have slipped into money difficulties which I can see no way out of, unless some
one who trusts me and my future will advance me a sum without other security. I
had very little fortune left when I came here. I have no prospects of money
from my own family. My expenses, in consequence of my marriage, have been very
much greater than I had expected. The result at this moment is that it would
take a thousand pounds to clear me. I mean, to free me from the risk of having
all my goods sold in security of my largest debt—as well as to pay my other
debts—and leave anything to keep us a little beforehand with our small income.
I find that it is out of the question that my wife's father should make such an
advance. That is why I mention my position to—to the only other man who may be
held to have some personal connection with my prosperity or ruin."
Lydgate
hated to hear himself. But he had spoken now, and had spoken with unmistakable
directness. Mr. Bulstrode replied without haste, but also without hesitation.
"I
am grieved, though, I confess, not surprised by this information, Mr. Lydgate.
For my own part, I regretted your alliance with my brother-in-law's family,
which has always been of prodigal habits, and which has already been much
indebted to me for sustainment in its present position. My advice to you, Mr.
Lydgate, would be, that instead of involving yourself in further obligations,
and continuing a doubtful struggle, you should simply become a bankrupt."
"That
would not improve my prospect," said Lydgate, rising and speaking
bitterly, "even if it were a more agreeable thing in itself."
"It
is always a trial," said Mr. Bulstrode; "but trial, my dear sir, is
our portion here, and is a needed corrective. I recommend you to weigh the
advice I have given."
"Thank
you," said Lydgate, not quite knowing what he said. "I have occupied
you too long. Good-day."
CHAPTER LXVIII.
"What suit of grace hath Virtue to put on
If
Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?
If
Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion
Act
as fair parts with ends as laudable?
Which all this mighty volume of events
The
world, the universal map of deeds,
Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,
That
the directest course still best succeeds.
For
should not grave and learn'd Experience
That
looks with the eyes of all the world beside,
And
with all ages holds intelligence,
Go
safer than Deceit without a guide!
—DANIEL:
Musophilus.
That
change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated or betrayed in
his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him by some severe
experience which he had gone through since the epoch of Mr. Larcher's sale,
when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw, and when the banker had in vain
attempted an act of restitution which might move Divine Providence to arrest
painful consequences.
His
certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return to Middlemarch before
long, had been justified. On Christmas Eve he had reappeared at The Shrubs.
Bulstrode was at home to receive him, and hinder his communication with the
rest of the family, but he could not altogether hinder the circumstances of the
visit from compromising himself and alarming his wife. Raffles proved more
unmanageable than he had shown himself to be in his former appearances, his
chronic state of mental restlessness, the growing effect of habitual
intemperance, quickly shaking off every impression from what was said to him.
He insisted on staying in the house, and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of evils,
felt that this was at least not a worse alternative than his going into the
town. He kept him in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed, Raffles
all the while amusing himself with the annoyance he was causing this decent and
highly prosperous fellow-sinner, an amusement which he facetiously expressed as
sympathy with his friend's pleasure in entertaining a man who had been
serviceable to him, and who had not had all his earnings. There was a cunning
calculation under this noisy joking—a cool resolve to extract something the
handsomer from Bulstrode as payment for release from this new application of
torture. But his cunning had a little overcast its mark.
Bulstrode
was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles could enable him to
imagine. He had told his wife that he was simply taking care of this wretched
creature, the victim of vice, who might otherwise injure himself; he implied,
without the direct form of falsehood, that there was a family tie which bound
him to this care, and that there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles
which urged caution. He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next
morning. In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode with
precautionary information for his daughters and servants, and accounting for
his allowing no one but himself to enter the room even with food and drink. But
he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles should be overheard in his loud and
plain references to past facts—lest Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to
listen at the door. How could he hinder her, how betray his terror by opening
the door to detect her? She was a woman of honest direct habits, and little
likely to take so low a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge; but
fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.
In this
way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and produced an effect which had
not been in his plan. By showing himself hopelessly unmanageable he had made
Bulstrode feel that a strong defiance was the only resource left. After taking
Raffles to bed that night the banker ordered his closed carriage to be ready at
half-past seven the next morning. At six o'clock he had already been long
dressed, and had spent some of his wretchedness in prayer, pleading his motives
for averting the worst evil if in anything he had used falsity and spoken what
was not true before God. For Bulstrode shrank from a direct lie with an
intensity disproportionate to the number of his more indirect misdeeds. But
many of these misdeeds were like the subtle muscular movements which are not
taken account of in the consciousness, though they bring about the end that we
fix our mind on and desire. And it is only what we are vividly conscious of
that we can vividly imagine to be seen by Omniscience.
Bulstrode
carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles, who was apparently in a painful
dream. He stood silent, hoping that the presence of the light would serve to
waken the sleeper gradually and gently, for he feared some noise as the
consequence of a too sudden awakening. He had watched for a couple of minutes
or more the shudderings and pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when
Raffles, with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round him in
terror, trembling and gasping. But he made no further noise, and Bulstrode,
setting down the candle, awaited his recovery.
It was a
quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a cold peremptoriness of manner
which he had not before shown, said, "I came to call you thus early, Mr.
Raffles, because I have ordered the carriage to be ready at half-past seven,
and intend myself to conduct you as far as Ilsely, where you can either take
the railway or await a coach." Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode
anticipated him imperiously with the words, "Be silent, sir, and hear what
I have to say. I shall supply you with money now, and I will furnish you with a
reasonable sum from time to time, on your application to me by letter; but if
you choose to present yourself here again, if you return to Middlemarch, if you
use your tongue in a manner injurious to me, you will have to live on such
fruits as your malice can bring you, without help from me. Nobody will pay you
well for blasting my name: I know the worst you can do against me, and I shall
brave it if you dare to thrust yourself upon me again. Get up, sir, and do as I
order you, without noise, or I will send for a policeman to take you off my
premises, and you may carry your stories into every pothouse in the town, but
you shall have no sixpence from me to pay your expenses there."
Bulstrode
had rarely in his life spoken with such nervous energy: he had been
deliberating on this speech and its probable effects through a large part of
the night; and though he did not trust to its ultimately saving him from any
return of Raffles, he had concluded that it was the best throw he could make.
It succeeded in enforcing submission from the jaded man this morning: his
empoisoned system at this moment quailed before Bulstrode's cold, resolute
bearing, and he was taken off quietly in the carriage before the family
breakfast time. The servants imagined him to be a poor relation, and were not
surprised that a strict man like their master, who held his head high in the
world, should be ashamed of such a cousin and want to get rid of him. The
banker's drive of ten miles with his hated companion was a dreary beginning of
the Christmas day; but at the end of the drive, Raffles had recovered his
spirits, and parted in a contentment for which there was the good reason that
the banker had given him a hundred pounds. Various motives urged Bulstrode to
this open-handedness, but he did not himself inquire closely into all of them. As
he had stood watching Raffles in his uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his
mind that the man had been much shattered since the first gift of two hundred
pounds.
He had
taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve not to be played on
any more; and had tried to penetrate Raffles with the fact that he had shown
the risks of bribing him to be quite equal to the risks of defying him. But
when, freed from his repulsive presence, Bulstrode returned to his quiet home,
he brought with him no confidence that he had secured more than a respite. It
was as if he had had a loathsome dream, and could not shake off its images with
their hateful kindred of sensations—as if on all the pleasant surroundings of
his life a dangerous reptile had left his slimy traces.
Who can
know how much of his most inward life is made up of the thoughts he believes
other men to have about him, until that fabric of opinion is threatened with
ruin?
Bulstrode
was only the more conscious that there was a deposit of uneasy presentiment in
his wife's mind, because she carefully avoided any allusion to it. He had been
used every day to taste the flavour of supremacy and the tribute of complete
deference: and the certainty that he was watched or measured with a hidden
suspicion of his having some discreditable secret, made his voice totter when
he was speaking to edification. Foreseeing, to men of Bulstrode's anxious
temperament, is often worse than seeing; and his imagination continually
heightened the anguish of an imminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his
defiance of Raffles did not keep the man away—and though he prayed for this
result he hardly hoped for it—the disgrace was certain. In vain he said to
himself that, if permitted, it would be a divine visitation, a chastisement, a
preparation; he recoiled from the imagined burning; and he judged that it must
be more for the Divine glory that he should escape dishonour. That recoil had
at last urged him to make preparations for quitting Middlemarch. If evil truth
must be reported of him, he would then be at a less scorching distance from the
contempt of his old neighbors; and in a new scene, where his life would not
have gathered the same wide sensibility, the tormentor, if he pursued him,
would be less formidable. To leave the place finally would, he knew, be
extremely painful to his wife, and on other grounds he would have preferred to
stay where he had struck root. Hence he made his preparations at first in a
conditional way, wishing to leave on all sides an opening for his return after
brief absence, if any favorable intervention of Providence should dissipate his
fears. He was preparing to transfer his management of the Bank, and to give up
any active control of other commercial affairs in the neighborhood, on the
ground of his failing health, but without excluding his future resumption of
such work. The measure would cause him some added expense and some diminution
of income beyond what he had already undergone from the general depression of
trade; and the Hospital presented itself as a principal object of outlay on
which he could fairly economize.
This was
the experience which had determined his conversation with Lydgate. But at this
time his arrangements had most of them gone no farther than a stage at which he
could recall them if they proved to be unnecessary. He continually deferred the
final steps; in the midst of his fears, like many a man who is in danger of
shipwreck or of being dashed from his carriage by runaway horses, he had a
clinging impression that something would happen to hinder the worst, and that
to spoil his life by a late transplantation might be over-hasty—especially
since it was difficult to account satisfactorily to his wife for the project of
their indefinite exile from the only place where she would like to live.
Among the
affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the management of the farm at Stone
Court in case of his absence; and on this as well as on all other matters
connected with any houses and land he possessed in or about Middlemarch, he had
consulted Caleb Garth. Like every one else who had business of that sort, he
wanted to get the agent who was more anxious for his employer's interests than
his own. With regard to Stone Court, since Bulstrode wished to retain his hold
on the stock, and to have an arrangement by which he himself could, if he
chose, resume his favorite recreation of superintendence, Caleb had advised him
not to trust to a mere bailiff, but to let the land, stock, and implements
yearly, and take a proportionate share of the proceeds.
"May
I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms, Mr. Garth?" said
Bulstrode. "And will you mention to me the yearly sum which would repay
you for managing these affairs which we have discussed together?"
"I'll
think about it," said Caleb, in his blunt way. "I'll see how I can
make it out."
If it had
not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy's future, Mr. Garth would not
probably have been glad of any addition to his work, of which his wife was
always fearing an excess for him as he grew older. But on quitting Bulstrode
after that conversation, a very alluring idea occurred to him about this said
letting of Stone Court. What if Bulstrode would agree to his placing Fred Vincy
there on the understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be responsible for the
management? It would be an excellent schooling for Fred; he might make a modest
income there, and still have time left to get knowledge by helping in other
business. He mentioned his notion to Mrs. Garth with such evident delight that
she could not bear to chill his pleasure by expressing her constant fear of his
undertaking too much.
"The
lad would be as happy as two," he said, throwing himself back in his
chair, and looking radiant, "if I could tell him it was all settled.
Think; Susan! His mind had been running on that place for years before old
Featherstone died. And it would be as pretty a turn of things as could be that
he should hold the place in a good industrious way after all—by his taking to
business. For it's likely enough Bulstrode might let him go on, and gradually
buy the stock. He hasn't made up his mind, I can see, whether or not he shall
settle somewhere else as a lasting thing. I never was better pleased with a
notion in my life. And then the children might be married by-and-by,
Susan."
"You
will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until you are sure that Bulstrode
would agree to the plan?" said Mrs. Garth, in a tone of gentle caution.
"And as to marriage, Caleb, we old people need not help to hasten
it."
"Oh,
I don't know," said Caleb, swinging his head aside. "Marriage is a
taming thing. Fred would want less of my bit and bridle. However, I shall say
nothing till I know the ground I'm treading on. I shall speak to Bulstrode
again."
He took
his earliest opportunity of doing so. Bulstrode had anything but a warm
interest in his nephew Fred Vincy, but he had a strong wish to secure Mr.
Garth's services on many scattered points of business at which he was sure to
be a considerable loser, if they were under less conscientious management. On
that ground he made no objection to Mr. Garth's proposal; and there was also
another reason why he was not sorry to give a consent which was to benefit one
of the Vincy family. It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heard of Lydgate's
debts, had been anxious to know whether her husband could not do something for
poor Rosamond, and had been much troubled on learning from him that Lydgate's
affairs were not easily remediable, and that the wisest plan was to let them
"take their course." Mrs. Bulstrode had then said for the first time,
"I think you are always a little hard towards my family, Nicholas. And I
am sure I have no reason to deny any of my relatives. Too worldly they may be,
but no one ever had to say that they were not respectable."
"My
dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife's eyes, which
were filling with tears, "I have supplied your brother with a great deal
of capital. I cannot be expected to take care of his married children."
That
seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode's remonstrance subsided into pity for
poor Rosamond, whose extravagant education she had always foreseen the fruits
of.
But
remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that when he had to talk to his
wife fully about his plan of quitting Middlemarch, he should be glad to tell
her that he had made an arrangement which might be for the good of her nephew
Fred. At present he had merely mentioned to her that he thought of shutting up
The Shrubs for a few months, and taking a house on the Southern Coast.
Hence Mr.
Garth got the assurance he desired, namely, that in case of Bulstrode's
departure from Middlemarch for an indefinite time, Fred Vincy should be allowed
to have the tenancy of Stone Court on the terms proposed.
Caleb was
so elated with his hope of this "neat turn" being given to things,
that if his self-control had not been braced by a little affectionate wifely
scolding, he would have betrayed everything to Mary, wanting "to give the
child comfort." However, he restrained himself, and kept in strict privacy
from Fred certain visits which he was making to Stone Court, in order to look
more thoroughly into the state of the land and stock, and take a preliminary
estimate. He was certainly more eager in these visits than the probable speed
of events required him to be; but he was stimulated by a fatherly delight in
occupying his mind with this bit of probable happiness which he held in store
like a hidden birthday gift for Fred and Mary.
"But
suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a castle in the air?" said
Mrs. Garth.
"Well,
well," replied Caleb; "the castle will tumble about nobody's
head."
To be
continued
