I should never give it to Mr. Ned Plymdale, if it were. I have already refused him. If I loved, I should love at once and without change,


I see how it is, my dear. You have allowed your affections to be engaged without return.


No, indeed, aunt,


Then you are quite confident that Mr. Lydgate has a serious attachment to you?


Especially when she has great attractions, and her parents see much company. Gentlemen pay her attention, and engross her all to themselves, for the mere pleasure of the moment, and that drives off others. I think it is a heavy responsibility, Mr. Lydgate, to interfere with the prospects of any girl.


Clearly. On the other hand, a man must be a great coxcomb to go about with a notion that he must not pay attention to a young lady lest she should fall in love with him, or lest others should think she must.


Oh, Mr. Lydgate, you know well what your advantages are. You know that our young men here cannot cope with you. Where you frequent a house it may militate very much against a girl’s making a desirable settlement in life, and prevent her from accepting offers even if they are made.


What! you are going to get lashed to the mast, eh, and are stopping your ears? Well, if you don’t mean to be won by the sirens, you are right to take precautions in time.


What is the matter? you are distressed. Tell me, pray.


Oh, my dear, you must do things handsomely where there’s last illness and a property. God knows, I don’t grudge them every ham in the house—only, save the best for the funeral. Have some stuffed veal always, and a fine cheese in cut. You must expect to keep open house in these last illnesses,


Why, Tom, you don’t wear such gentlemanly trousers—you haven’t got half such fine long legs,


Back, back, Mrs. Waule! Back, Solomon!


Oh, Brother. Peter,


Brother Peter. It’s nothing but right I should speak to you about the Three Crofts and the Manganese. The Almighty knows what I’ve got on my mind—


Then he knows more than I want to know,


There’s things you might repent of, Brother, for want of speaking to me. I could sit up with you to-night, and Jane with me, willingly, and you might take your own time to speak, or let me speak.


Yes, I shall take my own time—you needn’t offer me yours,


But you can’t take your own time to die in, Brother. And when you lie speechless you may be tired of having strangers about you, and you may think of me and my children


No, I shan’t. I shan’t think of any of you. I’ve made my will, I tell you, I’ve made my will.


Some people would be ashamed to fill up a place belonging by rights to others,


Oh, sister, you and me are not fine, and handsome, and clever enough: we must be humble and let smart people push themselves before us.


Shall my mother and I leave the room, sir, that you may be alone with your friends?


Sit down, I tell you. Stop where you are. Good-by, Solomon. Good-by, Mrs. Waule. Don’t you come again.


I shall be down-stairs, Brother, whether or no. I shall do my duty, and it remains to be seen what the Almighty will allow.


Yes, in property going out of families, and where there’s steady young men to carry on. But I pity them who are not such, and I pity their mothers. Good-by, Brother Peter.


Remember, I’m the eldest after you, Brother, and prospered from the first, just as you did, and have got land already by the name of Featherstone. But I bid you good-by for the present.


I don’t mind if I have a slice of that ham, and a glass of that ale, Miss Garth, if you will allow me. It’s not necessary for you to go out;—let me ring the bell.


Thank you. I have an errand.


Well, Mr. Trumbull, you’re highly favored,


What! seeing the old man? Ah, you see he has relied on me considerably.


Might anybody ask what their brother has been saying?


Oh yes, anybody may ask. Anybody may interrogate. Any one may give their remarks an interrogative turn. This is constantly done by good speakers, even when they anticipate no answer. It is what we call a figure of speech—speech at a high figure, as one may say.


I shouldn’t be sorry to hear he’d remembered you, Mr. Trumbull. I never was against the deserving. It’s the undeserving I’m against.


Ah, there it is, you see, there it is. It can’t be denied that undeserving people have been legatees, and even residuary legatees. It is so, with testamentary dispositions.


Do you mean to say for certain, Mr. Trumbull, that my brother has left his land away from our family?


A man might as well turn his land into charity land at once as leave it to some people,


What, Blue-Coat land? Oh, Mr. Trumbull, you never can mean to say that. It would be flying in the face of the Almighty that’s prospered him.


Anne of Geierstein’ (pronounced Jeersteen) or the ‘Maiden of the Mist, by the author of Waverley. The course of four centuries has well-nigh elapsed since the series of events which are related in the following chapters took place on the Continent.


I shall take a mere mouthful of ham and a glass of ale. As a man with public business, I take a snack when I can. I will back this ham, against any ham in the three kingdoms. In my opinion it is better than the hams at Freshitt Hall—and I think I am a tolerable judge.


Some don’t like so much sugar in their hams. But my poor brother would always have sugar.


If any person demands better, he is at liberty to do so; but, God bless me, what an aroma! I should be glad to buy in that quality, I know. There is some gratification to a gentleman in having this kind of ham set on his table. You have an interesting work there, I see, Miss Garth. It is by the author of ‘Waverley’: that is Sir Walter Scott. I have bought one of his works myself—a very nice thing, a very superior publication, entitled ‘Ivanhoe.’ You will not get any writer to beat him in a hurry, I think—he will not, in my opinion, be speedily surpassed. I have just been reading a portion at the commencement of ‘Anne of Jeersteen.’ It commences well. You are a reader, I see. Do you subscribe to our Middlemarch library?


No. Mr. Fred Vincy brought this book.


I am a great bookman myself. I have no less than two hundred volumes in calf, and I flatter myself they are well selected. Also pictures by Murillo, Rubens, Teniers, Titian, Vandyck, and others. I shall be happy to lend you any work you like to mention, Miss Garth.


I am much obliged, but I have little time for reading.


I should say my brother has done something for her in his will,


His first wife was a poor match for him, though. She brought him nothing: and this young woman is only her niece,—and very proud. And my brother has always paid her wage.


A sensible girl though, in my opinion. I have observed her when she has been mixing medicine in drops. She minds what she is doing, sir. That is a great point in a woman, and a great point for our friend up-stairs, poor dear old soul. A man whose life is of any value should think of his wife as a nurse: that is what I should do, if I married; and I believe I have lived single long enough not to make a mistake in that line. Some men must marry to elevate themselves a little, but when I am in need of that, I hope some one will tell me so—I hope some individual will apprise me of the fact. I wish you good morning, Mrs. Waule. Good morning, Mr. Solomon. I trust we shall meet under less melancholy auspices.


You may depend, Jane, my brother has left that girl a lumping sum.


Anybody would think so, from the way Mr. Trumbull talks. He talks as if my daughters wasn’t to be trusted to give drops.


Auctioneers talk wild,


Missy, come here! How many of ’em are in the house?


You mean of your own relations, sir. Mr. Jonah Featherstone and young Cranch are sleeping here.


Oh ay, they stick, do they? and the rest—they come every day, I’ll warrant—Solomon and Jane, and all the young uns? They come peeping, and counting and casting up?


Not all of them every day. Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule are here every day, and the others come often.


The more fools they. You hearken, missy. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’ve got all my faculties as well as ever I had in my life. I know all my property, and where the money’s put out, and everything. And I’ve made everything ready to change my mind, and do as I like at the last. Do you hear, missy? I’ve got my faculties.


Well, sir?


I’ve made two wills, and I’m going to burn one. Now you do as I tell you. This is the key of my iron chest, in the closet there. You push well at the side of the brass plate at the top, till it goes like a bolt: then you can put the key in the front lock and turn it. See and do that; and take out the topmost paper—Last Will and Testament—big printed.


No, sir. I cannot do that.


Not do it? I tell you, you must,


I cannot touch your iron chest or your will. I must refuse to do anything that might lay me open to suspicion.


I tell you, I’m in my right mind. Shan’t I do as I like at the last? I made two wills on purpose. Take the key, I say.


No, sir, I will not,


I tell you, there’s no time to lose.


I cannot help that, sir. I will not let the close of your life soil the beginning of mine. I will not touch your iron chest or your will.


Missy, look here! take the money—the notes and gold—look here—take it—you shall have it all—do as I tell you.


I will not touch your key or your money, sir. Pray don’t ask me to do it again. If you do, I must go and call your brother. Pray put up your money, sir;


Look here, then. Call the young chap. Call Fred Vincy.


I will call him, if you will let me call Mr. Jonah and others with him.


Nobody else, I say. The young chap. I shall do as I like.


Wait till broad daylight, sir, when every one is stirring. Or let me call Simmons now, to go and fetch the lawyer? He can be here in less than two hours.


Lawyer? What do I want with the lawyer? Nobody shall know—I say, nobody shall know. I shall do as I like.


Let me call some one else, sir. Let me, pray, call some one else.


You let me alone, I say. Look here, missy. Take the money. You’ll never have the chance again. It’s pretty nigh two hundred—there’s more in the box, and nobody knows how much there was. Take it and do as I tell you.


It is of no use, sir. I will not do it. Put up your money. I will not touch your money. I will do anything else I can to comfort you; but I will not touch your keys or your money.


Anything else—anything else! I want nothing else. You come here—you come here.


Let me give you some cordial, and try to compose yourself. You will perhaps go to sleep. And to-morrow by daylight you can do as you like.


Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws, Carry no weight, no force.


But levity Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight. For power finds its place in lack of power; Advance is cession, and the driven ship May run aground because the helmsman’s thought Lacked force to balance opposites.


I will go anywhere with you, Mrs. Cadwallader, but I don’t like funerals.


Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must accommodate your tastes: I did that very early. When I married Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the end very much. That soon spread to the middle and the beginning, because I couldn’t have the end without them.


No, to be sure not,


I shall not look any more. I dare say Dodo likes it: she is fond of melancholy things and ugly people.


I am fond of knowing something about the people I live among. It seems to me we know nothing of our neighbors, unless they are cottagers. One is constantly wondering what sort of lives other people lead, and how they take things. I am quite obliged to Mrs. Cadwallader for coming and calling me out of the library.


Quite right to feel obliged to me. Your rich Lowick farmers are as curious as any buffaloes or bisons, and I dare say you don’t half see them at church. They are quite different from your uncle’s tenants or Sir James’s—monsters—farmers without landlords—one can’t tell how to class them.


Most of these followers are not Lowick people. I suppose they are legatees from a distance, or from Middlemarch. Lovegood tells me the old fellow has left a good deal of money as well as land.


Think of that now! when so many younger sons can’t dine at their own expense. Ah, here is Mr. Brooke. I felt that we were incomplete before, and here is the explanation. You are come to see this odd funeral, of course?


No, I came to look after Casaubon—to see how he goes on, you know. And to bring a little news—a little news, my dear. I looked into the library, and I saw Casaubon over his books. I told him it wouldn’t do: I said, ‘This will never do, you know: think of your wife, Casaubon.’ And he promised me to come up. I didn’t tell him my news: I said, he must come up.


Ah, now they are coming out of church. Dear me, what a wonderfully mixed set! Mr. Lydgate as doctor, I suppose. But that is really a good looking woman, and the fair young man must be her son. Who are they, Sir James, do you know?


I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife and son,


Yes, a very decent family—a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to the manufacturing interest. You have seen him at my house, you know.


Ah, yes: one of your secret committee,


A coursing fellow, though,


And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom weavers in Tipton and Freshitt. That is how his family look so fair and sleek. Those dark, purple-faced people are an excellent foil. Dear me, they are like a set of jugs! Do look at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above them in his white surplice.


It’s a solemn thing, though, a funeral, if you take it in that light, you know.


But I am not taking it in that light. I can’t wear my solemnity too often, else it will go to rags. It was time the old man died, and none of these people are sorry.


How piteous! This funeral seems to me the most dismal thing I ever saw. It is a blot on the morning. I cannot bear to think that any one should die and leave no love behind.


Positively, there is a new face come out from behind that broad man queerer than any of them: a little round head with bulging eyes—a sort of frog-face—do look. He must be of another blood, I think.


Let me see! Oh, what an odd face! Why, Dodo, you never told me that Mr. Ladislaw was come again!


He came with me, you know; he is my guest—puts up with me at the Grange. And we have brought the picture at the top of the carriage. I knew you would be pleased with the surprise, Casaubon. There you are to the very life—as Aquinas, you know. Quite the right sort of thing. And you will hear young Ladislaw talk about it. He talks uncommonly well—points out this, that, and the other—knows art and everything of that kind—companionable, you know—is up with you in any track—what I’ve been wanting a long while.


Who is Mr. Ladislaw?


A young relative of Mr. Casaubon’s,


A very nice young fellow—Casaubon has done everything for him. He repays your expense in him, Casaubon. I hope he will stay with me a long while and we shall make something of my documents. I have plenty of ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he is just the man to put them into shape—remembers what the right quotations are, omne tulit punctum, and that sort of thing—gives subjects a kind of turn. I invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon; Dorothea said you couldn’t have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to write.


You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative of mine.


Now you can see him, Mrs. Cadwallader. He is just like a miniature of Mr. Casaubon’s aunt that hangs in Dorothea’s boudoir—quite nice-looking.


A very pretty sprig. What is your nephew to be, Mr. Casaubon?


Pardon me, he is not my nephew. He is my cousin.


Well, you know, he is trying his wings. He is just the sort of young fellow to rise. I should be glad to give him an opportunity. He would make a good secretary, now, like Hobbes, Milton, Swift—that sort of man.


I understand. One who can write speeches.


I’ll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon? He wouldn’t come in till I had announced him, you know. And we’ll go down and look at the picture. There you are to the life: a deep subtle sort of thinker with his fore-finger on the page, while Saint Bonaventure or somebody else, rather fat and florid, is looking up at the Trinity. Everything is symbolical, you know—the higher style of art: I like that up to a certain point, but not too far—it’s rather straining to keep up with, you know. But you are at home in that, Casaubon. And your painter’s flesh is good—solidity, transparency, everything of that sort. I went into that a great deal at one time. However, I’ll go and fetch Ladislaw.


Why, Trumbull himself is pretty sure of five hundred—that you may depend,—I shouldn’t wonder if my brother promised him,


Dear, dear!


I suppose you know everything about what my poor brother’s done, Mr. Trumbull,


My good lady, whatever was told me was told in confidence,


Them who’ve made sure of their good-luck may be disappointed yet,


Hopes are often delusive,


Ah! It’s wonderful how close poor Peter was. We none of us know what he might have had on his mind. I only hope and trust he wasn’t a worse liver than we think of, Martha.


I never was covetous, Jane, but I have six children and have buried three, and I didn’t marry into money. The eldest, that sits there, is but nineteen—so I leave you to guess. And stock always short, and land most awkward. But if ever I’ve begged and prayed; it’s been to God above; though where there’s one brother a bachelor and the other childless after twice marrying—anybody might think!


I shouldn’t wonder if Featherstone had better feelings than any of us gave him credit for. This funeral shows a thought about everybody: it looks well when a man wants to be followed by his friends, and if they are humble, not to be ashamed of them. I should be all the better pleased if he’d left lots of small legacies. They may be uncommonly useful to fellows in a small way.


Everything is as handsome as could be, crape and silk and everything,


The will I hold in my hand, was drawn up by myself and executed by our deceased friend on the 9th of August, 1825. But I find that there is a subsequent instrument hitherto unknown to me, bearing date the 20th of July, 1826, hardly a year later than the previous one. And there is farther, I see a codicil to this latter will, bearing date March 1, 1828.


I shall begin by reading the earlier will, since such, as appears by his not having destroyed the document, was the intention of the deceased.


A most singular testamentary disposition! But there is a second will—there is a further document. We have not yet heard the final wishes of the deceased.


The most unaccountable will I ever heard! I should say he was not in his right mind when he made it. I should say this last will was void. Eh Standish?


Our deceased friend always knew what he was about, I think. Everything is quite regular. Here is a letter from Clemmens of Brassing tied with the will. He drew it up. A very respectable solicitor.


I never noticed any alienation of mind—any aberration of intellect in the late Mr. Featherstone, but I call this will eccentric. I was always willingly of service to the old soul; and he intimated pretty plainly a sense of obligation which would show itself in his will. The gold-headed cane is farcical considered as an acknowledgment to me; but happily I am above mercenary considerations.


There’s nothing very surprising in the matter that I can see. Anybody might have had more reason for wondering if the will had been what you might expect from an open-minded straightforward man. For my part, I wish there was no such thing as a will.


That’s a strange sentiment to come from a Christian man, by God! I should like to know how you will back that up, Garth!


Oh,


Well, he always was a fine hypocrite, was my brother Peter. But this will cuts out everything. If I’d known, a wagon and six horses shouldn’t have drawn me from Brassing. I’ll put a white hat and drab coat on to-morrow.


Dear, dear, and we’ve been at the expense of travelling, and that poor lad sitting idle here so long! It’s the first time I ever heard my brother Peter was so wishful to please God Almighty; but if I was to be struck helpless I must say it’s hard—I can think no other.


It’ll do him no good where he’s gone, that’s my belief. Peter was a bad liver, and almshouses won’t cover it, when he’s had the impudence to show it at the last.


And all the while had got his own lawful family—brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces—and has sat in church with ’em whenever he thought well to come. And might have left his property so respectable, to them that’s never been used to extravagance or unsteadiness in no manner of way—and not so poor but what they could have saved every penny and made more of it. And me—the trouble I’ve been at, times and times, to come here and be sisterly—and him with things on his mind all the while that might make anybody’s flesh creep. But if the Almighty’s allowed it, he means to punish him for it. Brother Solomon, I shall be going, if you’ll drive me.


I’ve no desire to put my foot on the premises again. I’ve got land of my own and property of my own to will away.


It’s a poor tale how luck goes in the world. It never answers to have a bit of spirit in you. You’d better be a dog in the manger. But those above ground might learn a lesson. One fool’s will is enough in a family.


There’s more ways than one of being a fool. I shan’t leave my money to be poured down the sink, and I shan’t leave it to foundlings from Africay. I like Featherstones that were brewed such, and not turned Featherstones with sticking the name on ’em.


Don’t give way, Lucy; don’t make a fool of yourself, my dear, before these people. Go and order the phaeton, Fred; I have no time to waste.


Good-by. Be brave, Fred. I do believe you are better without the money. What was the good of it to Mr. Featherstone?


That’s all very fine. What is a fellow to do? I must go into the Church now. And I thought I should be able to pay your father at once and make everything right. And you have not even a hundred pounds left you. What shall you do now, Mary?


Take another situation, of course, as soon as I can get one. My father has enough to do to keep the rest, without me. Good-by.


Well, sir. I hope you’ve made up your mind now to go up next term and pass your examination. I’ve taken my resolution, so I advise you to lose no time in taking yours.


Don’t be hard on the poor boy, Vincy. He’ll turn out well yet, though that wicked man has deceived him. I feel as sure as I sit here, Fred will turn out well—else why was he brought back from the brink of the grave? And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the land, to promise it; and what is promising, if making everybody believe is not promising? And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then took it away again.


Took it away again! I tell you the lad’s an unlucky lad, Lucy. And you’ve always spoiled him.


Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when he came. You were as proud as proud,


Who knows what babies will turn to? I was fool enough, I dare say,


But who has handsomer, better children than ours? Fred is far beyond other people’s sons: you may hear it in his speech, that he has kept college company. And Rosamond—where is there a girl like her? She might stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the better for it. You see—Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest company and been everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once. Not but what I could have wished Rosamond had not engaged herself. She might have met somebody on a visit who would have been a far better match; I mean at her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby’s. There are relations in that family quite as high as Mr. Lydgate’s.


Damn relations! I’ve had enough of them. I don’t want a son-in-law who has got nothing but his relations to recommend him.


Why, my dear, you seemed as pleased as could be about it. It’s true, I wasn’t at home; but Rosamond told me you hadn’t a word to say against the engagement. And she has begun to buy in the best linen and cambric for her underclothing.


Not by my will. I shall have enough to do this year, with an idle scamp of a son, without paying for wedding-clothes. The times are as tight as can be; everybody is being ruined; and I don’t believe Lydgate has got a farthing. I shan’t give my consent to their marrying. Let ’em wait, as their elders have done before ’em.


Rosamond will take it hard, Vincy, and you know you never could bear to cross her.


Yes, I could. The sooner the engagement’s off, the better. I don’t believe he’ll ever make an income, the way he goes on. He makes enemies; that’s all I hear of his making.


But he stands very high with Mr. Bulstrode, my dear. The marriage would please him, I should think.


Please the deuce! Bulstrode won’t pay for their keep. And if Lydgate thinks I’m going to give money for them to set up housekeeping, he’s mistaken, that’s all. I expect I shall have to put down my horses soon. You’d better tell Rosy what I say.


What do you say, my dear?


Papa does not mean anything of the kind. He has always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved. And I shall marry Mr. Lydgate. It is seven weeks now since papa gave his consent. And I hope we shall have Mrs. Bretton’s house.


Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa. You always do manage everybody. But if we ever do go and get damask, Sadler’s is the place—far better than Hopkins’s. Mrs. Bretton’s is very large, though: I should love you to have such a house; but it will take a great deal of furniture—carpeting and everything, besides plate and glass. And you hear, your papa says he will give no money. Do you think Mr. Lydgate expects it?


You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma. Of course he understands his own affairs.


But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of your having a pretty legacy as well as Fred;—and now everything is so dreadful—there’s no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor boy disappointed as he is.


That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma. Fred must leave off being idle. I am going up-stairs to take this work to Miss Morgan: she does the open hemming very well. Mary Garth might do some work for me now, I should think. Her sewing is exquisite; it is the nicest thing I know about Mary. I should so like to have all my cambric frilling double-hemmed. And it takes a long time.


Walter, you never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go on without inquiry into Mr. Lydgate’s prospects? Think of this girl brought up in luxury—in too worldly a way, I am sorry to say—what will she do on a small income?


Oh, confound it, Harriet! What can I do when men come into the town without any asking of mine? Did you shut your house up against Lydgate? Bulstrode has pushed him forward more than anybody. I never made any fuss about the young fellow. You should go and talk to your husband about it, not me.


Well, really, Walter, how can Mr. Bulstrode be to blame? I am sure he did not wish for the engagement.


Oh, if Bulstrode had not taken him by the hand, I should never have invited him.


But you called him in to attend on Fred, and I am sure that was a mercy,


I don’t know about mercy. I know I am worried more than I like with my family. I was a good brother to you, Harriet, before you married Bulstrode, and I must say he doesn’t always show that friendly spirit towards your family that might have been expected of him.


I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl—brought up as she has been,


Truly, my dear. Those who are not of this world can do little else to arrest the errors of the obstinately worldly. That is what we must accustom ourselves to recognize with regard to your brother’s family. I could have wished that Mr. Lydgate had not entered into such a union; but my relations with him are limited to that use of his gifts for God’s purposes which is taught us by the divine government under each dispensation.


Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and now he brings back chaos.


Yes, at some stages. But a better order will begin after.


Soon?


I hope so, really. This unsettled state of affairs uses up the time, and when one has notions in science, every moment is an opportunity. I feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to work steadily. He has everything at home then—no teasing with personal speculations—he can get calmness and freedom.


You are an enviable dog, to have such a prospect—Rosamond, calmness and freedom, all to your share. Here am I with nothing but my pipe and pond-animalcules. Now, are you ready?


Dear! your eyelids are red.


Are they? I wonder why.


As if you could hide it from me! Don’t I see a tiny drop on one of the lashes? Things trouble you, and you don’t tell me. That is unloving.


Why should I tell you what you cannot alter? They are every-day things:—perhaps they have been a little worse lately.


Family annoyances. Don’t fear speaking. I guess them.


Papa has been more irritable lately. Fred makes him angry, and this morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw his whole education away, and do something quite beneath him. And besides— I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement, and he said last night that he should certainly speak to you and say it must be given up.


Will you give it up?


I never give up anything that I choose to do,


God bless you! It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be given up. You are of age, and I claim you as mine. If anything is done to make you unhappy,—that is a reason for hastening our marriage. Why should we defer it? I have taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready—can it not? You will not mind about new clothes. Those can be bought afterwards.


What original notions you clever men have! This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought after marriage.


But you don’t mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for the sake of clothes? Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of happiness even than this—being continually together, independent of others, and ordering our lives as we will. Come, dear, tell me how soon you can be altogether mine. Six weeks would be ample—say so, Rosamond,


There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared. Still, mamma could see to those while we were away.


Yes, to be sure. We must be away a week or so.


Oh, more than that!


Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed. But let us take a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you may be suffering. Six weeks!—I am sure they would be ample.


I could certainly hasten the work. Will you, then, mention it to papa?—I think it would be better to write to him.


It must be lovely. Just what Rosy ought to have. I trust in heaven it won’t be broken!


One must hire servants who will not break things,


Nonsense, my dear! What has he got to marry on? You’d much better give up the engagement. I’ve told you so pretty plainly before this. What have you had such an education for, if you are to go and marry a poor man? It’s a cruel thing for a father to see.


Mr. Lydgate is not poor, papa. He bought Mr. Peacock’s practice, which, they say, is worth eight or nine hundred a-year.


Stuff and nonsense! What’s buying a practice? He might as well buy next year’s swallows. It’ll all slip through his fingers.


On the contrary, papa, he will increase the practice. See how he has been called in by the Chettams and Casaubons.


I hope he knows I shan’t give anything—with this disappointment about Fred, and Parliament going to be dissolved, and machine-breaking everywhere, and an election coming on—


Dear papa! what can that have to do with my marriage?


A pretty deal to do with it! We may all be ruined for what I know—the country’s in that state! Some say it’s the end of the world, and be hanged if I don’t think it looks like it! Anyhow, it’s not a time for me to be drawing money out of my business, and I should wish Lydgate to know that.


I am sure he expects nothing, papa. And he has such very high connections: he is sure to rise in one way or another. He is engaged in making scientific discoveries. I cannot give up my only prospect of happiness, papa. Mr. Lydgate is a gentleman. I could never love any one who was not a perfect gentleman. You would not like me to go into a consumption, as Arabella Hawley did. And you know that I never change my mind. Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish. We shall never give each other up; and you know that you have always objected to long courtships and late marriages.


Well, well, child, he must write to me first before I can answer him,


I shall like so much to know your family. We might perhaps take a direction that would allow us to see them as we returned. Which of your uncles do you like best?


Oh,—my uncle Godwin, I think. He is a good-natured old fellow.


You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy, were you not? I should so like to see the old spot and everything you were used to. Does he know you are going to be married?


No,


Do send him word of it, you naughty undutiful nephew. He will perhaps ask you to take me to Quallingham; and then you could show me about the grounds, and I could imagine you there when you were a boy. Remember, you see me in my home, just as it has been since I was a child. It is not fair that I should be so ignorant of yours. But perhaps you would be a little ashamed of me. I forgot that.


I will write to him, then. But my cousins are bores.


I hope your uncle Sir Godwin will not look down on Rosy, Mr. Lydgate. I should think he would do something handsome. A thousand or two can be nothing to a baronet.


Mamma!


That means mischief, eh? He’s got the freak of being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise. So much the worse for him. I’ve had my eye on him for some time. He shall be prettily pumped upon. He’s a damned bad landlord. What business has an old county man to come currying favor with a low set of dark-blue freemen? As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing himself. It would be worth our paying for.


I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who can write the highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything in the London papers. And he means to take very high ground on Reform.


Let Brooke reform his rent-roll. He’s a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his estate are going to rack. I suppose this young fellow is some loose fish from London.


His name is Ladislaw. He is said to be of foreign extraction.


I know the sort, some emissary. He’ll begin with flourishing about the Rights of Man and end with murdering a wench. That’s the style.


You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley. I myself should never favor immoderate views—in fact I take my stand with Huskisson—but I cannot blind myself to the consideration that the non-representation of large towns—


Large towns be damned! I know a little too much about Middlemarch elections. Let ’em quash every pocket borough to-morrow, and bring in every mushroom town in the kingdom—they’ll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament. I go upon facts.


He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know. I don’t mean as to anything objectionable—laxities or atheism, or anything of that kind, you know—Ladislaw’s sentiments in every way I am sure are good—indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night. But he has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation—a fine thing under guidance—under guidance, you know. I think I shall be able to put him on the right tack; and I am the more pleased because he is a relation of yours, Casaubon.


It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices,


Don’t mention that I am here, Pratt; I will wait till luncheon; I know Mr. Casaubon does not like to be disturbed when he is in the library.


Master is out, sir; there’s only Mrs. Casaubon in the library. I’d better tell her you’re here, sir,


Oh, very well; this confounded rain has hindered me from sketching,


Mr. Casaubon has gone to the Archdeacon’s. I don’t know whether he will be at home again long before dinner. He was uncertain how long he should be. Did you want to say anything particular to him?


No; I came to sketch, but the rain drove me in. Else I would not have disturbed you yet. I supposed that Mr. Casaubon was here, and I know he dislikes interruption at this hour.


I am indebted to the rain, then. I am so glad to see you.


I really came for the chance of seeing you alone. I wanted to talk about things, as we did in Rome. It always makes a difference when other people are present.


Yes. Sit down.


I have often thought that I should like to talk to you again. It seems strange to me how many things I said to you.


I remember them all,


I have tried to learn a great deal since we were in Rome. I can read Latin a little, and I am beginning to understand just a little Greek. I can help Mr. Casaubon better now. I can find out references for him and save his eyes in many ways. But it is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.


If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit. But it is quite true that the best minds have been sometimes overstrained in working out their ideas.


You correct me. I expressed myself ill. I should have said that those who have great thoughts get too much worn in working them out. I used to feel about that, even when I was a little girl; and it always seemed to me that the use I should like to make of my life would be to help some one who did great works, so that his burthen might be lighter.


But you may easily carry the help too far, and get over-wrought yourself. Are you not too much shut up? You already look paler. It would be better for Mr. Casaubon to have a secretary; he could easily get a man who would do half his work for him. It would save him more effectually, and you need only help him in lighter ways.


How can you think of that? I should have no happiness if I did not help him in his work. What could I do? There is no good to be done in Lowick. The only thing I desire is to help him more. And he objects to a secretary: please not to mention that again.


Certainly not, now I know your feeling. But I have heard both Mr. Brooke and Sir James Chettam express the same wish.


Yes, but they don’t understand—they want me to be a great deal on horseback, and have the garden altered and new conservatories, to fill up my days. I thought you could understand that one’s mind has other wants, besides, Mr. Casaubon cannot bear to hear of a secretary.


My mistake is excusable. In old days I used to hear Mr. Casaubon speak as if he looked forward to having a secretary. Indeed he held out the prospect of that office to me. But I turned out to be—not good enough for it.


You were not a steady worker enough.


No. And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing. He is too doubtful—too uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, but he dislikes me because I disagree with him.


Mr. Casaubon must have overcome his dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is admirable.


Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters. It was an abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited because she made what they called a mesalliance, though there was nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread.


I wish I knew all about her! I wonder how she bore the change from wealth to poverty: I wonder whether she was happy with her husband! Do you know much about them?


No; only that my grandfather was a patriot—a bright fellow—could speak many languages—musical—got his bread by teaching all sorts of things. They both died rather early. And I never knew much of my father, beyond what my mother told me; but he inherited the musical talents. I remember his slow walk and his long thin hands; and one day remains with me when he was lying ill, and I was very hungry, and had only a little bit of bread.


Ah, what a different life from mine! I have always had too much of everything. But tell me how it was—Mr. Casaubon could not have known about you then.


No; but my father had made himself known to Mr. Casaubon, and that was my last hungry day. My father died soon after, and my mother and I were well taken care of. Mr. Casaubon always expressly recognized it as his duty to take care of us because of the harsh injustice which had been shown to his mother’s sister. But now I am telling you what is not new to you.


No. Mr. Casaubon has always avoided dwelling on his own honorable actions. He had never told me that he supported your mother. Is she still living?


No; she died by an accident—a fall—four years ago. It is curious that my mother, too, ran away from her family, but not for the sake of her husband. She never would tell me anything about her family, except that she forsook them to get her own living—went on the stage, in fact. She was a dark-eyed creature, with crisp ringlets, and never seemed to be getting old. You see I come of rebellious blood on both sides,


That is your apology, I suppose, for having yourself been rather rebellious; I mean, to Mr. Casaubon’s wishes. You must remember that you have not done what he thought best for you. And if he dislikes you—you were speaking of dislike a little while ago—but I should rather say, if he has shown any painful feelings towards you, you must consider how sensitive he has become from the wearing effect of study. Perhaps, my uncle has not told you how serious Mr. Casaubon’s illness was. It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial.


You teach me better. I will never grumble on that subject again. I have really sometimes been a perverse fellow, but I will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you would disapprove.


That is very good of you. I shall have a little kingdom then, where I shall give laws. But you will soon go away, out of my rule, I imagine. You will soon be tired of staying at the Grange.


That is a point I wanted to mention to you—one of the reasons why I wished to speak to you alone. Mr. Brooke proposes that I should stay in this neighborhood. He has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers, and he wishes me to conduct that, and also to help him in other ways.


Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?


Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and not settling to anything. And here is something offered to me. If you would not like me to accept it, I will give it up. Otherwise I would rather stay in this part of the country than go away. I belong to nobody anywhere else.


I should like you to stay very much,


Then I will stay,


But my opinion is of little consequence on such a subject. I think you should be guided by Mr. Casaubon. I spoke without thinking of anything else than my own feeling, which has nothing to do with the real question. But it now occurs to me—perhaps Mr. Casaubon might see that the proposal was not wise. Can you not wait now and mention it to him?


I can’t wait to-day. The rain is quite over now. I told Mr. Brooke not to call for me: I would rather walk the five miles. I shall strike across Halsell Common, and see the gleams on the wet grass. I like that.


I wish you could have stayed,


Good-by,


I have had the gratification of meeting my former acquaintance, Dr. Spanning, to-day, and of being praised by one who is himself a worthy recipient of praise. He spoke very handsomely of my late tractate on the Egyptian Mysteries,—using, in fact, terms which it would not become me to repeat.


I am very glad you have had that pleasure. Before you came I had been regretting that you happened to be out to-day.


Why so, my dear?


Because Mr. Ladislaw has been here; and he has mentioned a proposal of my uncle’s which I should like to know your opinion of. Dear uncle, you know, has many projects. It appears that he has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers, and he has asked Mr. Ladislaw to stay in this neighborhood and conduct the paper for him, besides helping him in other ways. What is your opinion?


Did Mr. Ladislaw come on purpose to ask my opinion?


No, he did not say that he came to ask your opinion. But when he mentioned the proposal, he of course expected me to tell you of it. I feared that you might feel some objection. But certainly a young man with so much talent might be very useful to my uncle—might help him to do good in a better way. And Mr. Ladislaw wishes to have some fixed occupation. He has been blamed, he says, for not seeking something of that kind, and he would like to stay in this neighborhood because no one cares for him elsewhere.


Mrs. Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and (according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your part been in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and warrantable in me when that effect is viewed under the influence of legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me when the same effect is considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once that your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly offensive to me. That I have some claim to the exercise of a veto here, would not, I believe, be denied by any reasonable person cognizant of the relations between us: relations which, though thrown into the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby annulled in their character of determining antecedents. I will not here make reflections on any person’s judgment. It is enough for me to point out to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties which should hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any wise conspicuous in this vicinity in a status not only much beneath my own, but associated at best with the sciolism of literary or political adventurers. At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from further reception at my house.


But he will! The great strength of his character lies here. And what are we doing with our money? We make no use of half of our income. My own money buys me nothing but an uneasy conscience.


Dorothea, since you are up, will you light a candle?


Do you feel ill, dear?


No, not at all; but I shall be obliged, since you are up, if you will read me a few pages of Lowth.


May I talk to you a little instead?


Certainly.


I have been thinking about money all day—that I have always had too much, and especially the prospect of too much.


These, my dear Dorothea, are providential arrangements.


But if one has too much in consequence of others being wronged, it seems to me that the divine voice which tells us to set that wrong right must be obeyed.


What, my love, is the bearing of your remark?


That you have been too liberal in arrangements for me—I mean, with regard to property; and that makes me unhappy.


How so? I have none but comparatively distant connections.


I have been led to think about your aunt Julia, and how she was left in poverty only because she married a poor man, an act which was not disgraceful, since he was not unworthy. It was on that ground, I know, that you educated Mr. Ladislaw and provided for his mother. But surely we should regard his claim as a much greater one, even to the half of that property which I know that you have destined for me. And I think he ought at once to be provided for on that understanding. It is not right that he should be in the dependence of poverty while we are rich. And if there is any objection to the proposal he mentioned, the giving him his true place and his true share would set aside any motive for his accepting it.


Mr. Ladislaw has probably been speaking to you on this subject?


Indeed, no! How can you imagine it, since he has so lately declined everything from you? I fear you think too hardly of him, dear. He only told me a little about his parents and grandparents, and almost all in answer to my questions. You are so good, so just—you have done everything you thought to be right. But it seems to me clear that more than that is right; and I must speak about it, since I am the person who would get what is called benefit by that ‘more’ not being done.


Dorothea, my love, this is not the first occasion, but it were well that it should be the last, on which you have assumed a judgment on subjects beyond your scope. Into the question how far conduct, especially in the matter of alliances, constitutes a forfeiture of family claims, I do not now enter. Suffice it, that you are not here qualified to discriminate. What I now wish you to understand is, that I accept no revision, still less dictation within that range of affairs which I have deliberated upon as distinctly and properly mine. It is not for you to interfere between me and Mr. Ladislaw, and still less to encourage communications from him to you which constitute a criticism on my procedure.


DEAR MR. CASAUBON,—I have given all due consideration to your letter of yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual position. With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should. Granted that a benefactor’s wishes may constitute a claim; there must always be a reservation as to the quality of those wishes. They may possibly clash with more imperative considerations. Or a benefactor’s veto might impose such a negation on a man’s life that the consequent blank might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous. I am merely using strong illustrations. In the present case I am unable to take your view of the bearing which my acceptance of occupation—not enriching certainly, but not dishonorable—will have on your own position which seems to me too substantial to be affected in that shadowy manner. And though I do not believe that any change in our relations will occur (certainly none has yet occurred) which can nullify the obligations imposed on me by the past, pardon me for not seeing that those obligations should restrain me from using the ordinary freedom of living where I choose, and maintaining myself by any lawful occupation I may choose. Regretting that there exists this difference between us as to a relation in which the conferring of benefits has been entirely on your side— I remain, yours with persistent obligation, WILL LADISLAW.”


Never fear, Casaubon! Depend upon it, young Ladislaw will do you credit. Depend upon it, I have put my finger on the right thing.


I can’t talk to you as I want, before Celia: it might hurt her. Indeed, it would not be right.


I know what you mean—the ‘Pioneer’ at the Grange! It is frightful—this taking to buying whistles and blowing them in everybody’s hearing. Lying in bed all day and playing at dominoes, like poor Lord Plessy, would be more private and bearable.


I see they are beginning to attack our friend Brooke in the ‘Trumpet,’ There are tremendous sarcasms against a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents, and makes no returns.


I do wish Brooke would leave that off,


Is he really going to be put in nomination, though? I saw Farebrother yesterday—he’s Whiggish himself, hoists Brougham and Useful Knowledge; that’s the worst I know of him;—and he says that Brooke is getting up a pretty strong party. Bulstrode, the banker, is his foremost man. But he thinks Brooke would come off badly at a nomination.


Exactly. I have been inquiring into the thing, for I’ve never known anything about Middlemarch politics before—the county being my business. What Brooke trusts to, is that they are going to turn out Oliver because he is a Peelite. But Hawley tells me that if they send up a Whig at all it is sure to be Bagster, one of those candidates who come from heaven knows where, but dead against Ministers, and an experienced Parliamentary man. Hawley’s rather rough: he forgot that he was speaking to me. He said if Brooke wanted a pelting, he could get it cheaper than by going to the hustings.


I warned you all of it. I said to Humphrey long ago, Mr. Brooke is going to make a splash in the mud. And now he has done it.


Well, he might have taken it into his head to marry. That would have been a graver mess than a little flirtation with politics.


He may do that afterwards, when he has come out on the other side of the mud with an ague.


What I care for most is his own dignity. Of course I care the more because of the family. But he’s getting on in life now, and I don’t like to think of his exposing himself. They will be raking up everything against him.


I suppose it’s no use trying any persuasion. There’s such an odd mixture of obstinacy and changeableness in Brooke. Have you tried him on the subject?


Well, no. I feel a delicacy in appearing to dictate. But I have been talking to this young Ladislaw that Brooke is making a factotum of. Ladislaw seems clever enough for anything. I thought it as well to hear what he had to say; and he is against Brooke’s standing this time. I think he’ll turn him round: I think the nomination may be staved off.


I know. The independent member hasn’t got his speeches well enough by heart.


But this Ladislaw—there again is a vexatious business. We have had him two or three times to dine at the Hall (you have met him, by the bye) as Brooke’s guest and a relation of Casaubon’s, thinking he was only on a flying visit. And now I find he’s in everybody’s mouth in Middlemarch as the editor of the ‘Pioneer.’ There are stories going about him as a quill-driving alien, a foreign emissary, and what not.


Casaubon won’t like that,


There is some foreign blood in Ladislaw,


with his opera songs and his ready tongue. A sort of Byronic hero—an amorous conspirator, it strikes me. And Thomas Aquinas is not fond of him. I could see that, the day the picture was brought.


He has more right to interfere than I. But it’s a disagreeable affair all round. What a character for anybody with decent connections to show himself in!—one of those newspaper fellows! You have only to look at Keck, who manages the ‘Trumpet.’ I saw him the other day with Hawley. His writing is sound enough, I believe, but he’s such a low fellow, that I wished he had been on the wrong side.


What can you expect with these peddling Middlemarch papers?


Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Brooke should have put a man who has a sort of connection with the family in a position of that kind. For my part, I think Ladislaw is rather a fool for accepting.


It is Aquinas’s fault. Why didn’t he use his interest to get Ladislaw made an attache or sent to India? That is how families get rid of troublesome sprigs.


But if Casaubon says nothing, what can I do?


don’t let us make too much of all this. It is likely enough to end in mere smoke. After a month or two Brooke and this Master Ladislaw will get tired of each other; Ladislaw will take wing; Brooke will sell the ‘Pioneer,’ and everything will settle down again as usual.


If I knew the items of election expenses I could scare him. It’s no use plying him with wide words like Expenditure: I wouldn’t talk of phlebotomy, I would empty a pot of leeches upon him. What we good stingy people don’t like, is having our sixpences sucked away from us.


And he will not like having things raked up against him,


Perhaps the ‘Trumpet’ may rouse him to make a change, and some good may come of it all,


I want him to have a proper man to look after things—I want him to take on Garth again,


In the right of it too. Garth is an independent fellow: an original, simple-minded fellow. One day, when he was doing some valuation for me, he told me point-blank that clergymen seldom understood anything about business, and did mischief when they meddled; but he said it as quietly and respectfully as if he had been talking to me about sailors. He would make a different parish of Tipton, if Brooke would let him manage. I wish, by the help of the ‘Trumpet,’ you could bring that round.


If Dorothea had kept near her uncle, there would have been some chance. She might have got some power over him in time, and she was always uneasy about the estate. She had wonderfully good notions about such things. But now Casaubon takes her up entirely. Celia complains a good deal. We can hardly get her to dine with us, since he had that fit.


Poor Casaubon!


Brooke doesn’t mean badly by his tenants or any one else, but he has got that way of paring and clipping at expenses.


Come, that’s a blessing. That helps him to find himself in a morning. He may not know his own opinions, but he does know his own pocket.


I don’t believe a man is in pocket by stinginess on his land,


But talk of an independent politician and he will appear.


What! Brooke?


Yes. Now, you ply him with the ‘Trumpet,’ Humphrey; and I will put the leeches on him. What will you do, Sir James?


The fact is, I don’t like to begin about it with Brooke, in our mutual position; the whole thing is so unpleasant. I do wish people would behave like gentlemen,


Here you all are, eh? I was going up to the Hall by-and-by, Chettam. But it’s pleasant to find everybody, you know. Well, what do you think of things?—going on a little fast! It was true enough, what Lafitte said—‘Since yesterday, a century has passed away:’—they’re in the next century, you know, on the other side of the water. Going on faster than we are.


Why, yes,


Eh? no,


Look here! all this is about a landlord not a hundred miles from Middlemarch, who receives his own rents. They say he is the most retrogressive man in the county. I think you must have taught them that word in the ‘Pioneer.’


Oh, that is Keck—an illiterate fellow, you know. Retrogressive, now! Come, that’s capital. He thinks it means destructive: they want to make me out a destructive, you know,


I think he knows the meaning of the word. Here is a sharp stroke or two. If we had to describe a man who is retrogressive in the most evil sense of the word—we should say, he is one who would dub himself a reformer of our constitution, while every interest for which he is immediately responsible is going to decay: a philanthropist who cannot bear one rogue to be hanged, but does not mind five honest tenants being half-starved: a man who shrieks at corruption, and keeps his farms at rack-rent: who roars himself red at rotten boroughs, and does not mind if every field on his farms has a rotten gate: a man very open-hearted to Leeds and Manchester, no doubt; he would give any number of representatives who will pay for their seats out of their own pockets: what he objects to giving, is a little return on rent-days to help a tenant to buy stock, or an outlay on repairs to keep the weather out at a tenant’s barn-door or make his house look a little less like an Irish cottier’s. But we all know the wag’s definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance. And so on. All the rest is to show what sort of legislator a philanthropist is likely to make,


Come, that’s rather good, you know, that about roaring himself red at rotten boroughs—I never made a speech about rotten boroughs in my life. And as to roaring myself red and that kind of thing—these men never understand what is good satire. Satire, you know, should be true up to a certain point. I recollect they said that in ‘The Edinburgh’ somewhere—it must be true up to a certain point.


Well, that is really a hit about the gates. Dagley complained to me the other day that he hadn’t got a decent gate on his farm. Garth has invented a new pattern of gate—I wish you would try it. One ought to use some of one’s timber in that way.


You go in for fancy farming, you know, Chettam,


They said the last unsuccessful candidate at Middlemarch—Giles, wasn’t his name?—spent ten thousand pounds and failed because he did not bribe enough. What a bitter reflection for a man!


Somebody was saying, that East Retford was nothing to Middlemarch, for bribery.


Nothing of the kind. The Tories bribe, you know: Hawley and his set bribe with treating, hot codlings, and that sort of thing; and they bring the voters drunk to the poll. But they are not going to have it their own way in future—not in future, you know. Middlemarch is a little backward, I admit—the freemen are a little backward. But we shall educate them—we shall bring them on, you know. The best people there are on our side.


Hawley says you have men on your side who will do you harm. He says Bulstrode the banker will do you harm.


And that if you got pelted, half the rotten eggs would mean hatred of your committee-man. Good heavens! Think what it must be to be pelted for wrong opinions. And I seem to remember a story of a man they pretended to chair and let him fall into a dust-heap on purpose!


Pelting is nothing to their finding holes in one’s coat. I confess that’s what I should be afraid of, if we parsons had to stand at the hustings for preferment. I should be afraid of their reckoning up all my fishing days. Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.


The fact is, if a man goes into public life he must be prepared for the consequences. He must make himself proof against calumny.


My dear Chettam, that is all very fine, you know. But how will you make yourself proof against calumny? You should read history—look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know. But what is that in Horace?—fiat justitia, ruat … something or other.


Exactly. What I mean by being proof against calumny is being able to point to the fact as a contradiction.


And it is not martyrdom to pay bills that one has run into one’s self,


Well, you know, Chettam, you and I have a different system. You are all for outlay with your farms. I don’t want to make out that my system is good under all circumstances—under all circumstances, you know.


There ought to be a new valuation made from time to time. Returns are very well occasionally, but I like a fair valuation. What do you say, Cadwallader?


I agree with you. If I were Brooke, I would choke the ‘Trumpet’ at once by getting Garth to make a new valuation of the farms, and giving him carte blanche about gates and repairs: that’s my view of the political situation,


That’s a showy sort of thing to do, you know. But I should like you to tell me of another landlord who has distressed his tenants for arrears as little as I have. I let the old tenants stay on. I’m uncommonly easy, let me tell you, uncommonly easy. I have my own ideas, and I take my stand on them, you know. A man who does that is always charged with eccentricity, inconsistency, and that kind of thing. When I change my line of action, I shall follow my own ideas.


I didn’t want to take a liberty with Brooke. I see he is nettled. But as to what he says about old tenants, in point of fact no new tenant would take the farms on the present terms.


I have a notion that he will be brought round in time. But you were pulling one way, Elinor, and we were pulling another. You wanted to frighten him away from expense, and we want to frighten him into it. Better let him try to be popular and see that his character as a landlord stands in his way. I don’t think it signifies two straws about the ‘Pioneer,’ or Ladislaw, or Brooke’s speechifying to the Middlemarchers. But it does signify about the parishioners in Tipton being comfortable.


Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack. You should have proved to him that he loses money by bad management, and then we should all have pulled together. If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.


Well, my dear, this is pleasant, now. You have left Casaubon with his books, I suppose. That’s right. We must not have you getting too learned for a woman, you know.


There is no fear of that, uncle. I am very slow. When I want to be busy with books, I am often playing truant among my thoughts. I find it is not so easy to be learned as to plan cottages.


Why, yes, my dear, it was quite your hobby to draw plans. But it was good to break that off a little. Hobbies are apt to run away with us, you know; it doesn’t do to be run away with. We must keep the reins. I have never let myself be run away with; I always pulled up. That is what I tell Ladislaw. He and I are alike, you know: he likes to go into everything. We are working at capital punishment. We shall do a great deal together, Ladislaw and I.


Yes. Sir James has been telling me that he is in hope of seeing a great change made soon in your management of the estate—that you are thinking of having the farms valued, and repairs made, and the cottages improved, so that Tipton may look quite another place. Oh, how happy! If I were at home still, I should take to riding again, that I might go about with you and see all that! And you are going to engage Mr. Garth, who praised my cottages, Sir James says.


Chettam is a little hasty, my dear, a little hasty, you know. I never said I should do anything of the kind. I never said I should not do it, you know.


He only feels confident that you will do it, because you mean to enter Parliament as a member who cares for the improvement of the people, and one of the first things to be made better is the state of the land and the laborers. Think of Kit Downes, uncle, who lives with his wife and seven children in a house with one sitting room and one bedroom hardly larger than this table!—and those poor Dagleys, in their tumble-down farmhouse, where they live in the back kitchen and leave the other rooms to the rats! That is one reason why I did not like the pictures here, dear uncle—which you think me stupid about. I used to come from the village with all that dirt and coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in what is false, while we don’t mind how hard the truth is for the neighbors outside our walls. I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.


There is something in what you say, my dear, something in what you say—but not everything—eh, Ladislaw? You and I don’t like our pictures and statues being found fault with. Young ladies are a little ardent, you know—a little one-sided, my dear. Fine art, poetry, that kind of thing, elevates a nation—emollit mores—you understand a little Latin now. But—eh? what? I’ll come, I’ll come. I shall let him off easily, you know,


I hope you feel how right this change is that I—that Sir James wishes for,


I do, now I have heard you speak about it. I shall not forget what you have said. But can you think of something else at this moment? I may not have another opportunity of speaking to you about what has occurred,


Pray tell me what it is,


No, I did not. I am very, very sorry,


Mr. Casaubon’s reason is, his displeasure at my taking a position here which he considers unsuited to my rank as his cousin. I have told him that I cannot give way on this point. It is a little too hard on me to expect that my course in life is to be hampered by prejudices which I think ridiculous. Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning. I would not have accepted the position if I had not meant to make it useful and honorable. I am not bound to regard family dignity in any other light.


It is better for us not to speak on the subject, since you and Mr. Casaubon disagree. You intend to remain?


Yes; but I shall hardly ever see you now,


No, hardly ever. But I shall hear of you. I shall know what you are doing for my uncle.


I shall know hardly anything about you. No one will tell me anything.


Oh, my life is very simple. I am always at Lowick.


That is a dreadful imprisonment,


No, don’t think that. I have no longings. I mean, for myself. Except that I should like not to have so much more than my share without doing anything for others. But I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me.


What is that?


That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.


That is a beautiful mysticism—it is a—


Please not to call it by any name. You will say it is Persian, or something else geographical. It is my life. I have found it out, and cannot part with it. I have always been finding out my religion since I was a little girl. I used to pray so much—now I hardly ever pray. I try not to have desires merely for myself, because they may not be good for others, and I have too much already. I only told you, that you might know quite well how my days go at Lowick.


God bless you for telling me!


What is your religion? I mean—not what you know about religion, but the belief that helps you most?


To love what is good and beautiful when I see it. But I am a rebel: I don’t feel bound, as you do, to submit to what I don’t like.


But if you like what is good, that comes to the same thing,


Now you are subtle,


Yes; Mr. Casaubon often says I am too subtle. I don’t feel as if I were subtle. But how long my uncle is! I must go and look for him. I must really go on to the Hall. Celia is expecting me.


Chettam, now, he finds fault with me, my dear; but I should not preserve my game if it were not for Chettam, and he can’t say that that expense is for the sake of the tenants, you know. It’s a little against my feeling:—poaching, now, if you come to look into it—I have often thought of getting up the subject. Not long ago, Flavell, the Methodist preacher, was brought up for knocking down a hare that came across his path when he and his wife were walking out together. He was pretty quick, and knocked it on the neck.


That was very brutal, I think,


Well, now, it seemed rather black to me, I confess, in a Methodist preacher, you know. And Johnson said, ‘You may judge what a hypocrite he is.’ And upon my word, I thought Flavell looked very little like ‘the highest style of man’—as somebody calls the Christian—Young, the poet Young, I think—you know Young? Well, now, Flavell in his shabby black gaiters, pleading that he thought the Lord had sent him and his wife a good dinner, and he had a right to knock it down, though not a mighty hunter before the Lord, as Nimrod was—I assure you it was rather comic: Fielding would have made something of it—or Scott, now—Scott might have worked it up. But really, when I came to think of it, I couldn’t help liking that the fellow should have a bit of hare to say grace over. It’s all a matter of prejudice—prejudice with the law on its side, you know—about the stick and the gaiters, and so on. However, it doesn’t do to reason about things; and law is law. But I got Johnson to be quiet, and I hushed the matter up. I doubt whether Chettam would not have been more severe, and yet he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the county. But here we are at Dagley’s.


Dagley, my good fellow,


Oh, ay, I’m a good feller, am I? Thank ye, sir, thank ye. I’m glad to hear I’m a good feller.


Your little lad Jacob has been caught killing a leveret, Dagley: I have told Johnson to lock him up in the empty stable an hour or two, just to frighten him, you know. But he will be brought home by-and-by, before night: and you’ll just look after him, will you, and give him a reprimand, you know?


No, I woon’t: I’ll be dee’d if I’ll leather my boy to please you or anybody else, not if you was twenty landlords istid o’ one, and that a bad un.


Well, well, I’ll speak to your wife—I didn’t mean beating, you know. How do you do, Mrs. Dagley? I came to tell you about your boy: I don’t want you to give him the stick, you know.


No, nor he woon’t hev the stick, whether you want it or no. You’ve got no call to come an’ talk about sticks o’ these primises, as you woon’t give a stick tow’rt mending. Go to Middlemarch to ax for your charrickter.


You’d far better hold your tongue, Dagley, and not kick your own trough over. When a man as is father of a family has been an’ spent money at market and made himself the worse for liquor, he’s done enough mischief for one day. But I should like to know what my boy’s done, sir.


Niver do you mind what he’s done, it’s my business to speak, an’ not yourn. An’ I wull speak, too. I’ll hev my say—supper or no. An’ what I say is, as I’ve lived upo’ your ground from my father and grandfather afore me, an’ hev dropped our money into’t, an’ me an’ my children might lie an’ rot on the ground for top-dressin’ as we can’t find the money to buy, if the King wasn’t to put a stop.


My good fellow, you’re drunk, you know. Another day, another day,


I’m no more drunk nor you are, nor so much. I can carry my liquor, an’ I know what I meean. An’ I meean as the King ’ull put a stop to ’t, for them say it as knows it, as there’s to be a Rinform, and them landlords as never done the right thing by their tenants ’ull be treated i’ that way as they’ll hev to scuttle off. An’ there’s them i’ Middlemarch knows what the Rinform is—an’ as knows who’ll hev to scuttle. Says they, ‘I know who your landlord is.’ An’ says I, ‘I hope you’re the better for knowin’ him, I arn’t.’ Says they, ‘He’s a close-fisted un.’ ‘Ay ay,’ says I. ‘He’s a man for the Rinform,’ says they. That’s what they says. An’ I made out what the Rinform were—an’ it were to send you an’ your likes a-scuttlin’ an’ wi’ pretty strong-smellin’ things too. An’ you may do as you like now, for I’m none afeard on you. An’ you’d better let my boy aloan, an’ look to yoursen, afore the Rinform has got upo’ your back. That’s what I’n got to say,


Oh, don’t sew, Mary!


No, no, Mischief! Try and mould it yourself: you have seen me do it often enough. I must get this sewing done. It is for Rosamond Vincy: she is to be married next week, and she can’t be married without this handkerchief.


Why can’t she, Mary?


Because this is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be eleven,


Have you made up your mind, my dear?


I shall go to the school at York. I am less unfit to teach in a school than in a family. I like to teach classes best. And, you see, I must teach: there is nothing else to be done.


Teaching seems to me the most delightful work in the world. I could understand your objection to it if you had not knowledge enough, Mary, or if you disliked children.


I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like, mother. I am not fond of a schoolroom: I like the outside world better. It is a very inconvenient fault of mine.


It must be very stupid to be always in a girls’ school. Such a set of nincompoops, like Mrs. Ballard’s pupils walking two and two.


And they have no games worth playing at. They can neither throw nor leap. I don’t wonder at Mary’s not liking it.


What is that Mary doesn’t like, eh?


Being among a lot of nincompoop girls,


Is it the situation you had heard of, Mary?


Yes, father: the school at York. I have determined to take it. It is quite the best. Thirty-five pounds a-year, and extra pay for teaching the smallest strummers at the piano.


Poor child! I wish she could stay at home with us, Susan,


Mary would not be happy without doing her duty,


It wouldn’t make me happy to do such a nasty duty as that,


Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred, for everything that you think disagreeable. And suppose that Mary could help you to go to Mr. Hanmer’s with the money she gets?


That seems to me a great shame. But she’s an old brick,


She’s an old brick, old brick, old brick!


What do you think, Susan?


He writes handsomely, doesn’t he, Susan? Brooke didn’t like to ask me himself, I can see,


Here is an honor to your father, children. He is asked to take a post again by those who dismissed him long ago. That shows that he did his work well, so that they feel the want of him.


Like Cincinnatus—hooray!


Will they come to fetch him, mother?


Now, mind you ask fair pay, Caleb.


Oh yes. It’ll come to between four and five hundred, the two together. Mary, write and give up that school. Stay and help your mother. I’m as pleased as Punch, now I’ve thought of that.


It’s a thousand pities Christy didn’t take to business, Susan. I shall want help by-and-by. And Alfred must go off to the engineering—I’ve made up my mind to that. I shall make Brooke have new agreements with the tenants, and I shall draw up a rotation of crops. And I’ll lay a wager we can get fine bricks out of the clay at Bott’s corner. I must look into that: it would cheapen the repairs. It’s a fine bit of work, Susan! A man without a family would be glad to do it for nothing.


Mind you don’t, though,


No, no; but it’s a fine thing to come to a man when he’s seen into the nature of business: to have the chance of getting a bit of the country into good fettle, as they say, and putting men into the right way with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building done—that those who are living and those who come after will be the better for. I’d sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work that is. It’s a great gift of God, Susan.


That it is, Caleb. And it will be a blessing to your children to have had a father who did such work: a father whose good work remains though his name may be forgotten.


I come as an envoy, Mrs. Garth: I have something to say to you and Garth on behalf of Fred Vincy. The fact is, poor fellow, he has taken me into his confidence.


We haven’t seen the lad for months. I couldn’t think what was become of him.


He has been away on a visit, because home was a little too hot for him, and Lydgate told his mother that the poor fellow must not begin to study yet. But yesterday he came and poured himself out to me. I am very glad he did, because I have seen him grow up from a youngster of fourteen, and I am so much at home in the house that the children are like nephews and nieces to me. But it is a difficult case to advise upon. However, he has asked me to come and tell you that he is going away, and that he is so miserable about his debt to you, and his inability to pay, that he can’t bear to come himself even to bid you good by.


Tell him it doesn’t signify a farthing. We’ve had the pinch and have got over it. And now I’m going to be as rich as a Jew.


Which means, that we are going to have enough to bring up the boys well and to keep Mary at home.


What is the treasure-trove?


I’m going to be agent for two estates, Freshitt and Tipton; and perhaps for a pretty little bit of land in Lowick besides: it’s all the same family connection, and employment spreads like water if it’s once set going. It makes me very happy, Mr. Farebrother that I’ve got an opportunity again with the letting of the land, and carrying out a notion or two with improvements. It’s a most uncommonly cramping thing, as I’ve often told Susan, to sit on horseback and look over the hedges at the wrong thing, and not be able to put your hand to it to make it right. What people do who go into politics I can’t think: it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement over only a few hundred acres.


I congratulate you heartily, Garth. This is the best sort of news I could have had to carry to Fred Vincy, for he dwelt a good deal on the injury he had done you in causing you to part with money—robbing you of it, he said—which you wanted for other purposes. I wish Fred were not such an idle dog; he has some very good points, and his father is a little hard upon him.


Where is he going?


He means to try again for his degree, and he is going up to study before term. I have advised him to do that. I don’t urge him to enter the Church—on the contrary. But if he will go and work so as to pass, that will be some guarantee that he has energy and a will; and he is quite at sea; he doesn’t know what else to do. So far he will please his father, and I have promised in the mean time to try and reconcile Vincy to his son’s adopting some other line of life. Fred says frankly he is not fit for a clergyman, and I would do anything I could to hinder a man from the fatal step of choosing the wrong profession. He quoted to me what you said, Miss Garth—do you remember it?


I have said so many impertinent things to Fred—we are such old playfellows.


You said, according to him, that he would be one of those ridiculous clergymen who help to make the whole clergy ridiculous. Really, that was so cutting that I felt a little cut myself.


She gets her tongue from you, Susan,


Not its flippancy, father. It is rather too bad of Fred to repeat my flippant speeches to Mr. Farebrother.


It was certainly a hasty speech, my dear. We should not value our Vicar the less because there was a ridiculous curate in the next parish.


There’s something in what she says, though. A bad workman of any sort makes his fellows mistrusted. Things hang together,


Clearly. By being contemptible we set men’s minds to the tune of contempt. I certainly agree with Miss Garth’s view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not. But as to Fred Vincy, it is only fair he should be excused a little: old Featherstone’s delusive behavior did help to spoil him. There was something quite diabolical in not leaving him a farthing after all. But Fred has the good taste not to dwell on that. And what he cares most about is having offended you, Mrs. Garth; he supposes you will never think well of him again.


I have been disappointed in Fred. But I shall be ready to think well of him again when he gives me good reason to do so.


Oh, we must forgive young people when they’re sorry. And as you say, Mr. Farebrother, there was the very devil in that old man. Now Mary’s gone out, I must tell you a thing—it’s only known to Susan and me, and you’ll not tell it again. The old scoundrel wanted Mary to burn one of the wills the very night he died, when she was sitting up with him by herself, and he offered her a sum of money that he had in the box by him if she would do it. But Mary, you understand, could do no such thing—would not be handling his iron chest, and so on. Now, you see, the will he wanted burnt was this last, so that if Mary had done what he wanted, Fred Vincy would have had ten thousand pounds. The old man did turn to him at the last. That touches poor Mary close; she couldn’t help it—she was in the right to do what she did, but she feels, as she says, much as if she had knocked down somebody’s property and broken it against her will, when she was rightfully defending herself. I feel with her, somehow, and if I could make any amends to the poor lad, instead of bearing him a grudge for the harm he did us, I should be glad to do it. Now, what is your opinion, sir? Susan doesn’t agree with me; she says—tell what you say, Susan.


Mary could not have acted otherwise, even if she had known what would be the effect on Fred. And she was quite ignorant of it. It seems to me, a loss which falls on another because we have done right is not to lie upon our conscience.


It’s the feeling. The child feels in that way, and I feel with her. You don’t mean your horse to tread on a dog when you’re backing out of the way; but it goes through you, when it’s done.


I am sure Mrs. Garth would agree with you there. One could hardly say that the feeling you mention about Fred is wrong—or rather, mistaken—though no man ought to make a claim on such feeling.


Well, well, it’s a secret. You will not tell Fred.


Certainly not. But I shall carry the other good news—that you can afford the loss he caused you.


Have you any message for your old playfellow, Miss Garth? Something to soften down that harsh judgment? I am going straight to see him.


No. If I were to say that he would not be ridiculous as a clergyman, I must say that he would be something worse than ridiculous. But I am very glad to hear that he is going away to work.


On the other hand, I am very glad to hear that you are not going away to work. My mother, I am sure, will be all the happier if you will come to see her at the vicarage: you know she is fond of having young people to talk to, and she has a great deal to tell about old times. You will really be doing a kindness.


I should like it very much, if I may. Everything seems too happy for me all at once. I thought it would always be part of my life to long for home, and losing that grievance makes me feel rather empty: I suppose it served instead of sense to fill up my mind?


May I go with you, Mary?


Susan, guess what I’m thinking of.


The rotation of crops, or else the back-doors of the Tipton cottages.


No. I am thinking that I could do a great turn for Fred Vincy. Christy’s gone, Alfred will be gone soon, and it will be five years before Jim is ready to take to business. I shall want help, and Fred might come in and learn the nature of things and act under me, and it might be the making of him into a useful man, if he gives up being a parson. What do you think?


I think, there is hardly anything honest that his family would object to more,


What care I about their objecting? The lad is of age and must get his bread. He has sense enough and quickness enough; he likes being on the land, and it’s my belief that he could learn business well if he gave his mind to it.


But would he? His father and mother wanted him to be a fine gentleman, and I think he has the same sort of feeling himself. They all think us beneath them. And if the proposal came from you, I am sure Mrs. Vincy would say that we wanted Fred for Mary.


Life is a poor tale, if it is to be settled by nonsense of that sort,


Yes, but there is a certain pride which is proper, Caleb.


I call it improper pride to let fools’ notions hinder you from doing a good action. There’s no sort of work, that could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say. You must have it inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow.


I will not oppose any plan you have set your mind on, Caleb. Still, it seems to be fixed that Fred is to go back to college: will it not be better to wait and see what he will choose to do after that? It is not easy to keep people against their will. And you are not yet quite sure enough of your own position, or what you will want.


Well, it may be better to wait a bit. But as to my getting plenty of work for two, I’m pretty sure of that. I’ve always had my hands full with scattered things, and there’s always something fresh turning up. Why, only yesterday—bless me, I don’t think I told you!—it was rather odd that two men should have been at me on different sides to do the same bit of valuing. And who do you think they were? Why, that Rigg, or Rigg Featherstone, was one. But Bulstrode was before him, so I’m going to do it for Bulstrode. Whether it’s mortgage or purchase they’re going for, I can’t tell yet.


Can that man be going to sell the land just left him—which he has taken the name for?


Deuce knows. But Bulstrode has long been wanting to get a handsome bit of land under his fingers—that I know. And it’s a difficult matter to get, in this part of the country. The ins and outs of things are curious. Here is the land they’ve been all along expecting for Fred, which it seems the old man never meant to leave him a foot of, but left it to this side-slip of a son that he kept in the dark, and thought of his sticking there and vexing everybody as well as he could have vexed ’em himself if he could have kept alive. I say, it would be curious if it got into Bulstrode’s hands after all. The old man hated him, and never would bank with him.


What reason could the miserable creature have for hating a man whom he had nothing to do with?


Pooh! where’s the use of asking for such fellows’ reasons? The soul of man. The soul of man, when it gets fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no eye can see whence came the seed thereof.


Come, now, Josh, look at it in this light: here is your poor mother going into the vale of years, and you could afford something handsome now to make her comfortable.


Not while you live. Nothing would make her comfortable while you live. What I give her, you’ll take.


You bear me a grudge, Josh, that I know. But come, now—as between man and man—without humbug—a little capital might enable me to make a first-rate thing of the shop. The tobacco trade is growing. I should cut my own nose off in not doing the best I could at it. I should stick to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake. I should always be on the spot. And nothing would make your poor mother so happy. I’ve pretty well done with my wild oats—turned fifty-five. I want to settle down in my chimney-corner. And if I once buckled to the tobacco trade, I could bring an amount of brains and experience to bear on it that would not be found elsewhere in a hurry. I don’t want to be bothering you one time after another, but to get things once for all into the right channel. Consider that, Josh—as between man and man—and with your poor mother to be made easy for her life. I was always fond of the old woman, by Jove!


Have you done?


Yes, I’ve done,


Then just listen to me. The more you say anything, the less I shall believe it. The more you want me to do a thing, the more reason I shall have for never doing it. Do you think I mean to forget your kicking me when I was a lad, and eating all the best victual away from me and my mother? Do you think I forget your always coming home to sell and pocket everything, and going off again leaving us in the lurch? I should be glad to see you whipped at the cart-tail. My mother was a fool to you: she’d no right to give me a father-in-law, and she’s been punished for it. She shall have her weekly allowance paid and no more: and that shall be stopped if you dare to come on to these premises again, or to come into this country after me again. The next time you show yourself inside the gates here, you shall be driven off with the dogs and the wagoner’s whip.


Come, Josh, give us a spoonful of brandy, and a sovereign to pay the way back, and I’ll go. Honor bright! I’ll go like a bullet, by Jove!


Mind, if I ever see you again, I shan’t speak to you. I don’t own you any more than if I saw a crow; and if you want to own me you’ll get nothing by it but a character for being what you are—a spiteful, brassy, bullying rogue.


That’s a pity, now, Josh. I’m very fond of you; by Jove, I am! There’s nothing I like better than plaguing you—you’re so like your mother, and I must do without it. But the brandy and the sovereign’s a bargain.


Farewell, Josh—and if forever!


In marrying Dorothea Brooke I had to care for her well-being in case of my death. But well-being is not to be secured by ample, independent possession of property; on the contrary, occasions might arise in which such possession might expose her to the more danger. She is ready prey to any man who knows how to play adroitly either on her affectionate ardor or her Quixotic enthusiasm; and a man stands by with that very intention in his mind—a man with no other principle than transient caprice, and who has a personal animosity towards me—I am sure of it—an animosity which is fed by the consciousness of his ingratitude, and which he has constantly vented in ridicule of which I am as well assured as if I had heard it. Even if I live I shall not be without uneasiness as to what he may attempt through indirect influence. This man has gained Dorothea’s ear: he has fascinated her attention; he has evidently tried to impress her mind with the notion that he has claims beyond anything I have done for him. If I die—and he is waiting here on the watch for that—he will persuade her to marry him. That would be calamity for her and success for him. She would not think it calamity: he would make her believe anything; she has a tendency to immoderate attachment which she inwardly reproaches me for not responding to, and already her mind is occupied with his fortunes. He thinks of an easy conquest and of entering into my nest. That I will hinder! Such a marriage would be fatal to Dorothea. Has he ever persisted in anything except from contradiction? In knowledge he has always tried to be showy at small cost. In religion he could be, as long as it suited him, the facile echo of Dorothea’s vagaries. When was sciolism ever dissociated from laxity? I utterly distrust his morals, and it is my duty to hinder to the utmost the fulfilment of his designs.


No, I merely wish to have his opinion concerning some habitual symptoms. You need not see him, my dear. I shall give orders that he may be sent to me in the Yew-tree Walk, where I shall be taking my usual exercise.


Poor fellow, some men with his years are like lions; one can tell nothing of their age except that they are full grown.


Mr. Lydgate. I am exceedingly obliged to you for your punctuality. We will, if you please, carry on our conversation in walking to and fro.


I hope your wish to see me is not due to the return of unpleasant symptoms,


Not immediately—no. In order to account for that wish I must mention—what it were otherwise needless to refer to—that my life, on all collateral accounts insignificant, derives a possible importance from the incompleteness of labors which have extended through all its best years. In short, I have long had on hand a work which I would fain leave behind me in such a state, at least, that it might be committed to the press by—others. Were I assured that this is the utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful circumscription of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and negative determination of my course.


You refer to the possible hindrances from want of health?


I do. You have not implied to me that the symptoms which—I am bound to testify—you watched with scrupulous care, were those of a fatal disease. But were it so, Mr. Lydgate, I should desire to know the truth without reservation, and I appeal to you for an exact statement of your conclusions: I request it as a friendly service. If you can tell me that my life is not threatened by anything else than ordinary casualties, I shall rejoice, on grounds which I have already indicated. If not, knowledge of the truth is even more important to me.


Then I can no longer hesitate as to my course, but the first thing I must impress on you is that my conclusions are doubly uncertain—uncertain not only because of my fallibility, but because diseases of the heart are eminently difficult to found predictions on. In any case, one can hardly increase appreciably the tremendous uncertainty of life. I believe that you are suffering from what is called fatty degeneration of the heart, a disease which was first divined and explored by Laennec, the man who gave us the stethoscope, not so very many years ago. A good deal of experience—a more lengthened observation—is wanting on the subject. But after what you have said, it is my duty to tell you that death from this disease is often sudden. At the same time, no such result can be predicted. Your condition may be consistent with a tolerably comfortable life for another fifteen years, or even more. I could add no information to this beyond anatomical or medical details, which would leave expectation at precisely the same point.


I thank you, Mr. Lydgate. One thing more I have still to ask: did you communicate what you have now told me to Mrs. Casaubon?


Partly—I mean, as to the possible issues.


I thank you,


I wish to be alone


What have I done—what am I—that he should treat me so? He never knows what is in my mind—he never cares. What is the use of anything I do? He wishes he had never married me. Is he worth living for? It is his fault, not mine.


I shall not dine, then, Tantripp.


Oh, madam, let me bring you a little something?


No; I am not well. Get everything ready in my dressing room, but pray do not disturb me again.


Dorothea! Were you waiting for me?


Yes, I did not like to disturb you.


Come, my dear, come. You are young, and need not to extend your life by watching.


This figure hath high price: ’t was wrought with love Ages ago in finest ivory; Nought modish in it, pure and noble lines Of generous womanhood that fits all time That too is costly ware; majolica Of deft design, to please a lordly eye: The smile, you see, is perfect—wonderful As mere Faience! a table ornament To suit the richest mounting.


Is Mrs. Lydgate at home? I will go in and speak to her, if she will allow me. Will you ask her if she can see me—see Mrs. Casaubon, for a few minutes?


Thank you very much for allowing me to interrupt you. I am anxious to see Mr. Lydgate, if possible, before I go home, and I hoped that you might possibly tell me where I could find him, or even allow me to wait for him, if you expect him soon.


He is at the New Hospital. I am not sure how soon he will come home. But I can send for him.


Will you let me go and fetch him?


I did not know it was you: I had no thought of seeing you here.


May I go to the Hospital and tell Mr. Lydgate that you wish to see him?


It would be quicker to send the carriage for him, if you will be kind enough to give the message to the coachman. I will go myself, thank you. I wish to lose no time before getting home again. I will drive to the Hospital and see Mr. Lydgate there. Pray excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate. I am very much obliged to you.


Perhaps I have been mistaken in many things,


It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted. May I come another day and just finish about the rendering of ‘Lungi dal caro bene’?


I shall be happy to be taught. But I am sure you admit that the interruption was a very beautiful one. I quite envy your acquaintance with Mrs. Casaubon. Is she very clever? She looks as if she were.


Really, I never thought about it,


That is just the answer Tertius gave me, when I first asked him if she were handsome. What is it that you gentlemen are thinking of when you are with Mrs. Casaubon?


Herself. When one sees a perfect woman, one never thinks of her attributes—one is conscious of her presence.


I shall be jealous when Tertius goes to Lowick. He will come back and think nothing of me.


That does not seem to have been the effect on Lydgate hitherto. Mrs. Casaubon is too unlike other women for them to be compared with her.


You are a devout worshipper, I perceive. You often see her, I suppose.