No. Worship is usually a matter of theory rather than of practice. But I am practising it to excess just at this moment—I must really tear myself away.


Pray come again some evening: Mr. Lydgate will like to hear the music, and I cannot enjoy it so well without him. Mr. Ladislaw was here singing with me when Mrs. Casaubon came in. He seemed vexed. Do you think he disliked her seeing him at our house? Surely your position is more than equal to his—whatever may be his relation to the Casaubons.


No, no; it must be something else if he were really vexed. Ladislaw is a sort of gypsy; he thinks nothing of leather and prunella.


Music apart, he is not always very agreeable. Do you like him?


Yes: I think he is a good fellow: rather miscellaneous and bric-a-brac, but likable.


Do you know, I think he adores Mrs. Casaubon.


Poor devil!


Why so?


Why, what can a man do when he takes to adoring one of you mermaids? He only neglects his work and runs up bills.


I am sure you do not neglect your work. You are always at the Hospital, or seeing poor patients, or thinking about some doctor’s quarrel; and then at home you always want to pore over your microscope and phials. Confess you like those things better than me.


Haven’t you ambition enough to wish that your husband should be something better than a Middlemarch doctor? I shall make you learn my favorite bit from an old poet— ‘Why should our pride make such a stir to be And be forgot? What good is like to this, To do worthy the writing, and to write Worthy the reading and the worlds delight?’ What I want, Rosy, is to do worthy the writing,—and to write out myself what I have done. A man must work, to do that, my pet.


Of course, I wish you to make discoveries: no one could more wish you to attain a high position in some better place than Middlemarch. You cannot say that I have ever tried to hinder you from working. But we cannot live like hermits. You are not discontented with me, Tertius?


No, dear, no. I am too entirely contented.


But what did Mrs. Casaubon want to say to you?


Merely to ask about her husband’s health. But I think she is going to be splendid to our New Hospital: I think she will give us two hundred a-year.


I don’t know whether your or Mr. Casaubon’s attention has been drawn to the needs of our New Hospital. Circumstances have made it seem rather egotistic in me to urge the subject; but that is not my fault: it is because there is a fight being made against it by the other medical men. I think you are generally interested in such things, for I remember that when I first had the pleasure of seeing you at Tipton Grange before your marriage, you were asking me some questions about the way in which the health of the poor was affected by their miserable housing.


Yes, indeed. I shall be quite grateful to you if you will tell me how I can help to make things a little better. Everything of that sort has slipped away from me since I have been married. I mean, that the people in our village are tolerably comfortable, and my mind has been too much taken up for me to inquire further. But here—in such a place as Middlemarch—there must be a great deal to be done.


There is everything to be done. And this Hospital is a capital piece of work, due entirely to Mr. Bulstrode’s exertions, and in a great degree to his money. But one man can’t do everything in a scheme of this sort. Of course he looked forward to help. And now there’s a mean, petty feud set up against the thing in the town, by certain persons who want to make it a failure.


What can be their reasons?


Chiefly Mr. Bulstrode’s unpopularity, to begin with. Half the town would almost take trouble for the sake of thwarting him. In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set. I had no connection with Bulstrode before I came here. I look at him quite impartially, and I see that he has some notions—that he has set things on foot—which I can turn to good public purpose. If a fair number of the better educated men went to work with the belief that their observations might contribute to the reform of medical doctrine and practice, we should soon see a change for the better. That’s my point of view. I hold that by refusing to work with Mr. Bulstrode I should be turning my back on an opportunity of making my profession more generally serviceable.


I quite agree with you. But what is there against Mr. Bulstrode? I know that my uncle is friendly with him.


People don’t like his religious tone,


That is all the stronger reason for despising such an opposition,


To put the matter quite fairly, they have other objections to him:—he is masterful and rather unsociable, and he is concerned with trade, which has complaints of its own that I know nothing about. But what has that to do with the question whether it would not be a fine thing to establish here a more valuable hospital than any they have in the county? The immediate motive to the opposition, however, is the fact that Bulstrode has put the medical direction into my hands. Of course I am glad of that. It gives me an opportunity of doing some good work,—and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me. But the consequence is, that the whole profession in Middlemarch have set themselves tooth and nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse to cooperate themselves, but try to blacken the whole affair and hinder subscriptions.


How very petty!


I suppose one must expect to fight one’s way: there is hardly anything to be done without it. And the ignorance of people about here is stupendous. I don’t lay claim to anything else than having used some opportunities which have not come within everybody’s reach; but there is no stifling the offence of being young, and a new-comer, and happening to know something more than the old inhabitants. Still, if I believe that I can set going a better method of treatment—if I believe that I can pursue certain observations and inquiries which may be a lasting benefit to medical practice, I should be a base truckler if I allowed any consideration of personal comfort to hinder me. And the course is all the clearer from there being no salary in question to put my persistence in an equivocal light.


I am glad you have told me this, Mr. Lydgate. I feel sure I can help a little. I have some money, and don’t know what to do with it—that is often an uncomfortable thought to me. I am sure I can spare two hundred a-year for a grand purpose like this. How happy you must be, to know things that you feel sure will do great good! I wish I could awake with that knowledge every morning. There seems to be so much trouble taken that one can hardly see the good of! Pray come to Lowick and tell us more of this. I will mention the subject to Mr. Casaubon. I must hasten home now.


She knows that I know,


It is in that way that hard-working medical men may come to be almost as mischievous as quacks. To get their own bread they must overdose the king’s lieges; and that’s a bad sort of treason, Mr. Mawmsey—undermines the constitution in a fatal way.


Does this Mr. Lydgate mean to say there is no use in taking medicine? I should like him to tell me how I could bear up at Fair time, if I didn’t take strengthening medicine for a month beforehand. Think of what I have to provide for calling customers, my dear! a large veal pie—a stuffed fillet—a round of beef—ham, tongue, et cetera, et cetera! But what keeps me up best is the pink mixture, not the brown. I wonder, Mr. Mawmsey, with your experience, you could have patience to listen. I should have told him at once that I knew a little better than that.


No, no, no. I was not going to tell him my opinion. Hear everything and judge for yourself is my motto. But he didn’t know who he was talking to. I was not to be turned on his finger. People often pretend to tell me things, when they might as well say, ‘Mawmsey, you’re a fool.’ But I smile at it: I humor everybody’s weak place. If physic had done harm to self and family, I should have found it out by this time.


Indeed! How will he cure his patients, then?


That is what I say. Does he suppose that people will pay him only to come and sit with them and go away again?


Well, Lydgate is a good-looking young fellow, you know.


Not one that I would employ. Others may do as they please.


Dibbitts will get rid of his stale drugs, then. I’m fond of little Dibbitts—I’m glad he’s in luck.


I see your meaning, Toller, and I am entirely of your opinion. I shall take an opportunity of expressing myself to that effect. A medical man should be responsible for the quality of the drugs consumed by his patients. That is the rationale of the system of charging which has hitherto obtained; and nothing is more offensive than this ostentation of reform, where there is no real amelioration.


Ostentation, Hackbutt? I don’t see that. A man can’t very well be ostentatious of what nobody believes in. There’s no reform in the matter: the question is, whether the profit on the drugs is paid to the medical man by the druggist or by the patient, and whether there shall be extra pay under the name of attendance.


Ah, to be sure; one of your damned new versions of old humbug,


As to humbug, Hawley, that’s a word easy to fling about. But what I contend against is the way medical men are fouling their own nest, and setting up a cry about the country as if a general practitioner who dispenses drugs couldn’t be a gentleman. I throw back the imputation with scorn. I say, the most ungentlemanly trick a man can be guilty of is to come among the members of his profession with innovations which are a libel on their time-honored procedure. That is my opinion, and I am ready to maintain it against any one who contradicts me.


I can’t oblige you there, Wrench,


My dear fellow, the physicians have their toes trodden on more than we have. If you come to dignity it is a question for Minchin and Sprague.


Does medical jurisprudence provide nothing against these infringements? How does the law stand, eh, Hawley?


Nothing to be done there. I looked into it for Sprague. You’d only break your nose against a damned judge’s decision.


Pooh! no need of law. So far as practice is concerned the attempt is an absurdity. No patient will like it—certainly not Peacock’s, who have been used to depletion. Pass the wine.


It’s not tumor: it’s cramp.


Indeed! ah! I saw it was a surgical case, not of a fatal kind.


Never fear, sir; you are not speaking to one who is altogether ignorant of the vis medicatrix,


Very well, we have a capital house-surgeon and dispenser, a clear-headed, neat-handed fellow; we’ll get Webbe from Crabsley, as good a country practitioner as any of them, to come over twice a-week, and in case of any exceptional operation, Protheroe will come from Brassing. I must work the harder, that’s all, and I have given up my post at the Infirmary. The plan will flourish in spite of them, and then they’ll be glad to come in. Things can’t last as they are: there must be all sorts of reform soon, and then young fellows may be glad to come and study here.


I shall not flinch, you may depend upon it, Mr. Lydgate. While I see you carrying out high intentions with vigor, you shall have my unfailing support. And I have humble confidence that the blessing which has hitherto attended my efforts against the spirit of evil in this town will not be withdrawn. Suitable directors to assist me I have no doubt of securing. Mr. Brooke of Tipton has already given me his concurrence, and a pledge to contribute yearly: he has not specified the sum—probably not a great one. But he will be a useful member of the board.


Bulstrode had found a man to suit him in Lydgate; a charlatan in religion is sure to like other sorts of charlatans.


Yes, indeed, I can imagine, there are so many of that sort. I remember Mr. Cheshire, with his irons, trying to make people straight when the Almighty had made them crooked.


No, no. Cheshire was all right—all fair and above board. But there’s St. John Long—that’s the kind of fellow we call a charlatan, advertising cures in ways nobody knows anything about: a fellow who wants to make a noise by pretending to go deeper than other people. The other day he was pretending to tap a man’s brain and get quicksilver out of it.


Good gracious! what dreadful trifling with people’s constitutions!


They will not drive me away. I have got a good opportunity here, for the ends I care most about; and I am pretty sure to get income enough for our wants. By-and-by I shall go on as quietly as possible: I have no seductions now away from home and work. And I am more and more convinced that it will be possible to demonstrate the homogeneous origin of all the tissues. Raspail and others are on the same track, and I have been losing time.


I have no power of prophecy there, but as to the hostility in the town, you’ll weather it if you are prudent.


How am I to be prudent? I just do what comes before me to do. I can’t help people’s ignorance and spite, any more than Vesalius could. It isn’t possible to square one’s conduct to silly conclusions which nobody can foresee.


Quite true; I didn’t mean that. I meant only two things. One is, keep yourself as separable from Bulstrode as you can: of course, you can go on doing good work of your own by his help; but don’t get tied. Perhaps it seems like personal feeling in me to say so—and there’s a good deal of that, I own—but personal feeling is not always in the wrong if you boil it down to the impressions which make it simply an opinion.


Bulstrode is nothing to me, except on public grounds. As to getting very closely united to him, I am not fond enough of him for that. But what was the other thing you meant?


Why, this. Take care—experto crede—take care not to get hampered about money matters. I know, by a word you let fall one day, that you don’t like my playing at cards so much for money. You are right enough there. But try and keep clear of wanting small sums that you haven’t got. I am perhaps talking rather superfluously; but a man likes to assume superiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and sermonizing on it.


Is that enough music for you, my lord?


Yes, dear, if you are tired,


What is absorbing you?


I am thinking of a great fellow, who was about as old as I am three hundred years ago, and had already begun a new era in anatomy.


I can’t guess. We used to play at guessing historical characters at Mrs. Lemon’s, but not anatomists.


I’ll tell you. His name was Vesalius. And the only way he could get to know anatomy as he did, was by going to snatch bodies at night, from graveyards and places of execution.


Oh! I am very glad you are not Vesalius. I should have thought he might find some less horrible way than that.


No, he couldn’t. He could only get a complete skeleton by snatching the whitened bones of a criminal from the gallows, and burying them, and fetching them away by bits secretly, in the dead of night.


I hope he is not one of your great heroes, else I shall have you getting up in the night to go to St. Peter’s churchyard. You know how angry you told me the people were about Mrs. Goby. You have enemies enough already.


So had Vesalius, Rosy. No wonder the medical fogies in Middlemarch are jealous, when some of the greatest doctors living were fierce upon Vesalius because they had believed in Galen, and he showed that Galen was wrong. They called him a liar and a poisonous monster. But the facts of the human frame were on his side; and so he got the better of them.


And what happened to him afterwards?


Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last. And they did exasperate him enough at one time to make him burn a good deal of his work. Then he got shipwrecked just as he was coming from Jerusalem to take a great chair at Padua. He died rather miserably.


Do you know, Tertius, I often wish you had not been a medical man.


Nay, Rosy, don’t say that. That is like saying you wish you had married another man.


Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you might easily have been something else. And your cousins at Quallingham all think that you have sunk below them in your choice of a profession.


The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil! It was like their impudence if they said anything of the sort to you.


Still. I do not think it is a nice profession, dear.


It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond. And to say that you love me without loving the medical man in me, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach but don’t like its flavor. Don’t say that again, dear, it pains me.


Very well, Doctor Grave-face. I will declare in future that I dote on skeletons, and body-snatchers, and bits of things in phials, and quarrels with everybody, that end in your dying miserably.


No, no, not so bad as that, giving up remonstrance and petting her resignedly.


Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year. The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question of Reform has set in. There is likely to be another election before long, and by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its head. What we have to work at now is the ‘Pioneer’ and political meetings.


Quite right, Ladislaw; we shall make a new thing of opinion here. Only I want to keep myself independent about Reform, you know; I don’t want to go too far. I want to take up Wilberforce’s and Romilly’s line, you know, and work at Negro Emancipation, Criminal Law—that kind of thing. But of course I should support Grey.


If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared to take what the situation offers. If everybody pulled for his own bit against everybody else, the whole question would go to tatters.


Yes, yes, I agree with you—I quite take that point of view. I should put it in that light. I should support Grey, you know. But I don’t want to change the balance of the constitution, and I don’t think Grey would.


But that is what the country wants. Else there would be no meaning in political unions or any other movement that knows what it’s about. It wants to have a House of Commons which is not weighted with nominees of the landed class, but with representatives of the other interests. And as to contending for a reform short of that, it is like asking for a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to thunder.


That is fine, Ladislaw: that is the way to put it. Write that down, now. We must begin to get documents about the feeling of the country, as well as the machine-breaking and general distress.


As to documents, a two-inch card will hold plenty. A few rows of figures are enough to deduce misery from, and a few more will show the rate at which the political determination of the people is growing.


Good: draw that out a little more at length, Ladislaw. That is an idea, now: write it out in the ‘Pioneer.’ Put the figures and deduce the misery, you know; and put the other figures and deduce—and so on. You have a way of putting things. Burke, now:—when I think of Burke, I can’t help wishing somebody had a pocket-borough to give you, Ladislaw. You’d never get elected, you know. And we shall always want talent in the House: reform as we will, we shall always want talent. That avalanche and the thunder, now, was really a little like Burke. I want that sort of thing—not ideas, you know, but a way of putting them.


Pocket-boroughs would be a fine thing, if they were always in the right pocket, and there were always a Burke at hand.


Shift the pegs a little, and Mr. Brooke might be in the Cabinet, while I was Under-Secretary. That is the common order of things: the little waves make the large ones and are of the same pattern. I am better here than in the sort of life Mr. Casaubon would have trained me for, where the doing would be all laid down by a precedent too rigid for me to react upon. I don’t care for prestige or high pay. I never had any caste,


Brooke has taken him up, because that is what no man in his senses could have expected. Casaubon has devilish good reasons, you may be sure, for turning the cold shoulder on a young fellow whose bringing-up he paid for. Just like Brooke—one of those fellows who would praise a cat to sell a horse.


which had existed when he was in his cradle.


the violence of an energumen—a miserable effort to shroud in the brilliancy of fireworks the daring of irresponsible statements and the poverty of a knowledge which was of the cheapest and most recent description.


That was a rattling article yesterday, Keck. But what is an energumen?


Oh, a term that came up in the French Revolution,


It’s no use your puffing Brooke as a reforming landlord, Ladislaw: they only pick the more holes in his coat in the ‘Trumpet.’


No matter; those who read the ‘Pioneer’ don’t read the ‘Trumpet,’ Do you suppose the public reads with a view to its own conversion? We should have a witches’ brewing with a vengeance then—‘Mingle, mingle, mingle, mingle, You that mingle may’—and nobody would know which side he was going to take.


Farebrother says, he doesn’t believe Brooke would get elected if the opportunity came: the very men who profess to be for him would bring another member out of the bag at the right moment.


There’s no harm in trying. It’s good to have resident members.


Why?


They represent the local stupidity better, and they are kept on their best behavior in the neighborhood. Brooke is not a bad fellow, but he has done some good things on his estate that he never would have done but for this Parliamentary bite.


He’s not fitted to be a public man. He would disappoint everybody who counted on him: I can see that at the Hospital. Only, there Bulstrode holds the reins and drives him.


That depends on how you fix your standard of public men. He’s good enough for the occasion: when the people have made up their mind as they are making it up now, they don’t want a man—they only want a vote.


That is the way with you political writers, Ladislaw—crying up a measure as if it were a universal cure, and crying up men who are a part of the very disease that wants curing.


Why not? Men may help to cure themselves off the face of the land without knowing it,


That is no excuse for encouraging the superstitious exaggeration of hopes about this particular measure, helping the cry to swallow it whole and to send up voting popinjays who are good for nothing but to carry it. You go against rottenness, and there is nothing more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured by a political hocus-pocus.


That’s very fine, my dear fellow. But your cure must begin somewhere, and put it that a thousand things which debase a population can never be reformed without this particular reform to begin with. Look what Stanley said the other day—that the House had been tinkering long enough at small questions of bribery, inquiring whether this or that voter has had a guinea when everybody knows that the seats have been sold wholesale. Wait for wisdom and conscience in public agents—fiddlestick! The only conscience we can trust to is the massive sense of wrong in a class, and the best wisdom that will work is the wisdom of balancing claims. That’s my text—which side is injured? I support the man who supports their claims; not the virtuous upholder of the wrong.


That general talk about a particular case is mere question begging, Ladislaw. When I say, I go in for the dose that cures, it doesn’t follow that I go in for opium in a given case of gout.


I am not begging the question we are upon—whether we are to try for nothing till we find immaculate men to work with. Should you go on that plan? If there were one man who would carry you a medical reform and another who would oppose it, should you inquire which had the better motives or even the better brains?


Oh, of course, if one did not work with such men as are at hand, things must come to a dead-lock. Suppose the worst opinion in the town about Bulstrode were a true one, that would not make it less true that he has the sense and the resolution to do what I think ought to be done in the matters I know and care most about; but that is the only ground on which I go with him. He is nothing to me otherwise; I would not cry him up on any personal ground—I would keep clear of that.


Do you mean that I cry up Brooke on any personal ground?


Not at all. I was simply explaining my own action. I meant that a man may work for a special end with others whose motives and general course are equivocal, if he is quite sure of his personal independence, and that he is not working for his private interest—either place or money.


Then, why don’t you extend your liberality to others? My personal independence is as important to me as yours is to you. You have no more reason to imagine that I have personal expectations from Brooke, than I have to imagine that you have personal expectations from Bulstrode. Motives are points of honor, I suppose—nobody can prove them. But as to money and place in the world. I think it is pretty clear that I am not determined by considerations of that sort.


You quite mistake me, Ladislaw. I beg your pardon for unintentionally annoying you. In fact, I should rather attribute to you a romantic disregard of your own worldly interests. On the political question, I referred simply to intellectual bias.


How very unpleasant you both are this evening! I cannot conceive why money should have been referred to. Politics and Medicine are sufficiently disagreeable to quarrel upon. You can both of you go on quarrelling with all the world and with each other on those two topics.


Poor Rosy! Disputation is not amusing to cherubs. Have some music. Ask Ladislaw to sing with you.


What put you out of temper this evening, Tertius?


Me? It was Ladislaw who was out of temper. He is like a bit of tinder.


But I mean, before that. Something had vexed you before you came in, you looked cross. And that made you begin to dispute with Mr. Ladislaw. You hurt me very much when you look so, Tertius.


Do I? Then I am a brute,


What vexed you?


Oh, outdoor things—business.


Was never true love loved in vain. For truest love is highest gain. No art can make it: it must spring Where elements are fostering. So in heaven’s spot and hour Springs the little native flower. Downward root and upward eye. Shapen by the earth and sky.


Dorothea, he said to himself, was forever enthroned in his soul: no other woman could sit higher than her footstool; and if he could have written out in immortal syllables the effect she wrought within him, he might have boasted after the example of old Drayton, that,—


Queens hereafter might be glad to live Upon the alms of her superfluous praise.


I am a fool.


That will be a virtual defiance of Mr. Casaubon’s prohibition to visit Lowick, and Dorothea will be displeased.


Nonsense! it would be too monstrous for him to hinder me from going out to a pretty country church on a spring morning. And Dorothea will be glad.


It will be clear to Mr. Casaubon that you have come either to annoy him or to see Dorothea.


It is not true that I go to annoy him, and why should I not go to see Dorothea? Is he to have everything to himself and be always comfortable? Let him smart a little, as other people are obliged to do. I have always liked the quaintness of the church and congregation; besides, I know the Tuckers: I shall go into their pew.


You will oblige me, my dear, if instead of other reading this evening, you will go through this aloud, pencil in hand, and at each point where I say ‘mark,’ will make a cross with your pencil. This is the first step in a sifting process which I have long had in view, and as we go on I shall be able to indicate to you certain principles of selection whereby you will, I trust, have an intelligent participation in my purpose. We will take the volume up-stairs—and the pencil, if you please—and in case of reading in the night, we can pursue this task. It is not wearisome to you, I trust, Dorothea?


I prefer always reading what you like best to hear,


Are you ill, Edward?


I felt some uneasiness in a reclining posture. I will sit here for a time.


You would like me to read to you?


You would oblige me greatly by doing so, Dorothea. I am wakeful: my mind is remarkably lucid.


I fear that the excitement may be too great for you,


No, I am not conscious of undue excitement. Thought is easy. That will do—mark that Pass on to the next head—I omit the second excursus on Crete. Close the book now, my dear. We will resume our work to-morrow. I have deferred it too long, and would gladly see it completed. But you observe that the principle on which my selection is made, is to give adequate, and not disproportionate illustration to each of the theses enumerated in my introduction, as at present sketched. You have perceived that distinctly, Dorothea?


Yes,


And now I think that I can take some repose. Before I sleep, I have a request to make, Dorothea.


What is it?


It is that you will let me know, deliberately, whether, in case of my death, you will carry out my wishes: whether you will avoid doing what I should deprecate, and apply yourself to do what I should desire. You refuse?


No, I do not yet refuse, but it is too solemn—I think it is not right—to make a promise when I am ignorant what it will bind me to. Whatever affection prompted I would do without promising.


But you would use your own judgment: I ask you to obey mine; you refuse.


No, dear, no! But may I wait and reflect a little while? I desire with my whole soul to do what will comfort you; but I cannot give any pledge suddenly—still less a pledge to do I know not what.


You cannot then confide in the nature of my wishes?


Grant me till to-morrow,


Till to-morrow then,


I refuse to content this pining hunger?


No! if you die, I will put no finger to your work


I never saw you look so pale, madam,


Was I ever high-colored, Tantripp?


Well, not to say high-colored, but with a bloom like a Chiny rose. But always smelling those leather books, what can be expected? Do rest a little this morning, madam. Let me say you are ill and not able to go into that close library.


Oh no, no! let me make haste. Mr. Casaubon wants me particularly.


I was waiting for your appearance, my dear. I had hoped to set to work at once this morning, but I find myself under some indisposition, probably from too much excitement yesterday. I am going now to take a turn in the shrubbery, since the air is milder.


I am glad to hear that. Your mind, I feared, was too active last night.


I would fain have it set at rest on the point I last spoke of, Dorothea. You can now, I hope, give me an answer.


May I come out to you in the garden presently?


I shall be in the Yew-tree Walk for the next half-hour,


God bless you, madam! I wish every book in that library was built into a caticom for your master,


He exhausted himself last night. I am come, Edward; I am ready. I am ready! Wake, dear, wake! Listen to me. I am come to answer. Tell him I shall go to him soon: I am ready to promise. Only, thinking about it was so dreadful—it has made me ill. Not very ill. I shall soon be better. Go and tell him.


I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this,


That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix, and she likes to go into these things—property, land, that kind of thing. She has her notions, you know, and she would like to act—depend upon it, as an executrix Dorothea would want to act. And she was twenty-one last December, you know. I can hinder nothing.


I will tell you what we can do. Until Dorothea is well, all business must be kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to us. Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing in the world for her, and will pass away the time. And meanwhile you must get rid of Ladislaw: you must send him out of the country.


That is easily said, Chettam, easily said, you know.


My dear sir, it was you who brought him here, and you who keep him here—I mean by the occupation you give him.


Yes, but I can’t dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons, my dear Chettam. Ladislaw has been invaluable, most satisfactory. I consider that I have done this part of the country a service by bringing him—by bringing him, you know.


It’s a pity this part of the country didn’t do without him, that’s all I have to say about it. At any rate, as Dorothea’s brother-in-law, I feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being kept here by any action on the part of her friends. You admit, I hope, that I have a right to speak about what concerns the dignity of my wife’s sister?


Of course, my dear Chettam, of course. But you and I have different ideas—different—


Not about this action of Casaubon’s, I should hope. I say that he has most unfairly compromised Dorothea. I say that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action than this—a codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time of his marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family—a positive insult to Dorothea!


Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw. Ladislaw has told me the reason—dislike of the bent he took, you know—Ladislaw didn’t think much of Casaubon’s notions, Thoth and Dagon—that sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn’t like the independent position Ladislaw had taken up. I saw the letters between them, you know. Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books—he didn’t know the world.


It’s all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it. But I believe Casaubon was only jealous of him on Dorothea’s account, and the world will suppose that she gave him some reason; and that is what makes it so abominable—coupling her name with this young fellow’s.


My dear Chettam, it won’t lead to anything, you know. It’s all of a piece with Casaubon’s oddity. This paper, now, ‘Synoptical Tabulation’ and so on, ‘for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,’ it was locked up in the desk with the will. I suppose he meant Dorothea to publish his researches, eh? and she’ll do it, you know; she has gone into his studies uncommonly.


My dear sir, that is neither here nor there. The question is, whether you don’t see with me the propriety of sending young Ladislaw away?


Well, no, not the urgency of the thing. By-and-by, perhaps, it may come round. As to gossip, you know, sending him away won’t hinder gossip. People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter and verse for. I might get rid of Ladislaw up to a certain point—take away the ‘Pioneer’ from him, and that sort of thing; but I couldn’t send him out of the country if he didn’t choose to go—didn’t choose, you know.


Good God! let us get him a post; let us spend money on him. If he could go in the suite of some Colonial Governor! Grampus might take him—and I could write to Fulke about it.


But Ladislaw won’t be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear fellow; Ladislaw has his ideas. It’s my opinion that if he were to part from me to-morrow, you’d only hear the more of him in the country. With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are few men who could come up to him as an agitator—an agitator, you know.


Agitator!


But be reasonable, Chettam. Dorothea, now. As you say, she had better go to Celia as soon as possible. She can stay under your roof, and in the mean time things may come round quietly. Don’t let us be firing off our guns in a hurry, you know. Standish will keep our counsel, and the news will be old before it’s known. Twenty things may happen to carry off Ladislaw—without my doing anything, you know.


Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?


Decline, Chettam?—no—I didn’t say decline. But I really don’t see what I could do. Ladislaw is a gentleman.


I am glad to hear it! I am sure Casaubon was not.


Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder her from marrying again at all, you know.


I don’t know that. It would have been less indelicate.


One of poor Casaubon’s freaks! That attack upset his brain a little. It all goes for nothing. She doesn’t want to marry Ladislaw.


But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did. I don’t believe anything of the sort about Dorothea, but I suspect Ladislaw. I tell you frankly, I suspect Ladislaw.


I couldn’t take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam. In fact, if it were possible to pack him off—send him to Norfolk Island—that sort of thing—it would look all the worse for Dorothea to those who knew about it. It would seem as if we distrusted her—distrusted her, you know.


Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once, because her friends were too careless. I shall do what I can, as her brother, to protect her now.


You can’t do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible, Chettam. I approve that plan altogether,


This Loller here wol precilen us somewhat.


Nay by my father’s soule! that schal he nat, here schal he not preche, We schal no gospel glosen here ne teche. We leven all in the gret God. He wolden sowen some diffcultee.


Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have the living at Lowick. After Mr. Tucker had been provided for, I never heard my husband say that he had any clergyman in his mind as a successor to himself. I think I ought to have the keys now and go to Lowick to examine all my husband’s papers. There may be something that would throw light on his wishes.


No hurry, my dear. By-and-by, you know, you can go, if you like. But I cast my eyes over things in the desks and drawers—there was nothing—nothing but deep subjects, you know—besides the will. Everything can be done by-and-by. As to the living, I have had an application for interest already—I should say rather good. Mr. Tyke has been strongly recommended to me—I had something to do with getting him an appointment before. An apostolic man, I believe—the sort of thing that would suit you, my dear.


I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge for myself, if Mr. Casaubon has not left any expression of his wishes. He has perhaps made some addition to his will—there may be some instructions for me,


Nothing about the rectory, my dear—nothing, nor about his researches, you know. Nothing in the will.


Look, Dodo! look at him! Did you ever see anything like that?


What, Kitty?


What? why, his upper lip; see how he is drawing it down, as if he meant to make a face. Isn’t it wonderful! He may have his little thoughts. I wish nurse were here. Do look at him.


I wonder if Sir James would drive me to Lowick. I want to look over everything—to see if there were any words written for me.


You are not to go till Mr. Lydgate says you may go. And he has not said so yet (here you are, nurse; take baby and walk up and down the gallery). Besides, you have got a wrong notion in your head as usual, Dodo—I can see that: it vexes me.


Where am I wrong, Kitty?


I can see what you are thinking of as well as can be, Dodo. You are wanting to find out if there is anything uncomfortable for you to do now, only because Mr. Casaubon wished it. As if you had not been uncomfortable enough before. And he doesn’t deserve it, and you will find that out. He has behaved very badly. James is as angry with him as can be. And I had better tell you, to prepare you.


Celia, you distress me. Tell me at once what you mean.


Why, he has made a codicil to his will, to say the property was all to go away from you if you married—I mean—


That is of no consequence,


But if you married Mr. Ladislaw, not anybody else. Of course that is of no consequence in one way—you never would marry Mr. Ladislaw; but that only makes it worse of Mr. Casaubon. James says so. He says it is abominable, and not like a gentleman. And there never was a better judge than James. It is as if Mr. Casaubon wanted to make people believe that you would wish to marry Mr. Ladislaw—which is ridiculous. Only James says it was to hinder Mr. Ladislaw from wanting to marry you for your money—just as if he ever would think of making you an offer. Mrs. Cadwallader said you might as well marry an Italian with white mice! But I must just go and look at baby,


What I think, Dodo, is that Mr. Casaubon was spiteful. I never did like him, and James never did. I think the corners of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful. And now he has behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not require you to make yourself uncomfortable about him. If he has been taken away, that is a mercy, and you ought to be grateful. We should not grieve, should we, baby?


I fear you are not so well as you were, Mrs. Casaubon; have you been agitated? allow me to feel your pulse.


She wants to go to Lowick, to look over papers. She ought not, ought she?


I hardly know. In my opinion Mrs. Casaubon should do what would give her the most repose of mind. That repose will not always come from being forbidden to act.


Thank you. I am sure that is wise. There are so many things which I ought to attend to. Why should I sit here idle? You know every one in Middlemarch, I think, Mr. Lydgate. I shall ask you to tell me a great deal. I have serious things to do now. I have a living to give away. You know Mr. Tyke and all the—


Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes. She wants perfect freedom, I think, more than any other prescription.


I have no wish to stay there at present. I could hardly bear it. I am much happier at Freshitt with Celia. I shall be able to think better about what should be done at Lowick by looking at it from a distance. And I should like to be at the Grange a little while with my uncle, and go about in all the old walks and among the people in the village.


Not yet, I think. Your uncle is having political company, and you are better out of the way of such doings,


Instead of telling you anything about Mr. Tyke. I should like to speak of another man—Mr. Farebrother, the Vicar of St. Botolph’s. His living is a poor one, and gives him a stinted provision for himself and his family. His mother, aunt, and sister all live with him, and depend upon him. I believe he has never married because of them. I never heard such good preaching as his—such plain, easy eloquence. He would have done to preach at St. Paul’s Cross after old Latimer. His talk is just as good about all subjects: original, simple, clear. I think him a remarkable fellow: he ought to have done more than he has done. Why has he not done more?


That’s a hard question. I find myself that it’s uncommonly difficult to make the right thing work: there are so many strings pulling at once. Farebrother often hints that he has got into the wrong profession; he wants a wider range than that of a poor clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him on. He is very fond of Natural History and various scientific matters, and he is hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position. He has no money to spare—hardly enough to use; and that has led him into card-playing—Middlemarch is a great place for whist. He does play for money, and he wins a good deal. Of course that takes him into company a little beneath him, and makes him slack about some things; and yet, with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of the most blameless men I ever knew. He has neither venom nor doubleness in him, and those often go with a more correct outside.


I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit. I wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off.


I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted into plenty: he would be glad of the time for other things.


My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man,


I don’t pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic. His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better. Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an impatience of everything in which the parson doesn’t cut the principal figure. I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people uncomfortably aware of him. Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!—he ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the birds.


True. It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our farmers and laborers get from their teaching. I have been looking into a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would be of no use at Lowick—I mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the Apocalypse. I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest—I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it. It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much. But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear him preach.


Do. I trust to the effect of that. He is very much beloved, but he has his enemies too: there are always people who can’t forgive an able man for differing from them. And that money-winning business is really a blot. You don’t, of course, see many Middlemarch people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a great friend of Mr. Farebrother’s old ladies, and would be glad to sing the Vicar’s praises. One of the old ladies—Miss Noble, the aunt—is a wonderfully quaint picture of self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw gallants her about sometimes. I met them one day in a back street: you know Ladislaw’s look—a sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat; and this little old maid reaching up to his arm—they looked like a couple dropped out of a romantic comedy. But the best evidence about Farebrother is to see him and hear him.


Why should you bring me into the matter? I never see Mrs. Casaubon, and am not likely to see her, since she is at Freshitt. I never go there. It is Tory ground, where I and the ‘Pioneer’ are no more welcome than a poacher and his gun.


We are forever divided. I might as well be at Rome; she would be no farther from me.


You know there are tactics in these things, meeting people half-way—tempering your ideas—saying, ‘Well now, there’s something in that,’ and so on. I agree with you that this is a peculiar occasion—the country with a will of its own—political unions—that sort of thing—but we sometimes cut with rather too sharp a knife, Ladislaw. These ten-pound householders, now: why ten? Draw the line somewhere—yes: but why just at ten? That’s a difficult question, now, if you go into it.


Of course it is. But if you are to wait till we get a logical Bill, you must put yourself forward as a revolutionist, and then Middlemarch would not elect you, I fancy. As for trimming, this is not a time for trimming.


As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light. Will it support Mrs. Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children when I am no more? I put the question fictiously, knowing what must be the answer. Very well, sir. I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am to do when gentlemen come to me and say, ‘Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote against us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere: when I sugar my liquor I like to feel that I am benefiting the country by maintaining tradesmen of the right color.’ Those very words have been spoken to me, sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting. I don’t mean by your honorable self, Mr. Brooke.


No, no, no—that’s narrow, you know. Until my butler complains to me of your goods, Mr. Mawmsey, until I hear that you send bad sugars, spices—that sort of thing—I shall never order him to go elsewhere.


Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged. There would be some pleasure in voting for a gentleman who speaks in that honorable manner.


Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the right thing to put yourself on our side. This Reform will touch everybody by-and-by—a thoroughly popular measure—a sort of A, B, C, you know, that must come first before the rest can follow. I quite agree with you that you’ve got to look at the thing in a family light: but public spirit, now. We’re all one family, you know—it’s all one cupboard. Such a thing as a vote, now: why, it may help to make men’s fortunes at the Cape—there’s no knowing what may be the effect of a vote,


I beg your pardon, sir, but I can’t afford that. When I give a vote I must know what I am doing; I must look to what will be the effects on my till and ledger, speaking respectfully. Prices, I’ll admit, are what nobody can know the merits of; and the sudden falls after you’ve bought in currants, which are a goods that will not keep—I’ve never; myself seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke to human pride. But as to one family, there’s debtor and creditor, I hope; they’re not going to reform that away; else I should vote for things staying as they are. Few men have less need to cry for change than I have, personally speaking—that is, for self and family. I am not one of those who have nothing to lose: I mean as to respectability both in parish and private business, and noways in respect of your honorable self and custom, which you was good enough to say you would not withdraw from me, vote or no vote, while the article sent in was satisfactory.


This looks well, eh? I shall have a good audience, at any rate. I like this, now—this kind of public made up of one’s own neighbors, you know.


I’ll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw,


And questions, now, somebody may put questions about the schedules.—Ladislaw, just hand me the memorandum of the schedules.


This looks dangerous, by God! Hawley has got some deeper plan than this.


Gentlemen—Electors of Middlemarch! I’m uncommonly glad to be here—I was never so proud and happy in my life—never so happy, you know.


it’s all up now. The only chance is that, since the best thing won’t always do, floundering may answer for once.


I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends—you’ve known me on the bench a good while—I’ve always gone a good deal into public questions—machinery, now, and machine-breaking—you’re many of you concerned with machinery, and I’ve been going into that lately. It won’t do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on—trade, manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples—that kind of thing—since Adam Smith, that must go on. We must look all over the globe:—‘Observation with extensive view,’ must look everywhere, ‘from China to Peru,’ as somebody says—Johnson, I think, ‘The Rambler,’ you know. That is what I have done up to a certain point—not as far as Peru; but I’ve not always stayed at home—I saw it wouldn’t do. I’ve been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go—and then, again, in the Baltic. The Baltic, now.


The Baltic, now,


That reminds me, if I wanted a precedent, you know—but we never want a precedent for the right thing—but there is Chatham, now; I can’t say I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt—he was not a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know. Blast your ideas! we want the Bill,


Blast your ideas! we want the Bill.


There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we meet for but to speak our minds—freedom of opinion, freedom of the press, liberty—that kind of thing? The Bill, now—you shall have the Bill


You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, and a seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds, seven shillings, and fourpence.


Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth—all that is very well


All that is very well;


This is a little too bad, you know. I should have got the ear of the people by-and-by—but they didn’t give me time. I should have gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know. However, things will come all right at the nomination.


It was Bowyer who did it. I know it as well as if he had been advertised. He’s uncommonly good at ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God! Hawley has been having him to dinner lately: there’s a fund of talent in Bowyer.


Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would have invited him to dine,


There’s not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer, but it seems as if the paltry fellows were always to turn the scale.


I have felt uneasy about the chest—it won’t do to carry that too far. I must pull up. Poor Casaubon was a warning, you know. I’ve made some heavy advances, but I’ve dug a channel. It’s rather coarse work—this electioneering, eh, Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it. However, we have dug a channel with the ‘Pioneer’—put things in a track, and so on. A more ordinary man than you might carry it on now—more ordinary, you know.


Do you wish me to give it up? I am ready to do so whenever you wish it.


As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest opinion of your powers, you know. But about the ‘Pioneer,’ I have been consulting a little with some of the men on our side, and they are inclined to take it into their hands—indemnify me to a certain extent—carry it on, in fact. And under the circumstances, you might like to give up—might find a better field. These people might not take that high view of you which I have always taken, as an alter ego, a right hand—though I always looked forward to your doing something else. I think of having a run into France. But I’ll write you any letters, you know—to Althorpe and people of that kind. I’ve met Althorpe.


I am exceedingly obliged to you. Since you are going to part with the ‘Pioneer,’ I need not trouble you about the steps I shall take. I may choose to continue here for the present.


The greatest comfort, Camden, is that you have deserved it.


When a man gets a good berth, mother, half the deserving must come after. Now, aunt. There shall be sugar-candy always on the table for you to steal and give to the children, and you shall have a great many new stockings to make presents of, and you shall darn your own more than ever!


You must set me the example, Cam: you must marry now.


With all my heart. But who is in love with me? I am a seedy old fellow. What do you say, mother?


You are a handsome man, Camden: though not so fine a figure of a man as your father,


I wish you would marry Miss Garth, brother,


Very fine! You talk as if young women were tied up to be chosen, like poultry at market; as if I had only to ask and everybody would have me,


We don’t want everybody. But you would like Miss Garth, mother, shouldn’t you?


My son’s choice shall be mine, and a wife would be most welcome, Camden. You will want your whist at home when we go to Lowick, and Henrietta Noble never was a whist-player.


I shall do without whist now, mother.


Why so, Camden? In my time whist was thought an undeniable amusement for a good churchman,


I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes. I don’t feel bound to give up St. Botolph’s. It is protest enough against the pluralism they want to reform if I give somebody else most of the money. The stronger thing is not to give up power, but to use it well.


I have thought of that. So far as self is concerned, I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep them. It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of me.


It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power. I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman, but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good a clergyman out of myself as I can. That is the well-beneficed point of view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much simplified,


I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother, but you are the only friend I can consult. I told you everything once before, and you were so good that I can’t help coming to you again.


Sit down, Fred, I’m ready to hear and do anything I can,


I wanted to tell you— I might go into the Church now; and really, look where I may, I can’t see anything else to do. I don’t like it, but I know it’s uncommonly hard on my father to say so, after he has spent a good deal of money in educating me for it. and I can’t see anything else to do.


I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way with him. He said it was too late. But you have got over one bridge now: what are your other difficulties?


Merely that I don’t like it. I don’t like divinity, and preaching, and feeling obliged to look serious. I like riding across country, and doing as other men do. I don’t mean that I want to be a bad fellow in any way; but I’ve no taste for the sort of thing people expect of a clergyman. And yet what else am I to do? My father can’t spare me any capital, else I might go into farming. And he has no room for me in his trade. And of course I can’t begin to study for law or physic now, when my father wants me to earn something. It’s all very well to say I’m wrong to go into the Church; but those who say so might as well tell me to go into the backwoods.


Have you any difficulties about doctrines—about the Articles?


No; I suppose the Articles are right. I am not prepared with any arguments to disprove them, and much better, cleverer fellows than I am go in for them entirely. I think it would be rather ridiculous in me to urge scruples of that sort, as if I were a judge,


I suppose, then, it has occurred to you that you might be a fair parish priest without being much of a divine?


Of course, if I am obliged to be a clergyman, I shall try and do my duty, though I mayn’t like it. Do you think any body ought to blame me?


For going into the Church under the circumstances? That depends on your conscience, Fred—how far you have counted the cost, and seen what your position will require of you. I can only tell you about myself, that I have always been too lax, and have been uneasy in consequence.


But there is another hindrance. I did not tell you before, though perhaps I may have said things that made you guess it. There is somebody I am very fond of: I have loved her ever since we were children.


Miss Garth, I suppose?


Yes. I shouldn’t mind anything if she would have me. And I know I could be a good fellow then.


And you think she returns the feeling?


She never will say so; and a good while ago she made me promise not to speak to her about it again. And she has set her mind especially against my being a clergyman; I know that. But I can’t give her up. I do think she cares about me. I saw Mrs. Garth last night, and she said that Mary was staying at Lowick Rectory with Miss Farebrother.


Yes, she is very kindly helping my sister. Do you wish to go there?


No, I want to ask a great favor of you. I am ashamed to bother you in this way; but Mary might listen to what you said, if you mentioned the subject to her—I mean about my going into the Church.


That is rather a delicate task, my dear Fred. I shall have to presuppose your attachment to her; and to enter on the subject as you wish me to do, will be asking her to tell me whether she returns it.


That is what I want her to tell you. I don’t know what to do, unless I can get at her feeling.


You mean that you would be guided by that as to your going into the Church?


If Mary said she would never have me I might as well go wrong in one way as another.


That is nonsense, Fred. Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.


Not my sort of love: I have never been without loving Mary. If I had to give her up, it would be like beginning to live on wooden legs.


Will she not be hurt at my intrusion?


No, I feel sure she will not. She respects you more than any one, and she would not put you off with fun as she does me. Of course I could not have told any one else, or asked any one else to speak to her, but you. There is no one else who could be such a friend to both of us. And she ought to acknowledge that I have worked in order to pass. She ought to believe that I would exert myself for her sake.


Very well, my boy. I will do what you wish.


Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you. This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody would think you were a silly young gentleman.


You are unmerciful to young gentlemen, Miss Garth,


It always answers to reason with Fly. Oh, with some, I suppose; since some of them turn into excellent men.


I am glad of that admission, because I want at this very moment to interest you in a young gentleman.


Not a silly one, I hope,


No; though perhaps wisdom is not his strong point, but rather affection and sincerity. However, wisdom lies more in those two qualities than people are apt to imagine. I hope you know by those marks what young gentleman I mean.


Yes, I think I do, it must be Fred Vincy.


He has asked me to consult you about his going into the Church. I hope you will not think that I consented to take a liberty in promising to do so.


On the contrary, Mr. Farebrother, whenever you have anything to say to me I feel honored.


But before I enter on that question, let me just touch a point on which your father took me into confidence; by the way, it was that very evening on which I once before fulfilled a mission from Fred, just after he had gone to college. Mr. Garth told me what happened on the night of Featherstone’s death—how you refused to burn the will; and he said that you had some heart-prickings on that subject, because you had been the innocent means of hindering Fred from getting his ten thousand pounds. I have kept that in mind, and I have heard something that may relieve you on that score—may show you that no sin-offering is demanded from you there. I mean, that your action made no real difference to Fred’s lot. I find that the first will would not have been legally good after the burning of the last; it would not have stood if it had been disputed, and you may be sure it would have been disputed. So, on that score, you may feel your mind free.


Thank you, Mr. Farebrother. I am grateful to you for remembering my feelings.


Well, now I may go on. Fred, you know, has taken his degree. He has worked his way so far, and now the question is, what is he to do? That question is so difficult that he is inclined to follow his father’s wishes and enter the Church, though you know better than I do that he was quite set against that formerly. I have questioned him on the subject, and I confess I see no insuperable objection to his being a clergyman, as things go. He says that he could turn his mind to doing his best in that vocation, on one condition. If that condition were fulfilled I would do my utmost in helping Fred on. After a time—not, of course, at first—he might be with me as my curate, and he would have so much to do that his stipend would be nearly what I used to get as vicar. But I repeat that there is a condition without which all this good cannot come to pass. He has opened his heart to me, Miss Garth, and asked me to plead for him. The condition lies entirely in your feeling. To speak quite plainly, Fred will not take any course which would lessen the chance that you would consent to be his wife; but with that prospect, he will try his best at anything you approve.


I cannot possibly say that I will ever be his wife, Mr. Farebrother: but I certainly never will be his wife if he becomes a clergyman. What you say is most generous and kind; I don’t mean for a moment to correct your judgment. It is only that I have my girlish, mocking way of looking at things,


He wishes me to report exactly what you think,


I could not love a man who is ridiculous. Fred has sense and knowledge enough to make him respectable, if he likes, in some good worldly business, but I can never imagine him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings, and praying by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a caricature. His being a clergyman would be only for gentility’s sake, and I think there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile gentility. I used to think that of Mr. Crowse, with his empty face and neat umbrella, and mincing little speeches. What right have such men to represent Christianity—as if it were an institution for getting up idiots genteelly—as if—


Young women are severe: they don’t feel the stress of action as men do, though perhaps I ought to make you an exception there. But you don’t put Fred Vincy on so low a level as that?


No, indeed, he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show it as a clergyman. He would be a piece of professional affectation.


Then the answer is quite decided. As a clergyman he could have no hope?


I think Fred ought not to need telling again what I have already said to him. I mean that he ought not to put such questions until he has done something worthy, instead of saying that he could do it.


I understand that you resist any attempt to fetter you, but either your feeling for Fred Vincy excludes your entertaining another attachment, or it does not: either he may count on your remaining single until he shall have earned your hand, or he may in any case be disappointed. Pardon me, Mary—you know I used to catechise you under that name—but when the state of a woman’s affections touches the happiness of another life—of more lives than one—I think it would be the nobler course for her to be perfectly direct and open.


Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else. I should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of me. It has taken such deep root in me—my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker. I should like better than anything to see him worthy of every one’s respect. But please tell him I will not promise to marry him till then: I should shame and grieve my father and mother. He is free to choose some one else.


Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly, and I shall ride back to Middlemarch forthwith. With this prospect before him, we shall get Fred into the right niche somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your hands. God bless you!


Oh, please stay, and let me give you some tea,


Bless my heart! what’s this fellow in black coming along the lane? He’s like one of those men one sees about after the races.


By Jove, Nick, it’s you! I couldn’t be mistaken, though the five-and-twenty years have played old Boguy with us both! How are you, eh? you didn’t expect to see me here. Come, shake us by the hand.


I did not indeed expect to see you in this remote country place.


Well, it belongs to a stepson of mine. I came to see him here before. I’m not so surprised at seeing you, old fellow, because I picked up a letter—what you may call a providential thing. It’s uncommonly fortunate I met you, though; for I don’t care about seeing my stepson: he’s not affectionate, and his poor mother’s gone now. To tell the truth, I came out of love to you, Nick: I came to get your address, for—look here!


I wish you good evening, Mr. Bulstrode; I must be getting home,


You didn’t put your full address to this letter. That was not like the first-rate man of business you used to be. ‘The Shrubs,’—they may be anywhere: you live near at hand, eh?—have cut the London concern altogether—perhaps turned country squire—have a rural mansion to invite me to. Lord, how many years it is ago! The old lady must have been dead a pretty long while—gone to glory without the pain of knowing how poor her daughter was, eh? But, by Jove! you’re very pale and pasty, Nick. Come, if you’re going home, I’ll walk by your side.


I was going home, but I can defer my ride a little. And you can, if you please, rest here.


Thank you. I don’t care now about seeing my stepson. I’d rather go home with you.


Your stepson, if Mr. Rigg Featherstone was he, is here no longer. I am master here now.


Well then, I’ve no objection. I’ve had enough walking from the coach-road. I never was much of a walker, or rider either. What I like is a smart vehicle and a spirited cob. I was always a little heavy in the saddle. What a pleasant surprise it must be to you to see me, old fellow! You don’t say so; but you never took your luck heartily—you were always thinking of improving the occasion—you’d such a gift for improving your luck.


If I remember rightly, our acquaintance many years ago had not the sort of intimacy which you are now assuming, Mr. Raffles. Any services you desire of me will be the more readily rendered if you will avoid a tone of familiarity which did not lie in our former intercourse, and can hardly be warranted by more than twenty years of separation.


You don’t like being called Nick? Why, I always called you Nick in my heart, and though lost to sight, to memory dear. By Jove! my feelings have ripened for you like fine old cognac. I hope you’ve got some in the house now. Josh filled my flask well the last time.


Your habits and mine are so different, Mr. Raffles, that we can hardly enjoy each other’s society. The wisest plan for both of us will therefore be to part as soon as possible. Since you say that you wished to meet me, you probably considered that you had some business to transact with me. But under the circumstances I will invite you to remain here for the night, and I will myself ride over here early to-morrow morning—before breakfast, in fact—when I can receive any communication you have to make to me.


With all my heart, this is a comfortable place—a little dull for a continuance; but I can put up with it for a night, with this good liquor and the prospect of seeing you again in the morning. You’re a much better host than my stepson was; but Josh owed me a bit of a grudge for marrying his mother; and between you and me there was never anything but kindness.


As I have little time to spare, Mr. Raffles. I shall be obliged if you will mention at once the ground on which you wished to meet with me. I presume that you have a home elsewhere and will be glad to return to it.


Why, if a man has got any heart, doesn’t he want to see an old friend, Nick?—I must call you Nick—we always did call you young Nick when we knew you meant to marry the old widow. Some said you had a handsome family likeness to old Nick, but that was your mother’s fault, calling you Nicholas. Aren’t you glad to see me again? I expected an invite to stay with you at some pretty place. My own establishment is broken up now my wife’s dead. I’ve no particular attachment to any spot; I would as soon settle hereabout as anywhere.


May I ask why you returned from America? I considered that the strong wish you expressed to go there, when an adequate sum was furnished, was tantamount to an engagement that you would remain there for life.


Never knew that a wish to go to a place was the same thing as a wish to stay. But I did stay a matter of ten years; it didn’t suit me to stay any longer. And I’m not going again, Nick.


Do you wish to be settled in any business? What is your calling now?


Thank you, my calling is to enjoy myself as much as I can. I don’t care about working any more. If I did anything it would be a little travelling in the tobacco line—or something of that sort, which takes a man into agreeable company. But not without an independence to fall back upon. That’s what I want: I’m not so strong as I was, Nick, though I’ve got more color than you. I want an independence.


That could be supplied to you, if you would engage to keep at a distance,


That must be as it suits my convenience. I see no reason why I shouldn’t make a few acquaintances hereabout. I’m not ashamed of myself as company for anybody. I dropped my portmanteau at the turnpike when I got down—change of linen—genuine—honor bright—more than fronts and wristbands; and with this suit of mourning, straps and everything, I should do you credit among the nobs here.


If you intend to rely on me in any way, Mr. Raffles, you will expect to meet my wishes.


Ah, to be sure. Didn’t I always do it? Lord, you made a pretty thing out of me, and I got but little. I’ve often thought since, I might have done better by telling the old woman that I’d found her daughter and her grandchild: it would have suited my feelings better; I’ve got a soft place in my heart. But you’ve buried the old lady by this time, I suppose—it’s all one to her now. And you’ve got your fortune out of that profitable business which had such a blessing on it. You’ve taken to being a nob, buying land, being a country bashaw. Still in the Dissenting line, eh? Still godly? Or taken to the Church as more genteel?


I’ve not had such fine luck as you, by Jove! Things went confoundedly with me in New York; those Yankees are cool hands, and a man of gentlemanly feelings has no chance with them. I married when I came back—a nice woman in the tobacco trade—very fond of me—but the trade was restricted, as we say. She had been settled there a good many years by a friend; but there was a son too much in the case. Josh and I never hit it off. However, I made the most of the position, and I’ve always taken my glass in good company. It’s been all on the square with me; I’m as open as the day. You won’t take it ill of me that I didn’t look you up before. I’ve got a complaint that makes me a little dilatory. I thought you were trading and praying away in London still, and didn’t find you there. But you see I was sent to you, Nick—perhaps for a blessing to both of us.


You will do well to reflect, Mr. Raffles, that it is possible for a man to overreach himself in the effort to secure undue advantage. Although I am not in any way bound to you, I am willing to supply you with a regular annuity—in quarterly payments—so long as you fulfil a promise to remain at a distance from this neighborhood. It is in your power to choose. If you insist on remaining here, even for a short time, you will get nothing from me. I shall decline to know you.


Ha, ha! that reminds me of a droll dog of a thief who declined to know the constable.


Your allusions are lost on me sir; the law has no hold on me either through your agency or any other.


You can’t understand a joke, my good fellow. I only meant that I should never decline to know you. But let us be serious. Your quarterly payment won’t quite suit me. I like my freedom. I’ll tell you what! Give us a couple of hundreds—come, that’s modest—and I’ll go away—honor bright!—pick up my portmanteau and go away. But I shall not give up my liberty for a dirty annuity. I shall come and go where I like. Perhaps it may suit me to stay away, and correspond with a friend; perhaps not. Have you the money with you?


No, I have one hundred. I will forward you the other if you will mention an address.


No, I’ll wait here till you bring it. I’ll take a stroll and have a snack, and you’ll be back by that time. I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn’t tell you; I’d a tender conscience about that pretty young woman. I didn’t find her, but I found out her husband’s name, and I made a note of it. But hang it, I lost my pocketbook. However, if I heard it, I should know it again. I’ve got my faculties as if I was in my prime, but names wear out, by Jove! Sometimes I’m no better than a confounded tax-paper before the names are filled in. However, if I hear of her and her family, you shall know, Nick. You’d like to do something for her, now she’s your step-daughter.


Doubtless,


But what the deuce was the name? It began with L; it was almost all l’s I fancy,


Ladislaw!


Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her own—children or anything! And if she had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur. Could it, James?


Not if it had been like Casaubon,


No! just imagine! Really it was a mercy, and I think it is very nice for Dodo to be a widow. She can be just as fond of our baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own as she likes.


It is a pity she was not a queen,


But what should we have been then? We must have been something else. I like her better as she is. What will you do at Lowick, Dodo? You say yourself there is nothing to be done there: everybody is so clean and well off, it makes you quite melancholy. And here you have been so happy going all about Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards. And now uncle is abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way; and I am sure James does everything you tell him.


I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all the better,


But you will never see him washed, and that is quite the best part of the day.


Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose; but I want to be alone now, and in my own home. I wish to know the Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother about what there is to be done in Middlemarch.


You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I dare say you are a little bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn’t believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine.


I never called everything by the same name that all the people about me did,


But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear,


No, I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion.


It will be well for her to marry again as soon as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people. Of course the Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly a husband is the best thing to keep her in order. If we were not so poor I would invite Lord Triton. He will be marquis some day, and there is no denying that she would make a good marchioness: she looks handsomer than ever in her mourning.


My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone. Such contrivances are of no use,


No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and women together? And it is a shame that her uncle should have run away and shut up the Grange just now. There ought to be plenty of eligible matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange. Lord Triton is precisely the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft-headed sort of way. That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon.


Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor.


That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose if she has no variety to choose from? A woman’s choice usually means taking the only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey. If her friends don’t exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon business yet.


For heaven’s sake don’t touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore point with Sir James. He would be deeply offended if you entered on it to him unnecessarily.


I have never entered on it. Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking of mine.


Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the young fellow is going out of the neighborhood.


I could not use it. Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief in—Dorothea?


Probably some of Mr. Farebrother’s Middlemarch hearers may follow him to Lowick sometimes. Do you not think so?


If they are wise they will, Mrs. Casaubon. I see that you set a right value on my son’s preaching. His grandfather on my side was an excellent clergyman, but his father was in the law:—most exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our never being rich. They say Fortune is a woman and capricious. But sometimes she is a good woman and gives to those who merit, which has been the case with you, Mrs. Casaubon, who have given a living to my son.


I do wish it


I will see him. Let him be shown into the drawing-room.


Glad to see you here again, sir,


I am only come to say good-by, Pratt,


Very sorry to hear it, sir,


Your master was as jealous as a fiend—and no reason. Madam would look higher than Mr. Ladislaw, else I don’t know her. Mrs. Cadwallader’s maid says there’s a lord coming who is to marry her when the mourning’s over.


I hope I have not presumed too much in calling. I could not bear to leave the neighborhood and begin a new life without seeing you to say good-by.


Presumed? Surely not. I should have thought it unkind if you had not wished to see me. Are you going away immediately?


Very soon, I think. I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all public business. There will be a great deal of political work to be done by-and-by, and I mean to try and do some of it. Other men have managed to win an honorable position for themselves without family or money.


And that will make it all the more honorable. Besides, you have so many talents. I have heard from my uncle how well you speak in public, so that every one is sorry when you leave off, and how clearly you can explain things. And you care that justice should be done to every one. I am so glad. When we were in Rome, I thought you only cared for poetry and art, and the things that adorn life for us who are well off. But now I know you think about the rest of the world.


You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here again till I have made myself of some mark in the world?


Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say. I shall be very happy when I hear that you have made your value felt. But you must have patience. It will perhaps be a long while.


I shall never hear from you. And you will forget all about me.


No. I shall never forget you. I have never forgotten any one whom I once knew. My life has never been crowded, and seems not likely to be so. And I have a great deal of space for memory at Lowick, haven’t I?


Good God!


I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature which hangs up-stairs—I mean that beautiful miniature of your grandmother. I think it is not right for me to keep it, if you would wish to have it. It is wonderfully like you.


You are very good. No; I don’t mind about it. It is not very consoling to have one’s own likeness. It would be more consoling if others wanted to have it.


I thought you would like to cherish her memory—I thought— you would surely like to have the miniature as a family memorial.


Why should I have that, when I have nothing else! A man with only a portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his head.


You are much the happier of us two, Mr. Ladislaw, to have nothing.


I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now. But poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we most care for.


Sorrow comes in so many ways. Two years ago I had no notion of that—I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak. I used to despise women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better things. I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given it up,


I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it. The thing one most longs for may be surrounded with conditions that would be intolerable.


Sir James Chettam is in the library, madam.


Ask Sir James to come in here,


I must say good-by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while.


How is Celia?


Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap. I am sure your dress must make you feel ill.


I am so used to the cap—it has become a sort of shell. I feel rather bare and exposed when it is off.


I must see you without it; it makes us all warm,


Ah!


It was I who did it, James. Dodo need not make such a slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap any more among her friends.


My dear Celia, a widow must wear her mourning at least a year.


Not if she marries again before the end of it,


That is very rare, I hope. No friend of ours ever committed herself in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was very painful to Lord Grinsell when she did so. Her first husband was objectionable, which made it the greater wonder. And severely she was punished for it. They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair, and held up loaded pistols at her.


Oh, if she took the wrong man! Marriage is always bad then, first or second. Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other. I would rather have a good second husband than an indifferent first.


My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you. I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely, if our dear Rector were taken away.


Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy. It is lawful to marry again, I suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos instead of Christians. Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man, she must take the consequences, and one who does it twice over deserves her fate. But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery—the sooner the better.


I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen. Suppose we change it.


Not on my account, Sir James. If you are speaking on my behalf, I can assure you that no question can be more indifferent and impersonal to me than second marriage. It is no more to me than if you talked of women going fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not, I shall not follow them. Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader amuse herself on that subject as much as on any other.


you do not, I hope, think there was any allusion to you in my mentioning Mrs. Beevor. It was only an instance that occurred to me. She was step-daughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroy for his second wife. There could be no possible allusion to you.


Nobody chose the subject; it all came out of Dodo’s cap. Mrs. Cadwallader only said what was quite true. A woman could not be married in a widow’s cap, James.


I will not offend again. I will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia. Only what are we to talk about? I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature, because that is the nature of rectors’ wives.


Really, Dodo, taking your cap off made you like yourself again in more ways than one. You spoke up just as you used to do, when anything was said to displease you. But I could hardly make out whether it was James that you thought wrong, or Mrs. Cadwallader.


Neither. James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he was mistaken in supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said. I should only mind if there were a law obliging me to take any piece of blood and beauty that she or anybody else recommended.


But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be all the better to have blood and beauty,


Don’t be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life. I shall never marry again,


Really—quite? Not anybody at all—if he were very wonderful indeed?


Not anybody at all. I have delightful plans. I should like to take a great deal of land, and drain it, and make a little colony, where everybody should work, and all the work should be done well. I should know every one of the people and be their friend. I am going to have great consultations with Mr. Garth: he can tell me almost everything I want to know.


Then you will be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo? Perhaps little Arthur will like plans when he grows up, and then he can help you.


Most uncommon! She said a thing I often used to think myself when I was a lad:—‘Mr. Garth, I should like to feel, if I lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece of land and built a great many good cottages, because the work is of a healthy kind while it is being done, and after it is done, men are the better for it.’ Those were the very words: she sees into things in that way.


But womanly, I hope,


Oh, you can’t think! You would like to hear her speak, Susan. She speaks in such plain words, and a voice like music. Bless me! it reminds me of bits in the ‘Messiah’—‘and straightway there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying;’ it has a tone with it that satisfies your ear.


The cows will all cast their calves, brother, if the railway comes across the Near Close; and I shouldn’t wonder at the mare too, if she was in foal. It’s a poor tale if a widow’s property is to be spaded away, and the law say nothing to it. What’s to hinder ’em from cutting right and left if they begin? It’s well known, I can’t fight.


The best way would be to say nothing, and set somebody on to send ’em away with a flea in their ear, when they came spying and measuring. Folks did that about Brassing, by what I can understand. It’s all a pretence, if the truth was known, about their being forced to take one way. Let ’em go cutting in another parish. And I don’t believe in any pay to make amends for bringing a lot of ruffians to trample your crops. Where’s a company’s pocket?


Brother Peter, God forgive him, got money out of a company. But that was for the manganese. That wasn’t for railways to blow you to pieces right and left.


Well, there’s this to be said, Jane, the more spokes we put in their wheel, the more they’ll pay us to let ’em go on, if they must come whether or not.


Why, there’ll be no stirrin’ from one pla-ace to another,


Not a bit. And cutting up fine land such as this parish! Let ’em go into Tipton, say I. But there’s no knowing what there is at the bottom of it. Traffic is what they put for’ard; but it’s to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run.


Why, they’re Lunnon chaps, I reckon,


Ay, to be sure. And in some parts against Brassing, by what I’ve heard say, the folks fell on ’em when they were spying, and broke their peep-holes as they carry, and drove ’em away, so as they knew better than come again.


It war good foon, I’d be bound,


Well, I wouldn’t meddle with ’em myself. But some say this country’s seen its best days, and the sign is, as it’s being overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the little, so as there shan’t be a team left on the land, nor a whip to crack.


I’ll crack my whip about their ear’n, afore they bring it to that, though,


What do you confounded fools mean? I’ll swear to every one of you before the magistrate. You’ve knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I know. You’ll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you don’t mind,


Yo’re a coward, yo are. Yo git off your horse, young measter, and I’ll have a round wi’ ye, I wull. Yo daredn’t come on wi’out your hoss an’ whip. I’d soon knock the breath out on ye, I would.


Wait a minute, and I’ll come back presently, and have a round with you all in turn, if you like. Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can come back for their traps. The ground is clear now.


No, no, here’s a breakage. They’ll have to give up for to-day, and it will be as well. Here, take the things before you on the horse, Tom. They’ll see you coming, and they’ll turn back.


I’m glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth. No knowing what might have happened if the cavalry had not come up in time.


Ay, ay, it was lucky. But—deuce take it—this is what comes of men being fools—I’m hindered of my day’s work. I can’t get along without somebody to help me with the measuring-chain. However! What have you got to do to-day, young fellow?


Nothing, Mr. Garth. I’ll help you with pleasure—can I?


Well, you mustn’t mind stooping and getting hot.


I don’t mind anything. Only I want to go first and have a round with that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me. It would be a good lesson for him. I shall not be five minutes.


Nonsense! I shall go and speak to the men myself. It’s all ignorance. Somebody has been telling them lies. The poor fools don’t know any better.


I shall go with you, then,


No, no; stay where you are. I don’t want your young blood. I can take care of myself.


Why, my lads, how’s this? How came you to make such a mistake as this? Somebody has been telling you lies. You thought those men up there wanted to do mischief.


Aw!


Nonsense! No such thing! They’re looking out to see which way the railroad is to take. Now, my lads, you can’t hinder the railroad: it will be made whether you like it or not. And if you go fighting against it, you’ll get yourselves into trouble. The law gives those men leave to come here on the land. The owner has nothing to say against it, and if you meddle with them you’ll have to do with the constable and Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Middlemarch jail. And you might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you. But come, you didn’t mean any harm. Somebody told you the railroad was a bad thing. That was a lie. It may do a bit of harm here and there, to this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven. But the railway’s a good thing.


Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on. I’n seen lots o’ things turn up sin’ I war a young un—the war an’ the peace, and the canells, an’ the oald King George, an’ the Regen’, an’ the new King George, an’ the new un as has got a new ne-ame—an’ it’s been all aloike to the poor mon. What’s the canells been t’ him? They’n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor wage to lay by, if he didn’t save it wi’ clemmin’ his own inside. Times ha’ got wusser for him sin’ I war a young un. An’ so it’ll be wi’ the railroads. They’ll on’y leave the poor mon furder behind. But them are fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here. This is the big folks’s world, this is. But yo’re for the big folks, Muster Garth, yo are.


If you don’t think well of me, Tim, never mind; that’s neither here nor there now. Things may be bad for the poor man—bad they are; but I want the lads here not to do what will make things worse for themselves. The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won’t help ’em to throw it over into the roadside pit, when it’s partly their own fodder.


We war on’y for a bit o’ foon. That war all we war arter.


Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I’ll see that nobody informs against you.


I’n ne’er meddled, an’ I’n no call to promise,


No, but the rest. Come, I’m as hard at work as any of you to-day, and I can’t spare much time. Say you’ll be quiet without the constable.


Aw, we wooant meddle—they may do as they loike for oos


A young fellow needn’t be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?


I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A. Do you think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Garth?


My business is of many sorts, my boy. A good deal of what I know can only come from experience: you can’t learn it off as you learn things out of a book. But you are young enough to lay a foundation yet.


You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?


That depends. You must be sure of two things: you must love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that—if I had this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man is—I wouldn’t give twopence for him whether he was the prime minister or the rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.


I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman,


Then let it alone, my boy, else you’ll never be easy. Or, if you are easy, you’ll be a poor stick.


That is very nearly what Mary thinks about it. I think you must know what I feel for Mary, Mr. Garth: I hope it does not displease you that I have always loved her better than any one else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her.


That makes things more serious, Fred, if you want to take Mary’s happiness into your keeping.


I know that, Mr. Garth, and I would do anything for her. She says she will never have me if I go into the Church; and I shall be the most miserable devil in the world if I lose all hope of Mary. Really, if I could get some other profession, business—anything that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would deserve your good opinion. I should like to have to do with outdoor things. I know a good deal about land and cattle already. I used to believe, you know—though you will think me rather foolish for it—that I should have land of my own. I am sure knowledge of that sort would come easily to me, especially if I could be under you in any way.


Softly, my boy. What have you said to your father about all this?


Nothing, yet; but I must tell him. I am only waiting to know what I can do instead of entering the Church. I am very sorry to disappoint him, but a man ought to be allowed to judge for himself when he is four-and-twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what it would be right for me to do now? My education was a mistake.


But hearken to this, Fred. Are you sure Mary is fond of you, or would ever have you?


I asked Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden me—I didn’t know what else to do. And he says that I have every reason to hope, if I can put myself in an honorable position—I mean, out of the Church. I dare say you think it unwarrantable in me, Mr. Garth, to be troubling you and obtruding my own wishes about Mary, before I have done anything at all for myself. Of course I have not the least claim—indeed, I have already a debt to you which will never be discharged, even when I have been able to pay it in the shape of money.


Yes, my boy, you have a claim. The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them forward. I was young myself once and had to do without much help; but help would have been welcome to me, if it had been only for the fellow-feeling’s sake. But I must consider. Come to me to-morrow at the office, at nine o’clock. At the office, mind.


It is come round as I thought, Susan. The children are fond of each other—I mean, Fred and Mary. After we’d done our work, Fred poured it all out to me. He can’t bear to be a clergyman, and Mary says she won’t have him if he is one; and the lad would like to be under me and give his mind to business. And I’ve determined to take him and make a man of him.


Caleb!


It’s a fine thing to do. I shall have trouble with him, but I think I shall carry it through. The lad loves Mary, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan. It shapes many a rough fellow.


Has Mary spoken to you on the subject?