Middlemarch
head, I mean to do without another clerk. So you must buckle to. How
are you at writing and arithmetic?”
Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought of
desk-work; but he was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink. “I’m
not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it always came easily to me. I
think you know my writing.”
“Let us see,” said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully and
handing it, well dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper. “Copy me
a line or two of that valuation, with the figures at the end.”
At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to
write legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk. Fred
wrote the lines demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any
viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the
consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes had
a blotted solidity and the letters disdained to keep the line—in short,
it was a manuscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret when you
know beforehand what the writer means.
As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression, but when
Fred handed him the paper he gave something like a snarl, and rapped
the paper passionately with the back of his hand. Bad work like this
dispelled all Caleb’s mildness.
“The deuce!” he exclaimed, snarlingly. “To think that this is a country
where a man’s education may cost hundreds and hundreds, and it turns
you out this!” Then in a more pathetic tone, pushing up his spectacles
and looking at the unfortunate scribe, “The Lord have mercy on us,
Fred, I can’t put up with this!”
“What can I do, Mr. Garth?” said Fred, whose spirits had sunk very low,
not only at the estimate of his handwriting, but at the vision of
himself as liable to be ranked with office clerks.
“Do? Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line. What’s
the use of writing at all if nobody can understand it?” asked Caleb,
energetically, quite preoccupied with the bad quality of the work. “Is
there so little business in the world that you must be sending puzzles
over the country? But that’s the way people are brought up. I should
lose no end of time with the letters some people send me, if Susan did
not make them out for me. It’s disgusting.” Here Caleb tossed the paper
from him.
Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have wondered
what was the drama between the indignant man of business, and the
fine-looking young fellow whose blond complexion was getting rather
patchy as he bit his lip with mortification. Fred was struggling with
many thoughts. Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at the
beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had been
at a high pitch, and the downfall was proportionate. He had not thought
of desk-work—in fact, like the majority of young gentlemen, he wanted
an occupation which should be free from disagreeables. I cannot tell
what might have been the consequences if he had not distinctly promised
himself that he would go to Lowick to see Mary and tell her that he was
engaged to work under her father. He did not like to disappoint himself
there.
“I am very sorry,” were all the words that he could muster. But Mr.
Garth was already relenting.
“We must make the best of it, Fred,” he began, with a return to his
usual quiet tone. “Every man can learn to write. I taught myself. Go at
it with a will, and sit up at night if the day-time isn’t enough. We’ll
be patient, my boy. Callum shall go on with the books for a bit, while
you are learning. But now I must be off,” said Caleb, rising. “You must
let your father know our agreement. You’ll save me Callum’s salary, you
know, when you can write; and I can afford to give you eighty pounds
for the first year, and more after.”
When Fred made the necessary disclosure to his parents, the relative
effect on the two was a surprise which entered very deeply into his
memory. He went straight from Mr. Garth’s office to the warehouse,
rightly feeling that the most respectful way in which he could behave
to his father was to make the painful communication as gravely and
formally as possible. Moreover, the decision would be more certainly
understood to be final, if the interview took place in his father’s
gravest hours, which were always those spent in his private room at the
warehouse.
Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he had
done and was resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret that he
should be the cause of disappointment to his father, and taking the
blame on his own deficiencies. The regret was genuine, and inspired
Fred with strong, simple words.
Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise without uttering even an
exclamation, a silence which in his impatient temperament was a sign of
unusual emotion. He had not been in good spirits about trade that
morning, and the slight bitterness in his lips grew intense as he
listened. When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly a minute,
during which Mr. Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned the key
emphatically. Then he looked at his son steadily, and said—
“So you’ve made up your mind at last, sir?”
“Yes, father.”
“Very well; stick to it. I’ve no more to say. You’ve thrown away your
education, and gone down a step in life, when I had given you the means
of rising, that’s all.”
“I am very sorry that we differ, father. I think I can be quite as much
of a gentleman at the work I have undertaken, as if I had been a
curate. But I am grateful to you for wishing to do the best for me.”
“Very well; I have no more to say. I wash my hands of you. I only hope,
when you have a son of your own he will make a better return for the
pains you spend on him.”
This was very cutting to Fred. His father was using that unfair
advantage possessed by us all when we are in a pathetic situation and
see our own past as if it were simply part of the pathos. In reality,
Mr. Vincy’s wishes about his son had had a great deal of pride,
inconsiderateness, and egoistic folly in them. But still the
disappointed father held a strong lever; and Fred felt as if he were
being banished with a malediction.
“I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?” he said,
after rising to go; “I shall have a sufficient salary to pay for my
board, as of course I should wish to do.”
“Board be hanged!” said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust at
the notion that Fred’s keep would be missed at his table. “Of course
your mother will want you to stay. But I shall keep no horse for you,
you understand; and you will pay your own tailor. You will do with a
suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay for ’em.”
Fred lingered; there was still something to be said. At last it came.
“I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me the
vexation I have caused you.”
Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son, who
had advanced near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly,
“Yes, yes, let us say no more.”
Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother,
but she was inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her
husband had never thought of, the certainty that Fred would marry Mary
Garth, that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a perpetual
infusion of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his
beautiful face and stylish air “beyond anybody else’s son in
Middlemarch,” would be sure to get like that family in plainness of
appearance and carelessness about his clothes. To her it seemed that
there was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred,
but she dared not enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint of it
had made him “fly out” at her as he had never done before. Her temper
was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her
happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at
Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject of some baleful
prophecy. Perhaps she was the slower to recover her usual cheerfulness
because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the sore question
with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him. If her
husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged into
defence of her darling. It was the end of the fourth day when Mr. Vincy
said to her—
“Come, Lucy, my dear, don’t be so down-hearted. You always have spoiled
the boy, and you must go on spoiling him.”
“Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy,” said the wife, her fair
throat and chin beginning to tremble again, “only his illness.”
“Pooh, pooh, never mind! We must expect to have trouble with our
children. Don’t make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits.”
“Well, I won’t,” said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting
herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled
plumage.
“It won’t do to begin making a fuss about one,” said Mr. Vincy, wishing
to combine a little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness. “There’s
Rosamond as well as Fred.”
“Yes, poor thing. I’m sure I felt for her being disappointed of her
baby; but she got over it nicely.”
“Baby, pooh! I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice, and
getting into debt too, by what I hear. I shall have Rosamond coming to
me with a pretty tale one of these days. But they’ll get no money from
me, I know. Let _his_ family help him. I never did like that marriage.
But it’s no use talking. Ring the bell for lemons, and don’t look dull
any more, Lucy. I’ll drive you and Louisa to Riverston to-morrow.”
CHAPTER LVII.
They numbered scarce eight summers when a name
Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there
As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame
At penetration of the quickening air:
His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu,
Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor,
Making the little world their childhood knew
Large with a land of mountain lake and scaur,
And larger yet with wonder, love, belief
Toward Walter Scott who living far away
Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief.
The book and they must part, but day by day,
In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran
They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan.
The evening that Fred Vincy walked to Lowick parsonage (he had begun to
see that this was a world in which even a spirited young man must
sometimes walk for want of a horse to carry him) he set out at five
o’clock and called on Mrs. Garth by the way, wishing to assure himself
that she accepted their new relations willingly.
He found the family group, dogs and cats included, under the great
apple-tree in the orchard. It was a festival with Mrs. Garth, for her
eldest son, Christy, her peculiar joy and pride, had come home for a
short holiday—Christy, who held it the most desirable thing in the
world to be a tutor, to study all literatures and be a regenerate
Porson, and who was an incorporate criticism on poor Fred, a sort of
object-lesson given to him by the educational mother. Christy himself,
a square-browed, broad-shouldered masculine edition of his mother not
much higher than Fred’s shoulder—which made it the harder that he
should be held superior—was always as simple as possible, and thought
no more of Fred’s disinclination to scholarship than of a giraffe’s,
wishing that he himself were more of the same height. He was lying on
the ground now by his mother’s chair, with his straw hat laid flat over
his eyes, while Jim on the other side was reading aloud from that
beloved writer who has made a chief part in the happiness of many young
lives. The volume was “Ivanhoe,” and Jim was in the great archery scene
at the tournament, but suffered much interruption from Ben, who had