Middlemarch
taking part in the conversation, she never looked towards him any more
than if she had been a sculptured Psyche modelled to look another way:
and when, after being called out for an hour or two, he re-entered the
room, she seemed unconscious of the fact, which eighteen months before
would have had the effect of a numeral before ciphers. In reality,
however, she was intensely aware of Lydgate’s voice and movements; and
her pretty good-tempered air of unconsciousness was a studied negation
by which she satisfied her inward opposition to him without compromise
of propriety. When the ladies were in the drawing-room after Lydgate
had been called away from the dessert, Mrs. Farebrother, when Rosamond
happened to be near her, said—“You have to give up a great deal of your
husband’s society, Mrs. Lydgate.”
“Yes, the life of a medical man is very arduous: especially when he is
so devoted to his profession as Mr. Lydgate is,” said Rosamond, who was
standing, and moved easily away at the end of this correct little
speech.
“It is dreadfully dull for her when there is no company,” said Mrs.
Vincy, who was seated at the old lady’s side. “I am sure I thought so
when Rosamond was ill, and I was staying with her. You know, Mrs.
Farebrother, ours is a cheerful house. I am of a cheerful disposition
myself, and Mr. Vincy always likes something to be going on. That is
what Rosamond has been used to. Very different from a husband out at
odd hours, and never knowing when he will come home, and of a close,
proud disposition, _I_ think”—indiscreet Mrs. Vincy did lower her tone
slightly with this parenthesis. “But Rosamond always had an angel of a
temper; her brothers used very often not to please her, but she was
never the girl to show temper; from a baby she was always as good as
good, and with a complexion beyond anything. But my children are all
good-tempered, thank God.”
This was easily credible to any one looking at Mrs. Vincy as she threw
back her broad cap-strings, and smiled towards her three little girls,
aged from seven to eleven. But in that smiling glance she was obliged
to include Mary Garth, whom the three girls had got into a corner to
make her tell them stories. Mary was just finishing the delicious tale
of Rumpelstiltskin, which she had well by heart, because Letty was
never tired of communicating it to her ignorant elders from a favorite
red volume. Louisa, Mrs. Vincy’s darling, now ran to her with wide-eyed
serious excitement, crying, “Oh mamma, mamma, the little man stamped so
hard on the floor he couldn’t get his leg out again!”
“Bless you, my cherub!” said mamma; “you shall tell me all about it
to-morrow. Go and listen!” and then, as her eyes followed Louisa back
towards the attractive corner, she thought that if Fred wished her to
invite Mary again she would make no objection, the children being so
pleased with her.
But presently the corner became still more animated, for Mr.
Farebrother came in, and seating himself behind Louisa, took her on his
lap; whereupon the girls all insisted that he must hear
Rumpelstiltskin, and Mary must tell it over again. He insisted too, and
Mary, without fuss, began again in her neat fashion, with precisely the
same words as before. Fred, who had also seated himself near, would
have felt unmixed triumph in Mary’s effectiveness if Mr. Farebrother
had not been looking at her with evident admiration, while he
dramatized an intense interest in the tale to please the children.
“You will never care any more about my one-eyed giant, Loo,” said Fred
at the end.
“Yes, I shall. Tell about him now,” said Louisa.
“Oh, I dare say; I am quite cut out. Ask Mr. Farebrother.”
“Yes,” added Mary; “ask Mr. Farebrother to tell you about the ants
whose beautiful house was knocked down by a giant named Tom, and he
thought they didn’t mind because he couldn’t hear them cry, or see them
use their pocket-handkerchiefs.”
“Please,” said Louisa, looking up at the Vicar.
“No, no, I am a grave old parson. If I try to draw a story out of my
bag a sermon comes instead. Shall I preach you a sermon?” said he,
putting on his short-sighted glasses, and pursing up his lips.
“Yes,” said Louisa, falteringly.
“Let me see, then. Against cakes: how cakes are bad things, especially
if they are sweet and have plums in them.”
Louisa took the affair rather seriously, and got down from the Vicar’s
knee to go to Fred.
“Ah, I see it will not do to preach on New Year’s Day,” said Mr.
Farebrother, rising and walking away. He had discovered of late that
Fred had become jealous of him, and also that he himself was not losing
his preference for Mary above all other women.
“A delightful young person is Miss Garth,” said Mrs. Farebrother, who
had been watching her son’s movements.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Vincy, obliged to reply, as the old lady turned to her
expectantly. “It is a pity she is not better-looking.”
“I cannot say that,” said Mrs. Farebrother, decisively. “I like her
countenance. We must not always ask for beauty, when a good God has
seen fit to make an excellent young woman without it. I put good
manners first, and Miss Garth will know how to conduct herself in any
station.”
The old lady was a little sharp in her tone, having a prospective
reference to Mary’s becoming her daughter-in-law; for there was this
inconvenience in Mary’s position with regard to Fred, that it was not
suitable to be made public, and hence the three ladies at Lowick
Parsonage were still hoping that Camden would choose Miss Garth.
New visitors entered, and the drawing-room was given up to music and
games, while whist-tables were prepared in the quiet room on the other
side of the hall. Mr. Farebrother played a rubber to satisfy his
mother, who regarded her occasional whist as a protest against scandal
and novelty of opinion, in which light even a revoke had its dignity.
But at the end he got Mr. Chichely to take his place, and left the
room. As he crossed the hall, Lydgate had just come in and was taking
off his great-coat.
“You are the man I was going to look for,” said the Vicar; and instead
of entering the drawing-room, they walked along the hall and stood
against the fireplace, where the frosty air helped to make a glowing
bank. “You see, I can leave the whist-table easily enough,” he went on,
smiling at Lydgate, “now I don’t play for money. I owe that to you,
Mrs. Casaubon says.”
“How?” said Lydgate, coldly.
“Ah, you didn’t mean me to know it; I call that ungenerous reticence.
You should let a man have the pleasure of feeling that you have done
him a good turn. I don’t enter into some people’s dislike of being
under an obligation: upon my word, I prefer being under an obligation
to everybody for behaving well to me.”
“I can’t tell what you mean,” said Lydgate, “unless it is that I once
spoke of you to Mrs. Casaubon. But I did not think that she would break
her promise not to mention that I had done so,” said Lydgate, leaning
his back against the corner of the mantel-piece, and showing no
radiance in his face.
“It was Brooke who let it out, only the other day. He paid me the
compliment of saying that he was very glad I had the living though you
had come across his tactics, and had praised me up as a Ken and a
Tillotson, and that sort of thing, till Mrs. Casaubon would hear of no
one else.”
“Oh, Brooke is such a leaky-minded fool,” said Lydgate, contemptuously.
“Well, I was glad of the leakiness then. I don’t see why you shouldn’t
like me to know that you wished to do me a service, my dear fellow. And
you certainly have done me one. It’s rather a strong check to one’s
self-complacency to find how much of one’s right doing depends on not
being in want of money. A man will not be tempted to say the Lord’s
Prayer backward to please the devil, if he doesn’t want the devil’s
services. I have no need to hang on the smiles of chance now.”
“I don’t see that there’s any money-getting without chance,” said
Lydgate; “if a man gets it in a profession, it’s pretty sure to come by
chance.”
Mr. Farebrother thought he could account for this speech, in striking
contrast with Lydgate’s former way of talking, as the perversity which
will often spring from the moodiness of a man ill at ease in his
affairs. He answered in a tone of good-humored admission—
“Ah, there’s enormous patience wanted with the way of the world. But it
is the easier for a man to wait patiently when he has friends who love
him, and ask for nothing better than to help him through, so far as it
lies in their power.”
“Oh yes,” said Lydgate, in a careless tone, changing his attitude and
looking at his watch. “People make much more of their difficulties than
they need to do.”
He knew as distinctly as possible that this was an offer of help to
himself from Mr. Farebrother, and he could not bear it. So strangely
determined are we mortals, that, after having been long gratified with
the sense that he had privately done the Vicar a service, the
suggestion that the Vicar discerned his need of a service in return
made him shrink into unconquerable reticence. Besides, behind all
making of such offers what else must come?—that he should “mention his
case,” imply that he wanted specific things. At that moment, suicide
seemed easier.
Mr. Farebrother was too keen a man not to know the meaning of that
reply, and there was a certain massiveness in Lydgate’s manner and
tone, corresponding with his physique, which if he repelled your
advances in the first instance seemed to put persuasive devices out of
question.
“What time are you?” said the Vicar, devouring his wounded feeling.
“After eleven,” said Lydgate. And they went into the drawing-room.
CHAPTER LXIV.
1_st Gent_. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.
2_d Gent_. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright
The coming pest with border fortresses,
Or catch your carp with subtle argument.
All force is twain in one: cause is not cause
Unless effect be there; and action’s self
Must needs contain a passive. So command
Exists but with obedience.
Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs,
he knew that it would have hardly been in Mr. Farebrother’s power to
give him the help he immediately wanted. With the year’s bills coming
in from his tradesmen, with Dover’s threatening hold on his furniture,
and with nothing to depend on but slow dribbling payments from patients
who must not be offended—for the handsome fees he had had from Freshitt
Hall and Lowick Manor had been easily absorbed—nothing less than a
thousand pounds would have freed him from actual embarrassment, and
left a residue which, according to the favorite phrase of hopefulness
in such circumstances, would have given him “time to look about him.”
Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year, when
fellow-citizens expect to be paid for the trouble and goods they have
smilingly bestowed on their neighbors, had so tightened the pressure of
sordid cares on Lydgate’s mind that it was hardly possible for him to
think unbrokenly of any other subject, even the most habitual and
soliciting. He was not an ill-tempered man; his intellectual activity,
the ardent kindness of his heart, as well as his strong frame, would
always, under tolerably easy conditions, have kept him above the petty
uncontrolled susceptibilities which make bad temper. But he was now a
prey to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances,
but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances, of
wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the reverse of
all his former purposes. “_This_ is what I am thinking of; and _that_
is what I might have been thinking of,” was the bitter incessant murmur