Middlemarch
and his sudden appearance with an announcement of Mr. Farebrother had
the effect of a sharp concussion.
“No, no,” said Lydgate; “I have nothing particular to say to him.
But—the game is up—I must be going—I came in just to see Bambridge.”
“Bambridge is over there, but he is making a row—I don’t think he’s
ready for business. Come down with me to Farebrother. I expect he is
going to blow me up, and you will shield me,” said Fred, with some
adroitness.
Lydgate felt shame, but could not bear to act as if he felt it, by
refusing to see Mr. Farebrother; and he went down. They merely shook
hands, however, and spoke of the frost; and when all three had turned
into the street, the Vicar seemed quite willing to say good-by to
Lydgate. His present purpose was clearly to talk with Fred alone, and
he said, kindly, “I disturbed you, young gentleman, because I have some
pressing business with you. Walk with me to St. Botolph’s, will you?”
It was a fine night, the sky thick with stars, and Mr. Farebrother
proposed that they should make a circuit to the old church by the
London road. The next thing he said was—
“I thought Lydgate never went to the Green Dragon?”
“So did I,” said Fred. “But he said that he went to see Bambridge.”
“He was not playing, then?”
Fred had not meant to tell this, but he was obliged now to say, “Yes,
he was. But I suppose it was an accidental thing. I have never seen him
there before.”
“You have been going often yourself, then, lately?”
“Oh, about five or six times.”
“I think you had some good reason for giving up the habit of going
there?”
“Yes. You know all about it,” said Fred, not liking to be catechised in
this way. “I made a clean breast to you.”
“I suppose that gives me a warrant to speak about the matter now. It is
understood between us, is it not?—that we are on a footing of open
friendship: I have listened to you, and you will be willing to listen
to me. I may take my turn in talking a little about myself?”
“I am under the deepest obligation to you, Mr. Farebrother,” said Fred,
in a state of uncomfortable surmise.
“I will not affect to deny that you are under some obligation to me.
But I am going to confess to you, Fred, that I have been tempted to
reverse all that by keeping silence with you just now. When somebody
said to me, ‘Young Vincy has taken to being at the billiard-table every
night again—he won’t bear the curb long;’ I was tempted to do the
opposite of what I am doing—to hold my tongue and wait while you went
down the ladder again, betting first and then—”
“I have not made any bets,” said Fred, hastily.
“Glad to hear it. But I say, my prompting was to look on and see you
take the wrong turning, wear out Garth’s patience, and lose the best
opportunity of your life—the opportunity which you made some rather
difficult effort to secure. You can guess the feeling which raised that
temptation in me—I am sure you know it. I am sure you know that the
satisfaction of your affections stands in the way of mine.”
There was a pause. Mr. Farebrother seemed to wait for a recognition of
the fact; and the emotion perceptible in the tones of his fine voice
gave solemnity to his words. But no feeling could quell Fred’s alarm.
“I could not be expected to give her up,” he said, after a moment’s
hesitation: it was not a case for any pretence of generosity.
“Clearly not, when her affection met yours. But relations of this sort,
even when they are of long standing, are always liable to change. I can
easily conceive that you might act in a way to loosen the tie she feels
towards you—it must be remembered that she is only conditionally bound
to you—and that in that case, another man, who may flatter himself that
he has a hold on her regard, might succeed in winning that firm place
in her love as well as respect which you had let slip. I can easily
conceive such a result,” repeated Mr. Farebrother, emphatically. “There
is a companionship of ready sympathy, which might get the advantage
even over the longest associations.” It seemed to Fred that if Mr.
Farebrother had had a beak and talons instead of his very capable
tongue, his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel. He had a
horrible conviction that behind all this hypothetic statement there was
a knowledge of some actual change in Mary’s feeling.
“Of course I know it might easily be all up with me,” he said, in a
troubled voice. “If she is beginning to compare—” He broke off, not
liking to betray all he felt, and then said, by the help of a little
bitterness, “But I thought you were friendly to me.”
“So I am; that is why we are here. But I have had a strong disposition
to be otherwise. I have said to myself, ‘If there is a likelihood of
that youngster doing himself harm, why should you interfere? Aren’t you
worth as much as he is, and don’t your sixteen years over and above
his, in which you have gone rather hungry, give you more right to
satisfaction than he has? If there’s a chance of his going to the dogs,
let him—perhaps you could nohow hinder it—and do you take the
benefit.’”
There was a pause, in which Fred was seized by a most uncomfortable
chill. What was coming next? He dreaded to hear that something had been
said to Mary—he felt as if he were listening to a threat rather than a
warning. When the Vicar began again there was a change in his tone like
the encouraging transition to a major key.
“But I had once meant better than that, and I am come back to my old
intention. I thought that I could hardly _secure myself_ in it better,
Fred, than by telling you just what had gone on in me. And now, do you
understand me? I want you to make the happiness of her life and your
own, and if there is any chance that a word of warning from me may turn
aside any risk to the contrary—well, I have uttered it.”
There was a drop in the Vicar’s voice when he spoke the last words. He
paused—they were standing on a patch of green where the road diverged
towards St. Botolph’s, and he put out his hand, as if to imply that the
conversation was closed. Fred was moved quite newly. Some one highly
susceptible to the contemplation of a fine act has said, that it
produces a sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and makes
one feel ready to begin a new life. A good degree of that effect was
just then present in Fred Vincy.
“I will try to be worthy,” he said, breaking off before he could say
“of you as well as of her.” And meanwhile Mr. Farebrother had gathered
the impulse to say something more.
“You must not imagine that I believe there is at present any decline in
her preference of you, Fred. Set your heart at rest, that if you keep
right, other things will keep right.”
“I shall never forget what you have done,” Fred answered. “I can’t say
anything that seems worth saying—only I will try that your goodness
shall not be thrown away.”
“That’s enough. Good-by, and God bless you.”
In that way they parted. But both of them walked about a long while
before they went out of the starlight. Much of Fred’s rumination might
be summed up in the words, “It certainly would have been a fine thing
for her to marry Farebrother—but if she loves me best and I am a good
husband?”
Perhaps Mr. Farebrother’s might be concentrated into a single shrug and
one little speech. “To think of the part one little woman can play in
the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitation
of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!”
CHAPTER LXVII.
Now is there civil war within the soul:
Resolve is thrust from off the sacred throne
By clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand-vizier
Makes humble compact, plays the supple part
Of envoy and deft-tongued apologist
For hungry rebels.
Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, and brought
away no encouragement to make a raid on luck. On the contrary, he felt
unmixed disgust with himself the next day when he had to pay four or
five pounds over and above his gains, and he carried about with him a
most unpleasant vision of the figure he had made, not only rubbing
elbows with the men at the Green Dragon but behaving just as they did.
A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly distinguishable from a
Philistine under the same circumstances: the difference will chiefly be
found in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a very
disagreeable cud in that way. His reason told him how the affair might
have been magnified into ruin by a slight change of scenery—if it had
been a gambling-house that he had turned into, where chance could be
clutched with both hands instead of being picked up with thumb and
fore-finger. Nevertheless, though reason strangled the desire to
gamble, there remained the feeling that, with an assurance of luck to
the needful amount, he would have liked to gamble, rather than take the
alternative which was beginning to urge itself as inevitable.
That alternative was to apply to Mr. Bulstrode. Lydgate had so many
times boasted both to himself and others that he was totally
independent of Bulstrode, to whose plans he had lent himself solely
because they enabled him to carry out his own ideas of professional
work and public benefit—he had so constantly in their personal
intercourse had his pride sustained by the sense that he was making a
good social use of this predominating banker, whose opinions he thought
contemptible and whose motives often seemed to him an absurd mixture of
contradictory impressions—that he had been creating for himself strong
ideal obstacles to the proffering of any considerable request to him on
his own account.
Still, early in March his affairs were at that pass in which men begin
to say that their oaths were delivered in ignorance, and to perceive
that the act which they had called impossible to them is becoming
manifestly possible. With Dover’s ugly security soon to be put in
force, with the proceeds of his practice immediately absorbed in paying
back debts, and with the chance, if the worst were known, of daily
supplies being refused on credit, above all with the vision of
Rosamond’s hopeless discontent continually haunting him, Lydgate had
begun to see that he should inevitably bend himself to ask help from
somebody or other. At first he had considered whether he should write
to Mr. Vincy; but on questioning Rosamond he found that, as he had
suspected, she had already applied twice to her father, the last time
being since the disappointment from Sir Godwin; and papa had said that
Lydgate must look out for himself. “Papa said he had come, with one bad
year after another, to trade more and more on borrowed capital, and had
had to give up many indulgences; he could not spare a single hundred
from the charges of his family. He said, let Lydgate ask Bulstrode:
they have always been hand and glove.”
Indeed, Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion that if he must end
by asking for a free loan, his relations with Bulstrode, more at least
than with any other man, might take the shape of a claim which was not
purely personal. Bulstrode had indirectly helped to cause the failure
of his practice, and had also been highly gratified by getting a
medical partner in his plans:—but who among us ever reduced himself to
the sort of dependence in which Lydgate now stood, without trying to
believe that he had claims which diminished the humiliation of asking?
It was true that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of
interest in Bulstrode about the Hospital; but his health had got worse,
and showed signs of a deep-seated nervous affection. In other respects
he did not appear to be changed: he had always been highly polite, but
Lydgate had observed in him from the first a marked coldness about his
marriage and other private circumstances, a coldness which he had