Middlemarch
Mary saw Fred at the orchard-gate, and went to meet him.
“What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant youth!” said Mary, as Fred
stood still and raised his hat to her with playful formality. “You are
not learning economy.”
“Now that is too bad, Mary,” said Fred. “Just look at the edges of
these coat-cuffs! It is only by dint of good brushing that I look
respectable. I am saving up three suits—one for a wedding-suit.”
“How very droll you will look!—like a gentleman in an old
fashion-book.”
“Oh no, they will keep two years.”
“Two years! be reasonable, Fred,” said Mary, turning to walk. “Don’t
encourage flattering expectations.”
“Why not? One lives on them better than on unflattering ones. If we
can’t be married in two years, the truth will be quite bad enough when
it comes.”
“I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged
flattering expectations, and they did him harm.”
“Mary, if you’ve got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt; I
shall go into the house to Mr. Garth. I am out of spirits. My father is
so cut up—home is not like itself. I can’t bear any more bad news.”
“Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live at Stone
Court, and manage the farm, and be remarkably prudent, and save money
every year till all the stock and furniture were your own, and you were
a distinguished agricultural character, as Mr. Borthrop Trumbull
says—rather stout, I fear, and with the Greek and Latin sadly
weather-worn?”
“You don’t mean anything except nonsense, Mary?” said Fred, coloring
slightly nevertheless.
“That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen, and he
never talks nonsense,” said Mary, looking up at Fred now, while he
grasped her hand as they walked, till it rather hurt her; but she would
not complain.
“Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could be
married directly.”
“Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer our
marriage for some years? That would leave you time to misbehave, and
then if I liked some one else better, I should have an excuse for
jilting you.”
“Pray don’t joke, Mary,” said Fred, with strong feeling. “Tell me
seriously that all this is true, and that you are happy because of
it—because you love me best.”
“It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it—because I love you
best,” said Mary, in a tone of obedient recitation.
They lingered on the door-step under the steep-roofed porch, and Fred
almost in a whisper said—
“When we were first engaged, with the umbrella-ring, Mary, you used
to—”
The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary’s eyes, but the
fatal Ben came running to the door with Brownie yapping behind him,
and, bouncing against them, said—
“Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in?—or may I eat your cake?”
FINALE.
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young
lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know
what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life,
however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be
kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers
may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand
retrieval.
Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a
great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in
Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of
the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic—the gradual
conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the
advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in
common.
Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope
and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each
other and the world.
All who have cared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that
these two made no such failure, but achieved a solid mutual happiness.
Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways. He became rather
distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic and practical
farmer, and produced a work on the “Cultivation of Green Crops and the
Economy of Cattle-Feeding” which won him high congratulations at
agricultural meetings. In Middlemarch admiration was more reserved:
most persons there were inclined to believe that the merit of Fred’s
authorship was due to his wife, since they had never expected Fred
Vincy to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.
But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called “Stories of
Great Men, taken from Plutarch,” and had it printed and published by
Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing to give the
credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been to the
University, “where the ancients were studied,” and might have been a
clergyman if he had chosen.
In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived,
and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since
it was always done by somebody else.
Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady. Some years after his
marriage he told Mary that his happiness was half owing to Farebrother,
who gave him a strong pull-up at the right moment. I cannot say that he
was never again misled by his hopefulness: the yield of crops or the
profits of a cattle sale usually fell below his estimate; and he was
always prone to believe that he could make money by the purchase of a
horse which turned out badly—though this, Mary observed, was of course
the fault of the horse, not of Fred’s judgment. He kept his love of
horsemanship, but he rarely allowed himself a day’s hunting; and when
he did so, it was remarkable that he submitted to be laughed at for
cowardliness at the fences, seeming to see Mary and the boys sitting on
the five-barred gate, or showing their curly heads between hedge and
ditch.
There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought forth
men-children only; and when Fred wished to have a girl like her, she
said, laughingly, “that would be too great a trial to your mother.”
Mrs. Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished lustre of her
housekeeping, was much comforted by her perception that two at least of
Fred’s boys were real Vincys, and did not “feature the Garths.” But
Mary secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three was very much
what her father must have been when he wore a round jacket, and showed
a marvellous nicety of aim in playing at marbles, or in throwing stones
to bring down the mellow pears.
Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well in
their teens, disputed much as to whether nephews or nieces were more
desirable; Ben contending that it was clear girls were good for less
than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats, which showed
how little they were meant for; whereupon Letty, who argued much from
books, got angry in replying that God made coats of skins for both Adam
and Eve alike—also it occurred to her that in the East the men too wore
petticoats. But this latter argument, obscuring the majesty of the
former, was one too many, for Ben answered contemptuously, “The more
spooneys they!” and immediately appealed to his mother whether boys
were not better than girls. Mrs. Garth pronounced that both were alike
naughty, but that boys were undoubtedly stronger, could run faster, and
throw with more precision to a greater distance. With this oracular
sentence Ben was well satisfied, not minding the naughtiness; but Letty
took it ill, her feeling of superiority being stronger than her
muscles.
Fred never became rich—his hopefulness had not led him to expect that;
but he gradually saved enough to become owner of the stock and
furniture at Stone Court, and the work which Mr. Garth put into his
hands carried him in plenty through those “bad times” which are always
present with farmers. Mary, in her matronly days, became as solid in
figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little formal
teaching, so that Mrs. Garth was alarmed lest they should never be well
grounded in grammar and geography. Nevertheless, they were found quite
forward enough when they went to school; perhaps, because they had
liked nothing so well as being with their mother. When Fred was riding
home on winter evenings he had a pleasant vision beforehand of the
bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor, and was sorry for other men who
could not have Mary for their wife; especially for Mr. Farebrother. “He
was ten times worthier of you than I was,” Fred could now say to her,
magnanimously. “To be sure he was,” Mary answered; “and for that reason
he could do better without me. But you—I shudder to think what you
would have been—a curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric
pocket-handkerchiefs!”
On inquiry it might possibly be found that Fred and Mary still inhabit
Stone Court—that the creeping plants still cast the foam of their
blossoms over the fine stone-wall into the field where the walnut-trees
stand in stately row—and that on sunny days the two lovers who were
first engaged with the umbrella-ring may be seen in white-haired
placidity at the open window from which Mary Garth, in the days of old
Peter Featherstone, had often been ordered to look out for Mr. Lydgate.
Lydgate’s hair never became white. He died when he was only fifty,
leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance on his
life. He had gained an excellent practice, alternating, according to
the season, between London and a Continental bathing-place; having
written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal of wealth
on its side. His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he
always regarded himself as a failure: he had not done what he once
meant to do. His acquaintances thought him enviable to have so charming
a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion. Rosamond never
committed a second compromising indiscretion. She simply continued to
be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment, disposed to admonish
her husband, and able to frustrate him by stratagem. As the years went
on he opposed her less and less, whence Rosamond concluded that he had
learned the value of her opinion; on the other hand, she had a more
thorough conviction of his talents now that he gained a good income,
and instead of the threatened cage in Bride Street provided one all
flowers and gilding, fit for the bird of paradise that she resembled.
In brief, Lydgate was what is called a successful man. But he died
prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond afterwards married an elderly
and wealthy physician, who took kindly to her four children. She made a
very pretty show with her daughters, driving out in her carriage, and
often spoke of her happiness as “a reward”—she did not say for what,
but probably she meant that it was a reward for her patience with
Tertius, whose temper never became faultless, and to the last
occasionally let slip a bitter speech which was more memorable than the
signs he made of his repentance. He once called her his basil plant;
and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant
which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man’s brains. Rosamond
had a placid but strong answer to such speeches. Why then had he chosen
her? It was a pity he had not had Mrs. Ladislaw, whom he was always
praising and placing above her. And thus the conversation ended with
the advantage on Rosamond’s side. But it would be unjust not to tell,
that she never uttered a word in depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in
religious remembrance the generosity which had come to her aid in the
sharpest crisis of her life.
Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women,