Middlemarch
the women of our family; but the Featherstones have always had some
money, and the Waules too. Waule had money too. A warm man was Waule.
Ay, ay; money’s a good egg; and if you’ve got money to leave behind
you, lay it in a warm nest. Good-by, Mrs. Waule.” Here Mr. Featherstone
pulled at both sides of his wig as if he wanted to deafen himself, and
his sister went away ruminating on this oracular speech of his.
Notwithstanding her jealousy of the Vincys and of Mary Garth, there
remained as the nethermost sediment in her mental shallows a persuasion
that her brother Peter Featherstone could never leave his chief
property away from his blood-relations:—else, why had the Almighty
carried off his two wives both childless, after he had gained so much
by manganese and things, turning up when nobody expected it?—and why
was there a Lowick parish church, and the Waules and Powderells all
sitting in the same pew for generations, and the Featherstone pew next
to them, if, the Sunday after her brother Peter’s death, everybody was
to know that the property was gone out of the family? The human mind
has at no period accepted a moral chaos; and so preposterous a result
was not strictly conceivable. But we are frightened at much that is not
strictly conceivable.
When Fred came in the old man eyed him with a peculiar twinkle, which
the younger had often had reason to interpret as pride in the
satisfactory details of his appearance.
“You two misses go away,” said Mr. Featherstone. “I want to speak to
Fred.”
“Come into my room, Rosamond, you will not mind the cold for a little
while,” said Mary. The two girls had not only known each other in
childhood, but had been at the same provincial school together (Mary as
an articled pupil), so that they had many memories in common, and liked
very well to talk in private. Indeed, this _tête-à-tête_ was one of
Rosamond’s objects in coming to Stone Court.
Old Featherstone would not begin the dialogue till the door had been
closed. He continued to look at Fred with the same twinkle and with one
of his habitual grimaces, alternately screwing and widening his mouth;
and when he spoke, it was in a low tone, which might be taken for that
of an informer ready to be bought off, rather than for the tone of an
offended senior. He was not a man to feel any strong moral indignation
even on account of trespasses against himself. It was natural that
others should want to get an advantage over him, but then, he was a
little too cunning for them.
“So, sir, you’ve been paying ten per cent for money which you’ve
promised to pay off by mortgaging my land when I’m dead and gone, eh?
You put my life at a twelvemonth, say. But I can alter my will yet.”
Fred blushed. He had not borrowed money in that way, for excellent
reasons. But he was conscious of having spoken with some confidence
(perhaps with more than he exactly remembered) about his prospect of
getting Featherstone’s land as a future means of paying present debts.
“I don’t know what you refer to, sir. I have certainly never borrowed
any money on such an insecurity. Please do explain.”
“No, sir, it’s you must explain. I can alter my will yet, let me tell
you. I’m of sound mind—can reckon compound interest in my head, and
remember every fool’s name as well as I could twenty years ago. What
the deuce? I’m under eighty. I say, you must contradict this story.”
“I have contradicted it, sir,” Fred answered, with a touch of
impatience, not remembering that his uncle did not verbally
discriminate contradicting from disproving, though no one was further
from confounding the two ideas than old Featherstone, who often
wondered that so many fools took his own assertions for proofs. “But I
contradict it again. The story is a silly lie.”
“Nonsense! you must bring dockiments. It comes from authority.”
“Name the authority, and make him name the man of whom I borrowed the
money, and then I can disprove the story.”
“It’s pretty good authority, I think—a man who knows most of what goes
on in Middlemarch. It’s that fine, religious, charitable uncle o’
yours. Come now!” Here Mr. Featherstone had his peculiar inward shake
which signified merriment.
“Mr. Bulstrode?”
“Who else, eh?”
“Then the story has grown into this lie out of some sermonizing words
he may have let fall about me. Do they pretend that he named the man
who lent me the money?”
“If there is such a man, depend upon it Bulstrode knows him. But,
supposing you only tried to get the money lent, and didn’t get
it—Bulstrode ’ud know that too. You bring me a writing from Bulstrode
to say he doesn’t believe you’ve ever promised to pay your debts out o’
my land. Come now!”
Mr. Featherstone’s face required its whole scale of grimaces as a
muscular outlet to his silent triumph in the soundness of his
faculties.
Fred felt himself to be in a disgusting dilemma.
“You must be joking, sir. Mr. Bulstrode, like other men, believes
scores of things that are not true, and he has a prejudice against me.
I could easily get him to write that he knew no facts in proof of the
report you speak of, though it might lead to unpleasantness. But I
could hardly ask him to write down what he believes or does not believe
about me.” Fred paused an instant, and then added, in politic appeal to
his uncle’s vanity, “That is hardly a thing for a gentleman to ask.”
But he was disappointed in the result.
“Ay, I know what you mean. You’d sooner offend me than Bulstrode. And
what’s he?—he’s got no land hereabout that ever I heard tell of. A
speckilating fellow! He may come down any day, when the devil leaves
off backing him. And that’s what his religion means: he wants God
A’mighty to come in. That’s nonsense! There’s one thing I made out
pretty clear when I used to go to church—and it’s this: God A’mighty
sticks to the land. He promises land, and He gives land, and He makes
chaps rich with corn and cattle. But you take the other side. You like
Bulstrode and speckilation better than Featherstone and land.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Fred, rising, standing with his back to
the fire and beating his boot with his whip. “I like neither Bulstrode
nor speculation.” He spoke rather sulkily, feeling himself stalemated.
“Well, well, you can do without me, that’s pretty clear,” said old
Featherstone, secretly disliking the possibility that Fred would show
himself at all independent. “You neither want a bit of land to make a
squire of you instead of a starving parson, nor a lift of a hundred
pound by the way. It’s all one to me. I can make five codicils if I
like, and I shall keep my bank-notes for a nest-egg. It’s all one to
me.”
Fred colored again. Featherstone had rarely given him presents of
money, and at this moment it seemed almost harder to part with the
immediate prospect of bank-notes than with the more distant prospect of
the land.
“I am not ungrateful, sir. I never meant to show disregard for any kind
intentions you might have towards me. On the contrary.”
“Very good. Then prove it. You bring me a letter from Bulstrode saying
he doesn’t believe you’ve been cracking and promising to pay your debts
out o’ my land, and then, if there’s any scrape you’ve got into, we’ll
see if I can’t back you a bit. Come now! That’s a bargain. Here, give
me your arm. I’ll try and walk round the room.”
Fred, in spite of his irritation, had kindness enough in him to be a
little sorry for the unloved, unvenerated old man, who with his
dropsical legs looked more than usually pitiable in walking. While
giving his arm, he thought that he should not himself like to be an old
fellow with his constitution breaking up; and he waited
good-temperedly, first before the window to hear the wonted remarks
about the guinea-fowls and the weather-cock, and then before the scanty
book-shelves, of which the chief glories in dark calf were Josephus,
Culpepper, Klopstock’s “Messiah,” and several volumes of the
“Gentleman’s Magazine.”
“Read me the names o’ the books. Come now! you’re a college man.”
Fred gave him the titles.
“What did missy want with more books? What must you be bringing her
more books for?”
“They amuse her, sir. She is very fond of reading.”
“A little too fond,” said Mr. Featherstone, captiously. “She was for
reading when she sat with me. But I put a stop to that. She’s got the
newspaper to read out loud. That’s enough for one day, I should think.
I can’t abide to see her reading to herself. You mind and not bring her
any more books, do you hear?”
“Yes, sir, I hear.” Fred had received this order before, and had
secretly disobeyed it. He intended to disobey it again.
“Ring the bell,” said Mr. Featherstone; “I want missy to come down.”
Rosamond and Mary had been talking faster than their male friends. They
did not think of sitting down, but stood at the toilet-table near the
window while Rosamond took off her hat, adjusted her veil, and applied
little touches of her finger-tips to her hair—hair of infantine
fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow. Mary Garth seemed all the plainer
standing at an angle between the two nymphs—the one in the glass, and
the one out of it, who looked at each other with eyes of heavenly blue,
deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an ingenious beholder
could put into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner
if these should happen to be less exquisite. Only a few children in
Middlemarch looked blond by the side of Rosamond, and the slim figure
displayed by her riding-habit had delicate undulations. In fact, most
men in Middlemarch, except her brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the
best girl in the world, and some called her an angel. Mary Garth, on
the contrary, had the aspect of an ordinary sinner: she was brown; her
curly dark hair was rough and stubborn; her stature was low; and it
would not be true to declare, in satisfactory antithesis, that she had
all the virtues. Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite
as much as beauty; it is apt either to feign amiability, or, not
feigning it, to show all the repulsiveness of discontent: at any rate,
to be called an ugly thing in contrast with that lovely creature your
companion, is apt to produce some effect beyond a sense of fine
veracity and fitness in the phrase. At the age of two-and-twenty Mary
had certainly not attained that perfect good sense and good principle
which are usually recommended to the less fortunate girl, as if they
were to be obtained in quantities ready mixed, with a flavor of
resignation as required. Her shrewdness had a streak of satiric
bitterness continually renewed and never carried utterly out of sight,
except by a strong current of gratitude towards those who, instead of
telling her that she ought to be contented, did something to make her
so. Advancing womanhood had tempered her plainness, which was of a good
human sort, such as the mothers of our race have very commonly worn in
all latitudes under a more or less becoming headgear. Rembrandt would
have painted her with pleasure, and would have made her broad features
look out of the canvas with intelligent honesty. For honesty,
truth-telling fairness, was Mary’s reigning virtue: she neither tried
to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when
she was in a good mood she had humor enough in her to laugh at herself.
When she and Rosamond happened both to be reflected in the glass, she
said, laughingly—
“What a brown patch I am by the side of you, Rosy! You are the most
unbecoming companion.”
“Oh no! No one thinks of your appearance, you are so sensible and
useful, Mary. Beauty is of very little consequence in reality,” said
Rosamond, turning her head towards Mary, but with eyes swerving towards
the new view of her neck in the glass.