Middlemarch
“is that Mr. Farebrother’s attendance at the hospital should be
superseded by the appointment of a chaplain—of Mr. Tyke, in fact—and
that no other spiritual aid should be called in.”
“As a medical man I could have no opinion on such a point unless I knew
Mr. Tyke, and even then I should require to know the cases in which he
was applied.” Lydgate smiled, but he was bent on being circumspect.
“Of course you cannot enter fully into the merits of this measure at
present. But”—here Mr. Bulstrode began to speak with a more chiselled
emphasis—“the subject is likely to be referred to the medical board of
the infirmary, and what I trust I may ask of you is, that in virtue of
the cooperation between us which I now look forward to, you will not,
so far as you are concerned, be influenced by my opponents in this
matter.”
“I hope I shall have nothing to do with clerical disputes,” said
Lydgate. “The path I have chosen is to work well in my own profession.”
“My responsibility, Mr. Lydgate, is of a broader kind. With me, indeed,
this question is one of sacred accountableness; whereas with my
opponents, I have good reason to say that it is an occasion for
gratifying a spirit of worldly opposition. But I shall not therefore
drop one iota of my convictions, or cease to identify myself with that
truth which an evil generation hates. I have devoted myself to this
object of hospital-improvement, but I will boldly confess to you, Mr.
Lydgate, that I should have no interest in hospitals if I believed that
nothing more was concerned therein than the cure of mortal diseases. I
have another ground of action, and in the face of persecution I will
not conceal it.”
Mr. Bulstrode’s voice had become a loud and agitated whisper as he said
the last words.
“There we certainly differ,” said Lydgate. But he was not sorry that
the door was now opened, and Mr. Vincy was announced. That florid
sociable personage was become more interesting to him since he had seen
Rosamond. Not that, like her, he had been weaving any future in which
their lots were united; but a man naturally remembers a charming girl
with pleasure, and is willing to dine where he may see her again.
Before he took leave, Mr. Vincy had given that invitation which he had
been “in no hurry about,” for Rosamond at breakfast had mentioned that
she thought her uncle Featherstone had taken the new doctor into great
favor.
Mr. Bulstrode, alone with his brother-in-law, poured himself out a
glass of water, and opened a sandwich-box.
“I cannot persuade you to adopt my regimen, Vincy?”
“No, no; I’ve no opinion of that system. Life wants padding,” said Mr.
Vincy, unable to omit his portable theory. “However,” he went on,
accenting the word, as if to dismiss all irrelevance, “what I came here
to talk about was a little affair of my young scapegrace, Fred’s.”
“That is a subject on which you and I are likely to take quite as
different views as on diet, Vincy.”
“I hope not this time.” (Mr. Vincy was resolved to be good-humored.)
“The fact is, it’s about a whim of old Featherstone’s. Somebody has
been cooking up a story out of spite, and telling it to the old man, to
try to set him against Fred. He’s very fond of Fred, and is likely to
do something handsome for him; indeed he has as good as told Fred that
he means to leave him his land, and that makes other people jealous.”
“Vincy, I must repeat, that you will not get any concurrence from me as
to the course you have pursued with your eldest son. It was entirely
from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church: with a family
of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting
money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in
giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the
consequences.”
To point out other people’s errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely
shrank from, but Mr. Vincy was not equally prepared to be patient. When
a man has the immediate prospect of being mayor, and is ready, in the
interests of commerce, to take up a firm attitude on politics
generally, he has naturally a sense of his importance to the framework
of things which seems to throw questions of private conduct into the
background. And this particular reproof irritated him more than any
other. It was eminently superfluous to him to be told that he was
reaping the consequences. But he felt his neck under Bulstrode’s yoke;
and though he usually enjoyed kicking, he was anxious to refrain from
that relief.
“As to that, Bulstrode, it’s no use going back. I’m not one of your
pattern men, and I don’t pretend to be. I couldn’t foresee everything
in the trade; there wasn’t a finer business in Middlemarch than ours,
and the lad was clever. My poor brother was in the Church, and would
have done well—had got preferment already, but that stomach fever took
him off: else he might have been a dean by this time. I think I was
justified in what I tried to do for Fred. If you come to religion, it
seems to me a man shouldn’t want to carve out his meat to an ounce
beforehand:—one must trust a little to Providence and be generous. It’s
a good British feeling to try and raise your family a little: in my
opinion, it’s a father’s duty to give his sons a fine chance.”
“I don’t wish to act otherwise than as your best friend, Vincy, when I
say that what you have been uttering just now is one mass of
worldliness and inconsistent folly.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Vincy, kicking in spite of resolutions, “I never
professed to be anything but worldly; and, what’s more, I don’t see
anybody else who is not worldly. I suppose you don’t conduct business
on what you call unworldly principles. The only difference I see is
that one worldliness is a little bit honester than another.”
“This kind of discussion is unfruitful, Vincy,” said Mr. Bulstrode,
who, finishing his sandwich, had thrown himself back in his chair, and
shaded his eyes as if weary. “You had some more particular business.”
“Yes, yes. The long and short of it is, somebody has told old
Featherstone, giving you as the authority, that Fred has been borrowing
or trying to borrow money on the prospect of his land. Of course you
never said any such nonsense. But the old fellow will insist on it that
Fred should bring him a denial in your handwriting; that is, just a bit
of a note saying you don’t believe a word of such stuff, either of his
having borrowed or tried to borrow in such a fool’s way. I suppose you
can have no objection to do that.”
“Pardon me. I have an objection. I am by no means sure that your son,
in his recklessness and ignorance—I will use no severer word—has not
tried to raise money by holding out his future prospects, or even that
some one may not have been foolish enough to supply him on so vague a
presumption: there is plenty of such lax money-lending as of other
folly in the world.”
“But Fred gives me his honor that he has never borrowed money on the
pretence of any understanding about his uncle’s land. He is not a liar.
I don’t want to make him better than he is. I have blown him up
well—nobody can say I wink at what he does. But he is not a liar. And I
should have thought—but I may be wrong—that there was no religion to
hinder a man from believing the best of a young fellow, when you don’t
know worse. It seems to me it would be a poor sort of religion to put a
spoke in his wheel by refusing to say you don’t believe such harm of
him as you’ve got no good reason to believe.”
“I am not at all sure that I should be befriending your son by
smoothing his way to the future possession of Featherstone’s property.
I cannot regard wealth as a blessing to those who use it simply as a
harvest for this world. You do not like to hear these things, Vincy,
but on this occasion I feel called upon to tell you that I have no
motive for furthering such a disposition of property as that which you
refer to. I do not shrink from saying that it will not tend to your
son’s eternal welfare or to the glory of God. Why then should you
expect me to pen this kind of affidavit, which has no object but to
keep up a foolish partiality and secure a foolish bequest?”
“If you mean to hinder everybody from having money but saints and
evangelists, you must give up some profitable partnerships, that’s all
I can say,” Mr. Vincy burst out very bluntly. “It may be for the glory
of God, but it is not for the glory of the Middlemarch trade, that
Plymdale’s house uses those blue and green dyes it gets from the
Brassing manufactory; they rot the silk, that’s all I know about it.
Perhaps if other people knew so much of the profit went to the glory of
God, they might like it better. But I don’t mind so much about that—I
could get up a pretty row, if I chose.”
Mr. Bulstrode paused a little before he answered. “You pain me very
much by speaking in this way, Vincy. I do not expect you to understand
my grounds of action—it is not an easy thing even to thread a path for
principles in the intricacies of the world—still less to make the
thread clear for the careless and the scoffing. You must remember, if
you please, that I stretch my tolerance towards you as my wife’s
brother, and that it little becomes you to complain of me as
withholding material help towards the worldly position of your family.
I must remind you that it is not your own prudence or judgment that has
enabled you to keep your place in the trade.”
“Very likely not; but you have been no loser by my trade yet,” said Mr.
Vincy, thoroughly nettled (a result which was seldom much retarded by
previous resolutions). “And when you married Harriet, I don’t see how
you could expect that our families should not hang by the same nail. If
you’ve changed your mind, and want my family to come down in the world,
you’d better say so. I’ve never changed; I’m a plain Churchman now,
just as I used to be before doctrines came up. I take the world as I
find it, in trade and everything else. I’m contented to be no worse
than my neighbors. But if you want us to come down in the world, say
so. I shall know better what to do then.”
“You talk unreasonably. Shall you come down in the world for want of
this letter about your son?”
“Well, whether or not, I consider it very unhandsome of you to refuse
it. Such doings may be lined with religion, but outside they have a
nasty, dog-in-the-manger look. You might as well slander Fred: it comes
pretty near to it when you refuse to say you didn’t set a slander
going. It’s this sort of thing—this tyrannical spirit, wanting to play
bishop and banker everywhere—it’s this sort of thing makes a man’s name
stink.”
“Vincy, if you insist on quarrelling with me, it will be exceedingly
painful to Harriet as well as myself,” said Mr. Bulstrode, with a
trifle more eagerness and paleness than usual.
“I don’t want to quarrel. It’s for my interest—and perhaps for yours
too—that we should be friends. I bear you no grudge; I think no worse
of you than I do of other people. A man who half starves himself, and
goes the length in family prayers, and so on, that you do, believes in
his religion whatever it may be: you could turn over your capital just
as fast with cursing and swearing:—plenty of fellows do. You like to be
master, there’s no denying that; you must be first chop in heaven, else
you won’t like it much. But you’re my sister’s husband, and we ought to
stick together; and if I know Harriet, she’ll consider it your fault if
we quarrel because you strain at a gnat in this way, and refuse to do
Fred a good turn. And I don’t mean to say I shall bear it well. I
consider it unhandsome.”
Mr. Vincy rose, began to button his great-coat, and looked steadily at
his brother-in-law, meaning to imply a demand for a decisive answer.