Middlemarch
“To a certain extent—with regard to populous districts, and in the
metropolis,” said the Doctor. “But I hope it will be long before this
part of the country loses the services of my friend Chichely, even
though it might get the best man in our profession to succeed him. I am
sure Vincy will agree with me.”
“Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good coursing man,” said Mr.
Vincy, jovially. “And in my opinion, you’re safest with a lawyer.
Nobody can know everything. Most things are ‘visitation of God.’ And as
to poisoning, why, what you want to know is the law. Come, shall we
join the ladies?”
Lydgate’s private opinion was that Mr. Chichely might be the very
coroner without bias as to the coats of the stomach, but he had not
meant to be personal. This was one of the difficulties of moving in
good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a
qualification for any salaried office. Fred Vincy had called Lydgate a
prig, and now Mr. Chichely was inclined to call him prick-eared;
especially when, in the drawing-room, he seemed to be making himself
eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily monopolized in a
_tête-à-tête_, since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the tea-table. She
resigned no domestic function to her daughter; and the matron’s
blooming good-natured face, with the two volatile pink strings floating
from her fine throat, and her cheery manners to husband and children,
was certainly among the great attractions of the Vincy
house—attractions which made it all the easier to fall in love with the
daughter. The tinge of unpretentious, inoffensive vulgarity in Mrs.
Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond’s refinement, which was beyond what
Lydgate had expected.
Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impression
of refined manners, and the right thing said seems quite astonishingly
right when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid.
And Rosamond could say the right thing; for she was clever with that
sort of cleverness which catches every tone except the humorous.
Happily she never attempted to joke, and this perhaps was the most
decisive mark of her cleverness.
She and Lydgate readily got into conversation. He regretted that he had
not heard her sing the other day at Stone Court. The only pleasure he
allowed himself during the latter part of his stay in Paris was to go
and hear music.
“You have studied music, probably?” said Rosamond.
“No, I know the notes of many birds, and I know many melodies by ear;
but the music that I don’t know at all, and have no notion about,
delights me—affects me. How stupid the world is that it does not make
more use of such a pleasure within its reach!”
“Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tuneless. There are hardly any
good musicians. I only know two gentlemen who sing at all well.”
“I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way,
leaving you to fancy the tune—very much as if it were tapped on a
drum?”
“Ah, you have heard Mr. Bowyer,” said Rosamond, with one of her rare
smiles. “But we are speaking very ill of our neighbors.”
Lydgate was almost forgetting that he must carry on the conversation,
in thinking how lovely this creature was, her garment seeming to be
made out of the faintest blue sky, herself so immaculately blond, as if
the petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and disclosed her;
and yet with this infantine blondness showing so much ready,
self-possessed grace. Since he had had the memory of Laure, Lydgate had
lost all taste for large-eyed silence: the divine cow no longer
attracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite. But he recalled
himself.
“You will let me hear some music to-night, I hope.”
“I will let you hear my attempts, if you like,” said Rosamond. “Papa is
sure to insist on my singing. But I shall tremble before you, who have
heard the best singers in Paris. I have heard very little: I have only
once been to London. But our organist at St. Peter’s is a good
musician, and I go on studying with him.”
“Tell me what you saw in London.”
“Very little.” (A more naive girl would have said, “Oh, everything!”
But Rosamond knew better.) “A few of the ordinary sights, such as raw
country girls are always taken to.”
“Do you call yourself a raw country girl?” said Lydgate, looking at her
with an involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blush
with pleasure. But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck a
little, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hair-plaits—an
habitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten’s paw.
Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph
caught young and educated at Mrs. Lemon’s.
“I assure you my mind is raw,” she said immediately; “I pass at
Middlemarch. I am not afraid of talking to our old neighbors. But I am
really afraid of you.”
“An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her
knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a
thousand things—as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were
any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language
between women and men, and so the bears can get taught.”
“Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him from
jarring all your nerves,” said Rosamond, moving to the other side of
the room, where Fred having opened the piano, at his father’s desire,
that Rosamond might give them some music, was parenthetically
performing “Cherry Ripe!” with one hand. Able men who have passed their
examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than the plucked
Fred.
“Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr.
Lydgate ill,” said Rosamond. “He has an ear.”
Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.
Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, “You perceive,
the bears will not always be taught.”
“Now then, Rosy!” said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it
upward for her, with a hearty expectation of enjoyment. “Some good
rousing tunes first.”
Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemon’s school (close to
a county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church
and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be
found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted
Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of
musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant’s instinct, had seized
his manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble
music with the precision of an echo. It was almost startling, heard for
the first time. A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from
Rosamond’s fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live on in
perpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there goes somewhere an
originating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter. Lydgate was
taken possession of, and began to believe in her as something
exceptional. After all, he thought, one need not be surprised to find
the rare conjunctions of nature under circumstances apparently
unfavorable: come where they may, they always depend on conditions that
are not obvious. He sat looking at her, and did not rise to pay her any
compliments, leaving that to others, now that his admiration was
deepened.
Her singing was less remarkable, but also well trained, and sweet to
hear as a chime perfectly in tune. It is true she sang “Meet me by
moonlight,” and “I’ve been roaming”; for mortals must share the
fashions of their time, and none but the ancients can be always
classical. But Rosamond could also sing “Black-eyed Susan” with effect,
or Haydn’s canzonets, or “Voi, che sapete,” or “Batti, batti”—she only
wanted to know what her audience liked.
Her father looked round at the company, delighting in their admiration.
Her mother sat, like a Niobe before her troubles, with her youngest
little girl on her lap, softly beating the child’s hand up and down in
time to the music. And Fred, notwithstanding his general scepticism
about Rosy, listened to her music with perfect allegiance, wishing he
could do the same thing on his flute. It was the pleasantest family
party that Lydgate had seen since he came to Middlemarch. The Vincys
had the readiness to enjoy, the rejection of all anxiety, and the
belief in life as a merry lot, which made a house exceptional in most
county towns at that time, when Evangelicalism had cast a certain
suspicion as of plague-infection over the few amusements which survived
in the provinces. At the Vincys’ there was always whist, and the
card-tables stood ready now, making some of the company secretly
impatient of the music. Before it ceased Mr. Farebrother came in—a
handsome, broad-chested but otherwise small man, about forty, whose
black was very threadbare: the brilliancy was all in his quick gray
eyes. He came like a pleasant change in the light, arresting little
Louisa with fatherly nonsense as she was being led out of the room by
Miss Morgan, greeting everybody with some special word, and seeming to
condense more talk into ten minutes than had been held all through the
evening. He claimed from Lydgate the fulfilment of a promise to come
and see him. “I can’t let you off, you know, because I have some
beetles to show you. We collectors feel an interest in every new man
till he has seen all we have to show him.”
But soon he swerved to the whist-table, rubbing his hands and saying,
“Come now, let us be serious! Mr. Lydgate? not play? Ah! you are too
young and light for this kind of thing.”
Lydgate said to himself that the clergyman whose abilities were so
painful to Mr. Bulstrode, appeared to have found an agreeable resort in
this certainly not erudite household. He could half understand it: the
good-humor, the good looks of elder and younger, and the provision for
passing the time without any labor of intelligence, might make the
house beguiling to people who had no particular use for their odd
hours.
Everything looked blooming and joyous except Miss Morgan, who was
brown, dull, and resigned, and altogether, as Mrs. Vincy often said,
just the sort of person for a governess. Lydgate did not mean to pay
many such visits himself. They were a wretched waste of the evenings;
and now, when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant to
excuse himself and go.
“You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure,” she said, when the
whist-players were settled. “We are very stupid, and you have been used
to something quite different.”
“I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike,” said Lydgate. “But
I have noticed that one always believes one’s own town to be more
stupid than any other. I have made up my mind to take Middlemarch as it
comes, and shall be much obliged if the town will take me in the same
way. I have certainly found some charms in it which are much greater
than I had expected.”
“You mean the rides towards Tipton and Lowick; every one is pleased
with those,” said Rosamond, with simplicity.
“No, I mean something much nearer to me.”
Rosamond rose and reached her netting, and then said, “Do you care
about dancing at all? I am not quite sure whether clever men ever
dance.”
“I would dance with you if you would allow me.”
“Oh!” said Rosamond, with a slight deprecatory laugh. “I was only going
to say that we sometimes have dancing, and I wanted to know whether you
would feel insulted if you were asked to come.”
“Not on the condition I mentioned.”
After this chat Lydgate thought that he was going, but on moving
towards the whist-tables, he got interested in watching Mr.
Farebrother’s play, which was masterly, and also his face, which was a
striking mixture of the shrewd and the mild. At ten o’clock supper was
brought in (such were the customs of Middlemarch) and there was