Middlemarch
Horrock—was evidently impressed with its merit. To get all the
advantage of being with men of this sort, you must know how to draw
your inferences, and not be a spoon who takes things literally. The
color of the horse was a dappled gray, and Fred happened to know that
Lord Medlicote’s man was on the look-out for just such a horse. After
all his running down, Bambridge let it out in the course of the
evening, when the farmer was absent, that he had seen worse horses go
for eighty pounds. Of course he contradicted himself twenty times over,
but when you know what is likely to be true you can test a man’s
admissions. And Fred could not but reckon his own judgment of a horse
as worth something. The farmer had paused over Fred’s respectable
though broken-winded steed long enough to show that he thought it worth
consideration, and it seemed probable that he would take it, with
five-and-twenty pounds in addition, as the equivalent of Diamond. In
that case Fred, when he had parted with his new horse for at least
eighty pounds, would be fifty-five pounds in pocket by the transaction,
and would have a hundred and thirty-five pounds towards meeting the
bill; so that the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at the
utmost be twenty-five pounds. By the time he was hurrying on his
clothes in the morning, he saw so clearly the importance of not losing
this rare chance, that if Bambridge and Horrock had both dissuaded him,
he would not have been deluded into a direct interpretation of their
purpose: he would have been aware that those deep hands held something
else than a young fellow’s interest. With regard to horses, distrust
was your only clew. But scepticism, as we know, can never be thoroughly
applied, else life would come to a standstill: something we must
believe in and do, and whatever that something may be called, it is
virtually our own judgment, even when it seems like the most slavish
reliance on another. Fred believed in the excellence of his bargain,
and even before the fair had well set in, had got possession of the
dappled gray, at the price of his old horse and thirty pounds in
addition—only five pounds more than he had expected to give.
But he felt a little worried and wearied, perhaps with mental debate,
and without waiting for the further gayeties of the horse-fair, he set
out alone on his fourteen miles’ journey, meaning to take it very
quietly and keep his horse fresh.
CHAPTER XXIV.
“The offender’s sorrow brings but small relief
To him who wears the strong offence’s cross.”
—SHAKESPEARE: _Sonnets_.
I am sorry to say that only the third day after the propitious events
at Houndsley Fred Vincy had fallen into worse spirits than he had known
in his life before. Not that he had been disappointed as to the
possible market for his horse, but that before the bargain could be
concluded with Lord Medlicote’s man, this Diamond, in which hope to the
amount of eighty pounds had been invested, had without the slightest
warning exhibited in the stable a most vicious energy in kicking, had
just missed killing the groom, and had ended in laming himself severely
by catching his leg in a rope that overhung the stable-board. There was
no more redress for this than for the discovery of bad temper after
marriage—which of course old companions were aware of before the
ceremony. For some reason or other, Fred had none of his usual
elasticity under this stroke of ill-fortune: he was simply aware that
he had only fifty pounds, that there was no chance of his getting any
more at present, and that the bill for a hundred and sixty would be
presented in five days. Even if he had applied to his father on the
plea that Mr. Garth should be saved from loss, Fred felt smartingly
that his father would angrily refuse to rescue Mr. Garth from the
consequence of what he would call encouraging extravagance and deceit.
He was so utterly downcast that he could frame no other project than to
go straight to Mr. Garth and tell him the sad truth, carrying with him
the fifty pounds, and getting that sum at least safely out of his own
hands. His father, being at the warehouse, did not yet know of the
accident: when he did, he would storm about the vicious brute being
brought into his stable; and before meeting that lesser annoyance Fred
wanted to get away with all his courage to face the greater. He took
his father’s nag, for he had made up his mind that when he had told Mr.
Garth, he would ride to Stone Court and confess all to Mary. In fact,
it is probable that but for Mary’s existence and Fred’s love for her,
his conscience would have been much less active both in previously
urging the debt on his thought and impelling him not to spare himself
after his usual fashion by deferring an unpleasant task, but to act as
directly and simply as he could. Even much stronger mortals than Fred
Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love
best. “The theatre of all my actions is fallen,” said an antique
personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who
get a theatre where the audience demands their best. Certainly it would
have made a considerable difference to Fred at that time if Mary Garth
had had no decided notions as to what was admirable in character.
Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which
was a little way outside the town—a homely place with an orchard in
front of it, a rambling, old-fashioned, half-timbered building, which
before the town had spread had been a farm-house, but was now
surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen. We get the fonder
of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends
have. The Garth family, which was rather a large one, for Mary had four
brothers and one sister, were very fond of their old house, from which
all the best furniture had long been sold. Fred liked it too, knowing
it by heart even to the attic which smelt deliciously of apples and
quinces, and until to-day he had never come to it without pleasant
expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now with the sense that he
should probably have to make his confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom
he was rather more in awe than of her husband. Not that she was
inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies, as Mary was. In her
present matronly age at least, Mrs. Garth never committed herself by
over-hasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth,
and learned self-control. She had that rare sense which discerns what
is unalterable, and submits to it without murmuring. Adoring her
husband’s virtues, she had very early made up her mind to his
incapacity of minding his own interests, and had met the consequences
cheerfully. She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all pride in
teapots or children’s frilling, and had never poured any pathetic
confidences into the ears of her feminine neighbors concerning Mr.
Garth’s want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been
like other men. Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or
eccentric, and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as “your fine
Mrs. Garth.” She was not without her criticism of them in return, being
more accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and—where
is the blameless woman?—apt to be a little severe towards her own sex,
which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate. On the
other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings
of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural. Also, it
must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in her
resistance to what she held to be follies: the passage from governess
into housewife had wrought itself a little too strongly into her
consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent
were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the family
dinner, and darned all the stockings. She had sometimes taken pupils in
a peripatetic fashion, making them follow her about in the kitchen with
their book or slate. She thought it good for them to see that she could
make an excellent lather while she corrected their blunders “without
looking,”—that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows
might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid Zone—that, in
short, she might possess “education” and other good things ending in
“tion,” and worthy to be pronounced emphatically, without being a
useless doll. When she made remarks to this edifying effect, she had a
firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not hinder her face from
looking benevolent, and her words which came forth like a procession
were uttered in a fervid agreeable contralto. Certainly, the exemplary
Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her character sustained her
oddities, as a very fine wine sustains a flavor of skin.
Towards Fred Vincy she had a motherly feeling, and had always been
disposed to excuse his errors, though she would probably not have
excused Mary for engaging herself to him, her daughter being included
in that more rigorous judgment which she applied to her own sex. But
this very fact of her exceptional indulgence towards him made it the
harder to Fred that he must now inevitably sink in her opinion. And the
circumstances of his visit turned out to be still more unpleasant than
he had expected; for Caleb Garth had gone out early to look at some
repairs not far off. Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in the
kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several occupations at
once there—making her pies at the well-scoured deal table on one side
of that airy room, observing Sally’s movements at the oven and
dough-tub through an open door, and giving lessons to her youngest boy
and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table with their
books and slates before them. A tub and a clothes-horse at the other
end of the kitchen indicated an intermittent wash of small things also
going on.
Mrs. Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling
her pastry—applying her rolling-pin and giving ornamental pinches,
while she expounded with grammatical fervor what were the right views
about the concord of verbs and pronouns with “nouns of multitude or
signifying many,” was a sight agreeably amusing. She was of the same
curly-haired, square-faced type as Mary, but handsomer, with more
delicacy of feature, a pale skin, a solid matronly figure, and a
remarkable firmness of glance. In her snowy-frilled cap she reminded
one of that delightful Frenchwoman whom we have all seen marketing,
basket on arm. Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter
would become like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a
dowry—the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a
malignant prophecy—“Such as I am, she will shortly be.”
“Now let us go through that once more,” said Mrs. Garth, pinching an
apple-puff which seemed to distract Ben, an energetic young male with a
heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson. “‘Not without regard to
the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea’—tell me
again what that means, Ben.”
(Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient
paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold her
“Lindley Murray” above the waves.)
“Oh—it means—you must think what you mean,” said Ben, rather peevishly.
“I hate grammar. What’s the use of it?”
“To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be
understood,” said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision. “Should you like
to speak as old Job does?”
“Yes,” said Ben, stoutly; “it’s funnier. He says, ‘Yo goo’—that’s just
as good as ‘You go.’”
“But he says, ‘A ship’s in the garden,’ instead of ‘a sheep,’” said