Middlemarch
Letty, with an air of superiority. “You might think he meant a ship off
the sea.”
“No, you mightn’t, if you weren’t silly,” said Ben. “How could a ship
off the sea come there?”
“These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of
grammar,” said Mrs. Garth. “That apple-peel is to be eaten by the pigs,
Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty. Job has only
to speak about very plain things. How do you think you would write or
speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of grammar
than he does? You would use wrong words, and put words in the wrong
places, and instead of making people understand you, they would turn
away from you as a tiresome person. What would you do then?”
“I shouldn’t care, I should leave off,” said Ben, with a sense that
this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.
“I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben,” said Mrs. Garth,
accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring.
Having finished her pies, she moved towards the clothes-horse, and
said, “Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday, about
Cincinnatus.”
“I know! he was a farmer,” said Ben.
“Now, Ben, he was a Roman—let _me_ tell,” said Letty, using her elbow
contentiously.
“You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing.”
“Yes, but before that—that didn’t come first—people wanted him,” said
Letty.
“Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first,” insisted Ben.
“He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his
advice. And he was a brave man, and could fight. And so could my
father—couldn’t he, mother?”
“Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,”
said Letty, frowning. “Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak.”
“Letty, I am ashamed of you,” said her mother, wringing out the caps
from the tub. “When your brother began, you ought to have waited to see
if he could not tell the story. How rude you look, pushing and
frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows! Cincinnatus, I
am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so.” (Mrs.
Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation,
and Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem,
that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a painful affair.) “Now,
Ben.”
“Well—oh—well—why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were
all blockheads, and—I can’t tell it just how you told it—but they
wanted a man to be captain and king and everything—”
“Dictator, now,” said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish
to make her mother repent.
“Very well, dictator!” said Ben, contemptuously. “But that isn’t a good
word: he didn’t tell them to write on slates.”
“Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that,” said Mrs. Garth,
carefully serious. “Hark, there is a knock at the door! Run, Letty, and
open it.”
The knock was Fred’s; and when Letty said that her father was not in
yet, but that her mother was in the kitchen, Fred had no alternative.
He could not depart from his usual practice of going to see Mrs. Garth
in the kitchen if she happened to be at work there. He put his arm
round Letty’s neck silently, and led her into the kitchen without his
usual jokes and caresses.
Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not
a feeling that she was given to express, and she only said, quietly
continuing her work—
“You, Fred, so early in the day? You look quite pale. Has anything
happened?”
“I want to speak to Mr. Garth,” said Fred, not yet ready to say
more—“and to you also,” he added, after a little pause, for he had no
doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the bill, and he must in
the end speak of it before her, if not to her solely.
“Caleb will be in again in a few minutes,” said Mrs. Garth, who
imagined some trouble between Fred and his father. “He is sure not to
be long, because he has some work at his desk that must be done this
morning. Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my matters here?”
“But we needn’t go on about Cincinnatus, need we?” said Ben, who had
taken Fred’s whip out of his hand, and was trying its efficiency on the
cat.
“No, go out now. But put that whip down. How very mean of you to whip
poor old Tortoise! Pray take the whip from him, Fred.”
“Come, old boy, give it me,” said Fred, putting out his hand.
“Will you let me ride on your horse to-day?” said Ben, rendering up the
whip, with an air of not being obliged to do it.
“Not to-day—another time. I am not riding my own horse.”
“Shall you see Mary to-day?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.
“Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun.”
“Enough, enough, Ben! run away,” said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred was
teased.
“Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?” said Fred, when
the children were gone and it was needful to say something that would
pass the time. He was not yet sure whether he should wait for Mr.
Garth, or use any good opportunity in conversation to confess to Mrs.
Garth herself, give her the money and ride away.
“One—only one. Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven. I am not
getting a great income now,” said Mrs. Garth, smiling. “I am at a low
ebb with pupils. But I have saved my little purse for Alfred’s premium:
I have ninety-two pounds. He can go to Mr. Hanmer’s now; he is just at
the right age.”
This did not lead well towards the news that Mr. Garth was on the brink
of losing ninety-two pounds and more. Fred was silent. “Young gentlemen
who go to college are rather more costly than that,” Mrs. Garth
innocently continued, pulling out the edging on a cap-border. “And
Caleb thinks that Alfred will turn out a distinguished engineer: he
wants to give the boy a good chance. There he is! I hear him coming in.
We will go to him in the parlor, shall we?”
When they entered the parlor Caleb had thrown down his hat and was
seated at his desk.
“What! Fred, my boy!” he said, in a tone of mild surprise, holding his
pen still undipped; “you are here betimes.” But missing the usual
expression of cheerful greeting in Fred’s face, he immediately added,
“Is there anything up at home?—anything the matter?”
“Yes, Mr. Garth, I am come to tell something that I am afraid will give
you a bad opinion of me. I am come to tell you and Mrs. Garth that I
can’t keep my word. I can’t find the money to meet the bill after all.
I have been unfortunate; I have only got these fifty pounds towards the
hundred and sixty.”
While Fred was speaking, he had taken out the notes and laid them on
the desk before Mr. Garth. He had burst forth at once with the plain
fact, feeling boyishly miserable and without verbal resources. Mrs.
Garth was mutely astonished, and looked at her husband for an
explanation. Caleb blushed, and after a little pause said—
“Oh, I didn’t tell you, Susan: I put my name to a bill for Fred; it was
for a hundred and sixty pounds. He made sure he could meet it himself.”
There was an evident change in Mrs. Garth’s face, but it was like a
change below the surface of water which remains smooth. She fixed her
eyes on Fred, saying—
“I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money and he
has refused you.”
“No,” said Fred, biting his lip, and speaking with more difficulty;
“but I know it will be of no use to ask him; and unless it were of use,
I should not like to mention Mr. Garth’s name in the matter.”
“It has come at an unfortunate time,” said Caleb, in his hesitating
way, looking down at the notes and nervously fingering the paper,
“Christmas upon us—I’m rather hard up just now. You see, I have to cut
out everything like a tailor with short measure. What can we do, Susan?
I shall want every farthing we have in the bank. It’s a hundred and ten
pounds, the deuce take it!”
“I must give you the ninety-two pounds that I have put by for Alfred’s
premium,” said Mrs. Garth, gravely and decisively, though a nice ear
might have discerned a slight tremor in some of the words. “And I have
no doubt that Mary has twenty pounds saved from her salary by this
time. She will advance it.”
Mrs. Garth had not again looked at Fred, and was not in the least
calculating what words she should use to cut him the most effectively.
Like the eccentric woman she was, she was at present absorbed in
considering what was to be done, and did not fancy that the end could
be better achieved by bitter remarks or explosions. But she had made
Fred feel for the first time something like the tooth of remorse.
Curiously enough, his pain in the affair beforehand had consisted
almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonorable, and sink
in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the
inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them,
for this exercise of the imagination on other people’s needs is not
common with hopeful young gentlemen. Indeed we are most of us brought
up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is
something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong. But at
this moment he suddenly saw himself as a pitiful rascal who was robbing
two women of their savings.
“I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth—ultimately,” he stammered
out.
“Yes, ultimately,” said Mrs. Garth, who having a special dislike to
fine words on ugly occasions, could not now repress an epigram. “But
boys cannot well be apprenticed ultimately: they should be apprenticed
at fifteen.” She had never been so little inclined to make excuses for
Fred.
“I was the most in the wrong, Susan,” said Caleb. “Fred made sure of
finding the money. But I’d no business to be fingering bills. I suppose
you have looked all round and tried all honest means?” he added, fixing
his merciful gray eyes on Fred. Caleb was too delicate to specify Mr.
Featherstone.
“Yes, I have tried everything—I really have. I should have had a
hundred and thirty pounds ready but for a misfortune with a horse which
I was about to sell. My uncle had given me eighty pounds, and I paid
away thirty with my old horse in order to get another which I was going
to sell for eighty or more—I meant to go without a horse—but now it has
turned out vicious and lamed itself. I wish I and the horses too had
been at the devil, before I had brought this on you. There’s no one
else I care so much for: you and Mrs. Garth have always been so kind to
me. However, it’s no use saying that. You will always think me a rascal
now.”
Fred turned round and hurried out of the room, conscious that he was
getting rather womanish, and feeling confusedly that his being sorry
was not of much use to the Garths. They could see him mount, and
quickly pass through the gate.
“I am disappointed in Fred Vincy,” said Mrs. Garth. “I would not have
believed beforehand that he would have drawn you into his debts. I knew
he was extravagant, but I did not think that he would be so mean as to
hang his risks on his oldest friend, who could the least afford to
lose.”
“I was a fool, Susan.”
“That you were,” said the wife, nodding and smiling. “But I should not
have gone to publish it in the market-place. Why should you keep such
things from me? It is just so with your buttons: you let them burst off
without telling me, and go out with your wristband hanging. If I had
only known I might have been ready with some better plan.”
“You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan,” said Caleb, looking feelingly at
her. “I can’t abide your losing the money you’ve scraped together for
Alfred.”
“It is very well that I _had_ scraped it together; and it is you who
will have to suffer, for you must teach the boy yourself. You must give