Middlemarch
up your bad habits. Some men take to drinking, and you have taken to
working without pay. You must indulge yourself a little less in that.
And you must ride over to Mary, and ask the child what money she has.”
Caleb had pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his
head slowly, and fitting his finger-tips together with much nicety.
“Poor Mary!” he said. “Susan,” he went on in a lowered tone, “I’m
afraid she may be fond of Fred.”
“Oh no! She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think of her
in any other than a brotherly way.”
Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up
his chair to the desk, and said, “Deuce take the bill—I wish it was at
Hanover! These things are a sad interruption to business!”
The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory
expression, and was uttered with a slight snarl easy to imagine. But it
would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the
word “business,” the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious
regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in
its gold-fringed linen.
Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the
indispensable might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by which
the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of his
imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof or
keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of the
furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to
him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating
star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the
wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of
muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out,—all these
sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of the
poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers, a
religion without the aid of theology. His early ambition had been to
have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was
peculiarly dignified by him with the name of “business;” and though he
had only been a short time under a surveyor, and had been chiefly his
own teacher, he knew more of land, building, and mining than most of
the special men in the county.
His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the
categories of more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these
advanced times. He divided them into “business, politics, preaching,
learning, and amusement.” He had nothing to say against the last four;
but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than
his own. In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he
would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such
close contact with “business” as to get often honorably decorated with
marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of
the woods and fields. Though he had never regarded himself as other
than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the
subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good
practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of
undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. But there was
no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to him
that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number of
firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best
land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring
(for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical
intelligence. But he could not manage finance: he knew values well, but
he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape of
profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he determined
to give up all forms of his beloved “business” which required that
talent. He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of work which he
could do without handling capital, and was one of those precious men
within his own district whom everybody would choose to work for them,
because he did his work well, charged very little, and often declined
to charge at all. It is no wonder, then, that the Garths were poor, and
“lived in a small way.” However, they did not mind it.
CHAPTER XXV.
“Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care
But for another gives its ease
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.
. . . . . . .
Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven’s despite.”
—W. BLAKE: _Songs of Experience_.
Fred Vincy wanted to arrive at Stone Court when Mary could not expect
him, and when his uncle was not downstairs: in that case she might be
sitting alone in the wainscoted parlor. He left his horse in the yard
to avoid making a noise on the gravel in front, and entered the parlor
without other notice than the noise of the door-handle. Mary was in her
usual corner, laughing over Mrs. Piozzi’s recollections of Johnson, and
looked up with the fun still in her face. It gradually faded as she saw
Fred approach her without speaking, and stand before her with his elbow
on the mantel-piece, looking ill. She too was silent, only raising her
eyes to him inquiringly.
“Mary,” he began, “I am a good-for-nothing blackguard.”
“I should think one of those epithets would do at a time,” said Mary,
trying to smile, but feeling alarmed.
“I know you will never think well of me any more. You will think me a
liar. You will think me dishonest. You will think I didn’t care for
you, or your father and mother. You always do make the worst of me, I
know.”
“I cannot deny that I shall think all that of you, Fred, if you give me
good reasons. But please to tell me at once what you have done. I would
rather know the painful truth than imagine it.”
“I owed money—a hundred and sixty pounds. I asked your father to put
his name to a bill. I thought it would not signify to him. I made sure
of paying the money myself, and I have tried as hard as I could. And
now, I have been so unlucky—a horse has turned out badly—I can only pay
fifty pounds. And I can’t ask my father for the money: he would not
give me a farthing. And my uncle gave me a hundred a little while ago.
So what can I do? And now your father has no ready money to spare, and
your mother will have to pay away her ninety-two pounds that she has
saved, and she says your savings must go too. You see what a—”
“Oh, poor mother, poor father!” said Mary, her eyes filling with tears,
and a little sob rising which she tried to repress. She looked straight
before her and took no notice of Fred, all the consequences at home
becoming present to her. He too remained silent for some moments,
feeling more miserable than ever. “I wouldn’t have hurt you for the
world, Mary,” he said at last. “You can never forgive me.”
“What does it matter whether I forgive you?” said Mary, passionately.
“Would that make it any better for my mother to lose the money she has
been earning by lessons for four years, that she might send Alfred to
Mr. Hanmer’s? Should you think all that pleasant enough if I forgave
you?”
“Say what you like, Mary. I deserve it all.”
“I don’t want to say anything,” said Mary, more quietly, “and my anger
is of no use.” She dried her eyes, threw aside her book, rose and
fetched her sewing.
Fred followed her with his eyes, hoping that they would meet hers, and
in that way find access for his imploring penitence. But no! Mary could
easily avoid looking upward.
“I do care about your mother’s money going,” he said, when she was
seated again and sewing quickly. “I wanted to ask you, Mary—don’t you
think that Mr. Featherstone—if you were to tell him—tell him, I mean,
about apprenticing Alfred—would advance the money?”
“My family is not fond of begging, Fred. We would rather work for our
money. Besides, you say that Mr. Featherstone has lately given you a
hundred pounds. He rarely makes presents; he has never made presents to
us. I am sure my father will not ask him for anything; and even if I
chose to beg of him, it would be of no use.”
“I am so miserable, Mary—if you knew how miserable I am, you would be
sorry for me.”
“There are other things to be more sorry for than that. But selfish
people always think their own discomfort of more importance than
anything else in the world. I see enough of that every day.”
“It is hardly fair to call me selfish. If you knew what things other
young men do, you would think me a good way off the worst.”
“I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves
without knowing how they shall pay, must be selfish. They are always
thinking of what they can get for themselves, and not of what other
people may lose.”
“Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when
he meant it. There is not a better man in the world than your father,
and yet he got into trouble.”
“How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred?”
said Mary, in a deep tone of indignation. “He never got into trouble by
thinking of his own idle pleasures, but because he was always thinking
of the work he was doing for other people. And he has fared hard, and
worked hard to make good everybody’s loss.”
“And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary. It
is not generous to believe the worst of a man. When you have got any
power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better;
but that is what you never do. However, I’m going,” Fred ended,
languidly. “I shall never speak to you about anything again. I’m very
sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused—that’s all.”
Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up. There is often
something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary’s hard experience
had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different from that
hard slight thing which we call girlishness. At Fred’s last words she
felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother feels at the
imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which may lose
itself and get harm. And when, looking up, her eyes met his dull
despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her anger and all her
other anxieties.
“Oh, Fred, how ill you look! Sit down a moment. Don’t go yet. Let me
tell uncle that you are here. He has been wondering that he has not
seen you for a whole week.” Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words that
came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying them in
a half-soothing half-beseeching tone, and rising as if to go away to
Mr. Featherstone. Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had parted and a
gleam had come: he moved and stood in her way.
“Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything. Say you will not think the
worst of me—will not give me up altogether.”
“As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you,” said Mary, in a
mournful tone. “As if it were not very painful to me to see you an idle
frivolous creature. How can you bear to be so contemptible, when others
are working and striving, and there are so many things to be done—how
can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is useful? And
with so much good in your disposition, Fred,—you might be worth a great
deal.”
“I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you
love me.”
“I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be
hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him. What
will you be when you are forty? Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose—just as
idle, living in Mrs. Beck’s front parlor—fat and shabby, hoping