Middlemarch
somebody will invite you to dinner—spending your morning in learning a
comic song—oh no! learning a tune on the flute.”
Mary’s lips had begun to curl with a smile as soon as she had asked
that question about Fred’s future (young souls are mobile), and before
she ended, her face had its full illumination of fun. To him it was
like the cessation of an ache that Mary could laugh at him, and with a
passive sort of smile he tried to reach her hand; but she slipped away
quickly towards the door and said, “I shall tell uncle. You _must_ see
him for a moment or two.”
Fred secretly felt that his future was guaranteed against the
fulfilment of Mary’s sarcastic prophecies, apart from that “anything”
which he was ready to do if she would define it. He never dared in
Mary’s presence to approach the subject of his expectations from Mr.
Featherstone, and she always ignored them, as if everything depended on
himself. But if ever he actually came into the property, she must
recognize the change in his position. All this passed through his mind
somewhat languidly, before he went up to see his uncle. He stayed but a
little while, excusing himself on the ground that he had a cold; and
Mary did not reappear before he left the house. But as he rode home, he
began to be more conscious of being ill, than of being melancholy.
When Caleb Garth arrived at Stone Court soon after dusk, Mary was not
surprised, although he seldom had leisure for paying her a visit, and
was not at all fond of having to talk with Mr. Featherstone. The old
man, on the other hand, felt himself ill at ease with a brother-in-law
whom he could not annoy, who did not mind about being considered poor,
had nothing to ask of him, and understood all kinds of farming and
mining business better than he did. But Mary had felt sure that her
parents would want to see her, and if her father had not come, she
would have obtained leave to go home for an hour or two the next day.
After discussing prices during tea with Mr. Featherstone, Caleb rose to
bid him good-by, and said, “I want to speak to you, Mary.”
She took a candle into another large parlor, where there was no fire,
and setting down the feeble light on the dark mahogany table, turned
round to her father, and putting her arms round his neck kissed him
with childish kisses which he delighted in,—the expression of his large
brows softening as the expression of a great beautiful dog softens when
it is caressed. Mary was his favorite child, and whatever Susan might
say, and right as she was on all other subjects, Caleb thought it
natural that Fred or any one else should think Mary more lovable than
other girls.
“I’ve got something to tell you, my dear,” said Caleb in his hesitating
way. “No very good news; but then it might be worse.”
“About money, father? I think I know what it is.”
“Ay? how can that be? You see, I’ve been a bit of a fool again, and put
my name to a bill, and now it comes to paying; and your mother has got
to part with her savings, that’s the worst of it, and even they won’t
quite make things even. We wanted a hundred and ten pounds: your mother
has ninety-two, and I have none to spare in the bank; and she thinks
that you have some savings.”
“Oh yes; I have more than four-and-twenty pounds. I thought you would
come, father, so I put it in my bag. See! beautiful white notes and
gold.”
Mary took out the folded money from her reticule and put it into her
father’s hand.
“Well, but how—we only want eighteen—here, put the rest back,
child,—but how did you know about it?” said Caleb, who, in his
unconquerable indifference to money, was beginning to be chiefly
concerned about the relation the affair might have to Mary’s
affections.
“Fred told me this morning.”
“Ah! Did he come on purpose?”
“Yes, I think so. He was a good deal distressed.”
“I’m afraid Fred is not to be trusted, Mary,” said the father, with
hesitating tenderness. “He means better than he acts, perhaps. But I
should think it a pity for any body’s happiness to be wrapped up in
him, and so would your mother.”
“And so should I, father,” said Mary, not looking up, but putting the
back of her father’s hand against her cheek.
“I don’t want to pry, my dear. But I was afraid there might be
something between you and Fred, and I wanted to caution you. You see,
Mary”—here Caleb’s voice became more tender; he had been pushing his
hat about on the table and looking at it, but finally he turned his
eyes on his daughter—“a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got
to put up with the life her husband makes for her. Your mother has had
to put up with a good deal because of me.”
Mary turned the back of her father’s hand to her lips and smiled at
him.
“Well, well, nobody’s perfect, but”—here Mr. Garth shook his head to
help out the inadequacy of words—“what I am thinking of is—what it must
be for a wife when she’s never sure of her husband, when he hasn’t got
a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by
others than of getting his own toes pinched. That’s the long and the
short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they
know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only
get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you
have more sense than most, and you haven’t been kept in cotton-wool:
there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for
his daughter, and you are all by yourself here.”
“Don’t fear for me, father,” said Mary, gravely meeting her father’s
eyes; “Fred has always been very good to me; he is kind-hearted and
affectionate, and not false, I think, with all his self-indulgence. But
I will never engage myself to one who has no manly independence, and
who goes on loitering away his time on the chance that others will
provide for him. You and my mother have taught me too much pride for
that.”
“That’s right—that’s right. Then I am easy,” said Mr. Garth, taking up
his hat. “But it’s hard to run away with your earnings, eh child.”
“Father!” said Mary, in her deepest tone of remonstrance. “Take
pocketfuls of love besides to them all at home,” was her last word
before he closed the outer door on himself.
“I suppose your father wanted your earnings,” said old Mr.
Featherstone, with his usual power of unpleasant surmise, when Mary
returned to him. “He makes but a tight fit, I reckon. You’re of age
now; you ought to be saving for yourself.”
“I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir,” said
Mary, coldly.
Mr. Featherstone grunted: he could not deny that an ordinary sort of
girl like her might be expected to be useful, so he thought of another
rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos. “If Fred Vincy
comes to-morrow, now, don’t you keep him chattering: let him come up to
me.”
CHAPTER XXVI.
He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction! would it were
otherwise—that I could beat him while he railed at me.—_Troilus and
Cressida_.
But Fred did not go to Stone Court the next day, for reasons that were
quite peremptory. From those visits to unsanitary Houndsley streets in
search of Diamond, he had brought back not only a bad bargain in
horse-flesh, but the further misfortune of some ailment which for a day
or two had deemed mere depression and headache, but which got so much
worse when he returned from his visit to Stone Court that, going into
the dining-room, he threw himself on the sofa, and in answer to his
mother’s anxious question, said, “I feel very ill: I think you must
send for Wrench.”
Wrench came, but did not apprehend anything serious, spoke of a “slight
derangement,” and did not speak of coming again on the morrow. He had a
due value for the Vincys’ house, but the wariest men are apt to be
dulled by routine, and on worried mornings will sometimes go through
their business with the zest of the daily bell-ringer. Mr. Wrench was a
small, neat, bilious man, with a well-dressed wig: he had a laborious
practice, an irascible temper, a lymphatic wife and seven children; and
he was already rather late before setting out on a four-miles drive to
meet Dr. Minchin on the other side of Tipton, the decease of Hicks, a
rural practitioner, having increased Middlemarch practice in that
direction. Great statesmen err, and why not small medical men? Mr.
Wrench did not neglect sending the usual white parcels, which this time
had black and drastic contents. Their effect was not alleviating to
poor Fred, who, however, unwilling as he said to believe that he was
“in for an illness,” rose at his usual easy hour the next morning and
went down-stairs meaning to breakfast, but succeeded in nothing but in
sitting and shivering by the fire. Mr. Wrench was again sent for, but
was gone on his rounds, and Mrs. Vincy seeing her darling’s changed
looks and general misery, began to cry and said she would send for Dr.
Sprague.
“Oh, nonsense, mother! It’s nothing,” said Fred, putting out his hot
dry hand to her, “I shall soon be all right. I must have taken cold in
that nasty damp ride.”
“Mamma!” said Rosamond, who was seated near the window (the dining-room
windows looked on that highly respectable street called Lowick Gate),
“there is Mr. Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one. If I were you I
would call him in. He has cured Ellen Bulstrode. They say he cures
every one.”
Mrs. Vincy sprang to the window and opened it in an instant, thinking
only of Fred and not of medical etiquette. Lydgate was only two yards
off on the other side of some iron palisading, and turned round at the
sudden sound of the sash, before she called to him. In two minutes he
was in the room, and Rosamond went out, after waiting just long enough
to show a pretty anxiety conflicting with her sense of what was
becoming.
Lydgate had to hear a narrative in which Mrs. Vincy’s mind insisted
with remarkable instinct on every point of minor importance, especially
on what Mr. Wrench had said and had not said about coming again. That
there might be an awkward affair with Wrench, Lydgate saw at once; but
the case was serious enough to make him dismiss that consideration: he
was convinced that Fred was in the pink-skinned stage of typhoid fever,
and that he had taken just the wrong medicines. He must go to bed
immediately, must have a regular nurse, and various appliances and
precautions must be used, about which Lydgate was particular. Poor Mrs.
Vincy’s terror at these indications of danger found vent in such words
as came most easily. She thought it “very ill usage on the part of Mr.
Wrench, who had attended their house so many years in preference to Mr.
Peacock, though Mr. Peacock was equally a friend. Why Mr. Wrench should
neglect her children more than others, she could not for the life of
her understand. He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher’s when they had the
measles, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that he should. And if
anything should happen—”
Here poor Mrs. Vincy’s spirit quite broke down, and her Niobe throat
and good-humored face were sadly convulsed. This was in the hall out of
Fred’s hearing, but Rosamond had opened the drawing-room door, and now
came forward anxiously. Lydgate apologized for Mr. Wrench, said that
the symptoms yesterday might have been disguising, and that this form
of fever was very equivocal in its beginnings: he would go immediately
to the druggist’s and have a prescription made up in order to lose no
time, but he would write to Mr. Wrench and tell him what had been done.
“But you must come again—you must go on attending Fred. I can’t have my
boy left to anybody who may come or not. I bear nobody ill-will, thank
God, and Mr. Wrench saved me in the pleurisy, but he’d better have let
me die—if—if—”