Middlemarch
always, and a fine cheese in cut. You must expect to keep open house in
these last illnesses,” said liberal Mrs. Vincy, once more of cheerful
note and bright plumage.
But some of the visitors alighted and did not depart after the handsome
treating to veal and ham. Brother Jonah, for example (there are such
unpleasant people in most families; perhaps even in the highest
aristocracy there are Brobdingnag specimens, gigantically in debt and
bloated at greater expense)—Brother Jonah, I say, having come down in
the world, was mainly supported by a calling which he was modest enough
not to boast of, though it was much better than swindling either on
exchange or turf, but which did not require his presence at Brassing so
long as he had a good corner to sit in and a supply of food. He chose
the kitchen-corner, partly because he liked it best, and partly because
he did not want to sit with Solomon, concerning whom he had a strong
brotherly opinion. Seated in a famous arm-chair and in his best suit,
constantly within sight of good cheer, he had a comfortable
consciousness of being on the premises, mingled with fleeting
suggestions of Sunday and the bar at the Green Man; and he informed
Mary Garth that he should not go out of reach of his brother Peter
while that poor fellow was above ground. The troublesome ones in a
family are usually either the wits or the idiots. Jonah was the wit
among the Featherstones, and joked with the maid-servants when they
came about the hearth, but seemed to consider Miss Garth a suspicious
character, and followed her with cold eyes.
Mary would have borne this one pair of eyes with comparative ease, but
unfortunately there was young Cranch, who, having come all the way from
the Chalky Flats to represent his mother and watch his uncle Jonah,
also felt it his duty to stay and to sit chiefly in the kitchen to give
his uncle company. Young Cranch was not exactly the balancing point
between the wit and the idiot,—verging slightly towards the latter
type, and squinting so as to leave everything in doubt about his
sentiments except that they were not of a forcible character. When Mary
Garth entered the kitchen and Mr. Jonah Featherstone began to follow
her with his cold detective eyes, young Cranch turning his head in the
same direction seemed to insist on it that she should remark how he was
squinting, as if he did it with design, like the gypsies when Borrow
read the New Testament to them. This was rather too much for poor Mary;
sometimes it made her bilious, sometimes it upset her gravity. One day
that she had an opportunity she could not resist describing the kitchen
scene to Fred, who would not be hindered from immediately going to see
it, affecting simply to pass through. But no sooner did he face the
four eyes than he had to rush through the nearest door which happened
to lead to the dairy, and there under the high roof and among the pans
he gave way to laughter which made a hollow resonance perfectly audible
in the kitchen. He fled by another doorway, but Mr. Jonah, who had not
before seen Fred’s white complexion, long legs, and pinched delicacy of
face, prepared many sarcasms in which these points of appearance were
wittily combined with the lowest moral attributes.
“Why, Tom, _you_ don’t wear such gentlemanly trousers—you haven’t got
half such fine long legs,” said Jonah to his nephew, winking at the
same time, to imply that there was something more in these statements
than their undeniableness. Tom looked at his legs, but left it
uncertain whether he preferred his moral advantages to a more vicious
length of limb and reprehensible gentility of trouser.
In the large wainscoted parlor too there were constantly pairs of eyes
on the watch, and own relatives eager to be “sitters-up.” Many came,
lunched, and departed, but Brother Solomon and the lady who had been
Jane Featherstone for twenty-five years before she was Mrs. Waule found
it good to be there every day for hours, without other calculable
occupation than that of observing the cunning Mary Garth (who was so
deep that she could be found out in nothing) and giving occasional dry
wrinkly indications of crying—as if capable of torrents in a wetter
season—at the thought that they were not allowed to go into Mr.
Featherstone’s room. For the old man’s dislike of his own family seemed
to get stronger as he got less able to amuse himself by saying biting
things to them. Too languid to sting, he had the more venom refluent in
his blood.
Not fully believing the message sent through Mary Garth, they had
presented themselves together within the door of the bedroom, both in
black—Mrs. Waule having a white handkerchief partially unfolded in her
hand—and both with faces in a sort of half-mourning purple; while Mrs.
Vincy with her pink cheeks and pink ribbons flying was actually
administering a cordial to their own brother, and the
light-complexioned Fred, his short hair curling as might be expected in
a gambler’s, was lolling at his ease in a large chair.
Old Featherstone no sooner caught sight of these funereal figures
appearing in spite of his orders than rage came to strengthen him more
successfully than the cordial. He was propped up on a bed-rest, and
always had his gold-headed stick lying by him. He seized it now and
swept it backwards and forwards in as large an area as he could,
apparently to ban these ugly spectres, crying in a hoarse sort of
screech—
“Back, back, Mrs. Waule! Back, Solomon!”
“Oh, Brother. Peter,” Mrs. Waule began—but Solomon put his hand before
her repressingly. He was a large-cheeked man, nearly seventy, with
small furtive eyes, and was not only of much blander temper but thought
himself much deeper than his brother Peter; indeed not likely to be
deceived in any of his fellow-men, inasmuch as they could not well be
more greedy and deceitful than he suspected them of being. Even the
invisible powers, he thought, were likely to be soothed by a bland
parenthesis here and there—coming from a man of property, who might
have been as impious as others.
“Brother Peter,” he said, in a wheedling yet gravely official tone,
“It’s nothing but right I should speak to you about the Three Crofts
and the Manganese. The Almighty knows what I’ve got on my mind—”
“Then he knows more than I want to know,” said Peter, laying down his
stick with a show of truce which had a threat in it too, for he
reversed the stick so as to make the gold handle a club in case of
closer fighting, and looked hard at Solomon’s bald head.
“There’s things you might repent of, Brother, for want of speaking to
me,” said Solomon, not advancing, however. “I could sit up with you
to-night, and Jane with me, willingly, and you might take your own time
to speak, or let me speak.”
“Yes, I shall take my own time—you needn’t offer me yours,” said Peter.
“But you can’t take your own time to die in, Brother,” began Mrs.
Waule, with her usual woolly tone. “And when you lie speechless you may
be tired of having strangers about you, and you may think of me and my
children”—but here her voice broke under the touching thought which she
was attributing to her speechless brother; the mention of ourselves
being naturally affecting.
“No, I shan’t,” said old Featherstone, contradictiously. “I shan’t
think of any of you. I’ve made my will, I tell you, I’ve made my will.”
Here he turned his head towards Mrs. Vincy, and swallowed some more of
his cordial.
“Some people would be ashamed to fill up a place belonging by rights to
others,” said Mrs. Waule, turning her narrow eyes in the same
direction.
“Oh, sister,” said Solomon, with ironical softness, “you and me are not
fine, and handsome, and clever enough: we must be humble and let smart
people push themselves before us.”
Fred’s spirit could not bear this: rising and looking at Mr.
Featherstone, he said, “Shall my mother and I leave the room, sir, that
you may be alone with your friends?”
“Sit down, I tell you,” said old Featherstone, snappishly. “Stop where
you are. Good-by, Solomon,” he added, trying to wield his stick again,
but failing now that he had reversed the handle. “Good-by, Mrs. Waule.
Don’t you come again.”
“I shall be down-stairs, Brother, whether or no,” said Solomon. “I
shall do my duty, and it remains to be seen what the Almighty will
allow.”
“Yes, in property going out of families,” said Mrs. Waule, in
continuation,—“and where there’s steady young men to carry on. But I
pity them who are not such, and I pity their mothers. Good-by, Brother
Peter.”
“Remember, I’m the eldest after you, Brother, and prospered from the
first, just as you did, and have got land already by the name of
Featherstone,” said Solomon, relying much on that reflection, as one
which might be suggested in the watches of the night. “But I bid you
good-by for the present.”
Their exit was hastened by their seeing old Mr. Featherstone pull his
wig on each side and shut his eyes with his mouth-widening grimace, as
if he were determined to be deaf and blind.
None the less they came to Stone Court daily and sat below at the post
of duty, sometimes carrying on a slow dialogue in an undertone in which
the observation and response were so far apart, that any one hearing
them might have imagined himself listening to speaking automata, in
some doubt whether the ingenious mechanism would really work, or wind
itself up for a long time in order to stick and be silent. Solomon and
Jane would have been sorry to be quick: what that led to might be seen
on the other side of the wall in the person of Brother Jonah.
But their watch in the wainscoted parlor was sometimes varied by the
presence of other guests from far or near. Now that Peter Featherstone
was up-stairs, his property could be discussed with all that local
enlightenment to be found on the spot: some rural and Middlemarch
neighbors expressed much agreement with the family and sympathy with
their interest against the Vincys, and feminine visitors were even
moved to tears, in conversation with Mrs. Waule, when they recalled the
fact that they themselves had been disappointed in times past by
codicils and marriages for spite on the part of ungrateful elderly
gentlemen, who, it might have been supposed, had been spared for
something better. Such conversation paused suddenly, like an organ when
the bellows are let drop, if Mary Garth came into the room; and all
eyes were turned on her as a possible legatee, or one who might get
access to iron chests.
But the younger men who were relatives or connections of the family,
were disposed to admire her in this problematic light, as a girl who
showed much conduct, and who among all the chances that were flying
might turn out to be at least a moderate prize. Hence she had her share
of compliments and polite attentions.
Especially from Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, a distinguished bachelor and
auctioneer of those parts, much concerned in the sale of land and
cattle: a public character, indeed, whose name was seen on widely
distributed placards, and who might reasonably be sorry for those who
did not know of him. He was second cousin to Peter Featherstone, and
had been treated by him with more amenity than any other relative,
being useful in matters of business; and in that programme of his
funeral which the old man had himself dictated, he had been named as a
Bearer. There was no odious cupidity in Mr. Borthrop Trumbull—nothing
more than a sincere sense of his own merit, which, he was aware, in
case of rivalry might tell against competitors; so that if Peter
Featherstone, who so far as he, Trumbull, was concerned, had behaved
like as good a soul as ever breathed, should have done anything
handsome by him, all he could say was, that he had never fished and