Middlemarch
invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon; Dorothea said
you couldn’t have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to
write.”
Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle’s was about as pleasant
as a grain of sand in the eye to Mr. Casaubon. It would be altogether
unfitting now to explain that she had not wished her uncle to invite
Will Ladislaw. She could not in the least make clear to herself the
reasons for her husband’s dislike to his presence—a dislike painfully
impressed on her by the scene in the library; but she felt the
unbecomingness of saying anything that might convey a notion of it to
others. Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly represented those
mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of
us, seeking rather for justification than for self-knowledge. But he
wished to repress outward signs, and only Dorothea could discern the
changes in her husband’s face before he observed with more of dignified
bending and sing-song than usual—
“You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you
acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative of
mine.”
The funeral was ended now, and the churchyard was being cleared.
“Now you can see him, Mrs. Cadwallader,” said Celia. “He is just like a
miniature of Mr. Casaubon’s aunt that hangs in Dorothea’s boudoir—quite
nice-looking.”
“A very pretty sprig,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, dryly. “What is your
nephew to be, Mr. Casaubon?”
“Pardon me, he is not my nephew. He is my cousin.”
“Well, you know,” interposed Mr. Brooke, “he is trying his wings. He is
just the sort of young fellow to rise. I should be glad to give him an
opportunity. He would make a good secretary, now, like Hobbes, Milton,
Swift—that sort of man.”
“I understand,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “One who can write speeches.”
“I’ll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon?” said Mr. Brooke. “He wouldn’t
come in till I had announced him, you know. And we’ll go down and look
at the picture. There you are to the life: a deep subtle sort of
thinker with his fore-finger on the page, while Saint Bonaventure or
somebody else, rather fat and florid, is looking up at the Trinity.
Everything is symbolical, you know—the higher style of art: I like that
up to a certain point, but not too far—it’s rather straining to keep up
with, you know. But you are at home in that, Casaubon. And your
painter’s flesh is good—solidity, transparency, everything of that
sort. I went into that a great deal at one time. However, I’ll go and
fetch Ladislaw.”
CHAPTER XXXV.
“Non, je ne comprends pas de plus charmant plaisir
Que de voir d’héritiers une troupe affligée
Le maintien interdit, et la mine allongée,
Lire un long testament où pales, étonnés
On leur laisse un bonsoir avec un pied de nez.
Pour voir au naturel leur tristesse profonde
Je reviendrais, je crois, exprès de l’autre monde.”
—REGNARD: _Le Légataire Universel_.
When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied
species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to
think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were
eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations. (I fear the
part played by the vultures on that occasion would be too painful for
art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously naked about the
gullet, and apparently without rites and ceremonies.)
The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed
Peter Featherstone’s funeral procession; most of them having their
minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the
most of. The long-recognized blood-relations and connections by
marriage made already a goodly number, which, multiplied by
possibilities, presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and
pathetic hopefulness. Jealousy of the Vincys had created a fellowship
in hostility among all persons of the Featherstone blood, so that in
the absence of any decided indication that one of themselves was to
have more than the rest, the dread lest that long-legged Fred Vincy
should have the land was necessarily dominant, though it left abundant
feeling and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were entertained
towards Mary Garth. Solomon found time to reflect that Jonah was
undeserving, and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder
sister, held that Martha’s children ought not to expect so much as the
young Waules; and Martha, more lax on the subject of primogeniture, was
sorry to think that Jane was so “having.” These nearest of kin were
naturally impressed with the unreasonableness of expectations in
cousins and second cousins, and used their arithmetic in reckoning the
large sums that small legacies might mount to, if there were too many
of them. Two cousins were present to hear the will, and a second cousin
besides Mr. Trumbull. This second cousin was a Middlemarch mercer of
polite manners and superfluous aspirates. The two cousins were elderly
men from Brassing, one of them conscious of claims on the score of
inconvenient expense sustained by him in presents of oysters and other
eatables to his rich cousin Peter; the other entirely saturnine,
leaning his hands and chin on a stick, and conscious of claims based on
no narrow performance but on merit generally: both blameless citizens
of Brassing, who wished that Jonah Featherstone did not live there. The
wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.
“Why, Trumbull himself is pretty sure of five hundred—_that_ you may
depend,—I shouldn’t wonder if my brother promised him,” said Solomon,
musing aloud with his sisters, the evening before the funeral.
“Dear, dear!” said poor sister Martha, whose imagination of hundreds
had been habitually narrowed to the amount of her unpaid rent.
But in the morning all the ordinary currents of conjecture were
disturbed by the presence of a strange mourner who had plashed among
them as if from the moon. This was the stranger described by Mrs.
Cadwallader as frog-faced: a man perhaps about two or three and thirty,
whose prominent eyes, thin-lipped, downward-curved mouth, and hair
sleekly brushed away from a forehead that sank suddenly above the ridge
of the eyebrows, certainly gave his face a batrachian unchangeableness
of expression. Here, clearly, was a new legatee; else why was he bidden
as a mourner? Here were new possibilities, raising a new uncertainty,
which almost checked remark in the mourning-coaches. We are all
humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very
comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have
been making up our world entirely without it. No one had seen this
questionable stranger before except Mary Garth, and she knew nothing
more of him than that he had twice been to Stone Court when Mr.
Featherstone was down-stairs, and had sat alone with him for several
hours. She had found an opportunity of mentioning this to her father,
and perhaps Caleb’s were the only eyes, except the lawyer’s, which
examined the stranger with more of inquiry than of disgust or
suspicion. Caleb Garth, having little expectation and less cupidity,
was interested in the verification of his own guesses, and the calmness
with which he half smilingly rubbed his chin and shot intelligent
glances much as if he were valuing a tree, made a fine contrast with
the alarm or scorn visible in other faces when the unknown mourner,
whose name was understood to be Rigg, entered the wainscoted parlor and
took his seat near the door to make part of the audience when the will
should be read. Just then Mr. Solomon and Mr. Jonah were gone up-stairs
with the lawyer to search for the will; and Mrs. Waule, seeing two
vacant seats between herself and Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, had the spirit
to move next to that great authority, who was handling his watch-seals
and trimming his outlines with a determination not to show anything so
compromising to a man of ability as wonder or surprise.
“I suppose you know everything about what my poor brother’s done, Mr.
Trumbull,” said Mrs. Waule, in the lowest of her woolly tones, while
she turned her crape-shadowed bonnet towards Mr. Trumbull’s ear.
“My good lady, whatever was told me was told in confidence,” said the
auctioneer, putting his hand up to screen that secret.
“Them who’ve made sure of their good-luck may be disappointed yet,”
Mrs. Waule continued, finding some relief in this communication.
“Hopes are often delusive,” said Mr. Trumbull, still in confidence.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Waule, looking across at the Vincys, and then moving
back to the side of her sister Martha.
“It’s wonderful how close poor Peter was,” she said, in the same
undertones. “We none of us know what he might have had on his mind. I
only hope and trust he wasn’t a worse liver than we think of, Martha.”
Poor Mrs. Cranch was bulky, and, breathing asthmatically, had the
additional motive for making her remarks unexceptionable and giving
them a general bearing, that even her whispers were loud and liable to
sudden bursts like those of a deranged barrel-organ.
“I never _was_ covetous, Jane,” she replied; “but I have six children
and have buried three, and I didn’t marry into money. The eldest, that
sits there, is but nineteen—so I leave you to guess. And stock always
short, and land most awkward. But if ever I’ve begged and prayed; it’s
been to God above; though where there’s one brother a bachelor and the
other childless after twice marrying—anybody might think!”
Meanwhile, Mr. Vincy had glanced at the passive face of Mr. Rigg, and
had taken out his snuff-box and tapped it, but had put it again
unopened as an indulgence which, however clarifying to the judgment,
was unsuited to the occasion. “I shouldn’t wonder if Featherstone had
better feelings than any of us gave him credit for,” he observed, in
the ear of his wife. “This funeral shows a thought about everybody: it
looks well when a man wants to be followed by his friends, and if they
are humble, not to be ashamed of them. I should be all the better
pleased if he’d left lots of small legacies. They may be uncommonly
useful to fellows in a small way.”
“Everything is as handsome as could be, crape and silk and everything,”
said Mrs. Vincy, contentedly.
But I am sorry to say that Fred was under some difficulty in repressing
a laugh, which would have been more unsuitable than his father’s
snuff-box. Fred had overheard Mr. Jonah suggesting something about a
“love-child,” and with this thought in his mind, the stranger’s face,
which happened to be opposite him, affected him too ludicrously. Mary
Garth, discerning his distress in the twitchings of his mouth, and his
recourse to a cough, came cleverly to his rescue by asking him to
change seats with her, so that he got into a shadowy corner. Fred was
feeling as good-naturedly as possible towards everybody, including
Rigg; and having some relenting towards all these people who were less
lucky than he was aware of being himself, he would not for the world
have behaved amiss; still, it was particularly easy to laugh.
But the entrance of the lawyer and the two brothers drew every one’s
attention. The lawyer was Mr. Standish, and he had come to Stone Court
this morning believing that he knew thoroughly well who would be
pleased and who disappointed before the day was over. The will he
expected to read was the last of three which he had drawn up for Mr.
Featherstone. Mr. Standish was not a man who varied his manners: he
behaved with the same deep-voiced, off-hand civility to everybody, as
if he saw no difference in them, and talked chiefly of the hay-crop,
which would be “very fine, by God!” of the last bulletins concerning
the King, and of the Duke of Clarence, who was a sailor every inch of