Middlemarch
opportunity of engaging Mr. Rigg in conversation: there was no knowing
how many pairs of legs the new proprietor might require hose for, and
profits were more to be relied on than legacies. Also, the mercer, as a
second cousin, was dispassionate enough to feel curiosity.
Mr. Vincy, after his one outburst, had remained proudly silent, though
too much preoccupied with unpleasant feelings to think of moving, till
he observed that his wife had gone to Fred’s side and was crying
silently while she held her darling’s hand. He rose immediately, and
turning his back on the company while he said to her in an
undertone,—“Don’t give way, Lucy; don’t make a fool of yourself, my
dear, before these people,” he added in his usual loud voice—“Go and
order the phaeton, Fred; I have no time to waste.”
Mary Garth had before this been getting ready to go home with her
father. She met Fred in the hall, and now for the first time had the
courage to look at him. He had that withered sort of paleness which
will sometimes come on young faces, and his hand was very cold when she
shook it. Mary too was agitated; she was conscious that fatally,
without will of her own, she had perhaps made a great difference to
Fred’s lot.
“Good-by,” she said, with affectionate sadness. “Be brave, Fred. I do
believe you are better without the money. What was the good of it to
Mr. Featherstone?”
“That’s all very fine,” said Fred, pettishly. “What is a fellow to do?
I must go into the Church now.” (He knew that this would vex Mary: very
well; then she must tell him what else he could do.) “And I thought I
should be able to pay your father at once and make everything right.
And you have not even a hundred pounds left you. What shall you do now,
Mary?”
“Take another situation, of course, as soon as I can get one. My father
has enough to do to keep the rest, without me. Good-by.”
In a very short time Stone Court was cleared of well-brewed
Featherstones and other long-accustomed visitors. Another stranger had
been brought to settle in the neighborhood of Middlemarch, but in the
case of Mr. Rigg Featherstone there was more discontent with immediate
visible consequences than speculation as to the effect which his
presence might have in the future. No soul was prophetic enough to have
any foreboding as to what might appear on the trial of Joshua Rigg.
And here I am naturally led to reflect on the means of elevating a low
subject. Historical parallels are remarkably efficient in this way. The
chief objection to them is, that the diligent narrator may lack space,
or (what is often the same thing) may not be able to think of them with
any degree of particularity, though he may have a philosophical
confidence that if known they would be illustrative. It seems an easier
and shorter way to dignity, to observe that—since there never was a
true story which could not be told in parables, where you might put a
monkey for a margrave, and vice versa—whatever has been or is to be
narrated by me about low people, may be ennobled by being considered a
parable; so that if any bad habits and ugly consequences are brought
into view, the reader may have the relief of regarding them as not more
than figuratively ungenteel, and may feel himself virtually in company
with persons of some style. Thus while I tell the truth about loobies,
my reader’s imagination need not be entirely excluded from an
occupation with lords; and the petty sums which any bankrupt of high
standing would be sorry to retire upon, may be lifted to the level of
high commercial transactions by the inexpensive addition of
proportional ciphers.
As to any provincial history in which the agents are all of high moral
rank, that must be of a date long posterior to the first Reform Bill,
and Peter Featherstone, you perceive, was dead and buried some months
before Lord Grey came into office.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
’T is strange to see the humors of these men,
These great aspiring spirits, that should be wise:
. . . . . . . .
For being the nature of great spirits to love
To be where they may be most eminent;
They, rating of themselves so farre above
Us in conceit, with whom they do frequent,
Imagine how we wonder and esteeme
All that they do or say; which makes them strive
To make our admiration more extreme,
Which they suppose they cannot, ’less they give
Notice of their extreme and highest thoughts.
—DANIEL: _Tragedy of Philotas_.
Mr. Vincy went home from the reading of the will with his point of view
considerably changed in relation to many subjects. He was an
open-minded man, but given to indirect modes of expressing himself:
when he was disappointed in a market for his silk braids, he swore at
the groom; when his brother-in-law Bulstrode had vexed him, he made
cutting remarks on Methodism; and it was now apparent that he regarded
Fred’s idleness with a sudden increase of severity, by his throwing an
embroidered cap out of the smoking-room on to the hall-floor.
“Well, sir,” he observed, when that young gentleman was moving off to
bed, “I hope you’ve made up your mind now to go up next term and pass
your examination. I’ve taken my resolution, so I advise you to lose no
time in taking yours.”
Fred made no answer: he was too utterly depressed. Twenty-four hours
ago he had thought that instead of needing to know what he should do,
he should by this time know that he needed to do nothing: that he
should hunt in pink, have a first-rate hunter, ride to cover on a fine
hack, and be generally respected for doing so; moreover, that he should
be able at once to pay Mr. Garth, and that Mary could no longer have
any reason for not marrying him. And all this was to have come without
study or other inconvenience, purely by the favor of providence in the
shape of an old gentleman’s caprice. But now, at the end of the
twenty-four hours, all those firm expectations were upset. It was
“rather hard lines” that while he was smarting under this
disappointment he should be treated as if he could have helped it. But
he went away silently and his mother pleaded for him.
“Don’t be hard on the poor boy, Vincy. He’ll turn out well yet, though
that wicked man has deceived him. I feel as sure as I sit here, Fred
will turn out well—else why was he brought back from the brink of the
grave? And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the land, to
promise it; and what is promising, if making everybody believe is not
promising? And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then
took it away again.”
“Took it away again!” said Mr. Vincy, pettishly. “I tell you the lad’s
an unlucky lad, Lucy. And you’ve always spoiled him.”
“Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when
he came. You were as proud as proud,” said Mrs. Vincy, easily
recovering her cheerful smile.
“Who knows what babies will turn to? I was fool enough, I dare say,”
said the husband—more mildly, however.
“But who has handsomer, better children than ours? Fred is far beyond
other people’s sons: you may hear it in his speech, that he has kept
college company. And Rosamond—where is there a girl like her? She might
stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the better for it. You
see—Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest company and been everywhere, and
he fell in love with her at once. Not but what I could have wished
Rosamond had not engaged herself. She might have met somebody on a
visit who would have been a far better match; I mean at her
schoolfellow Miss Willoughby’s. There are relations in that family
quite as high as Mr. Lydgate’s.”
“Damn relations!” said Mr. Vincy; “I’ve had enough of them. I don’t
want a son-in-law who has got nothing but his relations to recommend
him.”
“Why, my dear,” said Mrs. Vincy, “you seemed as pleased as could be
about it. It’s true, I wasn’t at home; but Rosamond told me you hadn’t
a word to say against the engagement. And she has begun to buy in the
best linen and cambric for her underclothing.”
“Not by my will,” said Mr. Vincy. “I shall have enough to do this year,
with an idle scamp of a son, without paying for wedding-clothes. The
times are as tight as can be; everybody is being ruined; and I don’t
believe Lydgate has got a farthing. I shan’t give my consent to their
marrying. Let ’em wait, as their elders have done before ’em.”
“Rosamond will take it hard, Vincy, and you know you never could bear
to cross her.”
“Yes, I could. The sooner the engagement’s off, the better. I don’t
believe he’ll ever make an income, the way he goes on. He makes
enemies; that’s all I hear of his making.”
“But he stands very high with Mr. Bulstrode, my dear. The marriage
would please _him_, I should think.”
“Please the deuce!” said Mr. Vincy. “Bulstrode won’t pay for their
keep. And if Lydgate thinks I’m going to give money for them to set up
housekeeping, he’s mistaken, that’s all. I expect I shall have to put
down my horses soon. You’d better tell Rosy what I say.”
This was a not infrequent procedure with Mr. Vincy—to be rash in jovial
assent, and on becoming subsequently conscious that he had been rash,
to employ others in making the offensive retractation. However, Mrs.
Vincy, who never willingly opposed her husband, lost no time the next
morning in letting Rosamond know what he had said. Rosamond, examining
some muslin-work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a certain
turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could teach
you that it meant perfect obstinacy.
“What do you say, my dear?” said her mother, with affectionate
deference.
“Papa does not mean anything of the kind,” said Rosamond, quite calmly.
“He has always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved. And I
shall marry Mr. Lydgate. It is seven weeks now since papa gave his
consent. And I hope we shall have Mrs. Bretton’s house.”
“Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa. You always do
manage everybody. But if we ever do go and get damask, Sadler’s is the
place—far better than Hopkins’s. Mrs. Bretton’s is very large, though:
I should love you to have such a house; but it will take a great deal
of furniture—carpeting and everything, besides plate and glass. And you
hear, your papa says he will give no money. Do you think Mr. Lydgate
expects it?”
“You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma. Of course he
understands his own affairs.”
“But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of
your having a pretty legacy as well as Fred;—and now everything is so
dreadful—there’s no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor
boy disappointed as he is.”
“That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma. Fred must leave off
being idle. I am going up-stairs to take this work to Miss Morgan: she
does the open hemming very well. Mary Garth might do some work for me
now, I should think. Her sewing is exquisite; it is the nicest thing I
know about Mary. I should so like to have all my cambric frilling
double-hemmed. And it takes a long time.”
Mrs. Vincy’s belief that Rosamond could manage her papa was well
founded. Apart from his dinners and his coursing, Mr. Vincy, blustering
as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a prime
minister: the force of circumstances was easily too much for him, as it
is for most pleasure-loving florid men; and the circumstance called
Rosamond was particularly forcible by means of that mild persistence
which, as we know, enables a white soft living substance to make its
way in spite of opposing rock. Papa was not a rock: he had no other
fixity than that fixity of alternating impulses sometimes called habit,
and this was altogether unfavorable to his taking the only decisive
line of conduct in relation to his daughter’s engagement—namely, to