Middlemarch
inquire thoroughly into Lydgate’s circumstances, declare his own
inability to furnish money, and forbid alike either a speedy marriage
or an engagement which must be too lengthy. That seems very simple and
easy in the statement; but a disagreeable resolve formed in the chill
hours of the morning had as many conditions against it as the early
frost, and rarely persisted under the warming influences of the day.
The indirect though emphatic expression of opinion to which Mr. Vincy
was prone suffered much restraint in this case: Lydgate was a proud man
towards whom innuendoes were obviously unsafe, and throwing his hat on
the floor was out of the question. Mr. Vincy was a little in awe of
him, a little vain that he wanted to marry Rosamond, a little
indisposed to raise a question of money in which his own position was
not advantageous, a little afraid of being worsted in dialogue with a
man better educated and more highly bred than himself, and a little
afraid of doing what his daughter would not like. The part Mr. Vincy
preferred playing was that of the generous host whom nobody criticises.
In the earlier half of the day there was business to hinder any formal
communication of an adverse resolve; in the later there was dinner,
wine, whist, and general satisfaction. And in the mean while the hours
were each leaving their little deposit and gradually forming the final
reason for inaction, namely, that action was too late. The accepted
lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick Gate, and a love-making not
at all dependent on money-advances from fathers-in-law, or prospective
income from a profession, went on flourishingly under Mr. Vincy’s own
eyes. Young love-making—that gossamer web! Even the points it clings
to—the things whence its subtle interlacings are swung—are scarcely
perceptible: momentary touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from
blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and
lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs
and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of
completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning that web
from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience
supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure—in spite too of
medicine and biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes
presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia’s), and other incidents of
scientific inquiry, are observed to be less incompatible with poetic
love than a native dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose.
As for Rosamond, she was in the water-lily’s expanding wonderment at
its own fuller life, and she too was spinning industriously at the
mutual web. All this went on in the corner of the drawing-room where
the piano stood, and subtle as it was, the light made it a sort of
rainbow visible to many observers besides Mr. Farebrother. The
certainty that Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general
in Middlemarch without the aid of formal announcement.
Aunt Bulstrode was again stirred to anxiety; but this time she
addressed herself to her brother, going to the warehouse expressly to
avoid Mrs. Vincy’s volatility. His replies were not satisfactory.
“Walter, you never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go
on without inquiry into Mr. Lydgate’s prospects?” said Mrs. Bulstrode,
opening her eyes with wider gravity at her brother, who was in his
peevish warehouse humor. “Think of this girl brought up in luxury—in
too worldly a way, I am sorry to say—what will she do on a small
income?”
“Oh, confound it, Harriet! What can I do when men come into the town
without any asking of mine? Did you shut your house up against Lydgate?
Bulstrode has pushed him forward more than anybody. I never made any
fuss about the young fellow. You should go and talk to your husband
about it, not me.”
“Well, really, Walter, how can Mr. Bulstrode be to blame? I am sure he
did not wish for the engagement.”
“Oh, if Bulstrode had not taken him by the hand, I should never have
invited him.”
“But you called him in to attend on Fred, and I am sure that was a
mercy,” said Mrs. Bulstrode, losing her clew in the intricacies of the
subject.
“I don’t know about mercy,” said Mr. Vincy, testily. “I know I am
worried more than I like with my family. I was a good brother to you,
Harriet, before you married Bulstrode, and I must say he doesn’t always
show that friendly spirit towards your family that might have been
expected of him.” Mr. Vincy was very little like a Jesuit, but no
accomplished Jesuit could have turned a question more adroitly. Harriet
had to defend her husband instead of blaming her brother, and the
conversation ended at a point as far from the beginning as some recent
sparring between the brothers-in-law at a vestry meeting.
Mrs. Bulstrode did not repeat her brother’s complaints to her husband,
but in the evening she spoke to him of Lydgate and Rosamond. He did not
share her warm interest, however; and only spoke with resignation of
the risks attendant on the beginning of medical practice and the
desirability of prudence.
“I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl—brought up as
she has been,” said Mrs. Bulstrode, wishing to rouse her husband’s
feelings.
“Truly, my dear,” said Mr. Bulstrode, assentingly. “Those who are not
of this world can do little else to arrest the errors of the
obstinately worldly. That is what we must accustom ourselves to
recognize with regard to your brother’s family. I could have wished
that Mr. Lydgate had not entered into such a union; but my relations
with him are limited to that use of his gifts for God’s purposes which
is taught us by the divine government under each dispensation.”
Mrs. Bulstrode said no more, attributing some dissatisfaction which she
felt to her own want of spirituality. She believed that her husband was
one of those men whose memoirs should be written when they died.
As to Lydgate himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept
all the consequences which he believed himself to foresee with perfect
clearness. Of course he must be married in a year—perhaps even in half
a year. This was not what he had intended; but other schemes would not
be hindered: they would simply adjust themselves anew. Marriage, of
course, must be prepared for in the usual way. A house must be taken
instead of the rooms he at present occupied; and Lydgate, having heard
Rosamond speak with admiration of old Mrs. Bretton’s house (situated in
Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell vacant after the old lady’s
death, and immediately entered into treaty for it.
He did this in an episodic way, very much as he gave orders to his
tailor for every requisite of perfect dress, without any notion of
being extravagant. On the contrary, he would have despised any
ostentation of expense; his profession had familiarized him with all
grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered hardships.
He would have behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served
in a jug with the handle off, and he would have remembered nothing
about a grand dinner except that a man was there who talked well. But
it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what
he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and
excellent waiting at table. In warming himself at French social
theories he had brought away no smell of scorching. We may handle even
extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving,
and preference for armorial bearings in our own case, link us
indissolubly with the established order. And Lydgate’s tendency was not
towards extreme opinions: he would have liked no barefooted doctrines,
being particular about his boots: he was no radical in relation to
anything but medical reform and the prosecution of discovery. In the
rest of practical life he walked by hereditary habit; half from that
personal pride and unreflecting egoism which I have already called
commonness, and half from that naivete which belonged to preoccupation
with favorite ideas.
Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement
which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of
money. Certainly, being in love and being expected continually by some
one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent
her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which
might serve some “plodding fellow of a German” to make the great,
imminent discovery. This was really an argument for not deferring the
marriage too long, as he implied to Mr. Farebrother, one day that the
Vicar came to his room with some pond-products which he wanted to
examine under a better microscope than his own, and, finding Lydgate’s
tableful of apparatus and specimens in confusion, said sarcastically—
“Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and
now he brings back chaos.”
“Yes, at some stages,” said Lydgate, lifting his brows and smiling,
while he began to arrange his microscope. “But a better order will
begin after.”
“Soon?” said the Vicar.
“I hope so, really. This unsettled state of affairs uses up the time,
and when one has notions in science, every moment is an opportunity. I
feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to
work steadily. He has everything at home then—no teasing with personal
speculations—he can get calmness and freedom.”
“You are an enviable dog,” said the Vicar, “to have such a
prospect—Rosamond, calmness and freedom, all to your share. Here am I
with nothing but my pipe and pond-animalcules. Now, are you ready?”
Lydgate did not mention to the Vicar another reason he had for wishing
to shorten the period of courtship. It was rather irritating to him,
even with the wine of love in his veins, to be obliged to mingle so
often with the family party at the Vincys’, and to enter so much into
Middlemarch gossip, protracted good cheer, whist-playing, and general
futility. He had to be deferential when Mr. Vincy decided questions
with trenchant ignorance, especially as to those liquors which were the
best inward pickle, preserving you from the effects of bad air. Mrs.
Vincy’s openness and simplicity were quite unstreaked with suspicion as
to the subtle offence she might give to the taste of her intended
son-in-law; and altogether Lydgate had to confess to himself that he
was descending a little in relation to Rosamond’s family. But that
exquisite creature herself suffered in the same sort of way:—it was at
least one delightful thought that in marrying her, he could give her a
much-needed transplantation.
“Dear!” he said to her one evening, in his gentlest tone, as he sat
down by her and looked closely at her face—
But I must first say that he had found her alone in the drawing-room,
where the great old-fashioned window, almost as large as the side of
the room, was opened to the summer scents of the garden at the back of
the house. Her father and mother were gone to a party, and the rest
were all out with the butterflies.
“Dear! your eyelids are red.”
“Are they?” said Rosamond. “I wonder why.” It was not in her nature to
pour forth wishes or grievances. They only came forth gracefully on
solicitation.
“As if you could hide it from me!” said Lydgate, laying his hand
tenderly on both of hers. “Don’t I see a tiny drop on one of the
lashes? Things trouble you, and you don’t tell me. That is unloving.”
“Why should I tell you what you cannot alter? They are every-day
things:—perhaps they have been a little worse lately.”
“Family annoyances. Don’t fear speaking. I guess them.”
“Papa has been more irritable lately. Fred makes him angry, and this