Middlemarch
morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw his
whole education away, and do something quite beneath him. And besides—”
Rosamond hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush.
Lydgate had never seen her in trouble since the morning of their
engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at
this moment. He kissed the hesitating lips gently, as if to encourage
them.
“I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement,” Rosamond
continued, almost in a whisper; “and he said last night that he should
certainly speak to you and say it must be given up.”
“Will you give it up?” said Lydgate, with quick energy—almost angrily.
“I never give up anything that I choose to do,” said Rosamond,
recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.
“God bless you!” said Lydgate, kissing her again. This constancy of
purpose in the right place was adorable. He went on:—
“It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be
given up. You are of age, and I claim you as mine. If anything is done
to make you unhappy,—that is a reason for hastening our marriage.”
An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his,
and the radiance seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine.
Ideal happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you
are invited to step from the labor and discord of the street into a
paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed
to be an affair of a few weeks’ waiting, more or less.
“Why should we defer it?” he said, with ardent insistence. “I have
taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready—can it not?
You will not mind about new clothes. Those can be bought afterwards.”
“What original notions you clever men have!” said Rosamond, dimpling
with more thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity.
“This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought
after marriage.”
“But you don’t mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for
the sake of clothes?” said Lydgate, half thinking that Rosamond was
tormenting him prettily, and half fearing that she really shrank from
speedy marriage. “Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of
happiness even than this—being continually together, independent of
others, and ordering our lives as we will. Come, dear, tell me how soon
you can be altogether mine.”
There was a serious pleading in Lydgate’s tone, as if he felt that she
would be injuring him by any fantastic delays. Rosamond became serious
too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many
intricacies of lace-edging and hosiery and petticoat-tucking, in order
to give an answer that would at least be approximative.
“Six weeks would be ample—say so, Rosamond,” insisted Lydgate,
releasing her hands to put his arm gently round her.
One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave her
neck a meditative turn, and then said seriously—
“There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared.
Still, mamma could see to those while we were away.”
“Yes, to be sure. We must be away a week or so.”
“Oh, more than that!” said Rosamond, earnestly. She was thinking of her
evening dresses for the visit to Sir Godwin Lydgate’s, which she had
long been secretly hoping for as a delightful employment of at least
one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her introduction to
the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also a pleasing though sober
kind of rank, when sustained by blood). She looked at her lover with
some wondering remonstrance as she spoke, and he readily understood
that she might wish to lengthen the sweet time of double solitude.
“Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed. But let us take
a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you may be
suffering. Six weeks!—I am sure they would be ample.”
“I could certainly hasten the work,” said Rosamond. “Will you, then,
mention it to papa?—I think it would be better to write to him.” She
blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk
forth happily among them in the transcendent evening light: is there
not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half child, in those delicate
petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?
He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and
they sat quite still for many minutes which flowed by them like a small
gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it. Rosamond thought
that no one could be more in love than she was; and Lydgate thought
that after all his wild mistakes and absurd credulity, he had found
perfect womanhood—felt as if already breathed upon by exquisite wedded
affection such as would be bestowed by an accomplished creature who
venerated his high musings and momentous labors and would never
interfere with them; who would create order in the home and accounts
with still magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and
transform life into romance at any moment; who was instructed to the
true womanly limit and not a hair’s-breadth beyond—docile, therefore,
and ready to carry out behests which came from that limit. It was
plainer now than ever that his notion of remaining much longer a
bachelor had been a mistake: marriage would not be an obstruction but a
furtherance. And happening the next day to accompany a patient to
Brassing, he saw a dinner-service there which struck him as so exactly
the right thing that he bought it at once. It saved time to do these
things just when you thought of them, and Lydgate hated ugly crockery.
The dinner-service in question was expensive, but that might be in the
nature of dinner-services. Furnishing was necessarily expensive; but
then it had to be done only once.
“It must be lovely,” said Mrs. Vincy, when Lydgate mentioned his
purchase with some descriptive touches. “Just what Rosy ought to have.
I trust in heaven it won’t be broken!”
“One must hire servants who will not break things,” said Lydgate.
(Certainly, this was reasoning with an imperfect vision of sequences.
But at that period there was no sort of reasoning which was not more or
less sanctioned by men of science.)
Of course it was unnecessary to defer the mention of anything to mamma,
who did not readily take views that were not cheerful, and being a
happy wife herself, had hardly any feeling but pride in her daughter’s
marriage. But Rosamond had good reasons for suggesting to Lydgate that
papa should be appealed to in writing. She prepared for the arrival of
the letter by walking with her papa to the warehouse the next morning,
and telling him on the way that Mr. Lydgate wished to be married soon.
“Nonsense, my dear!” said Mr. Vincy. “What has he got to marry on?
You’d much better give up the engagement. I’ve told you so pretty
plainly before this. What have you had such an education for, if you
are to go and marry a poor man? It’s a cruel thing for a father to
see.”
“Mr. Lydgate is not poor, papa. He bought Mr. Peacock’s practice,
which, they say, is worth eight or nine hundred a-year.”
“Stuff and nonsense! What’s buying a practice? He might as well buy
next year’s swallows. It’ll all slip through his fingers.”
“On the contrary, papa, he will increase the practice. See how he has
been called in by the Chettams and Casaubons.”
“I hope he knows I shan’t give anything—with this disappointment about
Fred, and Parliament going to be dissolved, and machine-breaking
everywhere, and an election coming on—”
“Dear papa! what can that have to do with my marriage?”
“A pretty deal to do with it! We may all be ruined for what I know—the
country’s in that state! Some say it’s the end of the world, and be
hanged if I don’t think it looks like it! Anyhow, it’s not a time for
me to be drawing money out of my business, and I should wish Lydgate to
know that.”
“I am sure he expects nothing, papa. And he has such very high
connections: he is sure to rise in one way or another. He is engaged in
making scientific discoveries.”
Mr. Vincy was silent.
“I cannot give up my only prospect of happiness, papa. Mr. Lydgate is a
gentleman. I could never love any one who was not a perfect gentleman.
You would not like me to go into a consumption, as Arabella Hawley did.
And you know that I never change my mind.”
Again papa was silent.
“Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish. We shall
never give each other up; and you know that you have always objected to
long courtships and late marriages.”
There was a little more urgency of this kind, till Mr. Vincy said,
“Well, well, child, he must write to me first before I can answer
him,”—and Rosamond was certain that she had gained her point.
Mr. Vincy’s answer consisted chiefly in a demand that Lydgate should
insure his life—a demand immediately conceded. This was a delightfully
reassuring idea supposing that Lydgate died, but in the mean time not a
self-supporting idea. However, it seemed to make everything comfortable
about Rosamond’s marriage; and the necessary purchases went on with
much spirit. Not without prudential considerations, however. A bride
(who is going to visit at a baronet’s) must have a few first-rate
pocket-handkerchiefs; but beyond the absolutely necessary half-dozen,
Rosamond contented herself without the very highest style of embroidery
and Valenciennes. Lydgate also, finding that his sum of eight hundred
pounds had been considerably reduced since he had come to Middlemarch,
restrained his inclination for some plate of an old pattern which was
shown to him when he went into Kibble’s establishment at Brassing to
buy forks and spoons. He was too proud to act as if he presupposed that
Mr. Vincy would advance money to provide furniture; and though, since
it would not be necessary to pay for everything at once, some bills
would be left standing over, he did not waste time in conjecturing how
much his father-in-law would give in the form of dowry, to make payment
easy. He was not going to do anything extravagant, but the requisite
things must be bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a
poor quality. All these matters were by the bye. Lydgate foresaw that
science and his profession were the objects he should alone pursue
enthusiastically; but he could not imagine himself pursuing them in
such a home as Wrench had—the doors all open, the oil-cloth worn, the
children in soiled pinafores, and lunch lingering in the form of bones,
black-handled knives, and willow-pattern. But Wrench had a wretched
lymphatic wife who made a mummy of herself indoors in a large shawl;
and he must have altogether begun with an ill-chosen domestic
apparatus.
Rosamond, however, was on her side much occupied with conjectures,
though her quick imitative perception warned her against betraying them
too crudely.
“I shall like so much to know your family,” she said one day, when the
wedding journey was being discussed. “We might perhaps take a direction
that would allow us to see them as we returned. Which of your uncles do
you like best?”
“Oh,—my uncle Godwin, I think. He is a good-natured old fellow.”
“You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy,
were you not? I should so like to see the old spot and everything you
were used to. Does he know you are going to be married?”
“No,” said Lydgate, carelessly, turning in his chair and rubbing his
hair up.
“Do send him word of it, you naughty undutiful nephew. He will perhaps
ask you to take me to Quallingham; and then you could show me about the
grounds, and I could imagine you there when you were a boy. Remember,
you see me in my home, just as it has been since I was a child. It is