Middlemarch
being on the land, and it’s my belief that he could learn business well
if he gave his mind to it.”
“But would he? His father and mother wanted him to be a fine gentleman,
and I think he has the same sort of feeling himself. They all think us
beneath them. And if the proposal came from you, I am sure Mrs. Vincy
would say that we wanted Fred for Mary.”
“Life is a poor tale, if it is to be settled by nonsense of that sort,”
said Caleb, with disgust.
“Yes, but there is a certain pride which is proper, Caleb.”
“I call it improper pride to let fools’ notions hinder you from doing a
good action. There’s no sort of work,” said Caleb, with fervor, putting
out his hand and moving it up and down to mark his emphasis, “that
could ever be done well, if you minded what fools say. You must have it
inside you that your plan is right, and that plan you must follow.”
“I will not oppose any plan you have set your mind on, Caleb,” said
Mrs. Garth, who was a firm woman, but knew that there were some points
on which her mild husband was yet firmer. “Still, it seems to be fixed
that Fred is to go back to college: will it not be better to wait and
see what he will choose to do after that? It is not easy to keep people
against their will. And you are not yet quite sure enough of your own
position, or what you will want.”
“Well, it may be better to wait a bit. But as to my getting plenty of
work for two, I’m pretty sure of that. I’ve always had my hands full
with scattered things, and there’s always something fresh turning up.
Why, only yesterday—bless me, I don’t think I told you!—it was rather
odd that two men should have been at me on different sides to do the
same bit of valuing. And who do you think they were?” said Caleb,
taking a pinch of snuff and holding it up between his fingers, as if it
were a part of his exposition. He was fond of a pinch when it occurred
to him, but he usually forgot that this indulgence was at his command.
His wife held down her knitting and looked attentive.
“Why, that Rigg, or Rigg Featherstone, was one. But Bulstrode was
before him, so I’m going to do it for Bulstrode. Whether it’s mortgage
or purchase they’re going for, I can’t tell yet.”
“Can that man be going to sell the land just left him—which he has
taken the name for?” said Mrs. Garth.
“Deuce knows,” said Caleb, who never referred the knowledge of
discreditable doings to any higher power than the deuce. “But Bulstrode
has long been wanting to get a handsome bit of land under his
fingers—that I know. And it’s a difficult matter to get, in this part
of the country.”
Caleb scattered his snuff carefully instead of taking it, and then
added, “The ins and outs of things are curious. Here is the land
they’ve been all along expecting for Fred, which it seems the old man
never meant to leave him a foot of, but left it to this side-slip of a
son that he kept in the dark, and thought of his sticking there and
vexing everybody as well as he could have vexed ’em himself if he could
have kept alive. I say, it would be curious if it got into Bulstrode’s
hands after all. The old man hated him, and never would bank with him.”
“What reason could the miserable creature have for hating a man whom he
had nothing to do with?” said Mrs. Garth.
“Pooh! where’s the use of asking for such fellows’ reasons? The soul of
man,” said Caleb, with the deep tone and grave shake of the head which
always came when he used this phrase—“The soul of man, when it gets
fairly rotten, will bear you all sorts of poisonous toad-stools, and no
eye can see whence came the seed thereof.”
It was one of Caleb’s quaintnesses, that in his difficulty of finding
speech for his thought, he caught, as it were, snatches of diction
which he associated with various points of view or states of mind; and
whenever he had a feeling of awe, he was haunted by a sense of Biblical
phraseology, though he could hardly have given a strict quotation.
CHAPTER XLI.
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain it raineth every day.
—_Twelfth Night_.
The transactions referred to by Caleb Garth as having gone forward
between Mr. Bulstrode and Mr. Joshua Rigg Featherstone concerning the
land attached to Stone Court, had occasioned the interchange of a
letter or two between these personages.
Who shall tell what may be the effect of writing? If it happens to have
been cut in stone, though it lie face down-most for ages on a forsaken
beach, or “rest quietly under the drums and tramplings of many
conquests,” it may end by letting us into the secret of usurpations and
other scandals gossiped about long empires ago:—this world being
apparently a huge whispering-gallery. Such conditions are often
minutely represented in our petty lifetimes. As the stone which has
been kicked by generations of clowns may come by curious little links
of effect under the eyes of a scholar, through whose labors it may at
last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink
and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at
last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge
enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe. To Uriel watching
the progress of planetary history from the sun, the one result would be
just as much of a coincidence as the other.
Having made this rather lofty comparison I am less uneasy in calling
attention to the existence of low people by whose interference, however
little we may like it, the course of the world is very much determined.
It would be well, certainly, if we could help to reduce their number,
and something might perhaps be done by not lightly giving occasion to
their existence. Socially speaking, Joshua Rigg would have been
generally pronounced a superfluity. But those who like Peter
Featherstone never had a copy of themselves demanded, are the very last
to wait for such a request either in prose or verse. The copy in this
case bore more of outside resemblance to the mother, in whose sex
frog-features, accompanied with fresh-colored cheeks and a well-rounded
figure, are compatible with much charm for a certain order of admirers.
The result is sometimes a frog-faced male, desirable, surely, to no
order of intelligent beings. Especially when he is suddenly brought
into evidence to frustrate other people’s expectations—the very lowest
aspect in which a social superfluity can present himself.
But Mr. Rigg Featherstone’s low characteristics were all of the sober,
water-drinking kind. From the earliest to the latest hour of the day he
was always as sleek, neat, and cool as the frog he resembled, and old
Peter had secretly chuckled over an offshoot almost more calculating,
and far more imperturbable, than himself. I will add that his
finger-nails were scrupulously attended to, and that he meant to marry
a well-educated young lady (as yet unspecified) whose person was good,
and whose connections, in a solid middle-class way, were undeniable.
Thus his nails and modesty were comparable to those of most gentlemen;
though his ambition had been educated only by the opportunities of a
clerk and accountant in the smaller commercial houses of a seaport. He
thought the rural Featherstones very simple absurd people, and they in
their turn regarded his “bringing up” in a seaport town as an
exaggeration of the monstrosity that their brother Peter, and still
more Peter’s property, should have had such belongings.
The garden and gravel approach, as seen from the two windows of the
wainscoted parlor at Stone Court, were never in better trim than now,
when Mr. Rigg Featherstone stood, with his hands behind him, looking
out on these grounds as their master. But it seemed doubtful whether he
looked out for the sake of contemplation or of turning his back to a
person who stood in the middle of the room, with his legs considerably
apart and his hands in his trouser-pockets: a person in all respects a
contrast to the sleek and cool Rigg. He was a man obviously on the way
towards sixty, very florid and hairy, with much gray in his bushy
whiskers and thick curly hair, a stoutish body which showed to
disadvantage the somewhat worn joinings of his clothes, and the air of
a swaggerer, who would aim at being noticeable even at a show of
fireworks, regarding his own remarks on any other person’s performance
as likely to be more interesting than the performance itself.
His name was John Raffles, and he sometimes wrote jocosely W.A.G. after
his signature, observing when he did so, that he was once taught by
Leonard Lamb of Finsbury who wrote B.A. after his name, and that he,
Raffles, originated the witticism of calling that celebrated principal
Ba-Lamb. Such were the appearance and mental flavor of Mr. Raffles,
both of which seemed to have a stale odor of travellers’ rooms in the
commercial hotels of that period.
“Come, now, Josh,” he was saying, in a full rumbling tone, “look at it
in this light: here is your poor mother going into the vale of years,
and you could afford something handsome now to make her comfortable.”
“Not while you live. Nothing would make her comfortable while you
live,” returned Rigg, in his cool high voice. “What I give her, you’ll
take.”
“You bear me a grudge, Josh, that I know. But come, now—as between man
and man—without humbug—a little capital might enable me to make a
first-rate thing of the shop. The tobacco trade is growing. I should
cut my own nose off in not doing the best I could at it. I should stick
to it like a flea to a fleece for my own sake. I should always be on
the spot. And nothing would make your poor mother so happy. I’ve pretty
well done with my wild oats—turned fifty-five. I want to settle down in
my chimney-corner. And if I once buckled to the tobacco trade, I could
bring an amount of brains and experience to bear on it that would not
be found elsewhere in a hurry. I don’t want to be bothering you one
time after another, but to get things once for all into the right
channel. Consider that, Josh—as between man and man—and with your poor
mother to be made easy for her life. I was always fond of the old
woman, by Jove!”
“Have you done?” said Mr. Rigg, quietly, without looking away from the
window.
“Yes, _I_’ve done,” said Raffles, taking hold of his hat which stood
before him on the table, and giving it a sort of oratorical push.
“Then just listen to me. The more you say anything, the less I shall
believe it. The more you want me to do a thing, the more reason I shall
have for never doing it. Do you think I mean to forget your kicking me
when I was a lad, and eating all the best victual away from me and my
mother? Do you think I forget your always coming home to sell and
pocket everything, and going off again leaving us in the lurch? I
should be glad to see you whipped at the cart-tail. My mother was a
fool to you: she’d no right to give me a father-in-law, and she’s been
punished for it. She shall have her weekly allowance paid and no more:
and that shall be stopped if you dare to come on to these premises
again, or to come into this country after me again. The next time you
show yourself inside the gates here, you shall be driven off with the
dogs and the wagoner’s whip.”
As Rigg pronounced the last words he turned round and looked at Raffles
with his prominent frozen eyes. The contrast was as striking as it
could have been eighteen years before, when Rigg was a most unengaging
kickable boy, and Raffles was the rather thick-set Adonis of bar-rooms
and back-parlors. But the advantage now was on the side of Rigg, and
auditors of this conversation might probably have expected that Raffles
would retire with the air of a defeated dog. Not at all. He made a
grimace which was habitual with him whenever he was “out” in a game;