Middlemarch
“Very well, my boy. I will do what you wish.”
That very day Mr. Farebrother went to Lowick parsonage on the nag which
he had just set up. “Decidedly I am an old stalk,” he thought, “the
young growths are pushing me aside.”
He found Mary in the garden gathering roses and sprinkling the petals
on a sheet. The sun was low, and tall trees sent their shadows across
the grassy walks where Mary was moving without bonnet or parasol. She
did not observe Mr. Farebrother’s approach along the grass, and had
just stooped down to lecture a small black-and-tan terrier, which would
persist in walking on the sheet and smelling at the rose-leaves as Mary
sprinkled them. She took his fore-paws in one hand, and lifted up the
forefinger of the other, while the dog wrinkled his brows and looked
embarrassed. “Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you,” Mary was saying in a
grave contralto. “This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody would
think you were a silly young gentleman.”
“You are unmerciful to young gentlemen, Miss Garth,” said the Vicar,
within two yards of her.
Mary started up and blushed. “It always answers to reason with Fly,”
she said, laughingly.
“But not with young gentlemen?”
“Oh, with some, I suppose; since some of them turn into excellent men.”
“I am glad of that admission, because I want at this very moment to
interest you in a young gentleman.”
“Not a silly one, I hope,” said Mary, beginning to pluck the roses
again, and feeling her heart beat uncomfortably.
“No; though perhaps wisdom is not his strong point, but rather
affection and sincerity. However, wisdom lies more in those two
qualities than people are apt to imagine. I hope you know by those
marks what young gentleman I mean.”
“Yes, I think I do,” said Mary, bravely, her face getting more serious,
and her hands cold; “it must be Fred Vincy.”
“He has asked me to consult you about his going into the Church. I hope
you will not think that I consented to take a liberty in promising to
do so.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Farebrother,” said Mary, giving up the roses, and
folding her arms, but unable to look up, “whenever you have anything to
say to me I feel honored.”
“But before I enter on that question, let me just touch a point on
which your father took me into confidence; by the way, it was that very
evening on which I once before fulfilled a mission from Fred, just
after he had gone to college. Mr. Garth told me what happened on the
night of Featherstone’s death—how you refused to burn the will; and he
said that you had some heart-prickings on that subject, because you had
been the innocent means of hindering Fred from getting his ten thousand
pounds. I have kept that in mind, and I have heard something that may
relieve you on that score—may show you that no sin-offering is demanded
from you there.”
Mr. Farebrother paused a moment and looked at Mary. He meant to give
Fred his full advantage, but it would be well, he thought, to clear her
mind of any superstitions, such as women sometimes follow when they do
a man the wrong of marrying him as an act of atonement. Mary’s cheeks
had begun to burn a little, and she was mute.
“I mean, that your action made no real difference to Fred’s lot. I find
that the first will would not have been legally good after the burning
of the last; it would not have stood if it had been disputed, and you
may be sure it would have been disputed. So, on that score, you may
feel your mind free.”
“Thank you, Mr. Farebrother,” said Mary, earnestly. “I am grateful to
you for remembering my feelings.”
“Well, now I may go on. Fred, you know, has taken his degree. He has
worked his way so far, and now the question is, what is he to do? That
question is so difficult that he is inclined to follow his father’s
wishes and enter the Church, though you know better than I do that he
was quite set against that formerly. I have questioned him on the
subject, and I confess I see no insuperable objection to his being a
clergyman, as things go. He says that he could turn his mind to doing
his best in that vocation, on one condition. If that condition were
fulfilled I would do my utmost in helping Fred on. After a time—not, of
course, at first—he might be with me as my curate, and he would have so
much to do that his stipend would be nearly what I used to get as
vicar. But I repeat that there is a condition without which all this
good cannot come to pass. He has opened his heart to me, Miss Garth,
and asked me to plead for him. The condition lies entirely in your
feeling.”
Mary looked so much moved, that he said after a moment, “Let us walk a
little;” and when they were walking he added, “To speak quite plainly,
Fred will not take any course which would lessen the chance that you
would consent to be his wife; but with that prospect, he will try his
best at anything you approve.”
“I cannot possibly say that I will ever be his wife, Mr. Farebrother:
but I certainly never will be his wife if he becomes a clergyman. What
you say is most generous and kind; I don’t mean for a moment to correct
your judgment. It is only that I have my girlish, mocking way of
looking at things,” said Mary, with a returning sparkle of playfulness
in her answer which only made its modesty more charming.
“He wishes me to report exactly what you think,” said Mr. Farebrother.
“I could not love a man who is ridiculous,” said Mary, not choosing to
go deeper. “Fred has sense and knowledge enough to make him
respectable, if he likes, in some good worldly business, but I can
never imagine him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings,
and praying by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a
caricature. His being a clergyman would be only for gentility’s sake,
and I think there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile
gentility. I used to think that of Mr. Crowse, with his empty face and
neat umbrella, and mincing little speeches. What right have such men to
represent Christianity—as if it were an institution for getting up
idiots genteelly—as if—” Mary checked herself. She had been carried
along as if she had been speaking to Fred instead of Mr. Farebrother.
“Young women are severe: they don’t feel the stress of action as men
do, though perhaps I ought to make you an exception there. But you
don’t put Fred Vincy on so low a level as that?”
“No, indeed, he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show it
as a clergyman. He would be a piece of professional affectation.”
“Then the answer is quite decided. As a clergyman he could have no
hope?”
Mary shook her head.
“But if he braved all the difficulties of getting his bread in some
other way—will you give him the support of hope? May he count on
winning you?”
“I think Fred ought not to need telling again what I have already said
to him,” Mary answered, with a slight resentment in her manner. “I mean
that he ought not to put such questions until he has done something
worthy, instead of saying that he could do it.”
Mr. Farebrother was silent for a minute or more, and then, as they
turned and paused under the shadow of a maple at the end of a grassy
walk, said, “I understand that you resist any attempt to fetter you,
but either your feeling for Fred Vincy excludes your entertaining
another attachment, or it does not: either he may count on your
remaining single until he shall have earned your hand, or he may in any
case be disappointed. Pardon me, Mary—you know I used to catechise you
under that name—but when the state of a woman’s affections touches the
happiness of another life—of more lives than one—I think it would be
the nobler course for her to be perfectly direct and open.”
Mary in her turn was silent, wondering not at Mr. Farebrother’s manner
but at his tone, which had a grave restrained emotion in it. When the
strange idea flashed across her that his words had reference to
himself, she was incredulous, and ashamed of entertaining it. She had
never thought that any man could love her except Fred, who had espoused
her with the umbrella ring, when she wore socks and little strapped
shoes; still less that she could be of any importance to Mr.
Farebrother, the cleverest man in her narrow circle. She had only time
to feel that all this was hazy and perhaps illusory; but one thing was
clear and determined—her answer.
“Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I
have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else. I
should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of
me. It has taken such deep root in me—my gratitude to him for always
loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time
when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to
make that weaker. I should like better than anything to see him worthy
of every one’s respect. But please tell him I will not promise to marry
him till then: I should shame and grieve my father and mother. He is
free to choose some one else.”
“Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly,” said Mr. Farebrother,
putting out his hand to Mary, “and I shall ride back to Middlemarch
forthwith. With this prospect before him, we shall get Fred into the
right niche somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your hands. God
bless you!”
“Oh, please stay, and let me give you some tea,” said Mary. Her eyes
filled with tears, for something indefinable, something like the
resolute suppression of a pain in Mr. Farebrother’s manner, made her
feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she saw her father’s
hands trembling in a moment of trouble.
“No, my dear, no. I must get back.”
In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone
magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation of
whist, or even than the writing of penitential meditations.
CHAPTER LIII.
It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from what
outsiders call inconsistency—putting a dead mechanism of “ifs” and
“therefores” for the living myriad of hidden suckers whereby the belief
and the conduct are wrought into mutual sustainment.
Mr. Bulstrode, when he was hoping to acquire a new interest in Lowick,
had naturally had an especial wish that the new clergyman should be one
whom he thoroughly approved; and he believed it to be a chastisement
and admonition directed to his own shortcomings and those of the nation
at large, that just about the time when he came in possession of the
deeds which made him the proprietor of Stone Court, Mr. Farebrother
“read himself” into the quaint little church and preached his first
sermon to the congregation of farmers, laborers, and village artisans.
It was not that Mr. Bulstrode intended to frequent Lowick Church or to
reside at Stone Court for a good while to come: he had bought the
excellent farm and fine homestead simply as a retreat which he might
gradually enlarge as to the land and beautify as to the dwelling, until
it should be conducive to the divine glory that he should enter on it
as a residence, partially withdrawing from his present exertions in the
administration of business, and throwing more conspicuously on the side
of Gospel truth the weight of local landed proprietorship, which
Providence might increase by unforeseen occasions of purchase. A strong
leading in this direction seemed to have been given in the surprising
facility of getting Stone Court, when every one had expected that Mr.
Rigg Featherstone would have clung to it as the Garden of Eden. That
was what poor old Peter himself had expected; having often, in
imagination, looked up through the sods above him, and, unobstructed by
perspective, seen his frog-faced legatee enjoying the fine old place to
the perpetual surprise and disappointment of other survivors.