Middlemarch

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‘He is not fit to be a clergyman.’

‘But he ought to be fit.’

‘Well, then, he is not what he ought to be. I know some other people who are in the same case.’

‘But no one approves of them. I should not like to marry a clergyman; but there must be clergymen.’

‘It does not follow that Fred must be one.’

‘But when papa has been at the expense of educating him for it! And only suppose, if he should have no fortune left him?’

‘I can suppose that very well,’ said Mary, dryly.

‘Then I wonder you can defend Fred,’ said Rosamond, inclined to push this point.

‘I don’t defend him,’ said Mary, laughing; ‘I would defend any parish from having him for a clergyman.

‘But of course if he were a clergyman, he must be different.’

‘Yes, he would be a great hypocrite; and he is not that yet.’

‘It is of no use saying anything to you, Mary. You always take Fred’s part.’

‘Why should I not take his part?’ said Mary, lighting up. ‘He would take mine. He is the only person who takes the least trouble to oblige me.’

‘You make me feel very uncomfortable, Mary,’ said Rosamond, with her gravest mildness; ‘I would not tell mamma for the world.’

‘What would you not tell her?’ said Mary angrily.

‘Pray do not go into a rage, Mary,’ said Rosamond, mildly as ever.

‘If your mamma is afraid that Fred will make me an offer, tell her that I would not marry him if he asked me. But he is not going to do so, that I am aware. He certainly never has asked me.’

‘Mary, you are always so violent.’

‘And you are always so exasperating.’

‘I? What can you blame me for?’

‘Oh, blameless people are always the most exasperating. There is the bell—I think we must go down.’

‘I did not mean to quarrel,’ said Rosamond, putting on her hat.

‘Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarrelled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?’

‘Am I to repeat what you have said?’

‘Just as you please. I never say what I am afraid of having repeated. But let us go down.’

Mr Lydgate was rather late this morning, but the visitors stayed long enough to see him; for Mr Featherstone asked Rosamond to sing to him, and she herself was so kind as to propose a second favourite song of his—‘Flow on, thou shining river’—after that she had sung ‘Home, sweet home’ (which she detested). This hard-headed old Overreach approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing for a song.

Mr Featherstone was still applauding the last performance, and assuring Missy that her voice was as clear as a blackbird’s, when Mr Lydgate’s horse passed the window.

His dull expectation of the usual disagreeable routine with an aged patient—who can hardly believe that medicine would not ‘set him up’ if the doctor were only clever enough—added to his general disbelief in Middlemarch charms, made a doubly effective background to this vision of Rosamond, whom old Featherstone made haste ostentatiously to introduce as his niece, though he had never thought it worth while to speak of Mary Garth in that light. Nothing escaped Lydgate in Rosamond’s graceful behaviour; how delicately she waived the notice which the old man’s want of taste had thrust upon her by a quiet gravity, not showing her dimples on the wrong occasion, but showing them afterwards in speaking to Mary, to whom she addressed herself with so much good-natured interest, that Lydgate, after quickly examining Mary more fully than he had done before, saw an adorable kindness in Rosamond’s eyes. But Mary from some cause looked rather out of temper.

‘Miss Rosy has been singing me a song—you’ve nothing to say against that, eh, doctor?’ said Mr Featherstone. ‘I like it better than your physic.’

‘That has made me forget how the time was going,’ said Rosamond, rising to reach her hat, which she had laid aside before singing, so that her flower-like head on its white stem was seen in perfection above her riding-habit. ‘Fred, we must really go.’

‘Very good,’ said Fred, who had his own reasons for not being in the best spirits, and wanted to get away.

‘Miss Vincy is a musician?’ said Lydgate, following her with his eyes. (Every nerve and muscle in Rosamond was adjusted to the consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique: she even acted her own character, and so well, that she did not know it to be precisely her own.)

‘The best in Middlemarch, I’ll be bound,’ said Mr Featherstone, ‘let the next be who she will. Eh, Fred? Speak up for your sister.’

‘I’m afraid I’m out of court, sir, my evidence would be good for nothing.’

‘Middlemarch has not a very high standard, uncle,’ said Rosamond, with a pretty lightness, going towards her whip, which lay at a distance.

Lydgate was quick in anticipating her. He reached the whip before she did, and turned to present it to her. She bowed and looked at him; he of course was looking at her, and their eyes met with that peculiar meeting which is never arrived at by effort, but seems like a sudden divine clearance of haze. I think Lydgate turned a little paler than usual, but Rosamond blushed deeply and felt a certain astonishment. After that, she was really anxious to go, and did not know what sort of stupidity her uncle was talking of when she went to shake hands with him.

Yet this result, which she took to be a mutual impression, called falling in love, was just what Rosamond had contemplated beforehand. Ever since that important new arrival in Middlemarch she had woven a little future, of which something like this scene was the necessary beginning. Strangers, whether wrecked and clinging to a raft, or duly escorted and accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination for the virgin mind, against which native merit has urged itself in vain. And a stranger was absolutely necessary to Rosamond’s social romance, which had always turned on a lover and bridegroom who was not a Middlemarcher, and who had no connections at all like her own: of late, indeed, the construction seemed to demand that he should somehow be related to a baronet. Now that she and the stranger had met, reality proved much more moving than anticipation, and Rosamond could not doubt that this was the great epoch of her life. She judged of her own symptoms as those of awakening love, and she held it still more natural that Mr Lydgate should have fallen in love at first sight of her. These things happened so often at balls, and why not by the morning light, when the complexion showed all the better for it? Rosamond, though no older than Mary, was rather used to being fallen in love with; but she, for her part, had remained indifferent and fastidiously critical towards both fresh sprig and faded bachelor. And here was Mr Lydgate suddenly corresponding to her ideal, being altogether foreign to Middlemarch, carrying a certain air of distinction congruous with good family, and possessing connections which offered vistas of that middle-class heaven, rank: a man of talent, also, whom it would be especially delightful to enslave: in fact, a man who had touched her nature quite newly, and brought a vivid interest into her life which was better than any fancied ‘might-be’ such as she was in the habit of opposing to the actual.

Thus, in riding home, both the brother and the sister were preoccupied and inclined to be silent. Rosamond, whose basis for her structure had the usual airy slightness, was of remarkably detailed and realistic imagination when the foundation had been once presupposed; and before they had ridden a mile she was far on in the costume and introductions of her wedded life, having determined on her house in Middlemarch, and foreseen the visits she would pay to her husband’s high-bred relatives at a distance, whose finished manners she could appropriate as thoroughly as she had done her school accomplishments, preparing herself thus for vaguer elevations which might ultimately come. There was nothing financial, still less sordid, in her provisions: she cared about what were considered refinements, and not about the money that was to pay for them.

Fred’s mind, on the other hand, was busy with an anxiety which even his ready hopefulness could not immediately quell. He saw no way of eluding Featherstone’s stupid demand without incurring consequences which he liked less even than the task of fulfilling it. His father was already out of humour with him, and would be still more so if he were the occasion of any additional coolness between his own family and the Bulstrodes. Then, he himself hated having to go and speak to his uncle Bulstrode, and perhaps after drinking wine he had said many foolish things about Featherstone’s property, and these had been magnified by report. Fred felt that he made a wretched figure as a fellow who bragged about expectations from a queer old miser like Featherstone, and went to beg for certificates at his bidding. But—those expectations! He really had them, and he saw no agreeable alternative if he gave them up; besides, he had lately made a debt which galled him extremely, and old Featherstone had almost bargained to pay it off. The whole affair was miserably small: his debts were small, even his expectations were not anything so very magnificent. Fred had known men to whom he would have been ashamed of confessing the smallness of his scrapes. Such ruminations naturally produced a streak of misanthropic bitterness. To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular, while such men as Mainwaring and Vyan—certainly life was a poor business, when a spirited young fellow, with a good appetite for the best of everything, had so poor an outlook.

It had not occurred to Fred that the introduction of Bulstrode’s name in the matter was a fiction of old Featherstone’s; nor could this have made any difference to his position. He saw plainly enough that the old man wanted to exercise his power by tormenting him a little, and also probably to get some satisfaction out of seeing him on unpleasant terms with Bulstrode. Fred fancied that he saw to the bottom of his uncle Featherstone’s soul, though in reality half what he saw there was no more than the reflex of his own inclinations. The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes.

Fred’s main point of debate with himself was, whether he should tell his father, or try to get through the affair without his father’s knowledge. It was probably Mrs Waule who had been talking about him; and if Mary Garth had repeated Mrs Waule’s report to Rosamond, it would be sure to reach his father, who would as surely question him about it. He said to Rosamond, as they slackened their pace—

‘Rosy, did Mary tell you that Mrs Waule had said anything about me?’

‘Yes, indeed, she did.’

‘What?’

‘That you were very unsteady.’

‘Was that all?’

‘I should think that was enough, Fred.’

‘You are sure she said no more?’

‘Mary mentioned nothing else. But really, Fred, I think you ought to be ashamed.’

‘Oh fudge! don’t lecture me. What did Mary say about it?’

‘I am not obliged to tell you. You care so very much what Mary says, and you are too rude to allow me to speak.’

‘Of course I care what Mary says. She is the best girl I know.’

‘I should never have thought she was a girl to fall in love with.’

‘How do you know what men would fall in love with? Girls never know.’

‘At least, Fred, let me advise you not to fall in love with her, for she says she would not marry you if you asked her.’

‘She might have waited till I did ask her.’

‘I knew it would nettle you, Fred.’

‘Not at all. She would not have said so if you had not provoked her.’

Before reaching home, Fred concluded that he would tell the whole affair as simply as possible to his father, who might perhaps take on himself the unpleasant business of speaking to Bulstrode.

PART TWO (#ulink_f45692b9-5664-52d1-9513-429dfca49c6b)

CHAPTER 13 (#ulink_2a8c0279-e807-5a19-ab3d-94707f99d994)

1st Gent. ‘How class your man?—as better than the most,

Or, seeming better, worse beneath that cloak?

As saint or knave, pilgrim or hypocrite?’

2nd Gent. ‘Nay, tell me how you class your wealth of books,

The drifted relics of all time. As well

Sort them at once by size and livery:

Vellum, tall copies, and the common calf

Will hardly cover more diversity

Than all your labels cunningly devised

To class your unread authors.’

In consequence of what he had heard from Fred, Mr Vincy determined to speak with Mr Bulstrode in his private room at the Bank at half past one, when he was usually free from other callers. But a visitor had come in at one o’clock, and Mr Bulstrode had so much to say to him, that there was little chance of the interview being over in half an hour. The banker’s speech was fluent, but it was also copious, and he used up an appreciable amount of time in brief meditative pauses. Do not imagine his sickly aspect to have been of the yellow, black-haired sort: he had a pale blond skin, thin gray-besprinkled brown hair, light-gray eyes, and a large forehead. Loud men called his subdued tone an undertone, and sometimes implied that it was inconsistent with openness; though there seems to be no reason why a loud man should not be given to concealment of anything except his own voice, unless it can be shown that Holy Writ has placed the seat of candour in the lungs. Mr Bulstrode had also a deferential bending attitude in listening, and an apparently fixed attentiveness in his eyes which made those persons who thought themselves worth hearing infer that he was seeking the utmost improvement from their discourse. Others, who expected to make no great figure, disliked this kind of moral lantern turned on them. If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wine-glass to the light and look judicial. Such joys are reserved for conscious merit. Hence Mr Bulstrode’s close attention was not agreeable to the publicans and sinners in Middlemarch; it was attributed by some to his being a Pharisee, and by others to his being Evangelical. Less superficial reasoners among them wished to know who his father and grandfather were, observing that five-and-twenty years ago nobody had ever heard of a Bulstrode in Middlemarch. To his present visitor, Lydgate, the scrutinising look was a matter of indifference: he simply formed an unfavourable opinion of the banker’s constitution, and concluded that he had an eager inward life with little enjoyment of tangible things.

‘I shall be exceedingly obliged if you will look in on me here occasionally, Mr Lydgate,’ the banker observed after a brief pause. ‘If, as I dare to hope, I have the privilege of finding you a valuable coadjutor in the interesting matter of hospital management, there will be many questions which we shall need to discuss in private. As to the new hospital, which is nearly finished, I shall consider what you have said about the advantages of the special destination for fevers. The decision will rest with me, for though Lord Medlicote has given the land and timber for the building, he is not disposed to give his personal attention to the object.’

‘There are few things better worth the pains in a provincial town like this,’ said Lydgate. ‘A fine fever hospital in addition to the old infirmary might be the nucleus of a medical school here, when once we get our medical reforms; and what would do more for medical education than the spread of such schools over the country? A born provincial man who has a grain of public spirit as well as a few ideas, should do what he can to resist the rush of everything that is a little better than common towards London. Any valid professional aims may often find a freer, if not a richer field, in the provinces.’

One of Lydgate’s gifts was a voice habitually deep and sonorous, yet capable of becoming very low and gentle at the right moment. About his ordinary bearing there was a certain fling, a fearless expectation of success, a confidence in his own powers and integrity much fortified by contempt for petty obstacles or seductions of which he had had no experience. But this proud openness was made lovable by an expression of unaffected good-will. Mr Bulstrode perhaps liked him the better for the difference between them in pitch and manners; he certainly liked him the better, as Rosamond did, for being a stranger in Middlemarch. One can begin so many things with a new person!—even begin to be a better man.

‘I shall rejoice to furnish your zeal with fuller opportunities,’ Mr. Bulstrode answered; ‘I mean, by confiding to you the superintendence of my new hospital, should a maturer knowledge favour that issue, for I am determined that so great an object shall not be shackled by our two physicians. Indeed, I am encouraged to consider your advent to this town as a gracious indication that a more manifest blessing is now to be awarded to my efforts, which have hitherto been much withstood. With regard to the old infirmary, we have gained the initial point—I mean your election. And now I hope you will not shrink from incurring a certain amount of jealousy and dislike from your professional brethren by presenting yourself as a reformer.’

‘I will not profess bravery,’ said Lydgate, smiling, ‘but I acknowledge a good deal of pleasure in fighting, and I should not care for my profession, if I did not believe that better methods were to be found and enforced there as well as everywhere else.’

‘The standard of that profession is low in Middlemarch, my dear sir,’ said the banker. ‘I mean in knowledge and skill; not in social status for our medical men are most of them connected with respectable townspeople here. My own imperfect health has induced me to give some attention to those palliative resources which the Divine mercy has placed within our reach. I have consulted eminent men in the metropolis, and I am painfully aware of the backwardness under which medical treatment labours in our provincial districts.’

‘Yes;—with our present medical rules and education, one must be satisfied now and then to meet with a fair practitioner. As to all the higher questions which determine the starting-point of a diagnosis—as to the philosophy of medical evidence—any glimmering of these can only come from a scientific culture of which country practitioners have usually no more notion than the man in the moon.’

Mr Bulstrode, bending and looking intently, found the form which Lydgate had given to his agreement not quite suited to his comprehension. Under such circumstances a judicious man changes the topic and enters on ground where his own gifts may be more useful.

‘I am aware,’ he said, ‘that the peculiar bias of medical ability is towards material means. Nevertheless, Mr Lydgate, I hope we shall not vary in sentiment as to a measure in which you are not likely to be actively concerned, but in which your sympathetic concurrence may be an aid to me. You recognise, I hope, the existence of spiritual interests in your patients?’

‘Certainly I do. But those words are apt to cover different meanings to different minds.’

‘Precisely. And on such subjects wrong teaching is as fatal as no teaching. Now a point which I have much at heart to secure is a new regulation as to clerical attendance at the old infirmary. The building stands in Mr Farebrother’s parish. You know Mr Farebrother?’

‘I have seen him. He gave me his vote. I must call to thank him. He seems a very bright pleasant little fellow. And I understand he is a naturalist.’

‘Mr Farebrother, my dear sir, is a man deeply painful to contemplate. I suppose there is not a clergyman in this country who has greater talents.’ Mr Bulstrode paused and looked meditative.

‘I have not yet been pained by finding any excessive talents in Middlemarch,’ said Lydgate, bluntly.

‘What I desire,’ Mr Bulstrode continued, looking still more serious, ‘is that Mr Farebrother’s attendance at the hospital should be superseded by the appointment of a chaplain—of Mr Tyke, in fact—and that no other spiritual aid should be called in.’

‘As a medical man I could have no opinion on such a point unless I knew Mr Tyke, and even then I should require to know the cases in which he was applied.’ Lydgate smiled, but he was bent on being circumspect.

‘Of course you cannot enter fully into the merits of this measure at present. But’—here Mr Bulstrode began to speak with a more chiselled emphasis—‘the subject is likely to be referred to the medical board of the infirmary, and what I trust I may ask of you is, that in virtue of the co-operation between us which I now look forward to, you will not, so far as you are concerned, be influenced by my opponents in this matter.’

‘I hope I shall have nothing to do with clerical disputes,’ said Lydgate. ‘The path I have chosen is to work well in my own profession.’

‘My responsibility, Mr Lydgate, is of a broader kind. With me, indeed, this question is one of sacred accountableness; whereas with my opponents, I have good reason to say that it is an occasion for gratifying a spirit of worldly opposition. But I shall not therefore drop one iota of my convictions, or cease to identify myself with that truth which an evil generation hates. I have devoted myself to this object of hospital-improvement, but I will boldly confess to you, Mr Lydgate, that I should have no interests in hospitals if I believed that nothing more was concerned therein than the cure of mortal diseases. I have another ground of action, and in the face of persecution I will not conceal it.’

Mr Bulstrode’s voice had become a loud and agitated whisper as he said the last words.

‘There we certainly differ,’ said Lydgate. But he was not sorry that the door was now opened, and Mr Vincy was announced. That florid sociable personage was become more interesting to him since he had seen Rosamond. Not that, like her, he had been weaving any future in which their lots were united; but a man naturally remembers a charming girl with pleasure, and is willing to dine where he may see her again. Before he took leave, Mr Vincy had given that invitation which he had been ‘in no hurry about,’ for Rosamond at breakfast had mentioned that she thought her uncle Featherstone had taken the new doctor into great favour.

Mr Bulstrode alone with his brother-in-law, poured himself out a glass of water, and opened a sandwich box.

‘I cannot persuade you to adopt my regimen, Vincy?’

‘No, no; ‘I’ve no opinion of that system. Life wants padding,’ said Mr Vincy, unable to omit his portable theory. ‘However,’ he went on, accenting the word, as if to dismiss all irrelevance, ‘what I came here to talk about was a little affair of my young scapegrace, Fred’s.’

‘That is a subject on which you and I are likely to take quite as different views as on diet, Vincy.’

‘I hope not this time.’ (Mr Vincy was resolved to be good-humoured.) ‘The fact is, it’s about a whim of old Featherstone’s. Somebody has been cooking up a story out of spite, and telling it to the old man, to try to set him against Fred. He’s very fond of Fred, and is likely to do something handsome for him; indeed, he has as good as told Fred that he means to leave him his land, and that makes other people jealous.’

‘Vincy, I must repeat, that you will not get any concurrence from me as to the course you have pursued with your eldest son. It was entirely from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church: with a family of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the consequences.’

To point out other people’s errors was a duty that Mr Bulstrode rarely shrank from, but Mr Vincy was not equally prepared to be patient. When a man has the immediate prospect of being mayor, and is ready in the interests of commerce, to take up a firm attitude on politics generally, he has naturally a sense of his importance to the framework of things which seems to throw questions of private conduct into the background. And this particular reproof irritated him more than any other. It was eminently superfluous to be told that he was reaping the consequences. But he felt his neck under Bulstrode’s yoke; and though he usually enjoyed kicking, he was anxious to refrain from that relief.