Chapter: "Le coeur se sature d'amour comme d'un sel divin qui le
    conserve; de la l'incorruptible adherence de ceux qui se
    sont aimes des l'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles
    amours prolonges. Il existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est de
    Daphnis et Chloe que sont faits Philemon et Baucis. Cette
    vieillesse la, ressemblance du soir avec l'aurore."
                    --VICTOR HUGO: L'homme qui rit.


Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about tea-time, opened the
parlor-door and said, "There you are, Caleb.  Have you had your
dinner?"  (Mr. Garth's meals were much subordinated to "business.")

"Oh yes, a good dinner--cold mutton and I don't know what.  Where is
Mary?"

"In the garden with Letty, I think."

"Fred is not come yet?"

"No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?" said Mrs.
Garth, seeing that her absent-minded husband was putting on again the
hat which he had just taken off.

"No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute."

Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing
loftily hung between two pear-trees. She had a pink kerchief tied over
her head, making a little poke to shade her eyes from the level
sunbeams, while she was giving a glorious swing to Letty, who laughed
and screamed wildly.

Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him, pushing
back the pink kerchief and smiling afar off at him with the involuntary
smile of loving pleasure.

"I came to look for you, Mary," said Mr. Garth.  "Let us walk about a
bit."

Mary knew quite well that her father had something particular to say:
his eyebrows made their pathetic angle, and there was a tender gravity
in his voice: these things had been signs to her when she was Letty's
age.  She put her arm within his, and they turned by the row of
nut-trees.

"It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary," said her
father, not looking at her, but at the end of the stick which he held
in his other hand.

"Not a sad while, father--I mean to be merry," said Mary, laughingly.
"I have been single and merry for four-and-twenty years and more: I
suppose it will not be quite as long again as that."  Then, after a
little pause, she said, more gravely, bending her face before her
father's, "If you are contented with Fred?"

Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head aside wisely.

"Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday.  You said he had an
uncommon notion of stock, and a good eye for things."

"Did I?" said Caleb, rather slyly.

"Yes, I put it all down, and the date, anno Domini, and everything,"
said Mary.  "You like things to be neatly booked.  And then his
behavior to you, father, is really good; he has a deep respect for you;
and it is impossible to have a better temper than Fred has."

"Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match."

"No, indeed, father.  I don't love him because he is a fine match."

"What for, then?"

"Oh, dear, because I have always loved him.  I should never like
scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in
a husband."

"Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?" said Caleb, returning to his
first tone.  "There's no other wish come into it since things have been
going on as they have been of late?"  (Caleb meant a great deal in that
vague phrase;) "because, better late than never.  A woman must not
force her heart--she'll do a man no good by that."

"My feelings have not changed, father," said Mary, calmly.  "I shall be
constant to Fred as long as he is constant to me.  I don't think either
of us could spare the other, or like any one else better, however much
we might admire them.  It would make too great a difference to us--like
seeing all the old places altered, and changing the name for
everything.  We must wait for each other a long while; but Fred knows
that."

Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood still and screwed his
stick on the grassy walk.  Then he said, with emotion in his voice,
"Well, I've got a bit of news.  What do you think of Fred going to live
at Stone Court, and managing the land there?"

"How can that ever be, father?" said Mary, wonderingly.

"He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode.  The poor woman has been to
me begging and praying.  She wants to do the lad good, and it might be
a fine thing for him.  With saving, he might gradually buy the stock,
and he has a turn for farming."

"Oh, Fred would be so happy!  It is too good to believe."

"Ah, but mind you," said Caleb, turning his head warningly, "I must
take it on _my_ shoulders, and be responsible, and see after
everything; and that will grieve your mother a bit, though she mayn't
say so.  Fred had need be careful."

"Perhaps it is too much, father," said Mary, checked in her joy.
"There would be no happiness in bringing you any fresh trouble."

"Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it doesn't vex your mother.
And then, if you and Fred get married," here Caleb's voice shook just
perceptibly, "he'll be steady and saving; and you've got your mother's
cleverness, and mine too, in a woman's sort of way; and you'll keep him
in order.  He'll be coming by-and-by, so I wanted to tell you first,
because I think you'd like to tell _him_ by yourselves.  After that, I
could talk it well over with him, and we could go into business and the
nature of things."

"Oh, you dear good father!" cried Mary, putting her hands round her
father's neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed.
"I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the
world!"

"Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better."

"Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; "husbands are
an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order."

When they were entering the house with Letty, who had run to join them,
Mary saw Fred at the orchard-gate, and went to meet him.

"What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant youth!" said Mary, as Fred
stood still and raised his hat to her with playful formality.  "You are
not learning economy."

"Now that is too bad, Mary," said Fred.  "Just look at the edges of
these coat-cuffs! It is only by dint of good brushing that I look
respectable.  I am saving up three suits--one for a wedding-suit."

"How very droll you will look!--like a gentleman in an old
fashion-book."

"Oh no, they will keep two years."

"Two years! be reasonable, Fred," said Mary, turning to walk.  "Don't
encourage flattering expectations."

"Why not?  One lives on them better than on unflattering ones.  If we
can't be married in two years, the truth will be quite bad enough when
it comes."

"I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged
flattering expectations, and they did him harm."

"Mary, if you've got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt; I
shall go into the house to Mr. Garth.  I am out of spirits.  My father
is so cut up--home is not like itself.  I can't bear any more bad news."

"Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live at Stone
Court, and manage the farm, and be remarkably prudent, and save money
every year till all the stock and furniture were your own, and you were
a distinguished agricultural character, as Mr. Borthrop Trumbull
says--rather stout, I fear, and with the Greek and Latin sadly
weather-worn?"

"You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?" said Fred, coloring
slightly nevertheless.

"That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen, and he
never talks nonsense," said Mary, looking up at Fred now, while he
grasped her hand as they walked, till it rather hurt her; but she would
not complain.

"Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could be
married directly."

"Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer our
marriage for some years?  That would leave you time to misbehave, and
then if I liked some one else better, I should have an excuse for
jilting you."

"Pray don't joke, Mary," said Fred, with strong feeling.  "Tell me
seriously that all this is true, and that you are happy because of
it--because you love me best."

"It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it--because I love you
best," said Mary, in a tone of obedient recitation.

They lingered on the door-step under the steep-roofed porch, and Fred
almost in a whisper said--

"When we were first engaged, with the umbrella-ring, Mary, you used
to--"

The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary's eyes, but the
fatal Ben came running to the door with Brownie yapping behind him,
and, bouncing against them, said--

"Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in?--or may I eat your cake?"


FINALE.


Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending.  Who can quit young
lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know
what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life,
however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be
kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers
may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand
retrieval.

Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a
great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in
Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of
the wilderness.  It is still the beginning of the home epic--the
gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which
makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet
memories in common.

Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope
and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each
other and the world.

All who have cared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that
these two made no such failure, but achieved a solid mutual happiness.
Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways.  He became rather
distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic and practical
farmer, and produced a work on the "Cultivation of Green Crops and the
Economy of Cattle-Feeding" which won him high congratulations at
agricultural meetings.  In Middlemarch admiration was more reserved:
most persons there were inclined to believe that the merit of Fred's
authorship was due to his wife, since they had never expected Fred
Vincy to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.

But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories of
Great Men, taken from Plutarch," and had it printed and published by
Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing to give the
credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been to the
University, "where the ancients were studied," and might have been a
clergyman if he had chosen.

In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived,
and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since
it was always done by somebody else.

Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady.  Some years after his
marriage he told Mary that his happiness was half owing to Farebrother,
who gave him a strong pull-up at the right moment.  I cannot say that
he was never again misled by his hopefulness: the yield of crops or the
profits of a cattle sale usually fell below his estimate; and he was
always prone to believe that he could make money by the purchase of a
horse which turned out badly--though this, Mary observed, was of
course the fault of the horse, not of Fred's judgment.  He kept his
love of horsemanship, but he rarely allowed himself a day's hunting;
and when he did so, it was remarkable that he submitted to be laughed
at for cowardliness at the fences, seeming to see Mary and the boys
sitting on the five-barred gate, or showing their curly heads between
hedge and ditch.

There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought forth
men-children only; and when Fred wished to have a girl like her, she
said, laughingly, "that would be too great a trial to your mother."
Mrs. Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished lustre of her
housekeeping, was much comforted by her perception that two at least of
Fred's boys were real Vincys, and did not "feature the Garths." But
Mary secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three was very much
what her father must have been when he wore a round jacket, and showed
a marvellous nicety of aim in playing at marbles, or in throwing stones
to bring down the mellow pears.

Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well in
their teens, disputed much as to whether nephews or nieces were more
desirable; Ben contending that it was clear girls were good for less
than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats, which showed
how little they were meant for; whereupon Letty, who argued much from
books, got angry in replying that God made coats of skins for both Adam
and Eve alike--also it occurred to her that in the East the men too
wore petticoats.  But this latter argument, obscuring the majesty of
the former, was one too many, for Ben answered contemptuously, "The
more spooneys they!" and immediately appealed to his mother whether
boys were not better than girls.  Mrs. Garth pronounced that both were
alike naughty, but that boys were undoubtedly stronger, could run
faster, and throw with more precision to a greater distance.  With this
oracular sentence Ben was well satisfied, not minding the naughtiness;
but Letty took it ill, her feeling of superiority being stronger than
her muscles.

Fred never became rich--his hopefulness had not led him to expect that;
but he gradually saved enough to become owner of the stock and
furniture at Stone Court, and the work which Mr. Garth put into his
hands carried him in plenty through those "bad times" which are always
present with farmers.  Mary, in her matronly days, became as solid in
figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little formal
teaching, so that Mrs. Garth was alarmed lest they should never be well
grounded in grammar and geography.  Nevertheless, they were found quite
forward enough when they went to school; perhaps, because they had
liked nothing so well as being with their mother.  When Fred was riding
home on winter evenings he had a pleasant vision beforehand of the
bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor, and was sorry for other men who
could not have Mary for their wife; especially for Mr. Farebrother.
"He was ten times worthier of you than I was," Fred could now say to
her, magnanimously.  "To be sure he was," Mary answered; "and for that
reason he could do better without me.  But you--I shudder to think what
you would have been--a curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric
pocket-handkerchiefs!"

On inquiry it might possibly be found that Fred and Mary still inhabit
Stone Court--that the creeping plants still cast the foam of their
blossoms over the fine stone-wall into the field where the walnut-trees
stand in stately row--and that on sunny days the two lovers who were
first engaged with the umbrella-ring may be seen in white-haired
placidity at the open window from which Mary Garth, in the days of old
Peter Featherstone, had often been ordered to look out for Mr. Lydgate.

Lydgate's hair never became white.  He died when he was only fifty,
leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance on his
life.  He had gained an excellent practice, alternating, according to
the season, between London and a Continental bathing-place; having
written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal of wealth
on its side.  His skill was relied on by many paying patients, but he
always regarded himself as a failure: he had not done what he once
meant to do.  His acquaintances thought him enviable to have so
charming a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion.  Rosamond
never committed a second compromising indiscretion.  She simply
continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment,
disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him by
stratagem.  As the years went on he opposed her less and less, whence
Rosamond concluded that he had learned the value of her opinion; on the
other hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents now that
he gained a good income, and instead of the threatened cage in Bride
Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the bird of
paradise that she resembled.  In brief, Lydgate was what is called a
successful man.  But he died prematurely of diphtheria, and Rosamond
afterwards married an elderly and wealthy physician, who took kindly to
her four children.  She made a very pretty show with her daughters,
driving out in her carriage, and often spoke of her happiness as "a
reward"--she did not say for what, but probably she meant that it was a
reward for her patience with Tertius, whose temper never became
faultless, and to the last occasionally let slip a bitter speech which
was more memorable than the signs he made of his repentance.  He once
called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said
that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered
man's brains.  Rosamond had a placid but strong answer to such
speeches.  Why then had he chosen her?  It was a pity he had not had
Mrs. Ladislaw, whom he was always praising and placing above her.  And
thus the conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's side.  But
it would be unjust not to tell, that she never uttered a word in
depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance the
generosity which had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of her life.

Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women,
feeling that there was always something better which she might have
done, if she had only been better and known better.  Still, she never
repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry Will
Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well as
sorrow to him if she had repented.  They were bound to each other by a
love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it.  No life
would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled with emotion,
and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent activity which she
had not the doubtful pains of discovering and marking out for herself.
Will became an ardent public man, working well in those times when
reforms were begun with a young hopefulness of immediate good which has
been much checked in our days, and getting at last returned to
Parliament by a constituency who paid his expenses.  Dorothea could
have liked nothing better, since wrongs existed, than that her husband
should be in the thick of a struggle against them, and that she should
give him wifely help.  Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so
substantive and rare a creature should have been absorbed into the life
of another, and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother.
But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought
rather to have done--not even Sir James Chettam, who went no further
than the negative prescription that she ought not to have married Will
Ladislaw.

But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the way
in which the family was made whole again was characteristic of all
concerned.  Mr. Brooke could not resist the pleasure of corresponding
with Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen had been
remarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal Reform, it ran off into
an invitation to the Grange, which, once written, could not be done
away with at less cost than the sacrifice (hardly to be conceived) of
the whole valuable letter.  During the months of this correspondence
Mr. Brooke had continually, in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been
presupposing or hinting that the intention of cutting off the entail
was still maintained; and the day on which his pen gave the daring
invitation, he went to Freshitt expressly to intimate that he had a
stronger sense than ever of the reasons for taking that energetic step
as a precaution against any mixture of low blood in the heir of the
Brookes.

But that morning something exciting had happened at the Hall.  A letter
had come to Celia which made her cry silently as she read it; and when
Sir James, unused to see her in tears, asked anxiously what was the
matter, she burst out in a wail such as he had never heard from her
before.

"Dorothea has a little boy.  And you will not let me go and see her.
And I am sure she wants to see me.  And she will not know what to do
with the baby--she will do wrong things with it.  And they thought she
would die.  It is very dreadful!  Suppose it had been me and little
Arthur, and Dodo had been hindered from coming to see me!  I wish you
would be less unkind, James!"

"Good heavens, Celia!" said Sir James, much wrought upon, "what do you
wish?  I will do anything you like.  I will take you to town to-morrow
if you wish it."  And Celia did wish it.

It was after this that Mr. Brooke came, and meeting the Baronet in the
grounds, began to chat with him in ignorance of the news, which Sir
James for some reason did not care to tell him immediately.  But when
the entail was touched on in the usual way, he said, "My dear sir, it
is not for me to dictate to you, but for my part I would let that
alone.  I would let things remain as they are."

Mr. Brooke felt so much surprised that he did not at once find out how
much he was relieved by the sense that he was not expected to do
anything in particular.

Such being the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James
should consent to a reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband.
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to have Sir
James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing of
reciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when Dorothea and
Celia were present.

It became an understood thing that Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaw should pay at
least two visits during the year to the Grange, and there came
gradually a small row of cousins at Freshitt who enjoyed playing with
the two cousins visiting Tipton as much as if the blood of these
cousins had been less dubiously mixed.

Mr. Brooke lived to a good old age, and his estate was inherited by
Dorothea's son, who might have represented Middlemarch, but declined,
thinking that his opinions had less chance of being stifled if he
remained out of doors.

Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a
mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in
Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine
girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and
in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry
his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property, and
not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually
observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would
not have married either the one or the other.

Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally
beautiful.  They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse
struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which
great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the
aspect of illusion.  For there is no creature whose inward being is so
strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.  A
new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual
life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in
daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which
their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.  But we insignificant
people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many
Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that
of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were
not widely visible.  Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on
the earth.  But the effect of her being on those around her was
incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you
and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived
faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

 Caleb comes into his house and asks his wife where Mary is. He goes outside to have a serious chat with his daughter. He asks her if she's really sure about Fred, and willing to wait a long while to be married. Of course she is, and she's cheerful about it. Then her father tells her that Fred is going to live at Stone Court and manage the estate there. Mary is, of course, delighted. Fred arrives shortly afterwards, and she goes to tell him the good news. They're about to smooch when one of Mary's little brothers comes running out of the house and interrupts.

