Chapter: "If, as I have, you also doe,
       Vertue attired in woman see,
     And dare love that, and say so too,
       And forget the He and She;

     And if this love, though placed so,
       From prophane men you hide,
     Which will no faith on this bestow,
       Or, if they doe, deride:

     Then you have done a braver thing
       Than all the Worthies did,
     And a braver thence will spring,
       Which is, to keep that hid."
                             --DR. DONNE.


Sir James Chettam's mind was not fruitful in devices, but his growing
anxiety to "act on Brooke," once brought close to his constant belief
in Dorothea's capacity for influence, became formative, and issued in a
little plan; namely, to plead Celia's indisposition as a reason for
fetching Dorothea by herself to the Hall, and to leave her at the
Grange with the carriage on the way, after making her fully aware of
the situation concerning the management of the estate.

In this way it happened that one day near four o'clock, when Mr. Brooke
and Ladislaw were seated in the library, the door opened and Mrs.
Casaubon was announced.

Will, the moment before, had been low in the depths of boredom, and,
obliged to help Mr. Brooke in arranging "documents" about hanging
sheep-stealers, was exemplifying the power our minds have of riding
several horses at once by inwardly arranging measures towards getting a
lodging for himself in Middlemarch and cutting short his constant
residence at the Grange; while there flitted through all these steadier
images a tickling vision of a sheep-stealing epic written with Homeric
particularity.  When Mrs. Casaubon was announced he started up as from
an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his finger-ends.  Any one
observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the
adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which
might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed
the message of a magic touch.  And so it had.  For effective magic is
transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those
touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a
man's passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy
in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top
differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels?  Will, too,
was made of very impressible stuff.  The bow of a violin drawn near him
cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him,
and his point of view shifted--as easily as his mood.  Dorothea's
entrance was the freshness of morning.

"Well, my dear, this is pleasant, now," said Mr. Brooke, meeting and
kissing her.  "You have left Casaubon with his books, I suppose.
That's right.  We must not have you getting too learned for a woman,
you know."

"There is no fear of that, uncle," said Dorothea, turning to Will and
shaking hands with open cheerfulness, while she made no other form of
greeting, but went on answering her uncle.  "I am very slow.  When I
want to be busy with books, I am often playing truant among my
thoughts.  I find it is not so easy to be learned as to plan cottages."

She seated herself beside her uncle opposite to Will, and was evidently
preoccupied with something that made her almost unmindful of him.  He
was ridiculously disappointed, as if he had imagined that her coming
had anything to do with him.

"Why, yes, my dear, it was quite your hobby to draw plans.  But it was
good to break that off a little.  Hobbies are apt to ran away with us,
you know; it doesn't do to be run away with.  We must keep the reins.
I have never let myself be run away with; I always pulled up.  That is
what I tell Ladislaw.  He and I are alike, you know: he likes to go
into everything.  We are working at capital punishment.  We shall do a
great deal together, Ladislaw and I."

"Yes," said Dorothea, with characteristic directness, "Sir James has
been telling me that he is in hope of seeing a great change made soon
in your management of the estate--that you are thinking of having the
farms valued, and repairs made, and the cottages improved, so that
Tipton may look quite another place.  Oh, how happy!"--she went on,
clasping her hands, with a return to that more childlike impetuous
manner, which had been subdued since her marriage.  "If I were at home
still, I should take to riding again, that I might go about with you
and see all that!  And you are going to engage Mr. Garth, who praised
my cottages, Sir James says."

"Chettam is a little hasty, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, coloring
slightly; "a little hasty, you know.  I never said I should do anything
of the kind.  I never said I should _not_ do it, you know."

"He only feels confident that you will do it," said Dorothea, in a
voice as clear and unhesitating as that of a young chorister chanting a
credo, "because you mean to enter Parliament as a member who cares for
the improvement of the people, and one of the first things to be made
better is the state of the land and the laborers.  Think of Kit Downes,
uncle, who lives with his wife and seven children in a house with one
sitting room and one bedroom hardly larger than this table!--and those
poor Dagleys, in their tumble-down farmhouse, where they live in the
back kitchen and leave the other rooms to the rats!  That is one reason
why I did not like the pictures here, dear uncle--which you think me
stupid about.  I used to come from the village with all that dirt and
coarse ugliness like a pain within me, and the simpering pictures in
the drawing-room seemed to me like a wicked attempt to find delight in
what is false, while we don't mind how hard the truth is for the
neighbors outside our walls.  I think we have no right to come forward
and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils
which lie under our own hands."

Dorothea had gathered emotion as she went on, and had forgotten
everything except the relief of pouring forth her feelings, unchecked:
an experience once habitual with her, but hardly ever present since her
marriage, which had been a perpetual struggle of energy with fear.  For
the moment, Will's admiration was accompanied with a chilling sense of
remoteness.  A man is seldom ashamed of feeling that he cannot love a
woman so well when he sees a certain greatness in her: nature having
intended greatness for men.  But nature has sometimes made sad
oversights in carrying out her intention; as in the case of good Mr.
Brooke, whose masculine consciousness was at this moment in rather a
stammering condition under the eloquence of his niece.  He could not
immediately find any other mode of expressing himself than that of
rising, fixing his eye-glass, and fingering the papers before him.  At
last he said--

"There is something in what you say, my dear, something in what you
say--but not everything--eh, Ladislaw?  You and I don't like our
pictures and statues being found fault with.  Young ladies are a little
ardent, you know--a little one-sided, my dear.  Fine art, poetry, that
kind of thing, elevates a nation--emollit mores--you understand a
little Latin now.  But--eh? what?"

These interrogatives were addressed to the footman who had come in to
say that the keeper had found one of Dagley's boys with a leveret in
his hand just killed.

"I'll come, I'll come.  I shall let him off easily, you know," said Mr.
Brooke aside to Dorothea, shuffling away very cheerfully.

"I hope you feel how right this change is that I--that Sir James wishes
for," said Dorothea to Will, as soon as her uncle was gone.

"I do, now I have heard you speak about it.  I shall not forget what
you have said.  But can you think of something else at this moment?  I
may not have another opportunity of speaking to you about what has
occurred," said Will, rising with a movement of impatience, and holding
the back of his chair with both hands.

"Pray tell me what it is," said Dorothea, anxiously, also rising and
going to the open window, where Monk was looking in, panting and
wagging his tail.  She leaned her back against the window-frame, and
laid her hand on the dog's head; for though, as we know, she was not
fond of pets that must be held in the hands or trodden on, she was
always attentive to the feelings of dogs, and very polite if she had to
decline their advances.

Will followed her only with his eyes and said, "I presume you know that
Mr. Casaubon has forbidden me to go to his house."

"No, I did not," said Dorothea, after a moment's pause.  She was
evidently much moved.  "I am very, very sorry," she added, mournfully.
She was thinking of what Will had no knowledge of--the conversation
between her and her husband in the darkness; and she was anew smitten
with hopelessness that she could influence Mr. Casaubon's action.  But
the marked expression of her sorrow convinced Will that it was not all
given to him personally, and that Dorothea had not been visited by the
idea that Mr. Casaubon's dislike and jealousy of him turned upon
herself.  He felt an odd mixture of delight and vexation: of delight
that he could dwell and be cherished in her thought as in a pure home,
without suspicion and without stint--of vexation because he was of too
little account with her, was not formidable enough, was treated with an
unhesitating benevolence which did not flatter him.  But his dread of
any change in Dorothea was stronger than his discontent, and he began
to speak again in a tone of mere explanation.

"Mr. Casaubon's reason is, his displeasure at my taking a position here
which he considers unsuited to my rank as his cousin.  I have told him
that I cannot give way on this point.  It is a little too hard on me to
expect that my course in life is to be hampered by prejudices which I
think ridiculous.  Obligation may be stretched till it is no better
than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know
its meaning.  I would not have accepted the position if I had not meant
to make it useful and honorable.  I am not bound to regard family
dignity in any other light."

Dorothea felt wretched.  She thought her husband altogether in the
wrong, on more grounds than Will had mentioned.

"It is better for us not to speak on the subject," she said, with a
tremulousness not common in her voice, "since you and Mr. Casaubon
disagree.  You intend to remain?"  She was looking out on the lawn,
with melancholy meditation.

"Yes; but I shall hardly ever see you now," said Will, in a tone of
almost boyish complaint.

"No," said Dorothea, turning her eyes full upon him, "hardly ever.  But
I shall hear of you.  I shall know what you are doing for my uncle."

"I shall know hardly anything about you," said Will.  "No one will tell
me anything."

"Oh, my life is very simple," said Dorothea, her lips curling with an
exquisite smile, which irradiated her melancholy.  "I am always at
Lowick."

"That is a dreadful imprisonment," said Will, impetuously.

"No, don't think that," said Dorothea.  "I have no longings."

He did not speak, but she replied to some change in his expression.  "I
mean, for myself.  Except that I should like not to have so much more
than my share without doing anything for others.  But I have a belief
of my own, and it comforts me."

"What is that?" said Will, rather jealous of the belief.

"That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know
what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power
against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with
darkness narrower."

"That is a beautiful mysticism--it is a--"

"Please not to call it by any name," said Dorothea, putting out her
hands entreatingly.  "You will say it is Persian, or something else
geographical.  It is my life.  I have found it out, and cannot part
with it.  I have always been finding out my religion since I was a
little girl.  I used to pray so much--now I hardly ever pray.  I try
not to have desires merely for myself, because they may not be good for
others, and I have too much already.  I only told you, that you might
know quite well how my days go at Lowick."

"God bless you for telling me!" said Will, ardently, and rather
wondering at himself.  They were looking at each other like two fond
children who were talking confidentially of birds.

"What is _your_ religion?" said Dorothea.  "I mean--not what you know
about religion, but the belief that helps you most?"

"To love what is good and beautiful when I see it," said Will.  "But I
am a rebel: I don't feel bound, as you do, to submit to what I don't
like."

"But if you like what is good, that comes to the same thing," said
Dorothea, smiling.

"Now you are subtle," said Will.

"Yes; Mr. Casaubon often says I am too subtle.  I don't feel as if I
were subtle," said Dorothea, playfully.  "But how long my uncle is!  I
must go and look for him.  I must really go on to the Hall.  Celia is
expecting me."

Will offered to tell Mr. Brooke, who presently came and said that he
would step into the carriage and go with Dorothea as far as Dagley's,
to speak about the small delinquent who had been caught with the
leveret.  Dorothea renewed the subject of the estate as they drove
along, but Mr. Brooke, not being taken unawares, got the talk under his
own control.

"Chettam, now," he replied; "he finds fault with me, my dear; but I
should not preserve my game if it were not for Chettam, and he can't
say that that expense is for the sake of the tenants, you know.  It's a
little against my feeling:--poaching, now, if you come to look into
it--I have often thought of getting up the subject.  Not long ago,
Flavell, the Methodist preacher, was brought up for knocking down a
hare that came across his path when he and his wife were walking out
together.  He was pretty quick, and knocked it on the neck."

"That was very brutal, I think," said Dorothea

"Well, now, it seemed rather black to me, I confess, in a Methodist
preacher, you know.  And Johnson said, 'You may judge what a
_hypocrite_ he is.'  And upon my word, I thought Flavell looked very
little like 'the highest style of man'--as somebody calls the
Christian--Young, the poet Young, I think--you know Young?  Well, now,
Flavell in his shabby black gaiters, pleading that he thought the Lord
had sent him and his wife a good dinner, and he had a right to knock it
down, though not a mighty hunter before the Lord, as Nimrod was--I
assure you it was rather comic: Fielding would have made something of
it--or Scott, now--Scott might have worked it up.  But really, when I
came to think of it, I couldn't help liking that the fellow should have
a bit of hare to say grace over.  It's all a matter of
prejudice--prejudice with the law on its side, you know--about the
stick and the gaiters, and so on.  However, it doesn't do to reason
about things; and law is law.  But I got Johnson to be quiet, and I
hushed the matter up.  I doubt whether Chettam would not have been more
severe, and yet he comes down on me as if I were the hardest man in the
county.  But here we are at Dagley's."

Mr. Brooke got down at a farmyard-gate, and Dorothea drove on.  It is
wonderful how much uglier things will look when we only suspect that we
are blamed for them.  Even our own persons in the glass are apt to
change their aspect for us after we have heard some frank remark on
their less admirable points; and on the other hand it is astonishing
how pleasantly conscience takes our encroachments on those who never
complain or have nobody to complain for them.  Dagley's homestead never
before looked so dismal to Mr. Brooke as it did today, with his mind
thus sore about the fault-finding of the "Trumpet," echoed by Sir James.

It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine
arts which makes other people's hardships picturesque, might have been
delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End: the old house had
dormer-windows in the dark red roof, two of the chimneys were choked
with ivy, the large porch was blocked up with bundles of sticks, and
half the windows were closed with gray worm-eaten shutters about which
the jasmine-boughs grew in wild luxuriance; the mouldering garden wall
with hollyhocks peeping over it was a perfect study of highly mingled
subdued color, and there was an aged goat (kept doubtless on
interesting superstitious grounds) lying against the open back-kitchen
door.  The mossy thatch of the cow-shed, the broken gray barn-doors,
the pauper laborers in ragged breeches who had nearly finished
unloading a wagon of corn into the barn ready for early thrashing; the
scanty dairy of cows being tethered for milking and leaving one half of
the shed in brown emptiness; the very pigs and white ducks seeming to
wander about the uneven neglected yard as if in low spirits from
feeding on a too meagre quality of rinsings,--all these objects under
the quiet light of a sky marbled with high clouds would have made a
sort of picture which we have all paused over as a "charming bit,"
touching other sensibilities than those which are stirred by the
depression of the agricultural interest, with the sad lack of farming
capital, as seen constantly in the newspapers of that time.  But these
troublesome associations were just now strongly present to Mr. Brooke,
and spoiled the scene for him.  Mr. Dagley himself made a figure in the
landscape, carrying a pitchfork and wearing his milking-hat--a very old
beaver flattened in front.  His coat and breeches were the best he had,
and he would not have been wearing them on this weekday occasion if he
had not been to market and returned later than usual, having given
himself the rare treat of dining at the public table of the Blue Bull.
How he came to fall into this extravagance would perhaps be matter of
wonderment to himself on the morrow; but before dinner something in the
state of the country, a slight pause in the harvest before the Far Dips
were cut, the stories about the new King and the numerous handbills on
the walls, had seemed to warrant a little recklessness.  It was a maxim
about Middlemarch, and regarded as self-evident, that good meat should
have good drink, which last Dagley interpreted as plenty of table ale
well followed up by rum-and-water. These liquors have so far truth in
them that they were not false enough to make poor Dagley seem merry:
they only made his discontent less tongue-tied than usual.  He had also
taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant
dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism, which consisted in
holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse.
He was flushed, and his eyes had a decidedly quarrelsome stare as he
stood still grasping his pitchfork, while the landlord approached with
his easy shuffling walk, one hand in his trouser-pocket and the other
swinging round a thin walking-stick.

"Dagley, my good fellow," began Mr. Brooke, conscious that he was going
to be very friendly about the boy.

"Oh, ay, I'm a good feller, am I?  Thank ye, sir, thank ye," said
Dagley, with a loud snarling irony which made Fag the sheep-dog stir
from his seat and prick his ears; but seeing Monk enter the yard after
some outside loitering, Fag seated himself again in an attitude of
observation.  "I'm glad to hear I'm a good feller."

Mr. Brooke reflected that it was market-day, and that his worthy tenant
had probably been dining, but saw no reason why he should not go on,
since he could take the precaution of repeating what he had to say to
Mrs. Dagley.

"Your little lad Jacob has been caught killing a leveret, Dagley: I
have told Johnson to lock him up in the empty stable an hour or two,
just to frighten him, you know.  But he will be brought home by-and-by,
before night: and you'll just look after him, will you, and give him a
reprimand, you know?"

"No, I woon't: I'll be dee'd if I'll leather my boy to please you or
anybody else, not if you was twenty landlords istid o' one, and that a
bad un."

Dagley's words were loud enough to summon his wife to the back-kitchen
door--the only entrance ever used, and one always open except in bad
weather--and Mr. Brooke, saying soothingly, "Well, well, I'll speak to
your wife--I didn't mean beating, you know," turned to walk to the
house.  But Dagley, only the more inclined to "have his say" with a
gentleman who walked away from him, followed at once, with Fag
slouching at his heels and sullenly evading some small and probably
charitable advances on the part of Monk.

"How do you do, Mrs. Dagley?" said Mr. Brooke, making some haste.  "I
came to tell you about your boy: I don't want you to give him the
stick, you know."  He was careful to speak quite plainly this time.

Overworked Mrs. Dagley--a thin, worn woman, from whose life pleasure
had so entirely vanished that she had not even any Sunday clothes which
could give her satisfaction in preparing for church--had already had a
misunderstanding with her husband since he had come home, and was in
low spirits, expecting the worst.  But her husband was beforehand in
answering.

"No, nor he woon't hev the stick, whether you want it or no," pursued
Dagley, throwing out his voice, as if he wanted it to hit hard.
"You've got no call to come an' talk about sticks o' these primises, as
you woon't give a stick tow'rt mending.  Go to Middlemarch to ax for
_your_ charrickter."

"You'd far better hold your tongue, Dagley," said the wife, "and not
kick your own trough over.  When a man as is father of a family has
been an' spent money at market and made himself the worse for liquor,
he's done enough mischief for one day.  But I should like to know what
my boy's done, sir."

"Niver do you mind what he's done," said Dagley, more fiercely, "it's
my business to speak, an' not yourn.  An' I wull speak, too.  I'll hev
my say--supper or no.  An' what I say is, as I've lived upo' your
ground from my father and grandfather afore me, an' hev dropped our
money into't, an' me an' my children might lie an' rot on the ground
for top-dressin' as we can't find the money to buy, if the King wasn't
to put a stop."

"My good fellow, you're drunk, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
confidentially but not judiciously.  "Another day, another day," he
added, turning as if to go.

But Dagley immediately fronted him, and Fag at his heels growled low,
as his master's voice grew louder and more insulting, while Monk also
drew close in silent dignified watch.  The laborers on the wagon were
pausing to listen, and it seemed wiser to be quite passive than to
attempt a ridiculous flight pursued by a bawling man.

"I'm no more drunk nor you are, nor so much," said Dagley.  "I can
carry my liquor, an' I know what I meean.  An' I meean as the King 'ull
put a stop to 't, for them say it as knows it, as there's to be a
Rinform, and them landlords as never done the right thing by their
tenants 'ull be treated i' that way as they'll hev to scuttle off.  An'
there's them i' Middlemarch knows what the Rinform is--an' as knows
who'll hev to scuttle.  Says they, 'I know who _your_ landlord is.'
An' says I, 'I hope you're the better for knowin' him, I arn't.' Says
they, 'He's a close-fisted un.' 'Ay ay,' says I. 'He's a man for the
Rinform,' says they.  That's what they says.  An' I made out what the
Rinform were--an' it were to send you an' your likes a-scuttlin' an'
wi' pretty strong-smellin' things too.  An' you may do as you like now,
for I'm none afeard on you.  An' you'd better let my boy aloan, an'
look to yoursen, afore the Rinform has got upo' your back.  That's what
I'n got to say," concluded Mr. Dagley, striking his fork into the
ground with a firmness which proved inconvenient as he tried to draw it
up again.

At this last action Monk began to bark loudly, and it was a moment for
Mr. Brooke to escape.  He walked out of the yard as quickly as he
could, in some amazement at the novelty of his situation.  He had never
been insulted on his own land before, and had been inclined to regard
himself as a general favorite (we are all apt to do so, when we think
of our own amiability more than of what other people are likely to want
of us). When he had quarrelled with Caleb Garth twelve years before he
had thought that the tenants would be pleased at the landlord's taking
everything into his own hands.

Some who follow the narrative of his experience may wonder at the
midnight darkness of Mr. Dagley; but nothing was easier in those times
than for an hereditary farmer of his grade to be ignorant, in spite
somehow of having a rector in the twin parish who was a gentleman to
the backbone, a curate nearer at hand who preached more learnedly than
the rector, a landlord who had gone into everything, especially fine
art and social improvement, and all the lights of Middlemarch only
three miles off.  As to the facility with which mortals escape
knowledge, try an average acquaintance in the intellectual blaze of
London, and consider what that eligible person for a dinner-party would
have been if he had learned scant skill in "summing" from the
parish-clerk of Tipton, and read a chapter in the Bible with immense
difficulty, because such names as Isaiah or Apollos remained
unmanageable after twice spelling.  Poor Dagley read a few verses
sometimes on a Sunday evening, and the world was at least not darker to
him than it had been before.  Some things he knew thoroughly, namely,
the slovenly habits of farming, and the awkwardness of weather, stock
and crops, at Freeman's End--so called apparently by way of sarcasm,
to imply that a man was free to quit it if he chose, but that there was
no earthly "beyond" open to him.



    Wise in his daily work was he:
      To fruits of diligence,
    And not to faiths or polity,
      He plied his utmost sense.
    These perfect in their little parts,
      Whose work is all their prize--
    Without them how could laws, or arts,
      Or towered cities rise?


In watching effects, if only of an electric battery, it is often
necessary to change our place and examine a particular mixture or group
at some distance from the point where the movement we are interested in
was set up.  The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth's
breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were:
father, mother, and five of the children.  Mary was just now at home
waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was
getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his
father's disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling
"business."

The letters had come--nine costly letters, for which the postman had
been paid three and twopence, and Mr. Garth was forgetting his tea and
toast while he read his letters and laid them open one above the other,
sometimes swaying his head slowly, sometimes screwing up his mouth in
inward debate, but not forgetting to cut off a large red seal unbroken,
which Letty snatched up like an eager terrier.

The talk among the rest went on unrestrainedly, for nothing disturbed
Caleb's absorption except shaking the table when he was writing.

Two letters of the nine had been for Mary.  After reading them, she had
passed them to her mother, and sat playing with her tea-spoon absently,
till with a sudden recollection she returned to her sewing, which she
had kept on her lap during breakfast.

"Oh, don't sew, Mary!" said Ben, pulling her arm down.  "Make me a
peacock with this bread-crumb." He had been kneading a small mass for
the purpose.

"No, no, Mischief!" said Mary, good-humoredly, while she pricked his
hand lightly with her needle.  "Try and mould it yourself: you have
seen me do it often enough.  I must get this sewing done.  It is for
Rosamond Vincy: she is to be married next week, and she can't be
married without this handkerchief."  Mary ended merrily, amused with
the last notion.

"Why can't she, Mary?" said Letty, seriously interested in this
mystery, and pushing her head so close to her sister that Mary now
turned the threatening needle towards Letty's nose.

"Because this is one of a dozen, and without it there would only be
eleven," said Mary, with a grave air of explanation, so that Letty sank
back with a sense of knowledge.

"Have you made up your mind, my dear?" said Mrs. Garth, laying the
letters down.

"I shall go to the school at York," said Mary.  "I am less unfit to
teach in a school than in a family.  I like to teach classes best.
And, you see, I must teach: there is nothing else to be done."

"Teaching seems to me the most delightful work in the world," said Mrs.
Garth, with a touch of rebuke in her tone.  "I could understand your
objection to it if you had not knowledge enough, Mary, or if you
disliked children."

"I suppose we never quite understand why another dislikes what we like,
mother," said Mary, rather curtly.  "I am not fond of a schoolroom: I
like the outside world better.  It is a very inconvenient fault of
mine."

"It must be very stupid to be always in a girls' school," said Alfred.
"Such a set of nincompoops, like Mrs. Ballard's pupils walking two and
two."

"And they have no games worth playing at," said Jim.  "They can neither
throw nor leap.  I don't wonder at Mary's not liking it."

"What is that Mary doesn't like, eh?" said the father, looking over his
spectacles and pausing before he opened his next letter.

"Being among a lot of nincompoop girls," said Alfred.

"Is it the situation you had heard of, Mary?" said Caleb, gently,
looking at his daughter.

"Yes, father: the school at York.  I have determined to take it.  It is
quite the best.  Thirty-five pounds a-year, and extra pay for teaching
the smallest strummers at the piano."

"Poor child!  I wish she could stay at home with us, Susan," said
Caleb, looking plaintively at his wife.

"Mary would not be happy without doing her duty," said Mrs. Garth,
magisterially, conscious of having done her own.

"It wouldn't make me happy to do such a nasty duty as that," said
Alfred--at which Mary and her father laughed silently, but Mrs. Garth
said, gravely--

"Do find a fitter word than nasty, my dear Alfred, for everything that
you think disagreeable.  And suppose that Mary could help you to go to
Mr. Hanmer's with the money she gets?"

"That seems to me a great shame.  But she's an old brick," said Alfred,
rising from his chair, and pulling Mary's head backward to kiss her.

Mary colored and laughed, but could not conceal that the tears were
coming.  Caleb, looking on over his spectacles, with the angles of his
eyebrows falling, had an expression of mingled delight and sorrow as he
returned to the opening of his letter; and even Mrs. Garth, her lips
curling with a calm contentment, allowed that inappropriate language to
pass without correction, although Ben immediately took it up, and sang,
"She's an old brick, old brick, old brick!" to a cantering measure,
which he beat out with his fist on Mary's arm.

But Mrs. Garth's eyes were now drawn towards her husband, who was
already deep in the letter he was reading.  His face had an expression
of grave surprise, which alarmed her a little, but he did not like to
be questioned while he was reading, and she remained anxiously watching
till she saw him suddenly shaken by a little joyous laugh as he turned
back to the beginning of the letter, and looking at her above his
spectacles, said, in a low tone, "What do you think, Susan?"

She went and stood behind him, putting her hand on his shoulder, while
they read the letter together.  It was from Sir James Chettam, offering
to Mr. Garth the management of the family estates at Freshitt and
elsewhere, and adding that Sir James had been requested by Mr. Brooke
of Tipton to ascertain whether Mr. Garth would be disposed at the same
time to resume the agency of the Tipton property.  The Baronet added in
very obliging words that he himself was particularly desirous of seeing
the Freshitt and Tipton estates under the same management, and he hoped
to be able to show that the double agency might be held on terms
agreeable to Mr. Garth, whom he would be glad to see at the Hall at
twelve o'clock on the following day.

"He writes handsomely, doesn't he, Susan?" said Caleb, turning his eyes
upward to his wife, who raised her hand from his shoulder to his ear,
while she rested her chin on his head.  "Brooke didn't like to ask me
himself, I can see," he continued, laughing silently.

"Here is an honor to your father, children," said Mrs. Garth, looking
round at the five pair of eyes, all fixed on the parents.  "He is asked
to take a post again by those who dismissed him long ago.  That shows
that he did his work well, so that they feel the want of him."

"Like Cincinnatus--hooray!" said Ben, riding on his chair, with a
pleasant confidence that discipline was relaxed.

"Will they come to fetch him, mother?" said Letty, thinking of the
Mayor and Corporation in their robes.

Mrs. Garth patted Letty's head and smiled, but seeing that her husband
was gathering up his letters and likely soon to be out of reach in that
sanctuary "business," she pressed his shoulder and said emphatically--

"Now, mind you ask fair pay, Caleb."

"Oh yes," said Caleb, in a deep voice of assent, as if it would be
unreasonable to suppose anything else of him.  "It'll come to between
four and five hundred, the two together."  Then with a little start of
remembrance he said, "Mary, write and give up that school.  Stay and
help your mother.  I'm as pleased as Punch, now I've thought of that."

No manner could have been less like that of Punch triumphant than
Caleb's, but his talents did not lie in finding phrases, though he was
very particular about his letter-writing, and regarded his wife as a
treasury of correct language.

There was almost an uproar among the children now, and Mary held up the
cambric embroidery towards her mother entreatingly, that it might be
put out of reach while the boys dragged her into a dance.  Mrs. Garth,
in placid joy, began to put the cups and plates together, while Caleb
pushing his chair from the table, as if he were going to move to the
desk, still sat holding his letters in his hand and looking on the
ground meditatively, stretching out the fingers of his left hand,
according to a mute language of his own.  At last he said--

"It's a thousand pities Christy didn't take to business, Susan.  I
shall want help by-and-by. And Alfred must go off to the
engineering--I've made up my mind to that."  He fell into meditation and
finger-rhetoric again for a little while, and then continued: "I shall
make Brooke have new agreements with the tenants, and I shall draw up a
rotation of crops.  And I'll lay a wager we can get fine bricks out of
the clay at Bott's corner.  I must look into that: it would cheapen the
repairs.  It's a fine bit of work, Susan!  A man without a family would
be glad to do it for nothing."

"Mind you don't, though," said his wife, lifting up her finger.

"No, no; but it's a fine thing to come to a man when he's seen into the
nature of business: to have the chance of getting a bit of the country
into good fettle, as they say, and putting men into the right way with
their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building
done--that those who are living and those who come after will be the
better for.  I'd sooner have it than a fortune.  I hold it the most
honorable work that is."  Here Caleb laid down his letters, thrust his
fingers between the buttons of his waistcoat, and sat upright, but
presently proceeded with some awe in his voice and moving his head
slowly aside--"It's a great gift of God, Susan."

"That it is, Caleb," said his wife, with answering fervor.  "And it
will be a blessing to your children to have had a father who did such
work: a father whose good work remains though his name may be
forgotten."  She could not say any more to him then about the pay.

In the evening, when Caleb, rather tired with his day's work, was
seated in silence with his pocket-book open on his knee, while Mrs.
Garth and Mary were at their sewing, and Letty in a corner was
whispering a dialogue with her doll, Mr. Farebrother came up the
orchard walk, dividing the bright August lights and shadows with the
tufted grass and the apple-tree boughs.  We know that he was fond of
his parishioners the Garths, and had thought Mary worth mentioning to
Lydgate.  He used to the full the clergyman's privilege of disregarding
the Middlemarch discrimination of ranks, and always told his mother
that Mrs. Garth was more of a lady than any matron in the town.  Still,
you see, he spent his evenings at the Vincys', where the matron, though
less of a lady, presided over a well-lit drawing-room and whist.  In
those days human intercourse was not determined solely by respect.  But
the Vicar did heartily respect the Garths, and a visit from him was no
surprise to that family.  Nevertheless he accounted for it even while
he was shaking hands, by saying, "I come as an envoy, Mrs. Garth: I
have something to say to you and Garth on behalf of Fred Vincy.  The
fact is, poor fellow," he continued, as he seated himself and looked
round with his bright glance at the three who were listening to him,
"he has taken me into his confidence."

Mary's heart beat rather quickly: she wondered how far Fred's
confidence had gone.

"We haven't seen the lad for months," said Caleb.  "I couldn't think
what was become of him."

"He has been away on a visit," said the Vicar, "because home was a
little too hot for him, and Lydgate told his mother that the poor
fellow must not begin to study yet.  But yesterday he came and poured
himself out to me.  I am very glad he did, because I have seen him grow
up from a youngster of fourteen, and I am so much at home in the house
that the children are like nephews and nieces to me.  But it is a
difficult case to advise upon.  However, he has asked me to come and
tell you that he is going away, and that he is so miserable about his
debt to you, and his inability to pay, that he can't bear to come
himself even to bid you good by."

"Tell him it doesn't signify a farthing," said Caleb, waving his hand.
"We've had the pinch and have got over it.  And now I'm going to be as
rich as a Jew."

"Which means," said Mrs. Garth, smiling at the Vicar, "that we are
going to have enough to bring up the boys well and to keep Mary at
home."

"What is the treasure-trove?" said Mr. Farebrother.

"I'm going to be agent for two estates, Freshitt and Tipton; and
perhaps for a pretty little bit of land in Lowick besides: it's all the
same family connection, and employment spreads like water if it's once
set going.  It makes me very happy, Mr. Farebrother"--here Caleb threw
back his head a little, and spread his arms on the elbows of his
chair--"that I've got an opportunity again with the letting of the
land, and carrying out a notion or two with improvements.  It's a most
uncommonly cramping thing, as I've often told Susan, to sit on
horseback and look over the hedges at the wrong thing, and not be able
to put your hand to it to make it right.  What people do who go into
politics I can't think: it drives me almost mad to see mismanagement
over only a few hundred acres."

It was seldom that Caleb volunteered so long a speech, but his
happiness had the effect of mountain air: his eyes were bright, and the
words came without effort.

"I congratulate you heartily, Garth," said the Vicar.  "This is the
best sort of news I could have had to carry to Fred Vincy, for he dwelt
a good deal on the injury he had done you in causing you to part with
money--robbing you of it, he said--which you wanted for other purposes.
I wish Fred were not such an idle dog; he has some very good points,
and his father is a little hard upon him."

"Where is he going?" said Mrs. Garth, rather coldly.

"He means to try again for his degree, and he is going up to study
before term.  I have advised him to do that.  I don't urge him to enter
the Church--on the contrary.  But if he will go and work so as to pass,
that will be some guarantee that he has energy and a will; and he is
quite at sea; he doesn't know what else to do.  So far he will please
his father, and I have promised in the mean time to try and reconcile
Vincy to his son's adopting some other line of life.  Fred says frankly
he is not fit for a clergyman, and I would do anything I could to
hinder a man from the fatal step of choosing the wrong profession.  He
quoted to me what you said, Miss Garth--do you remember it?"  (Mr.
Farebrother used to say "Mary" instead of "Miss Garth," but it was part
of his delicacy to treat her with the more deference because, according
to Mrs. Vincy's phrase, she worked for her bread.)

Mary felt uncomfortable, but, determined to take the matter lightly,
answered at once, "I have said so many impertinent things to Fred--we
are such old playfellows."

"You said, according to him, that he would be one of those ridiculous
clergymen who help to make the whole clergy ridiculous.  Really, that
was so cutting that I felt a little cut myself."

Caleb laughed.  "She gets her tongue from you, Susan," he said, with
some enjoyment.

"Not its flippancy, father," said Mary, quickly, fearing that her
mother would be displeased.  "It is rather too bad of Fred to repeat my
flippant speeches to Mr. Farebrother."

"It was certainly a hasty speech, my dear," said Mrs. Garth, with whom
speaking evil of dignities was a high misdemeanor.  "We should not
value our Vicar the less because there was a ridiculous curate in the
next parish."

"There's something in what she says, though," said Caleb, not disposed
to have Mary's sharpness undervalued.  "A bad workman of any sort makes
his fellows mistrusted.  Things hang together," he added, looking on
the floor and moving his feet uneasily with a sense that words were
scantier than thoughts.

"Clearly," said the Vicar, amused.  "By being contemptible we set men's
minds, to the tune of contempt.  I certainly agree with Miss Garth's
view of the matter, whether I am condemned by it or not.  But as to
Fred Vincy, it is only fair he should be excused a little: old
Featherstone's delusive behavior did help to spoil him.  There was
something quite diabolical in not leaving him a farthing after all.
But Fred has the good taste not to dwell on that.  And what he cares
most about is having offended you, Mrs. Garth; he supposes you will
never think well of him again."

"I have been disappointed in Fred," said Mrs. Garth, with decision.
"But I shall be ready to think well of him again when he gives me good
reason to do so."

At this point Mary went out of the room, taking Letty with her.

"Oh, we must forgive young people when they're sorry," said Caleb,
watching Mary close the door.  "And as you say, Mr. Farebrother, there
was the very devil in that old man. Now Mary's gone out, I must tell you
a thing--it's only known to Susan and me, and you'll not tell it again.
The old scoundrel wanted Mary to burn one of the wills the very night
he died, when she was sitting up with him by herself, and he offered her
a sum of money that he had in the box by him if she would do it.  But Mary,
you understand, could do no such thing--would not be handling his iron
chest, and so on.  Now, you see, the will he wanted burnt was this last,
so that if Mary had done what he wanted, Fred Vincy would have had ten
thousand pounds. The old man did turn to him at the last.  That touches
poor Mary close; she couldn't help it--she was in the right to do what
she did, but she feels, as she says, much as if she had knocked down
somebody's property and broken it against her will, when she was
rightfully defending herself.  I feel with her, somehow, and if I could
make any amends to the poor lad, instead of bearing him a grudge for
the harm he did us, I should be glad to do it.  Now, what is your opinion,
sir?  Susan doesn't agree with me.  She says--tell what you say, Susan."

"Mary could not have acted otherwise, even if she had known what would
be the effect on Fred," said Mrs. Garth, pausing from her work, and
looking at Mr. Farebrother.

"And she was quite ignorant of it.  It seems to me, a loss which falls
on another because we have done right is not to lie upon our
conscience."

The Vicar did not answer immediately, and Caleb said, "It's the
feeling.  The child feels in that way, and I feel with her.  You don't
mean your horse to tread on a dog when you're backing out of the way;
but it goes through you, when it's done."

"I am sure Mrs. Garth would agree with you there," said Mr.
Farebrother, who for some reason seemed more inclined to ruminate than
to speak.  "One could hardly say that the feeling you mention about
Fred is wrong--or rather, mistaken--though no man ought to make a claim
on such feeling."

"Well, well," said Caleb, "it's a secret.  You will not tell Fred."

"Certainly not.  But I shall carry the other good news--that you can
afford the loss he caused you."

Mr. Farebrother left the house soon after, and seeing Mary in the
orchard with Letty, went to say good-by to her.  They made a pretty
picture in the western light which brought out the brightness of the
apples on the old scant-leaved boughs--Mary in her lavender gingham and
black ribbons holding a basket, while Letty in her well-worn nankin
picked up the fallen apples.  If you want to know more particularly how
Mary looked, ten to one you will see a face like hers in the crowded
street to-morrow, if you are there on the watch: she will not be among
those daughters of Zion who are haughty, and walk with stretched-out
necks and wanton eyes, mincing as they go: let all those pass, and fix
your eyes on some small plump brownish person of firm but quiet
carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is
looking at her.  If she has a broad face and square brow, well-marked
eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her
glance which her mouth keeps the secret of, and for the rest features
entirely insignificant--take that ordinary but not disagreeable person
for a portrait of Mary Garth.  If you made her smile, she would show
you perfect little teeth; if you made her angry, she would not raise
her voice, but would probably say one of the bitterest things you have
ever tasted the flavor of; if you did her a kindness, she would never
forget it.  Mary admired the keen-faced handsome little Vicar in his
well-brushed threadbare clothes more than any man she had had the
opportunity of knowing.  She had never heard him say a foolish thing,
though she knew that he did unwise ones; and perhaps foolish sayings
were more objectionable to her than any of Mr. Farebrother's unwise
doings.  At least, it was remarkable that the actual imperfections of
the Vicar's clerical character never seemed to call forth the same
scorn and dislike which she showed beforehand for the predicted
imperfections of the clerical character sustained by Fred Vincy.  These
irregularities of judgment, I imagine, are found even in riper minds
than Mary Garth's: our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and
demerit, which none of us ever saw.  Will any one guess towards which
of those widely different men Mary had the peculiar woman's
tenderness?--the one she was most inclined to be severe on, or the
contrary?

"Have you any message for your old playfellow, Miss Garth?" said the
Vicar, as he took a fragrant apple from the basket which she held
towards him, and put it in his pocket.  "Something to soften down that
harsh judgment?  I am going straight to see him."

"No," said Mary, shaking her head, and smiling.  "If I were to say that
he would not be ridiculous as a clergyman, I must say that he would be
something worse than ridiculous.  But I am very glad to hear that he is
going away to work."

"On the other hand, I am very glad to hear that _you_ are not going
away to work.  My mother, I am sure, will be all the happier if you
will come to see her at the vicarage: you know she is fond of having
young people to talk to, and she has a great deal to tell about old
times.  You will really be doing a kindness."

"I should like it very much, if I may," said Mary.  "Everything seems
too happy for me all at once.  I thought it would always be part of my
life to long for home, and losing that grievance makes me feel rather
empty: I suppose it served instead of sense to fill up my mind?"

"May I go with you, Mary?" whispered Letty--a most inconvenient child,
who listened to everything.  But she was made exultant by having her
chin pinched and her cheek kissed by Mr. Farebrother--an incident
which she narrated to her mother and father.

As the Vicar walked to Lowick, any one watching him closely might have
seen him twice shrug his shoulders.  I think that the rare Englishmen
who have this gesture are never of the heavy type--for fear of any
lumbering instance to the contrary, I will say, hardly ever; they have
usually a fine temperament and much tolerance towards the smaller
errors of men (themselves inclusive). The Vicar was holding an inward
dialogue in which he told himself that there was probably something
more between Fred and Mary Garth than the regard of old playfellows,
and replied with a question whether that bit of womanhood were not a
great deal too choice for that crude young gentleman.  The rejoinder to
this was the first shrug.  Then he laughed at himself for being likely
to have felt jealous, as if he had been a man able to marry, which,
added he, it is as clear as any balance-sheet that I am not.  Whereupon
followed the second shrug.

What could two men, so different from each other, see in this "brown
patch," as Mary called herself?  It was certainly not her plainness
that attracted them (and let all plain young ladies be warned against
the dangerous encouragement given them by Society to confide in their
want of beauty). A human being in this aged nation of ours is a very
wonderful whole, the slow creation of long interchanging influences:
and charm is a result of two such wholes, the one loving and the one
loved.

When Mr. and Mrs. Garth were sitting alone, Caleb said, "Susan, guess
what I'm thinking of."

"The rotation of crops," said Mrs. Garth, smiling at him, above her
knitting, "or else the back-doors of the Tipton cottages."

"No," said Caleb, gravely; "I am thinking that I could do a great turn
for Fred Vincy.  Christy's gone, Alfred will be gone soon, and it will
be five years before Jim is ready to take to business.  I shall want
help, and Fred might come in and learn the nature of things and act
under me, and it might be the making of him into a useful man, if he
gives up being a parson.  What do you think?"

"I think, there is hardly anything honest that his family would object
to more," said Mrs. Garth, decidedly.

"What care I about their objecting?" said Caleb, with a sturdiness
which he was apt to show when he had an opinion.  "The lad is of age
and must get his bread.  He has sense enough and quickness enough; he
likes 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.



    "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;
then subsided into a laugh, and drew a brandy-flask from his pocket.

"Come, Josh," he said, in a cajoling tone, "give us a spoonful of
brandy, and a sovereign to pay the way back, and I'll go.  Honor
bright!  I'll go like a bullet, _by_ Jove!"

"Mind," said Rigg, drawing out a bunch of keys, "if I ever see you
again, I shan't speak to you.  I don't own you any more than if I saw a
crow; and if you want to own me you'll get nothing by it but a
character for being what you are--a spiteful, brassy, bullying rogue."

"That's a pity, now, Josh," said Raffles, affecting to scratch his head
and wrinkle his brows upward as if he were nonplussed.  "I'm very fond
of you; _by_ Jove, I am!  There's nothing I like better than plaguing
you--you're so like your mother, and I must do without it.  But the
brandy and the sovereign's a bargain."

He jerked forward the flask and Rigg went to a fine old oaken bureau
with his keys.  But Raffles had reminded himself by his movement with
the flask that it had become dangerously loose from its leather
covering, and catching sight of a folded paper which had fallen within
the fender, he took it up and shoved it under the leather so as to make
the glass firm.

By that time Rigg came forward with a brandy-bottle, filled the flask,
and handed Raffles a sovereign, neither looking at him nor speaking to
him.  After locking up the bureau again, he walked to the window and
gazed out as impassibly as he had done at the beginning of the
interview, while Raffles took a small allowance from the flask, screwed
it up, and deposited it in his side-pocket, with provoking slowness,
making a grimace at his stepson's back.

"Farewell, Josh--and if forever!" said Raffles, turning back his head
as he opened the door.

Rigg saw him leave the grounds and enter the lane.  The gray day had
turned to a light drizzling rain, which freshened the hedgerows and the
grassy borders of the by-roads, and hastened the laborers who were
loading the last shocks of corn.  Raffles, walking with the uneasy gait
of a town loiterer obliged to do a bit of country journeying on foot,
looked as incongruous amid this moist rural quiet and industry as if he
had been a baboon escaped from a menagerie.  But there were none to
stare at him except the long-weaned calves, and none to show dislike of
his appearance except the little water-rats which rustled away at his
approach.

He was fortunate enough when he got on to the highroad to be overtaken
by the stage-coach, which carried him to Brassing; and there he took
the new-made railway, observing to his fellow-passengers that he
considered it pretty well seasoned now it had done for Huskisson.  Mr.
Raffles on most occasions kept up the sense of having been educated at
an academy, and being able, if he chose, to pass well everywhere;
indeed, there was not one of his fellow-men whom he did not feel
himself in a position to ridicule and torment, confident of the
entertainment which he thus gave to all the rest of the company.

He played this part now with as much spirit as if his journey had been
entirely successful, resorting at frequent intervals to his flask.  The
paper with which he had wedged it was a letter signed Nicholas
Bulstrode, but Raffles was not likely to disturb it from its present
useful position.

 Dorothea makes a visit to Tipton Grange and runs into Will who is staying there. He informs her that her husband has forbidden his visits, and Dorothea is sad. She tells him she will nevertheless always be aware of what he is doing. She believes that by desiring what is good we are part of the divine power against evil--"widening the skirts of light." She asks what he believes, and he says, "To love what is good and beautiful--but I am a  rebel." . Mr. Brooke is being forced into improving the life of his tenants, since he is running for office. Dorothea and Brooke visit the cottage of Mr. Dagley whose son has been caught poaching. Mr. Dagley is drunk and tells off Mr. Brooke, saying generations of his family have been exploited on this land, but now the "Rinform"  is coming. . Mary Garth offers to leave her family to take a teaching position in order to help replace the money lost by Fred. But Caleb Garth receives a letter from Sir James offering him a position as manager of Freshitt Hall as well as his old job back managing Tipton Grange. We hear from Mr. Farebrother that he is helping Fred prepare for his university exams though Fred won't be going into the church. It will at least demonstrate that he is serious about succeeding. . Riggs, the inheritor of Stone Court, is visited by his stepfather, Mr. John Raffles, an irresponsible drunkard who gets money from Riggs. Riggs tries to get rid of him with a sovereign and some brandy. Before Raffles leaves he accidentally picks up a paper with Nicholas Bulstrode's signature on it. This will lead to important developments. . .

