Chapter: A task too strong for wizard spells
    This squire had brought about;
    'T is easy dropping stones in wells,
    But who shall get them out?"


"I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this," said Sir
James Chettam, with a little frown on his brow, and an expression of
intense disgust about his mouth.

He was standing on the hearth-rug in the library at Lowick Grange, and
speaking to Mr. Brooke.  It was the day after Mr. Casaubon had been
buried, and Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room.

"That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix,
and she likes to go into these things--property, land, that kind of
thing.  She has her notions, you know," said Mr. Brooke, sticking his
eye-glasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a folded paper
which he held in his hand; "and she would like to act--depend upon it,
as an executrix Dorothea would want to act.  And she was twenty-one
last December, you know.  I can hinder nothing."

Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then
lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, "I will
tell you what we can do.  Until Dorothea is well, all business must be
kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to
us.  Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing in the world
for her, and will pass away the time.  And meanwhile you must get rid
of Ladislaw: you must send him out of the country." Here Sir James's
look of disgust returned in all its intensity.

Mr. Brooke put his hands behind him, walked to the window and
straightened his back with a little shake before he replied.

"That is easily said, Chettam, easily said, you know."

"My dear sir," persisted Sir James, restraining his indignation within
respectful forms, "it was you who brought him here, and you who keep
him here--I mean by the occupation you give him."

"Yes, but I can't dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons,
my dear Chettam.  Ladislaw has been invaluable, most satisfactory.  I
consider that I have done this part of the country a service by
bringing him--by bringing him, you know."  Mr. Brooke ended with a nod,
turning round to give it.

"It's a pity this part of the country didn't do without him, that's all
I have to say about it.  At any rate, as Dorothea's brother-in-law, I
feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being kept here by any
action on the part of her friends.  You admit, I hope, that I have a
right to speak about what concerns the dignity of my wife's sister?"

Sir James was getting warm.

"Of course, my dear Chettam, of course.  But you and I have different
ideas--different--"

"Not about this action of Casaubon's, I should hope," interrupted Sir
James.  "I say that he has most unfairly compromised Dorothea.  I say
that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action than this--a
codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time of his
marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family--a positive
insult to Dorothea!"

"Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw.
Ladislaw has told me the reason--dislike of the bent he took, you
know--Ladislaw didn't think much of Casaubon's notions, Thoth and
Dagon--that sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn't like the
independent position Ladislaw had taken up.  I saw the letters between
them, you know.  Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books--he didn't
know the world."

"It's all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it," said Sir
James.  "But I believe Casaubon was only jealous of him on Dorothea's
account, and the world will suppose that she gave him some reason; and
that is what makes it so abominable--coupling her name with this young
fellow's."

"My dear Chettam, it won't lead to anything, you know," said Mr.
Brooke, seating himself and sticking on his eye-glass again.  "It's all
of a piece with Casaubon's oddity.  This paper, now, 'Synoptical
Tabulation' and so on, 'for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,' it was locked up
in the desk with the will.  I suppose he meant Dorothea to publish his
researches, eh? and she'll do it, you know; she has gone into his
studies uncommonly."

"My dear sir," said Sir James, impatiently, "that is neither here nor
there.  The question is, whether you don't see with me the propriety of
sending young Ladislaw away?"

"Well, no, not the urgency of the thing.  By-and-by, perhaps, it may
come round.  As to gossip, you know, sending him away won't hinder
gossip.  People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter
and verse for," said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that
lay on the side of his own wishes.  "I might get rid of Ladislaw up to
a certain point--take away the 'Pioneer' from him, and that sort of
thing; but I couldn't send him out of the country if he didn't choose
to go--didn't choose, you know."

Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the
nature of last year's weather, and nodding at the end with his usual
amenity, was an exasperating form of obstinacy.

"Good God!" said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed,
"let us get him a post; let us spend money on him.  If he could go in
the suite of some Colonial Governor!  Grampus might take him--and I
could write to Fulke about it."

"But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear
fellow; Ladislaw has his ideas.  It's my opinion that if he were to
part from me to-morrow, you'd only hear the more of him in the country.
With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are few
men who could come up to him as an agitator--an agitator, you know."

"Agitator!" said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the
syllables of this word properly repeated were a sufficient exposure of
its hatefulness.

"But be reasonable, Chettam.  Dorothea, now.  As you say, she had
better go to Celia as soon as possible.  She can stay under your roof,
and in the mean time things may come round quietly.  Don't let us be
firing off our guns in a hurry, you know.  Standish will keep our
counsel, and the news will be old before it's known.  Twenty things may
happen to carry off Ladislaw--without my doing anything, you know."

"Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?"

"Decline, Chettam?--no--I didn't say decline.  But I really don't see
what I could do.  Ladislaw is a gentleman."

"I am glad to hear it!" said Sir James, his irritation making him
forget himself a little.  "I am sure Casaubon was not."

"Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder
her from marrying again at all, you know."

"I don't know that," said Sir James.  "It would have been less
indelicate."

"One of poor Casaubon's freaks!  That attack upset his brain a little.
It all goes for nothing.  She doesn't _want_ to marry Ladislaw."

"But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she
did.  I don't believe anything of the sort about Dorothea," said Sir
James--then frowningly, "but I suspect Ladislaw.  I tell you frankly,
I suspect Ladislaw."

"I couldn't take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam.  In
fact, if it were possible to pack him off--send him to Norfolk
Island--that sort of thing--it would look all the worse for Dorothea
to those who knew about it.  It would seem as if we distrusted
her--distrusted her, you know."

That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend to
soothe Sir James.  He put out his hand to reach his hat, implying that
he did not mean to contend further, and said, still with some heat--

"Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once,
because her friends were too careless.  I shall do what I can, as her
brother, to protect her now."

"You can't do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible,
Chettam.  I approve that plan altogether," said Mr. Brooke, well
pleased that he had won the argument.  It would have been highly
inconvenient to him to part with Ladislaw at that time, when a
dissolution might happen any day, and electors were to be convinced of
the course by which the interests of the country would be best served.
Mr. Brooke sincerely believed that this end could be secured by his own
return to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the
nation.



    "'This Loller here wol precilen us somewhat.'
     'Nay by my father's soule! that schal he nat,'
      Sayde the Schipman, 'here schal he not preche,
      We schal no gospel glosen here ne teche.
      We leven all in the gret God,' quod he.
      He wolden sowen some diffcultee."
                                 Canterbury Tales.


Dorothea had been safe at Freshitt Hall nearly a week before she had
asked any dangerous questions.  Every morning now she sat with Celia in
the prettiest of up-stairs sitting-rooms, opening into a small
conservatory--Celia all in white and lavender like a bunch of mixed
violets, watching the remarkable acts of the baby, which were so
dubious to her inexperienced mind that all conversation was interrupted
by appeals for their interpretation made to the oracular nurse.
Dorothea sat by in her widow's dress, with an expression which rather
provoked Celia, as being much too sad; for not only was baby quite
well, but really when a husband had been so dull and troublesome while
he lived, and besides that had--well, well!  Sir James, of course, had
told Celia everything, with a strong representation how important it
was that Dorothea should not know it sooner than was inevitable.

But Mr. Brooke had been right in predicting that Dorothea would not
long remain passive where action had been assigned to her; she knew the
purport of her husband's will made at the time of their marriage, and
her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her position, was
silently occupied with what she ought to do as the owner of Lowick
Manor with the patronage of the living attached to it.

One morning when her uncle paid his usual visit, though with an unusual
alacrity in his manner which he accounted for by saying that it was now
pretty certain Parliament would be dissolved forthwith, Dorothea said--

"Uncle, it is right now that I should consider who is to have the
living at Lowick.  After Mr. Tucker had been provided for, I never
heard my husband say that he had any clergyman in his mind as a
successor to himself.  I think I ought to have the keys now and go to
Lowick to examine all my husband's papers.  There may be something that
would throw light on his wishes."

"No hurry, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, quietly.  "By-and-by, you know,
you can go, if you like.  But I cast my eyes over things in the desks
and drawers--there was nothing--nothing but deep subjects, you
know--besides the will.  Everything can be done by-and-by. As to the
living, I have had an application for interest already--I should say
rather good.  Mr. Tyke has been strongly recommended to me--I had
something to do with getting him an appointment before.  An apostolic
man, I believe--the sort of thing that would suit you, my dear."

"I should like to have fuller knowledge about him, uncle, and judge for
myself, if Mr. Casaubon has not left any expression of his wishes.  He
has perhaps made some addition to his will--there may be some
instructions for me," said Dorothea, who had all the while had this
conjecture in her mind with relation to her husband's work.

"Nothing about the rectory, my dear--nothing," said Mr. Brooke, rising
to go away, and putting out his hand to his nieces: "nor about his
researches, you know.  Nothing in the will."

Dorothea's lip quivered.

"Come, you must not think of these things yet, my dear.  By-and-by, you
know."

"I am quite well now, uncle; I wish to exert myself."

"Well, well, we shall see.  But I must run away now--I have no end of
work now--it's a crisis--a political crisis, you know.  And here is
Celia and her little man--you are an aunt, you know, now, and I am a
sort of grandfather," said Mr. Brooke, with placid hurry, anxious to
get away and tell Chettam that it would not be his (Mr. Brooke's) fault
if Dorothea insisted on looking into everything.

Dorothea sank back in her chair when her uncle had left the room, and
cast her eyes down meditatively on her crossed hands.

"Look, Dodo! look at him!  Did you ever see anything like that?" said
Celia, in her comfortable staccato.

"What, Kitty?" said Dorothea, lifting her eyes rather absently.

"What? why, his upper lip; see how he is drawing it down, as if he
meant to make a face.  Isn't it wonderful!  He may have his little
thoughts.  I wish nurse were here.  Do look at him."

A large tear which had been for some time gathering, rolled down
Dorothea's cheek as she looked up and tried to smile.

"Don't be sad, Dodo; kiss baby.  What are you brooding over so?  I am
sure you did everything, and a great deal too much.  You should be
happy now."

"I wonder if Sir James would drive me to Lowick.  I want to look over
everything--to see if there were any words written for me."

"You are not to go till Mr. Lydgate says you may go.  And he has not
said so yet (here you are, nurse; take baby and walk up and down the
gallery). Besides, you have got a wrong notion in your head as usual,
Dodo--I can see that: it vexes me."

"Where am I wrong, Kitty?" said Dorothea, quite meekly.  She was almost
ready now to think Celia wiser than herself, and was really wondering
with some fear what her wrong notion was.  Celia felt her advantage,
and was determined to use it.  None of them knew Dodo as well as she
did, or knew how to manage her.  Since Celia's baby was born, she had
had a new sense of her mental solidity and calm wisdom.  It seemed
clear that where there was a baby, things were right enough, and that
error, in general, was a mere lack of that central poising force.

"I can see what you are thinking of as well as can be, Dodo," said
Celia.  "You are wanting to find out if there is anything uncomfortable
for you to do now, only because Mr. Casaubon wished it.  As if you had
not been uncomfortable enough before.  And he doesn't deserve it, and
you will find that out.  He has behaved very badly.  James is as angry
with him as can be.  And I had better tell you, to prepare you."

"Celia," said Dorothea, entreatingly, "you distress me.  Tell me at
once what you mean."  It glanced through her mind that Mr. Casaubon
had left the property away from her--which would not be so very
distressing.

"Why, he has made a codicil to his will, to say the property was all to
go away from you if you married--I mean--"

"That is of no consequence," said Dorothea, breaking in impetuously.

"But if you married Mr. Ladislaw, not anybody else," Celia went on with
persevering quietude.  "Of course that is of no consequence in one
way--you never _would_ marry Mr. Ladislaw; but that only makes it worse
of Mr. Casaubon."

The blood rushed to Dorothea's face and neck painfully.  But Celia was
administering what she thought a sobering dose of fact.  It was taking
up notions that had done Dodo's health so much harm.  So she went on in
her neutral tone, as if she had been remarking on baby's robes.

"James says so.  He says it is abominable, and not like a gentleman.
And there never was a better judge than James.  It is as if Mr.
Casaubon wanted to make people believe that you would wish to marry Mr.
Ladislaw--which is ridiculous.  Only James says it was to hinder Mr.
Ladislaw from wanting to marry you for your money--just as if he ever
would think of making you an offer.  Mrs. Cadwallader said you might as
well marry an Italian with white mice!  But I must just go and look at
baby," Celia added, without the least change of tone, throwing a light
shawl over her, and tripping away.

Dorothea by this time had turned cold again, and now threw herself back
helplessly in her chair.  She might have compared her experience at
that moment to the vague, alarmed consciousness that her life was
taking on a new form, that she was undergoing a metamorphosis in which
memory would not adjust itself to the stirring of new organs.
Everything was changing its aspect: her husband's conduct, her own
duteous feeling towards him, every struggle between them--and yet
more, her whole relation to Will Ladislaw.  Her world was in a state of
convulsive change; the only thing she could say distinctly to herself
was, that she must wait and think anew.  One change terrified her as if
it had been a sin; it was a violent shock of repulsion from her
departed husband, who had had hidden thoughts, perhaps perverting
everything she said and did.  Then again she was conscious of another
change which also made her tremulous; it was a sudden strange yearning
of heart towards Will Ladislaw.  It had never before entered her mind
that he could, under any circumstances, be her lover: conceive the
effect of the sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that
light--that perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a
possibility,--and this with the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting
conditions, and questions not soon to be solved.

It seemed a long while--she did not know how long--before she heard
Celia saying, "That will do, nurse; he will be quiet on my lap now.
You can go to lunch, and let Garratt stay in the next room." "What I
think, Dodo," Celia went on, observing nothing more than that Dorothea
was leaning back in her chair, and likely to be passive, "is that Mr.
Casaubon was spiteful.  I never did like him, and James never did.  I
think the corners of his mouth were dreadfully spiteful.  And now he
has behaved in this way, I am sure religion does not require you to
make yourself uncomfortable about him.  If he has been taken away, that
is a mercy, and you ought to be grateful.  We should not grieve, should
we, baby?" said Celia confidentially to that unconscious centre and
poise of the world, who had the most remarkable fists all complete even
to the nails, and hair enough, really, when you took his cap off, to
make--you didn't know what:--in short, he was Bouddha in a Western
form.

At this crisis Lydgate was announced, and one of the first things he
said was, "I fear you are not so well as you were, Mrs. Casaubon; have
you been agitated? allow me to feel your pulse."  Dorothea's hand was
of a marble coldness.

"She wants to go to Lowick, to look over papers," said Celia.  "She
ought not, ought she?"

Lydgate did not speak for a few moments.  Then he said, looking at
Dorothea.  "I hardly know.  In my opinion Mrs. Casaubon should do what
would give her the most repose of mind.  That repose will not always
come from being forbidden to act."

"Thank you," said Dorothea, exerting herself, "I am sure that is wise.
There are so many things which I ought to attend to.  Why should I sit
here idle?"  Then, with an effort to recall subjects not connected with
her agitation, she added, abruptly, "You know every one in Middlemarch,
I think, Mr. Lydgate.  I shall ask you to tell me a great deal.  I have
serious things to do now.  I have a living to give away.  You know Mr.
Tyke and all the--" But Dorothea's effort was too much for her; she
broke off and burst into sobs.  Lydgate made her drink a dose of sal
volatile.

"Let Mrs. Casaubon do as she likes," he said to Sir James, whom he
asked to see before quitting the house.  "She wants perfect freedom, I
think, more than any other prescription."

His attendance on Dorothea while her brain was excited, had enabled him
to form some true conclusions concerning the trials of her life.  He
felt sure that she had been suffering from the strain and conflict of
self-repression; and that she was likely now to feel herself only in
another sort of pinfold than that from which she had been released.

Lydgate's advice was all the easier for Sir James to follow when he
found that Celia had already told Dorothea the unpleasant fact about
the will.  There was no help for it now--no reason for any further
delay in the execution of necessary business.  And the next day Sir
James complied at once with her request that he would drive her to
Lowick.

"I have no wish to stay there at present," said Dorothea; "I could
hardly bear it.  I am much happier at Freshitt with Celia.  I shall be
able to think better about what should be done at Lowick by looking at
it from a distance.  And I should like to be at the Grange a little
while with my uncle, and go about in all the old walks and among the
people in the village."

"Not yet, I think.  Your uncle is having political company, and you are
better out of the way of such doings," said Sir James, who at that
moment thought of the Grange chiefly as a haunt of young Ladislaw's.
But no word passed between him and Dorothea about the objectionable
part of the will; indeed, both of them felt that the mention of it
between them would be impossible.  Sir James was shy, even with men,
about disagreeable subjects; and the one thing that Dorothea would have
chosen to say, if she had spoken on the matter at all, was forbidden to
her at present because it seemed to be a further exposure of her
husband's injustice.  Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what
had passed between her and her husband about Will Ladislaw's moral
claim on the property: it would then, she thought, be apparent to him
as it was to her, that her husband's strange indelicate proviso had
been chiefly urged by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and
not merely by personal feelings more difficult to talk about.  Also, it
must be admitted, Dorothea wished that this could be known for Will's
sake, since her friends seemed to think of him as simply an object of
Mr. Casaubon's charity.  Why should he be compared with an Italian
carrying white mice?  That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed
like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger.

At Lowick Dorothea searched desk and drawer--searched all her husband's
places of deposit for private writing, but found no paper addressed
especially to her, except that "Synoptical Tabulation," which was
probably only the beginning of many intended directions for her
guidance.  In carrying out this bequest of labor to Dorothea, as in all
else, Mr. Casaubon had been slow and hesitating, oppressed in the plan
of transmitting his work, as he had been in executing it, by the sense
of moving heavily in a dim and clogging medium: distrust of Dorothea's
competence to arrange what he had prepared was subdued only by distrust
of any other redactor.  But he had come at last to create a trust for
himself out of Dorothea's nature: she could do what she resolved to do:
and he willingly imagined her toiling under the fetters of a promise to
erect a tomb with his name upon it.  (Not that Mr. Casaubon called the
future volumes a tomb; he called them the Key to all Mythologies.) But
the months gained on him and left his plans belated: he had only had
time to ask for that promise by which he sought to keep his cold grasp
on Dorothea's life.

The grasp had slipped away.  Bound by a pledge given from the depths of
her pity, she would have been capable of undertaking a toil which her
judgment whispered was vain for all uses except that consecration of
faithfulness which is a supreme use.  But now her judgment, instead of
being controlled by duteous devotion, was made active by the
imbittering discovery that in her past union there had lurked the
hidden alienation of secrecy and suspicion.  The living, suffering man
was no longer before her to awaken her pity: there remained only the
retrospect of painful subjection to a husband whose thoughts had been
lower than she had believed, whose exorbitant claims for himself had
even blinded his scrupulous care for his own character, and made him
defeat his own pride by shocking men of ordinary honor.  As for the
property which was the sign of that broken tie, she would have been
glad to be free from it and have nothing more than her original fortune
which had been settled on her, if there had not been duties attached to
ownership, which she ought not to flinch from.  About this property
many troublous questions insisted on rising: had she not been right in
thinking that the half of it ought to go to Will Ladislaw?--but was it
not impossible now for her to do that act of justice?  Mr. Casaubon had
taken a cruelly effective means of hindering her: even with indignation
against him in her heart, any act that seemed a triumphant eluding of
his purpose revolted her.

After collecting papers of business which she wished to examine, she
locked up again the desks and drawers--all empty of personal words for
her--empty of any sign that in her husband's lonely brooding his heart
had gone out to her in excuse or explanation; and she went back to
Freshitt with the sense that around his last hard demand and his last
injurious assertion of his power, the silence was unbroken.

Dorothea tried now to turn her thoughts towards immediate duties, and
one of these was of a kind which others were determined to remind her
of.  Lydgate's ear had caught eagerly her mention of the living, and as
soon as he could, he reopened the subject, seeing here a possibility of
making amends for the casting-vote he had once given with an
ill-satisfied conscience.  "Instead of telling you anything about Mr.
Tyke," he said, "I should like to speak of another man--Mr.
Farebrother, the Vicar of St. Botolph's.  His living is a poor one, and
gives him a stinted provision for himself and his family.  His mother,
aunt, and sister all live with him, and depend upon him.  I believe he
has never married because of them.  I never heard such good preaching
as his--such plain, easy eloquence.  He would have done to preach at
St. Paul's Cross after old Latimer.  His talk is just as good about all
subjects: original, simple, clear.  I think him a remarkable fellow: he
ought to have done more than he has done."

"Why has he not done more?" said Dorothea, interested now in all who
had slipped below their own intention.

"That's a hard question," said Lydgate.  "I find myself that it's
uncommonly difficult to make the right thing work: there are so many
strings pulling at once.  Farebrother often hints that he has got into
the wrong profession; he wants a wider range than that of a poor
clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him on.  He is very
fond of Natural History and various scientific matters, and he is
hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position.  He has no
money to spare--hardly enough to use; and that has led him into
card-playing--Middlemarch is a great place for whist.  He does play for
money, and he wins a good deal.  Of course that takes him into company
a little beneath him, and makes him slack about some things; and yet,
with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of the most
blameless men I ever knew.  He has neither venom nor doubleness in him,
and those often go with a more correct outside."

"I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit,"
said Dorothea; "I wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off."

"I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted into
plenty: he would be glad of the time for other things."

"My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man," said
Dorothea, meditatively.  She was wishing it were possible to restore
the times of primitive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr. Farebrother with a
strong desire to rescue him from his chance-gotten money.

"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate.
"His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a
parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better.
Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an
impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut the principal
figure.  I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good
deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people
uncomfortably aware of him.  Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!--he
ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the
birds."

"True," said Dorothea.  "It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our
farmers and laborers get from their teaching.  I have been looking into
a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would be of no use at
Lowick--I mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the
Apocalypse.  I have always been thinking of the different ways in which
Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a
wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean
that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most
people as sharers in it.  It is surely better to pardon too much, than
to condemn too much.  But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear
him preach."

"Do," said Lydgate; "I trust to the effect of that.  He is very much
beloved, but he has his enemies too: there are always people who can't
forgive an able man for differing from them.  And that money-winning
business is really a blot.  You don't, of course, see many Middlemarch
people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a
great friend of Mr. Farebrother's old ladies, and would be glad to sing
the Vicar's praises.  One of the old ladies--Miss Noble, the aunt--is a
wonderfully quaint picture of self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw
gallants her about sometimes.  I met them one day in a back street: you
know Ladislaw's look--a sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat; and this
little old maid reaching up to his arm--they looked like a couple
dropped out of a romantic comedy.  But the best evidence about
Farebrother is to see him and hear him."

Happily Dorothea was in her private sitting-room when this conversation
occurred, and there was no one present to make Lydgate's innocent
introduction of Ladislaw painful to her.  As was usual with him in
matters of personal gossip, Lydgate had quite forgotten Rosamond's
remark that she thought Will adored Mrs. Casaubon.  At that moment he
was only caring for what would recommend the Farebrother family; and he
had purposely given emphasis to the worst that could be said about the
Vicar, in order to forestall objections.  In the weeks since Mr.
Casaubon's death he had hardly seen Ladislaw, and he had heard no rumor
to warn him that Mr. Brooke's confidential secretary was a dangerous
subject with Mrs. Casaubon.  When he was gone, his picture of Ladislaw
lingered in her mind and disputed the ground with that question of the
Lowick living.  What was Will Ladislaw thinking about her?  Would he
hear of that fact which made her cheeks burn as they never used to do?
And how would he feel when he heard it?--But she could see as well as
possible how he smiled down at the little old maid.  An Italian with
white mice!--on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every
one's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of
urging his own with iron resistance.



    Party is Nature too, and you shall see
    By force of Logic how they both agree:
    The Many in the One, the One in Many;
    All is not Some, nor Some the same as Any:
    Genus holds species, both are great or small;
    One genus highest, one not high at all;
    Each species has its differentia too,
    This is not That, and He was never You,
    Though this and that are AYES, and you and he
    Are like as one to one, or three to three.


No gossip about Mr. Casaubon's will had yet reached Ladislaw: the air
seemed to be filled with the dissolution of Parliament and the coming
election, as the old wakes and fairs were filled with the rival clatter
of itinerant shows; and more private noises were taken little notice
of.  The famous "dry election" was at hand, in which the depths of
public feeling might be measured by the low flood-mark of drink.  Will
Ladislaw was one of the busiest at this time; and though Dorothea's
widowhood was continually in his thought, he was so far from wishing to
be spoken to on the subject, that when Lydgate sought him out to tell
him what had passed about the Lowick living, he answered rather
waspishly--

"Why should you bring me into the matter?  I never see Mrs. Casaubon,
and am not likely to see her, since she is at Freshitt.  I never go
there.  It is Tory ground, where I and the 'Pioneer' are no more
welcome than a poacher and his gun."

The fact was that Will had been made the more susceptible by observing
that Mr. Brooke, instead of wishing him, as before, to come to the
Grange oftener than was quite agreeable to himself, seemed now to
contrive that he should go there as little as possible.  This was a
shuffling concession of Mr. Brooke's to Sir James Chettam's indignant
remonstrance; and Will, awake to the slightest hint in this direction,
concluded that he was to be kept away from the Grange on Dorothea's
account.  Her friends, then, regarded him with some suspicion?  Their
fears were quite superfluous: they were very much mistaken if they
imagined that he would put himself forward as a needy adventurer trying
to win the favor of a rich woman.

Until now Will had never fully seen the chasm between himself and
Dorothea--until now that he was come to the brink of it, and saw her on
the other side.  He began, not without some inward rage, to think of
going away from the neighborhood: it would be impossible for him to
show any further interest in Dorothea without subjecting himself to
disagreeable imputations--perhaps even in her mind, which others might
try to poison.

"We are forever divided," said Will.  "I might as well be at Rome; she
would be no farther from me."  But what we call our despair is often
only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.  There were plenty of reasons
why he should not go--public reasons why he should not quit his post at
this crisis, leaving Mr. Brooke in the lurch when he needed "coaching"
for the election, and when there was so much canvassing, direct and
indirect, to be carried on.  Will could not like to leave his own
chessmen in the heat of a game; and any candidate on the right side,
even if his brain and marrow had been as soft as was consistent with a
gentlemanly bearing, might help to turn a majority.  To coach Mr.
Brooke and keep him steadily to the idea that he must pledge himself to
vote for the actual Reform Bill, instead of insisting on his
independence and power of pulling up in time, was not an easy task.
Mr. Farebrother's prophecy of a fourth candidate "in the bag" had not
yet been fulfilled, neither the Parliamentary Candidate Society nor any
other power on the watch to secure a reforming majority seeing a worthy
nodus for interference while there was a second reforming candidate
like Mr. Brooke, who might be returned at his own expense; and the
fight lay entirely between Pinkerton the old Tory member, Bagster the
new Whig member returned at the last election, and Brooke the future
independent member, who was to fetter himself for this occasion only.
Mr. Hawley and his party would bend all their forces to the return of
Pinkerton, and Mr. Brooke's success must depend either on plumpers
which would leave Bagster in the rear, or on the new minting of Tory
votes into reforming votes.  The latter means, of course, would be
preferable.

This prospect of converting votes was a dangerous distraction to Mr.
Brooke: his impression that waverers were likely to be allured by
wavering statements, and also the liability of his mind to stick afresh
at opposing arguments as they turned up in his memory, gave Will
Ladislaw much trouble.

"You know there are tactics in these things," said Mr. Brooke; "meeting
people half-way--tempering your ideas--saying, 'Well now, there's
something in that,' and so on.  I agree with you that this is a
peculiar occasion--the country with a will of its own--political
unions--that sort of thing--but we sometimes cut with rather too sharp
a knife, Ladislaw.  These ten-pound householders, now: why ten?  Draw
the line somewhere--yes: but why just at ten?  That's a difficult
question, now, if you go into it."

"Of course it is," said Will, impatiently.  "But if you are to wait
till we get a logical Bill, you must put yourself forward as a
revolutionist, and then Middlemarch would not elect you, I fancy.  As
for trimming, this is not a time for trimming."

Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still appeared
to him a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley; but after an interval
the wisdom of his own methods reasserted itself, and he was again drawn
into using them with much hopefulness.  At this stage of affairs he was
in excellent spirits, which even supported him under large advances of
money; for his powers of convincing and persuading had not yet been
tested by anything more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing
other orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which he
came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it
was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing.  He was a
little conscious of defeat, however, with Mr. Mawmsey, a chief
representative in Middlemarch of that great social power, the retail
trader, and naturally one of the most doubtful voters in the
borough--willing for his own part to supply an equal quality of teas
and sugars to reformer and anti-reformer, as well as to agree
impartially with both, and feeling like the burgesses of old that this
necessity of electing members was a great burthen to a town; for even
if there were no danger in holding out hopes to all parties beforehand,
there would be the painful necessity at last of disappointing
respectable people whose names were on his books.  He was accustomed to
receive large orders from Mr. Brooke of Tipton; but then, there were
many of Pinkerton's committee whose opinions had a great weight of
grocery on their side.  Mr. Mawmsey thinking that Mr. Brooke, as not
too "clever in his intellects," was the more likely to forgive a grocer
who gave a hostile vote under pressure, had become confidential in his
back parlor.

"As to Reform, sir, put it in a family light," he said, rattling the
small silver in his pocket, and smiling affably.  "Will it support Mrs.
Mawmsey, and enable her to bring up six children when I am no more?  I
put the question _fictiously_, knowing what must be the answer.  Very
well, sir.  I ask you what, as a husband and a father, I am to do when
gentlemen come to me and say, 'Do as you like, Mawmsey; but if you vote
against us, I shall get my groceries elsewhere: when I sugar my liquor
I like to feel that I am benefiting the country by maintaining
tradesmen of the right color.'  Those very words have been spoken to
me, sir, in the very chair where you are now sitting.  I don't mean by
your honorable self, Mr. Brooke."

"No, no, no--that's narrow, you know.  Until my butler complains to me
of your goods, Mr. Mawmsey," said Mr. Brooke, soothingly, "until I hear
that you send bad sugars, spices--that sort of thing--I shall never
order him to go elsewhere."

"Sir, I am your humble servant, and greatly obliged," said Mr. Mawmsey,
feeling that politics were clearing up a little.  "There would be some
pleasure in voting for a gentleman who speaks in that honorable manner."

"Well, you know, Mr. Mawmsey, you would find it the right thing to put
yourself on our side.  This Reform will touch everybody by-and-by--a
thoroughly popular measure--a sort of A, B, C, you know, that must come
first before the rest can follow.  I quite agree with you that you've
got to look at the thing in a family light: but public spirit, now.
We're all one family, you know--it's all one cupboard.  Such a thing
as a vote, now: why, it may help to make men's fortunes at the
Cape--there's no knowing what may be the effect of a vote," Mr. Brooke
ended, with a sense of being a little out at sea, though finding it
still enjoyable.  But Mr. Mawmsey answered in a tone of decisive check.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I can't afford that.  When I give a vote I
must know what I am doing; I must look to what will be the effects on
my till and ledger, speaking respectfully.  Prices, I'll admit, are
what nobody can know the merits of; and the sudden falls after you've
bought in currants, which are a goods that will not keep--I've never;
myself seen into the ins and outs there; which is a rebuke to human
pride.  But as to one family, there's debtor and creditor, I hope;
they're not going to reform that away; else I should vote for things
staying as they are.  Few men have less need to cry for change than I
have, personally speaking--that is, for self and family.  I am not one
of those who have nothing to lose: I mean as to respectability both in
parish and private business, and noways in respect of your honorable
self and custom, which you was good enough to say you would not
withdraw from me, vote or no vote, while the article sent in was
satisfactory."

After this conversation Mr. Mawmsey went up and boasted to his wife
that he had been rather too many for Brooke of Tipton, and that he
didn't mind so much now about going to the poll.

Mr. Brooke on this occasion abstained from boasting of his tactics to
Ladislaw, who for his part was glad enough to persuade himself that he
had no concern with any canvassing except the purely argumentative
sort, and that he worked no meaner engine than knowledge.  Mr. Brooke,
necessarily, had his agents, who understood the nature of the
Middlemarch voter and the means of enlisting his ignorance on the side
of the Bill--which were remarkably similar to the means of enlisting it
on the side against the Bill.  Will stopped his ears.  Occasionally
Parliament, like the rest of our lives, even to our eating and apparel,
could hardly go on if our imaginations were too active about processes.
There were plenty of dirty-handed men in the world to do dirty
business; and Will protested to himself that his share in bringing Mr.
Brooke through would be quite innocent.

But whether he should succeed in that mode of contributing to the
majority on the right side was very doubtful to him.  He had written
out various speeches and memoranda for speeches, but he had begun to
perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had the burthen of remembering
any train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of it, and
not easily come back again.  To collect documents is one mode of
serving your country, and to remember the contents of a document is
another.  No! the only way in which Mr. Brooke could be coerced into
thinking of the right arguments at the right time was to be well plied
with them till they took up all the room in his brain.  But here there
was the difficulty of finding room, so many things having been taken in
beforehand.  Mr. Brooke himself observed that his ideas stood rather in
his way when he was speaking.

However, Ladislaw's coaching was forthwith to be put to the test, for
before the day of nomination Mr. Brooke was to explain himself to the
worthy electors of Middlemarch from the balcony of the White Hart,
which looked out advantageously at an angle of the market-place,
commanding a large area in front and two converging streets.  It was a
fine May morning, and everything seemed hopeful: there was some
prospect of an understanding between Bagster's committee and Brooke's,
to which Mr. Bulstrode, Mr. Standish as a Liberal lawyer, and such
manufacturers as Mr. Plymdale and Mr. Vincy, gave a solidity which
almost counterbalanced Mr. Hawley and his associates who sat for
Pinkerton at the Green Dragon.  Mr. Brooke, conscious of having
weakened the blasts of the "Trumpet" against him, by his reforms as a
landlord in the last half year, and hearing himself cheered a little as
he drove into the town, felt his heart tolerably light under his
buff-colored waistcoat.  But with regard to critical occasions, it
often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

"This looks well, eh?" said Mr. Brooke as the crowd gathered.  "I shall
have a good audience, at any rate.  I like this, now--this kind of
public made up of one's own neighbors, you know."

The weavers and tanners of Middlemarch, unlike Mr. Mawmsey, had never
thought of Mr. Brooke as a neighbor, and were not more attached to him
than if he had been sent in a box from London.  But they listened
without much disturbance to the speakers who introduced the candidate,
one of them--a political personage from Brassing, who came to tell
Middlemarch its duty--spoke so fully, that it was alarming to think
what the candidate could find to say after him.  Meanwhile the crowd
became denser, and as the political personage neared the end of his
speech, Mr. Brooke felt a remarkable change in his sensations while he
still handled his eye-glass, trifled with documents before him, and
exchanged remarks with his committee, as a man to whom the moment of
summons was indifferent.

"I'll take another glass of sherry, Ladislaw," he said, with an easy
air, to Will, who was close behind him, and presently handed him the
supposed fortifier.  It was ill-chosen; for Mr. Brooke was an
abstemious man, and to drink a second glass of sherry quickly at no
great interval from the first was a surprise to his system which tended
to scatter his energies instead of collecting them.  Pray pity him: so
many English gentlemen make themselves miserable by speechifying on
entirely private grounds!  whereas Mr. Brooke wished to serve his
country by standing for Parliament--which, indeed, may also be done on
private grounds, but being once undertaken does absolutely demand some
speechifying.

It was not about the beginning of his speech that Mr. Brooke was at all
anxious; this, he felt sure, would be all right; he should have it
quite pat, cut out as neatly as a set of couplets from Pope.  Embarking
would be easy, but the vision of open sea that might come after was
alarming.  "And questions, now," hinted the demon just waking up in his
stomach, "somebody may put questions about the schedules.--Ladislaw,"
he continued, aloud, "just hand me the memorandum of the schedules."

When Mr. Brooke presented himself on the balcony, the cheers were quite
loud enough to counterbalance the yells, groans, brayings, and other
expressions of adverse theory, which were so moderate that Mr. Standish
(decidedly an old bird) observed in the ear next to him, "This looks
dangerous, by God!  Hawley has got some deeper plan than this."  Still,
the cheers were exhilarating, and no candidate could look more amiable
than Mr. Brooke, with the memorandum in his breast-pocket, his left
hand on the rail of the balcony, and his right trifling with his
eye-glass. The striking points in his appearance were his buff
waistcoat, short-clipped blond hair, and neutral physiognomy.  He began
with some confidence.

"Gentlemen--Electors of Middlemarch!"

This was so much the right thing that a little pause after it seemed
natural.

"I'm uncommonly glad to be here--I was never so proud and happy in my
life--never so happy, you know."

This was a bold figure of speech, but not exactly the right thing; for,
unhappily, the pat opening had slipped away--even couplets from Pope
may be but "fallings from us, vanishings," when fear clutches us, and a
glass of sherry is hurrying like smoke among our ideas.  Ladislaw, who
stood at the window behind the speaker, thought, "it's all up now.  The
only chance is that, since the best thing won't always do, floundering
may answer for once."  Mr. Brooke, meanwhile, having lost other clews,
fell back on himself and his qualifications--always an appropriate
graceful subject for a candidate.

"I am a close neighbor of yours, my good friends--you've known me on
the bench a good while--I've always gone a good deal into public
questions--machinery, now, and machine-breaking--you're many of you
concerned with machinery, and I've been going into that lately.  It
won't do, you know, breaking machines: everything must go on--trade,
manufactures, commerce, interchange of staples--that kind of
thing--since Adam Smith, that must go on.  We must look all over the
globe:--'Observation with extensive view,' must look everywhere, 'from
China to Peru,' as somebody says--Johnson, I think, 'The Rambler,' you
know.  That is what I have done up to a certain point--not as far as
Peru; but I've not always stayed at home--I saw it wouldn't do.  I've
been in the Levant, where some of your Middlemarch goods go--and then,
again, in the Baltic.  The Baltic, now."

Plying among his recollections in this way, Mr. Brooke might have got
along, easily to himself, and would have come back from the remotest
seas without trouble; but a diabolical procedure had been set up by the
enemy.  At one and the same moment there had risen above the shoulders
of the crowd, nearly opposite Mr. Brooke, and within ten yards of him,
the effigy of himself: buff-colored waistcoat, eye-glass, and neutral
physiognomy, painted on rag; and there had arisen, apparently in the
air, like the note of the cuckoo, a parrot-like, Punch-voiced echo of
his words.  Everybody looked up at the open windows in the houses at
the opposite angles of the converging streets; but they were either
blank, or filled by laughing listeners.  The most innocent echo has an
impish mockery in it when it follows a gravely persistent speaker, and
this echo was not at all innocent; if it did not follow with the
precision of a natural echo, it had a wicked choice of the words it
overtook.  By the time it said, "The Baltic, now," the laugh which had
been running through the audience became a general shout, and but for
the sobering effects of party and that great public cause which the
entanglement of things had identified with "Brooke of Tipton," the
laugh might have caught his committee.  Mr. Bulstrode asked,
reprehensively, what the new police was doing; but a voice could not
well be collared, and an attack on the effigy of the candidate would
have been too equivocal, since Hawley probably meant it to be pelted.

Mr. Brooke himself was not in a position to be quickly conscious of
anything except a general slipping away of ideas within himself: he had
even a little singing in the ears, and he was the only person who had
not yet taken distinct account of the echo or discerned the image of
himself.  Few things hold the perceptions more thoroughly captive than
anxiety about what we have got to say.  Mr. Brooke heard the laughter;
but he had expected some Tory efforts at disturbance, and he was at
this moment additionally excited by the tickling, stinging sense that
his lost exordium was coming back to fetch him from the Baltic.

"That reminds me," he went on, thrusting a hand into his side-pocket,
with an easy air, "if I wanted a precedent, you know--but we never want
a precedent for the right thing--but there is Chatham, now; I can't say
I should have supported Chatham, or Pitt, the younger Pitt--he was not
a man of ideas, and we want ideas, you know."

"Blast your ideas! we want the Bill," said a loud rough voice from the
crowd below.

Immediately the invisible Punch, who had hitherto followed Mr. Brooke,
repeated, "Blast your ideas! we want the Bill." The laugh was louder
than ever, and for the first time Mr. Brooke being himself silent,
heard distinctly the mocking echo.  But it seemed to ridicule his
interrupter, and in that light was encouraging; so he replied with
amenity--

"There is something in what you say, my good friend, and what do we
meet for but to speak our minds--freedom of opinion, freedom of the
press, liberty--that kind of thing?  The Bill, now--you shall have the
Bill"--here Mr. Brooke paused a moment to fix on his eye-glass and take
the paper from his breast-pocket, with a sense of being practical and
coming to particulars.  The invisible Punch followed:--

"You shall have the Bill, Mr. Brooke, per electioneering contest, and a
seat outside Parliament as delivered, five thousand pounds, seven
shillings, and fourpence."

Mr. Brooke, amid the roars of laughter, turned red, let his eye-glass
fall, and looking about him confusedly, saw the image of himself, which
had come nearer.  The next moment he saw it dolorously bespattered with
eggs.  His spirit rose a little, and his voice too.

"Buffoonery, tricks, ridicule the test of truth--all that is very
well"--here an unpleasant egg broke on Mr. Brooke's shoulder, as the
echo said, "All that is very well;" then came a hail of eggs, chiefly
aimed at the image, but occasionally hitting the original, as if by
chance.  There was a stream of new men pushing among the crowd;
whistles, yells, bellowings, and fifes made all the greater hubbub
because there was shouting and struggling to put them down.  No voice
would have had wing enough to rise above the uproar, and Mr. Brooke,
disagreeably anointed, stood his ground no longer.  The frustration
would have been less exasperating if it had been less gamesome and
boyish: a serious assault of which the newspaper reporter "can aver
that it endangered the learned gentleman's ribs," or can respectfully
bear witness to "the soles of that gentleman's boots having been
visible above the railing," has perhaps more consolations attached to
it.

Mr. Brooke re-entered the committee-room, saying, as carelessly as he
could, "This is a little too bad, you know.  I should have got the ear
of the people by-and-by--but they didn't give me time.  I should have
gone into the Bill by-and-by, you know," he added, glancing at
Ladislaw.  "However, things will come all right at the nomination."

But it was not resolved unanimously that things would come right; on
the contrary, the committee looked rather grim, and the political
personage from Brassing was writing busily, as if he were brewing new
devices.

"It was Bowyer who did it," said Mr. Standish, evasively.  "I know it
as well as if he had been advertised.  He's uncommonly good at
ventriloquism, and he did it uncommonly well, by God!  Hawley has been
having him to dinner lately: there's a fund of talent in Bowyer."

"Well, you know, you never mentioned him to me, Standish, else I would
have invited him to dine," said poor Mr. Brooke, who had gone through a
great deal of inviting for the good of his country.

"There's not a more paltry fellow in Middlemarch than Bowyer," said
Ladislaw, indignantly, "but it seems as if the paltry fellows were
always to turn the scale."

Will was thoroughly out of temper with himself as well as with his
"principal," and he went to shut himself in his rooms with a
half-formed resolve to throw up the "Pioneer" and Mr. Brooke together.
Why should he stay?  If the impassable gulf between himself and
Dorothea were ever to be filled up, it must rather be by his going away
and getting into a thoroughly different position than by staying here
and slipping into deserved contempt as an understrapper of Brooke's.
Then came the young dream of wonders that he might do--in five years,
for example: political writing, political speaking, would get a higher
value now public life was going to be wider and more national, and they
might give him such distinction that he would not seem to be asking
Dorothea to step down to him.  Five years:--if he could only be sure
that she cared for him more than for others; if he could only make her
aware that he stood aloof until he could tell his love without lowering
himself--then he could go away easily, and begin a career which at
five-and-twenty seemed probable enough in the inward order of things,
where talent brings fame, and fame everything else which is delightful.
He could speak and he could write; he could master any subject if he
chose, and he meant always to take the side of reason and justice, on
which he would carry all his ardor.  Why should he not one day be
lifted above the shoulders of the crowd, and feel that he had won that
eminence well?  Without doubt he would leave Middlemarch, go to town,
and make himself fit for celebrity by "eating his dinners."

But not immediately: not until some kind of sign had passed between him
and Dorothea.  He could not be satisfied until she knew why, even if he
were the man she would choose to marry, he would not marry her.  Hence
he must keep his post and bear with Mr. Brooke a little longer.

But he soon had reason to suspect that Mr. Brooke had anticipated him
in the wish to break up their connection.  Deputations without and
voices within had concurred in inducing that philanthropist to take a
stronger measure than usual for the good of mankind; namely, to
withdraw in favor of another candidate, to whom he left the advantages
of his canvassing machinery.  He himself called this a strong measure,
but observed that his health was less capable of sustaining excitement
than he had imagined.

"I have felt uneasy about the chest--it won't do to carry that too
far," he said to Ladislaw in explaining the affair.  "I must pull up.
Poor Casaubon was a warning, you know.  I've made some heavy advances,
but I've dug a channel.  It's rather coarse work--this electioneering,
eh, Ladislaw? dare say you are tired of it.  However, we have dug a
channel with the 'Pioneer'--put things in a track, and so on.  A more
ordinary man than you might carry it on now--more ordinary, you know."

"Do you wish me to give it up?" said Will, the quick color coming in
his face, as he rose from the writing-table, and took a turn of three
steps with his hands in his pockets.  "I am ready to do so whenever you
wish it."

"As to wishing, my dear Ladislaw, I have the highest opinion of your
powers, you know.  But about the 'Pioneer,' I have been consulting a
little with some of the men on our side, and they are inclined to take
it into their hands--indemnify me to a certain extent--carry it on, in
fact.  And under the circumstances, you might like to give up--might
find a better field.  These people might not take that high view of you
which I have always taken, as an alter ego, a right hand--though I
always looked forward to your doing something else.  I think of having
a run into France.  But I'll write you any letters, you know--to
Althorpe and people of that kind.  I've met Althorpe."

"I am exceedingly obliged to you," said Ladislaw, proudly.  "Since you
are going to part with the 'Pioneer,' I need not trouble you about the
steps I shall take.  I may choose to continue here for the present."

After Mr. Brooke had left him Will said to himself, "The rest of the
family have been urging him to get rid of me, and he doesn't care now
about my going.  I shall stay as long as I like.  I shall go of my own
movements and not because they are afraid of me."



                                 "His heart
    The lowliest duties on itself did lay."
                                 --WORDSWORTH.


On that June evening when Mr. Farebrother knew that he was to have the
Lowick living, there was joy in the old fashioned parlor, and even the
portraits of the great lawyers seemed to look on with satisfaction.
His mother left her tea and toast untouched, but sat with her usual
pretty primness, only showing her emotion by that flush in the cheeks
and brightness in the eyes which give an old woman a touching momentary
identity with her far-off youthful self, and saying decisively--

"The greatest comfort, Camden, is that you have deserved it."

"When a man gets a good berth, mother, half the deserving must come
after," said the son, brimful of pleasure, and not trying to conceal
it.  The gladness in his face was of that active kind which seems to
have energy enough not only to flash outwardly, but to light up busy
vision within: one seemed to see thoughts, as well as delight, in his
glances.

"Now, aunt," he went on, rubbing his hands and looking at Miss Noble,
who was making tender little beaver-like noises, "There shall be
sugar-candy always on the table for you to steal and give to the
children, and you shall have a great many new stockings to make
presents of, and you shall darn your own more than ever!"

Miss Noble nodded at her nephew with a subdued half-frightened laugh,
conscious of having already dropped an additional lump of sugar into
her basket on the strength of the new preferment.

"As for you, Winny"--the Vicar went on--"I shall make no difficulty
about your marrying any Lowick bachelor--Mr. Solomon Featherstone, for
example, as soon as I find you are in love with him."

Miss Winifred, who had been looking at her brother all the while and
crying heartily, which was her way of rejoicing, smiled through her
tears and said, "You must set me the example, Cam: _you_ must marry
now."

"With all my heart.  But who is in love with me?  I am a seedy old
fellow," said the Vicar, rising, pushing his chair away and looking
down at himself.  "What do you say, mother?"

"You are a handsome man, Camden: though not so fine a figure of a man
as your father," said the old lady.

"I wish you would marry Miss Garth, brother," said Miss Winifred.  "She
would make us so lively at Lowick."

"Very fine! You talk as if young women were tied up to be chosen, like
poultry at market; as if I had only to ask and everybody would have
me," said the Vicar, not caring to specify.

"We don't want everybody," said Miss Winifred.  "But _you_ would like
Miss Garth, mother, shouldn't you?"

"My son's choice shall be mine," said Mrs. Farebrother, with majestic
discretion, "and a wife would be most welcome, Camden.  You will want
your whist at home when we go to Lowick, and Henrietta Noble never was
a whist-player." (Mrs. Farebrother always called her tiny old sister by
that magnificent name.)

"I shall do without whist now, mother."

"Why so, Camden?  In my time whist was thought an undeniable amusement
for a good churchman," said Mrs. Farebrother, innocent of the meaning
that whist had for her son, and speaking rather sharply, as at some
dangerous countenancing of new doctrine.

"I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes," said the
Vicar, preferring not to discuss the virtues of that game.

He had already said to Dorothea, "I don't feel bound to give up St.
Botolph's. It is protest enough against the pluralism they want to
reform if I give somebody else most of the money.  The stronger thing
is not to give up power, but to use it well."

"I have thought of that," said Dorothea.  "So far as self is concerned,
I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep
them.  It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I
felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of me."

"It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power,"
said Mr. Farebrother.

His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active
when the yoke of life ceases to gall them.  He made no display of
humility on the subject, but in his heart he felt rather ashamed that
his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get benefices
were free from.

"I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman," he
said to Lydgate, "but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good
a clergyman out of myself as I can.  That is the well-beneficed point
of view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much simplified," he
ended, smiling.

The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy.  But
Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly--something like a heavy
friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg
within our gates.

Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the
disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from Omnibus College with his
bachelor's degree.

"I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother," said Fred, whose fair
open face was propitiating, "but you are the only friend I can consult.
I told you everything once before, and you were so good that I can't
help coming to you again."

"Sit down, Fred, I'm ready to hear and do anything I can," said the
Vicar, who was busy packing some small objects for removal, and went on
with his work.

"I wanted to tell you--" Fred hesitated an instant and then went on
plungingly, "I might go into the Church now; and really, look where I
may, I can't see anything else to do.  I don't like it, but I know it's
uncommonly hard on my father to say so, after he has spent a good deal
of money in educating me for it." Fred paused again an instant, and
then repeated, "and I can't see anything else to do."

"I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way with
him.  He said it was too late.  But you have got over one bridge now:
what are your other difficulties?"

"Merely that I don't like it.  I don't like divinity, and preaching,
and feeling obliged to look serious.  I like riding across country, and
doing as other men do.  I don't mean that I want to be a bad fellow in
any way; but I've no taste for the sort of thing people expect of a
clergyman.  And yet what else am I to do?  My father can't spare me any
capital, else I might go into farming.  And he has no room for me in
his trade.  And of course I can't begin to study for law or physic now,
when my father wants me to earn something.  It's all very well to say
I'm wrong to go into the Church; but those who say so might as well
tell me to go into the backwoods."

Fred's voice had taken a tone of grumbling remonstrance, and Mr.
Farebrother might have been inclined to smile if his mind had not been
too busy in imagining more than Fred told him.

"Have you any difficulties about doctrines--about the Articles?" he
said, trying hard to think of the question simply for Fred's sake.

"No; I suppose the Articles are right.  I am not prepared with any
arguments to disprove them, and much better, cleverer fellows than I am
go in for them entirely.  I think it would be rather ridiculous in me
to urge scruples of that sort, as if I were a judge," said Fred, quite
simply.

"I suppose, then, it has occurred to you that you might be a fair
parish priest without being much of a divine?"

"Of course, if I am obliged to be a clergyman, I shall try and do my
duty, though I mayn't like it.  Do you think any body ought to blame
me?"

"For going into the Church under the circumstances?  That depends on
your conscience, Fred--how far you have counted the cost, and seen what
your position will require of you.  I can only tell you about myself,
that I have always been too lax, and have been uneasy in consequence."

"But there is another hindrance," said Fred, coloring.  "I did not tell
you before, though perhaps I may have said things that made you guess
it.  There is somebody I am very fond of: I have loved her ever since
we were children."

"Miss Garth, I suppose?" said the Vicar, examining some labels very
closely.

"Yes.  I shouldn't mind anything if she would have me.  And I know I
could be a good fellow then."

"And you think she returns the feeling?"

"She never will say so; and a good while ago she made me promise not to
speak to her about it again.  And she has set her mind especially
against my being a clergyman; I know that.  But I can't give her up.  I
do think she cares about me.  I saw Mrs. Garth last night, and she said
that Mary was staying at Lowick Rectory with Miss Farebrother."

"Yes, she is very kindly helping my sister.  Do you wish to go there?"

"No, I want to ask a great favor of you.  I am ashamed to bother you in
this way; but Mary might listen to what you said, if you mentioned the
subject to her--I mean about my going into the Church."

"That is rather a delicate task, my dear Fred.  I shall have to
presuppose your attachment to her; and to enter on the subject as you
wish me to do, will be asking her to tell me whether she returns it."

"That is what I want her to tell you," said Fred, bluntly.  "I don't
know what to do, unless I can get at her feeling."

"You mean that you would be guided by that as to your going into the
Church?"

"If Mary said she would never have me I might as well go wrong in one
way as another."

"That is nonsense, Fred.  Men outlive their love, but they don't
outlive the consequences of their recklessness."

"Not my sort of love: I have never been without loving Mary.  If I had
to give her up, it would be like beginning to live on wooden legs."

"Will she not be hurt at my intrusion?"

"No, I feel sure she will not.  She respects you more than any one, and
she would not put you off with fun as she does me.  Of course I could
not have told any one else, or asked any one else to speak to her, but
you.  There is no one else who could be such a friend to both of us."
Fred paused a moment, and then said, rather complainingly, "And she
ought to acknowledge that I have worked in order to pass.  She ought to
believe that I would exert myself for her sake."

There was a moment's silence before Mr. Farebrother laid down his work,
and putting out his hand to Fred said--

"Very well, my boy.  I will do what you wish."

That very day Mr. Farebrother went to Lowick parsonage on the nag which
he had just set up.  "Decidedly I am an old stalk," he thought, "the
young growths are pushing me aside."

He found Mary in the garden gathering roses and sprinkling the petals
on a sheet.  The sun was low, and tall trees sent their shadows across
the grassy walks where Mary was moving without bonnet or parasol.  She
did not observe Mr. Farebrother's approach along the grass, and had
just stooped down to lecture a small black-and-tan terrier, which would
persist in walking on the sheet and smelling at the rose-leaves as Mary
sprinkled them.  She took his fore-paws in one hand, and lifted up the
forefinger of the other, while the dog wrinkled his brows and looked
embarrassed.  "Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you," Mary was saying in a
grave contralto.  "This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody
would think you were a silly young gentleman."

"You are unmerciful to young gentlemen, Miss Garth," said the Vicar,
within two yards of her.

Mary started up and blushed.  "It always answers to reason with Fly,"
she said, laughingly.

"But not with young gentlemen?"

"Oh, with some, I suppose; since some of them turn into excellent men."

"I am glad of that admission, because I want at this very moment to
interest you in a young gentleman."

"Not a silly one, I hope," said Mary, beginning to pluck the roses
again, and feeling her heart beat uncomfortably.

"No; though perhaps wisdom is not his strong point, but rather
affection and sincerity.  However, wisdom lies more in those two
qualities than people are apt to imagine.  I hope you know by those
marks what young gentleman I mean."

"Yes, I think I do," said Mary, bravely, her face getting more serious,
and her hands cold; "it must be Fred Vincy."

"He has asked me to consult you about his going into the Church.  I
hope you will not think that I consented to take a liberty in promising
to do so."

"On the contrary, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, giving up the roses, and
folding her arms, but unable to look up, "whenever you have anything to
say to me I feel honored."

"But before I enter on that question, let me just touch a point on
which your father took me into confidence; by the way, it was that very
evening on which I once before fulfilled a mission from Fred, just
after he had gone to college.  Mr. Garth told me what happened on the
night of Featherstone's death--how you refused to burn the will; and he
said that you had some heart-prickings on that subject, because you had
been the innocent means of hindering Fred from getting his ten thousand
pounds.  I have kept that in mind, and I have heard something that may
relieve you on that score--may show you that no sin-offering is
demanded from you there."

Mr. Farebrother paused a moment and looked at Mary.  He meant to give
Fred his full advantage, but it would be well, he thought, to clear her
mind of any superstitions, such as women sometimes follow when they do
a man the wrong of marrying him as an act of atonement.  Mary's cheeks
had begun to burn a little, and she was mute.

"I mean, that your action made no real difference to Fred's lot.  I
find that the first will would not have been legally good after the
burning of the last; it would not have stood if it had been disputed,
and you may be sure it would have been disputed.  So, on that score,
you may feel your mind free."

"Thank you, Mr. Farebrother," said Mary, earnestly.  "I am grateful to
you for remembering my feelings."

"Well, now I may go on.  Fred, you know, has taken his degree.  He has
worked his way so far, and now the question is, what is he to do?  That
question is so difficult that he is inclined to follow his father's
wishes and enter the Church, though you know better than I do that he
was quite set against that formerly.  I have questioned him on the
subject, and I confess I see no insuperable objection to his being a
clergyman, as things go.  He says that he could turn his mind to doing
his best in that vocation, on one condition.  If that condition were
fulfilled I would do my utmost in helping Fred on.  After a time--not,
of course, at first--he might be with me as my curate, and he would
have so much to do that his stipend would be nearly what I used to get
as vicar.  But I repeat that there is a condition without which all
this good cannot come to pass.  He has opened his heart to me, Miss
Garth, and asked me to plead for him.  The condition lies entirely in
your feeling."

Mary looked so much moved, that he said after a moment, "Let us walk a
little;" and when they were walking he added, "To speak quite plainly,
Fred will not take any course which would lessen the chance that you
would consent to be his wife; but with that prospect, he will try his
best at anything you approve."

"I cannot possibly say that I will ever be his wife, Mr. Farebrother:
but I certainly never will be his wife if he becomes a clergyman.  What
you say is most generous and kind; I don't mean for a moment to correct
your judgment.  It is only that I have my girlish, mocking way of
looking at things," said Mary, with a returning sparkle of playfulness
in her answer which only made its modesty more charming.

"He wishes me to report exactly what you think," said Mr. Farebrother.

"I could not love a man who is ridiculous," said Mary, not choosing to
go deeper.  "Fred has sense and knowledge enough to make him
respectable, if he likes, in some good worldly business, but I can
never imagine him preaching and exhorting, and pronouncing blessings,
and praying by the sick, without feeling as if I were looking at a
caricature.  His being a clergyman would be only for gentility's sake,
and I think there is nothing more contemptible than such imbecile
gentility.  I used to think that of Mr. Crowse, with his empty face and
neat umbrella, and mincing little speeches.  What right have such men
to represent Christianity--as if it were an institution for getting up
idiots genteelly--as if--" Mary checked herself.  She had been carried
along as if she had been speaking to Fred instead of Mr. Farebrother.

"Young women are severe: they don't feel the stress of action as men
do, though perhaps I ought to make you an exception there.  But you
don't put Fred Vincy on so low a level as that?"

"No, indeed, he has plenty of sense, but I think he would not show it
as a clergyman.  He would be a piece of professional affectation."

"Then the answer is quite decided.  As a clergyman he could have no
hope?"

Mary shook her head.

"But if he braved all the difficulties of getting his bread in some
other way--will you give him the support of hope?  May he count on
winning you?"

"I think Fred ought not to need telling again what I have already said
to him," Mary answered, with a slight resentment in her manner.  "I
mean that he ought not to put such questions until he has done
something worthy, instead of saying that he could do it."

Mr. Farebrother was silent for a minute or more, and then, as they
turned and paused under the shadow of a maple at the end of a grassy
walk, said, "I understand that you resist any attempt to fetter you,
but either your feeling for Fred Vincy excludes your entertaining
another attachment, or it does not: either he may count on your
remaining single until he shall have earned your hand, or he may in any
case be disappointed.  Pardon me, Mary--you know I used to catechise
you under that name--but when the state of a woman's affections touches
the happiness of another life--of more lives than one--I think it would
be the nobler course for her to be perfectly direct and open."

Mary in her turn was silent, wondering not at Mr. Farebrother's manner
but at his tone, which had a grave restrained emotion in it.  When the
strange idea flashed across her that his words had reference to
himself, she was incredulous, and ashamed of entertaining it.  She had
never thought that any man could love her except Fred, who had espoused
her with the umbrella ring, when she wore socks and little strapped
shoes; still less that she could be of any importance to Mr.
Farebrother, the cleverest man in her narrow circle.  She had only time
to feel that all this was hazy and perhaps illusory; but one thing was
clear and determined--her answer.

"Since you think it my duty, Mr. Farebrother, I will tell you that I
have too strong a feeling for Fred to give him up for any one else.  I
should never be quite happy if I thought he was unhappy for the loss of
me.  It has taken such deep root in me--my gratitude to him for always
loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time
when we were very little.  I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to
make that weaker.  I should like better than anything to see him worthy
of every one's respect.  But please tell him I will not promise to
marry him till then: I should shame and grieve my father and mother.
He is free to choose some one else."

"Then I have fulfilled my commission thoroughly," said Mr. Farebrother,
putting out his hand to Mary, "and I shall ride back to Middlemarch
forthwith.  With this prospect before him, we shall get Fred into the
right niche somehow, and I hope I shall live to join your hands.  God
bless you!"

"Oh, please stay, and let me give you some tea," said Mary.  Her eyes
filled with tears, for something indefinable, something like the
resolute suppression of a pain in Mr. Farebrother's manner, made her
feel suddenly miserable, as she had once felt when she saw her father's
hands trembling in a moment of trouble.

"No, my dear, no.  I must get back."

In three minutes the Vicar was on horseback again, having gone
magnanimously through a duty much harder than the renunciation of
whist, or even than the writing of penitential meditations.



    It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from
    what outsiders call inconsistency--putting a dead mechanism
    of "ifs" and "therefores" for the living myriad of hidden
    suckers whereby the belief and the conduct are wrought into
    mutual sustainment.


Mr. Bulstrode, when he was hoping to acquire a new interest in Lowick,
had naturally had an especial wish that the new clergyman should be one
whom he thoroughly approved; and he believed it to be a chastisement
and admonition directed to his own shortcomings and those of the nation
at large, that just about the time when he came in possession of the
deeds which made him the proprietor of Stone Court, Mr. Farebrother
"read himself" into the quaint little church and preached his first
sermon to the congregation of farmers, laborers, and village artisans.
It was not that Mr. Bulstrode intended to frequent Lowick Church or to
reside at Stone Court for a good while to come: he had bought the
excellent farm and fine homestead simply as a retreat which he might
gradually enlarge as to the land and beautify as to the dwelling, until
it should be conducive to the divine glory that he should enter on it
as a residence, partially withdrawing from his present exertions in the
administration of business, and throwing more conspicuously on the side
of Gospel truth the weight of local landed proprietorship, which
Providence might increase by unforeseen occasions of purchase.  A
strong leading in this direction seemed to have been given in the
surprising facility of getting Stone Court, when every one had expected
that Mr. Rigg Featherstone would have clung to it as the Garden of
Eden.  That was what poor old Peter himself had expected; having often,
in imagination, looked up through the sods above him, and, unobstructed
by perspective, seen his frog-faced legatee enjoying the fine old
place to the perpetual surprise and disappointment of other survivors.

But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbors!  We
judge from our own desires, and our neighbors themselves are not always
open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs.  The cool and judicious
Joshua Rigg had not allowed his parent to perceive that Stone Court was
anything less than the chief good in his estimation, and he had
certainly wished to call it his own.  But as Warren Hastings looked at
gold and thought of buying Daylesford, so Joshua Rigg looked at Stone
Court and thought of buying gold.  He had a very distinct and intense
vision of his chief good, the vigorous greed which he had inherited
having taken a special form by dint of circumstance: and his chief good
was to be a moneychanger.  From his earliest employment as an
errand-boy in a seaport, he had looked through the windows of the
moneychangers as other boys look through the windows of the
pastry-cooks; the fascination had wrought itself gradually into a deep
special passion; he meant, when he had property, to do many things, one
of them being to marry a genteel young person; but these were all
accidents and joys that imagination could dispense with.  The one joy
after which his soul thirsted was to have a money-changer's shop on a
much-frequented quay, to have locks all round him of which he held the
keys, and to look sublimely cool as he handled the breeding coins of
all nations, while helpless Cupidity looked at him enviously from the
other side of an iron lattice.  The strength of that passion had been a
power enabling him to master all the knowledge necessary to gratify it.
And when others were thinking that he had settled at Stone Court for
life, Joshua himself was thinking that the moment now was not far off
when he should settle on the North Quay with the best appointments in
safes and locks.

Enough.  We are concerned with looking at Joshua Rigg's sale of his
land from Mr. Bulstrode's point of view, and he interpreted it as a
cheering dispensation conveying perhaps a sanction to a purpose which
he had for some time entertained without external encouragement; he
interpreted it thus, but not too confidently, offering up his
thanksgiving in guarded phraseology.  His doubts did not arise from the
possible relations of the event to Joshua Rigg's destiny, which
belonged to the unmapped regions not taken under the providential
government, except perhaps in an imperfect colonial way; but they arose
from reflecting that this dispensation too might be a chastisement for
himself, as Mr. Farebrother's induction to the living clearly was.

This was not what Mr. Bulstrode said to any man for the sake of
deceiving him: it was what he said to himself--it was as genuinely his
mode of explaining events as any theory of yours may be, if you happen
to disagree with him.  For the egoism which enters into our theories
does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is
satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

However, whether for sanction or for chastisement, Mr. Bulstrode,
hardly fifteen months after the death of Peter Featherstone, had become
the proprietor of Stone Court, and what Peter would say "if he were
worthy to know," had become an inexhaustible and consolatory subject of
conversation to his disappointed relatives.  The tables were now turned
on that dear brother departed, and to contemplate the frustration of
his cunning by the superior cunning of things in general was a cud of
delight to Solomon.  Mrs. Waule had a melancholy triumph in the proof
that it did not answer to make false Featherstones and cut off the
genuine; and Sister Martha receiving the news in the Chalky Flats said,
"Dear, dear! then the Almighty could have been none so pleased with the
almshouses after all."

Affectionate Mrs. Bulstrode was particularly glad of the advantage
which her husband's health was likely to get from the purchase of Stone
Court.  Few days passed without his riding thither and looking over
some part of the farm with the bailiff, and the evenings were delicious
in that quiet spot, when the new hay-ricks lately set up were sending
forth odors to mingle with the breath of the rich old garden.  One
evening, while the sun was still above the horizon and burning in
golden lamps among the great walnut boughs, Mr. Bulstrode was pausing
on horseback outside the front gate waiting for Caleb Garth, who had
met him by appointment to give an opinion on a question of stable
drainage, and was now advising the bailiff in the rick-yard.

Mr. Bulstrode was conscious of being in a good spiritual frame and more
than usually serene, under the influence of his innocent recreation.
He was doctrinally convinced that there was a total absence of merit in
himself; but that doctrinal conviction may be held without pain when
the sense of demerit does not take a distinct shape in memory and
revive the tingling of shame or the pang of remorse.  Nay, it may be
held with intense satisfaction when the depth of our sinning is but a
measure for the depth of forgiveness, and a clenching proof that we are
peculiar instruments of the divine intention.  The memory has as many
moods as the temper, and shifts its scenery like a diorama.  At this
moment Mr. Bulstrode felt as if the sunshine were all one with that of
far-off evenings when he was a very young man and used to go out
preaching beyond Highbury.  And he would willingly have had that
service of exhortation in prospect now.  The texts were there still,
and so was his own facility in expounding them.  His brief reverie was
interrupted by the return of Caleb Garth, who also was on horseback,
and was just shaking his bridle before starting, when he exclaimed--

"Bless my heart! what's this fellow in black coming along the lane?
He's like one of those men one sees about after the races."

Mr. Bulstrode turned his horse and looked along the lane, but made no
reply.  The comer was our slight acquaintance Mr. Raffles, whose
appearance presented no other change than such as was due to a suit of
black and a crape hat-band. He was within three yards of the horseman
now, and they could see the flash of recognition in his face as he
whirled his stick upward, looking all the while at Mr. Bulstrode, and
at last exclaiming:--

"By Jove, Nick, it's you!  I couldn't be mistaken, though the
five-and-twenty years have played old Boguy with us both!  How are you,
eh? you didn't expect to see _me_ here.  Come, shake us by the hand."
To say that Mr. Raffles' manner was rather excited would be only one
mode of saying that it was evening.  Caleb Garth could see that there
was a moment of struggle and hesitation in Mr. Bulstrode, but it ended
in his putting out his hand coldly to Raffles and saying--

"I did not indeed expect to see you in this remote country place."

"Well, it belongs to a stepson of mine," said Raffles, adjusting
himself in a swaggering attitude.  "I came to see him here before.  I'm
not so surprised at seeing you, old fellow, because I picked up a
letter--what you may call a providential thing.  It's uncommonly
fortunate I met you, though; for I don't care about seeing my stepson:
he's not affectionate, and his poor mother's gone now.  To tell the
truth, I came out of love to you, Nick: I came to get your address,
for--look here!"  Raffles drew a crumpled paper from his pocket.

Almost any other man than Caleb Garth might have been tempted to linger
on the spot for the sake of hearing all he could about a man whose
acquaintance with Bulstrode seemed to imply passages in the banker's
life so unlike anything that was known of him in Middlemarch that they
must have the nature of a secret to pique curiosity.  But Caleb was
peculiar: certain human tendencies which are commonly strong were
almost absent from his mind; and one of these was curiosity about
personal affairs.  Especially if there was anything discreditable to be
found out concerning another man, Caleb preferred not to know it; and
if he had to tell anybody under him that his evil doings were
discovered, he was more embarrassed than the culprit.  He now spurred
his horse, and saying, "I wish you good evening, Mr. Bulstrode; I must
be getting home," set off at a trot.

"You didn't put your full address to this letter," Raffles continued.
"That was not like the first-rate man of business you used to be.  'The
Shrubs,'--they may be anywhere: you live near at hand, eh?--have cut
the London concern altogether--perhaps turned country squire--have a
rural mansion to invite me to.  Lord, how many years it is ago!  The
old lady must have been dead a pretty long while--gone to glory without
the pain of knowing how poor her daughter was, eh?  But, by Jove!
you're very pale and pasty, Nick.  Come, if you're going home, I'll
walk by your side."

Mr. Bulstrode's usual paleness had in fact taken an almost deathly hue.
Five minutes before, the expanse of his life had been submerged in its
evening sunshine which shone backward to its remembered morning: sin
seemed to be a question of doctrine and inward penitence, humiliation
an exercise of the closet, the bearing of his deeds a matter of private
vision adjusted solely by spiritual relations and conceptions of the
divine purposes.  And now, as if by some hideous magic, this loud red
figure had risen before him in unmanageable solidity--an incorporate
past which had not entered into his imagination of chastisements.  But
Mr. Bulstrode's thought was busy, and he was not a man to act or speak
rashly.

"I was going home," he said, "but I can defer my ride a little.  And
you can, if you please, rest here."

"Thank you," said Raffles, making a grimace.  "I don't care now about
seeing my stepson.  I'd rather go home with you."

"Your stepson, if Mr. Rigg Featherstone was he, is here no longer.  I
am master here now."

Raffles opened wide eyes, and gave a long whistle of surprise, before
he said, "Well then, I've no objection.  I've had enough walking from
the coach-road. I never was much of a walker, or rider either.  What I
like is a smart vehicle and a spirited cob.  I was always a little
heavy in the saddle.  What a pleasant surprise it must be to you to see
me, old fellow!" he continued, as they turned towards the house.  "You
don't say so; but you never took your luck heartily--you were always
thinking of improving the occasion--you'd such a gift for improving
your luck."

Mr. Raffles seemed greatly to enjoy his own wit, and swung his leg in a
swaggering manner which was rather too much for his companion's
judicious patience.

"If I remember rightly," Mr. Bulstrode observed, with chill anger, "our
acquaintance many years ago had not the sort of intimacy which you are
now assuming, Mr. Raffles.  Any services you desire of me will be the
more readily rendered if you will avoid a tone of familiarity which did
not lie in our former intercourse, and can hardly be warranted by more
than twenty years of separation."

"You don't like being called Nick?  Why, I always called you Nick in my
heart, and though lost to sight, to memory dear.  By Jove! my feelings
have ripened for you like fine old cognac.  I hope you've got some in
the house now.  Josh filled my flask well the last time."

Mr. Bulstrode had not yet fully learned that even the desire for cognac
was not stronger in Raffles than the desire to torment, and that a hint
of annoyance always served him as a fresh cue.  But it was at least
clear that further objection was useless, and Mr. Bulstrode, in giving
orders to the housekeeper for the accommodation of the guest, had a
resolute air of quietude.

There was the comfort of thinking that this housekeeper had been in the
service of Rigg also, and might accept the idea that Mr. Bulstrode
entertained Raffles merely as a friend of her former master.

When there was food and drink spread before his visitor in the
wainscoted parlor, and no witness in the room, Mr. Bulstrode said--

"Your habits and mine are so different, Mr. Raffles, that we can hardly
enjoy each other's society.  The wisest plan for both of us will
therefore be to part as soon as possible.  Since you say that you
wished to meet me, you probably considered that you had some business
to transact with me.  But under the circumstances I will invite you to
remain here for the night, and I will myself ride over here early
to-morrow morning--before breakfast, in fact, when I can receive any
Communication you have to make to me."

"With all my heart," said Raffles; "this is a comfortable place--a
little dull for a continuance; but I can put up with it for a night,
with this good liquor and the prospect of seeing you again in the
morning.  You're a much better host than my stepson was; but Josh owed
me a bit of a grudge for marrying his mother; and between you and me
there was never anything but kindness."

Mr. Bulstrode, hoping that the peculiar mixture of joviality and
sneering in Raffles' manner was a good deal the effect of drink, had
determined to wait till he was quite sober before he spent more words
upon him.  But he rode home with a terribly lucid vision of the
difficulty there would be in arranging any result that could be
permanently counted on with this man.  It was inevitable that he should
wish to get rid of John Raffles, though his reappearance could not be
regarded as lying outside the divine plan.  The spirit of evil might
have sent him to threaten Mr. Bulstrode's subversion as an instrument
of good; but the threat must have been permitted, and was a
chastisement of a new kind.  It was an hour of anguish for him very
different from the hours in which his struggle had been securely
private, and which had ended with a sense that his secret misdeeds were
pardoned and his services accepted.  Those misdeeds even when
committed--had they not been half sanctified by the singleness of his
desire to devote himself and all he possessed to the furtherance of the
divine scheme?  And was he after all to become a mere stone of
stumbling and a rock of offence?  For who would understand the work
within him?  Who would not, when there was the pretext of casting
disgrace upon him, confound his whole life and the truths he had
espoused, in one heap of obloquy?

In his closest meditations the life-long habit of Mr. Bulstrode's mind
clad his most egoistic terrors in doctrinal references to superhuman
ends.  But even while we are talking and meditating about the earth's
orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our movements to is
the stable earth and the changing day.  And now within all the
automatic succession of theoretic phrases--distinct and inmost as the
shiver and the ache of oncoming fever when we are discussing abstract
pain, was the forecast of disgrace in the presence of his neighbors and
of his own wife.  For the pain, as well as the public estimate of
disgrace, depends on the amount of previous profession.  To men who
only aim at escaping felony, nothing short of the prisoner's dock is
disgrace.  But Mr. Bulstrode had aimed at being an eminent Christian.

It was not more than half-past seven in the morning when he again
reached Stone Court.  The fine old place never looked more like a
delightful home than at that moment; the great white lilies were in
flower, the nasturtiums, their pretty leaves all silvered with dew,
were running away over the low stone wall; the very noises all around
had a heart of peace within them.  But everything was spoiled for the
owner as he walked on the gravel in front and awaited the descent of
Mr. Raffles, with whom he was condemned to breakfast.

It was not long before they were seated together in the wainscoted
parlor over their tea and toast, which was as much as Raffles cared to
take at that early hour.  The difference between his morning and
evening self was not so great as his companion had imagined that it
might be; the delight in tormenting was perhaps even the stronger
because his spirits were rather less highly pitched.  Certainly his
manners seemed more disagreeable by the morning light.

"As I have little time to spare, Mr. Raffles," said the banker, who
could hardly do more than sip his tea and break his toast without
eating it, "I shall be obliged if you will mention at once the ground
on which you wished to meet with me.  I presume that you have a home
elsewhere and will be glad to return to it."

"Why, if a man has got any heart, doesn't he want to see an old friend,
Nick?--I must call you Nick--we always did call you young Nick when we
knew you meant to marry the old widow.  Some said you had a handsome
family likeness to old Nick, but that was your mother's fault, calling
you Nicholas.  Aren't you glad to see me again?  I expected an invite
to stay with you at some pretty place.  My own establishment is broken
up now my wife's dead.  I've no particular attachment to any spot; I
would as soon settle hereabout as anywhere."

"May I ask why you returned from America?  I considered that the strong
wish you expressed to go there, when an adequate sum was furnished, was
tantamount to an engagement that you would remain there for life."

"Never knew that a wish to go to a place was the same thing as a wish
to stay.  But I did stay a matter of ten years; it didn't suit me to
stay any longer.  And I'm not going again, Nick." Here Mr. Raffles
winked slowly as he looked at Mr. Bulstrode.

"Do you wish to be settled in any business?  What is your calling now?"

"Thank you, my calling is to enjoy myself as much as I can.  I don't
care about working any more.  If I did anything it would be a little
travelling in the tobacco line--or something of that sort, which takes
a man into agreeable company.  But not without an independence to fall
back upon.  That's what I want: I'm not so strong as I was, Nick,
though I've got more color than you.  I want an independence."

"That could be supplied to you, if you would engage to keep at a
distance," said Mr. Bulstrode, perhaps with a little too much eagerness
in his undertone.

"That must be as it suits my convenience," said Raffles coolly.  "I see
no reason why I shouldn't make a few acquaintances hereabout.  I'm not
ashamed of myself as company for anybody.  I dropped my portmanteau at
the turnpike when I got down--change of linen--genuine--honor bright--more
than fronts and wristbands; and with this suit of mourning, straps
and everything, I should do you credit among the nobs here."  Mr.
Raffles had pushed away his chair and looked down at himself,
particularly at his straps.  His chief intention was to annoy
Bulstrode, but he really thought that his appearance now would produce
a good effect, and that he was not only handsome and witty, but clad in
a mourning style which implied solid connections.

"If you intend to rely on me in any way, Mr. Raffles," said Bulstrode,
after a moment's pause, "you will expect to meet my wishes."

"Ah, to be sure," said Raffles, with a mocking cordiality.  "Didn't I
always do it?  Lord, you made a pretty thing out of me, and I got but
little.  I've often thought since, I might have done better by telling
the old woman that I'd found her daughter and her grandchild: it would
have suited my feelings better; I've got a soft place in my heart.  But
you've buried the old lady by this time, I suppose--it's all one to her
now.  And you've got your fortune out of that profitable business which
had such a blessing on it.  You've taken to being a nob, buying land,
being a country bashaw.  Still in the Dissenting line, eh?  Still
godly?  Or taken to the Church as more genteel?"

This time Mr. Raffles' slow wink and slight protrusion of his tongue
was worse than a nightmare, because it held the certitude that it was
not a nightmare, but a waking misery.  Mr. Bulstrode felt a shuddering
nausea, and did not speak, but was considering diligently whether he
should not leave Raffles to do as he would, and simply defy him as a
slanderer.  The man would soon show himself disreputable enough to make
people disbelieve him.  "But not when he tells any ugly-looking truth
about _you_," said discerning consciousness.  And again: it seemed no
wrong to keep Raffles at a distance, but Mr. Bulstrode shrank from the
direct falsehood of denying true statements.  It was one thing to look
back on forgiven sins, nay, to explain questionable conformity to lax
customs, and another to enter deliberately on the necessity of
falsehood.

But since Bulstrode did not speak, Raffles ran on, by way of using time
to the utmost.

"I've not had such fine luck as you, by Jove!  Things went confoundedly
with me in New York; those Yankees are cool hands, and a man of
gentlemanly feelings has no chance with them.  I married when I came
back--a nice woman in the tobacco trade--very fond of me--but the
trade was restricted, as we say.  She had been settled there a good
many years by a friend; but there was a son too much in the case.  Josh
and I never hit it off.  However, I made the most of the position, and
I've always taken my glass in good company.  It's been all on the
square with me; I'm as open as the day.  You won't take it ill of me
that I didn't look you up before.  I've got a complaint that makes me a
little dilatory.  I thought you were trading and praying away in London
still, and didn't find you there.  But you see I was sent to you,
Nick--perhaps for a blessing to both of us."

Mr. Raffles ended with a jocose snuffle: no man felt his intellect more
superior to religious cant.  And if the cunning which calculates on the
meanest feelings in men could be called intellect, he had his share,
for under the blurting rallying tone with which he spoke to Bulstrode,
there was an evident selection of statements, as if they had been so
many moves at chess.  Meanwhile Bulstrode had determined on his move,
and he said, with gathered resolution--

"You will do well to reflect, Mr. Raffles, that it is possible for a
man to overreach himself in the effort to secure undue advantage.
Although I am not in any way bound to you, I am willing to supply you
with a regular annuity--in quarterly payments--so long as you fulfil a
promise to remain at a distance from this neighborhood.  It is in your
power to choose.  If you insist on remaining here, even for a short
time, you will get nothing from me.  I shall decline to know you."

"Ha, ha!" said Raffles, with an affected explosion, "that reminds me of
a droll dog of a thief who declined to know the constable."

"Your allusions are lost on me sir," said Bulstrode, with white heat;
"the law has no hold on me either through your agency or any other."

"You can't understand a joke, my good fellow.  I only meant that I
should never decline to know you.  But let us be serious.  Your
quarterly payment won't quite suit me.  I like my freedom."

Here Raffles rose and stalked once or twice up and down the room,
swinging his leg, and assuming an air of masterly meditation.  At last
he stopped opposite Bulstrode, and said, "I'll tell you what!  Give us
a couple of hundreds--come, that's modest--and I'll go away--honor
bright!--pick up my portmanteau and go away.  But I shall not give up
my Liberty for a dirty annuity.  I shall come and go where I like.
Perhaps it may suit me to stay away, and correspond with a friend;
perhaps not.  Have you the money with you?"

"No, I have one hundred," said Bulstrode, feeling the immediate
riddance too great a relief to be rejected on the ground of future
uncertainties.  "I will forward you the other if you will mention an
address."

"No, I'll wait here till you bring it," said Raffles.  "I'll take a
stroll and have a snack, and you'll be back by that time."

Mr. Bulstrode's sickly body, shattered by the agitations he had gone
through since the last evening, made him feel abjectly in the power of
this loud invulnerable man.  At that moment he snatched at a temporary
repose to be won on any terms.  He was rising to do what Raffles
suggested, when the latter said, lifting up his finger as if with a
sudden recollection--

"I did have another look after Sarah again, though I didn't tell you;
I'd a tender conscience about that pretty young woman.  I didn't find
her, but I found out her husband's name, and I made a note of it.  But
hang it, I lost my pocketbook.  However, if I heard it, I should know
it again.  I've got my faculties as if I was in my prime, but names
wear out, by Jove!  Sometimes I'm no better than a confounded tax-paper
before the names are filled in.  However, if I hear of her and her
family, you shall know, Nick.  You'd like to do something for her, now
she's your step-daughter."

"Doubtless," said Mr. Bulstrode, with the usual steady look of his
light-gray eyes; "though that might reduce my power of assisting you."

As he walked out of the room, Raffles winked slowly at his back, and
then turned towards the window to watch the banker riding away--virtually
at his command.  His lips first curled with a smile and then opened
with a short triumphant laugh.

"But what the deuce was the name?" he presently said, half aloud,
scratching his head, and wrinkling his brows horizontally.  He had not
really cared or thought about this point of forgetfulness until it
occurred to him in his invention of annoyances for Bulstrode.

"It began with L; it was almost all l's I fancy," he went on, with a
sense that he was getting hold of the slippery name.  But the hold was
too slight, and he soon got tired of this mental chase; for few men
were more impatient of private occupation or more in need of making
themselves continually heard than Mr. Raffles.  He preferred using his
time in pleasant conversation with the bailiff and the housekeeper,
from whom he gathered as much as he wanted to know about Mr.
Bulstrode's position in Middlemarch.

After all, however, there was a dull space of time which needed
relieving with bread and cheese and ale, and when he was seated alone
with these resources in the wainscoted parlor, he suddenly slapped his
knee, and exclaimed, "Ladislaw!"  That action of memory which he had
tried to set going, and had abandoned in despair, had suddenly
completed itself without conscious effort--a common experience,
agreeable as a completed sneeze, even if the name remembered is of no
value.  Raffles immediately took out his pocket-book, and wrote down
the name, not because he expected to use it, but merely for the sake of
not being at a loss if he ever did happen to want it.  He was not going
to tell Bulstrode: there was no actual good in telling, and to a mind
like that of Mr. Raffles there is always probable good in a secret.

He was satisfied with his present success, and by three o'clock that
day he had taken up his portmanteau at the turnpike and mounted the
coach, relieving Mr. Bulstrode's eyes of an ugly black spot on the
landscape at Stone Court, but not relieving him of the dread that the
black spot might reappear and become inseparable even from the vision
of his hearth.





BOOK VI.





THE WIDOW AND THE WIFE.

 The day after Casaubon's burial, Sir James and Mr. Brooke discuss a codicil to his will. Casaubon has forbidden Dorothea to marry Will Ladislaw. Sir James demands that Brooke send Ladislaw out of the country, but Brooke says that he can't ship Will off like a head of cattle. They resolve to keep the codicil a secret from Dorothea, but they fear that gossip will soon endanger Dorothea's reputation. Dorothea insists that she look through Casaubon's papers. She wants to find some clue about the unspecified promise he wanted of her. Celia reveals the details of the codicil. If Dorothea were to marry Will, she would be stripped of Casaubon's property. The knowledge that Casaubon viewed her with suspicion embitters Dorothea. Lydgate tells Dorothea to consider allowing Farebrother to take over the parish at Lowick instead of Tyke. He mentions Farebrother's gambling and says that an additional income would relieve him of the need to engage in such an activity. He mentions that Will is a friend of Farebrother's household, especially Miss Noble. Lydgate doesn't know that he has mentioned the strongest reason against Farebrother rather than the strongest recommendation in bringing up Will Ladislaw's association with him. Will doesn't know of Casaubon's codicil. He only knows that Brooke arranges for him to be at Tipton Grange as little as possible. He concludes that Dorothea's friends want him to stay away on her account. He wonders if they view him with suspicion. He despairs at the growing chasm between them and considers leaving the neighborhood, but he wants to coach Brooke for the Parliamentary elections. Brooke gives an election speech. He notices an effigy of himself held above the shoulders of the crowd. The hecklers befuddle him, and the speech ends in disaster. The hecklers pelt both the effigy and Brooke himself with eggs until Brooke flees. Brooke informs Will that he is out of a job, because he is selling the Pioneer. Will suspects that Brooke's friends have urged Brooke to be rid of him. Farebrother learns that he is to have the Lowick parish. His mother, aunt, and sister urge him to court Mary Garth now that he has sufficient income to marry. Fred, having taken his degree, requests that Farebrother ask Mary if there is any chance that she would marry him. Farebrother assures Mary that her refusal to burn Featherstone's second will made no difference in Fred's lot. It would have been valid regardless. He asks Mary about her feelings for Fred. Mary states that she won't marry Fred if he becomes a clergyman and if he doesn't settle on a steady occupation. Farebrother hints that he himself loves her. Mary says that she loves Fred too much to give him up for another. Feeling pained for his loss and proud for having done his duty, Farebrother leaves to deliver the message. John Raffles interrupts a conversation between Caleb Garth and Bulstrode. Garth senses that Bulstrode is not pleased to see Raffles. He leaves them alone because he doesn't want to eavesdrop. Raffles learns that Bulstrode purchased Stone Court from his stepson, Rigg Featherstone. Bulstrode bribes Raffles to stay away from Middlemarch. Raffles could damage Bulstrode's reputation as an eminent Christian by revealing the fact that Bulstrode contrived to prevent his first wife from finding her missing daughter and grandchild. The missing daughter's married name was Ladislaw.

