Chapter: "Though it be songe of old and yonge,
         That I sholde be to blame,
     Theyrs be the charge, that spoke so large
         In hurtynge of my name."
                           --The Not-Browne Mayde.


It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill: that
explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be walking on the slope of the
lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall, holding the "Times"
in his hands behind him, while he talked with a trout-fisher's
dispassionateness about the prospects of the country to Sir James
Chettam.  Mrs. Cadwallader, the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were
sometimes seated on garden-chairs, sometimes walking to meet little
Arthur, who was being drawn in his chariot, and, as became the
infantine Bouddha, was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome
silken fringe.

The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully.  Mrs.
Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation of peers: she had it
for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone over to the other
side entirely at the instigation of his wife, who had scented peerages
in the air from the very first introduction of the Reform question, and
would sign her soul away to take precedence of her younger sister, who
had married a baronet.  Lady Chettam thought that such conduct was very
reprehensible, and remembered that Mrs. Truberry's mother was a Miss
Walsingham of Melspring.  Celia confessed it was nicer to be "Lady"
than "Mrs.," and that Dodo never minded about precedence if she could
have her own way.  Mrs. Cadwallader held that it was a poor
satisfaction to take precedence when everybody about you knew that you
had not a drop of good blood in your veins; and Celia again, stopping
to look at Arthur, said, "It would be very nice, though, if he were a
Viscount--and his lordship's little tooth coming through!  He might
have been, if James had been an Earl."

"My dear Celia," said the Dowager, "James's title is worth far more
than any new earldom.  I never wished his father to be anything else
than Sir James."

"Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth," said Celia,
comfortably.  "But see, here is my uncle coming."

She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James and Mr. Cadwallader
came forward to make one group with the ladies.  Celia had slipped her
arm through her uncle's, and he patted her hand with a rather
melancholy "Well, my dear!"  As they approached, it was evident that
Mr. Brooke was looking dejected, but this was fully accounted for by
the state of politics; and as he was shaking hands all round without
more greeting than a "Well, you're all here, you know," the Rector
said, laughingly--

"Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke;
you've got all the riff-raff of the country on your side."

"The Bill, eh? ah!" said Mr. Brooke, with a mild distractedness of
manner.  "Thrown out, you know, eh?  The Lords are going too far,
though.  They'll have to pull up.  Sad news, you know.  I mean, here at
home--sad news.  But you must not blame me, Chettam."

"What is the matter?" said Sir James.  "Not another gamekeeper shot, I
hope?  It's what I should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass is
let off so easily."

"Gamekeeper?  No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house, you
know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at the Cadwalladers, to show that he
included them in his confidence.  "As to poachers like Trapping Bass,
you know, Chettam," he continued, as they were entering, "when you are
a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to commit.  Severity is all
very well, but it's a great deal easier when you've got somebody to do
it for you.  You have a soft place in your heart yourself, you
know--you're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort of thing."

Mr. Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation.  When he
had something painful to tell, it was usually his way to introduce it
among a number of disjointed particulars, as if it were a medicine that
would get a milder flavor by mixing.  He continued his chat with Sir
James about the poachers until they were all seated, and Mrs.
Cadwallader, impatient of this drivelling, said--

"I'm dying to know the sad news.  The gamekeeper is not shot: that is
settled.  What is it, then?"

"Well, it's a very trying thing, you know," said Mr. Brooke.  "I'm glad
you and the Rector are here; it's a family matter--but you will help
us all to bear it, Cadwallader.  I've got to break it to you, my dear."
Here Mr. Brooke looked at Celia--"You've no notion what it is, you
know.  And, Chettam, it will annoy you uncommonly--but, you see, you
have not been able to hinder it, any more than I have.  There's
something singular in things: they come round, you know."

"It must be about Dodo," said Celia, who had been used to think of her
sister as the dangerous part of the family machinery.  She had seated
herself on a low stool against her husband's knee.

"For God's sake let us hear what it is!" said Sir James.

"Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's will: it was a
sort of will to make things worse."

"Exactly," said Sir James, hastily.  "But _what_ is worse?"

"Dorothea is going to be married again, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
nodding towards Celia, who immediately looked up at her husband with a
frightened glance, and put her hand on his knee.  Sir James was almost
white with anger, but he did not speak.

"Merciful heaven!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "Not to _young_ Ladislaw?"

Mr. Brooke nodded, saying, "Yes; to Ladislaw," and then fell into a
prudential silence.

"You see, Humphrey!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her arm towards her
husband.  "Another time you will admit that I have some foresight; or
rather you will contradict me and be just as blind as ever.  _You_
supposed that the young gentleman was gone out of the country."

"So he might be, and yet come back," said the Rector, quietly

"When did you learn this?" said Sir James, not liking to hear any one
else speak, though finding it difficult to speak himself.

"Yesterday," said Mr. Brooke, meekly.  "I went to Lowick.  Dorothea
sent for me, you know.  It had come about quite suddenly--neither of
them had any idea two days ago--not any idea, you know.  There's
something singular in things.  But Dorothea is quite determined--it is
no use opposing.  I put it strongly to her.  I did my duty, Chettam.
But she can act as she likes, you know."

"It would have been better if I had called him out and shot him a year
ago," said Sir James, not from bloody-mindedness, but because he needed
something strong to say.

"Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable," said Celia.

"Be reasonable, Chettam.  Look at the affair more quietly," said Mr.
Cadwallader, sorry to see his good-natured friend so overmastered by
anger.

"That is not so very easy for a man of any dignity--with any sense of
right--when the affair happens to be in his own family," said Sir
James, still in his white indignation.  "It is perfectly scandalous.
If Ladislaw had had a spark of honor he would have gone out of the
country at once, and never shown his face in it again.  However, I am
not surprised.  The day after Casaubon's funeral I said what ought to
be done.  But I was not listened to."

"You wanted what was impossible, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke.
"You wanted him shipped off.  I told you Ladislaw was not to be done as
we liked with: he had his ideas.  He was a remarkable fellow--I always
said he was a remarkable fellow."

"Yes," said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, "it is rather a pity
you formed that high opinion of him.  We are indebted to that for his
being lodged in this neighborhood.  We are indebted to that for seeing
a woman like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying him." Sir James
made little stoppages between his clauses, the words not coming easily.
"A man so marked out by her husband's will, that delicacy ought to have
forbidden her from seeing him again--who takes her out of her proper
rank--into poverty--has the meanness to accept such a sacrifice--has
always had an objectionable position--a bad origin--and, I _believe_,
is a man of little principle and light character.  That is my opinion."
Sir James ended emphatically, turning aside and crossing his leg.

"I pointed everything out to her," said Mr. Brooke, apologetically--"I
mean the poverty, and abandoning her position.  I said, 'My dear, you
don't know what it is to live on seven hundred a-year, and have no
carriage, and that kind of thing, and go amongst people who don't know
who you are.'  I put it strongly to her.  But I advise you to talk to
Dorothea herself.  The fact is, she has a dislike to Casaubon's
property.  You will hear what she says, you know."

"No--excuse me--I shall not," said Sir James, with more coolness.  "I
cannot bear to see her again; it is too painful.  It hurts me too much
that a woman like Dorothea should have done what is wrong."

"Be just, Chettam," said the easy, large-lipped Rector, who objected to
all this unnecessary discomfort.  "Mrs. Casaubon may be acting
imprudently: she is giving up a fortune for the sake of a man, and we
men have so poor an opinion of each other that we can hardly call a
woman wise who does that.  But I think you should not condemn it as a
wrong action, in the strict sense of the word."

"Yes, I do," answered Sir James.  "I think that Dorothea commits a
wrong action in marrying Ladislaw."

"My dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because it
is unpleasant to us," said the Rector, quietly.  Like many men who take
life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth occasionally to
those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper.  Sir James took out
his handkerchief and began to bite the corner.

"It is very dreadful of Dodo, though," said Celia, wishing to justify
her husband.  "She said she _never would_ marry again--not anybody at
all."

"I heard her say the same thing myself," said Lady Chettam,
majestically, as if this were royal evidence.

"Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases," said Mrs.
Cadwallader.  "The only wonder to me is, that any of you are surprised.
You did nothing to hinder it.  If you would have had Lord Triton down
here to woo her with his philanthropy, he might have carried her off
before the year was over.  There was no safety in anything else.  Mr.
Casaubon had prepared all this as beautifully as possible.  He made
himself disagreeable--or it pleased God to make him so--and then he
dared her to contradict him.  It's the way to make any trumpery
tempting, to ticket it at a high price in that way."

"I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cadwallader," said Sir James,
still feeling a little stung, and turning round in his chair towards
the Rector.  "He's not a man we can take into the family.  At least, I
must speak for myself," he continued, carefully keeping his eyes off
Mr. Brooke.  "I suppose others will find his society too pleasant to
care about the propriety of the thing."

"Well, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, good-humoredly, nursing his
leg, "I can't turn my back on Dorothea.  I must be a father to her up
to a certain point.  I said, 'My dear, I won't refuse to give you
away.'  I had spoken strongly before.  But I can cut off the entail,
you know.  It will cost money and be troublesome; but I can do it, you
know."

Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing his
own force of resolution and propitiating what was just in the Baronet's
vexation.  He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than he was
aware of.  He had touched a motive of which Sir James was ashamed.  The
mass of his feeling about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was due
partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion, partly to a
jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladislaw's case than in Casaubon's.
He was convinced that the marriage was a fatal one for Dorothea.  But
amid that mass ran a vein of which he was too good and honorable a man
to like the avowal even to himself: it was undeniable that the union of
the two estates--Tipton and Freshitt--lying charmingly within a
ring-fence, was a prospect that flattered him for his son and heir.
Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed to that motive, Sir James felt
a sudden embarrassment; there was a stoppage in his throat; he even
blushed.  He had found more words than usual in the first jet of his
anger, but Mr. Brooke's propitiation was more clogging to his tongue
than Mr. Cadwallader's caustic hint.

But Celia was glad to have room for speech after her uncle's suggestion
of the marriage ceremony, and she said, though with as little eagerness
of manner as if the question had turned on an invitation to dinner, "Do
you mean that Dodo is going to be married directly, uncle?"

"In three weeks, you know," said Mr. Brooke, helplessly.  "I can do
nothing to hinder it, Cadwallader," he added, turning for a little
countenance toward the Rector, who said--

"--I--should not make any fuss about it.  If she likes to be poor, that
is her affair.  Nobody would have said anything if she had married the
young fellow because he was rich.  Plenty of beneficed clergy are
poorer than they will be.  Here is Elinor," continued the provoking
husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly a thousand
a-year--I was a lout--nobody could see anything in me--my shoes were
not the right cut--all the men wondered how a woman could like me.
Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I hear more harm of
him."

"Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife.
"Everything is all one--that is the beginning and end with you.  As if
you had not been a Cadwallader!  Does any one suppose that I would have
taken such a monster as you by any other name?"

"And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation.  "Elinor
cannot be said to have descended below her rank.  It is difficult to
say what Mr. Ladislaw is, eh, James?"

Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less respectful than his usual
mode of answering his mother.  Celia looked up at him like a thoughtful
kitten.

"It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!" said Mrs.
Cadwallader.  "The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with, and then a
rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing-master, was it?--and then an old
clo--"

"Nonsense, Elinor," said the Rector, rising.  "It is time for us to go."

"After all, he is a pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, rising too,
and wishing to make amends.  "He is like the fine old Crichley
portraits before the idiots came in."

"I'll go with you," said Mr. Brooke, starting up with alacrity.  "You
must all come and dine with me to-morrow, you know--eh, Celia, my dear?"

"You will, James--won't you?" said Celia, taking her husband's hand.

"Oh, of course, if you like," said Sir James, pulling down his
waistcoat, but unable yet to adjust his face good-humoredly. "That is
to say, if it is not to meet anybody else.':

"No, no, no," said Mr. Brooke, understanding the condition.  "Dorothea
would not come, you know, unless you had been to see her."

When Sir James and Celia were alone, she said, "Do you mind about my
having the carriage to go to Lowick, James?"

"What, now, directly?" he answered, with some surprise.

"Yes, it is very important," said Celia.

"Remember, Celia, I cannot see her," said Sir James.

"Not if she gave up marrying?"

"What is the use of saying that?--however, I'm going to the stables.
I'll tell Briggs to bring the carriage round."

Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least to take
a journey to Lowick in order to influence Dorothea's mind.  All through
their girlhood she had felt that she could act on her sister by a word
judiciously placed--by opening a little window for the daylight of her
own understanding to enter among the strange colored lamps by which
Dodo habitually saw.  And Celia the matron naturally felt more able to
advise her childless sister.  How could any one understand Dodo so well
as Celia did or love her so tenderly?

Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure at the sight of
her sister so soon after the revelation of her intended marriage.  She
had prefigured to herself, even with exaggeration, the disgust of her
friends, and she had even feared that Celia might be kept aloof from
her.

"O Kitty, I am delighted to see you!" said Dorothea, putting her hands
on Celia's shoulders, and beaming on her.  "I almost thought you would
not come to me."

"I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry," said Celia, and
they sat down on two small chairs opposite each other, with their knees
touching.

"You know, Dodo, it is very bad," said Celia, in her placid guttural,
looking as prettily free from humors as possible.  "You have
disappointed us all so.  And I can't think that it ever _will_ be--you
never can go and live in that way.  And then there are all your plans!
You never can have thought of that.  James would have taken any trouble
for you, and you might have gone on all your life doing what you liked."

"On the contrary, dear," said Dorothea, "I never could do anything that
I liked.  I have never carried out any plan yet."

"Because you always wanted things that wouldn't do.  But other plans
would have come.  And how can you marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of
us ever thought you _could_ marry?  It shocks James so dreadfully.  And
then it is all so different from what you have always been.  You would
have Mr. Casaubon because he had such a great soul, and was so and
dismal and learned; and now, to think of marrying Mr. Ladislaw, who has
got no estate or anything.  I suppose it is because you must be making
yourself uncomfortable in some way or other."

Dorothea laughed.

"Well, it is very serious, Dodo," said Celia, becoming more impressive.
"How will you live? and you will go away among queer people.  And I
shall never see you--and you won't mind about little Arthur--and I
thought you always would--"

Celia's rare tears had got into her eyes, and the corners of her mouth
were agitated.

"Dear Celia," said Dorothea, with tender gravity, "if you don't ever
see me, it will not be my fault."

"Yes, it will," said Celia, with the same touching distortion of her
small features.  "How can I come to you or have you with me when James
can't bear it?--that is because he thinks it is not right--he thinks
you are so wrong, Dodo.  But you always were wrong: only I can't help
loving you.  And nobody can think where you will live: where can you
go?"

"I am going to London," said Dorothea.

"How can you always live in a street?  And you will be so poor.  I
could give you half my things, only how can I, when I never see you?"

"Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth.  "Take comfort:
perhaps James will forgive me some time."

"But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia,
drying her eyes, and returning to her argument; "then there would be
nothing uncomfortable.  And you would not do what nobody thought you
could do.  James always said you ought to be a queen; but this is not
at all being like a queen.  You know what mistakes you have always been
making, Dodo, and this is another.  Nobody thinks Mr. Ladislaw a proper
husband for you.  And you _said you_ would never be married again."

"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said
Dorothea, "and that I might have done something better, if I had been
better.  But this is what I am going to do.  I have promised to marry
Mr. Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him."

The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long
learned to recognize.  She was silent a few moments, and then said, as
if she had dismissed all contest, "Is he very fond of you, Dodo?"

"I hope so.  I am very fond of him."

"That is nice," said Celia, comfortably.  "Only I rather you had such a
sort of husband as James is, with a place very near, that I could drive
to."

Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative.  Presently she
said, "I cannot think how it all came about." Celia thought it would be
pleasant to hear the story.

"I dare say not," said-Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin.  "If you
knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you."

"Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily.

"No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."



    "Then went the jury out whose names were Mr. Blindman, Mr.
    No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr.
    Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr.
    Hate-light, Mr. Implacable, who every one gave in his
    private verdict against him among themselves, and afterwards
    unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before the
    judge. And first among themselves, Mr. Blindman, the
    foreman, said, I see clearly that this man is a heretic.
    Then said Mr. No-good, Away with such a fellow from the
    earth! Ay, said Mr. Malice, for I hate the very look of him.
    Then said Mr. Love-lust, I could never endure him. Nor I,
    said Mr. Live-loose; for he would be always condemning my
    way. Hang him, hang him, said Mr. Heady. A sorry scrub, said
    Mr. High-mind. My heart riseth against him, said Mr. Enmity.
    He is a rogue, said Mr. Liar. Hanging is too good for him,
    said Mr. Cruelty. Let us despatch him out of the way said
    Mr. Hate-light. Then said Mr. Implacable, Might I have all
    the world given me, I could not be reconciled to him;
    therefore let us forthwith bring him in guilty of death."
                                            --Pilgrim's Progress.


When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions
bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful?  That is a
rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have not attained, to know
ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd--to be sure that what we
are denounced for is solely the good in us.  The pitiable lot is that
of the man who could not call himself a martyr even though he were to
persuade himself that the men who stoned him were but ugly passions
incarnate--who knows that he is stoned, not for professing the Right,
but for not being the man he professed to be.

This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he
made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end
his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.
The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from one
dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a tribunal
before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy.  His
equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had sustained the
conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to, yet he had a terror
upon him which would not let him expose them to judgment by a full
confession to his wife: the acts which he had washed and diluted with
inward argument and motive, and for which it seemed comparatively easy
to win invisible pardon--what name would she call them by?  That she
should ever silently call his acts Murder was what he could not bear.
He felt shrouded by her doubt: he got strength to face her from the
sense that she could not yet feel warranted in pronouncing that worst
condemnation on him.  Some time, perhaps--when he was dying--he would
tell her all: in the deep shadow of that time, when she held his hand
in the gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling from his
touch.  Perhaps: but concealment had been the habit of his life, and
the impulse to confession had no power against the dread of a deeper
humiliation.

He was full of timid care for his wife, not only because he deprecated
any harshness of judgment from her, but because he felt a deep distress
at the sight of her suffering.  She had sent her daughters away to
board at a school on the coast, that this crisis might be hidden from
them as far as possible.  Set free by their absence from the
intolerable necessity of accounting for her grief or of beholding their
frightened wonder, she could live unconstrainedly with the sorrow that
was every day streaking her hair with whiteness and making her eyelids
languid.

"Tell me anything that you would like to have me do, Harriet,"
Bulstrode had said to her; "I mean with regard to arrangements of
property.  It is my intention not to sell the land I possess in this
neighborhood, but to leave it to you as a safe provision.  If you have
any wish on such subjects, do not conceal it from me."

A few days afterwards, when she had returned from a visit to her
brother's, she began to speak to her husband on a subject which had for
some time been in her mind.

"I _should_ like to do something for my brother's family, Nicholas; and
I think we are bound to make some amends to Rosamond and her husband.
Walter says Mr. Lydgate must leave the town, and his practice is almost
good for nothing, and they have very little left to settle anywhere
with.  I would rather do without something for ourselves, to make some
amends to my poor brother's family."

Mrs. Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the facts than in the
phrase "make some amends;" knowing that her husband must understand
her.  He had a particular reason, which she was not aware of, for
wincing under her suggestion.  He hesitated before he said--

"It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way you propose, my
dear.  Mr. Lydgate has virtually rejected any further service from me.
He has returned the thousand pounds which I lent him.  Mrs. Casaubon
advanced him the sum for that purpose.  Here is his letter."

The letter seemed to cut Mrs. Bulstrode severely.  The mention of Mrs.
Casaubon's loan seemed a reflection of that public feeling which held
it a matter of course that every one would avoid a connection with her
husband.  She was silent for some time; and the tears fell one after
the other, her chin trembling as she wiped them away.  Bulstrode,
sitting opposite to her, ached at the sight of that grief-worn face,
which two months before had been bright and blooming.  It had aged to
keep sad company with his own withered features.  Urged into some
effort at comforting her, he said--

"There is another means, Harriet, by which I might do a service to your
brother's family, if you like to act in it.  And it would, I think, be
beneficial to you: it would be an advantageous way of managing the land
which I mean to be yours."

She looked attentive.

"Garth once thought of undertaking the management of Stone Court in
order to place your nephew Fred there.  The stock was to remain as it
is, and they were to pay a certain share of the profits instead of an
ordinary rent.  That would be a desirable beginning for the young man,
in conjunction with his employment under Garth.  Would it be a
satisfaction to you?"

"Yes, it would," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with some return of energy.
"Poor Walter is so cast down; I would try anything in my power to do
him some good before I go away.  We have always been brother and
sister."

"You must make the proposal to Garth yourself, Harriet," said Mr.
Bulstrode, not liking what he had to say, but desiring the end he had
in view, for other reasons besides the consolation of his wife.  "You
must state to him that the land is virtually yours, and that he need
have no transactions with me.  Communications can be made through
Standish.  I mention this, because Garth gave up being my agent.  I can
put into your hands a paper which he himself drew up, stating
conditions; and you can propose his renewed acceptance of them.  I
think it is not unlikely that he will accept when you propose the thing
for the sake of your nephew."



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


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

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

"In the garden with Letty, I think."

"Fred is not come yet?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Did I?" said Caleb, rather slyly.

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

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

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

"What for, then?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh no, they will keep two years."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


FINALE.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Mr. Brooke brings the news to Freshitt Hall that Will and Dorothea will be married in three weeks. Everyone is shocked and feels that Dorothea is making a second mistake. Dorothea stands strongly by her decision. . Mr. Bulstrode sends his daughters to school and prepares to leave Middlemarch. He is concerned about his wife whose suffering has been immense. She wants to give financial help to Rosamond before they leave, but Lydgate had returned Bulstrode's check, thanks to Dorothea. The only thing they can think to do is give Stone Court to Fred, so he can marry Mary. . .

