Chapter: "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.



    "Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore;
         Per che si fa gentil eio ch'ella mira:
         Ov'ella passa, ogni uom ver lei si gira,
         E cui saluta fa tremar lo core.

     Sicche, bassando il viso, tutto smore,
         E d'ogni suo difetto allor sospira:
         Fuggon dinanzi a lei Superbia ed Ira:
         Aiutatemi, donne, a farle onore.

     Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umile
         Nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente;
         Ond'e beato chi prima la vide.
     Quel ch'ella par quand' un poco sorride,
         Non si puo dicer, ne tener a mente,
         Si e nuovo miracolo gentile."
                        --DANTE: la Vita Nuova.


By that delightful morning when the hay-ricks at Stone Court were
scenting the air quite impartially, as if Mr. Raffles had been a guest
worthy of finest incense, Dorothea had again taken up her abode at
Lowick Manor.  After three months Freshitt had become rather
oppressive: to sit like a model for Saint Catherine looking rapturously
at Celia's baby would not do for many hours in the day, and to remain
in that momentous babe's presence with persistent disregard was a
course that could not have been tolerated in a childless sister.
Dorothea would have been capable of carrying baby joyfully for a mile
if there had been need, and of loving it the more tenderly for that
labor; but to an aunt who does not recognize her infant nephew as
Bouddha, and has nothing to do for him but to admire, his behavior is
apt to appear monotonous, and the interest of watching him exhaustible.
This possibility was quite hidden from Celia, who felt that Dorothea's
childless widowhood fell in quite prettily with the birth of little
Arthur (baby was named after Mr. Brooke).

"Dodo is just the creature not to mind about having anything of her
own--children or anything!" said Celia to her husband.  "And if she
had had a baby, it never could have been such a dear as Arthur.  Could
it, James?

"Not if it had been like Casaubon," said Sir James, conscious of some
indirectness in his answer, and of holding a strictly private opinion
as to the perfections of his first-born.

"No! just imagine!  Really it was a mercy," said Celia; "and I think it
is very nice for Dodo to be a widow.  She can be just as fond of our
baby as if it were her own, and she can have as many notions of her own
as she likes."

"It is a pity she was not a queen," said the devout Sir James.

"But what should we have been then?  We must have been something else,"
said Celia, objecting to so laborious a flight of imagination.  "I like
her better as she is."

Hence, when she found that Dorothea was making arrangements for her
final departure to Lowick, Celia raised her eyebrows with
disappointment, and in her quiet unemphatic way shot a needle-arrow of
sarcasm.

"What will you do at Lowick, Dodo?  You say yourself there is nothing
to be done there: everybody is so clean and well off, it makes you
quite melancholy.  And here you have been so happy going all about
Tipton with Mr. Garth into the worst backyards.  And now uncle is
abroad, you and Mr. Garth can have it all your own way; and I am sure
James does everything you tell him."

"I shall often come here, and I shall see how baby grows all the
better," said Dorothea.

"But you will never see him washed," said Celia; "and that is quite the
best part of the day."  She was almost pouting: it did seem to her very
hard in Dodo to go away from the baby when she might stay.

"Dear Kitty, I will come and stay all night on purpose," said Dorothea;
"but I want to be alone now, and in my own home.  I wish to know the
Farebrothers better, and to talk to Mr. Farebrother about what there is
to be done in Middlemarch."

Dorothea's native strength of will was no longer all converted into
resolute submission.  She had a great yearning to be at Lowick, and was
simply determined to go, not feeling bound to tell all her reasons.
But every one around her disapproved.  Sir James was much pained, and
offered that they should all migrate to Cheltenham for a few months
with the sacred ark, otherwise called a cradle: at that period a man
could hardly know what to propose if Cheltenham were rejected.

The Dowager Lady Chettam, just returned from a visit to her daughter in
town, wished, at least, that Mrs. Vigo should be written to, and
invited to accept the office of companion to Mrs. Casaubon: it was not
credible that Dorothea as a young widow would think of living alone in
the house at Lowick.  Mrs. Vigo had been reader and secretary to royal
personages, and in point of knowledge and sentiments even Dorothea
could have nothing to object to her.

Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in that
house alone, my dear.  You will see visions.  We have all got to exert
ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as
other people call them by.  To be sure, for younger sons and women who
have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care
of then.  But you must not run into that.  I dare say you are a little
bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might
become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing
tragedy queen and taking things sublimely.  Sitting alone in that
library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must
get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them.
That is a good lowering medicine."

"I never called everything by the same name that all the people about
me did," said Dorothea, stoutly.

"But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear," said Mrs.
Cadwallader, "and that is a proof of sanity."

Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her.  "No," she
said, "I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken
about many things.  Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the
greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion."

Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her
husband she remarked, "It will be well for her to marry again as soon
as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people.  Of
course the Chettams would not wish it.  But I see clearly a husband is
the best thing to keep her in order.  If we were not so poor I would
invite Lord Triton.  He will be marquis some day, and there is no
denying that she would make a good marchioness: she looks handsomer
than ever in her mourning."

"My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone.  Such contrivances are of
no use," said the easy Rector.

"No use?  How are matches made, except by bringing men and women
together?  And it is a shame that her uncle should have run away and
shut up the Grange just now.  There ought to be plenty of eligible
matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange.  Lord Triton is precisely
the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft-headed
sort of way.  That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon."

"Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor."

"That is the nonsense you wise men talk!  How can she choose if she has
no variety to choose from?  A woman's choice usually means taking the
only man she can get.  Mark my words, Humphrey.  If her friends don't
exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon
business yet."

"For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore
point with Sir James. He would be deeply offended if you entered on it
to him unnecessarily."

"I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands.
"Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking
of mine."

"Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the
young fellow is going out of the neighborhood."

Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant
nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes.

Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion.  So
by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and
the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of
note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones,
the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with
roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose
oftenest to sit.  At first she walked into every room, questioning the
eighteen months of her married life, and carrying on her thoughts as if
they were a speech to be heard by her husband.  Then, she lingered in
the library and could not be at rest till she had carefully ranged all
the note-books as she imagined that he would wish to see them, in
orderly sequence.  The pity which had been the restraining compelling
motive in her life with him still clung about his image, even while she
remonstrated with him in indignant thought and told him that he was
unjust.  One little act of hers may perhaps be smiled at as
superstitious.  The Synoptical Tabulation for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,
she carefully enclosed and sealed, writing within the envelope, "I
could not use it.  Do you not see now that I could not submit my soul
to yours, by working hopelessly at what I have no belief in--Dorothea?"
Then she deposited the paper in her own desk.

That silent colloquy was perhaps only the more earnest because
underneath and through it all there was always the deep longing which
had really determined her to come to Lowick.  The longing was to see
Will Ladislaw.  She did not know any good that could come of their
meeting: she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to
him for any unfairness in his lot.  But her soul thirsted to see him.
How could it be otherwise?  If a princess in the days of enchantment
had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds
come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with
choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what
would she look for when the herds passed her?  Surely for the gaze
which had found her, and which she would know again.  Life would be no
better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits
were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy.
It was true that Dorothea wanted to know the Farebrothers better, and
especially to talk to the new rector, but also true that remembering
what Lydgate had told her about Will Ladislaw and little Miss Noble,
she counted on Will's coming to Lowick to see the Farebrother family.
The very first Sunday, _before_ she entered the church, she saw him as
she had seen him the last time she was there, alone in the clergyman's
pew; but _when_ she entered his figure was gone.

In the week-days when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory, she
listened in vain for some word that they might let fall about Will; but
it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother talked of every one else in the
neighborhood and out of it.

"Probably some of Mr. Farebrother's Middlemarch hearers may follow him
to Lowick sometimes.  Do you not think so?" said Dorothea, rather
despising herself for having a secret motive in asking the question.

"If they are wise they will, Mrs. Casaubon," said the old lady.  "I see
that you set a right value on my son's preaching.  His grandfather on
my side was an excellent clergyman, but his father was in the law:--most
exemplary and honest nevertheless, which is a reason for our never
being rich.  They say Fortune is a woman and capricious.  But sometimes
she is a good woman and gives to those who merit, which has been the
case with you, Mrs. Casaubon, who have given a living to my son."

Mrs. Farebrother recurred to her knitting with a dignified satisfaction
in her neat little effort at oratory, but this was not what Dorothea
wanted to hear.  Poor thing! she did not even know whether Will
Ladislaw was still at Middlemarch, and there was no one whom she dared
to ask, unless it were Lydgate.  But just now she could not see Lydgate
without sending for him or going to seek him.  Perhaps Will Ladislaw,
having heard of that strange ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon, had
felt it better that he and she should not meet again, and perhaps she
was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good
reasons against.  Still "I do wish it" came at the end of those wise
reflections as naturally as a sob after holding the breath.  And the
meeting did happen, but in a formal way quite unexpected by her.

One morning, about eleven, Dorothea was seated in her boudoir with a
map of the land attached to the manor and other papers before her,
which were to help her in making an exact statement for herself of her
income and affairs.  She had not yet applied herself to her work, but
was seated with her hands folded on her lap, looking out along the
avenue of limes to the distant fields.  Every leaf was at rest in the
sunshine, the familiar scene was changeless, and seemed to represent
the prospect of her life, full of motiveless ease--motiveless, if her
own energy could not seek out reasons for ardent action.  The widow's
cap of those times made an oval frame for the face, and had a crown
standing up; the dress was an experiment in the utmost laying on of
crape; but this heavy solemnity of clothing made her face look all the
younger, with its recovered bloom, and the sweet, inquiring candor of
her eyes.

Her reverie was broken by Tantripp, who came to say that Mr. Ladislaw
was below, and begged permission to see Madam if it were not too early.

"I will see him," said Dorothea, rising immediately.  "Let him be shown
into the drawing-room."

The drawing-room was the most neutral room in the house to her--the
one least associated with the trials of her married life: the damask
matched the wood-work, which was all white and gold; there were two
tall mirrors and tables with nothing on them--in brief, it was a room
where you had no reason for sitting in one place rather than in
another.  It was below the boudoir, and had also a bow-window looking
out on the avenue.  But when Pratt showed Will Ladislaw into it the
window was open; and a winged visitor, buzzing in and out now and then
without minding the furniture, made the room look less formal and
uninhabited.

"Glad to see you here again, sir," said Pratt, lingering to adjust a
blind.

"I am only come to say good-by, Pratt," said Will, who wished even the
butler to know that he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon now
she was a rich widow.

"Very sorry to hear it, sir," said Pratt, retiring.  Of course, as a
servant who was to be told nothing, he knew the fact of which Ladislaw
was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences; indeed, had not
differed from his betrothed Tantripp when she said, "Your master was as
jealous as a fiend--and no reason.  Madam would look higher than Mr.
Ladislaw, else I don't know her.  Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's
a lord coming who is to marry her when the mourning's over."

There were not many moments for Will to walk about with his hat in his
hand before Dorothea entered.  The meeting was very different from that
first meeting in Rome when Will had been embarrassed and Dorothea calm.
This time he felt miserable but determined, while she was in a state of
agitation which could not be hidden.  Just outside the door she had
felt that this longed-for meeting was after all too difficult, and when
she saw Will advancing towards her, the deep blush which was rare in
her came with painful suddenness.  Neither of them knew how it was, but
neither of them spoke.  She gave her hand for a moment, and then they
went to sit down near the window, she on one settee and he on another
opposite.  Will was peculiarly uneasy: it seemed to him not like
Dorothea that the mere fact of her being a widow should cause such a
change in her manner of receiving him; and he knew of no other
condition which could have affected their previous relation to each
other--except that, as his imagination at once told him, her friends
might have been poisoning her mind with their suspicions of him.

"I hope I have not presumed too much in calling," said Will; "I could
not bear to leave the neighborhood and begin a new life without seeing
you to say good-by."

"Presumed?  Surely not.  I should have thought it unkind if you had not
wished to see me," said Dorothea, her habit of speaking with perfect
genuineness asserting itself through all her uncertainty and agitation.
"Are you going away immediately?"

"Very soon, I think.  I intend to go to town and eat my dinners as a
barrister, since, they say, that is the preparation for all public
business.  There will be a great deal of political work to be done
by-and-by, and I mean to try and do some of it.  Other men have managed
to win an honorable position for themselves without family or money."

"And that will make it all the more honorable," said Dorothea,
ardently.  "Besides, you have so many talents.  I have heard from my
uncle how well you speak in public, so that every one is sorry when you
leave off, and how clearly you can explain things.  And you care that
justice should be done to every one.  I am so glad.  When we were in
Rome, I thought you only cared for poetry and art, and the things that
adorn life for us who are well off.  But now I know you think about the
rest of the world."

While she was speaking Dorothea had lost her personal embarrassment,
and had become like her former self.  She looked at Will with a direct
glance, full of delighted confidence.

"You approve of my going away for years, then, and never coming here
again till I have made myself of some mark in the world?" said Will,
trying hard to reconcile the utmost pride with the utmost effort to get
an expression of strong feeling from Dorothea.

She was not aware how long it was before she answered.  She had turned
her head and was looking out of the window on the rose-bushes, which
seemed to have in them the summers of all the years when Will would be
away.  This was not judicious behavior.  But Dorothea never thought of
studying her manners: she thought only of bowing to a sad necessity
which divided her from Will.  Those first words of his about his
intentions had seemed to make everything clear to her: he knew, she
supposed, all about Mr. Casaubon's final conduct in relation to him,
and it had come to him with the same sort of shock as to herself.  He
had never felt more than friendship for her--had never had anything in
his mind to justify what she felt to be her husband's outrage on the
feelings of both: and that friendship he still felt.  Something which
may be called an inward silent sob had gone on in Dorothea before she
said with a pure voice, just trembling in the last words as if only
from its liquid flexibility--

"Yes, it must be right for you to do as you say.  I shall be very happy
when I hear that you have made your value felt.  But you must have
patience.  It will perhaps be a long while."

Will never quite knew how it was that he saved himself from falling
down at her feet, when the "long while" came forth with its gentle
tremor.  He used to say that the horrible hue and surface of her crape
dress was most likely the sufficient controlling force.  He sat still,
however, and only said--

"I shall never hear from you.  And you will forget all about me."

"No," said Dorothea, "I shall never forget you.  I have never forgotten
any one whom I once knew.  My life has never been crowded, and seems
not likely to be so.  And I have a great deal of space for memory at
Lowick, haven't I?"  She smiled.

"Good God!"  Will burst out passionately, rising, with his hat still in
his hand, and walking away to a marble table, where he suddenly turned
and leaned his back against it.  The blood had mounted to his face and
neck, and he looked almost angry.  It had seemed to him as if they were
like two creatures slowly turning to marble in each other's presence,
while their hearts were conscious and their eyes were yearning.  But
there was no help for it.  It should never be true of him that in this
meeting to which he had come with bitter resolution he had ended by a
confession which might be interpreted into asking for her fortune.
Moreover, it was actually true that he was fearful of the effect which
such confessions might have on Dorothea herself.

She looked at him from that distance in some trouble, imagining that
there might have been an offence in her words.  But all the while there
was a current of thought in her about his probable want of money, and
the impossibility of her helping him.  If her uncle had been at home,
something might have been done through him!  It was this preoccupation
with the hardship of Will's wanting money, while she had what ought to
have been his share, which led her to say, seeing that he remained
silent and looked away from her--

"I wonder whether you would like to have that miniature which hangs
up-stairs--I mean that beautiful miniature of your grandmother.  I
think it is not right for me to keep it, if you would wish to have it.
It is wonderfully like you."

"You are very good," said Will, irritably.  "No; I don't mind about it.
It is not very consoling to have one's own likeness.  It would be more
consoling if others wanted to have it."

"I thought you would like to cherish her memory--I thought--" Dorothea
broke off an instant, her imagination suddenly warning her away from
Aunt Julia's history--"you would surely like to have the miniature as a
family memorial."

"Why should I have that, when I have nothing else!  A man with only a
portmanteau for his stowage must keep his memorials in his head."

Will spoke at random: he was merely venting his petulance; it was a
little too exasperating to have his grandmother's portrait offered him
at that moment.  But to Dorothea's feeling his words had a peculiar
sting.  She rose and said with a touch of indignation as well as
hauteur--

"You are much the happier of us two, Mr. Ladislaw, to have nothing."

Will was startled.  Whatever the words might be, the tone seemed like a
dismissal; and quitting his leaning posture, he walked a little way
towards her.  Their eyes met, but with a strange questioning gravity.
Something was keeping their minds aloof, and each was left to
conjecture what was in the other.  Will had really never thought of
himself as having a claim of inheritance on the property which was held
by Dorothea, and would have required a narrative to make him understand
her present feeling.

"I never felt it a misfortune to have nothing till now," he said.  "But
poverty may be as bad as leprosy, if it divides us from what we most
care for."

The words cut Dorothea to the heart, and made her relent.  She answered
in a tone of sad fellowship.

"Sorrow comes in so many ways.  Two years ago I had no notion of
that--I mean of the unexpected way in which trouble comes, and ties our
hands, and makes us silent when we long to speak.  I used to despise
women a little for not shaping their lives more, and doing better
things.  I was very fond of doing as I liked, but I have almost given
it up," she ended, smiling playfully.

"I have not given up doing as I like, but I can very seldom do it,"
said Will.  He was standing two yards from her with his mind full of
contradictory desires and resolves--desiring some unmistakable proof
that she loved him, and yet dreading the position into which such a
proof might bring him.  "The thing one most longs for may be surrounded
with conditions that would be intolerable."

At this moment Pratt entered and said, "Sir James Chettam is in the
library, madam."

"Ask Sir James to come in here," said Dorothea, immediately.  It was as
if the same electric shock had passed through her and Will.  Each of
them felt proudly resistant, and neither looked at the other, while
they awaited Sir James's entrance.

After shaking hands with Dorothea, he bowed as slightly as possible to
Ladislaw, who repaid the slightness exactly, and then going towards
Dorothea, said--

"I must say good-by, Mrs. Casaubon; and probably for a long while."

Dorothea put out her hand and said her good-by cordially.  The sense
that Sir James was depreciating Will, and behaving rudely to him,
roused her resolution and dignity: there was no touch of confusion in
her manner.  And when Will had left the room, she looked with such calm
self-possession at Sir James, saying, "How is Celia?" that he was
obliged to behave as if nothing had annoyed him.  And what would be the
use of behaving otherwise?  Indeed, Sir James shrank with so much
dislike from the association even in thought of Dorothea with Ladislaw
as her possible lover, that he would himself have wished to avoid an
outward show of displeasure which would have recognized the
disagreeable possibility.  If any one had asked him why he shrank in
that way, I am not sure that he would at first have said anything
fuller or more precise than "_That_ Ladislaw!"--though on reflection
he might have urged that Mr. Casaubon's codicil, barring Dorothea's
marriage with Will, except under a penalty, was enough to cast
unfitness over any relation at all between them.  His aversion was all
the stronger because he felt himself unable to interfere.

But Sir James was a power in a way unguessed by himself.  Entering at
that moment, he was an incorporation of the strongest reasons through
which Will's pride became a repellent force, keeping him asunder from
Dorothea.



    Hath she her faults?  I would you had them too.
    They are the fruity must of soundest wine;
    Or say, they are regenerating fire
    Such as hath turned the dense black element
    Into a crystal pathway for the sun.


If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that
our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think
its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind.  Each
crisis seems final, simply because it is new.  We are told that the
oldest inhabitants in Peru do not cease to be agitated by the
earthquakes, but they probably see beyond each shock, and reflect that
there are plenty more to come.

To Dorothea, still in that time of youth when the eyes with their long
full lashes look out after their rain of tears unsoiled and unwearied
as a freshly opened passion-flower, that morning's parting with Will
Ladislaw seemed to be the close of their personal relations.  He was
going away into the distance of unknown years, and if ever he came back
he would be another man.  The actual state of his mind--his proud
resolve to give the lie beforehand to any suspicion that he would play
the needy adventurer seeking a rich woman--lay quite out of her
imagination, and she had interpreted all his behavior easily enough by
her supposition that Mr. Casaubon's codicil seemed to him, as it did to
her, a gross and cruel interdict on any active friendship between them.
Their young delight in speaking to each other, and saying what no one
else would care to hear, was forever ended, and become a treasure of
the past.  For this very reason she dwelt on it without inward check.
That unique happiness too was dead, and in its shadowed silent chamber
she might vent the passionate grief which she herself wondered at.  For
the first time she took down the miniature from the wall and kept it
before her, liking to blend the woman who had been too hardly judged
with the grandson whom her own heart and judgment defended.  Can any
one who has rejoiced in woman's tenderness think it a reproach to her
that she took the little oval picture in her palm and made a bed for it
there, and leaned her cheek upon it, as if that would soothe the
creatures who had suffered unjust condemnation?  She did not know then
that it was Love who had come to her briefly, as in a dream before
awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings--that it was Love to
whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the
blameless rigor of irresistible day.  She only felt that there was
something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot, and her thoughts about
the future were the more readily shapen into resolve.  Ardent souls,
ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to
the fulfilment of their own visions.

One day that she went to Freshitt to fulfil her promise of staying all
night and seeing baby washed, Mrs. Cadwallader came to dine, the Rector
being gone on a fishing excursion.  It was a warm evening, and even in
the delightful drawing-room, where the fine old turf sloped from the
open window towards a lilied pool and well-planted mounds, the heat was
enough to make Celia in her white muslin and light curls reflect with
pity on what Dodo must feel in her black dress and close cap.  But this
was not until some episodes with baby were over, and had left her mind
at leisure.  She had seated herself and taken up a fan for some time
before she said, in her quiet guttural--

"Dear Dodo, do throw off that cap.  I am sure your dress must make you
feel ill."

"I am so used to the cap--it has become a sort of shell," said
Dorothea, smiling.  "I feel rather bare and exposed when it is off."

"I must see you without it; it makes us all warm," said Celia, throwing
down her fan, and going to Dorothea.  It was a pretty picture to see
this little lady in white muslin unfastening the widow's cap from her
more majestic sister, and tossing it on to a chair.  Just as the coils
and braids of dark-brown hair had been set free, Sir James entered the
room.  He looked at the released head, and said, "Ah!" in a tone of
satisfaction.

"It was I who did it, James," said Celia.  "Dodo need not make such a
slavery of her mourning; she need not wear that cap any more among her
friends."

"My dear Celia," said Lady Chettam, "a widow must wear her mourning at
least a year."

"Not if she marries again before the end of it," said Mrs. Cadwallader,
who had some pleasure in startling her good friend the Dowager.  Sir
James was annoyed, and leaned forward to play with Celia's Maltese dog.

"That is very rare, I hope," said Lady Chettam, in a tone intended to
guard against such events.  "No friend of ours ever committed herself
in that way except Mrs. Beevor, and it was very painful to Lord
Grinsell when she did so.  Her first husband was objectionable, which
made it the greater wonder.  And severely she was punished for it.
They said Captain Beevor dragged her about by the hair, and held up
loaded pistols at her."

"Oh, if she took the wrong man!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, who was in a
decidedly wicked mood.  "Marriage is always bad then, first or second.
Priority is a poor recommendation in a husband if he has got no other.
I would rather have a good second husband than an indifferent first."

"My dear, your clever tongue runs away with you," said Lady Chettam.
"I am sure you would be the last woman to marry again prematurely, if
our dear Rector were taken away."

"Oh, I make no vows; it might be a necessary economy.  It is lawful to
marry again, I suppose; else we might as well be Hindoos instead of
Christians.  Of course if a woman accepts the wrong man, she must take
the consequences, and one who does it twice over deserves her fate.
But if she can marry blood, beauty, and bravery--the sooner the
better."

"I think the subject of our conversation is very ill-chosen," said Sir
James, with a look of disgust.  "Suppose we change it."

"Not on my account, Sir James," said Dorothea, determined not to lose
the opportunity of freeing herself from certain oblique references to
excellent matches.  "If you are speaking on my behalf, I can assure you
that no question can be more indifferent and impersonal to me than
second marriage.  It is no more to me than if you talked of women going
fox-hunting: whether it is admirable in them or not, I shall not follow
them.  Pray let Mrs. Cadwallader amuse herself on that subject as much
as on any other."

"My dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Lady Chettam, in her stateliest way, "you
do not, I hope, think there was any allusion to you in my mentioning
Mrs. Beevor.  It was only an instance that occurred to me.  She was
step-daughter to Lord Grinsell: he married Mrs. Teveroy for his second
wife.  There could be no possible allusion to you."

"Oh no," said Celia.  "Nobody chose the subject; it all came out of
Dodo's cap.  Mrs. Cadwallader only said what was quite true.  A woman
could not be married in a widow's cap, James."

"Hush, my dear!" said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "I will not offend again.  I
will not even refer to Dido or Zenobia.  Only what are we to talk
about?  I, for my part, object to the discussion of Human Nature,
because that is the nature of rectors' wives."

Later in the evening, after Mrs. Cadwallader was gone, Celia said
privately to Dorothea, "Really, Dodo, taking your cap off made you like
yourself again in more ways than one.  You spoke up just as you used to
do, when anything was said to displease you.  But I could hardly make
out whether it was James that you thought wrong, or Mrs. Cadwallader."

"Neither," said Dorothea.  "James spoke out of delicacy to me, but he
was mistaken in supposing that I minded what Mrs. Cadwallader said.  I
should only mind if there were a law obliging me to take any piece of
blood and beauty that she or anybody else recommended."

"But you know, Dodo, if you ever did marry, it would be all the better
to have blood and beauty," said Celia, reflecting that Mr. Casaubon had
not been richly endowed with those gifts, and that it would be well to
caution Dorothea in time.

"Don't be anxious, Kitty; I have quite other thoughts about my life.  I
shall never marry again," said Dorothea, touching her sister's chin,
and looking at her with indulgent affection.  Celia was nursing her
baby, and Dorothea had come to say good-night to her.

"Really--quite?" said Celia.  "Not anybody at all--if he were very
wonderful indeed?"

Dorothea shook her head slowly.  "Not anybody at all.  I have
delightful plans.  I should like to take a great deal of land, and
drain it, and make a little colony, where everybody should work, and
all the work should be done well.  I should know every one of the
people and be their friend.  I am going to have great consultations
with Mr. Garth: he can tell me almost everything I want to know."

"Then you _will_ be happy, if you have a plan, Dodo?" said Celia.
"Perhaps little Arthur will like plans when he grows up, and then he
can help you."

Sir James was informed that same night that Dorothea was really quite
set against marrying anybody at all, and was going to take to "all
sorts of plans," just like what she used to have.  Sir James made no
remark.  To his secret feeling there was something repulsive in a
woman's second marriage, and no match would prevent him from feeling it
a sort of desecration for Dorothea.  He was aware that the world would
regard such a sentiment as preposterous, especially in relation to a
woman of one-and-twenty; the practice of "the world" being to treat of
a young widow's second marriage as certain and probably near, and to
smile with meaning if the widow acts accordingly.  But if Dorothea did
choose to espouse her solitude, he felt that the resolution would well
become her.

 Now that Farebrother is the new rector of Lowick, his sister suggests he could ask Mary Garth to marry him. He has secretly loved her for a long time. However, Fred, who has graduated from university, comes to Farebrother, asking him to approach Mary to find out her feelings for him. Thus Farebrother is put in an awkward position. His unselfishness and lack of egoism come out as he speaks to Mary on Fred's behalf. Mary tells Farebrother that she loves Fred. . Bulstrode buys Stone Court from Featherstone's heir, Joshua Riggs. As Bulstrode surveys his new property and triumphs over Featherstone, he runs into Raffles, the stepfather of Riggs. Raffles greets Bulstrode as an acquaintance from the past. It is obvious he knows some secret of Bulstrode's and that Bulstrode wants to buy him off. Raffles wants money, but even more, he wants to torment Bulstrode about some misdeeds in the past and have power over him. . Raffles keeps hinting about some family Bulstrode has wronged, and finally remembers the name, "Ladislaw." Bulstrode pays Raffles some money to disappear, but he is worried that he will come back. . After three months with Celia, Dorothea is ready to return to Lowick with "her native strength of will" to use her money to do good. She reviews her 18 months of married life, knowing now she could not submit her soul to Casaubon's to finish his work. Mrs. Cadwallader is already trying to make a new match for her to keep her away from Will, but Dorothea begins to long to see him. She visits the Farebrothers hoping to run into him. Finally, Ladislaw comes to Lowick to say good by; he is leaving to make his fortune in the world. He is too proud to court a rich widow with nothing on his side. . The interview is awkward. Both hearts are longing for the other, but there is an invisible barrier between them, and they cannot speak their minds. He tells her he will become a barrister and enter political life. She praises his ambition. Just then, Sir James walks in, and knowing how awkward it looks, they part, as they think, for a long time without anything resolved. . .

