Chapter: "Your horses of the Sun," he said,
    "And first-rate whip Apollo!
     Whate'er they be, I'll eat my head,
     But I will beat them hollow."


Fred Vincy, we have seen, had a debt on his mind, and though no such
immaterial burthen could depress that buoyant-hearted young gentleman
for many hours together, there were circumstances connected with this
debt which made the thought of it unusually importunate.  The creditor
was Mr. Bambridge a horse-dealer of the neighborhood, whose company was
much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood to be "addicted to
pleasure."  During the vacations Fred had naturally required more
amusements than he had ready money for, and Mr. Bambridge had been
accommodating enough not only to trust him for the hire of horses and
the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter, but also to make a
small advance by which he might be able to meet some losses at
billiards.  The total debt was a hundred and sixty pounds.  Bambridge
was in no alarm about his money, being sure that young Vincy had
backers; but he had required something to show for it, and Fred had at
first given a bill with his own signature.  Three months later he had
renewed this bill with the signature of Caleb Garth.  On both occasions
Fred had felt confident that he should meet the bill himself, having
ample funds at disposal in his own hopefulness.  You will hardly demand
that his confidence should have a basis in external facts; such
confidence, we know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is
a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of
providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the
still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe,
will bring about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good
taste in costume, and our general preference for the best style of
thing.  Fred felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle,
that he should have a run of luck, that by dint of "swapping" he should
gradually metamorphose a horse worth forty pounds into a horse that
would fetch a hundred at any moment--"judgment" being always equivalent
to an unspecified sum in hard cash.  And in any case, even supposing
negations which only a morbid distrust could imagine, Fred had always
(at that time) his father's pocket as a last resource, so that his
assets of hopefulness had a sort of gorgeous superfluity about them.
Of what might be the capacity of his father's pocket, Fred had only a
vague notion: was not trade elastic?  And would not the deficiencies of
one year be made up for by the surplus of another?  The Vincys lived in
an easy profuse way, not with any new ostentation, but according to the
family habits and traditions, so that the children had no standard of
economy, and the elder ones retained some of their infantine notion
that their father might pay for anything if he would.  Mr. Vincy
himself had expensive Middlemarch habits--spent money on coursing, on
his cellar, and on dinner-giving, while mamma had those running
accounts with tradespeople, which give a cheerful sense of getting
everything one wants without any question of payment.  But it was in
the nature of fathers, Fred knew, to bully one about expenses: there
was always a little storm over his extravagance if he had to disclose a
debt, and Fred disliked bad weather within doors.  He was too filial to
be disrespectful to his father, and he bore the thunder with the
certainty that it was transient; but in the mean time it was
disagreeable to see his mother cry, and also to be obliged to look
sulky instead of having fun; for Fred was so good-tempered that if he
looked glum under scolding, it was chiefly for propriety's sake.  The
easier course plainly, was to renew the bill with a friend's signature.
Why not? With the superfluous securities of hope at his command, there
was no reason why he should not have increased other people's
liabilities to any extent, but for the fact that men whose names were
good for anything were usually pessimists, indisposed to believe that
the universal order of things would necessarily be agreeable to an
agreeable young gentleman.

With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do justice to their
more amiable qualities, forgive their little offenses, and concerning
each in turn, try to arrive at the conclusion that he will be eager to
oblige us, our own eagerness to be obliged being as communicable as
other warmth.  Still there is always a certain number who are dismissed
as but moderately eager until the others have refused; and it happened
that Fred checked off all his friends but one, on the ground that
applying to them would be disagreeable; being implicitly convinced that
he at least (whatever might be maintained about mankind generally) had
a right to be free from anything disagreeable.  That he should ever
fall into a thoroughly unpleasant position--wear trousers shrunk with
washing, eat cold mutton, have to walk for want of a horse, or to "duck
under" in any sort of way--was an absurdity irreconcilable with those
cheerful intuitions implanted in him by nature.  And Fred winced under
the idea of being looked down upon as wanting funds for small debts.
Thus it came to pass that the friend whom he chose to apply to was at
once the poorest and the kindest--namely, Caleb Garth.

The Garths were very fond of Fred, as he was of them; for when he and
Rosamond were little ones, and the Garths were better off, the slight
connection between the two families through Mr. Featherstone's double
marriage (the first to Mr. Garth's sister, and the second to Mrs.
Vincy's) had led to an acquaintance which was carried on between the
children rather than the parents: the children drank tea together out
of their toy teacups, and spent whole days together in play.  Mary was
a little hoyden, and Fred at six years old thought her the nicest girl
in the world, making her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut
from an umbrella.  Through all the stages of his education he had kept
his affection for the Garths, and his habit of going to their house as
a second home, though any intercourse between them and the elders of
his family had long ceased.  Even when Caleb Garth was prosperous, the
Vincys were on condescending terms with him and his wife, for there
were nice distinctions of rank in Middlemarch; and though old
manufacturers could not any more than dukes be connected with none but
equals, they were conscious of an inherent social superiority which was
defined with great nicety in practice, though hardly expressible
theoretically.  Since then Mr. Garth had failed in the building
business, which he had unfortunately added to his other avocations of
surveyor, valuer, and agent, had conducted that business for a time
entirely for the benefit of his assignees, and had been living
narrowly, exerting himself to the utmost that he might after all pay
twenty shillings in the pound.  He had now achieved this, and from all
who did not think it a bad precedent, his honorable exertions had won
him due esteem; but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded
on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete
dinner-service.  Mrs. Vincy had never been at her ease with Mrs. Garth,
and frequently spoke of her as a woman who had had to work for her
bread--meaning that Mrs. Garth had been a teacher before her marriage;
in which case an intimacy with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions
was something like a draper's discrimination of calico trademarks, or a
courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman who was better
off needed that sort of thing.  And since Mary had been keeping Mr.
Featherstone's house, Mrs. Vincy's want of liking for the Garths had
been converted into something more positive, by alarm lest Fred should
engage himself to this plain girl, whose parents "lived in such a small
way."  Fred, being aware of this, never spoke at home of his visits to
Mrs. Garth, which had of late become more frequent, the increasing
ardor of his affection for Mary inclining him the more towards those
who belonged to her.

Mr. Garth had a small office in the town, and to this Fred went with
his request.  He obtained it without much difficulty, for a large
amount of painful experience had not sufficed to make Caleb Garth
cautious about his own affairs, or distrustful of his fellow-men when
they had not proved themselves untrustworthy; and he had the highest
opinion of Fred, was "sure the lad would turn out well--an open
affectionate fellow, with a good bottom to his character--you might
trust him for anything." Such was Caleb's psychological argument.  He
was one of those rare men who are rigid to themselves and indulgent to
others.  He had a certain shame about his neighbors' errors, and never
spoke of them willingly; hence he was not likely to divert his mind
from the best mode of hardening timber and other ingenious devices in
order to preconceive those errors.  If he had to blame any one, it was
necessary for him to move all the papers within his reach, or describe
various diagrams with his stick, or make calculations with the odd
money in his pocket, before he could begin; and he would rather do
other men's work than find fault with their doing.  I fear he was a bad
disciplinarian.

When Fred stated the circumstances of his debt, his wish to meet it
without troubling his father, and the certainty that the money would be
forthcoming so as to cause no one any inconvenience, Caleb pushed his
spectacles upward, listened, looked into his favorite's clear young
eyes, and believed him, not distinguishing confidence about the future
from veracity about the past; but he felt that it was an occasion for a
friendly hint as to conduct, and that before giving his signature he
must give a rather strong admonition.  Accordingly, he took the paper
and lowered his spectacles, measured the space at his command, reached
his pen and examined it, dipped it in the ink and examined it again,
then pushed the paper a little way from him, lifted up his spectacles
again, showed a deepened depression in the outer angle of his bushy
eyebrows, which gave his face a peculiar mildness (pardon these details
for once--you would have learned to love them if you had known Caleb
Garth), and said in a comfortable tone--

"It was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse's knees?  And then,
these exchanges, they don't answer when you have 'cute jockeys to deal
with.  You'll be wiser another time, my boy."

Whereupon Caleb drew down his spectacles, and proceeded to write his
signature with the care which he always gave to that performance; for
whatever he did in the way of business he did well.  He contemplated
the large well-proportioned letters and final flourish, with his head a
trifle on one side for an instant, then handed it to Fred, said
"Good-by," and returned forthwith to his absorption in a plan for Sir
James Chettam's new farm-buildings.

Either because his interest in this work thrust the incident of the
signature from his memory, or for some reason of which Caleb was more
conscious, Mrs. Garth remained ignorant of the affair.

Since it occurred, a change had come over Fred's sky, which altered his
view of the distance, and was the reason why his uncle Featherstone's
present of money was of importance enough to make his color come and
go, first with a too definite expectation, and afterwards with a
proportionate disappointment.  His failure in passing his examination,
had made his accumulation of college debts the more unpardonable by his
father, and there had been an unprecedented storm at home.  Mr. Vincy
had sworn that if he had anything more of that sort to put up with,
Fred should turn out and get his living how he could; and he had never
yet quite recovered his good-humored tone to his son, who had
especially enraged him by saying at this stage of things that he did
not want to be a clergyman, and would rather not "go on with that."
Fred was conscious that he would have been yet more severely dealt with
if his family as well as himself had not secretly regarded him as Mr.
Featherstone's heir; that old gentleman's pride in him, and apparent
fondness for him, serving in the stead of more exemplary conduct--just
as when a youthful nobleman steals jewellery we call the act
kleptomania, speak of it with a philosophical smile, and never think of
his being sent to the house of correction as if he were a ragged boy
who had stolen turnips.  In fact, tacit expectations of what would be
done for him by uncle Featherstone determined the angle at which most
people viewed Fred Vincy in Middlemarch; and in his own consciousness,
what uncle Featherstone would do for him in an emergency, or what he
would do simply as an incorporated luck, formed always an immeasurable
depth of aerial perspective.  But that present of bank-notes, once
made, was measurable, and being applied to the amount of the debt,
showed a deficit which had still to be filled up either by Fred's
"judgment" or by luck in some other shape.  For that little episode of
the alleged borrowing, in which he had made his father the agent in
getting the Bulstrode certificate, was a new reason against going to
his father for money towards meeting his actual debt.  Fred was keen
enough to foresee that anger would confuse distinctions, and that his
denial of having borrowed expressly on the strength of his uncle's will
would be taken as a falsehood.  He had gone to his father and told him
one vexatious affair, and he had left another untold: in such cases the
complete revelation always produces the impression of a previous
duplicity.  Now Fred piqued himself on keeping clear of lies, and even
fibs; he often shrugged his shoulders and made a significant grimace at
what he called Rosamond's fibs (it is only brothers who can associate
such ideas with a lovely girl); and rather than incur the accusation of
falsehood he would even incur some trouble and self-restraint.  It was
under strong inward pressure of this kind that Fred had taken the wise
step of depositing the eighty pounds with his mother.  It was a pity
that he had not at once given them to Mr. Garth; but he meant to make
the sum complete with another sixty, and with a view to this, he had
kept twenty pounds in his own pocket as a sort of seed-corn, which,
planted by judgment, and watered by luck, might yield more than
threefold--a very poor rate of multiplication when the field is a young
gentleman's infinite soul, with all the numerals at command.

Fred was not a gambler: he had not that specific disease in which the
suspension of the whole nervous energy on a chance or risk becomes as
necessary as the dram to the drunkard; he had only the tendency to that
diffusive form of gambling which has no alcoholic intensity, but is
carried on with the healthiest chyle-fed blood, keeping up a joyous
imaginative activity which fashions events according to desire, and
having no fears about its own weather, only sees the advantage there
must be to others in going aboard with it.  Hopefulness has a pleasure
in making a throw of any kind, because the prospect of success is
certain; and only a more generous pleasure in offering as many as
possible a share in the stake.  Fred liked play, especially billiards,
as he liked hunting or riding a steeple-chase; and he only liked it the
better because he wanted money and hoped to win.  But the twenty
pounds' worth of seed-corn had been planted in vain in the seductive
green plot--all of it at least which had not been dispersed by the
roadside--and Fred found himself close upon the term of payment with no
money at command beyond the eighty pounds which he had deposited with
his mother.  The broken-winded horse which he rode represented a
present which had been made to him a long while ago by his uncle
Featherstone: his father always allowed him to keep a horse, Mr.
Vincy's own habits making him regard this as a reasonable demand even
for a son who was rather exasperating.  This horse, then, was Fred's
property, and in his anxiety to meet the imminent bill he determined to
sacrifice a possession without which life would certainly be worth
little.  He made the resolution with a sense of heroism--heroism forced
on him by the dread of breaking his word to Mr. Garth, by his love for
Mary and awe of her opinion.  He would start for Houndsley horse-fair
which was to be held the next morning, and--simply sell his horse,
bringing back the money by coach?--Well, the horse would hardly fetch
more than thirty pounds, and there was no knowing what might happen; it
would be folly to balk himself of luck beforehand.  It was a hundred to
one that some good chance would fall in his way; the longer he thought
of it, the less possible it seemed that he should not have a good
chance, and the less reasonable that he should not equip himself with
the powder and shot for bringing it down.  He would ride to Houndsley
with Bambridge and with Horrock "the vet," and without asking them
anything expressly, he should virtually get the benefit of their
opinion.  Before he set out, Fred got the eighty pounds from his mother.

Most of those who saw Fred riding out of Middlemarch in company with
Bambridge and Horrock, on his way of course to Houndsley horse-fair,
thought that young Vincy was pleasure-seeking as usual; and but for an
unwonted consciousness of grave matters on hand, he himself would have
had a sense of dissipation, and of doing what might be expected of a
gay young fellow.  Considering that Fred was not at all coarse, that he
rather looked down on the manners and speech of young men who had not
been to the university, and that he had written stanzas as pastoral and
unvoluptuous as his flute-playing, his attraction towards Bambridge and
Horrock was an interesting fact which even the love of horse-flesh
would not wholly account for without that mysterious influence of
Naming which determinates so much of mortal choice.  Under any other
name than "pleasure" the society of Messieurs Bambridge and Horrock
must certainly have been regarded as monotonous; and to arrive with
them at Houndsley on a drizzling afternoon, to get down at the Red Lion
in a street shaded with coal-dust, and dine in a room furnished with a
dirt-enamelled map of the county, a bad portrait of an anonymous horse
in a stable, His Majesty George the Fourth with legs and cravat, and
various leaden spittoons, might have seemed a hard business, but for
the sustaining power of nomenclature which determined that the pursuit
of these things was "gay."

In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent unfathomableness which
offered play to the imagination.  Costume, at a glance, gave him a
thrilling association with horses (enough to specify the hat-brim which
took the slightest upward angle just to escape the suspicion of bending
downwards), and nature had given him a face which by dint of Mongolian
eyes, and a nose, mouth, and chin seeming to follow his hat-brim in a
moderate inclination upwards, gave the effect of a subdued unchangeable
sceptical smile, of all expressions the most tyrannous over a
susceptible mind, and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to
create the reputation of an invincible understanding, an infinite fund
of humor--too dry to flow, and probably in a state of immovable
crust,--and a critical judgment which, if you could ever be fortunate
enough to know it, would be _the_ thing and no other.  It is a
physiognomy seen in all vocations, but perhaps it has never been more
powerful over the youth of England than in a judge of horses.

Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's fetlock, turned
sideways in his saddle, and watched the horse's action for the space of
three minutes, then turned forward, twitched his own bridle, and
remained silent with a profile neither more nor less sceptical than it
had been.

The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was terribly effective.
A mixture of passions was excited in Fred--a mad desire to thrash
Horrock's opinion into utterance, restrained by anxiety to retain the
advantage of his friendship.  There was always the chance that Horrock
might say something quite invaluable at the right moment.

Mr. Bambridge had more open manners, and appeared to give forth his
ideas without economy.  He was loud, robust, and was sometimes spoken
of as being "given to indulgence"--chiefly in swearing, drinking, and
beating his wife.  Some people who had lost by him called him a vicious
man; but he regarded horse-dealing as the finest of the arts, and might
have argued plausibly that it had nothing to do with morality.  He was
undeniably a prosperous man, bore his drinking better than others bore
their moderation, and, on the whole, flourished like the green
bay-tree. But his range of conversation was limited, and like the fine
old tune, "Drops of brandy," gave you after a while a sense of
returning upon itself in a way that might make weak heads dizzy.  But a
slight infusion of Mr. Bambridge was felt to give tone and character to
several circles in Middlemarch; and he was a distinguished figure in
the bar and billiard-room at the Green Dragon.  He knew some anecdotes
about the heroes of the turf, and various clever tricks of Marquesses
and Viscounts which seemed to prove that blood asserted its
pre-eminence even among black-legs; but the minute retentiveness of his
memory was chiefly shown about the horses he had himself bought and
sold; the number of miles they would trot you in no time without
turning a hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of
passionate asseveration, in which he would assist the imagination of
his hearers by solemnly swearing that they never saw anything like it.
In short, Mr. Bambridge was a man of pleasure and a gay companion.

Fred was subtle, and did not tell his friends that he was going to
Houndsley bent on selling his horse: he wished to get indirectly at
their genuine opinion of its value, not being aware that a genuine
opinion was the last thing likely to be extracted from such eminent
critics.  It was not Mr. Bambridge's weakness to be a gratuitous
flatterer.  He had never before been so much struck with the fact that
this unfortunate bay was a roarer to a degree which required the
roundest word for perdition to give you any idea of it.

"You made a bad hand at swapping when you went to anybody but me,
Vincy!  Why, you never threw your leg across a finer horse than that
chestnut, and you gave him for this brute.  If you set him cantering,
he goes on like twenty sawyers.  I never heard but one worse roarer in
my life, and that was a roan: it belonged to Pegwell, the corn-factor;
he used to drive him in his gig seven years ago, and he wanted me to
take him, but I said, 'Thank you, Peg, I don't deal in
wind-instruments.' That was what I said.  It went the round of the
country, that joke did.  But, what the hell! the horse was a penny
trumpet to that roarer of yours."

"Why, you said just now his was worse than mine," said Fred, more
irritable than usual.

"I said a lie, then," said Mr. Bambridge, emphatically.  "There wasn't
a penny to choose between 'em."

Fred spurred his horse, and they trotted on a little way.  When they
slackened again, Mr. Bambridge said--

"Not but what the roan was a better trotter than yours."

"I'm quite satisfied with his paces, I know," said Fred, who required
all the consciousness of being in gay company to support him; "I say
his trot is an uncommonly clean one, eh, Horrock?"

Mr. Horrock looked before him with as complete a neutrality as if he
had been a portrait by a great master.

Fred gave up the fallacious hope of getting a genuine opinion; but on
reflection he saw that Bambridge's depreciation and Horrock's silence
were both virtually encouraging, and indicated that they thought better
of the horse than they chose to say.

That very evening, indeed, before the fair had set in, Fred thought he
saw a favorable opening for disposing advantageously of his horse, but
an opening which made him congratulate himself on his foresight in
bringing with him his eighty pounds.  A young farmer, acquainted with
Mr. Bambridge, came into the Red Lion, and entered into conversation
about parting with a hunter, which he introduced at once as Diamond,
implying that it was a public character.  For himself he only wanted a
useful hack, which would draw upon occasion; being about to marry and
to give up hunting.  The hunter was in a friend's stable at some little
distance; there was still time for gentlemen to see it before dark.
The friend's stable had to be reached through a back street where you
might as easily have been poisoned without expense of drugs as in any
grim street of that unsanitary period.  Fred was not fortified against
disgust by brandy, as his companions were, but the hope of having at
last seen the horse that would enable him to make money was
exhilarating enough to lead him over the same ground again the first
thing in the morning.  He felt sure that if he did not come to a
bargain with the farmer, Bambridge would; for the stress of
circumstances, Fred felt, was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him
with all the constructive power of suspicion.  Bambridge had run down
Diamond in a way that he never would have done (the horse being a
friend's) if he had not thought of buying it; every one who looked at
the animal--even Horrock--was evidently impressed with its merit.  To
get all the advantage of being with men of this sort, you must know how
to draw your inferences, and not be a spoon who takes things literally.
The color of the horse was a dappled gray, and Fred happened to know
that Lord Medlicote's man was on the look-out for just such a horse.
After all his running down, Bambridge let it out in the course of the
evening, when the farmer was absent, that he had seen worse horses go
for eighty pounds.  Of course he contradicted himself twenty times
over, but when you know what is likely to be true you can test a man's
admissions.  And Fred could not but reckon his own judgment of a horse
as worth something.  The farmer had paused over Fred's respectable
though broken-winded steed long enough to show that he thought it worth
consideration, and it seemed probable that he would take it, with
five-and-twenty pounds in addition, as the equivalent of Diamond.  In
that case Fred, when he had parted with his new horse for at least
eighty pounds, would be fifty-five pounds in pocket by the transaction,
and would have a hundred and thirty-five pounds towards meeting the
bill; so that the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at the
utmost be twenty-five pounds.  By the time he was hurrying on his
clothes in the morning, he saw so clearly the importance of not losing
this rare chance, that if Bambridge and Horrock had both dissuaded him,
he would not have been deluded into a direct interpretation of their
purpose: he would have been aware that those deep hands held something
else than a young fellow's interest.  With regard to horses, distrust
was your only clew.  But scepticism, as we know, can never be
thoroughly applied, else life would come to a standstill: something we
must believe in and do, and whatever that something may be called, it
is virtually our own judgment, even when it seems like the most slavish
reliance on another.  Fred believed in the excellence of his bargain,
and even before the fair had well set in, had got possession of the
dappled gray, at the price of his old horse and thirty pounds in
addition--only five pounds more than he had expected to give.

But he felt a little worried and wearied, perhaps with mental debate,
and without waiting for the further gayeties of the horse-fair, he set
out alone on his fourteen miles' journey, meaning to take it very
quietly and keep his horse fresh.



    "The offender's sorrow brings but small relief
     To him who wears the strong offence's cross."
                                        --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.


I am sorry to say that only the third day after the propitious events
at Houndsley Fred Vincy had fallen into worse spirits than he had known
in his life before.  Not that he had been disappointed as to the
possible market for his horse, but that before the bargain could be
concluded with Lord Medlicote's man, this Diamond, in which hope to the
amount of eighty pounds had been invested, had without the slightest
warning exhibited in the stable a most vicious energy in kicking, had
just missed killing the groom, and had ended in laming himself severely
by catching his leg in a rope that overhung the stable-board. There was
no more redress for this than for the discovery of bad temper after
marriage--which of course old companions were aware of before the
ceremony.  For some reason or other, Fred had none of his usual
elasticity under this stroke of ill-fortune: he was simply aware that
he had only fifty pounds, that there was no chance of his getting any
more at present, and that the bill for a hundred and sixty would be
presented in five days.  Even if he had applied to his father on the
plea that Mr. Garth should be saved from loss, Fred felt smartingly
that his father would angrily refuse to rescue Mr. Garth from the
consequence of what he would call encouraging extravagance and deceit.
He was so utterly downcast that he could frame no other project than to
go straight to Mr. Garth and tell him the sad truth, carrying with him
the fifty pounds, and getting that sum at least safely out of his own
hands.  His father, being at the warehouse, did not yet know of the
accident: when he did, he would storm about the vicious brute being
brought into his stable; and before meeting that lesser annoyance Fred
wanted to get away with all his courage to face the greater.  He took
his father's nag, for he had made up his mind that when he had told Mr.
Garth, he would ride to Stone Court and confess all to Mary.  In fact,
it is probable that but for Mary's existence and Fred's love for her,
his conscience would have been much less active both in previously
urging the debt on his thought and impelling him not to spare himself
after his usual fashion by deferring an unpleasant task, but to act as
directly and simply as he could.  Even much stronger mortals than Fred
Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love
best.  "The theatre of all my actions is fallen," said an antique
personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who
get a theatre where the audience demands their best.  Certainly it
would have made a considerable difference to Fred at that time if Mary
Garth had had no decided notions as to what was admirable in character.

Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which
was a little way outside the town--a homely place with an orchard in
front of it, a rambling, old-fashioned, half-timbered building, which
before the town had spread had been a farm-house, but was now
surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen.  We get the fonder
of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends
have.  The Garth family, which was rather a large one, for Mary had
four brothers and one sister, were very fond of their old house, from
which all the best furniture had long been sold.  Fred liked it too,
knowing it by heart even to the attic which smelt deliciously of apples
and quinces, and until to-day he had never come to it without pleasant
expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now with the sense that he
should probably have to make his confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom
he was rather more in awe than of her husband.  Not that she was
inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies, as Mary was.  In her
present matronly age at least, Mrs. Garth never committed herself by
over-hasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth,
and learned self-control. She had that rare sense which discerns what
is unalterable, and submits to it without murmuring.  Adoring her
husband's virtues, she had very early made up her mind to his
incapacity of minding his own interests, and had met the consequences
cheerfully.  She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all pride in
teapots or children's frilling, and had never poured any pathetic
confidences into the ears of her feminine neighbors concerning Mr.
Garth's want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been
like other men.  Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or
eccentric, and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as "your fine
Mrs. Garth." She was not without her criticism of them in return, being
more accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and--where
is the blameless woman?--apt to be a little severe towards her own sex,
which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate.  On the
other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings
of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural.  Also, it
must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in her
resistance to what she held to be follies: the passage from governess
into housewife had wrought itself a little too strongly into her
consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent
were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the family
dinner, and darned all the stockings.  She had sometimes taken pupils
in a peripatetic fashion, making them follow her about in the kitchen
with their book or slate.  She thought it good for them to see that she
could make an excellent lather while she corrected their blunders
"without looking,"--that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her
elbows might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid
Zone--that, in short, she might possess "education" and other good
things ending in "tion," and worthy to be pronounced emphatically,
without being a useless doll.  When she made remarks to this edifying
effect, she had a firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not
hinder her face from looking benevolent, and her words which came forth
like a procession were uttered in a fervid agreeable contralto.
Certainly, the exemplary Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her
character sustained her oddities, as a very fine wine sustains a flavor
of skin.

Towards Fred Vincy she had a motherly feeling, and had always been
disposed to excuse his errors, though she would probably not have
excused Mary for engaging herself to him, her daughter being included
in that more rigorous judgment which she applied to her own sex.  But
this very fact of her exceptional indulgence towards him made it the
harder to Fred that he must now inevitably sink in her opinion.  And
the circumstances of his visit turned out to be still more unpleasant
than he had expected; for Caleb Garth had gone out early to look at
some repairs not far off.  Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in
the kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several occupations
at once there--making her pies at the well-scoured deal table on one
side of that airy room, observing Sally's movements at the oven and
dough-tub through an open door, and giving lessons to her youngest boy
and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table with their
books and slates before them.  A tub and a clothes-horse at the other
end of the kitchen indicated an intermittent wash of small things also
going on.

Mrs. Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling
her pastry--applying her rolling-pin and giving ornamental pinches,
while she expounded with grammatical fervor what were the right views
about the concord of verbs and pronouns with "nouns of multitude or
signifying many," was a sight agreeably amusing.  She was of the same
curly-haired, square-faced type as Mary, but handsomer, with more
delicacy of feature, a pale skin, a solid matronly figure, and a
remarkable firmness of glance.  In her snowy-frilled cap she reminded
one of that delightful Frenchwoman whom we have all seen marketing,
basket on arm.  Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter
would become like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a
dowry--the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a
malignant prophecy--"Such as I am, she will shortly be."

"Now let us go through that once more," said Mrs. Garth, pinching an
apple-puff which seemed to distract Ben, an energetic young male with a
heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson.  "'Not without regard to
the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea'--tell
me again what that means, Ben."

(Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient
paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold her
"Lindley Murray" above the waves.)

"Oh--it means--you must think what you mean," said Ben, rather
peevishly.  "I hate grammar.  What's the use of it?"

"To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be
understood," said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision.  "Should you like
to speak as old Job does?"

"Yes," said Ben, stoutly; "it's funnier.  He says, 'Yo goo'--that's
just as good as 'You go.'"

"But he says, 'A ship's in the garden,' instead of 'a sheep,'" said
Letty, with an air of superiority.  "You might think he meant a ship
off the sea."

"No, you mightn't, if you weren't silly," said Ben.  "How could a ship
off the sea come there?"

"These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of
grammar," said Mrs. Garth.  "That apple-peel is to be eaten by the
pigs, Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty.  Job
has only to speak about very plain things.  How do you think you would
write or speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of
grammar than he does?  You would use wrong words, and put words in the
wrong places, and instead of making people understand you, they would
turn away from you as a tiresome person.  What would you do then?"

"I shouldn't care, I should leave off," said Ben, with a sense that
this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.

"I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben," said Mrs. Garth,
accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring.
Having finished her pies, she moved towards the clothes-horse, and
said, "Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday, about
Cincinnatus."

"I know! he was a farmer," said Ben.

"Now, Ben, he was a Roman--let _me_ tell," said Letty, using her elbow
contentiously.

"You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing."

"Yes, but before that--that didn't come first--people wanted him," said
Letty.

"Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first," insisted Ben.
"He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his
advice.  And he was a brave man, and could fight.  And so could my
father--couldn't he, mother?"

"Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,"
said Letty, frowning.  "Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak."

"Letty, I am ashamed of you," said her mother, wringing out the caps
from the tub.  "When your brother began, you ought to have waited to
see if he could not tell the story.  How rude you look, pushing and
frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows!  Cincinnatus, I
am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so."  (Mrs.
Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation,
and Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem,
that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a painful affair.) "Now,
Ben."

"Well--oh--well--why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were
all blockheads, and--I can't tell it just how you told it--but they
wanted a man to be captain and king and everything--"

"Dictator, now," said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish
to make her mother repent.

"Very well, dictator!" said Ben, contemptuously.  "But that isn't a
good word: he didn't tell them to write on slates."

"Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that," said Mrs. Garth,
carefully serious.  "Hark, there is a knock at the door!  Run, Letty,
and open it."

The knock was Fred's; and when Letty said that her father was not in
yet, but that her mother was in the kitchen, Fred had no alternative.
He could not depart from his usual practice of going to see Mrs. Garth
in the kitchen if she happened to be at work there.  He put his arm
round Letty's neck silently, and led her into the kitchen without his
usual jokes and caresses.

Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not
a feeling that she was given to express, and she only said, quietly
continuing her work--

"You, Fred, so early in the day?  You look quite pale.  Has anything
happened?"

"I want to speak to Mr. Garth," said Fred, not yet ready to say
more--"and to you also," he added, after a little pause, for he had no
doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the bill, and he must in the
end speak of it before her, if not to her solely.

"Caleb will be in again in a few minutes," said Mrs. Garth, who
imagined some trouble between Fred and his father.  "He is sure not to
be long, because he has some work at his desk that must be done this
morning.  Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my matters here?"

"But we needn't go on about Cincinnatus, need we?" said Ben, who had
taken Fred's whip out of his hand, and was trying its efficiency on the
cat.

"No, go out now.  But put that whip down.  How very mean of you to whip
poor old Tortoise!  Pray take the whip from him, Fred."

"Come, old boy, give it me," said Fred, putting out his hand.

"Will you let me ride on your horse to-day?" said Ben, rendering up the
whip, with an air of not being obliged to do it.

"Not to-day--another time.  I am not riding my own horse."

"Shall you see Mary to-day?"

"Yes, I think so," said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.

"Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun."

"Enough, enough, Ben! run away," said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred was
teased. . .

"Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?" said Fred, when
the children were gone and it was needful to say something that would
pass the time.  He was not yet sure whether he should wait for Mr.
Garth, or use any good opportunity in conversation to confess to Mrs.
Garth herself, give her the money and ride away.

"One--only one.  Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven.  I am not
getting a great income now," said Mrs. Garth, smiling.  "I am at a low
ebb with pupils.  But I have saved my little purse for Alfred's
premium: I have ninety-two pounds.  He can go to Mr. Hanmer's now; he
is just at the right age."

This did not lead well towards the news that Mr. Garth was on the brink
of losing ninety-two pounds and more.  Fred was silent.  "Young
gentlemen who go to college are rather more costly than that," Mrs.
Garth innocently continued, pulling out the edging on a cap-border.
"And Caleb thinks that Alfred will turn out a distinguished engineer:
he wants to give the boy a good chance.  There he is!  I hear him
coming in.  We will go to him in the parlor, shall we?"

When they entered the parlor Caleb had thrown down his hat and was
seated at his desk.

"What!  Fred, my boy!" he said, in a tone of mild surprise, holding his
pen still undipped; "you are here betimes."  But missing the usual
expression of cheerful greeting in Fred's face, he immediately added,
"Is there anything up at home?--anything the matter?"

"Yes, Mr. Garth, I am come to tell something that I am afraid will give
you a bad opinion of me.  I am come to tell you and Mrs. Garth that I
can't keep my word.  I can't find the money to meet the bill after all.
I have been unfortunate; I have only got these fifty pounds towards the
hundred and sixty."

While Fred was speaking, he had taken out the notes and laid them on
the desk before Mr. Garth.  He had burst forth at once with the plain
fact, feeling boyishly miserable and without verbal resources.  Mrs.
Garth was mutely astonished, and looked at her husband for an
explanation.  Caleb blushed, and after a little pause said--

"Oh, I didn't tell you, Susan: I put my name to a bill for Fred; it was
for a hundred and sixty pounds.  He made sure he could meet it himself."

There was an evident change in Mrs. Garth's face, but it was like a
change below the surface of water which remains smooth.  She fixed her
eyes on Fred, saying--

"I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money and he
has refused you."

"No," said Fred, biting his lip, and speaking with more difficulty;
"but I know it will be of no use to ask him; and unless it were of use,
I should not like to mention Mr. Garth's name in the matter."

"It has come at an unfortunate time," said Caleb, in his hesitating
way, looking down at the notes and nervously fingering the paper,
"Christmas upon us--I'm rather hard up just now.  You see, I have to
cut out everything like a tailor with short measure.  What can we do,
Susan?  I shall want every farthing we have in the bank.  It's a
hundred and ten pounds, the deuce take it!"

"I must give you the ninety-two pounds that I have put by for Alfred's
premium," said Mrs. Garth, gravely and decisively, though a nice ear
might have discerned a slight tremor in some of the words.  "And I have
no doubt that Mary has twenty pounds saved from her salary by this
time.  She will advance it."

Mrs. Garth had not again looked at Fred, and was not in the least
calculating what words she should use to cut him the most effectively.
Like the eccentric woman she was, she was at present absorbed in
considering what was to be done, and did not fancy that the end could
be better achieved by bitter remarks or explosions.  But she had made
Fred feel for the first time something like the tooth of remorse.
Curiously enough, his pain in the affair beforehand had consisted
almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonorable, and sink
in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the
inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them,
for this exercise of the imagination on other people's needs is not
common with hopeful young gentlemen.  Indeed we are most of us brought
up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is
something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong.  But
at this moment he suddenly saw himself as a pitiful rascal who was
robbing two women of their savings.

"I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth--ultimately," he stammered
out.

"Yes, ultimately," said Mrs. Garth, who having a special dislike to
fine words on ugly occasions, could not now repress an epigram.  "But
boys cannot well be apprenticed ultimately: they should be apprenticed
at fifteen."  She had never been so little inclined to make excuses for
Fred.

"I was the most in the wrong, Susan," said Caleb.  "Fred made sure of
finding the money.  But I'd no business to be fingering bills.  I
suppose you have looked all round and tried all honest means?" he
added, fixing his merciful gray eyes on Fred.  Caleb was too delicate,
to specify Mr. Featherstone.

"Yes, I have tried everything--I really have.  I should have had a
hundred and thirty pounds ready but for a misfortune with a horse which
I was about to sell.  My uncle had given me eighty pounds, and I paid
away thirty with my old horse in order to get another which I was going
to sell for eighty or more--I meant to go without a horse--but now it
has turned out vicious and lamed itself.  I wish I and the horses too
had been at the devil, before I had brought this on you.  There's no
one else I care so much for: you and Mrs. Garth have always been so
kind to me.  However, it's no use saying that.  You will always think
me a rascal now."

Fred turned round and hurried out of the room, conscious that he was
getting rather womanish, and feeling confusedly that his being sorry
was not of much use to the Garths.  They could see him mount, and
quickly pass through the gate.

"I am disappointed in Fred Vincy," said Mrs. Garth.  "I would not have
believed beforehand that he would have drawn you into his debts.  I
knew he was extravagant, but I did not think that he would be so mean
as to hang his risks on his oldest friend, who could the least afford
to lose."

"I was a fool, Susan:"

"That you were," said the wife, nodding and smiling.  "But I should not
have gone to publish it in the market-place. Why should you keep such
things from me?  It is just so with your buttons: you let them burst
off without telling me, and go out with your wristband hanging.  If I
had only known I might have been ready with some better plan."

"You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan," said Caleb, looking feelingly at
her.  "I can't abide your losing the money you've scraped together for
Alfred."

"It is very well that I _had_ scraped it together; and it is you who
will have to suffer, for you must teach the boy yourself.  You must
give up your bad habits.  Some men take to drinking, and you have taken
to working without pay.  You must indulge yourself a little less in
that.  And you must ride over to Mary, and ask the child what money she
has."

Caleb had pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his
head slowly, and fitting his finger-tips together with much nicety.

"Poor Mary!" he said.  "Susan," he went on in a lowered tone, "I'm
afraid she may be fond of Fred."

"Oh no!  She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think of her
in any other than a brotherly way."

Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up
his chair to the desk, and said, "Deuce take the bill--I wish it was
at Hanover!  These things are a sad interruption to business!"

The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory
expression, and was uttered with a slight snarl easy to imagine.  But
it would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the
word "business," the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious
regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in
its gold-fringed linen.

Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the
indispensable might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by which
the social body is fed, clothed, and housed.  It had laid hold of his
imagination in boyhood.  The echoes of the great hammer where roof or
keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of the
furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to
him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating
star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the
wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of
muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out,--all these
sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of the
poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers,
a religion without the aid of theology.  His early ambition had been to
have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was
peculiarly dignified by him with the name of "business;" and though he
had only been a short time under a surveyor, and had been chiefly his
own teacher, he knew more of land, building, and mining than most of
the special men in the county.

His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the
categories of more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these
advanced times.  He divided them into "business, politics, preaching,
learning, and amusement."  He had nothing to say against the last four;
but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than
his own.  In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he
would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such
close contact with "business" as to get often honorably decorated with
marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of
the woods and fields.  Though he had never regarded himself as other
than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the
subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good
practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of
undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman.  But there
was no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to
him that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number
of firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best
land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring
(for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical
intelligence.  But he could not manage finance: he knew values well,
but he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape
of profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he
determined to give up all forms of his beloved "business" which
required that talent.  He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of
work which he could do without handling capital, and was one of those
precious men within his own district whom everybody would choose to
work for them, because he did his work well, charged very little, and
often declined to charge at all.  It is no wonder, then, that the
Garths were poor, and "lived in a small way."  However, they did not
mind it.



    "Love seeketh not itself to please,
       Nor for itself hath any care
     But for another gives its ease
       And builds a heaven in hell's despair.
          .    .    .    .    .    .    .
     Love seeketh only self to please,
       To bind another to its delight,
     Joys in another's loss of ease,
       And builds a hell in heaven's despite."
                       --W. BLAKE: Songs of Experience


Fred Vincy wanted to arrive at Stone Court when Mary could not expect
him, and when his uncle was not down-stairs in that case she might be
sitting alone in the wainscoted parlor.  He left his horse in the yard
to avoid making a noise on the gravel in front, and entered the parlor
without other notice than the noise of the door-handle. Mary was in her
usual corner, laughing over Mrs. Piozzi's recollections of Johnson, and
looked up with the fun still in her face.  It gradually faded as she
saw Fred approach her without speaking, and stand before her with his
elbow on the mantel-piece, looking ill.  She too was silent, only
raising her eyes to him inquiringly.

"Mary," he began, "I am a good-for-nothing blackguard."

"I should think one of those epithets would do at a time," said Mary,
trying to smile, but feeling alarmed.

"I know you will never think well of me any more.  You will think me a
liar.  You will think me dishonest.  You will think I didn't care for
you, or your father and mother.  You always do make the worst of me, I
know."

"I cannot deny that I shall think all that of you, Fred, if you give me
good reasons.  But please to tell me at once what you have done.  I
would rather know the painful truth than imagine it."

"I owed money--a hundred and sixty pounds.  I asked your father to put
his name to a bill.  I thought it would not signify to him.  I made
sure of paying the money myself, and I have tried as hard as I could.
And now, I have been so unlucky--a horse has turned out badly--I can
only pay fifty pounds.  And I can't ask my father for the money: he
would not give me a farthing.  And my uncle gave me a hundred a little
while ago.  So what can I do?  And now your father has no ready money
to spare, and your mother will have to pay away her ninety-two pounds
that she has saved, and she says your savings must go too.  You see
what a--"

"Oh, poor mother, poor father!" said Mary, her eyes filling with tears,
and a little sob rising which she tried to repress.  She looked
straight before her and took no notice of Fred, all the consequences at
home becoming present to her.  He too remained silent for some moments,
feeling more miserable than ever.  "I wouldn't have hurt you for the
world, Mary," he said at last.  "You can never forgive me."

"What does it matter whether I forgive you?" said Mary, passionately.
"Would that make it any better for my mother to lose the money she has
been earning by lessons for four years, that she might send Alfred to
Mr. Hanmer's? Should you think all that pleasant enough if I forgave
you?"

"Say what you like, Mary.  I deserve it all."

"I don't want to say anything," said Mary, more quietly, "and my anger
is of no use."  She dried her eyes, threw aside her book, rose and
fetched her sewing.

Fred followed her with his eyes, hoping that they would meet hers, and
in that way find access for his imploring penitence.  But no!  Mary
could easily avoid looking upward.

"I do care about your mother's money going," he said, when she was
seated again and sewing quickly.  "I wanted to ask you, Mary--don't
you think that Mr. Featherstone--if you were to tell him--tell him, I
mean, about apprenticing Alfred--would advance the money?"

"My family is not fond of begging, Fred.  We would rather work for our
money.  Besides, you say that Mr. Featherstone has lately given you a
hundred pounds.  He rarely makes presents; he has never made presents
to us.  I am sure my father will not ask him for anything; and even if
I chose to beg of him, it would be of no use."

"I am so miserable, Mary--if you knew how miserable I am, you would be
sorry for me."

"There are other things to be more sorry for than that.  But selfish
people always think their own discomfort of more importance than
anything else in the world.  I see enough of that every day."

"It is hardly fair to call me selfish.  If you knew what things other
young men do, you would think me a good way off the worst."

"I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves
without knowing how they shall pay, must be selfish.  They are always
thinking of what they can get for themselves, and not of what other
people may lose."

"Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when
he meant it.  There is not a better man in the world than your father,
and yet he got into trouble."

"How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred?"
said Mary, in a deep tone of indignation.  "He never got into trouble
by thinking of his own idle pleasures, but because he was always
thinking of the work he was doing for other people.  And he has fared
hard, and worked hard to make good everybody's loss."

"And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary.  It
is not generous to believe the worst of a man.  When you have got any
power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better;
but that is what you never do.  However, I'm going," Fred ended,
languidly.  "I shall never speak to you about anything again.  I'm very
sorry for all the trouble I've caused--that's all."

Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up.  There is
often something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary's hard
experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different
from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness.  At Fred's last
words she felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother
feels at the imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which
may lose itself and get harm.  And when, looking up, her eyes met his
dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her anger and all
her other anxieties.

"Oh, Fred, how ill you look!  Sit down a moment.  Don't go yet.  Let me
tell uncle that you are here.  He has been wondering that he has not
seen you for a whole week."  Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words
that came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying
them in a half-soothing half-beseeching tone, and rising as if to go
away to Mr. Featherstone.  Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had
parted and a gleam had come: he moved and stood in her way.

"Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything.  Say you will not think
the worst of me--will not give me up altogether."

"As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you," said Mary, in a
mournful tone.  "As if it were not very painful to me to see you an
idle frivolous creature.  How can you bear to be so contemptible, when
others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be
done--how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is
useful?  And with so much good in your disposition, Fred,--you might
be worth a great deal."

"I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you
love me."

"I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be
hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him.  What
will you be when you are forty?  Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose--just as
idle, living in Mrs. Beck's front parlor--fat and shabby, hoping
somebody will invite you to dinner--spending your morning in learning a
comic song--oh no! learning a tune on the flute."

Mary's lips had begun to curl with a smile as soon as she had asked
that question about Fred's future (young souls are mobile), and before
she ended, her face had its full illumination of fun.  To him it was
like the cessation of an ache that Mary could laugh at him, and with a
passive sort of smile he tried to reach her hand; but she slipped away
quickly towards the door and said, "I shall tell uncle.  You _must_ see
him for a moment or two."

Fred secretly felt that his future was guaranteed against the
fulfilment of Mary's sarcastic prophecies, apart from that "anything"
which he was ready to do if she would define it. He never dared in
Mary's presence to approach the subject of his expectations from Mr.
Featherstone, and she always ignored them, as if everything depended on
himself.  But if ever he actually came into the property, she must
recognize the change in his position.  All this passed through his mind
somewhat languidly, before he went up to see his uncle.  He stayed but
a little while, excusing himself on the ground that he had a cold; and
Mary did not reappear before he left the house.  But as he rode home,
he began to be more conscious of being ill, than of being melancholy.

When Caleb Garth arrived at Stone Court soon after dusk, Mary was not
surprised, although he seldom had leisure for paying her a visit, and
was not at all fond of having to talk with Mr. Featherstone.  The old
man, on the other hand, felt himself ill at ease with a brother-in-law
whom he could not annoy, who did not mind about being considered poor,
had nothing to ask of him, and understood all kinds of farming and
mining business better than he did.  But Mary had felt sure that her
parents would want to see her, and if her father had not come, she
would have obtained leave to go home for an hour or two the next day.
After discussing prices during tea with Mr. Featherstone Caleb rose to
bid him good-by, and said, "I want to speak to you, Mary."

She took a candle into another large parlor, where there was no fire,
and setting down the feeble light on the dark mahogany table, turned
round to her father, and putting her arms round his neck kissed him
with childish kisses which he delighted in,--the expression of his
large brows softening as the expression of a great beautiful dog
softens when it is caressed.  Mary was his favorite child, and whatever
Susan might say, and right as she was on all other subjects, Caleb
thought it natural that Fred or any one else should think Mary more
lovable than other girls.

"I've got something to tell you, my dear," said Caleb in his hesitating
way.  "No very good news; but then it might be worse."

"About money, father?  I think I know what it is."

"Ay? how can that be?  You see, I've been a bit of a fool again, and
put my name to a bill, and now it comes to paying; and your mother has
got to part with her savings, that's the worst of it, and even they
won't quite make things even.  We wanted a hundred and ten pounds: your
mother has ninety-two, and I have none to spare in the bank; and she
thinks that you have some savings."

"Oh yes; I have more than four-and-twenty pounds.  I thought you would
come, father, so I put it in my bag.  See! beautiful white notes and
gold."

Mary took out the folded money from her reticule and put it into her
father's hand.

"Well, but how--we only want eighteen--here, put the rest back,
child,--but how did you know about it?" said Caleb, who, in his
unconquerable indifference to money, was beginning to be chiefly
concerned about the relation the affair might have to Mary's affections.

"Fred told me this morning."

"Ah!  Did he come on purpose?"

"Yes, I think so.  He was a good deal distressed."

"I'm afraid Fred is not to be trusted, Mary," said the father, with
hesitating tenderness.  "He means better than he acts, perhaps.  But I
should think it a pity for any body's happiness to be wrapped up in
him, and so would your mother."

"And so should I, father," said Mary, not looking up, but putting the
back of her father's hand against her cheek.

"I don't want to pry, my dear.  But I was afraid there might be
something between you and Fred, and I wanted to caution you.  You see,
Mary"--here Caleb's voice became more tender; he had been pushing his
hat about on the table and looking at it, but finally he turned his
eyes on his daughter--"a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got
to put up with the life her husband makes for her.  Your mother has had
to put up with a good deal because of me."

Mary turned the back of her father's hand to her lips and smiled at him.

"Well, well, nobody's perfect, but"--here Mr. Garth shook his head to
help out the inadequacy of words--"what I am thinking of is--what it
must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when he hasn't
got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing
by others than of getting his own toes pinched.  That's the long and
the short of it, Mary.  Young folks may get fond of each other before
they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can
only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear.
However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in
cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father
trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here."

"Don't fear for me, father," said Mary, gravely meeting her father's
eyes; "Fred has always been very good to me; he is kind-hearted and
affectionate, and not false, I think, with all his self-indulgence. But
I will never engage myself to one who has no manly independence, and
who goes on loitering away his time on the chance that others will
provide for him.  You and my mother have taught me too much pride for
that."

"That's right--that's right.  Then I am easy," said Mr. Garth, taking
up his hat.  "But it's hard to run away with your earnings, eh child."

"Father!" said Mary, in her deepest tone of remonstrance.  "Take
pocketfuls of love besides to them all at home," was her last word
before he closed the outer door on himself.

"I suppose your father wanted your earnings," said old Mr.
Featherstone, with his usual power of unpleasant surmise, when Mary
returned to him.  "He makes but a tight fit, I reckon.  You're of age
now; you ought to be saving for yourself."

"I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir," said
Mary, coldly.

Mr. Featherstone grunted: he could not deny that an ordinary sort of
girl like her might be expected to be useful, so he thought of another
rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos.  "If Fred Vincy
comes to-morrow, now, don't you keep him chattering: let him come up to
me."



    "He beats me and I rail at him: O worthy satisfaction!
    would it were otherwise--that I could beat him while
    he railed at me.--"
                                    --Troilus and Cressida.


But Fred did not go to Stone Court the next day, for reasons that were
quite peremptory.  From those visits to unsanitary Houndsley streets in
search of Diamond, he had brought back not only a bad bargain in
horse-flesh, but the further misfortune of some ailment which for a day
or two had deemed mere depression and headache, but which got so much
worse when he returned from his visit to Stone Court that, going into
the dining-room, he threw himself on the sofa, and in answer to his
mother's anxious question, said, "I feel very ill: I think you must
send for Wrench."

Wrench came, but did not apprehend anything serious, spoke of a "slight
derangement," and did not speak of coming again on the morrow.  He had
a due value for the Vincys' house, but the wariest men are apt to be
dulled by routine, and on worried mornings will sometimes go through
their business with the zest of the daily bell-ringer.  Mr. Wrench was
a small, neat, bilious man, with a well-dressed wig: he had a laborious
practice, an irascible temper, a lymphatic wife and seven children; and
he was already rather late before setting out on a four-miles drive to
meet Dr. Minchin on the other side of Tipton, the decease of Hicks, a
rural practitioner, having increased Middlemarch practice in that
direction.  Great statesmen err, and why not small medical men?  Mr.
Wrench did not neglect sending the usual white parcels, which this time
had black and drastic contents.  Their effect was not alleviating to
poor Fred, who, however, unwilling as he said to believe that he was
"in for an illness," rose at his usual easy hour the next morning and
went down-stairs meaning to breakfast, but succeeded in nothing but in
sitting and shivering by the fire.  Mr. Wrench was again sent for, but
was gone on his rounds, and Mrs. Vincy seeing her darling's changed
looks and general misery, began to cry and said she would send for Dr.
Sprague.

"Oh, nonsense, mother!  It's nothing," said Fred, putting out his hot
dry hand to her, "I shall soon be all right.  I must have taken cold in
that nasty damp ride."

"Mamma!" said Rosamond, who was seated near the window (the dining-room
windows looked on that highly respectable street called Lowick Gate),
"there is Mr. Lydgate, stopping to speak to some one.  If I were you I
would call him in.  He has cured Ellen Bulstrode.  They say he cures
every one."

Mrs. Vincy sprang to the window and opened it in an instant, thinking
only of Fred and not of medical etiquette.  Lydgate was only two yards
off on the other side of some iron palisading, and turned round at the
sudden sound of the sash, before she called to him.  In two minutes he
was in the room, and Rosamond went out, after waiting just long enough
to show a pretty anxiety conflicting with her sense of what was
becoming.

Lydgate had to hear a narrative in which Mrs. Vincy's mind insisted
with remarkable instinct on every point of minor importance, especially
on what Mr. Wrench had said and had not said about coming again.  That
there might be an awkward affair with Wrench, Lydgate saw at once; but
the case was serious enough to make him dismiss that consideration: he
was convinced that Fred was in the pink-skinned stage of typhoid fever,
and that he had taken just the wrong medicines.  He must go to bed
immediately, must have a regular nurse, and various appliances and
precautions must be used, about which Lydgate was particular.  Poor
Mrs. Vincy's terror at these indications of danger found vent in such
words as came most easily.  She thought it "very ill usage on the part
of Mr. Wrench, who had attended their house so many years in preference
to Mr. Peacock, though Mr. Peacock was equally a friend.  Why Mr.
Wrench should neglect her children more than others, she could not for
the life of her understand.  He had not neglected Mrs. Larcher's when
they had the measles, nor indeed would Mrs. Vincy have wished that he
should.  And if anything should happen--"

Here poor Mrs. Vincy's spirit quite broke down, and her Niobe throat
and good-humored face were sadly convulsed.  This was in the hall out
of Fred's hearing, but Rosamond had opened the drawing-room door, and
now came forward anxiously.  Lydgate apologized for Mr. Wrench, said
that the symptoms yesterday might have been disguising, and that this
form of fever was very equivocal in its beginnings: he would go
immediately to the druggist's and have a prescription made up in order
to lose no time, but he would write to Mr. Wrench and tell him what had
been done.

"But you must come again--you must go on attending Fred.  I can't have
my boy left to anybody who may come or not.  I bear nobody ill-will,
thank God, and Mr. Wrench saved me in the pleurisy, but he'd better
have let me die--if--if--"

"I will meet Mr. Wrench here, then, shall I?" said Lydgate, really
believing that Wrench was not well prepared to deal wisely with a case
of this kind.

"Pray make that arrangement, Mr. Lydgate," said Rosamond, coming to her
mother's aid, and supporting her arm to lead her away.

When Mr. Vincy came home he was very angry with Wrench, and did not
care if he never came into his house again.  Lydgate should go on now,
whether Wrench liked it or not.  It was no joke to have fever in the
house.  Everybody must be sent to now, not to come to dinner on
Thursday.  And Pritchard needn't get up any wine: brandy was the best
thing against infection.  "I shall drink brandy," added Mr. Vincy,
emphatically--as much as to say, this was not an occasion for firing
with blank-cartridges. "He's an uncommonly unfortunate lad, is Fred.
He'd need have--some luck by-and-by to make up for all this--else I
don't know who'd have an eldest son."

"Don't say so, Vincy," said the mother, with a quivering lip, "if you
don't want him to be taken from me."

"It will worret you to death, Lucy; _that_ I can see," said Mr. Vincy,
more mildly.  "However, Wrench shall know what I think of the matter."
(What Mr. Vincy thought confusedly was, that the fever might somehow
have been hindered if Wrench had shown the proper solicitude about
his--the Mayor's--family.) "I'm the last man to give in to the cry
about new doctors, or new parsons either--whether they're Bulstrode's
men or not.  But Wrench shall know what I think, take it as he will."

Wrench did not take it at all well.  Lydgate was as polite as he could
be in his offhand way, but politeness in a man who has placed you at a
disadvantage is only an additional exasperation, especially if he
happens to have been an object of dislike beforehand.  Country
practitioners used to be an irritable species, susceptible on the point
of honor; and Mr. Wrench was one of the most irritable among them.  He
did not refuse to meet Lydgate in the evening, but his temper was
somewhat tried on the occasion.  He had to hear Mrs. Vincy say--

"Oh, Mr. Wrench, what have I ever done that you should use me so?--  To
go away, and never to come again!  And my boy might have been stretched
a corpse!"

Mr. Vincy, who had been keeping up a sharp fire on the enemy Infection,
and was a good deal heated in consequence, started up when he heard
Wrench come in, and went into the hall to let him know what he thought.

"I'll tell you what, Wrench, this is beyond a joke," said the Mayor,
who of late had had to rebuke offenders with an official air, and how
broadened himself by putting his thumbs in his armholes.--  "To let
fever get unawares into a house like this.  There are some things that
ought to be actionable, and are not so-- that's my opinion."

But irrational reproaches were easier to bear than the sense of being
instructed, or rather the sense that a younger man, like Lydgate,
inwardly considered him in need of instruction, for "in point of fact,"
Mr. Wrench afterwards said, Lydgate paraded flighty, foreign notions,
which would not wear.  He swallowed his ire for the moment, but he
afterwards wrote to decline further attendance in the case.  The house
might be a good one, but Mr. Wrench was not going to truckle to anybody
on a professional matter.  He reflected, with much probability on his
side, that Lydgate would by-and-by be caught tripping too, and that his
ungentlemanly attempts to discredit the sale of drugs by his
professional brethren, would by-and-by recoil on himself.  He threw out
biting remarks on Lydgate's tricks, worthy only of a quack, to get
himself a factitious reputation with credulous people.  That cant about
cures was never got up by sound practitioners.

This was a point on which Lydgate smarted as much as Wrench could
desire.  To be puffed by ignorance was not only humiliating, but
perilous, and not more enviable than the reputation of the
weather-prophet.  He was impatient of the foolish expectations amidst
which all work must be carried on, and likely enough to damage himself
as much as Mr. Wrench could wish, by an unprofessional openness.

However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, and
the event was a subject of general conversation in Middlemarch.  Some
said, that the Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy had
threatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused him of poisoning her
son.  Others were of opinion that Mr. Lydgate's passing by was
providential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that
Bulstrode was in the right to bring him forward.  Many people believed
that Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really due to Bulstrode;
and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her
information in misleading fragments caught between the rows of her
knitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was a natural son
of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions of
evangelical laymen.

She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother,
who did not fail to tell her son of it, observing--

"I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should be
sorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate."

"Why, mother," said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, "you
know very well that Lydgate is of a good family in the North.  He never
heard of Bulstrode before he came here."

"That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden," said
the old lady, with an air of precision.--"But as to Bulstrode--the
report may be true of some other son."



    Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:
    We are but mortals, and must sing of man.


An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly
furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me
this pregnant little fact.  Your pier-glass or extensive surface of
polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and
multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a
lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will
seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round
that little sun.  It is demonstrable that the scratches are going
everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the
flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with
an exclusive optical selection.  These things are a parable.  The
scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now
absent--of Miss Vincy, for example.  Rosamond had a Providence of her
own who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who
seemed to have arranged Fred's illness and Mr. Wrench's mistake in
order to bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity.  It would
have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented to
go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do,
especially since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless.
Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the children were sent away to a
farmhouse the morning after Fred's illness had declared itself,
Rosamond refused to leave papa and mamma.

Poor mamma indeed was an object to touch any creature born of woman;
and Mr. Vincy, who doted on his wife, was more alarmed on her account
than on Fred's. But for his insistence she would have taken no rest:
her brightness was all bedimmed; unconscious of her costume which had
always been so fresh and gay, she was like a sick bird with languid eye
and plumage ruffled, her senses dulled to the sights and sounds that
used most to interest her.  Fred's delirium, in which he seemed to be
wandering out of her reach, tore her heart.  After her first outburst
against Mr. Wrench she went about very quietly: her one low cry was to
Lydgate.  She would follow him out of the room and put her hand on his
arm moaning out, "Save my boy."  Once she pleaded, "He has always been
good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he never had a hard word for his mother,"--as
if poor Fred's suffering were an accusation against him.  All the
deepest fibres of the mother's memory were stirred, and the young man
whose voice took a gentler tone when he spoke to her, was one with the
babe whom she had loved, with a love new to her, before he was born.

"I have good hope, Mrs. Vincy," Lydgate would say.  "Come down with me
and let us talk about the food."  In that way he led her to the parlor
where Rosamond was, and made a change for her, surprising her into
taking some tea or broth which had been prepared for her.  There was a
constant understanding between him and Rosamond on these matters.  He
almost always saw her before going to the sickroom, and she appealed to
him as to what she could do for mamma.  Her presence of mind and
adroitness in carrying out his hints were admirable, and it is not
wonderful that the idea of seeing Rosamond began to mingle itself with
his interest in the case.  Especially when the critical stage was
passed, and he began to feel confident of Fred's recovery.  In the more
doubtful time, he had advised calling in Dr. Sprague (who, if he could,
would rather have remained neutral on Wrench's account); but after two
consultations, the conduct of the case was left to Lydgate, and there
was every reason to make him assiduous.  Morning and evening he was at
Mr. Vincy's, and gradually the visits became cheerful as Fred became
simply feeble, and lay not only in need of the utmost petting but
conscious of it, so that Mrs. Vincy felt as if, after all, the illness
had made a festival for her tenderness.

Both father and mother held it an added reason for good spirits, when
old Mr. Featherstone sent messages by Lydgate, saying that Fred must
make haste and get well, as he, Peter Featherstone, could not do
without him, and missed his visits sadly.  The old man himself was
getting bedridden.  Mrs. Vincy told these messages to Fred when he
could listen, and he turned towards her his delicate, pinched face,
from which all the thick blond hair had been cut away, and in which the
eyes seemed to have got larger, yearning for some word about
Mary--wondering what she felt about his illness.  No word passed his
lips; but "to hear with eyes belongs to love's rare wit," and the
mother in the fulness of her heart not only divined Fred's longing, but
felt ready for any sacrifice in order to satisfy him.

"If I can only see my boy strong again," she said, in her loving folly;
"and who knows?--perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry
anybody he likes then."

"Not if they won't have me, mother," said Fred.  The illness had made
him childish, and tears came as he spoke.

"Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, secretly
incredulous of any such refusal.

She never left Fred's side when her husband was not in the house, and
thus Rosamond was in the unusual position of being much alone.
Lydgate, naturally, never thought of staying long with her, yet it
seemed that the brief impersonal conversations they had together were
creating that peculiar intimacy which consists in shyness.  They were
obliged to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking
could not be carried through as the matter of course which it really
was.  Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness unpleasant and
one day looked down, or anywhere, like an ill-worked puppet.  But this
turned out badly: the next day, Rosamond looked down, and the
consequence was that when their eyes met again, both were more
conscious than before.  There was no help for this in science, and as
Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed to be no help for it in
folly.  It was therefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered
the house in quarantine, and when the chances of seeing Rosamond alone
were very much reduced.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the
other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to
be done away with.  Talk about the weather and other well-bred topics
is apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy
unless it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination--which of course need
not mean anything deep or serious.  This was the way in which Rosamond
and Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse
lively again.  Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more
music in the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy's
mayoralty returned.  Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by
Rosamond's side, and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her
captive--meaning, all the while, not to be her captive.  The
preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a
satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee
against danger.  This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and
did not interfere with graver pursuits.  Flirtation, after all, was not
necessarily a singeing process.  Rosamond, for her part, had never
enjoyed the days so much in her life before: she was sure of being
admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish
flirtation from love, either in herself or in another.  She seemed to
be sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts
were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped
would by-and-by be vacant.  She was quite determined, when she was
married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who were not
agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawing-room in
her favorite house with various styles of furniture.

Certainly her thoughts were much occupied with Lydgate himself; he
seemed to her almost perfect: if he had known his notes so that his
enchantment under her music had been less like an emotional elephant's,
and if he had been able to discriminate better the refinements of her
taste in dress, she could hardly have mentioned a deficiency in him.
How different he was from young Plymdale or Mr. Caius Larcher!  Those
young men had not a notion of French, and could speak on no subject
with striking knowledge, except perhaps the dyeing and carrying trades,
which of course they were ashamed to mention; they were Middlemarch
gentry, elated with their silver-headed whips and satin stocks, but
embarrassed in their manners, and timidly jocose: even Fred was above
them, having at least the accent and manner of a university man.
Whereas Lydgate was always listened to, bore himself with the careless
politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right
clothes on by a certain natural affinity, without ever having to think
about them.  Rosamond was proud when he entered the room, and when he
approached her with a distinguishing smile, she had a delicious sense
that she was the object of enviable homage.  If Lydgate had been aware
of all the pride he excited in that delicate bosom, he might have been
just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant
of humoral pathology or fibrous tissue: he held it one of the prettiest
attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's pre-eminence without
too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in.  But Rosamond was not
one of those helpless girls who betray themselves unawares, and whose
behavior is awkwardly driven by their impulses, instead of being
steered by wary grace and propriety.  Do you imagine that her rapid
forecast and rumination concerning house-furniture and society were
ever discernible in her conversation, even with her mamma?  On the
contrary, she would have expressed the prettiest surprise and
disapprobation if she had heard that another young lady had been
detected in that immodest prematureness--indeed, would probably have
disbelieved in its possibility.  For Rosamond never showed any
unbecoming knowledge, and was always that combination of correct
sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant note-writing, private
album for extracted verse, and perfect blond loveliness, which made the
irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date.  Think no unfair
evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or
mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except as something
necessary which other people would always provide.  She was not in the
habit of devising falsehoods, and if her statements were no direct clew
to fact, why, they were not intended in that light--they were among
her elegant accomplishments, intended to please.  Nature had inspired
many arts in finishing Mrs. Lemon's favorite pupil, who by general
consent (Fred's excepted) was a rare compound of beauty, cleverness,
and amiability.

Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was
no constraint now, there was a delightful interchange of influence in
their eyes, and what they said had that superfluity of meaning for
them, which is observable with some sense of flatness by a third
person; still they had no interviews or asides from which a third
person need have been excluded.  In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was
secure in the belief that they did nothing else.  If a man could not
love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time?
Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great
bores, and Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards:
what was he to do for relaxation?  He was often invited to the
Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and
Mrs. Bulstrode's _naive_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the
nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the
consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a
sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable
seriousness.  The Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the
pleasanter by contrast; besides, it nourished Rosamond--sweet to look
at as a half-opened blush-rose, and adorned with accomplishments for
the refined amusement of man.

But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss
Vincy.  One evening he came into the drawing-room rather late, when
several other visitors were there.  The card-table had drawn off the
elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch,
though not one of its leading minds) was in tete-a-tete with Rosamond.
He had brought the last "Keepsake," the gorgeous watered-silk
publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he
considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look
over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny
copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic
verses as capital and sentimental stories as interesting.  Rosamond was
gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in
art and literature as a medium for "paying addresses"--the very thing
to please a nice girl.  He had also reasons, deep rather than
ostensible, for being satisfied with his own appearance.  To
superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as
if it were being gradually reabsorbed.  And it did indeed cause him
some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were
at that time useful.

"I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you," said Mr. Ned.
He kept the book open at the bewitching portrait, and looked at it
rather languishingly.

"Her back is very large; she seems to have sat for that," said
Rosamond, not meaning any satire, but thinking how red young Plymdale's
hands were, and wondering why Lydgate did not come.  She went on with
her tatting all the while.

"I did not say she was as beautiful as you are," said Mr. Ned,
venturing to look from the portrait to its rival.

"I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer," said Rosamond, feeling
sure that she should have to reject this young gentleman a second time.

But now Lydgate came in; the book was closed before he reached
Rosamond's corner, and as he took his seat with easy confidence on the
other side of her, young Plymdale's jaw fell like a barometer towards
the cheerless side of change.  Rosamond enjoyed not only Lydgate's
presence but its effect: she liked to excite jealousy.

"What a late comer you are!" she said, as they shook hands.  "Mamma had
given you up a little while ago.  How do you find Fred?"

"As usual; going on well, but slowly.  I want him to go away--to Stone
Court, for example.  But your mamma seems to have some objection."

"Poor fellow!" said Rosamond, prettily.  "You will see Fred so
changed," she added, turning to the other suitor; "we have looked to
Mr. Lydgate as our guardian angel during this illness."

Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the "Keepsake" towards
him and opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed up his
chin, as if in wonderment at human folly.

"What are you laughing at so profanely?" said Rosamond, with bland
neutrality.

"I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest--the engravings or
the writing here," said Lydgate, in his most convinced tone, while he
turned over the pages quickly, seeming to see all through the book in
no time, and showing his large white hands to much advantage, as
Rosamond thought.  "Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church:
did you ever see such a 'sugared invention'--as the Elizabethans used
to say?  Did any haberdasher ever look so smirking?  Yet I will answer
for it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in the land."

"You are so severe, I am frightened at you," said Rosamond, keeping her
amusement duly moderate.  Poor young Plymdale had lingered with
admiration over this very engraving, and his spirit was stirred.

"There are a great many celebrated people writing in the 'Keepsake,' at
all events," he said, in a tone at once piqued and timid.  "This is the
first time I have heard it called silly."

"I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth,"
said Rosamond, looking at Lydgate with a smile.  "I suspect you know
nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L." Rosamond herself was not
without relish for these writers, but she did not readily commit
herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest hint that
anything was not, according to Lydgate, in the very highest taste.

"But Sir Walter Scott--I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him," said young
Plymdale, a little cheered by this advantage.

"Oh, I read no literature now," said Lydgate, shutting the book, and
pushing it away.  "I read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it
will last me all my life.  I used to know Scott's poems by heart."

"I should like to know when you left off," said Rosamond, "because then
I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know."

"Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing," said Mr. Ned,
purposely caustic.

"On the contrary," said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with
exasperating confidence at Rosamond.  "It would be worth knowing by the
fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me."

Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that
Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever
been his ill-fortune to meet.

"How rash you are!" said Rosamond, inwardly delighted.  "Do you see
that you have given offence?"

"What! is it Mr. Plymdale's book?  I am sorry.  I didn't think about
it."

"I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came
here--that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds."

"Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will.  Don't I listen
to her willingly?"

To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged.
That they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her
mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the
necessary materials being at hand.  It is true, Lydgate had the
counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a
shadow cast by other resolves which themselves were capable of
shrinking.  Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of
Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through
watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a
jelly-fish which gets melted without knowing it.

That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a
process of maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he
wrote out his daily notes with as much precision as usual.  The
reveries from which it was difficult for him to detach himself were
ideal constructions of something else than Rosamond's virtues, and the
primitive tissue was still his fair unknown.  Moreover, he was
beginning to feel some zest for the growing though half-suppressed feud
between him and the other medical men, which was likely to become more
manifest, now that Bulstrode's method of managing the new hospital was
about to be declared; and there were various inspiriting signs that his
non-acceptance by some of Peacock's patients might be counterbalanced
by the impression he had produced in other quarters.  Only a few days
later, when he had happened to overtake Rosamond on the Lowick road and
had got down from his horse to walk by her side until he had quite
protected her from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant on
horseback with a message calling him in to a house of some importance
where Peacock had never attended; and it was the second instance of
this kind.  The servant was Sir James Chettam's, and the house was
Lowick Manor.

 Fred did not want to go to his father about his debt, because Mr. Vincy tends to rage about his expensive habits. He settled on Caleb Garth, Mary's father. The Garths have always liked Fred. However, the family has little money, because Garth failed in the building business. He makes his living managing the estate of wealthy landowners. Mrs. Garth, a former schoolteacher, supplements their income by giving lessons. Garth did not tell his wife he co-signed a debt for Fred Vincy. Fred attends a fair, sells his horse, and buys another with Featherstone's gift. He hopes to sell the new horse at a profit and pay his debt. The new horse turns out to be vicious, however, and lames itself during a struggle. Fred, miserable at his bad luck, resolves to confess his inability to pay his debt. He visits the Garth home and tells Mrs. Garth. Mrs. Garth must part with all the money that she has saved to pay the fee to apprentice her fifteen-year-old son to a trade. They have to ask Mary to part with some of her own savings to cover the rest of the debt. Fred apologizes profusely and rides to Stone Court, Featherstone's estate, to confess all to Mary. Mrs. Garth expresses deep disappointment in Fred and scolds her husband for being foolish enough to co-sign the debt. Her husband knows more about mining, building, and land than anyone, but he doesn't have a head for finances. Garth regrets having to ask Mary for money, because he suspects she loves Fred. Fred arrives at Stone Court and declares to Mary that she will think of him as a good-for-nothing. He suggests that she ask Featherstone to advance the money to apprentice her brother, but Mary replies that her family prefers earning their money to begging for it. She accuses him of being selfish because he does not think about the consequences others suffer as a result of his actions. Still, she does not stay entirely angry. Fred returns home feeling physically ill but less melancholy. Garth arrives to collect a portion of her savings and tells her that he fears that Fred is not to be trusted. Mary assures her father that she will not engage herself to Fred if he remains so irresponsible. Featherstone lets Mary know that he is aware of what has occurred, and he criticizes her father's lack of financial sense. Fred catches a terrible fever, but Mr. Wrench, the Vincy family doctor, says that it is not serious. The medicines he prescribes, however, have no effect. Mrs. Vincy catches sight of Lydgate, so she asks him to examine her son. He diagnoses Fred with typhoid fever. Mr. Vincy is furious with Wrench's mistake, so he tells Wrench his opinion of him and names Lydgate as the new family doctor. Wrench is insulted, and Lydgate makes an enemy. Meanwhile, Featherstone sends messages wishing Fred well and urging him to visit Stone Court when he is able. Fred listens to the message, hoping for a scrap of information concerning Mary. Lydgate feels a growing attachment to Rosamond, so he looks forward to the end of Fred's illness. Flirtation is all very nice, but he still sticks to his plan to defer any romantic entanglements for a period of years. Meanwhile, Rosamond dreams of marrying, ridding herself of boring Middlemarch society, and choosing all the best furnishings for her new home. Ned Plymdale and other men who hoped to court Rosamond become increasingly jealous. Lydgate begins to build his medical practice despite his growing feud with other medical men. One day a servant of Sir James arrives to ask him to visit Lowick Manor.

