Chapter: 1st Gent. Such men as this are feathers, chips, and straws.
                  Carry no weight, no force.
    2d Gent.                                  But levity
                  Is causal too, and makes the sum of weight.
                  For power finds its place in lack of power;
                  Advance is cession, and the driven ship
                  May run aground because the helmsman's thought
                  Lacked force to balance opposites."


It was on a morning of May that Peter Featherstone was buried.  In the
prosaic neighborhood of Middlemarch, May was not always warm and sunny,
and on this particular morning a chill wind was blowing the blossoms
from the surrounding gardens on to the green mounds of Lowick
churchyard.  Swiftly moving clouds only now and then allowed a gleam to
light up any object, whether ugly or beautiful, that happened to stand
within its golden shower.  In the churchyard the objects were
remarkably various, for there was a little country crowd waiting to see
the funeral.  The news had spread that it was to be a "big burying;"
the old gentleman had left written directions about everything and
meant to have a funeral "beyond his betters."  This was true; for old
Featherstone had not been a Harpagon whose passions had all been
devoured by the ever-lean and ever-hungry passion of saving, and who
would drive a bargain with his undertaker beforehand.  He loved money,
but he also loved to spend it in gratifying his peculiar tastes, and
perhaps he loved it best of all as a means of making others feel his
power more or less uncomfortably.  If any one will here contend that
there must have been traits of goodness in old Featherstone, I will not
presume to deny this; but I must observe that goodness is of a modest
nature, easily discouraged, and when much privacy, elbowed in early
life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that
it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old
gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments
based on his personal acquaintance.  In any case, he had been bent on
having a handsome funeral, and on having persons "bid" to it who would
rather have stayed at home.  He had even desired that female relatives
should follow him to the grave, and poor sister Martha had taken a
difficult journey for this purpose from the Chalky Flats.  She and Jane
would have been altogether cheered (in a tearful manner) by this sign
that a brother who disliked seeing them while he was living had been
prospectively fond of their presence when he should have become a
testator, if the sign had not been made equivocal by being extended to
Mrs. Vincy, whose expense in handsome crape seemed to imply the most
presumptuous hopes, aggravated by a bloom of complexion which told
pretty plainly that she was not a blood-relation, but of that generally
objectionable class called wife's kin.

We are all of us imaginative in some form or other, for images are the
brood of desire; and poor old Featherstone, who laughed much at the way
in which others cajoled themselves, did not escape the fellowship of
illusion.  In writing the programme for his burial he certainly did not
make clear to himself that his pleasure in the little drama of which it
formed a part was confined to anticipation.  In chuckling over the
vexations he could inflict by the rigid clutch of his dead hand, he
inevitably mingled his consciousness with that livid stagnant presence,
and so far as he was preoccupied with a future life, it was with one of
gratification inside his coffin.  Thus old Featherstone was
imaginative, after his fashion.

However, the three mourning-coaches were filled according to the
written orders of the deceased.  There were pall-bearers on horseback,
with the richest scarfs and hatbands, and even the under-bearers had
trappings of woe which were of a good well-priced quality.  The black
procession, when dismounted, looked the larger for the smallness of the
churchyard; the heavy human faces and the black draperies shivering in
the wind seemed to tell of a world strangely incongruous with the
lightly dropping blossoms and the gleams of sunshine on the daisies.
The clergyman who met the procession was Mr. Cadwallader--also
according to the request of Peter Featherstone, prompted as usual by
peculiar reasons.  Having a contempt for curates, whom he always called
understrappers, he was resolved to be buried by a beneficed clergyman.
Mr. Casaubon was out of the question, not merely because he declined
duty of this sort, but because Featherstone had an especial dislike to
him as the rector of his own parish, who had a lien on the land in the
shape of tithe, also as the deliverer of morning sermons, which the old
man, being in his pew and not at all sleepy, had been obliged to sit
through with an inward snarl.  He had an objection to a parson stuck up
above his head preaching to him.  But his relations with Mr.
Cadwallader had been of a different kind: the trout-stream which ran
through Mr. Casaubon's land took its course through Featherstone's
also, so that Mr. Cadwallader was a parson who had had to ask a favor
instead of preaching.  Moreover, he was one of the high gentry living
four miles away from Lowick, and was thus exalted to an equal sky with
the sheriff of the county and other dignities vaguely regarded as
necessary to the system of things.  There would be a satisfaction in
being buried by Mr. Cadwallader, whose very name offered a fine
opportunity for pronouncing wrongly if you liked.

This distinction conferred on the Rector of Tipton and Freshitt was the
reason why Mrs. Cadwallader made one of the group that watched old
Featherstone's funeral from an upper window of the manor.  She was not
fond of visiting that house, but she liked, as she said, to see
collections of strange animals such as there would be at this funeral;
and she had persuaded Sir James and the young Lady Chettam to drive the
Rector and herself to Lowick in order that the visit might be
altogether pleasant.

"I will go anywhere with you, Mrs. Cadwallader," Celia had said; "but I
don't like funerals."

"Oh, my dear, when you have a clergyman in your family you must
accommodate your tastes: I did that very early.  When I married
Humphrey I made up my mind to like sermons, and I set out by liking the
end very much.  That soon spread to the middle and the beginning,
because I couldn't have the end without them."

"No, to be sure not," said the Dowager Lady Chettam, with stately
emphasis.

The upper window from which the funeral could be well seen was in the
room occupied by Mr. Casaubon when he had been forbidden to work; but
he had resumed nearly his habitual style of life now in spite of
warnings and prescriptions, and after politely welcoming Mrs.
Cadwallader had slipped again into the library to chew a cud of erudite
mistake about Cush and Mizraim.

But for her visitors Dorothea too might have been shut up in the
library, and would not have witnessed this scene of old Featherstone's
funeral, which, aloof as it seemed to be from the tenor of her life,
always afterwards came back to her at the touch of certain sensitive
points in memory, just as the vision of St. Peter's at Rome was inwoven
with moods of despondency.  Scenes which make vital changes in our
neighbors' lot are but the background of our own, yet, like a
particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for
us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of that unity
which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness.

The dream-like association of something alien and ill-understood with
the deepest secrets of her experience seemed to mirror that sense of
loneliness which was due to the very ardor of Dorothea's nature.  The
country gentry of old time lived in a rarefied social air: dotted apart
on their stations up the mountain they looked down with imperfect
discrimination on the belts of thicker life below.  And Dorothea was
not at ease in the perspective and chilliness of that height.

"I shall not look any more," said Celia, after the train had entered
the church, placing herself a little behind her husband's elbow so that
she could slyly touch his coat with her cheek.  "I dare say Dodo likes
it: she is fond of melancholy things and ugly people."

"I am fond of knowing something about the people I live among," said
Dorothea, who had been watching everything with the interest of a monk
on his holiday tour.  "It seems to me we know nothing of our neighbors,
unless they are cottagers.  One is constantly wondering what sort of
lives other people lead, and how they take things.  I am quite obliged
to Mrs. Cadwallader for coming and calling me out of the library."

"Quite right to feel obliged to me," said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "Your rich
Lowick farmers are as curious as any buffaloes or bisons, and I dare
say you don't half see them at church.  They are quite different from
your uncle's tenants or Sir James's--monsters--farmers without
landlords--one can't tell how to class them."

"Most of these followers are not Lowick people," said Sir James; "I
suppose they are legatees from a distance, or from Middlemarch.
Lovegood tells me the old fellow has left a good deal of money as well
as land."

"Think of that now! when so many younger sons can't dine at their own
expense," said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "Ah," turning round at the sound of
the opening door, "here is Mr. Brooke.  I felt that we were incomplete
before, and here is the explanation.  You are come to see this odd
funeral, of course?"

"No, I came to look after Casaubon--to see how he goes on, you know.
And to bring a little news--a little news, my dear," said Mr. Brooke,
nodding at Dorothea as she came towards him.  "I looked into the
library, and I saw Casaubon over his books.  I told him it wouldn't do:
I said, 'This will never do, you know: think of your wife, Casaubon.'
And he promised me to come up.  I didn't tell him my news: I said, he
must come up."

"Ah, now they are coming out of church," Mrs. Cadwallader exclaimed.
"Dear me, what a wonderfully mixed set!  Mr. Lydgate as doctor, I
suppose.  But that is really a good looking woman, and the fair young
man must be her son.  Who are they, Sir James, do you know?"

"I see Vincy, the Mayor of Middlemarch; they are probably his wife and
son," said Sir James, looking interrogatively at Mr. Brooke, who nodded
and said--

"Yes, a very decent family--a very good fellow is Vincy; a credit to
the manufacturing interest.  You have seen him at my house, you know."

"Ah, yes: one of your secret committee," said Mrs. Cadwallader,
provokingly.

"A coursing fellow, though," said Sir James, with a fox-hunter's
disgust.

"And one of those who suck the life out of the wretched handloom
weavers in Tipton and Freshitt.  That is how his family look so fair
and sleek," said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "Those dark, purple-faced people
are an excellent foil.  Dear me, they are like a set of jugs!  Do look
at Humphrey: one might fancy him an ugly archangel towering above them
in his white surplice."

"It's a solemn thing, though, a funeral," said Mr. Brooke, "if you take
it in that light, you know."

"But I am not taking it in that light.  I can't wear my solemnity too
often, else it will go to rags.  It was time the old man died, and none
of these people are sorry."

"How piteous!" said Dorothea.  "This funeral seems to me the most
dismal thing I ever saw.  It is a blot on the morning I cannot bear to
think that any one should die and leave no love behind."

She was going to say more, but she saw her husband enter and seat
himself a little in the background.  The difference his presence made
to her was not always a happy one: she felt that he often inwardly
objected to her speech.

"Positively," exclaimed Mrs. Cadwallader, "there is a new face come out
from behind that broad man queerer than any of them: a little round
head with bulging eyes--a sort of frog-face--do look.  He must be of
another blood, I think."

"Let me see!" said Celia, with awakened curiosity, standing behind Mrs.
Cadwallader and leaning forward over her head.  "Oh, what an odd face!"
Then with a quick change to another sort of surprised expression, she
added, "Why, Dodo, you never told me that Mr. Ladislaw was come again!"

Dorothea felt a shock of alarm: every one noticed her sudden paleness
as she looked up immediately at her uncle, while Mr. Casaubon looked at
her.

"He came with me, you know; he is my guest--puts up with me at the
Grange," said Mr. Brooke, in his easiest tone, nodding at Dorothea, as
if the announcement were just what she might have expected.  "And we
have brought the picture at the top of the carriage.  I knew you would
be pleased with the surprise, Casaubon.  There you are to the very
life--as Aquinas, you know.  Quite the right sort of thing.  And you
will hear young Ladislaw talk about it.  He talks uncommonly
well--points out this, that, and the other--knows art and everything of
that kind--companionable, you know--is up with you in any track--what
I've been wanting a long while."

Mr. Casaubon bowed with cold politeness, mastering his irritation, but
only so far as to be silent.  He remembered Will's letter quite as well
as Dorothea did; he had noticed that it was not among the letters which
had been reserved for him on his recovery, and secretly concluding that
Dorothea had sent word to Will not to come to Lowick, he had shrunk
with proud sensitiveness from ever recurring to the subject.  He now
inferred that she had asked her uncle to invite Will to the Grange; and
she felt it impossible at that moment to enter into any explanation.

Mrs. Cadwallader's eyes, diverted from the churchyard, saw a good deal
of dumb show which was not so intelligible to her as she could have
desired, and could not repress the question, "Who is Mr. Ladislaw?"

"A young relative of Mr. Casaubon's," said Sir James, promptly.  His
good-nature often made him quick and clear-seeing in personal matters,
and he had divined from Dorothea's glance at her husband that there was
some alarm in her mind.

"A very nice young fellow--Casaubon has done everything for him,"
explained Mr. Brooke.  "He repays your expense in him, Casaubon," he
went on, nodding encouragingly.  "I hope he will stay with me a long
while and we shall make something of my documents.  I have plenty of
ideas and facts, you know, and I can see he is just the man to put them
into shape--remembers what the right quotations are, omne tulit
punctum, and that sort of thing--gives subjects a kind of turn.  I
invited him some time ago when you were ill, Casaubon; Dorothea said
you couldn't have anybody in the house, you know, and she asked me to
write."

Poor Dorothea felt that every word of her uncle's was about as pleasant
as a grain of sand in the eye to Mr. Casaubon.  It would be altogether
unfitting now to explain that she had not wished her uncle to invite
Will Ladislaw.  She could not in the least make clear to herself the
reasons for her husband's dislike to his presence--a dislike painfully
impressed on her by the scene in the library; but she felt the
unbecomingness of saying anything that might convey a notion of it to
others.  Mr. Casaubon, indeed, had not thoroughly represented those
mixed reasons to himself; irritated feeling with him, as with all of
us, seeking rather for justification than for self-knowledge. But he
wished to repress outward signs, and only Dorothea could discern the
changes in her husband's face before he observed with more of dignified
bending and sing-song than usual--

"You are exceedingly hospitable, my dear sir; and I owe you
acknowledgments for exercising your hospitality towards a relative of
mine."

The funeral was ended now, and the churchyard was being cleared.

"Now you can see him, Mrs. Cadwallader," said Celia.  "He is just like
a miniature of Mr. Casaubon's aunt that hangs in Dorothea's
boudoir--quite nice-looking."

"A very pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, dryly.  "What is your
nephew to be, Mr. Casaubon?"

"Pardon me, he is not my nephew.  He is my cousin."

"Well, you know," interposed Mr. Brooke, "he is trying his wings.  He
is just the sort of young fellow to rise.  I should be glad to give him
an opportunity.  He would make a good secretary, now, like Hobbes,
Milton, Swift--that sort of man."

"I understand," said Mrs. Cadwallader.  "One who can write speeches."

"I'll fetch him in now, eh, Casaubon?" said Mr. Brooke.  "He wouldn't
come in till I had announced him, you know.  And we'll go down and look
at the picture.  There you are to the life: a deep subtle sort of
thinker with his fore-finger on the page, while Saint Bonaventure or
somebody else, rather fat and florid, is looking up at the Trinity.
Everything is symbolical, you know--the higher style of art: I like
that up to a certain point, but not too far--it's rather straining to
keep up with, you know.  But you are at home in that, Casaubon.  And
your painter's flesh is good--solidity, transparency, everything of
that sort.  I went into that a great deal at one time.  However, I'll
go and fetch Ladislaw."



    "Non, je ne comprends pas de plus charmant plaisir
     Que de voir d'heritiers une troupe affligee
     Le maintien interdit, et la mine allongee,
     Lire un long testament ou pales, etonnes
     On leur laisse un bonsoir avec un pied de nez.
     Pour voir au naturel leur tristesse profonde
     Je reviendrais, je crois, expres de l'autre monde."
                         --REGNARD: Le Legataire Universel.


When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied
species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to
think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were
eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations.  (I fear the
part played by the vultures on that occasion would be too painful for
art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously naked about the
gullet, and apparently without rites and ceremonies.)

The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed
Peter Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their
minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the
most of.  The long-recognized blood-relations and connections by
marriage made already a goodly number, which, multiplied by
possibilities, presented a fine range for jealous conjecture and
pathetic hopefulness.  Jealousy of the Vincys had created a fellowship
in hostility among all persons of the Featherstone blood, so that in
the absence of any decided indication that one of themselves was to
have more than the rest, the dread lest that long-legged Fred Vincy
should have the land was necessarily dominant, though it left abundant
feeling and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were entertained
towards Mary Garth.  Solomon found time to reflect that Jonah was
undeserving, and Jonah to abuse Solomon as greedy; Jane, the elder
sister, held that Martha's children ought not to expect so much as the
young Waules; and Martha, more lax on the subject of primogeniture, was
sorry to think that Jane was so "having."  These nearest of kin were
naturally impressed with the unreasonableness of expectations in
cousins and second cousins, and used their arithmetic in reckoning the
large sums that small legacies might mount to, if there were too many
of them.  Two cousins were present to hear the will, and a second
cousin besides Mr. Trumbull.  This second cousin was a Middlemarch
mercer of polite manners and superfluous aspirates.  The two cousins
were elderly men from Brassing, one of them conscious of claims on the
score of inconvenient expense sustained by him in presents of oysters
and other eatables to his rich cousin Peter; the other entirely
saturnine, leaning his hands and chin on a stick, and conscious of
claims based on no narrow performance but on merit generally: both
blameless citizens of Brassing, who wished that Jonah Featherstone did
not live there.  The wit of a family is usually best received among
strangers.

"Why, Trumbull himself is pretty sure of five hundred--_that_ you may
depend,--I shouldn't wonder if my brother promised him," said Solomon,
musing aloud with his sisters, the evening before the funeral.

"Dear, dear!" said poor sister Martha, whose imagination of hundreds
had been habitually narrowed to the amount of her unpaid rent.

But in the morning all the ordinary currents of conjecture were
disturbed by the presence of a strange mourner who had plashed among
them as if from the moon.  This was the stranger described by Mrs.
Cadwallader as frog-faced: a man perhaps about two or three and thirty,
whose prominent eyes, thin-lipped, downward-curved mouth, and hair
sleekly brushed away from a forehead that sank suddenly above the ridge
of the eyebrows, certainly gave his face a batrachian unchangeableness
of expression.  Here, clearly, was a new legatee; else why was he
bidden as a mourner?  Here were new possibilities, raising a new
uncertainty, which almost checked remark in the mourning-coaches. We
are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed
very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we
have been making up our world entirely without it.  No one had seen
this questionable stranger before except Mary Garth, and she knew
nothing more of him than that he had twice been to Stone Court when Mr.
Featherstone was down-stairs, and had sat alone with him for several
hours.  She had found an opportunity of mentioning this to her father,
and perhaps Caleb's were the only eyes, except the lawyer's, which
examined the stranger with more of inquiry than of disgust or
suspicion.  Caleb Garth, having little expectation and less cupidity,
was interested in the verification of his own guesses, and the calmness
with which he half smilingly rubbed his chin and shot intelligent
glances much as if he were valuing a tree, made a fine contrast with
the alarm or scorn visible in other faces when the unknown mourner,
whose name was understood to be Rigg, entered the wainscoted parlor and
took his seat near the door to make part of the audience when the will
should be read.  Just then Mr. Solomon and Mr. Jonah were gone
up-stairs with the lawyer to search for the will; and Mrs. Waule,
seeing two vacant seats between herself and Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, had
the spirit to move next to that great authority, who was handling his
watch-seals and trimming his outlines with a determination not to show
anything so compromising to a man of ability as wonder or surprise.

"I suppose you know everything about what my poor brother's done, Mr.
Trumbull," said Mrs. Waule, in the lowest of her woolly tones, while
she turned her crape-shadowed bonnet towards Mr. Trumbull's ear.

"My good lady, whatever was told me was told in confidence," said the
auctioneer, putting his hand up to screen that secret.

"Them who've made sure of their good-luck may be disappointed yet,"
Mrs. Waule continued, finding some relief in this communication.

"Hopes are often delusive," said Mr. Trumbull, still in confidence.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Waule, looking across at the Vincys, and then moving
back to the side of her sister Martha.

"It's wonderful how close poor Peter was," she said, in the same
undertones.  "We none of us know what he might have had on his mind.  I
only hope and trust he wasn't a worse liver than we think of, Martha."

Poor Mrs. Cranch was bulky, and, breathing asthmatically, had the
additional motive for making her remarks unexceptionable and giving
them a general bearing, that even her whispers were loud and liable to
sudden bursts like those of a deranged barrel-organ.

"I never _was_ covetous, Jane," she replied; "but I have six children
and have buried three, and I didn't marry into money.  The eldest, that
sits there, is but nineteen--so I leave you to guess.  And stock always
short, and land most awkward.  But if ever I've begged and prayed; it's
been to God above; though where there's one brother a bachelor and the
other childless after twice marrying--anybody might think!"

Meanwhile, Mr. Vincy had glanced at the passive face of Mr. Rigg, and
had taken out his snuff-box and tapped it, but had put it again
unopened as an indulgence which, however clarifying to the judgment,
was unsuited to the occasion.  "I shouldn't wonder if Featherstone had
better feelings than any of us gave him credit for," he observed, in
the ear of his wife.  "This funeral shows a thought about everybody: it
looks well when a man wants to be followed by his friends, and if they
are humble, not to be ashamed of them.  I should be all the better
pleased if he'd left lots of small legacies.  They may be uncommonly
useful to fellows in a small way."

"Everything is as handsome as could be, crape and silk and everything,"
said Mrs. Vincy, contentedly.

But I am sorry to say that Fred was under some difficulty in repressing
a laugh, which would have been more unsuitable than his father's
snuff-box. Fred had overheard Mr. Jonah suggesting something about a
"love-child," and with this thought in his mind, the stranger's face,
which happened to be opposite him, affected him too ludicrously.  Mary
Garth, discerning his distress in the twitchings of his mouth, and his
recourse to a cough, came cleverly to his rescue by asking him to
change seats with her, so that he got into a shadowy corner.  Fred was
feeling as good-naturedly as possible towards everybody, including
Rigg; and having some relenting towards all these people who were less
lucky than he was aware of being himself, he would not for the world
have behaved amiss; still, it was particularly easy to laugh.

But the entrance of the lawyer and the two brothers drew every one's
attention.  The lawyer was Mr. Standish, and he had come to Stone Court
this morning believing that he knew thoroughly well who would be
pleased and who disappointed before the day was over.  The will he
expected to read was the last of three which he had drawn up for Mr.
Featherstone.  Mr. Standish was not a man who varied his manners: he
behaved with the same deep-voiced, off-hand civility to everybody, as
if he saw no difference in them, and talked chiefly of the hay-crop,
which would be "very fine, by God!" of the last bulletins concerning
the King, and of the Duke of Clarence, who was a sailor every inch of
him, and just the man to rule over an island like Britain.

Old Featherstone had often reflected as he sat looking at the fire that
Standish would be surprised some day: it is true that if he had done as
he liked at the last, and burnt the will drawn up by another lawyer, he
would not have secured that minor end; still he had had his pleasure in
ruminating on it.  And certainly Mr. Standish was surprised, but not at
all sorry; on the contrary, he rather enjoyed the zest of a little
curiosity in his own mind, which the discovery of a second will added
to the prospective amazement on the part of the Featherstone family.

As to the sentiments of Solomon and Jonah, they were held in utter
suspense: it seemed to them that the old will would have a certain
validity, and that there might be such an interlacement of poor Peter's
former and latter intentions as to create endless "lawing" before
anybody came by their own--an inconvenience which would have at least
the advantage of going all round.  Hence the brothers showed a
thoroughly neutral gravity as they re-entered with Mr. Standish; but
Solomon took out his white handkerchief again with a sense that in any
case there would be affecting passages, and crying at funerals, however
dry, was customarily served up in lawn.

Perhaps the person who felt the most throbbing excitement at this
moment was Mary Garth, in the consciousness that it was she who had
virtually determined the production of this second will, which might
have momentous effects on the lot of some persons present.  No soul
except herself knew what had passed on that final night.

"The will I hold in my hand," said Mr. Standish, who, seated at the
table in the middle of the room, took his time about everything,
including the coughs with which he showed a disposition to clear his
voice, "was drawn up by myself and executed by our deceased friend on
the 9th of August, 1825.  But I find that there is a subsequent
instrument hitherto unknown to me, bearing date the 20th of July, 1826,
hardly a year later than the previous one.  And there is farther, I
see"--Mr. Standish was cautiously travelling over the document with his
spectacles--"a codicil to this latter will, bearing date March 1, 1828."

"Dear, dear!" said sister Martha, not meaning to be audible, but driven
to some articulation under this pressure of dates.

"I shall begin by reading the earlier will," continued Mr. Standish,
"since such, as appears by his not having destroyed the document, was
the intention of deceased."

The preamble was felt to be rather long, and several besides Solomon
shook their heads pathetically, looking on the ground: all eyes avoided
meeting other eyes, and were chiefly fixed either on the spots in the
table-cloth or on Mr. Standish's bald head; excepting Mary Garth's.
When all the rest were trying to look nowhere in particular, it was
safe for her to look at them.  And at the sound of the first "give and
bequeath" she could see all complexions changing subtly, as if some
faint vibration were passing through them, save that of Mr. Rigg.  He
sat in unaltered calm, and, in fact, the company, preoccupied with more
important problems, and with the complication of listening to bequests
which might or might not be revoked, had ceased to think of him.  Fred
blushed, and Mr. Vincy found it impossible to do without his snuff-box
in his hand, though he kept it closed.

The small bequests came first, and even the recollection that there was
another will and that poor Peter might have thought better of it, could
not quell the rising disgust and indignation.  One likes to be done
well by in every tense, past, present, and future.  And here was Peter
capable five years ago of leaving only two hundred apiece to his own
brothers and sisters, and only a hundred apiece to his own nephews and
nieces: the Garths were not mentioned, but Mrs. Vincy and Rosamond were
each to have a hundred.  Mr. Trumbull was to have the gold-headed cane
and fifty pounds; the other second cousins and the cousins present were
each to have the like handsome sum, which, as the saturnine cousin
observed, was a sort of legacy that left a man nowhere; and there was
much more of such offensive dribbling in favor of persons not
present--problematical, and, it was to be feared, low connections.
Altogether, reckoning hastily, here were about three thousand disposed of.
Where then had Peter meant the rest of the money to go--and where the
land? and what was revoked and what not revoked--and was the revocation
for better or for worse?  All emotion must be conditional, and might turn
out to be the wrong thing.  The men were strong enough to bear up and
keep quiet under this confused suspense; some letting their lower lip
fall, others pursing it up, according to the habit of their muscles.
But Jane and Martha sank under the rush of questions, and began to cry;
poor Mrs. Cranch being half moved with the consolation of getting any
hundreds at all without working for them, and half aware that her share
was scanty; whereas Mrs. Waule's mind was entirely flooded with the
sense of being an own sister and getting little, while somebody else
was to have much.  The general expectation now was that the "much"
would fall to Fred Vincy, but the Vincys themselves were surprised when
ten thousand pounds in specified investments were declared to be
bequeathed to him:--was the land coming too?  Fred bit his lips: it was
difficult to help smiling, and Mrs. Vincy felt herself the happiest of
women--possible revocation shrinking out of sight in this dazzling
vision.

There was still a residue of personal property as well as the land, but
the whole was left to one person, and that person was--O
possibilities!  O expectations founded on the favor of "close" old
gentlemen!  O endless vocatives that would still leave expression
slipping helpless from the measurement of mortal folly!--that
residuary legatee was Joshua Rigg, who was also sole executor, and who
was to take thenceforth the name of Featherstone.

There was a rustling which seemed like a shudder running round the
room.  Every one stared afresh at Mr. Rigg, who apparently experienced
no surprise.

"A most singular testamentary disposition!" exclaimed Mr. Trumbull,
preferring for once that he should be considered ignorant in the past.
"But there is a second will--there is a further document.  We have not
yet heard the final wishes of the deceased."

Mary Garth was feeling that what they had yet to hear were not the
final wishes.  The second will revoked everything except the legacies
to the low persons before mentioned (some alterations in these being
the occasion of the codicil), and the bequest of all the land lying in
Lowick parish with all the stock and household furniture, to Joshua
Rigg.  The residue of the property was to be devoted to the erection
and endowment of almshouses for old men, to be called Featherstone's
Alms-Houses, and to be built on a piece of land near Middlemarch
already bought for the purpose by the testator, he wishing--so the
document declared--to please God Almighty.  Nobody present had a
farthing; but Mr. Trumbull had the gold-headed cane.  It took some time
for the company to recover the power of expression.  Mary dared not
look at Fred.

Mr. Vincy was the first to speak--after using his snuff-box
energetically--and he spoke with loud indignation.  "The most
unaccountable will I ever heard!  I should say he was not in his right
mind when he made it.  I should say this last will was void," added Mr.
Vincy, feeling that this expression put the thing in the true light.
"Eh Standish?"

"Our deceased friend always knew what he was about, I think," said Mr.
Standish.  "Everything is quite regular.  Here is a letter from
Clemmens of Brassing tied with the will.  He drew it up.  A very
respectable solicitor."

"I never noticed any alienation of mind--any aberration of intellect in
the late Mr. Featherstone," said Borthrop Trumbull, "but I call this
will eccentric.  I was always willingly of service to the old soul; and
he intimated pretty plainly a sense of obligation which would show
itself in his will.  The gold-headed cane is farcical considered as an
acknowledgment to me; but happily I am above mercenary considerations."

"There's nothing very surprising in the matter that I can see," said
Caleb Garth.  "Anybody might have had more reason for wondering if the
will had been what you might expect from an open-minded straightforward
man.  For my part, I wish there was no such thing as a will."

"That's a strange sentiment to come from a Christian man, by God!" said
the lawyer.  "I should like to know how you will back that up, Garth!"

"Oh," said Caleb, leaning forward, adjusting his finger-tips with
nicety and looking meditatively on the ground.  It always seemed to him
that words were the hardest part of "business."

But here Mr. Jonah Featherstone made himself heard.  "Well, he always
was a fine hypocrite, was my brother Peter.  But this will cuts out
everything.  If I'd known, a wagon and six horses shouldn't have drawn
me from Brassing.  I'll put a white hat and drab coat on to-morrow."

"Dear, dear," wept Mrs. Cranch, "and we've been at the expense of
travelling, and that poor lad sitting idle here so long!  It's the
first time I ever heard my brother Peter was so wishful to please God
Almighty; but if I was to be struck helpless I must say it's hard--I
can think no other."

"It'll do him no good where he's gone, that's my belief," said Solomon,
with a bitterness which was remarkably genuine, though his tone could
not help being sly.  "Peter was a bad liver, and almshouses won't cover
it, when he's had the impudence to show it at the last."

"And all the while had got his own lawful family--brothers and sisters
and nephews and nieces--and has sat in church with 'em whenever he
thought well to come," said Mrs. Waule.  "And might have left his
property so respectable, to them that's never been used to extravagance
or unsteadiness in no manner of way--and not so poor but what they
could have saved every penny and made more of it.  And me--the trouble
I've been at, times and times, to come here and be sisterly--and him
with things on his mind all the while that might make anybody's flesh
creep.  But if the Almighty's allowed it, he means to punish him for
it.  Brother Solomon, I shall be going, if you'll drive me."

"I've no desire to put my foot on the premises again," said Solomon.
"I've got land of my own and property of my own to will away."

"It's a poor tale how luck goes in the world," said Jonah.  "It never
answers to have a bit of spirit in you.  You'd better be a dog in the
manger.  But those above ground might learn a lesson.  One fool's will
is enough in a family."

"There's more ways than one of being a fool," said Solomon.  "I shan't
leave my money to be poured down the sink, and I shan't leave it to
foundlings from Africay.  I like Featherstones that were brewed such,
and not turned Featherstones with sticking the name on 'em."

Solomon addressed these remarks in a loud aside to Mrs. Waule as he
rose to accompany her.  Brother Jonah felt himself capable of much more
stinging wit than this, but he reflected that there was no use in
offending the new proprietor of Stone Court, until you were certain
that he was quite without intentions of hospitality towards witty men
whose name he was about to bear.

Mr. Joshua Rigg, in fact, appeared to trouble himself little about any
innuendoes, but showed a notable change of manner, walking coolly up to
Mr. Standish and putting business questions with much coolness.  He had
a high chirping voice and a vile accent.  Fred, whom he no longer moved
to laughter, thought him the lowest monster he had ever seen.  But Fred
was feeling rather sick.  The Middlemarch mercer waited for an
opportunity of engaging Mr. Rigg in conversation: there was no knowing
how many pairs of legs the new proprietor might require hose for, and
profits were more to be relied on than legacies.  Also, the mercer, as
a second cousin, was dispassionate enough to feel curiosity.

Mr. Vincy, after his one outburst, had remained proudly silent, though
too much preoccupied with unpleasant feelings to think of moving, till
he observed that his wife had gone to Fred's side and was crying
silently while she held her darling's hand.  He rose immediately, and
turning his back on the company while he said to her in an
undertone,--"Don't give way, Lucy; don't make a fool of yourself, my
dear, before these people," he added in his usual loud voice--"Go and
order the phaeton, Fred; I have no time to waste."

Mary Garth had before this been getting ready to go home with her
father.  She met Fred in the hall, and now for the first time had the
courage to look at him. He had that withered sort of paleness which
will sometimes come on young faces, and his hand was very cold when she
shook it.  Mary too was agitated; she was conscious that fatally,
without will of her own, she had perhaps made a great difference to
Fred's lot.

"Good-by," she said, with affectionate sadness.  "Be brave, Fred.  I do
believe you are better without the money.  What was the good of it to
Mr. Featherstone?"

"That's all very fine," said Fred, pettishly.  "What is a fellow to do?
I must go into the Church now."  (He knew that this would vex Mary:
very well; then she must tell him what else he could do.) "And I
thought I should be able to pay your father at once and make everything
right.  And you have not even a hundred pounds left you.  What shall
you do now, Mary?"

"Take another situation, of course, as soon as I can get one.  My
father has enough to do to keep the rest, without me.  Good-by."

In a very short time Stone Court was cleared of well-brewed
Featherstones and other long-accustomed visitors.  Another stranger had
been brought to settle in the neighborhood of Middlemarch, but in the
case of Mr. Rigg Featherstone there was more discontent with immediate
visible consequences than speculation as to the effect which his
presence might have in the future.  No soul was prophetic enough to
have any foreboding as to what might appear on the trial of Joshua Rigg.

And here I am naturally led to reflect on the means of elevating a low
subject.  Historical parallels are remarkably efficient in this way.
The chief objection to them is, that the diligent narrator may lack
space, or (what is often the same thing) may not be able to think of
them with any degree of particularity, though he may have a
philosophical confidence that if known they would be illustrative.  It
seems an easier and shorter way to dignity, to observe that--since
there never was a true story which could not be told in parables, where
you might put a monkey for a margrave, and vice versa--whatever has
been or is to be narrated by me about low people, may be ennobled by
being considered a parable; so that if any bad habits and ugly
consequences are brought into view, the reader may have the relief of
regarding them as not more than figuratively ungenteel, and may feel
himself virtually in company with persons of some style.  Thus while I
tell the truth about loobies, my reader's imagination need not be
entirely excluded from an occupation with lords; and the petty sums
which any bankrupt of high standing would be sorry to retire upon, may
be lifted to the level of high commercial transactions by the
inexpensive addition of proportional ciphers.

As to any provincial history in which the agents are all of high moral
rank, that must be of a date long posterior to the first Reform Bill,
and Peter Featherstone, you perceive, was dead and buried some months
before Lord Grey came into office.



    "'Tis strange to see the humors of these men,
     These great aspiring spirits, that should be wise:
       .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .
     For being the nature of great spirits to love
     To be where they may be most eminent;
     They, rating of themselves so farre above
     Us in conceit, with whom they do frequent,
     Imagine how we wonder and esteeme
     All that they do or say; which makes them strive
     To make our admiration more extreme,
     Which they suppose they cannot, 'less they give
     Notice of their extreme and highest thoughts.
                                --DANIEL: Tragedy of Philotas.


Mr. Vincy went home from the reading of the will with his point of view
considerably changed in relation to many subjects.  He was an
open-minded man, but given to indirect modes of expressing himself:
when he was disappointed in a market for his silk braids, he swore at
the groom; when his brother-in-law Bulstrode had vexed him, he made
cutting remarks on Methodism; and it was now apparent that he regarded
Fred's idleness with a sudden increase of severity, by his throwing an
embroidered cap out of the smoking-room on to the hall-floor.

"Well, sir," he observed, when that young gentleman was moving off to
bed, "I hope you've made up your mind now to go up next term and pass
your examination.  I've taken my resolution, so I advise you to lose no
time in taking yours."

Fred made no answer: he was too utterly depressed.  Twenty-four hours
ago he had thought that instead of needing to know what he should do,
he should by this time know that he needed to do nothing: that he
should hunt in pink, have a first-rate hunter, ride to cover on a fine
hack, and be generally respected for doing so; moreover, that he should
be able at once to pay Mr. Garth, and that Mary could no longer have
any reason for not marrying him.  And all this was to have come without
study or other inconvenience, purely by the favor of providence in the
shape of an old gentleman's caprice.  But now, at the end of the
twenty-four hours, all those firm expectations were upset.  It was
"rather hard lines" that while he was smarting under this
disappointment he should be treated as if he could have helped it.  But
he went away silently and his mother pleaded for him.

"Don't be hard on the poor boy, Vincy.  He'll turn out well yet, though
that wicked man has deceived him.  I feel as sure as I sit here, Fred
will turn out well--else why was he brought back from the brink of the
grave?  And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the land, to
promise it; and what is promising, if making everybody believe is not
promising?  And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then
took it away again."

"Took it away again!" said Mr. Vincy, pettishly.  "I tell you the lad's
an unlucky lad, Lucy.  And you've always spoiled him."

"Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when
he came.  You were as proud as proud," said Mrs. Vincy, easily
recovering her cheerful smile.

"Who knows what babies will turn to?  I was fool enough, I dare say,"
said the husband--more mildly, however.

"But who has handsomer, better children than ours?  Fred is far beyond
other people's sons: you may hear it in his speech, that he has kept
college company.  And Rosamond--where is there a girl like her?  She
might stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the better for
it.  You see--Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest company and been
everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once.  Not but what I could
have wished Rosamond had not engaged herself.  She might have met
somebody on a visit who would have been a far better match; I mean at
her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby's. There are relations in that family
quite as high as Mr. Lydgate's."

"Damn relations!" said Mr. Vincy; "I've had enough of them.  I don't
want a son-in-law who has got nothing but his relations to recommend
him."

"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, "you seemed as pleased as could be
about it.  It's true, I wasn't at home; but Rosamond told me you hadn't
a word to say against the engagement.  And she has begun to buy in the
best linen and cambric for her underclothing."

"Not by my will," said Mr. Vincy.  "I shall have enough to do this
year, with an idle scamp of a son, without paying for wedding-clothes.
The times are as tight as can be; everybody is being ruined; and I
don't believe Lydgate has got a farthing.  I shan't give my consent to
their marrying.  Let 'em wait, as their elders have done before 'em."

"Rosamond will take it hard, Vincy, and you know you never could bear
to cross her."

"Yes, I could.  The sooner the engagement's off, the better.  I don't
believe he'll ever make an income, the way he goes on.  He makes
enemies; that's all I hear of his making."

"But he stands very high with Mr. Bulstrode, my dear.  The marriage
would please _him_, I should think."

"Please the deuce!" said Mr. Vincy.  "Bulstrode won't pay for their
keep.  And if Lydgate thinks I'm going to give money for them to set up
housekeeping, he's mistaken, that's all.  I expect I shall have to put
down my horses soon.  You'd better tell Rosy what I say."

This was a not infrequent procedure with Mr. Vincy--to be rash in
jovial assent, and on becoming subsequently conscious that he had been
rash, to employ others in making the offensive retractation.  However,
Mrs. Vincy, who never willingly opposed her husband, lost no time the
next morning in letting Rosamond know what he had said.  Rosamond,
examining some muslin-work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a
certain turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could
teach you that it meant perfect obstinacy.

"What do you say, my dear?" said her mother, with affectionate
deference.

"Papa does not mean anything of the kind," said Rosamond, quite calmly.
"He has always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved.  And I
shall marry Mr. Lydgate.  It is seven weeks now since papa gave his
consent.  And I hope we shall have Mrs. Bretton's house."

"Well, my dear, I shall leave you to manage your papa.  You always do
manage everybody.  But if we ever do go and get damask, Sadler's is the
place--far better than Hopkins's. Mrs. Bretton's is very large, though:
I should love you to have such a house; but it will take a great deal
of furniture--carpeting and everything, besides plate and glass.  And
you hear, your papa says he will give no money.  Do you think Mr.
Lydgate expects it?"

"You cannot imagine that I should ask him, mamma.  Of course he
understands his own affairs."

"But he may have been looking for money, my dear, and we all thought of
your having a pretty legacy as well as Fred;--and now everything is so
dreadful--there's no pleasure in thinking of anything, with that poor
boy disappointed as he is."

"That has nothing to do with my marriage, mamma.  Fred must leave off
being idle.  I am going up-stairs to take this work to Miss Morgan: she
does the open hemming very well.  Mary Garth might do some work for me
now, I should think.  Her sewing is exquisite; it is the nicest thing I
know about Mary.  I should so like to have all my cambric frilling
double-hemmed. And it takes a long time."

Mrs. Vincy's belief that Rosamond could manage her papa was well
founded.  Apart from his dinners and his coursing, Mr. Vincy,
blustering as he was, had as little of his own way as if he had been a
prime minister: the force of circumstances was easily too much for him,
as it is for most pleasure-loving florid men; and the circumstance
called Rosamond was particularly forcible by means of that mild
persistence which, as we know, enables a white soft living substance to
make its way in spite of opposing rock.  Papa was not a rock: he had no
other fixity than that fixity of alternating impulses sometimes called
habit, and this was altogether unfavorable to his taking the only
decisive line of conduct in relation to his daughter's
engagement--namely, to inquire thoroughly into Lydgate's circumstances,
declare his own inability to furnish money, and forbid alike either a
speedy marriage or an engagement which must be too lengthy.  That seems
very simple and easy in the statement; but a disagreeable resolve
formed in the chill hours of the morning had as many conditions against
it as the early frost, and rarely persisted under the warming
influences of the day.  The indirect though emphatic expression of
opinion to which Mr. Vincy was prone suffered much restraint in this
case: Lydgate was a proud man towards whom innuendoes were obviously
unsafe, and throwing his hat on the floor was out of the question.  Mr.
Vincy was a little in awe of him, a little vain that he wanted to marry
Rosamond, a little indisposed to raise a question of money in which his
own position was not advantageous, a little afraid of being worsted in
dialogue with a man better educated and more highly bred than himself,
and a little afraid of doing what his daughter would not like.  The
part Mr. Vincy preferred playing was that of the generous host whom
nobody criticises.  In the earlier half of the day there was business
to hinder any formal communication of an adverse resolve; in the later
there was dinner, wine, whist, and general satisfaction.  And in the
mean while the hours were each leaving their little deposit and
gradually forming the final reason for inaction, namely, that action
was too late.  The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick
Gate, and a love-making not at all dependent on money-advances from
fathers-in-law, or prospective income from a profession, went on
flourishingly under Mr. Vincy's own eyes.  Young love-making--that
gossamer web!  Even the points it clings to--the things whence its
subtle interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary
touches of fingertips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs,
unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest
tremors.  The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable
joys, yearnings of one life towards another, visions of completeness,
indefinite trust.  And Lydgate fell to spinning that web from his
inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience supposed to
be finished off with the drama of Laure--in spite too of medicine and
biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes presented in
a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of scientific inquiry,
are observed to be less incompatible with poetic love than a native
dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose.  As for Rosamond,
she was in the water-lily's expanding wonderment at its own fuller
life, and she too was spinning industriously at the mutual web.  All
this went on in the corner of the drawing-room where the piano stood,
and subtle as it was, the light made it a sort of rainbow visible to
many observers besides Mr. Farebrother.  The certainty that Miss Vincy
and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general in Middlemarch without the
aid of formal announcement.

Aunt Bulstrode was again stirred to anxiety; but this time she
addressed herself to her brother, going to the warehouse expressly to
avoid Mrs. Vincy's volatility.  His replies were not satisfactory.

"Walter, you never mean to tell me that you have allowed all this to go
on without inquiry into Mr. Lydgate's prospects?" said Mrs. Bulstrode,
opening her eyes with wider gravity at her brother, who was in his
peevish warehouse humor.  "Think of this girl brought up in luxury--in
too worldly a way, I am sorry to say--what will she do on a small
income?"

"Oh, confound it, Harriet! What can I do when men come into the town
without any asking of mine?  Did you shut your house up against
Lydgate?  Bulstrode has pushed him forward more than anybody.  I never
made any fuss about the young fellow.  You should go and talk to your
husband about it, not me."

"Well, really, Walter, how can Mr. Bulstrode be to blame?  I am sure he
did not wish for the engagement."

"Oh, if Bulstrode had not taken him by the hand, I should never have
invited him."

"But you called him in to attend on Fred, and I am sure that was a
mercy," said Mrs. Bulstrode, losing her clew in the intricacies of the
subject.

"I don't know about mercy," said Mr. Vincy, testily.  "I know I am
worried more than I like with my family.  I was a good brother to you,
Harriet, before you married Bulstrode, and I must say he doesn't always
show that friendly spirit towards your family that might have been
expected of him."  Mr. Vincy was very little like a Jesuit, but no
accomplished Jesuit could have turned a question more adroitly.
Harriet had to defend her husband instead of blaming her brother, and
the conversation ended at a point as far from the beginning as some
recent sparring between the brothers-in-law at a vestry meeting.

Mrs. Bulstrode did not repeat her brother's complaints to her husband,
but in the evening she spoke to him of Lydgate and Rosamond.  He did
not share her warm interest, however; and only spoke with resignation
of the risks attendant on the beginning of medical practice and the
desirability of prudence.

"I am sure we are bound to pray for that thoughtless girl--brought up
as she has been," said Mrs. Bulstrode, wishing to rouse her husband's
feelings.

"Truly, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, assentingly.  "Those who are not
of this world can do little else to arrest the errors of the
obstinately worldly.  That is what we must accustom ourselves to
recognize with regard to your brother's family.  I could have wished
that Mr. Lydgate had not entered into such a union; but my relations
with him are limited to that use of his gifts for God's purposes which
is taught us by the divine government under each dispensation."

Mrs. Bulstrode said no more, attributing some dissatisfaction which she
felt to her own want of spirituality.  She believed that her husband
was one of those men whose memoirs should be written when they died.

As to Lydgate himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept
all the consequences which he believed himself to foresee with perfect
clearness.  Of course he must be married in a year--perhaps even in
half a year.  This was not what he had intended; but other schemes
would not be hindered: they would simply adjust themselves anew.
Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way.  A house
must be taken instead of the rooms he at present occupied; and Lydgate,
having heard Rosamond speak with admiration of old Mrs. Bretton's house
(situated in Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell vacant after the
old lady's death, and immediately entered into treaty for it.

He did this in an episodic way, very much as he gave orders to his
tailor for every requisite of perfect dress, without any notion of
being extravagant.  On the contrary, he would have despised any
ostentation of expense; his profession had familiarized him with all
grades of poverty, and he cared much for those who suffered hardships.
He would have behaved perfectly at a table where the sauce was served
in a jug with the handle off, and he would have remembered nothing
about a grand dinner except that a man was there who talked well.  But
it had never occurred to him that he should live in any other than what
he would have called an ordinary way, with green glasses for hock, and
excellent waiting at table.  In warming himself at French social
theories he had brought away no smell of scorching.  We may handle even
extreme opinions with impunity while our furniture, our dinner-giving,
and preference for armorial bearings in our own case, link us
indissolubly with the established order.  And Lydgate's tendency was
not towards extreme opinions: he would have liked no barefooted
doctrines, being particular about his boots: he was no radical in
relation to anything but medical reform and the prosecution of
discovery.  In the rest of practical life he walked by hereditary
habit; half from that personal pride and unreflecting egoism which I
have already called commonness, and half from that naivete which
belonged to preoccupation with favorite ideas.

Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement
which had stolen upon him, turned on the paucity of time rather than of
money.  Certainly, being in love and being expected continually by some
one who always turned out to be prettier than memory could represent
her to be, did interfere with the diligent use of spare hours which
might serve some "plodding fellow of a German" to make the great,
imminent discovery.  This was really an argument for not deferring the
marriage too long, as he implied to Mr. Farebrother, one day that the
Vicar came to his room with some pond-products which he wanted to
examine under a better microscope than his own, and, finding Lydgate's
tableful of apparatus and specimens in confusion, said sarcastically--

"Eros has degenerated; he began by introducing order and harmony, and
now he brings back chaos."

"Yes, at some stages," said Lydgate, lifting his brows and smiling,
while he began to arrange his microscope.  "But a better order will
begin after."

"Soon?" said the Vicar.

"I hope so, really.  This unsettled state of affairs uses up the time,
and when one has notions in science, every moment is an opportunity.  I
feel sure that marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to
work steadily.  He has everything at home then--no teasing with
personal speculations--he can get calmness and freedom."

"You are an enviable dog," said the Vicar, "to have such a
prospect--Rosamond, calmness and freedom, all to your share.  Here am
I with nothing but my pipe and pond-animalcules. Now, are you ready?"

Lydgate did not mention to the Vicar another reason he had for wishing
to shorten the period of courtship.  It was rather irritating to him,
even with the wine of love in his veins, to be obliged to mingle so
often with the family party at the Vincys', and to enter so much into
Middlemarch gossip, protracted good cheer, whist-playing, and general
futility.  He had to be deferential when Mr. Vincy decided questions
with trenchant ignorance, especially as to those liquors which were the
best inward pickle, preserving you from the effects of bad air.  Mrs.
Vincy's openness and simplicity were quite unstreaked with suspicion as
to the subtle offence she might give to the taste of her intended
son-in-law; and altogether Lydgate had to confess to himself that he
was descending a little in relation to Rosamond's family.  But that
exquisite creature herself suffered in the same sort of way:--it was
at least one delightful thought that in marrying her, he could give her
a much-needed transplantation.

"Dear!" he said to her one evening, in his gentlest tone, as he sat
down by her and looked closely at her face--

But I must first say that he had found her alone in the drawing-room,
where the great old-fashioned window, almost as large as the side of
the room, was opened to the summer scents of the garden at the back of
the house.  Her father and mother were gone to a party, and the rest
were all out with the butterflies.

"Dear! your eyelids are red."

"Are they?" said Rosamond.  "I wonder why."  It was not in her nature
to pour forth wishes or grievances.  They only came forth gracefully on
solicitation.

"As if you could hide it from me!" said Lydgate, laying his hand
tenderly on both of hers.  "Don't I see a tiny drop on one of the
lashes?  Things trouble you, and you don't tell me.  That is unloving."

"Why should I tell you what you cannot alter?  They are every-day
things:--perhaps they have been a little worse lately."

"Family annoyances.  Don't fear speaking.  I guess them."

"Papa has been more irritable lately.  Fred makes him angry, and this
morning there was a fresh quarrel because Fred threatens to throw his
whole education away, and do something quite beneath him.  And
besides--"

Rosamond hesitated, and her cheeks were gathering a slight flush.
Lydgate had never seen her in trouble since the morning of their
engagement, and he had never felt so passionately towards her as at
this moment.  He kissed the hesitating lips gently, as if to encourage
them.

"I feel that papa is not quite pleased about our engagement," Rosamond
continued, almost in a whisper; "and he said last night that he should
certainly speak to you and say it must be given up."

"Will you give it up?" said Lydgate, with quick energy--almost angrily.

"I never give up anything that I choose to do," said Rosamond,
recovering her calmness at the touching of this chord.

"God bless you!" said Lydgate, kissing her again.  This constancy of
purpose in the right place was adorable.  He went on:--

"It is too late now for your father to say that our engagement must be
given up.  You are of age, and I claim you as mine.  If anything is
done to make you unhappy,--that is a reason for hastening our marriage."

An unmistakable delight shone forth from the blue eyes that met his,
and the radiance seemed to light up all his future with mild sunshine.
Ideal happiness (of the kind known in the Arabian Nights, in which you
are invited to step from the labor and discord of the street into a
paradise where everything is given to you and nothing claimed) seemed
to be an affair of a few weeks' waiting, more or less.

"Why should we defer it?" he said, with ardent insistence.  "I have
taken the house now: everything else can soon be got ready--can it
not?  You will not mind about new clothes.  Those can be bought
afterwards."

"What original notions you clever men have!" said Rosamond, dimpling
with more thorough laughter than usual at this humorous incongruity.
"This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought
after marriage."

"But you don't mean to say you would insist on my waiting months for
the sake of clothes?" said Lydgate, half thinking that Rosamond was
tormenting him prettily, and half fearing that she really shrank from
speedy marriage.  "Remember, we are looking forward to a better sort of
happiness even than this--being continually together, independent of
others, and ordering our lives as we will.  Come, dear, tell me how
soon you can be altogether mine."

There was a serious pleading in Lydgate's tone, as if he felt that she
would be injuring him by any fantastic delays.  Rosamond became serious
too, and slightly meditative; in fact, she was going through many
intricacies of lace-edging and hosiery and petticoat-tucking, in order
to give an answer that would at least be approximative.

"Six weeks would be ample--say so, Rosamond," insisted Lydgate,
releasing her hands to put his arm gently round her.

One little hand immediately went to pat her hair, while she gave her
neck a meditative turn, and then said seriously--

"There would be the house-linen and the furniture to be prepared.
Still, mamma could see to those while we were away."

"Yes, to be sure.  We must be away a week or so."

"Oh, more than that!" said Rosamond, earnestly.  She was thinking of
her evening dresses for the visit to Sir Godwin Lydgate's, which she
had long been secretly hoping for as a delightful employment of at
least one quarter of the honeymoon, even if she deferred her
introduction to the uncle who was a doctor of divinity (also a pleasing
though sober kind of rank, when sustained by blood). She looked at her
lover with some wondering remonstrance as she spoke, and he readily
understood that she might wish to lengthen the sweet time of double
solitude.

"Whatever you wish, my darling, when the day is fixed.  But let us take
a decided course, and put an end to any discomfort you may be
suffering.  Six weeks!--I am sure they would be ample."

"I could certainly hasten the work," said Rosamond.  "Will you, then,
mention it to papa?--I think it would be better to write to him." She
blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk
forth happily among them in the transcendent evening light: is there
not a soul beyond utterance, half nymph, half child, in those delicate
petals which glow and breathe about the centres of deep color?

He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and
they sat quite still for many minutes which flowed by them like a small
gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it.  Rosamond thought
that no one could be more in love than she was; and Lydgate thought
that after all his wild mistakes and absurd credulity, he had found
perfect womanhood--felt as if already breathed upon by exquisite wedded
affection such as would be bestowed by an accomplished creature who
venerated his high musings and momentous labors and would never
interfere with them; who would create order in the home and accounts
with still magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and
transform life into romance at any moment; who was instructed to the
true womanly limit and not a hair's-breadth beyond--docile, therefore,
and ready to carry out behests which came from that limit.  It was
plainer now than ever that his notion of remaining much longer a
bachelor had been a mistake: marriage would not be an obstruction but a
furtherance.  And happening the next day to accompany a patient to
Brassing, he saw a dinner-service there which struck him as so exactly
the right thing that he bought it at once.  It saved time to do these
things just when you thought of them, and Lydgate hated ugly crockery.
The dinner-service in question was expensive, but that might be in the
nature of dinner-services. Furnishing was necessarily expensive; but
then it had to be done only once.

"It must be lovely," said Mrs. Vincy, when Lydgate mentioned his
purchase with some descriptive touches.  "Just what Rosy ought to have.
I trust in heaven it won't be broken!"

"One must hire servants who will not break things," said Lydgate.
(Certainly, this was reasoning with an imperfect vision of sequences.
But at that period there was no sort of reasoning which was not more or
less sanctioned by men of science.)

Of course it was unnecessary to defer the mention of anything to mamma,
who did not readily take views that were not cheerful, and being a
happy wife herself, had hardly any feeling but pride in her daughter's
marriage.  But Rosamond had good reasons for suggesting to Lydgate that
papa should be appealed to in writing.  She prepared for the arrival of
the letter by walking with her papa to the warehouse the next morning,
and telling him on the way that Mr. Lydgate wished to be married soon.

"Nonsense, my dear!" said Mr. Vincy.  "What has he got to marry on?
You'd much better give up the engagement.  I've told you so pretty
plainly before this.  What have you had such an education for, if you
are to go and marry a poor man?  It's a cruel thing for a father to
see."

"Mr. Lydgate is not poor, papa.  He bought Mr. Peacock's practice,
which, they say, is worth eight or nine hundred a-year."

"Stuff and nonsense!  What's buying a practice?  He might as well buy
next year's swallows.  It'll all slip through his fingers."

"On the contrary, papa, he will increase the practice.  See how he has
been called in by the Chettams and Casaubons."

"I hope he knows I shan't give anything--with this disappointment about
Fred, and Parliament going to be dissolved, and machine-breaking
everywhere, and an election coming on--"

"Dear papa! what can that have to do with my marriage?"

"A pretty deal to do with it!  We may all be ruined for what I know--the
country's in that state!  Some say it's the end of the world, and
be hanged if I don't think it looks like it!  Anyhow, it's not a time
for me to be drawing money out of my business, and I should wish
Lydgate to know that."

"I am sure he expects nothing, papa.  And he has such very high
connections: he is sure to rise in one way or another.  He is engaged
in making scientific discoveries."

Mr. Vincy was silent.

"I cannot give up my only prospect of happiness, papa. Mr. Lydgate is a
gentleman.  I could never love any one who was not a perfect gentleman.
You would not like me to go into a consumption, as Arabella Hawley did.
And you know that I never change my mind."

Again papa was silent.

"Promise me, papa, that you will consent to what we wish.  We shall
never give each other up; and you know that you have always objected to
long courtships and late marriages."

There was a little more urgency of this kind, till Mr. Vincy said,
"Well, well, child, he must write to me first before I can answer
him,"--and Rosamond was certain that she had gained her point.

Mr. Vincy's answer consisted chiefly in a demand that Lydgate should
insure his life--a demand immediately conceded.  This was a
delightfully reassuring idea supposing that Lydgate died, but in the
mean time not a self-supporting idea.  However, it seemed to make
everything comfortable about Rosamond's marriage; and the necessary
purchases went on with much spirit.  Not without prudential
considerations, however.  A bride (who is going to visit at a
baronet's) must have a few first-rate pocket-handkerchiefs; but beyond
the absolutely necessary half-dozen, Rosamond contented herself without
the very highest style of embroidery and Valenciennes.  Lydgate also,
finding that his sum of eight hundred pounds had been considerably
reduced since he had come to Middlemarch, restrained his inclination
for some plate of an old pattern which was shown to him when he went
into Kibble's establishment at Brassing to buy forks and spoons.  He
was too proud to act as if he presupposed that Mr. Vincy would advance
money to provide furniture; and though, since it would not be
necessary to pay for everything at once, some bills would be left
standing over, he did not waste time in conjecturing how much his
father-in-law would give in the form of dowry, to make payment easy.
He was not going to do anything extravagant, but the requisite things
must be bought, and it would be bad economy to buy them of a poor
quality.  All these matters were by the bye.  Lydgate foresaw that
science and his profession were the objects he should alone pursue
enthusiastically; but he could not imagine himself pursuing them in
such a home as Wrench had--the doors all open, the oil-cloth worn, the
children in soiled pinafores, and lunch lingering in the form of bones,
black-handled knives, and willow-pattern. But Wrench had a wretched
lymphatic wife who made a mummy of herself indoors in a large shawl;
and he must have altogether begun with an ill-chosen domestic apparatus.

Rosamond, however, was on her side much occupied with conjectures,
though her quick imitative perception warned her against betraying them
too crudely.

"I shall like so much to know your family," she said one day, when the
wedding journey was being discussed.  "We might perhaps take a
direction that would allow us to see them as we returned.  Which of
your uncles do you like best?"

"Oh,--my uncle Godwin, I think.  He is a good-natured old fellow."

"You were constantly at his house at Quallingham, when you were a boy,
were you not?  I should so like to see the old spot and everything you
were used to.  Does he know you are going to be married?"

"No," said Lydgate, carelessly, turning in his chair and rubbing his
hair up.

"Do send him word of it, you naughty undutiful nephew.  He will perhaps
ask you to take me to Quallingham; and then you could show me about the
grounds, and I could imagine you there when you were a boy.  Remember,
you see me in my home, just as it has been since I was a child.  It is
not fair that I should be so ignorant of yours.  But perhaps you would
be a little ashamed of me.  I forgot that."

Lydgate smiled at her tenderly, and really accepted the suggestion that
the proud pleasure of showing so charming a bride was worth some
trouble.  And now he came to think of it, he would like to see the old
spots with Rosamond.

"I will write to him, then.  But my cousins are bores."

It seemed magnificent to Rosamond to be able to speak so slightingly of
a baronet's family, and she felt much contentment in the prospect of
being able to estimate them contemptuously on her own account.

But mamma was near spoiling all, a day or two later, by saying--

"I hope your uncle Sir Godwin will not look down on Rosy, Mr. Lydgate.
I should think he would do something handsome.  A thousand or two can
be nothing to a baronet."

"Mamma!" said Rosamond, blushing deeply; and Lydgate pitied her so much
that he remained silent and went to the other end of the room to
examine a print curiously, as if he had been absent-minded. Mamma had a
little filial lecture afterwards, and was docile as usual.  But
Rosamond reflected that if any of those high-bred cousins who were
bores, should be induced to visit Middlemarch, they would see many
things in her own family which might shock them.  Hence it seemed
desirable that Lydgate should by-and-by get some first-rate position
elsewhere than in Middlemarch; and this could hardly be difficult in
the case of a man who had a titled uncle and could make discoveries.
Lydgate, you perceive, had talked fervidly to Rosamond of his hopes as
to the highest uses of his life, and had found it delightful to be
listened to by a creature who would bring him the sweet furtherance of
satisfying affection--beauty--repose--such help as our thoughts get
from the summer sky and the flower-fringed meadows.

Lydgate relied much on the psychological difference between what for
the sake of variety I will call goose and gander: especially on the
innate submissiveness of the goose as beautifully corresponding to the
strength of the gander.



    "Thrice happy she that is so well assured
     Unto herself and settled so in heart
     That neither will for better be allured
     Ne fears to worse with any chance to start,
     But like a steddy ship doth strongly part
     The raging waves and keeps her course aright;
     Ne aught for tempest doth from it depart,
     Ne aught for fairer weather's false delight.
     Such self-assurance need not fear the spight
     Of grudging foes; ne favour seek of friends;
     But in the stay of her own stedfast might
     Neither to one herself nor other bends.
        Most happy she that most assured doth rest,
        But he most happy who such one loves best."
                                               --SPENSER.


The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general election
or the end of the world that was coming on, now that George the Fourth
was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally
depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type of the
uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time.  With the glow-worm
lights of country places, how could men see which were their own
thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures,
of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather
than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies
which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest,
and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors?
Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous
position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given
up the "Pioneer"--which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in
the van of progress--because it had taken Peel's side about the
Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of
Jesuitry and Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the "Trumpet,"
which--since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of
the public mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)--had become
feeble in its blowing.

It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the "Pioneer," when
the crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance to
public action on the part of men whose minds had from long experience
acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of judgment as well
as tolerance, dispassionateness as well as energy--in fact, all those
qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the
least disposed to share lodgings.

Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely
than usual, and leaving much uncertainty as to its ultimate channel,
was heard to say in Mr. Hawley's office that the article in question
"emanated" from Brooke of Tipton, and that Brooke had secretly bought
the "Pioneer" some months ago.

"That means mischief, eh?" said Mr. Hawley.  "He's got the freak of
being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise.
So much the worse for him.  I've had my eye on him for some time.  He
shall be prettily pumped upon.  He's a damned bad landlord.  What
business has an old county man to come currying favor with a low set of
dark-blue freemen?  As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing
himself.  It would be worth our paying for."

"I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who
can write the highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything
in the London papers.  And he means to take very high ground on Reform."

"Let Brooke reform his rent-roll. He's a cursed old screw, and the
buildings all over his estate are going to rack.  I suppose this young
fellow is some loose fish from London."

"His name is Ladislaw.  He is said to be of foreign extraction."

"I know the sort," said Mr. Hawley; "some emissary.  He'll begin with
flourishing about the Rights of Man and end with murdering a wench.
That's the style."

"You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley," said Mr. Hackbutt,
foreseeing some political disagreement with his family lawyer.  "I
myself should never favor immoderate views--in fact I take my stand
with Huskisson--but I cannot blind myself to the consideration that the
non-representation of large towns--"

"Large towns be damned!" said Mr. Hawley, impatient of exposition.  "I
know a little too much about Middlemarch elections.  Let 'em quash
every pocket borough to-morrow, and bring in every mushroom town in the
kingdom--they'll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament.
I go upon facts."

Mr. Hawley's disgust at the notion of the "Pioneer" being edited by an
emissary, and of Brooke becoming actively political--as if a tortoise
of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and
become rampant--was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members
of Mr. Brooke's own family.  The result had oozed forth gradually, like
the discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of
manufacture which will be permanently under your nostrils without legal
remedy.  The "Pioneer" had been secretly bought even before Will
Ladislaw's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in
the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which
did not pay; and in the interval since Mr. Brooke had written his
invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world
at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but had
hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover.

The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which
proved greater even than he had anticipated.  For it seemed that Will
was not only at home in all those artistic and literary subjects which
Mr. Brooke had gone into at one time, but that he was strikingly ready
at seizing the points of the political situation, and dealing with them
in that large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to
quotation and general effectiveness of treatment.

"He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know," Mr. Brooke took an
opportunity of saying, for the gratification of Mr. Casaubon.  "I don't
mean as to anything objectionable--laxities or atheism, or anything of
that kind, you know--Ladislaw's sentiments in every way I am sure are
good--indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night.  But he
has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation--a
fine thing under guidance--under guidance, you know.  I think I shall
be able to put him on the right tack; and I am the more pleased because
he is a relation of yours, Casaubon."

If the right tack implied anything more precise than the rest of Mr.
Brooke's speech, Mr. Casaubon silently hoped that it referred to some
occupation at a great distance from Lowick.  He had disliked Will while
he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will
had declined his help.  That is the way with us when we have any uneasy
jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the
burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons
for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any
one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves.  Having
the scruples of rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of
injuring him--rather we meet all his claims on us by active benefits;
and the drawing of cheques for him, being a superiority which he must
recognize, gives our bitterness a milder infusion.  Now Mr. Casaubon
had been deprived of that superiority (as anything more than a
remembrance) in a sudden, capricious manner.  His antipathy to Will did
not spring from the common jealousy of a winter-worn husband: it was
something deeper, bred by his lifelong claims and discontents; but
Dorothea, now that she was present--Dorothea, as a young wife who
herself had shown an offensive capability of criticism, necessarily
gave concentration to the uneasiness which had before been vague.

Will Ladislaw on his side felt that his dislike was flourishing at the
expense of his gratitude, and spent much inward discourse in justifying
the dislike.  Casaubon hated him--he knew that very well; on his first
entrance he could discern a bitterness in the mouth and a venom in the
glance which would almost justify declaring war in spite of past
benefits.  He was much obliged to Casaubon in the past, but really the
act of marrying this wife was a set-off against the obligation.  It was
a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's
self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against
another.  And Casaubon had done a wrong to Dorothea in marrying her.  A
man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to grow
gray crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a
girl into his companionship.  "It is the most horrible of
virgin-sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were
Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail.  But
he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her--if he gave
up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know
that she had one slave in the world, Will had--to use Sir Thomas
Browne's phrase--a "passionate prodigality" of statement both to
himself and others.  The simple truth was that nothing then invited him
so strongly as the presence of Dorothea.

Invitations of the formal kind had been wanting, however, for Will had
never been asked to go to Lowick.  Mr. Brooke, indeed, confident of
doing everything agreeable which Casaubon, poor fellow, was too much
absorbed to think of, had arranged to bring Ladislaw to Lowick several
times (not neglecting meanwhile to introduce him elsewhere on every
opportunity as "a young relative of Casaubon's"). And though Will had
not seen Dorothea alone, their interviews had been enough to restore
her former sense of young companionship with one who was cleverer than
herself, yet seemed ready to be swayed by her.  Poor Dorothea before
her marriage had never found much room in other minds for what she
cared most to say; and she had not, as we know, enjoyed her husband's
superior instruction so much as she had expected.  If she spoke with
any keenness of interest to Mr. Casaubon, he heard her with an air of
patience as if she had given a quotation from the Delectus familiar to
him from his tender years, and sometimes mentioned curtly what ancient
sects or personages had held similar ideas, as if there were too much
of that sort in stock already; at other times he would inform her that
she was mistaken, and reassert what her remark had questioned.

But Will Ladislaw always seemed to see more in what she said than she
herself saw.  Dorothea had little vanity, but she had the ardent
woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul.
Hence the mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like a lunette
opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny
air; and this pleasure began to nullify her original alarm at what her
husband might think about the introduction of Will as her uncle's
guest.  On this subject Mr. Casaubon had remained dumb.

But Will wanted to talk with Dorothea alone, and was impatient of slow
circumstance.  However slight the terrestrial intercourse between Dante
and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura, time changes the proportion of
things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets and
more conversation.  Necessity excused stratagem, but stratagem was
limited by the dread of offending Dorothea.  He found out at last that
he wanted to take a particular sketch at Lowick; and one morning when
Mr. Brooke had to drive along the Lowick road on his way to the county
town, Will asked to be set down with his sketch-book and camp-stool at
Lowick, and without announcing himself at the Manor settled himself to
sketch in a position where he must see Dorothea if she came out to
walk--and he knew that she usually walked an hour in the morning.

But the stratagem was defeated by the weather.  Clouds gathered with
treacherous quickness, the rain came down, and Will was obliged to take
shelter in the house.  He intended, on the strength of relationship, to
go into the drawing-room and wait there without being announced; and
seeing his old acquaintance the butler in the hall, he said, "Don't
mention that I am here, Pratt; I will wait till luncheon; I know Mr.
Casaubon does not like to be disturbed when he is in the library."

"Master is out, sir; there's only Mrs. Casaubon in the library.  I'd
better tell her you're here, sir," said Pratt, a red-cheeked man given
to lively converse with Tantripp, and often agreeing with her that it
must be dull for Madam.

"Oh, very well; this confounded rain has hindered me from sketching,"
said Will, feeling so happy that he affected indifference with
delightful ease.

In another minute he was in the library, and Dorothea was meeting him
with her sweet unconstrained smile.

"Mr. Casaubon has gone to the Archdeacon's," she said, at once.  "I
don't know whether he will be at home again long before dinner.  He was
uncertain how long he should be.  Did you want to say anything
particular to him?"

"No; I came to sketch, but the rain drove me in.  Else I would not have
disturbed you yet.  I supposed that Mr. Casaubon was here, and I know
he dislikes interruption at this hour."

"I am indebted to the rain, then.  I am so glad to see you." Dorothea
uttered these common words with the simple sincerity of an unhappy
child, visited at school.

"I really came for the chance of seeing you alone," said Will,
mysteriously forced to be just as simple as she was.  He could not stay
to ask himself, why not?  "I wanted to talk about things, as we did in
Rome.  It always makes a difference when other people are present."

"Yes," said Dorothea, in her clear full tone of assent.  "Sit down."
She seated herself on a dark ottoman with the brown books behind her,
looking in her plain dress of some thin woollen-white material, without
a single ornament on her besides her wedding-ring, as if she were under
a vow to be different from all other women; and Will sat down opposite
her at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and
delicate but rather petulant profile, with its defiant curves of lip
and chin.  Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers
which had opened then and there.  Dorothea for the moment forgot her
husband's mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at
her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had
found receptive; for in looking backward through sadness she
exaggerated a past solace.

"I have often thought that I should like to talk to you again," she
said, immediately.  "It seems strange to me how many things I said to
you."

"I remember them all," said Will, with the unspeakable content in his
soul of feeling that he was in the presence of a creature worthy to be
perfectly loved.  I think his own feelings at that moment were perfect,
for we mortals have our divine moments, when love is satisfied in the
completeness of the beloved object.

"I have tried to learn a great deal since we were in Rome," said
Dorothea.  "I can read Latin a little, and I am beginning to understand
just a little Greek.  I can help Mr. Casaubon better now.  I can find
out references for him and save his eyes in many ways.  But it is very
difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way
to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired."

"If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake
them before he is decrepit," said Will, with irrepressible quickness.
But through certain sensibilities Dorothea was as quick as he, and
seeing her face change, he added, immediately, "But it is quite true
that the best minds have been sometimes overstrained in working out
their ideas."

"You correct me," said Dorothea.  "I expressed myself ill.  I should
have said that those who have great thoughts get too much worn in
working them out.  I used to feel about that, even when I was a little
girl; and it always seemed to me that the use I should like to make of
my life would be to help some one who did great works, so that his
burthen might be lighter."

Dorothea was led on to this bit of autobiography without any sense of
making a revelation.  But she had never before said anything to Will
which threw so strong a light on her marriage.  He did not shrug his
shoulders; and for want of that muscular outlet he thought the more
irritably of beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and other emptinesses
ecclesiastically enshrined.  Also he had to take care that his speech
should not betray that thought.

"But you may easily carry the help too far," he said, "and get
over-wrought yourself.  Are you not too much shut up?  You already look
paler.  It would be better for Mr. Casaubon to have a secretary; he
could easily get a man who would do half his work for him.  It would
save him more effectually, and you need only help him in lighter ways."

"How can you think of that?" said Dorothea, in a tone of earnest
remonstrance.  "I should have no happiness if I did not help him in his
work.  What could I do?  There is no good to be done in Lowick.  The
only thing I desire is to help him more.  And he objects to a
secretary: please not to mention that again."

"Certainly not, now I know your feeling.  But I have heard both Mr.
Brooke and Sir James Chettam express the same wish."

"Yes?" said Dorothea, "but they don't understand--they want me to be a
great deal on horseback, and have the garden altered and new
conservatories, to fill up my days.  I thought you could understand
that one's mind has other wants," she added, rather
impatiently--"besides, Mr. Casaubon cannot bear to hear of a secretary."

"My mistake is excusable," said Will.  "In old days I used to hear Mr.
Casaubon speak as if he looked forward to having a secretary.  Indeed
he held out the prospect of that office to me.  But I turned out to
be--not good enough for it."

Dorothea was trying to extract out of this an excuse for her husband's
evident repulsion, as she said, with a playful smile, "You were not a
steady worker enough."

"No," said Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of
a spirited horse.  And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to
give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory,
he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any
one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing.  He is
too doubtful--too uncertain of himself.  I may not be good for much,
but he dislikes me because I disagree with him."

Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our
tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before
general intentions can be brought to bear.  And it was too intolerable
that Casaubon's dislike of him should not be fairly accounted for to
Dorothea.  Yet when he had spoken he was rather uneasy as to the effect
on her.

But Dorothea was strangely quiet--not immediately indignant, as she had
been on a like occasion in Rome.  And the cause lay deep.  She was no
longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting
herself to their clearest perception; and now when she looked steadily
at her husband's failure, still more at his possible consciousness of
failure, she seemed to be looking along the one track where duty became
tenderness.  Will's want of reticence might have been met with more
severity, if he had not already been recommended to her mercy by her
husband's dislike, which must seem hard to her till she saw better
reason for it.

She did not answer at once, but after looking down ruminatingly she
said, with some earnestness, "Mr. Casaubon must have overcome his
dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is
admirable."

"Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters.  It was an
abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited
because she made what they called a mesalliance, though there was
nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish
refugee who gave lessons for his bread."

"I wish I knew all about her!" said Dorothea.  "I wonder how she bore
the change from wealth to poverty: I wonder whether she was happy with
her husband!  Do you know much about them?"

"No; only that my grandfather was a patriot--a bright fellow--could
speak many languages--musical--got his bread by teaching all sorts of
things.  They both died rather early.  And I never knew much of my
father, beyond what my mother told me; but he inherited the musical
talents.  I remember his slow walk and his long thin hands; and one day
remains with me when he was lying ill, and I was very hungry, and had
only a little bit of bread."

"Ah, what a different life from mine!" said Dorothea, with keen
interest, clasping her hands on her lap.  "I have always had too much
of everything.  But tell me how it was--Mr. Casaubon could not have
known about you then."

"No; but my father had made himself known to Mr. Casaubon, and that was
my last hungry day.  My father died soon after, and my mother and I
were well taken care of.  Mr. Casaubon always expressly recognized it
as his duty to take care of us because of the harsh injustice which had
been shown to his mother's sister.  But now I am telling you what is
not new to you."

In his inmost soul Will was conscious of wishing to tell Dorothea what
was rather new even in his own construction of things--namely, that
Mr. Casaubon had never done more than pay a debt towards him.  Will was
much too good a fellow to be easy under the sense of being ungrateful.
And when gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways
of escaping from its bonds.

"No," answered Dorothea; "Mr. Casaubon has always avoided dwelling on
his own honorable actions."  She did not feel that her husband's
conduct was depreciated; but this notion of what justice had required
in his relations with Will Ladislaw took strong hold on her mind.
After a moment's pause, she added, "He had never told me that he
supported your mother.  Is she still living?"

"No; she died by an accident--a fall--four years ago.  It is curious
that my mother, too, ran away from her family, but not for the sake of
her husband.  She never would tell me anything about her family, except
that she forsook them to get her own living--went on the stage, in
fact.  She was a dark-eyed creature, with crisp ringlets, and never
seemed to be getting old.  You see I come of rebellious blood on both
sides," Will ended, smiling brightly at Dorothea, while she was still
looking with serious intentness before her, like a child seeing a drama
for the first time.

But her face, too, broke into a smile as she said, "That is your
apology, I suppose, for having yourself been rather rebellious; I mean,
to Mr. Casaubon's wishes.  You must remember that you have not done
what he thought best for you.  And if he dislikes you--you were
speaking of dislike a little while ago--but I should rather say, if he
has shown any painful feelings towards you, you must consider how
sensitive he has become from the wearing effect of study.  Perhaps,"
she continued, getting into a pleading tone, "my uncle has not told you
how serious Mr. Casaubon's illness was.  It would be very petty of us
who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from
those who carry a weight of trial."

"You teach me better," said Will.  "I will never grumble on that
subject again."  There was a gentleness in his tone which came from the
unutterable contentment of perceiving--what Dorothea was hardly
conscious of--that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity
and loyalty towards her husband.  Will was ready to adore her pity and
loyalty, if she would associate himself with her in manifesting them.
"I have really sometimes been a perverse fellow," he went on, "but I
will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you would
disapprove."

"That is very good of you," said Dorothea, with another open smile.  "I
shall have a little kingdom then, where I shall give laws.  But you
will soon go away, out of my rule, I imagine.  You will soon be tired
of staying at the Grange."

"That is a point I wanted to mention to you--one of the reasons why I
wished to speak to you alone.  Mr. Brooke proposes that I should stay
in this neighborhood.  He has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers,
and he wishes me to conduct that, and also to help him in other ways."

"Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?" said
Dorothea.

"Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and
not settling to anything.  And here is something offered to me.  If you
would not like me to accept it, I will give it up.  Otherwise I would
rather stay in this part of the country than go away.  I belong to
nobody anywhere else."

"I should like you to stay very much," said Dorothea, at once, as
simply and readily as she had spoken at Rome.  There was not the shadow
of a reason in her mind at the moment why she should not say so.

"Then I _will_ stay," said Ladislaw, shaking his head backward, rising
and going towards the window, as if to see whether the rain had ceased.

But the next moment, Dorothea, according to a habit which was getting
continually stronger, began to reflect that her husband felt
differently from herself, and she colored deeply under the double
embarrassment of having expressed what might be in opposition to her
husband's feeling, and of having to suggest this opposition to Will.
His face was not turned towards her, and this made it easier to say--

"But my opinion is of little consequence on such a subject.  I think
you should be guided by Mr. Casaubon.  I spoke without thinking of
anything else than my own feeling, which has nothing to do with the
real question.  But it now occurs to me--perhaps Mr. Casaubon might
see that the proposal was not wise.  Can you not wait now and mention
it to him?"

"I can't wait to-day," said Will, inwardly seared by the possibility
that Mr. Casaubon would enter.  "The rain is quite over now.  I told
Mr. Brooke not to call for me: I would rather walk the five miles.  I
shall strike across Halsell Common, and see the gleams on the wet
grass.  I like that."

He approached her to shake hands quite hurriedly, longing but not
daring to say, "Don't mention the subject to Mr. Casaubon." No, he
dared not, could not say it.  To ask her to be less simple and direct
would be like breathing on the crystal that you want to see the light
through.  And there was always the other great dread--of himself
becoming dimmed and forever ray-shorn in her eyes.

"I wish you could have stayed," said Dorothea, with a touch of
mournfulness, as she rose and put out her hand.  She also had her
thought which she did not like to express:--Will certainly ought to
lose no time in consulting Mr. Casaubon's wishes, but for her to urge
this might seem an undue dictation.

So they only said "Good-by," and Will quitted the house, striking
across the fields so as not to run any risk of encountering Mr.
Casaubon's carriage, which, however, did not appear at the gate until
four o'clock. That was an unpropitious hour for coming home: it was too
early to gain the moral support under ennui of dressing his person for
dinner, and too late to undress his mind of the day's frivolous
ceremony and affairs, so as to be prepared for a good plunge into the
serious business of study.  On such occasions he usually threw into an
easy-chair in the library, and allowed Dorothea to read the London
papers to him, closing his eyes the while.  To-day, however, he
declined that relief, observing that he had already had too many public
details urged upon him; but he spoke more cheerfully than usual, when
Dorothea asked about his fatigue, and added with that air of formal
effort which never forsook him even when he spoke without his waistcoat
and cravat--

"I have had the gratification of meeting my former acquaintance, Dr.
Spanning, to-day, and of being praised by one who is himself a worthy
recipient of praise.  He spoke very handsomely of my late tractate on
the Egyptian Mysteries,--using, in fact, terms which it would not
become me to repeat."  In uttering the last clause, Mr. Casaubon leaned
over the elbow of his chair, and swayed his head up and down,
apparently as a muscular outlet instead of that recapitulation which
would not have been becoming.

"I am very glad you have had that pleasure," said Dorothea, delighted
to see her husband less weary than usual at this hour.  "Before you
came I had been regretting that you happened to be out to-day."

"Why so, my dear?" said Mr. Casaubon, throwing himself backward again.

"Because Mr. Ladislaw has been here; and he has mentioned a proposal of
my uncle's which I should like to know your opinion of." Her husband
she felt was really concerned in this question.  Even with her
ignorance of the world she had a vague impression that the position
offered to Will was out of keeping with his family connections, and
certainly Mr. Casaubon had a claim to be consulted.  He did not speak,
but merely bowed.

"Dear uncle, you know, has many projects.  It appears that he has
bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers, and he has asked Mr. Ladislaw
to stay in this neighborhood and conduct the paper for him, besides
helping him in other ways."

Dorothea looked at her husband while she spoke, but he had at first
blinked and finally closed his eyes, as if to save them; while his lips
became more tense.  "What is your opinion?" she added, rather timidly,
after a slight pause.

"Did Mr. Ladislaw come on purpose to ask my opinion?" said Mr.
Casaubon, opening his eyes narrowly with a knife-edged look at
Dorothea.  She was really uncomfortable on the point he inquired about,
but she only became a little more serious, and her eyes did not swerve.

"No," she answered immediately, "he did not say that he came to ask
your opinion.  But when he mentioned the proposal, he of course
expected me to tell you of it."

Mr. Casaubon was silent.

"I feared that you might feel some objection.  But certainly a young
man with so much talent might be very useful to my uncle--might help
him to do good in a better way.  And Mr. Ladislaw wishes to have some
fixed occupation.  He has been blamed, he says, for not seeking
something of that kind, and he would like to stay in this neighborhood
because no one cares for him elsewhere."

Dorothea felt that this was a consideration to soften her husband.
However, he did not speak, and she presently recurred to Dr. Spanning
and the Archdeacon's breakfast.  But there was no longer sunshine on
these subjects.

The next morning, without Dorothea's knowledge, Mr. Casaubon despatched
the following letter, beginning "Dear Mr. Ladislaw" (he had always
before addressed him as "Will"):--


"Mrs. Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and
(according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your part been
in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this
neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my
own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and
warrantable in me when that effect is viewed under the influence of
legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me when the same effect is
considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once that
your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly
offensive to me.  That I have some claim to the exercise of a veto
here, would not, I believe, be denied by any reasonable person
cognizant of the relations between us: relations which, though thrown
into the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby annulled in
their character of determining antecedents.  I will not here make
reflections on any person's judgment.  It is enough for me to point out
to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties
which should hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any
wise conspicuous in this vicinity in a status not only much beneath my
own, but associated at best with the sciolism of literary or political
adventurers.  At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from
further reception at my house.

                Yours faithfully,
                        "EDWARD CASAUBON."


Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was innocently at work towards the further
embitterment of her husband; dwelling, with a sympathy that grew to
agitation, on what Will had told her about his parents and
grandparents.  Any private hours in her day were usually spent in her
blue-green boudoir, and she had come to be very fond of its pallid
quaintness.  Nothing had been outwardly altered there; but while the
summer had gradually advanced over the western fields beyond the avenue
of elms, the bare room had gathered within it those memories of an
inward life which fill the air as with a cloud of good or bad angels,
the invisible yet active forms of our spiritual triumphs or our
spiritual falls.  She had been so used to struggle for and to find
resolve in looking along the avenue towards the arch of western light
that the vision itself had gained a communicating power.  Even the pale
stag seemed to have reminding glances and to mean mutely, "Yes, we
know." And the group of delicately touched miniatures had made an
audience as of beings no longer disturbed about their own earthly lot,
but still humanly interested.  Especially the mysterious "Aunt Julia"
about whom Dorothea had never found it easy to question her husband.

And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had
gathered round that Aunt Julia who was Will's grandmother; the presence
of that delicate miniature, so like a living face that she knew,
helping to concentrate her feelings.  What a wrong, to cut off the girl
from the family protection and inheritance only because she had chosen
a man who was poor!  Dorothea, early troubling her elders with
questions about the facts around her, had wrought herself into some
independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons why
eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed: those
reasons, impressing her with a certain awe, might be weightier than she
knew, but here was a question of ties which left them uninfringed.
Here was a daughter whose child--even according to the ordinary aping
of aristocratic institutions by people who are no more aristocratic
than retired grocers, and who have no more land to "keep together" than
a lawn and a paddock--would have a prior claim.  Was inheritance a
question of liking or of responsibility?  All the energy of Dorothea's
nature went on the side of responsibility--the fulfilment of claims
founded on our own deeds, such as marriage and parentage.

It was true, she said to herself, that Mr. Casaubon had a debt to the
Ladislaws--that he had to pay back what the Ladislaws had been wronged
of.  And now she began to think of her husband's will, which had been
made at the time of their marriage, leaving the bulk of his property to
her, with proviso in case of her having children.  That ought to be
altered; and no time ought to be lost.  This very question which had
just arisen about Will Ladislaw's occupation, was the occasion for
placing things on a new, right footing.  Her husband, she felt sure,
according to all his previous conduct, would be ready to take the just
view, if she proposed it--she, in whose interest an unfair
concentration of the property had been urged.  His sense of right had
surmounted and would continue to surmount anything that might be called
antipathy.  She suspected that her uncle's scheme was disapproved by
Mr. Casaubon, and this made it seem all the more opportune that a fresh
understanding should be begun, so that instead of Will's starting
penniless and accepting the first function that offered itself, he
should find himself in possession of a rightful income which should be
paid by her husband during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of
the will, should be secured at his death.  The vision of all this as
what ought to be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of
daylight, waking her from her previous stupidity and incurious
self-absorbed ignorance about her husband's relation to others.  Will
Ladislaw had refused Mr. Casaubon's future aid on a ground that no
longer appeared right to her; and Mr. Casaubon had never himself seen
fully what was the claim upon him.  "But he will!" said Dorothea.  "The
great strength of his character lies here.  And what are we doing with
our money?  We make no use of half of our income.  My own money buys me
nothing but an uneasy conscience."

There was a peculiar fascination for Dorothea in this division of
property intended for herself, and always regarded by her as excessive.
She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to others--likely to
tread in the wrong places, as Celia had warned her; yet her blindness
to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by
the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear.

The thoughts which had gathered vividness in the solitude of her
boudoir occupied her incessantly through the day on which Mr. Casaubon
had sent his letter to Will.  Everything seemed hindrance to her till
she could find an opportunity of opening her heart to her husband.  To
his preoccupied mind all subjects were to be approached gently, and she
had never since his illness lost from her consciousness the dread of
agitating him.  But when young ardor is set brooding over the
conception of a prompt deed, the deed itself seems to start forth with
independent life, mastering ideal obstacles.  The day passed in a
sombre fashion, not unusual, though Mr. Casaubon was perhaps unusually
silent; but there were hours of the night which might be counted on as
opportunities of conversation; for Dorothea, when aware of her
husband's sleeplessness, had established a habit of rising, lighting a
candle, and reading him to sleep again.  And this night she was from
the beginning sleepless, excited by resolves.  He slept as usual for a
few hours, but she had risen softly and had sat in the darkness for
nearly an hour before he said--

"Dorothea, since you are up, will you light a candle?"

"Do you feel ill, dear?" was her first question, as she obeyed him.

"No, not at all; but I shall be obliged, since you are up, if you will
read me a few pages of Lowth."

"May I talk to you a little instead?" said Dorothea.

"Certainly."

"I have been thinking about money all day--that I have always had too
much, and especially the prospect of too much."

"These, my dear Dorothea, are providential arrangements."

"But if one has too much in consequence of others being wronged, it
seems to me that the divine voice which tells us to set that wrong
right must be obeyed."

"What, my love, is the bearing of your remark?"

"That you have been too liberal in arrangements for me--I mean, with
regard to property; and that makes me unhappy."

"How so?  I have none but comparatively distant connections."

"I have been led to think about your aunt Julia, and how she was left
in poverty only because she married a poor man, an act which was not
disgraceful, since he was not unworthy.  It was on that ground, I know,
that you educated Mr. Ladislaw and provided for his mother."

Dorothea waited a few moments for some answer that would help her
onward.  None came, and her next words seemed the more forcible to her,
falling clear upon the dark silence.

"But surely we should regard his claim as a much greater one, even to
the half of that property which I know that you have destined for me.
And I think he ought at once to be provided for on that understanding.
It is not right that he should be in the dependence of poverty while we
are rich.  And if there is any objection to the proposal he mentioned,
the giving him his true place and his true share would set aside any
motive for his accepting it."

"Mr. Ladislaw has probably been speaking to you on this subject?" said
Mr. Casaubon, with a certain biting quickness not habitual to him.

"Indeed, no!" said Dorothea, earnestly.  "How can you imagine it, since
he has so lately declined everything from you?  I fear you think too
hardly of him, dear.  He only told me a little about his parents and
grandparents, and almost all in answer to my questions.  You are so
good, so just--you have done everything you thought to be right.  But
it seems to me clear that more than that is right; and I must speak
about it, since I am the person who would get what is called benefit by
that 'more' not being done."

There was a perceptible pause before Mr. Casaubon replied, not quickly
as before, but with a still more biting emphasis.

"Dorothea, my love, this is not the first occasion, but it were well
that it should be the last, on which you have assumed a judgment on
subjects beyond your scope.  Into the question how far conduct,
especially in the matter of alliances, constitutes a forfeiture of
family claims, I do not now enter.  Suffice it, that you are not here
qualified to discriminate.  What I now wish you to understand is, that
I accept no revision, still less dictation within that range of affairs
which I have deliberated upon as distinctly and properly mine.  It is
not for you to interfere between me and Mr. Ladislaw, and still less to
encourage communications from him to you which constitute a criticism
on my procedure."

Poor Dorothea, shrouded in the darkness, was in a tumult of conflicting
emotions.  Alarm at the possible effect on himself of her husband's
strongly manifested anger, would have checked any expression of her own
resentment, even if she had been quite free from doubt and compunction
under the consciousness that there might be some justice in his last
insinuation.  Hearing him breathe quickly after he had spoken, she sat
listening, frightened, wretched--with a dumb inward cry for help to
bear this nightmare of a life in which every energy was arrested by
dread.  But nothing else happened, except that they both remained a
long while sleepless, without speaking again.

The next day, Mr. Casaubon received the following answer from Will
Ladislaw:--


"DEAR MR. CASAUBON,--I have given all due consideration to your letter
of yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual
position.  With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to
me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind
cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should.
Granted that a benefactor's wishes may constitute a claim; there must
always be a reservation as to the quality of those wishes.  They may
possibly clash with more imperative considerations.  Or a benefactor's
veto might impose such a negation on a man's life that the consequent
blank might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous.  I am
merely using strong illustrations.  In the present case I am unable to
take your view of the bearing which my acceptance of occupation--not
enriching certainly, but not dishonorable--will have on your own
position which seems to me too substantial to be affected in that
shadowy manner.  And though I do not believe that any change in our
relations will occur (certainly none has yet occurred) which can
nullify the obligations imposed on me by the past, pardon me for not
seeing that those obligations should restrain me from using the
ordinary freedom of living where I choose, and maintaining myself by
any lawful occupation I may choose.  Regretting that there exists this
difference between us as to a relation in which the conferring of
benefits has been entirely on your side--

                I remain, yours with persistent obligation,
                        WILL LADISLAW."


Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him
a little?) that no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than
he.  Young Ladislaw, he was sure, meant to defy and annoy him, meant to
win Dorothea's confidence and sow her mind with disrespect, and perhaps
aversion, towards her husband.  Some motive beneath the surface had
been needed to account for Will's sudden change of course in rejecting Mr.
Casaubon's aid and quitting his travels; and this defiant determination
to fix himself in the neighborhood by taking up something so much at
variance with his former choice as Mr. Brooke's Middlemarch projects,
revealed clearly enough that the undeclared motive had relation to
Dorothea.  Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any
doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little
less uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form
opinions about her husband's conduct was accompanied with a disposition
to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said.
His own proud reticence had prevented him from ever being undeceived in
the supposition that Dorothea had originally asked her uncle to invite
Will to his house.

And now, on receiving Will's letter, Mr. Casaubon had to consider his
duty.  He would never have been easy to call his action anything else
than duty; but in this case, contending motives thrust him back into
negations.

Should he apply directly to Mr. Brooke, and demand of that troublesome
gentleman to revoke his proposal?  Or should he consult Sir James
Chettam, and get him to concur in remonstrance against a step which
touched the whole family?  In either case Mr. Casaubon was aware that
failure was just as probable as success.  It was impossible for him to
mention Dorothea's name in the matter, and without some alarming
urgency Mr. Brooke was as likely as not, after meeting all
representations with apparent assent, to wind up by saying, "Never
fear, Casaubon!  Depend upon it, young Ladislaw will do you credit.
Depend upon it, I have put my finger on the right thing."  And Mr.
Casaubon shrank nervously from communicating on the subject with Sir
James Chettam, between whom and himself there had never been any
cordiality, and who would immediately think of Dorothea without any
mention of her.

Poor Mr. Casaubon was distrustful of everybody's feeling towards him,
especially as a husband.  To let any one suppose that he was jealous
would be to admit their (suspected) view of his disadvantages: to let
them know that he did not find marriage particularly blissful would
imply his conversion to their (probably) earlier disapproval.  It would
be as bad as letting Carp, and Brasenose generally, know how backward
he was in organizing the matter for his "Key to all Mythologies."  All
through his life Mr. Casaubon had been trying not to admit even to
himself the inward sores of self-doubt and jealousy.  And on the most
delicate of all personal subjects, the habit of proud suspicious
reticence told doubly.

Thus Mr. Casaubon remained proudly, bitterly silent.  But he had
forbidden Will to come to Lowick Manor, and he was mentally preparing
other measures of frustration.

 Featherstone's funeral is large and impressive in accordance with his wishes. Dorothea and the Brookes watch the funeral from a window. They observe a frog-eyed stranger in attendance. Celia informs Dorothea that Ladislaw is staying at Tipton Grange. The news displeases Casaubon. He believes that Dorothea asked Mr. Brooke to invite Ladislaw to Tipton Grange. Mr. Brooke praises Will, but only Dorothea can discern the signs of displeasure on Casaubon's face. She cannot explain in front of the others that she had nothing to do with his presence in Middlemarch. Mr. Brooke leaves to invite Will to come inside. All of Featherstone's relatives attend the reading of the will, as does the frog-eyed stranger. Rumor has it that his name is Mr. Rigg and that he is Featherstone's illegitimate son. Featherstone's lawyer, Mr. Standish, reads the earlier will first. Featherstone leaves small bequests to his siblings, which causes a flurry of indignant outbursts. The first will leaves ten thousand pounds to Fred, but the land is left to Joshua Rigg, who is to take the name of Featherstone. The second will revokes everything except some small bequests. Joshua Rigg receives everything else excepting some property to be used for the erection of some almshouses in Featherstone's name. Mary wonders if her decision to refuse Featherstone's last request deprived Fred of his ten thousand pounds. Fred laments that he will have to become a clergyman after all. Mr. Vincy regards Fred's idleness with increased severity and determines to send Fred back to school to pass his examination. Mr. Vincy resolves to revoke his consent to Rosamond's marriage. However, Rosamond is determined to have her way. Vincy inquires into Lydgate's finances and requires him to insure his life. Vincy also makes it clear that he won't advance any money should he and Rosamond get into financial straits. Lydgate arranges to rent a nice home in preparation for married life. Lydgate decides to hasten the marriage and the purchase of furnishings for his new home. His savings begin disappearing rapidly, so he begins buying on credit. Rosamond insists on visiting Lydgate's uncle, Sir Godwin, during their wedding journey. She begins planning to have Lydgate leave Middlemarch and find a practice elsewhere. Meanwhile, Mr. Brooke hires Will Ladislaw as editor of the Pioneer, a newspaper he has purchased. Brooke wants to be a political man, so he hops onto the Liberal reform platform. Ladislaw believes Casaubon wronged Dorothea in marrying her, so he resolves to stay near her and watch over her. He sets out to visit Dorothea. Dorothea regrets that Casaubon will not hire a secretary. Will replies that Casaubon is too uncertain and insecure to allow anyone else to poke around in his work. He also states that Casaubon doesn't like him merely because he disagrees with him. This assertion distresses Dorothea, so Will changes the subject. He reveals that his grandmother's family disowned her because she married a poor Polish man. Will's own mother ran away from her family to marry someone not to their liking. He announces that he plans to stay in Middlemarch. Dorothea reports this information to Casaubon. The news greatly distresses him. He believes that Will feels contempt for him. Without telling her, Casaubon writes Will requesting that he leave Middlemarch, because he feels his chosen profession reflects badly on him. Dorothea asks Casaubon to leave half his wealth to Will upon his death to make amends for the disinheritance of his grandmother. Casaubon orders her to cease interference in his relationship with Will. He suspects Will and Dorothea are conspiring against him. Meanwhile, Will writes to state that he will not leave Middlemarch. Casaubon forbids Will to come to Lowick again.

