CHAPTER XXXVI.
"'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 I 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 ease, 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 car 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.
