by George Eliot
CHAPTER XVI.
"All that in woman is adored In thy fair self I find-- For the whole sex can but afford The handsome and the kind." --SIR CHARLES SEDLEY.
The question whether Mr. Tyke should be appointed as salaried chaplainto the hospital was an exciting topic to the Middlemarchers; andLydgate heard it discussed in a way that threw much light on the powerexercised in the town by Mr. Bulstrode. The banker was evidently aruler, but there was an opposition party, and even among his supportersthere were some who allowed it to be seen that their support was acompromise, and who frankly stated their impression that the generalscheme of things, and especially the casualties of trade, required youto hold a candle to the devil.
Mr. Bulstrode's power was not due simply to his being a country banker,who knew the financial secrets of most traders in the town and couldtouch the springs of their credit; it was fortified by a beneficencethat was at once ready and severe--ready to confer obligations, andsevere in watching the result. He had gathered, as an industrious manalways at his post, a chief share in administering the town charities,and his private charities were both minute and abundant. He would takea great deal of pains about apprenticing Tegg the shoemaker's son, andhe would watch over Tegg's church-going; he would defend Mrs. Strypethe washerwoman against Stubbs's unjust exaction on the score of herdrying-ground, and he would himself scrutinize a calumny against Mrs.Strype. His private minor loans were numerous, but he would inquirestrictly into the circumstances both before and after. In this way aman gathers a domain in his neighbors' hope and fear as well asgratitude; and power, when once it has got into that subtle region,propagates itself, spreading out of all proportion to its externalmeans. It was a principle with Mr. Bulstrode to gain as much power aspossible, that he might use it for the glory of God. He went through agreat deal of spiritual conflict and inward argument in order to adjusthis motives, and make clear to himself what God's glory required. But,as we have seen, his motives were not always rightly appreciated.There were many crass minds in Middlemarch whose reflective scalescould only weigh things in the lump; and they had a strong suspicionthat since Mr. Bulstrode could not enjoy life in their fashion, eatingand drinking so little as he did, and worreting himself abouteverything, he must have a sort of vampire's feast in the sense ofmastery.
The subject of the chaplaincy came up at Mr. Vincy's table when Lydgatewas dining there, and the family connection with Mr. Bulstrode did not,he observed, prevent some freedom of remark even on the part of thehost himself, though his reasons against the proposed arrangementturned entirely on his objection to Mr. Tyke's sermons, which were alldoctrine, and his preference for Mr. Farebrother, whose sermons werefree from that taint. Mr. Vincy liked well enough the notion of thechaplain's having a salary, supposing it were given to Farebrother, whowas as good a little fellow as ever breathed, and the best preacheranywhere, and companionable too.
"What line shall you take, then?" said Mr. Chichely, the coroner, agreat coursing comrade of Mr. Vincy's.
"Oh, I'm precious glad I'm not one of the Directors now. I shall votefor referring the matter to the Directors and the Medical Boardtogether. I shall roll some of my responsibility on your shoulders,Doctor," said Mr. Vincy, glancing first at Dr. Sprague, the seniorphysician of the town, and then at Lydgate who sat opposite. "Youmedical gentlemen must consult which sort of black draught you willprescribe, eh, Mr. Lydgate?"
"I know little of either," said Lydgate; "but in general, appointmentsare apt to be made too much a question of personal liking. The fittestman for a particular post is not always the best fellow or the mostagreeable. Sometimes, if you wanted to get a reform, your only waywould be to pension off the good fellows whom everybody is fond of, andput them out of the question."
Dr. Sprague, who was considered the physician of most "weight," thoughDr. Minchin was usually said to have more "penetration," divested hislarge heavy face of all expression, and looked at his wine-glass whileLydgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical and suspectedabout this young man--for example, a certain showiness as to foreignideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled andforgotten by his elders--was positively unwelcome to a physician whosestanding had been fixed thirty years before by a treatise onMeningitis, of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf.For my part I have some fellow-feeling with Dr. Sprague: one'sself-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is veryunpleasant to find deprecated.
Lydgate's remark, however, did not meet the sense of the company. Mr.Vincy said, that if he could have _his_ way, he would not putdisagreeable fellows anywhere.
"Hang your reforms!" said Mr. Chichely. "There's no greater humbug inthe world. You never hear of a reform, but it means some trick to putin new men. I hope you are not one of the 'Lancet's' men, Mr.Lydgate--wanting to take the coronership out of the hands of the legalprofession: your words appear to point that way."
"I disapprove of Wakley," interposed Dr. Sprague, "no man more: he isan ill-intentioned fellow, who would sacrifice the respectability ofthe profession, which everybody knows depends on the London Colleges,for the sake of getting some notoriety for himself. There are men whodon't mind about being kicked blue if they can only get talked about.But Wakley is right sometimes," the Doctor added, judicially. "I couldmention one or two points in which Wakley is in the right."
"Oh, well," said Mr. Chichely, "I blame no man for standing up in favorof his own cloth; but, coming to argument, I should like to know how acoroner is to judge of evidence if he has not had a legal training?"
"In my opinion," said Lydgate, "legal training only makes a man moreincompetent in questions that require knowledge a of another kind.People talk about evidence as if it could really be weighed in scalesby a blind Justice. No man can judge what is good evidence on anyparticular subject, unless he knows that subject well. A lawyer is nobetter than an old woman at a post-mortem examination. How is he toknow the action of a poison? You might as well say that scanning versewill teach you to scan the potato crops."
"You are aware, I suppose, that it is not the coroner's business toconduct the post-mortem, but only to take the evidence of the medicalwitness?" said Mr. Chichely, with some scorn.
"Who is often almost as ignorant as the coroner himself," said Lydgate."Questions of medical jurisprudence ought not to be left to the chanceof decent knowledge in a medical witness, and the coroner ought not tobe a man who will believe that strychnine will destroy the coats of thestomach if an ignorant practitioner happens to tell him so."
Lydgate had really lost sight of the fact that Mr. Chichely was hisMajesty's coroner, and ended innocently with the question, "Don't youagree with me, Dr. Sprague?"
"To a certain extent--with regard to populous districts, and in themetropolis," said the Doctor. "But I hope it will be long before thispart of the country loses the services of my friend Chichely, eventhough it might get the best man in our profession to succeed him. Iam sure Vincy will agree with me."
"Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good coursing man," said Mr.Vincy, jovially. "And in my opinion, you're safest with a lawyer.Nobody can know everything. Most things are 'visitation of God.' And asto poisoning, why, what you want to know is the law. Come, shall wejoin the ladies?"
Lydgate's private opinion was that Mr. Chichely might be the verycoroner without bias as to the coats of the stomach, but he had notmeant to be personal. This was one of the difficulties of moving ingood Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as aqualification for any salaried office. Fred Vincy had called Lydgate aprig, and now Mr. Chichely was inclined to call him prick-eared;especially when, in the drawing-room, he seemed to be making himselfeminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily monopolized in atete-a-tete, since Mrs. Vincy herself sat at the tea-table. Sheresigned no domestic function to her daughter; and the matron'sblooming good-natured face, with the two volatile pink strings floatingfrom her fine throat, and h
er cheery manners to husband and children,was certainly among the great attractions of the Vincyhouse--attractions which made it all the easier to fall in love withthe daughter. The tinge of unpretentious, inoffensive vulgarity inMrs. Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond's refinement, which was beyondwhat Lydgate had expected.
Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impressionof refined manners, and the right thing said seems quite astonishinglyright when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid.And Rosamond could say the right thing; for she was clever with thatsort of cleverness which catches every tone except the humorous.Happily she never attempted to joke, and this perhaps was the mostdecisive mark of her cleverness.
She and Lydgate readily got into conversation. He regretted that hehad not heard her sing the other day at Stone Court. The only pleasurehe allowed himself during the latter part of his stay in Paris was togo and hear music.
"You have studied music, probably?" said Rosamond.
"No, I know the notes of many birds, and I know many melodies by ear;but the music that I don't know at all, and have no notion about,delights me--affects me. How stupid the world is that it does not makemore use of such a pleasure within its reach!"
"Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tuneless. There are hardlyany good musicians. I only know two gentlemen who sing at all well."
"I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way,leaving you to fancy the tune--very much as if it were tapped on adrum?"
"Ah, you have heard Mr. Bowyer," said Rosamond, with one of her raresmiles. "But we are speaking very ill of our neighbors."
Lydgate was almost forgetting that he must carry on the conversation,in thinking how lovely this creature was, her garment seeming to bemade out of the faintest blue sky, herself so immaculately blond, as ifthe petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and disclosed her;and yet with this infantine blondness showing so much ready,self-possessed grace. Since he had had the memory of Laure, Lydgatehad lost all taste for large-eyed silence: the divine cow no longerattracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite. But he recalledhimself.
"You will let me hear some music to-night, I hope."
"I will let you hear my attempts, if you like," said Rosamond. "Papais sure to insist on my singing. But I shall tremble before you, whohave heard the best singers in Paris. I have heard very little: I haveonly once been to London. But our organist at St. Peter's is a goodmusician, and I go on studying with him."
"Tell me what you saw in London."
"Very little." (A more naive girl would have said, "Oh, everything!"But Rosamond knew better.) "A few of the ordinary sights, such as rawcountry girls are always taken to."
"Do you call yourself a raw country girl?" said Lydgate, looking at herwith an involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blushwith pleasure. But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck alittle, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hair-plaits--anhabitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten's paw.Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylphcaught young and educated at Mrs. Lemon's.
"I assure you my mind is raw," she said immediately; "I pass atMiddlemarch. I am not afraid of talking to our old neighbors. But Iam really afraid of you."
"An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though herknowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me athousand things--as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there wereany common language between them. Happily, there is a common languagebetween women and men, and so the bears can get taught."
"Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him fromjarring all your nerves," said Rosamond, moving to the other side ofthe room, where Fred having opened the piano, at his father's desire,that Rosamond might give them some music, was parentheticallyperforming "Cherry Ripe!" with one hand. Able men who have passedtheir examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than theplucked Fred.
"Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr.Lydgate ill," said Rosamond. "He has an ear."
Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.
Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, "You perceive,the bears will not always be taught."
"Now then, Rosy!" said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting itupward for her, with a hearty expectation of enjoyment. "Some goodrousing tunes first."
Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemon's school (close toa county town with a memorable history that had its relics in churchand castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to befound in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a notedKapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions ofmusical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant's instinct, had seizedhis manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noblemusic with the precision of an echo. It was almost startling, heardfor the first time. A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth fromRosamond's fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live on inperpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there goes somewhere anoriginating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter. Lydgatewas taken possession of, and began to believe in her as somethingexceptional. After all, he thought, one need not be surprised to findthe rare conjunctions of nature under circumstances apparentlyunfavorable: come where they may, they always depend on conditions thatare not obvious. He sat looking at her, and did not rise to pay herany compliments, leaving that to others, now that his admiration wasdeepened.
Her singing was less remarkable, but also well trained, and sweet tohear as a chime perfectly in tune. It is true she sang "Meet me bymoonlight," and "I've been roaming"; for mortals must share thefashions of their time, and none but the ancients can be alwaysclassical. But Rosamond could also sing "Black-eyed Susan" witheffect, or Haydn's canzonets, or "Voi, che sapete," or "Batti,batti"--she only wanted to know what her audience liked.
Her father looked round at the company, delighting in their admiration.Her mother sat, like a Niobe before her troubles, with her youngestlittle girl on her lap, softly beating the child's hand up and down intime to the music. And Fred, notwithstanding his general scepticismabout Rosy, listened to her music with perfect allegiance, wishing hecould do the same thing on his flute. It was the pleasantest familyparty that Lydgate had seen since he came to Middlemarch. The Vincyshad the readiness to enjoy, the rejection of all anxiety, and thebelief in life as a merry lot, which made a house exceptional in mostcounty towns at that time, when Evangelicalism had cast a certainsuspicion as of plague-infection over the few amusements which survivedin the provinces. At the Vincys' there was always whist, and thecard-tables stood ready now, making some of the company secretlyimpatient of the music. Before it ceased Mr. Farebrother came in--ahandsome, broad-chested but otherwise small man, about forty, whoseblack was very threadbare: the brilliancy was all in his quick grayeyes. He came like a pleasant change in the light, arresting littleLouisa with fatherly nonsense as she was being led out of the room byMiss Morgan, greeting everybody with some special word, and seeming tocondense more talk into ten minutes than had been held all through theevening. He claimed from Lydgate the fulfilment of a promise to comeand see him. "I can't let you off, you know, because I have somebeetles to show you. We collectors feel an interest in every new mantill he has seen all we have to show him."
But soon he swerved to the whist-table, rubbing his hands and saying,"Come now, let us be serious! Mr. Lydgate? not play? Ah! you are tooyoung and light for this kind of thing."
Lydgate said to himself that the clergyman whose abilities were sopainful to Mr. Bulstrode, appeared to have found an agreeable resort inthis certainly not erudite household. He could half understand it: thegood-humor, the good looks of elder and younger, and the provision forpassing the time without any labor of intelligence, might make thehouse beguiling to people who had no particular use for their odd hours.
Everything looked b
looming and joyous except Miss Morgan, who wasbrown, dull, and resigned, and altogether, as Mrs. Vincy often said,just the sort of person for a governess. Lydgate did not mean to paymany such visits himself. They were a wretched waste of the evenings;and now, when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant toexcuse himself and go.
"You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure," she said, when thewhist-players were settled. "We are very stupid, and you have beenused to something quite different."
"I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike," said Lydgate."But I have noticed that one always believes one's own town to be morestupid than any other. I have made up my mind to take Middlemarch asit comes, and shall be much obliged if the town will take me in thesame way. I have certainly found some charms in it which are muchgreater than I had expected."
"You mean the rides towards Tipton and Lowick; every one is pleasedwith those," said Rosamond, with simplicity.
"No, I mean something much nearer to me."
Rosamond rose and reached her netting, and then said, "Do you careabout dancing at all? I am not quite sure whether clever men everdance."
"I would dance with you if you would allow me."
"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a slight deprecatory laugh. "I was onlygoing to say that we sometimes have dancing, and I wanted to knowwhether you would feel insulted if you were asked to come."
"Not on the condition I mentioned."
After this chat Lydgate thought that he was going, but on movingtowards the whist-tables, he got interested in watching Mr.Farebrother's play, which was masterly, and also his face, which was astriking mixture of the shrewd and the mild. At ten o'clock supper wasbrought in (such were the customs of Middlemarch) and there waspunch-drinking; but Mr. Farebrother had only a glass of water. He waswinning, but there seemed to be no reason why the renewal of rubbersshould end, and Lydgate at last took his leave.
But as it was not eleven o'clock, he chose to walk in the brisk airtowards the tower of St. Botolph's, Mr. Farebrother's church, whichstood out dark, square, and massive against the starlight. It was theoldest church in Middlemarch; the living, however, was but a vicarageworth barely four hundred a-year. Lydgate had heard that, and hewondered now whether Mr. Farebrother cared about the money he won atcards; thinking, "He seems a very pleasant fellow, but Bulstrode mayhave his good reasons." Many things would be easier to Lydgate if itshould turn out that Mr. Bulstrode was generally justifiable. "What ishis religious doctrine to me, if he carries some good notions alongwith it? One must use such brains as are to be found."
These were actually Lydgate's first meditations as he walked away fromMr. Vincy's, and on this ground I fear that many ladies will considerhim hardly worthy of their attention. He thought of Rosamond and hermusic only in the second place; and though, when her turn came, hedwelt on the image of her for the rest of his walk, he felt noagitation, and had no sense that any new current had set into his life.He could not marry yet; he wished not to marry for several years; andtherefore he was not ready to entertain the notion of being in lovewith a girl whom he happened to admire. He did admire Rosamondexceedingly; but that madness which had once beset him about Laure wasnot, he thought, likely to recur in relation to any other woman.Certainly, if falling in love had been at all in question, it wouldhave been quite safe with a creature like this Miss Vincy, who had justthe kind of intelligence one would desire in a woman--polished,refined, docile, lending itself to finish in all the delicacies oflife, and enshrined in a body which expressed this with a force ofdemonstration that excluded the need for other evidence. Lydgate feltsure that if ever he married, his wife would have that feminineradiance, that distinctive womanhood which must be classed with flowersand music, that sort of beauty which by its very nature was virtuous,being moulded only for pure and delicate joys.
But since he did not mean to marry for the next five years--his morepressing business was to look into Louis' new book on Fever, which hewas specially interested in, because he had known Louis in Paris, andhad followed many anatomical demonstrations in order to ascertain thespecific differences of typhus and typhoid. He went home and read farinto the smallest hour, bringing a much more testing vision of detailsand relations into this pathological study than he had ever thought itnecessary to apply to the complexities of love and marriage, thesebeing subjects on which he felt himself amply informed by literature,and that traditional wisdom which is handed down in the genialconversation of men. Whereas Fever had obscure conditions, and gavehim that delightful labor of the imagination which is not merearbitrariness, but the exercise of disciplined power--combining andconstructing with the clearest eye for probabilities and the fullestobedience to knowledge; and then, in yet more energetic alliance withimpartial Nature, standing aloof to invent tests by which to try itsown work.
Many men have been praised as vividly imaginative on the strength oftheir profuseness in indifferent drawing or cheap narration:--reportsof very poor talk going on in distant orbs; or portraits of Lucifercoming down on his bad errands as a large ugly man with bat's wings andspurts of phosphorescence; or exaggerations of wantonness that seem toreflect life in a diseased dream. But these kinds of inspirationLydgate regarded as rather vulgar and vinous compared with theimagination that reveals subtle actions inaccessible by any sort oflens, but tracked in that outer darkness through long pathways ofnecessary sequence by the inward light which is the last refinement ofEnergy, capable of bathing even the ethereal atoms in its ideallyilluminated space. He for his part had tossed away all cheapinventions where ignorance finds itself able and at ease: he wasenamoured of that arduous invention which is the very eye of research,provisionally framing its object and correcting it to more and moreexactness of relation; he wanted to pierce the obscurity of thoseminute processes which prepare human misery and joy, those invisiblethoroughfares which are the first lurking-places of anguish, mania, andcrime, that delicate poise and transition which determine the growth ofhappy or unhappy consciousness.
As he threw down his book, stretched his legs towards the embers in thegrate, and clasped his hands at the back of his head, in that agreeableafterglow of excitement when thought lapses from examination of aspecific object into a suffusive sense of its connections with all therest of our existence--seems, as it were, to throw itself on its backafter vigorous swimming and float with the repose of unexhaustedstrength--Lydgate felt a triumphant delight in his studies, andsomething like pity for those less lucky men who were not of hisprofession.
"If I had not taken that turn when I was a lad," he thought, "I mighthave got into some stupid draught-horse work or other, and lived alwaysin blinkers. I should never have been happy in any profession that didnot call forth the highest intellectual strain, and yet keep me in goodwarm contact with my neighbors. There is nothing like the medicalprofession for that: one can have the exclusive scientific life thattouches the distance and befriend the old fogies in the parish too. Itis rather harder for a clergyman: Farebrother seems to be an anomaly."
This last thought brought back the Vincys and all the pictures of theevening. They floated in his mind agreeably enough, and as he took uphis bed-candle his lips were curled with that incipient smile which isapt to accompany agreeable recollections. He was an ardent fellow, butat present his ardor was absorbed in love of his work and in theambition of making his life recognized as a factor in the better lifeof mankind--like other heroes of science who had nothing but an obscurecountry practice to begin with.
Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond! Each lived in a world ofwhich the other knew nothing. It had not occurred to Lydgate that hehad been a subject of eager meditation to Rosamond, who had neither anyreason for throwing her marriage into distant perspective, nor anypathological studies to divert her mind from that ruminating habit,that inward repetition of looks, words, and phrases, which makes alarge part in the lives of most girls. He had not meant to look at heror speak to her with more than the inevitable amount of admiration andcomplime
nt which a man must give to a beautiful girl; indeed, it seemedto him that his enjoyment of her music had remained almost silent, forhe feared falling into the rudeness of telling her his great surpriseat her possession of such accomplishment. But Rosamond had registeredevery look and word, and estimated them as the opening incidents of apreconceived romance--incidents which gather value from the foreseendevelopment and climax. In Rosamond's romance it was not necessary toimagine much about the inward life of the hero, or of his seriousbusiness in the world: of course, he had a profession and was clever,as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgatewas his good birth, which distinguished him from all Middlemarchadmirers, and presented marriage as a prospect of rising in rank andgetting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in whichshe would have nothing to do with vulgar people, and perhaps at lastassociate with relatives quite equal to the county people who lookeddown on the Middlemarchers. It was part of Rosamond's cleverness todiscern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank, and once when she hadseen the Miss Brookes accompanying their uncle at the county assizes,and seated among the aristocracy, she had envied them, notwithstandingtheir plain dress.
If you think it incredible that to imagine Lydgate as a man of familycould cause thrills of satisfaction which had anything to do with thesense that she was in love with him, I will ask you to use your powerof comparison a little more effectively, and consider whether red clothand epaulets have never had an influence of that sort. Our passions donot live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobeof notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together,feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.
Rosamond, in fact, was entirely occupied not exactly with TertiusLydgate as he was in himself, but with his relation to her; and it wasexcusable in a girl who was accustomed to hear that all young menmight, could, would be, or actually were in love with her, to believeat once that Lydgate could be no exception. His looks and words meantmore to her than other men's, because she cared more for them: shethought of them diligently, and diligently attended to that perfectionof appearance, behavior, sentiments, and all other elegancies, whichwould find in Lydgate a more adequate admirer than she had yet beenconscious of.
For Rosamond, though she would never do anything that was disagreeableto her, was industrious; and now more than ever she was active insketching her landscapes and market-carts and portraits of friends, inpractising her music, and in being from morning till night her ownstandard of a perfect lady, having always an audience in her ownconsciousness, with sometimes the not unwelcome addition of a morevariable external audience in the numerous visitors of the house. Shefound time also to read the best novels, and even the second best, andshe knew much poetry by heart. Her favorite poem was "Lalla Rookh."
"The best girl in the world! He will be a happy fellow who gets her!"was the sentiment of the elderly gentlemen who visited the Vincys; andthe rejected young men thought of trying again, as is the fashion incountry towns where the horizon is not thick with coming rivals. ButMrs. Plymdale thought that Rosamond had been educated to a ridiculouspitch, for what was the use of accomplishments which would be all laidaside as soon as she was married? While her aunt Bulstrode, who had asisterly faithfulness towards her brother's family, had two sincerewishes for Rosamond--that she might show a more serious turn of mind,and that she might meet with a husband whose wealth corresponded to herhabits.