"Because I like you better than any one else. But I know you despiseme."
"Yes, I do—a little," said Mary, nodding, with a smile.
"You would admire a stupendous fellow, who would have wiseopinions about everything."
"Yes, I should." Mary was sewing swiftly, and seemed provokinglymistress of the situation. When a conversation has taken a wrong turnfor us, we only get farther and farther into the swamp of awkwardness.This was what Fred Vincy felt.
"I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has alwaysknown—ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is alwayssome new fellow who strikes a girl."
"Let me see," said Mary, the corners of her mouth curling archly; "Imust go back on my experience. There is Juliet—she seems an example ofwhat you say. But then Ophelia had probably known Hamlet a longwhile; and Brenda Troil—she had known Mordaunt Merton ever sincethey were children; but then he seems to have been an estimable youngman; and Minna was still more deeply in love with Cleveland, who was astranger. Waverley was new to Flora MacIvor; but then she did not fallin love with him. And there are Olivia and Sophia Primrose, andCorinne—they may be said to have fallen in love with new men.Altogether, my experience is rather mixed."
Mary looked up with some roguishness at Fred, and that look of herswas very dear to him, though the eyes were nothing more than clearwindows where observation sat laughingly. He was certainly anaffectionate fellow, and as he had grown from boy to man, he had grownin love with his old playmate, notwithstanding that share in the highereducation of the country which had exalted his views of rank andincome.
"When a man is not loved, it is no use for him to say that he could bea better fellow—could do anything—I mean, if he were sure of beingloved in return."
"Not of the least use in the world for him to say he could be better.Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries."
"I don't see how a man is to be good for much unless he has someone woman to love him dearly."
"I think the goodness should come before he expects that."
"You know better, Mary. Women don't love men for their goodness."
"Perhaps not. But if they love them, they never think them bad."
"It is hardly fair to say I am bad."
"I said nothing at all about you."
"I never shall be good for anything, Mary, if you will not say that youlove me—if you will not promise to marry me—I mean, when I am ableto marry."
"If I did love you, I would not marry you: I would certainly notpromise ever to marry you."
"I think that is quite wicked, Mary. If you love me, you ought topromise to marry me."
"On the contrary, I think it would be wicked in me to marry youeven if I did love you."
"You mean, just as I am, without any means of maintaining a wife.Of course: I am but three-and-twenty."
"In that last point you will alter. But I am not so sure of any otheralteration. My father says an idle man ought not to exist, much less, bemarried."
"Then I am to blow my brains out?"
"No; on the whole I should think you would do better to pass yourexamination. I have heard Mr. Farebrother say it is disgracefully easy."
"That is all very fine. Anything is easy to him. Not that clevernesshas anything to do with it. I am ten times cleverer than many men whopass."
"Dear me!" said Mary, unable to repress her sarcasm; "that accountsfor the curates like Mr. Crowse. Divide your cleverness by ten, and thequotient—dear me!—is able to take a degree. But that only shows youare ten times more idle than the others."
"Well, if I did pass, you would not want me to go into the Church?"
"That is not the question—what I want you to do. You have aconscience of your own, I suppose. There! there is Mr. Lydgate. I mustgo and tell my uncle."
"Mary," said Fred, seizing her hand as she rose; "if you will not giveme some encouragement, I shall get worse instead of better."
"I will not give you any encouragement," said Mary, reddening. "Yourfriends would dislike it, and so would mine. My father would think it adisgrace to me if I accepted a man who got into debt, and would notwork!"
Fred was stung, and released her hand. She walked to the door, butthere she turned and said: "Fred, you have always been so good, sogenerous to me. I am not ungrateful. But never speak to me in that wayagain."
"Very well," said Fred, sulkily, taking up his hat and whip. Hiscomplexion showed patches of pale pink and dead white. Like many aplucked idle young gentleman, he was thoroughly in love, and with aplain girl, who had no money! But having Mr. Featherstone's land in thebackground, and a persuasion that, let Mary say what she would, shereally did care for him, Fred was not utterly in despair.
When he got home, he gave four of the twenties to his mother,asking her to keep them for him. "I don't want to spend that money,mother. I want it to pay a debt with. So keep it safe away from myfingers."
"Bless you, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy. She doted on her eldest sonand her youngest girl (a child of six), whom others thought her twonaughtiest children. The mother's eyes are not always deceived in theirpartiality: she at least can best judge who is the tender, filial-heartedchild. And Fred was certainly very fond of his mother. Perhaps it was hisfondness for another person also that made him particularly anxious totake some security against his own liability to spend the hundredpounds. For the creditor to whom he owed a hundred and sixty held afirmer security in the shape of a bill signed by Mary's father.
CHAPTER XV.
"Black eyes you have left, you say,
Blue eyes fail to draw you;
Yet you seem more rapt to-day,
Than of old we saw you.
"Oh, I track the fairest fair
Through new haunts of pleasure;
Footprints here and echoes there
Guide me to my treasure:
"Lo! she turns—immortal youth
Wrought to mortal stature,
Fresh as starlight's aged truth—
Many-named Nature!"
A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had thehappiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take hisplace among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observedto walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the leastimitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to thesuccessive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair tothe proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English.But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, ismeasured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, andthe clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated historiansmust not linger after his example; and if we did so, it is probable thatour chat would be thin and eager, as if delivered from a campstool in aparrot-house. I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain humanlots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light Ican command must be concentrated on this particular web, and notdispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.
At present I have to make the new settler Lydgate better known toany one interested in him than he could possibly be even to those whohad seen the most of him since his arrival in Middlemarch. For surely allmust admit that a man may be puffed and belauded, envied, ridiculed,counted upon as a tool and fallen in love with, or at least selected as afuture husband, and yet remain virtually unknown—known merely as acluster of signs for his neighbors' false suppositions. There was a generalimpression, however, that Lydgate was not altogether a common countrydoctor, and in Middlemarch at that time such an impression wassignificant of great things being expected from him. For everybody'sfamily doctor was remarkably clever, and was understood to haveimmeasurable skill in the management and training of the most skittishor vicious diseases. The evidence of his cleverness was of the higherintuitive order, lying in his lady-patients' immovable conviction, and wasunassailable by any objection except that their intuitions were opposedby others equally strong; each lady who saw medical truth in Wrenchand "the strengthening treatment" regarding Toller and "the loweringsystem" as medical perdition. For the heroic times of copious bleedingand blistering had not yet departed, still less the times of thorough-goingtheory, when disease in general was called by some bad name, andtreated accordingly without shilly-shally—as if, for example, it were to becalled insurrection, which must not be fired on with blank-cartridge, buthave its blood drawn at once. The strengtheners and the lowerers wereall "clever" men in somebody's opinion, which is really as much as can besaid for any living talents. Nobody's imagination had gone so far as toconjecture that Mr. Lydgate could know as much as Dr. Sprague and Dr.Minchin, the two physicians, who alone could offer any hope whendanger was extreme, and when the smallest hope was worth a guinea.Still, I repeat, there was a general impression that Lydgate wassomething rather more uncommon than any general practitioner inMiddlemarch. And this was true. He was but seven-and-twenty, an ageat which many men are not quite common—at which they are hopeful ofachievement, resolute in avoidance, thinking that Mammon shall neverput a bit in their mouths and get astride their backs, but rather thatMammon, if they have anything to do with him, shall draw their chariot.
He had been left an orphan when he was fresh from a public school.His father, a military man, had made but little provision for threechildren, and when the boy Tertius asked to have a medical education, itseemed easier to his guardians to grant his request by apprenticing himto a country practitioner than to make any objections on the score offamily dignity. He was one of the rarer lads who early get a decided bentand make up their minds that there is something particular in life whichthey would like to do for its own sake, and not because their fathers didit. Most of us who turn to any subject with love remember some morningor evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untriedvolume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lackof books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceablebeginning of our love. Something of that sort happened to Lydgate. Hewas a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in acorner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could layhis hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, butBailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it.Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or runningand hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him atten years of age; he had then read through "Chrysal, or the Adventures ofa Guinea," which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixturemeant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him that bookswere stuff, and that life was stupid. His school studies had not muchmodified that opinion, for though he "did" his classics and mathematics,he was not pre-eminent in them. It was said of him, that Lydgate coulddo anything he liked, but he had certainly not yet liked to do anythingremarkable. He was a vigorous animal with a ready understanding, butno spark had yet kindled in him an intellectual passion; knowledgeseemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from theconversation of his elders, he had apparently got already more than wasnecessary for mature life. Probably this was not an exceptional result ofexpensive teaching at that period of short-waisted coats, and otherfashions which have not yet recurred. But, one vacation, a wet day senthim to the small home library to hunt once more for a book which mighthave some freshness for him: in vain! unless, indeed, he took down adusty row of volumes with gray-paper backs and dingy labels—thevolumes of an old Cyclopaedia which he had never disturbed. It would atleast be a novelty to disturb them. They were on the highest shelf, andhe stood on a chair to get them down. But he opened the volume whichhe first took from the shelf: somehow, one is apt to read in a makeshiftattitude, just where it might seem inconvenient to do so. The page heopened on was under the head of Anatomy, and the first passage thatdrew his eyes was on the valves of the heart. He was not muchacquainted with valves of any sort, but he knew that valvae were folding-doors, and through this crevice came a sudden light startling him withhis first vivid notion of finely adjusted mechanism in the human frame.A liberal education had of course left him free to read the indecentpassages in the school classics, but beyond a general sense of secrecyand obscenity in connection with his internal structure, had left hisimagination quite unbiassed, so that for anything he knew his brains layin small bags at his temples, and he had no more thought of representingto himself how his blood circulated than how paper served instead ofgold. But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got downfrom his chair, the world was made new to him by a presentiment ofendless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by thatwordy ignorance which he had supposed to be knowledge. From thathour Lydgate felt the growth of an intellectual passion.
We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes tofall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally partedfrom her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we are neverweary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom and herfairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the oldTroubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that otherkind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industriousthought and patient renunciation of small desires? In the story of thispassion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the gloriousmarriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom thecatastrophe is bound up with the other passion, sung by theTroubadours. For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go abouttheir vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the sameway as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who oncemeant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story oftheir coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by thegross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness; for perhaps theirardor in generous unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor ofother youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost inits old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the worldmore subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginningthey inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breathtowards infecting them, when we uttered our conforming falsities ordrew our silly conclusions: or perhaps it came with the vibrations from awoman's glance.
