"I have no power of prophecy there," said Mr. Farebrother, who hadbeen puffing at his pipe thoughtfully while Lydgate talked; "but as to thehostility in the town, you'll weather it if you are prudent."
"How am I to be prudent?" said Lydgate, "I just do what comesbefore me to do. I can't help people's ignorance and spite, any more thanVesalius could. It isn't possible to square one's conduct to sillyconclusions which nobody can foresee."
"Quite true; I didn't mean that. I meant only two things. One is, keepyourself as separable from Bulstrode as you can: of course, you can go ondoing good work of your own by his help; but don't get tied. Perhaps itseems like personal feeling in me to say so—and there's a good deal ofthat, I own—but personal feeling is not always in the wrong if you boil itdown to the impressions which make it simply an opinion."
"Bulstrode is nothing to me," said Lydgate, carelessly, "except onpublic grounds. As to getting very closely united to him, I am not fondenough of him for that. But what was the other thing you meant?" saidLydgate, who was nursing his leg as comfortably as possible, and feelingin no great need of advice.
"Why, this. Take care—experto crede—take care not to get hamperedabout money matters. I know, by a word you let fall one day, that youdon't like my playing at cards so much for money. You are right enoughthere. But try and keep clear of wanting small sums that you haven't got.I am perhaps talking rather superfluously; but a man likes to assumesuperiority over himself, by holding up his bad example and sermonizingon it."
Lydgate took Mr. Farebrother's hints very cordially, though he wouldhardly have borne them from another man. He could not helpremembering that he had lately made some debts, but these had seemedinevitable, and he had no intention now to do more than keep house in asimple way. The furniture for which he owed would not want renewing;nor even the stock of wine for a long while.
Many thoughts cheered him at that time—and justly. A manconscious of enthusiasm for worthy aims is sustained under pettyhostilities by the memory of great workers who had to fight their way notwithout wounds, and who hover in his mind as patron saints, invisiblyhelping. At home, that same evening when he had been chatting withMr. Farebrother, he had his long legs stretched on the sofa, his headthrown back, and his hands clasped behind it according to his favoriteruminating attitude, while Rosamond sat at the piano, and played onetune after another, of which her husband only knew (like the emotionalelephant he was!) that they fell in with his mood as if they had beenmelodious sea-breezes.
There was something very fine in Lydgate's look just then, and anyone might have been encouraged to bet on his achievement. In his darkeyes and on his mouth and brow there was that placidity which comesfrom the fulness of contemplative thought—the mind not searching, butbeholding, and the glance seeming to be filled with what is behind it.
Presently Rosamond left the piano and seated herself on a chair closeto the sofa and opposite her husband's face.
"Is that enough music for you, my lord?" she said, folding her handsbefore her and putting on a little air of meekness.
"Yes, dear, if you are tired," said Lydgate, gently, turning his eyesand resting them on her, but not otherwise moving. Rosamond's presenceat that moment was perhaps no more than a spoonful brought to thelake, and her woman's instinct in this matter was not dull.
"What is absorbing you?" she said, leaning forward and bringing herface nearer to his.
He moved his hands and placed them gently behind her shoulders.
"I am thinking of a great fellow, who was about as old as I am threehundred years ago, and had already begun a new era in anatomy."
"I can't guess," said Rosamond, shaking her head. "We used to play atguessing historical characters at Mrs. Lemon's, but not anatomists."
"I'll tell you. His name was Vesalius. And the only way he could getto know anatomy as he did, was by going to snatch bodies at night, fromgraveyards and places of execution."
"Oh!" said Rosamond, with a look of disgust on her pretty face, "I amvery glad you are not Vesalius. I should have thought he might find someless horrible way than that."
"No, he couldn't," said Lydgate, going on too earnestly to take muchnotice of her answer. "He could only get a complete skeleton bysnatching the whitened bones of a criminal from the gallows, andburying them, and fetching them away by bits secretly, in the dead ofnight."
"I hope he is not one of your great heroes," said Rosamond, halfplayfully, half anxiously, "else I shall have you getting up in the night togo to St. Peter's churchyard. You know how angry you told me thepeople were about Mrs. Goby. You have enemies enough already."
"So had Vesalius, Rosy. No wonder the medical fogies inMiddlemarch are jealous, when some of the greatest doctors living werefierce upon Vesalius because they had believed in Galen, and he showedthat Galen was wrong. They called him a liar and a poisonous monster.But the facts of the human frame were on his side; and so he got thebetter of them."
"And what happened to him afterwards?" said Rosamond, with someinterest.
"Oh, he had a good deal of fighting to the last. And they didexasperate him enough at one time to make him burn a good deal of hiswork. Then he got shipwrecked just as he was coming from Jerusalem totake a great chair at Padua. He died rather miserably."
There was a moment's pause before Rosamond said, "Do you know,Tertius, I often wish you had not been a medical man."
"Nay, Rosy, don't say that," said Lydgate, drawing her closer to him."That is like saying you wish you had married another man."
"Not at all; you are clever enough for anything: you might easily havebeen something else. And your cousins at Quallingham all think that youhave sunk below them in your choice of a profession."
"The cousins at Quallingham may go to the devil!" said Lydgate, withscorn. "It was like their impudence if they said anything of the sort toyou."
"Still," said Rosamond, "I do not think it is a nice profession, dear."We know that she had much quiet perseverance in her opinion.
"It is the grandest profession in the world, Rosamond," said Lydgate,gravely. "And to say that you love me without loving the medical man inme, is the same sort of thing as to say that you like eating a peach butdon't like its flavor. Don't say that again, dear, it pains me."
"Very well, Doctor Grave-face," said Rosy, dimpling, "I will declare infuture that I dote on skeletons, and body-snatchers, and bits of things inphials, and quarrels with everybody, that end in your dying miserably."
"No, no, not so bad as that," said Lydgate, giving up remonstranceand petting her resignedly.
CHAPTER XLVI.
Pues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos aquello que
podremos.
Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we can get.—
Spanish Proverb.
While Lydgate, safely married and with the Hospital under hiscommand, felt himself struggling for Medical Reform againstMiddlemarch, Middlemarch was becoming more and more conscious ofthe national struggle for another kind of Reform.
By the time that Lord John Russell's measure was being debated inthe House of Commons, there was a new political animation inMiddlemarch, and a new definition of parties which might show adecided change of balance if a new election came. And there were somewho already predicted this event, declaring that a Reform Bill wouldnever be carried by the actual Parliament. This was what Will Ladislawdwelt on to Mr. Brooke as a reason for congratulation that he had notyet tried his strength at the hustings.
"Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will."The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question ofReform has set in. There is likely to be another election before long, andby that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its head. Whatwe have to work at now is the 'Pioneer' and political meetings."
"Quite right, Ladislaw; we shall make a new thing of opinion here,"said Mr. Brooke. "Only I want to keep myself independent about Reform,you know; I don't want to go too far. I want to take up. Wilberforce's andRomilly's line, you know, and work at Negro Emancipation, CriminalLaw—that kind of thing. But of course I should support Grey."
"If you go in for the principle of Reform, you must be prepared totake what the situation offers," said Will. "If everybody pulled for hisown bit against everybody else, the whole question would go to tatters."
"Yes, yes, I agree with you—I quite take that point of view. I shouldput it in that light. I should support Grey, you know. But I don't want tochange the balance of the constitution, and I don't think Grey would."
"But that is what the country wants,"-said Will. "Else there would beno meaning in political unions or any other movement that knows whatit's about. It wants to have a House of Commons which is not weightedwith nominees of the landed class, but with representatives of the otherinterests. And as to contending for a reform short of that, it is like askingfor a bit of an avalanche which has already begun to thunder."
"That is fine, Ladislaw: that is the way to put it. Write that down,now. We must begin to get documents about the feeling of the country,as well as the machine-breaking and general distress."
"As to documents," said Will, "a two-inch card will hold plenty. A fewrows of figures are enough to deduce misery from, and a few more willshow the rate at which the political determination of the people isgrowing."
"Good: draw that out a little more at length, Ladislaw. That is anidea, now: write it out in the 'Pioneer.' Put the figures and deduce themisery, you know; and put the other figures and deduce—and so on. Youhave a way of putting things. Burke, now:—when I think of Burke, Ican't help wishing somebody had a pocket-borough to give you, Ladislaw.You'd never get elected, you know. And we shall always want talent inthe House: reform as we will, we shall always want talent. Thatavalanche and the thunder, now, was really a little like Burke. I wantthat sort of thing—not ideas, you know, but a way of putting them."
"Pocket-boroughs would be a fine thing," said Ladislaw, "if they werealways in the right pocket, and there were always a Burke at hand."
Will was not displeased with that complimentary comparison, evenfrom Mr. Brooke; for it is a little too trying to human flesh to beconscious of expressing one's self better than others and never to have itnoticed, and in the general dearth of admiration for the right thing, evena chance bray of applause falling exactly in time is rather fortifying. Willfelt that his literary refinements were usually beyond the limits ofMiddlemarch perception; nevertheless, he was beginning thoroughly tolike the work of which when he began he had said to himself ratherlanguidly, "Why not?"—and he studied the political situation with asardent an interest as he had ever given to poetic metres or mediaevalism.It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Dorothea was, andperhaps the want of knowing what else to do, Will would not at this timehave been meditating on the needs of the English people or criticisingEnglish statesmanship: he would probably have been rambling in Italysketching plans for several dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune,trying verse and finding it too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from oldpictures, leaving off because they were "no good," and observing that,after all, self-culture was the principal point; while in politics he wouldhave been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general. Oursense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the placeof dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not amatter of indifference.
Ladislaw had now accepted his bit of work, though it was not thatindeterminate loftiest thing which he had once dreamed of as aloneworthy of continuous effort. His nature warmed easily in the presence ofsubjects which were visibly mixed with life and action, and the easilystirred rebellion in him helped the glow of public spirit. In spite of Mr.Casaubon and the banishment from Lowick, he was rather happy; gettinga great deal of fresh knowledge in a vivid way and for practical purposes,and making the "Pioneer" celebrated as far as Brassing (never mind thesmallness of the area; the writing was not worse than much that reachesthe four corners of the earth).
Mr. Brooke was occasionally irritating; but Will's impatience wasrelieved by the division of his time between visits to the Grange andretreats to his Middlemarch lodgings, which gave variety to his life.
"Shift the pegs a little," he said to himself, "and Mr. Brooke might bein the Cabinet, while I was Under-Secretary. That is the common orderof things: the little waves make the large ones and are of the samepattern. I am better here than in the sort of life Mr. Casaubon wouldhave trained me for, where the doing would be all laid down by aprecedent too rigid for me to react upon. I don't care for prestige or highpay."
As Lydgate had said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoyingthe sense of belonging to no class; he had a feeling of romance in hisposition, and a pleasant consciousness of creating a little surprisewherever he went. That sort of enjoyment had been disturbed when hehad felt some new distance between himself and Dorothea in theiraccidental meeting at Lydgate's, and his irritation had gone out towardsMr. Casaubon, who had declared beforehand that Will would lose caste."I never had any caste," he would have said, if that prophecy had beenuttered to him, and the quick blood would have come and gone likebreath in his transparent skin. But it is one thing to like defiance, andanother thing to like its consequences.
Meanwhile, the town opinion about the new editor of the "Pioneer"was tending to confirm Mr. Casaubon's view. Will's relationship in thatdistinguished quarter did not, like Lydgate's high connections, serve asan advantageous introduction: if it was rumored that young Ladislawwas Mr. Casaubon's nephew or cousin, it was also rumored that "Mr.Casaubon would have nothing to do with him."
