Lydgate, by betting on his own strokes, had won sixteen pounds; butyoung Hawley's arrival had changed the poise of things. He made first-rate strokes himself, and began to bet against Lydgate's strokes, thestrain of whose nerves was thus changed from simple confidence in hisown movements to defying another person's doubt in them. The defiancewas more exciting than the confidence, but it was less sure. Hecontinued to bet on his own play, but began often to fail. Still he wenton, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that precipitous crevice ofplay as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there. Fred observedthat Lydgate was losing fast, and found himself in the new situation ofpuzzling his brains to think of some device by which, without beingoffensive, he could withdraw Lydgate's attention, and perhaps suggest tohim a reason for quitting the room. He saw that others were observingLydgate's strange unlikeness to himself, and it occurred to him thatmerely to touch his elbow and call him aside for a moment might rousehim from his absorption. He could think of nothing cleverer than thedaring improbability of saying that he wanted to see Rosy, and wished toknow if she were at home this evening; and he was going desperately tocarry out this weak device, when a waiter came up to him with amessage, saying that Mr. Farebrother was below, and begged to speakwith him.
Fred was surprised, not quite comfortably, but sending word that hewould be down immediately, he went with a new impulse up to Lydgate,said, "Can I speak to you a moment?" and drew him aside.
"Farebrother has just sent up a message to say that he wants tospeak to me. He is below. I thought you might like to know he wasthere, if you had anything to say to him."
Fred had simply snatched up this pretext for speaking, because hecould not say, "You are losing confoundedly, and are making everybodystare at you; you had better come away." But inspiration could hardlyhave served him better. Lydgate had not before seen that Fred waspresent, and his sudden appearance with an announcement of Mr.Farebrother had the effect of a sharp concussion.
"No, no," said Lydgate; "I have nothing particular to say to him.But—the game is up—I must be going—I came in just to see Bambridge."
"Bambridge is over there, but he is making a row—I don't think he'sready for business. Come down with me to Farebrother. I expect he isgoing to blow me up, and you will shield me," said Fred, with someadroitness.
Lydgate felt shame, but could not bear to act as if he felt it, byrefusing to see Mr. Farebrother; and he went down. They merely shookhands, however, and spoke of the frost; and when all three had turnedinto the street, the Vicar seemed quite willing to say good-by to Lydgate.His present purpose was clearly to talk with Fred alone, and he said,kindly, "I disturbed you, young gentleman, because I have some pressingbusiness with you. Walk with me to St. Botolph's, will you?"
It was a fine night, the sky thick with stars, and Mr. Farebrotherproposed that they should make a circuit to the old church by theLondon road. The next thing he said was—
"I thought Lydgate never went to the Green Dragon?"
"So did I," said Fred. "But he said that he went to see Bambridge."
"He was not playing, then?"
Fred had not meant to tell this, but he was obliged now to say, "Yes,he was. But I suppose it was an accidental thing. I have never seen himthere before."
"You have been going often yourself, then, lately?"
"Oh, about five or six times."
"I think you had some good reason for giving up the habit of goingthere?"
"Yes. You know all about it," said Fred, not liking to be catechised inthis way. "I made a clean breast to you."
"I suppose that gives me a warrant to speak about the matter now. Itis understood between us, is it not?—that we are on a footing of openfriendship: I have listened to you, and you will be willing to listen to me.I may take my turn in talking a little about myself?"
"I am under the deepest obligation to you, Mr. Farebrother," saidFred, in a state of uncomfortable surmise.
"I will not affect to deny that you are under some obligation to me.But I am going to confess to you, Fred, that I have been tempted toreverse all that by keeping silence with you just now. When somebodysaid to me, 'Young Vincy has taken to being at the billiard-table everynight again—he won't bear the curb long;' I was tempted to do theopposite of what I am doing—to hold my tongue and wait while youwent down the ladder again, betting first and then—"
"I have not made any bets," said Fred, hastily.
"Glad to hear it. But I say, my prompting was to look on and see youtake the wrong turning, wear out Garth's patience, and lose the bestopportunity of your life—the opportunity which you made some ratherdifficult effort to secure. You can guess the feeling which raised thattemptation in me—I am sure you know it. I am sure you know that thesatisfaction of your affections stands in the way of mine."
There was a pause. Mr. Farebrother seemed to wait for a recognitionof the fact; and the emotion perceptible in the tones of his fine voicegave solemnity to his words. But no feeling could quell Fred's alarm.
"I could not be expected to give her up," he said, after a moment'shesitation: it was not a case for any pretence of generosity.
"Clearly not, when her affection met yours. But relations of this sort,even when they are of long standing, are always liable to change. I caneasily conceive that you might act in a way to loosen the tie she feelstowards you—it must be remembered that she is only conditionallybound to you—and that in that case, another man, who may flatterhimself that he has a hold on her regard, might succeed in winning thatfirm place in her love as well as respect which you had let slip. I caneasily conceive such a result," repeated Mr. Farebrother, emphatically."There is a companionship of ready sympathy, which might get theadvantage even over the longest associations." It seemed to Fred that ifMr. Farebrother had had a beak and talons instead of his very capabletongue, his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel. He had a horribleconviction that behind all this hypothetic statement there was aknowledge of some actual change in Mary's feeling.
"Of course I know it might easily be all up with me," he said, in atroubled voice. "If she is beginning to compare—" He broke off, not likingto betray all he felt, and then said, by the help of a little bitterness, "ButI thought you were friendly to me."
"So I am; that is why we are here. But I have had a strongdisposition to be otherwise. I have said to myself, 'If there is a likelihoodof that youngster doing himself harm, why should you interfere? Aren'tyou worth as much as he is, and don't your sixteen years over and abovehis, in which you have gone rather hungry, give you more right tosatisfaction than he has? If there's a chance of his going to the dogs, lethim—perhaps you could nohow hinder it—and do you take the benefit.'"
There was a pause, in which Fred was seized by a mostuncomfortable chill. What was coming next? He dreaded to hear thatsomething had been said to Mary—he felt as if he were listening to athreat rather than a warning. When the Vicar began again there was achange in his tone like the encouraging transition to a major key.
"But I had once meant better than that, and I am come back to myold intention. I thought that I could hardly secure myself in it better,Fred, than by telling you just what had gone on in me. And now, do youunderstand me? I want you to make the happiness of her life and yourown, and if there is any chance that a word of warning from me mayturn aside any risk to the contrary—well, I have uttered it."
There was a drop in the Vicar's voice when he spoke the last wordsHe paused—they were standing on a patch of green where the roaddiverged towards St. Botolph's, and he put out his hand, as if to implythat the conversation was closed. Fred was moved quite newly. Some onehighly susceptible to the contemplation of a fine act has said, that itproduces a sort of regenerating shudder through the frame, and makesone feel ready to begin a new life. A good degree of that effect was justthen present in Fred Vincy.
"I will try to be worthy," he said, breaking off before he could say "ofyou as well as of her." And meanwhile Mr. Farebrother had gathered theimpulse to say something more.
"You must not imagine that I believe there is at present any declinein her preference of you, Fred. Set your heart at rest, that if you keepright, other things will keep right."
"I shall never forget what you have done," Fred answered. "I can't sayanything that seems worth saying—only I will try that your goodnessshall not be thrown away."
"That's enough. Good-by, and God bless you."
In that way they parted. But both of them walked about a long whilebefore they went out of the starlight. Much of Fred's rumination might besummed up in the words, "It certainly would have been a fine thing forher to marry Farebrother—but if she loves me best and I am a goodhusband?"
Perhaps Mr. Farebrother's might be concentrated into a single shrugand one little speech. "To think of the part one little woman can play inthe life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very good imitationof heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!"
CHAPTER LXVII.
Now is there civil war within the soul:
Resolve is thrust from off the sacred throne
By clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand-vizier
Makes humble compact, plays the supple part
Of envoy and deft-tongued apologist
For hungry rebels.
Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, andbrought away no encouragement to make a raid on luck. On thecontrary, he felt unmixed disgust with himself the next day when he hadto pay four or five pounds over and above his gains, and he carried aboutwith him a most unpleasant vision of the figure he had made, not onlyrubbing elbows with the men at the Green Dragon but behaving just asthey did. A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly distinguishable from aPhilistine under the same circumstances: the difference will chiefly befound in his subsequent reflections, and Lydgate chewed a verydisagreeable cud in that way. His reason told him how the affair mighthave been magnified into ruin by a slight change of scenery—if it hadbeen a gambling-house that he had turned into, where chance could beclutched with both hands instead of being picked up with thumb andfore-finger. Nevertheless, though reason strangled the desire to gamble,there remained the feeling that, with an assurance of luck to the needfulamount, he would have liked to gamble, rather than take the alternativewhich was beginning to urge itself as inevitable.
That alternative was to apply to Mr. Bulstrode. Lydgate had so manytimes boasted both to himself and others that he was totally independentof Bulstrode, to whose plans he had lent himself solely because theyenabled him to carry out his own ideas of professional work and publicbenefit—he had so constantly in their personal intercourse had his pridesustained by the sense that he was making a good social use of thispredominating banker, whose opinions he thought contemptible andwhose motives often seemed to him an absurd mixture of contradictoryimpressions—that he had been creating for himself strong ideal obstaclesto the proffering of any considerable request to him on his own account. Still, early in March his affairs were at that pass in which men beginto say that their oaths were delivered in ignorance, and to perceive thatthe act which they had called impossible to them is becoming manifestlypossible. With Dover's ugly security soon to be put in force, with theproceeds of his practice immediately absorbed in paying back debts, andwith the chance, if the worst were known, of daily supplies being refusedon credit, above all with the vision of Rosamond's hopeless discontentcontinually haunting him, Lydgate had begun to see that he shouldinevitably bend himself to ask help from somebody or other. At first hehad considered whether he should write to Mr. Vincy; but onquestioning Rosamond he found that, as he had suspected, she hadalready applied twice to her father, the last time being since thedisappointment from Sir Godwin; and papa had said that Lydgate mustlook out for himself. "Papa said he had come, with one bad year afteranother, to trade more and more on borrowed capital, and had had togive up many indulgences; he could not spare a single hundred from thecharges of his family. He said, let Lydgate ask Bulstrode: they havealways been hand and glove."
Indeed, Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion that if he mustend by asking for a free loan, his relations with Bulstrode, more at leastthan with any other man, might take the shape of a claim which was notpurely personal. Bulstrode had indirectly helped to cause the failure ofhis practice, and had also been highly gratified by getting a medicalpartner in his plans:—but who among us ever reduced himself to the sortof dependence in which Lydgate now stood, without trying to believethat he had claims which diminished the humiliation of asking? It wastrue that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of interest inBulstrode about the Hospital; but his health had got worse, and showedsigns of a deep-seated nervous affection. In other respects he did notappear to be changed: he had always been highly polite, but Lydgate hadobserved in him from the first a marked coldness about his marriage andother private circumstances, a coldness which he had hitherto preferredto any warmth of familiarity between them. He deferred the intentionfrom day to day, his habit of acting on his conclusions being made infirmby his repugnance to every possible conclusion and its consequent act.He saw Mr. Bulstrode often, but he did not try to use any occasion forhis private purpose. At one moment he thought, "I will write a letter: Iprefer that to any circuitous talk;" at another he thought, "No; if I weretalking to him, I could make a retreat before any signs of disinclination." Still the days passed and no letter was written, no special interviewsought. In his shrinking from the humiliation of a dependent attitudetowards Bulstrode, he began to familiarize his imagination with anotherstep even more unlike his remembered self. He began spontaneously toconsider whether it would be possible to carry out that puerile notion ofRosamond's which had often made him angry, namely, that they shouldquit Middlemarch without seeing anything beyond that preface. Thequestion came—"Would any man buy the practice of me even now, for aslittle as it is worth? Then the sale might happen as a necessarypreparation for going away."
