บทที่ บทที่ 24 · Chapter XXIV

“The offender’s sorrow brings but small relief

To him who wears the strong offence’s cross.”

—SHAKESPEARE: _Sonnets_.

I am sorry to say that only the third day after the propitious events

at Houndsley Fred Vincy had fallen into worse spirits than he had known

in his life before. Not that he had been disappointed as to the

possible market for his horse, but that before the bargain could be

concluded with Lord Medlicote’s man, this Diamond, in which hope to the

amount of eighty pounds had been invested, had without the slightest

warning exhibited in the stable a most vicious energy in kicking, had

just missed killing the groom, and had ended in laming himself severely

by catching his leg in a rope that overhung the stable-board. There was

no more redress for this than for the discovery of bad temper after

marriage—which of course old companions were aware of before the

ceremony. For some reason or other, Fred had none of his usual

elasticity under this stroke of ill-fortune: he was simply aware that

he had only fifty pounds, that there was no chance of his getting any

more at present, and that the bill for a hundred and sixty would be

presented in five days. Even if he had applied to his father on the

plea that Mr. Garth should be saved from loss, Fred felt smartingly

that his father would angrily refuse to rescue Mr. Garth from the

consequence of what he would call encouraging extravagance and deceit.

He was so utterly downcast that he could frame no other project than to

go straight to Mr. Garth and tell him the sad truth, carrying with him

the fifty pounds, and getting that sum at least safely out of his own

hands. His father, being at the warehouse, did not yet know of the

accident: when he did, he would storm about the vicious brute being

brought into his stable; and before meeting that lesser annoyance Fred

wanted to get away with all his courage to face the greater. He took

his father’s nag, for he had made up his mind that when he had told Mr.

Garth, he would ride to Stone Court and confess all to Mary. In fact,

it is probable that but for Mary’s existence and Fred’s love for her,

his conscience would have been much less active both in previously

urging the debt on his thought and impelling him not to spare himself

after his usual fashion by deferring an unpleasant task, but to act as

directly and simply as he could. Even much stronger mortals than Fred

Vincy hold half their rectitude in the mind of the being they love

best. “The theatre of all my actions is fallen,” said an antique

personage when his chief friend was dead; and they are fortunate who

get a theatre where the audience demands their best. Certainly it would

have made a considerable difference to Fred at that time if Mary Garth

had had no decided notions as to what was admirable in character.

Mr. Garth was not at the office, and Fred rode on to his house, which

was a little way outside the town—a homely place with an orchard in

front of it, a rambling, old-fashioned, half-timbered building, which

before the town had spread had been a farm-house, but was now

surrounded with the private gardens of the townsmen. We get the fonder

of our houses if they have a physiognomy of their own, as our friends

have. The Garth family, which was rather a large one, for Mary had four

brothers and one sister, were very fond of their old house, from which

all the best furniture had long been sold. Fred liked it too, knowing

it by heart even to the attic which smelt deliciously of apples and

quinces, and until to-day he had never come to it without pleasant

expectations; but his heart beat uneasily now with the sense that he

should probably have to make his confession before Mrs. Garth, of whom

he was rather more in awe than of her husband. Not that she was

inclined to sarcasm and to impulsive sallies, as Mary was. In her

present matronly age at least, Mrs. Garth never committed herself by

over-hasty speech; having, as she said, borne the yoke in her youth,

and learned self-control. She had that rare sense which discerns what

is unalterable, and submits to it without murmuring. Adoring her

husband’s virtues, she had very early made up her mind to his

incapacity of minding his own interests, and had met the consequences

cheerfully. She had been magnanimous enough to renounce all pride in

teapots or children’s frilling, and had never poured any pathetic

confidences into the ears of her feminine neighbors concerning Mr.

Garth’s want of prudence and the sums he might have had if he had been

like other men. Hence these fair neighbors thought her either proud or

eccentric, and sometimes spoke of her to their husbands as “your fine

Mrs. Garth.” She was not without her criticism of them in return, being

more accurately instructed than most matrons in Middlemarch, and—where

is the blameless woman?—apt to be a little severe towards her own sex,

which in her opinion was framed to be entirely subordinate. On the

other hand, she was disproportionately indulgent towards the failings

of men, and was often heard to say that these were natural. Also, it

must be admitted that Mrs. Garth was a trifle too emphatic in her

resistance to what she held to be follies: the passage from governess

into housewife had wrought itself a little too strongly into her

consciousness, and she rarely forgot that while her grammar and accent

were above the town standard, she wore a plain cap, cooked the family

dinner, and darned all the stockings. She had sometimes taken pupils in

a peripatetic fashion, making them follow her about in the kitchen with

their book or slate. She thought it good for them to see that she could

make an excellent lather while she corrected their blunders “without

looking,”—that a woman with her sleeves tucked up above her elbows

might know all about the Subjunctive Mood or the Torrid Zone—that, in

short, she might possess “education” and other good things ending in

“tion,” and worthy to be pronounced emphatically, without being a

useless doll. When she made remarks to this edifying effect, she had a

firm little frown on her brow, which yet did not hinder her face from

looking benevolent, and her words which came forth like a procession

were uttered in a fervid agreeable contralto. Certainly, the exemplary

Mrs. Garth had her droll aspects, but her character sustained her

oddities, as a very fine wine sustains a flavor of skin.

Towards Fred Vincy she had a motherly feeling, and had always been

disposed to excuse his errors, though she would probably not have

excused Mary for engaging herself to him, her daughter being included

in that more rigorous judgment which she applied to her own sex. But

this very fact of her exceptional indulgence towards him made it the

harder to Fred that he must now inevitably sink in her opinion. And the

circumstances of his visit turned out to be still more unpleasant than

he had expected; for Caleb Garth had gone out early to look at some

repairs not far off. Mrs. Garth at certain hours was always in the

kitchen, and this morning she was carrying on several occupations at

once there—making her pies at the well-scoured deal table on one side

of that airy room, observing Sally’s movements at the oven and

dough-tub through an open door, and giving lessons to her youngest boy

and girl, who were standing opposite to her at the table with their

books and slates before them. A tub and a clothes-horse at the other

end of the kitchen indicated an intermittent wash of small things also

going on.

Mrs. Garth, with her sleeves turned above her elbows, deftly handling

her pastry—applying her rolling-pin and giving ornamental pinches,

while she expounded with grammatical fervor what were the right views

about the concord of verbs and pronouns with “nouns of multitude or

signifying many,” was a sight agreeably amusing. She was of the same

curly-haired, square-faced type as Mary, but handsomer, with more

delicacy of feature, a pale skin, a solid matronly figure, and a

remarkable firmness of glance. In her snowy-frilled cap she reminded

one of that delightful Frenchwoman whom we have all seen marketing,

basket on arm. Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter

would become like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a

dowry—the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a

malignant prophecy—“Such as I am, she will shortly be.”

“Now let us go through that once more,” said Mrs. Garth, pinching an

apple-puff which seemed to distract Ben, an energetic young male with a

heavy brow, from due attention to the lesson. “‘Not without regard to

the import of the word as conveying unity or plurality of idea’—tell me

again what that means, Ben.”

(Mrs. Garth, like more celebrated educators, had her favorite ancient

paths, and in a general wreck of society would have tried to hold her

“Lindley Murray” above the waves.)

“Oh—it means—you must think what you mean,” said Ben, rather peevishly.

“I hate grammar. What’s the use of it?”

“To teach you to speak and write correctly, so that you can be

understood,” said Mrs. Garth, with severe precision. “Should you like

to speak as old Job does?”

“Yes,” said Ben, stoutly; “it’s funnier. He says, ‘Yo goo’—that’s just

as good as ‘You go.’”

“But he says, ‘A ship’s in the garden,’ instead of ‘a sheep,’” said

Letty, with an air of superiority. “You might think he meant a ship off

the sea.”

“No, you mightn’t, if you weren’t silly,” said Ben. “How could a ship

off the sea come there?”

“These things belong only to pronunciation, which is the least part of

grammar,” said Mrs. Garth. “That apple-peel is to be eaten by the pigs,

Ben; if you eat it, I must give them your piece of pasty. Job has only

to speak about very plain things. How do you think you would write or

speak about anything more difficult, if you knew no more of grammar

than he does? You would use wrong words, and put words in the wrong

places, and instead of making people understand you, they would turn

away from you as a tiresome person. What would you do then?”

“I shouldn’t care, I should leave off,” said Ben, with a sense that

this was an agreeable issue where grammar was concerned.

“I see you are getting tired and stupid, Ben,” said Mrs. Garth,

accustomed to these obstructive arguments from her male offspring.

Having finished her pies, she moved towards the clothes-horse, and

said, “Come here and tell me the story I told you on Wednesday, about

Cincinnatus.”

“I know! he was a farmer,” said Ben.

“Now, Ben, he was a Roman—let _me_ tell,” said Letty, using her elbow

contentiously.

“You silly thing, he was a Roman farmer, and he was ploughing.”

“Yes, but before that—that didn’t come first—people wanted him,” said

Letty.

“Well, but you must say what sort of a man he was first,” insisted Ben.

“He was a wise man, like my father, and that made the people want his

advice. And he was a brave man, and could fight. And so could my

father—couldn’t he, mother?”

“Now, Ben, let me tell the story straight on, as mother told it us,”

said Letty, frowning. “Please, mother, tell Ben not to speak.”

“Letty, I am ashamed of you,” said her mother, wringing out the caps

from the tub. “When your brother began, you ought to have waited to see

if he could not tell the story. How rude you look, pushing and

frowning, as if you wanted to conquer with your elbows! Cincinnatus, I

am sure, would have been sorry to see his daughter behave so.” (Mrs.

Garth delivered this awful sentence with much majesty of enunciation,

and Letty felt that between repressed volubility and general disesteem,

that of the Romans inclusive, life was already a painful affair.) “Now,

Ben.”

“Well—oh—well—why, there was a great deal of fighting, and they were

all blockheads, and—I can’t tell it just how you told it—but they

wanted a man to be captain and king and everything—”

“Dictator, now,” said Letty, with injured looks, and not without a wish

to make her mother repent.

“Very well, dictator!” said Ben, contemptuously. “But that isn’t a good

word: he didn’t tell them to write on slates.”

“Come, come, Ben, you are not so ignorant as that,” said Mrs. Garth,

carefully serious. “Hark, there is a knock at the door! Run, Letty, and

open it.”

The knock was Fred’s; and when Letty said that her father was not in

yet, but that her mother was in the kitchen, Fred had no alternative.

He could not depart from his usual practice of going to see Mrs. Garth

in the kitchen if she happened to be at work there. He put his arm

round Letty’s neck silently, and led her into the kitchen without his

usual jokes and caresses.

Mrs. Garth was surprised to see Fred at this hour, but surprise was not

a feeling that she was given to express, and she only said, quietly

continuing her work—

“You, Fred, so early in the day? You look quite pale. Has anything

happened?”

“I want to speak to Mr. Garth,” said Fred, not yet ready to say

more—“and to you also,” he added, after a little pause, for he had no

doubt that Mrs. Garth knew everything about the bill, and he must in

the end speak of it before her, if not to her solely.

“Caleb will be in again in a few minutes,” said Mrs. Garth, who

imagined some trouble between Fred and his father. “He is sure not to

be long, because he has some work at his desk that must be done this

morning. Do you mind staying with me, while I finish my matters here?”

“But we needn’t go on about Cincinnatus, need we?” said Ben, who had

taken Fred’s whip out of his hand, and was trying its efficiency on the

cat.

“No, go out now. But put that whip down. How very mean of you to whip

poor old Tortoise! Pray take the whip from him, Fred.”

“Come, old boy, give it me,” said Fred, putting out his hand.

“Will you let me ride on your horse to-day?” said Ben, rendering up the

whip, with an air of not being obliged to do it.

“Not to-day—another time. I am not riding my own horse.”

“Shall you see Mary to-day?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Fred, with an unpleasant twinge.

“Tell her to come home soon, and play at forfeits, and make fun.”

“Enough, enough, Ben! run away,” said Mrs. Garth, seeing that Fred was

teased.

“Are Letty and Ben your only pupils now, Mrs. Garth?” said Fred, when

the children were gone and it was needful to say something that would

pass the time. He was not yet sure whether he should wait for Mr.

Garth, or use any good opportunity in conversation to confess to Mrs.

Garth herself, give her the money and ride away.

“One—only one. Fanny Hackbutt comes at half past eleven. I am not

getting a great income now,” said Mrs. Garth, smiling. “I am at a low

ebb with pupils. But I have saved my little purse for Alfred’s premium:

I have ninety-two pounds. He can go to Mr. Hanmer’s now; he is just at

the right age.”

This did not lead well towards the news that Mr. Garth was on the brink

of losing ninety-two pounds and more. Fred was silent. “Young gentlemen

who go to college are rather more costly than that,” Mrs. Garth

innocently continued, pulling out the edging on a cap-border. “And

Caleb thinks that Alfred will turn out a distinguished engineer: he

wants to give the boy a good chance. There he is! I hear him coming in.

We will go to him in the parlor, shall we?”

When they entered the parlor Caleb had thrown down his hat and was

seated at his desk.

“What! Fred, my boy!” he said, in a tone of mild surprise, holding his

pen still undipped; “you are here betimes.” But missing the usual

expression of cheerful greeting in Fred’s face, he immediately added,

“Is there anything up at home?—anything the matter?”

“Yes, Mr. Garth, I am come to tell something that I am afraid will give

you a bad opinion of me. I am come to tell you and Mrs. Garth that I

can’t keep my word. I can’t find the money to meet the bill after all.

I have been unfortunate; I have only got these fifty pounds towards the

hundred and sixty.”

While Fred was speaking, he had taken out the notes and laid them on

the desk before Mr. Garth. He had burst forth at once with the plain

fact, feeling boyishly miserable and without verbal resources. Mrs.

Garth was mutely astonished, and looked at her husband for an

explanation. Caleb blushed, and after a little pause said—

“Oh, I didn’t tell you, Susan: I put my name to a bill for Fred; it was

for a hundred and sixty pounds. He made sure he could meet it himself.”

There was an evident change in Mrs. Garth’s face, but it was like a

change below the surface of water which remains smooth. She fixed her

eyes on Fred, saying—

“I suppose you have asked your father for the rest of the money and he

has refused you.”

“No,” said Fred, biting his lip, and speaking with more difficulty;

“but I know it will be of no use to ask him; and unless it were of use,

I should not like to mention Mr. Garth’s name in the matter.”

“It has come at an unfortunate time,” said Caleb, in his hesitating

way, looking down at the notes and nervously fingering the paper,

“Christmas upon us—I’m rather hard up just now. You see, I have to cut

out everything like a tailor with short measure. What can we do, Susan?

I shall want every farthing we have in the bank. It’s a hundred and ten

pounds, the deuce take it!”

“I must give you the ninety-two pounds that I have put by for Alfred’s

premium,” said Mrs. Garth, gravely and decisively, though a nice ear

might have discerned a slight tremor in some of the words. “And I have

no doubt that Mary has twenty pounds saved from her salary by this

time. She will advance it.”

Mrs. Garth had not again looked at Fred, and was not in the least

calculating what words she should use to cut him the most effectively.

Like the eccentric woman she was, she was at present absorbed in

considering what was to be done, and did not fancy that the end could

be better achieved by bitter remarks or explosions. But she had made

Fred feel for the first time something like the tooth of remorse.

Curiously enough, his pain in the affair beforehand had consisted

almost entirely in the sense that he must seem dishonorable, and sink

in the opinion of the Garths: he had not occupied himself with the

inconvenience and possible injury that his breach might occasion them,

for this exercise of the imagination on other people’s needs is not

common with hopeful young gentlemen. Indeed we are most of us brought

up in the notion that the highest motive for not doing a wrong is

something irrespective of the beings who would suffer the wrong. But at

this moment he suddenly saw himself as a pitiful rascal who was robbing

two women of their savings.

“I shall certainly pay it all, Mrs. Garth—ultimately,” he stammered

out.

“Yes, ultimately,” said Mrs. Garth, who having a special dislike to

fine words on ugly occasions, could not now repress an epigram. “But

boys cannot well be apprenticed ultimately: they should be apprenticed

at fifteen.” She had never been so little inclined to make excuses for

Fred.

“I was the most in the wrong, Susan,” said Caleb. “Fred made sure of

finding the money. But I’d no business to be fingering bills. I suppose

you have looked all round and tried all honest means?” he added, fixing

his merciful gray eyes on Fred. Caleb was too delicate to specify Mr.

Featherstone.

“Yes, I have tried everything—I really have. I should have had a

hundred and thirty pounds ready but for a misfortune with a horse which

I was about to sell. My uncle had given me eighty pounds, and I paid

away thirty with my old horse in order to get another which I was going

to sell for eighty or more—I meant to go without a horse—but now it has

turned out vicious and lamed itself. I wish I and the horses too had

been at the devil, before I had brought this on you. There’s no one

else I care so much for: you and Mrs. Garth have always been so kind to

me. However, it’s no use saying that. You will always think me a rascal

now.”

Fred turned round and hurried out of the room, conscious that he was

getting rather womanish, and feeling confusedly that his being sorry

was not of much use to the Garths. They could see him mount, and

quickly pass through the gate.

“I am disappointed in Fred Vincy,” said Mrs. Garth. “I would not have

believed beforehand that he would have drawn you into his debts. I knew

he was extravagant, but I did not think that he would be so mean as to

hang his risks on his oldest friend, who could the least afford to

lose.”

“I was a fool, Susan.”

“That you were,” said the wife, nodding and smiling. “But I should not

have gone to publish it in the market-place. Why should you keep such

things from me? It is just so with your buttons: you let them burst off

without telling me, and go out with your wristband hanging. If I had

only known I might have been ready with some better plan.”

“You are sadly cut up, I know, Susan,” said Caleb, looking feelingly at

her. “I can’t abide your losing the money you’ve scraped together for

Alfred.”

“It is very well that I _had_ scraped it together; and it is you who

will have to suffer, for you must teach the boy yourself. You must give

up your bad habits. Some men take to drinking, and you have taken to

working without pay. You must indulge yourself a little less in that.

And you must ride over to Mary, and ask the child what money she has.”

Caleb had pushed his chair back, and was leaning forward, shaking his

head slowly, and fitting his finger-tips together with much nicety.

“Poor Mary!” he said. “Susan,” he went on in a lowered tone, “I’m

afraid she may be fond of Fred.”

“Oh no! She always laughs at him; and he is not likely to think of her

in any other than a brotherly way.”

Caleb made no rejoinder, but presently lowered his spectacles, drew up

his chair to the desk, and said, “Deuce take the bill—I wish it was at

Hanover! These things are a sad interruption to business!”

The first part of this speech comprised his whole store of maledictory

expression, and was uttered with a slight snarl easy to imagine. But it

would be difficult to convey to those who never heard him utter the

word “business,” the peculiar tone of fervid veneration, of religious

regard, in which he wrapped it, as a consecrated symbol is wrapped in

its gold-fringed linen.

Caleb Garth often shook his head in meditation on the value, the

indispensable might of that myriad-headed, myriad-handed labor by which

the social body is fed, clothed, and housed. It had laid hold of his

imagination in boyhood. The echoes of the great hammer where roof or

keel were a-making, the signal-shouts of the workmen, the roar of the

furnace, the thunder and plash of the engine, were a sublime music to

him; the felling and lading of timber, and the huge trunk vibrating

star-like in the distance along the highway, the crane at work on the

wharf, the piled-up produce in warehouses, the precision and variety of

muscular effort wherever exact work had to be turned out,—all these

sights of his youth had acted on him as poetry without the aid of the

poets, had made a philosophy for him without the aid of philosophers, a

religion without the aid of theology. His early ambition had been to

have as effective a share as possible in this sublime labor, which was

peculiarly dignified by him with the name of “business;” and though he

had only been a short time under a surveyor, and had been chiefly his

own teacher, he knew more of land, building, and mining than most of

the special men in the county.

His classification of human employments was rather crude, and, like the

categories of more celebrated men, would not be acceptable in these

advanced times. He divided them into “business, politics, preaching,

learning, and amusement.” He had nothing to say against the last four;

but he regarded them as a reverential pagan regarded other gods than

his own. In the same way, he thought very well of all ranks, but he

would not himself have liked to be of any rank in which he had not such

close contact with “business” as to get often honorably decorated with

marks of dust and mortar, the damp of the engine, or the sweet soil of

the woods and fields. Though he had never regarded himself as other

than an orthodox Christian, and would argue on prevenient grace if the

subject were proposed to him, I think his virtual divinities were good

practical schemes, accurate work, and the faithful completion of

undertakings: his prince of darkness was a slack workman. But there was

no spirit of denial in Caleb, and the world seemed so wondrous to him

that he was ready to accept any number of systems, like any number of

firmaments, if they did not obviously interfere with the best

land-drainage, solid building, correct measuring, and judicious boring

(for coal). In fact, he had a reverential soul with a strong practical

intelligence. But he could not manage finance: he knew values well, but

he had no keenness of imagination for monetary results in the shape of

profit and loss: and having ascertained this to his cost, he determined

to give up all forms of his beloved “business” which required that

talent. He gave himself up entirely to the many kinds of work which he

could do without handling capital, and was one of those precious men

within his own district whom everybody would choose to work for them,

because he did his work well, charged very little, and often declined

to charge at all. It is no wonder, then, that the Garths were poor, and

“lived in a small way.” However, they did not mind it.