Chương Chương 27 · Chapter XXVII

Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian:

We are but mortals, and must sing of man.

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly

furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me

this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of

polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and

multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a

lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will

seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round

that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going

everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the

flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with

an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The

scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now

absent—of Miss Vincy, for example. Rosamond had a Providence of her own

who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who seemed

to have arranged Fred’s illness and Mr. Wrench’s mistake in order to

bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity. It would have been to

contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented to go away to

Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do, especially

since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless. Therefore, while

Miss Morgan and the children were sent away to a farmhouse the morning

after Fred’s illness had declared itself, Rosamond refused to leave

papa and mamma.

Poor mamma indeed was an object to touch any creature born of woman;

and Mr. Vincy, who doted on his wife, was more alarmed on her account

than on Fred’s. But for his insistence she would have taken no rest:

her brightness was all bedimmed; unconscious of her costume which had

always been so fresh and gay, she was like a sick bird with languid eye

and plumage ruffled, her senses dulled to the sights and sounds that

used most to interest her. Fred’s delirium, in which he seemed to be

wandering out of her reach, tore her heart. After her first outburst

against Mr. Wrench she went about very quietly: her one low cry was to

Lydgate. She would follow him out of the room and put her hand on his

arm moaning out, “Save my boy.” Once she pleaded, “He has always been

good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he never had a hard word for his mother,”—as

if poor Fred’s suffering were an accusation against him. All the

deepest fibres of the mother’s memory were stirred, and the young man

whose voice took a gentler tone when he spoke to her, was one with the

babe whom she had loved, with a love new to her, before he was born.

“I have good hope, Mrs. Vincy,” Lydgate would say. “Come down with me

and let us talk about the food.” In that way he led her to the parlor

where Rosamond was, and made a change for her, surprising her into

taking some tea or broth which had been prepared for her. There was a

constant understanding between him and Rosamond on these matters. He

almost always saw her before going to the sickroom, and she appealed to

him as to what she could do for mamma. Her presence of mind and

adroitness in carrying out his hints were admirable, and it is not

wonderful that the idea of seeing Rosamond began to mingle itself with

his interest in the case. Especially when the critical stage was

passed, and he began to feel confident of Fred’s recovery. In the more

doubtful time, he had advised calling in Dr. Sprague (who, if he could,

would rather have remained neutral on Wrench’s account); but after two

consultations, the conduct of the case was left to Lydgate, and there

was every reason to make him assiduous. Morning and evening he was at

Mr. Vincy’s, and gradually the visits became cheerful as Fred became

simply feeble, and lay not only in need of the utmost petting but

conscious of it, so that Mrs. Vincy felt as if, after all, the illness

had made a festival for her tenderness.

Both father and mother held it an added reason for good spirits, when

old Mr. Featherstone sent messages by Lydgate, saying that Fred must

make haste and get well, as he, Peter Featherstone, could not do

without him, and missed his visits sadly. The old man himself was

getting bedridden. Mrs. Vincy told these messages to Fred when he could

listen, and he turned towards her his delicate, pinched face, from

which all the thick blond hair had been cut away, and in which the eyes

seemed to have got larger, yearning for some word about Mary—wondering

what she felt about his illness. No word passed his lips; but “to hear

with eyes belongs to love’s rare wit,” and the mother in the fulness of

her heart not only divined Fred’s longing, but felt ready for any

sacrifice in order to satisfy him.

“If I can only see my boy strong again,” she said, in her loving folly;

“and who knows?—perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry anybody

he likes then.”

“Not if they won’t have me, mother,” said Fred. The illness had made

him childish, and tears came as he spoke.

“Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear,” said Mrs. Vincy, secretly

incredulous of any such refusal.

She never left Fred’s side when her husband was not in the house, and

thus Rosamond was in the unusual position of being much alone. Lydgate,

naturally, never thought of staying long with her, yet it seemed that

the brief impersonal conversations they had together were creating that

peculiar intimacy which consists in shyness. They were obliged to look

at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking could not be carried

through as the matter of course which it really was. Lydgate began to

feel this sort of consciousness unpleasant and one day looked down, or

anywhere, like an ill-worked puppet. But this turned out badly: the

next day, Rosamond looked down, and the consequence was that when their

eyes met again, both were more conscious than before. There was no help

for this in science, and as Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed

to be no help for it in folly. It was therefore a relief when neighbors

no longer considered the house in quarantine, and when the chances of

seeing Rosamond alone were very much reduced.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the

other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to

be done away with. Talk about the weather and other well-bred topics is

apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy unless

it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination—which of course need not

mean anything deep or serious. This was the way in which Rosamond and

Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse lively

again. Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more music in

the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy’s

mayoralty returned. Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by

Rosamond’s side, and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her

captive—meaning, all the while, not to be her captive. The

preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a

satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee

against danger. This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and

did not interfere with graver pursuits. Flirtation, after all, was not

necessarily a singeing process. Rosamond, for her part, had never

enjoyed the days so much in her life before: she was sure of being

admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish

flirtation from love, either in herself or in another. She seemed to be

sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts

were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped

would by-and-by be vacant. She was quite determined, when she was

married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who were not

agreeable to her at her father’s; and she imagined the drawing-room in

her favorite house with various styles of furniture.

Certainly her thoughts were much occupied with Lydgate himself; he

seemed to her almost perfect: if he had known his notes so that his

enchantment under her music had been less like an emotional elephant’s,

and if he had been able to discriminate better the refinements of her

taste in dress, she could hardly have mentioned a deficiency in him.

How different he was from young Plymdale or Mr. Caius Larcher! Those

young men had not a notion of French, and could speak on no subject

with striking knowledge, except perhaps the dyeing and carrying trades,

which of course they were ashamed to mention; they were Middlemarch

gentry, elated with their silver-headed whips and satin stocks, but

embarrassed in their manners, and timidly jocose: even Fred was above

them, having at least the accent and manner of a university man.

Whereas Lydgate was always listened to, bore himself with the careless

politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right

clothes on by a certain natural affinity, without ever having to think

about them. Rosamond was proud when he entered the room, and when he

approached her with a distinguishing smile, she had a delicious sense

that she was the object of enviable homage. If Lydgate had been aware

of all the pride he excited in that delicate bosom, he might have been

just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant

of humoral pathology or fibrous tissue: he held it one of the prettiest

attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man’s pre-eminence without

too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in. But Rosamond was not

one of those helpless girls who betray themselves unawares, and whose

behavior is awkwardly driven by their impulses, instead of being

steered by wary grace and propriety. Do you imagine that her rapid

forecast and rumination concerning house-furniture and society were

ever discernible in her conversation, even with her mamma? On the

contrary, she would have expressed the prettiest surprise and

disapprobation if she had heard that another young lady had been

detected in that immodest prematureness—indeed, would probably have

disbelieved in its possibility. For Rosamond never showed any

unbecoming knowledge, and was always that combination of correct

sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant note-writing, private

album for extracted verse, and perfect blond loveliness, which made the

irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date. Think no unfair

evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or

mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except as something

necessary which other people would always provide. She was not in the

habit of devising falsehoods, and if her statements were no direct clew

to fact, why, they were not intended in that light—they were among her

elegant accomplishments, intended to please. Nature had inspired many

arts in finishing Mrs. Lemon’s favorite pupil, who by general consent

(Fred’s excepted) was a rare compound of beauty, cleverness, and

amiability.

Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was

no constraint now, there was a delightful interchange of influence in

their eyes, and what they said had that superfluity of meaning for

them, which is observable with some sense of flatness by a third

person; still they had no interviews or asides from which a third

person need have been excluded. In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was

secure in the belief that they did nothing else. If a man could not

love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time?

Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great

bores, and Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards:

what was he to do for relaxation? He was often invited to the

Bulstrodes’; but the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and

Mrs. Bulstrode’s _naive_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the

nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the

consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a

sufficient relief from the weight of her husband’s invariable

seriousness. The Vincys’ house, with all its faults, was the pleasanter

by contrast; besides, it nourished Rosamond—sweet to look at as a

half-opened blush-rose, and adorned with accomplishments for the

refined amusement of man.

But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss

Vincy. One evening he came into the drawing-room rather late, when

several other visitors were there. The card-table had drawn off the

elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch,

though not one of its leading minds) was in _tête-à-tête_ with

Rosamond. He had brought the last “Keepsake,” the gorgeous watered-silk

publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he

considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look

over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny

copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic

verses as capital and sentimental stories as interesting. Rosamond was

gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in

art and literature as a medium for “paying addresses”—the very thing to

please a nice girl. He had also reasons, deep rather than ostensible,

for being satisfied with his own appearance. To superficial observers

his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being

gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about

the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful.

“I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you,” said Mr. Ned. He

kept the book open at the bewitching portrait, and looked at it rather

languishingly.

“Her back is very large; she seems to have sat for that,” said

Rosamond, not meaning any satire, but thinking how red young Plymdale’s

hands were, and wondering why Lydgate did not come. She went on with

her tatting all the while.

“I did not say she was as beautiful as you are,” said Mr. Ned,

venturing to look from the portrait to its rival.

“I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer,” said Rosamond, feeling

sure that she should have to reject this young gentleman a second time.

But now Lydgate came in; the book was closed before he reached

Rosamond’s corner, and as he took his seat with easy confidence on the

other side of her, young Plymdale’s jaw fell like a barometer towards

the cheerless side of change. Rosamond enjoyed not only Lydgate’s

presence but its effect: she liked to excite jealousy.

“What a late comer you are!” she said, as they shook hands. “Mamma had

given you up a little while ago. How do you find Fred?”

“As usual; going on well, but slowly. I want him to go away—to Stone

Court, for example. But your mamma seems to have some objection.”

“Poor fellow!” said Rosamond, prettily. “You will see Fred so changed,”

she added, turning to the other suitor; “we have looked to Mr. Lydgate

as our guardian angel during this illness.”

Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the “Keepsake” towards

him and opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed up his chin,

as if in wonderment at human folly.

“What are you laughing at so profanely?” said Rosamond, with bland

neutrality.

“I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest—the engravings or the

writing here,” said Lydgate, in his most convinced tone, while he

turned over the pages quickly, seeming to see all through the book in

no time, and showing his large white hands to much advantage, as

Rosamond thought. “Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church: did

you ever see such a ‘sugared invention’—as the Elizabethans used to

say? Did any haberdasher ever look so smirking? Yet I will answer for

it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in the land.”

“You are so severe, I am frightened at you,” said Rosamond, keeping her

amusement duly moderate. Poor young Plymdale had lingered with

admiration over this very engraving, and his spirit was stirred.

“There are a great many celebrated people writing in the ‘Keepsake,’ at

all events,” he said, in a tone at once piqued and timid. “This is the

first time I have heard it called silly.”

“I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth,”

said Rosamond, looking at Lydgate with a smile. “I suspect you know

nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L.” Rosamond herself was not

without relish for these writers, but she did not readily commit

herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest hint that

anything was not, according to Lydgate, in the very highest taste.

“But Sir Walter Scott—I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him,” said young

Plymdale, a little cheered by this advantage.

“Oh, I read no literature now,” said Lydgate, shutting the book, and

pushing it away. “I read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it

will last me all my life. I used to know Scott’s poems by heart.”

“I should like to know when you left off,” said Rosamond, “because then

I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know.”

“Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing,” said Mr. Ned,

purposely caustic.

“On the contrary,” said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with

exasperating confidence at Rosamond. “It would be worth knowing by the

fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me.”

Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that

Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever

been his ill-fortune to meet.

“How rash you are!” said Rosamond, inwardly delighted. “Do you see that

you have given offence?”

“What! is it Mr. Plymdale’s book? I am sorry. I didn’t think about it.”

“I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came

here—that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds.”

“Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will. Don’t I listen

to her willingly?”

To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged.

That they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her

mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the

necessary materials being at hand. It is true, Lydgate had the

counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a

shadow cast by other resolves which themselves were capable of

shrinking. Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond’s

idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue

eyes, whereas Lydgate’s lay blind and unconcerned as a jelly-fish which

gets melted without knowing it.

That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a

process of maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he

wrote out his daily notes with as much precision as usual. The reveries

from which it was difficult for him to detach himself were ideal

constructions of something else than Rosamond’s virtues, and the

primitive tissue was still his fair unknown. Moreover, he was beginning

to feel some zest for the growing though half-suppressed feud between

him and the other medical men, which was likely to become more

manifest, now that Bulstrode’s method of managing the new hospital was

about to be declared; and there were various inspiriting signs that his

non-acceptance by some of Peacock’s patients might be counterbalanced

by the impression he had produced in other quarters. Only a few days

later, when he had happened to overtake Rosamond on the Lowick road and

had got down from his horse to walk by her side until he had quite

protected her from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant on

horseback with a message calling him in to a house of some importance

where Peacock had never attended; and it was the second instance of

this kind. The servant was Sir James Chettam’s, and the house was

Lowick Manor.