第 五十六 章 · Chapter LVI

“How happy is he born and taught

That serveth not another’s will;

Whose armor is his honest thought,

And simple truth his only skill!

. . . . . . .

This man is freed from servile bands

Of hope to rise or fear to fall;

Lord of himself though not of lands;

And having nothing yet hath all.”

—SIR HENRY WOTTON.

Dorothea’s confidence in Caleb Garth’s knowledge, which had begun on

her hearing that he approved of her cottages, had grown fast during her

stay at Freshitt, Sir James having induced her to take rides over the

two estates in company with himself and Caleb, who quite returned her

admiration, and told his wife that Mrs. Casaubon had a head for

business most uncommon in a woman. It must be remembered that by

“business” Caleb never meant money transactions, but the skilful

application of labor.

“Most uncommon!” repeated Caleb. “She said a thing I often used to

think myself when I was a lad:—‘Mr. Garth, I should like to feel, if I

lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece of land and built a

great many good cottages, because the work is of a healthy kind while

it is being done, and after it is done, men are the better for it.’

Those were the very words: she sees into things in that way.”

“But womanly, I hope,” said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs.

Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination.

“Oh, you can’t think!” said Caleb, shaking his head. “You would like to

hear her speak, Susan. She speaks in such plain words, and a voice like

music. Bless me! it reminds me of bits in the ‘Messiah’—‘and

straightway there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, praising

God and saying;’ it has a tone with it that satisfies your ear.”

Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear

an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a

profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him

sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable

language into his outstretched hands.

With this good understanding between them, it was natural that Dorothea

asked Mr. Garth to undertake any business connected with the three

farms and the numerous tenements attached to Lowick Manor; indeed, his

expectation of getting work for two was being fast fulfilled. As he

said, “Business breeds.” And one form of business which was beginning

to breed just then was the construction of railways. A projected line

was to run through Lowick parish where the cattle had hitherto grazed

in a peace unbroken by astonishment; and thus it happened that the

infant struggles of the railway system entered into the affairs of

Caleb Garth, and determined the course of this history with regard to

two persons who were dear to him. The submarine railway may have its

difficulties; but the bed of the sea is not divided among various

landed proprietors with claims for damages not only measurable but

sentimental. In the hundred to which Middlemarch belonged railways were

as exciting a topic as the Reform Bill or the imminent horrors of

Cholera, and those who held the most decided views on the subject were

women and landholders. Women both old and young regarded travelling by

steam as presumptuous and dangerous, and argued against it by saying

that nothing should induce them to get into a railway carriage; while

proprietors, differing from each other in their arguments as much as

Mr. Solomon Featherstone differed from Lord Medlicote, were yet

unanimous in the opinion that in selling land, whether to the Enemy of

mankind or to a company obliged to purchase, these pernicious agencies

must be made to pay a very high price to landowners for permission to

injure mankind.

But the slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule, who both

occupied land of their own, took a long time to arrive at this

conclusion, their minds halting at the vivid conception of what it

would be to cut the Big Pasture in two, and turn it into three-cornered

bits, which would be “nohow;” while accommodation-bridges and high

payments were remote and incredible.

“The cows will all cast their calves, brother,” said Mrs. Waule, in a

tone of deep melancholy, “if the railway comes across the Near Close;

and I shouldn’t wonder at the mare too, if she was in foal. It’s a poor

tale if a widow’s property is to be spaded away, and the law say

nothing to it. What’s to hinder ’em from cutting right and left if they

begin? It’s well known, _I_ can’t fight.”

“The best way would be to say nothing, and set somebody on to send ’em

away with a flea in their ear, when they came spying and measuring,”

said Solomon. “Folks did that about Brassing, by what I can understand.

It’s all a pretence, if the truth was known, about their being forced

to take one way. Let ’em go cutting in another parish. And I don’t

believe in any pay to make amends for bringing a lot of ruffians to

trample your crops. Where’s a company’s pocket?”

“Brother Peter, God forgive him, got money out of a company,” said Mrs.

Waule. “But that was for the manganese. That wasn’t for railways to

blow you to pieces right and left.”

“Well, there’s this to be said, Jane,” Mr. Solomon concluded, lowering

his voice in a cautious manner—“the more spokes we put in their wheel,

the more they’ll pay us to let ’em go on, if they must come whether or

not.”

This reasoning of Mr. Solomon’s was perhaps less thorough than he

imagined, his cunning bearing about the same relation to the course of

railways as the cunning of a diplomatist bears to the general chill or

catarrh of the solar system. But he set about acting on his views in a

thoroughly diplomatic manner, by stimulating suspicion. His side of

Lowick was the most remote from the village, and the houses of the

laboring people were either lone cottages or were collected in a hamlet

called Frick, where a water-mill and some stone-pits made a little

centre of slow, heavy-shouldered industry.

In the absence of any precise idea as to what railways were, public

opinion in Frick was against them; for the human mind in that grassy

corner had not the proverbial tendency to admire the unknown, holding

rather that it was likely to be against the poor man, and that

suspicion was the only wise attitude with regard to it. Even the rumor

of Reform had not yet excited any millennial expectations in Frick,

there being no definite promise in it, as of gratuitous grains to

fatten Hiram Ford’s pig, or of a publican at the “Weights and Scales”

who would brew beer for nothing, or of an offer on the part of the

three neighboring farmers to raise wages during winter. And without

distinct good of this kind in its promises, Reform seemed on a footing

with the bragging of pedlers, which was a hint for distrust to every

knowing person. The men of Frick were not ill-fed, and were less given

to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion; less inclined to

believe that they were peculiarly cared for by heaven, than to regard

heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in—a disposition

observable in the weather.

Thus the mind of Frick was exactly of the sort for Mr. Solomon

Featherstone to work upon, he having more plenteous ideas of the same

order, with a suspicion of heaven and earth which was better fed and

more entirely at leisure. Solomon was overseer of the roads at that

time, and on his slow-paced cob often took his rounds by Frick to look

at the workmen getting the stones there, pausing with a mysterious

deliberation, which might have misled you into supposing that he had

some other reason for staying than the mere want of impulse to move.

After looking for a long while at any work that was going on, he would

raise his eyes a little and look at the horizon; finally he would shake

his bridle, touch his horse with the whip, and get it to move slowly

onward. The hour-hand of a clock was quick by comparison with Mr.

Solomon, who had an agreeable sense that he could afford to be slow. He

was in the habit of pausing for a cautious, vaguely designing chat with

every hedger or ditcher on his way, and was especially willing to

listen even to news which he had heard before, feeling himself at an

advantage over all narrators in partially disbelieving them. One day,

however, he got into a dialogue with Hiram Ford, a wagoner, in which he

himself contributed information. He wished to know whether Hiram had

seen fellows with staves and instruments spying about: they called

themselves railroad people, but there was no telling what they were or

what they meant to do. The least they pretended was that they were

going to cut Lowick Parish into sixes and sevens.

“Why, there’ll be no stirrin’ from one pla-ace to another,” said Hiram,

thinking of his wagon and horses.

“Not a bit,” said Mr. Solomon. “And cutting up fine land such as this

parish! Let ’em go into Tipton, say I. But there’s no knowing what

there is at the bottom of it. Traffic is what they put for’ard; but

it’s to do harm to the land and the poor man in the long-run.”

“Why, they’re Lunnon chaps, I reckon,” said Hiram, who had a dim notion

of London as a centre of hostility to the country.

“Ay, to be sure. And in some parts against Brassing, by what I’ve heard

say, the folks fell on ’em when they were spying, and broke their

peep-holes as they carry, and drove ’em away, so as they knew better

than come again.”

“It war good foon, I’d be bound,” said Hiram, whose fun was much

restricted by circumstances.

“Well, I wouldn’t meddle with ’em myself,” said Solomon. “But some say

this country’s seen its best days, and the sign is, as it’s being

overrun with these fellows trampling right and left, and wanting to cut

it up into railways; and all for the big traffic to swallow up the

little, so as there shan’t be a team left on the land, nor a whip to

crack.”

“I’ll crack _my_ whip about their ear’n, afore they bring it to that,

though,” said Hiram, while Mr. Solomon, shaking his bridle, moved

onward.

Nettle-seed needs no digging. The ruin of this countryside by railroads

was discussed, not only at the “Weights and Scales,” but in the

hay-field, where the muster of working hands gave opportunities for

talk such as were rarely had through the rural year.

One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and

Mary Garth, in which she confessed to him her feeling for Fred Vincy,

it happened that her father had some business which took him to

Yoddrell’s farm in the direction of Frick: it was to measure and value

an outlying piece of land belonging to Lowick Manor, which Caleb

expected to dispose of advantageously for Dorothea (it must be

confessed that his bias was towards getting the best possible terms

from railroad companies). He put up his gig at Yoddrell’s, and in

walking with his assistant and measuring-chain to the scene of his

work, he encountered the party of the company’s agents, who were

adjusting their spirit-level. After a little chat he left them,

observing that by-and-by they would reach him again where he was going

to measure. It was one of those gray mornings after light rains, which

become delicious about twelve o’clock, when the clouds part a little,

and the scent of the earth is sweet along the lanes and by the

hedgerows.

The scent would have been sweeter to Fred Vincy, who was coming along

the lanes on horseback, if his mind had not been worried by

unsuccessful efforts to imagine what he was to do, with his father on

one side expecting him straightway to enter the Church, with Mary on

the other threatening to forsake him if he did enter it, and with the

working-day world showing no eager need whatever of a young gentleman

without capital and generally unskilled. It was the harder to Fred’s

disposition because his father, satisfied that he was no longer

rebellious, was in good humor with him, and had sent him on this

pleasant ride to see after some greyhounds. Even when he had fixed on

what he should do, there would be the task of telling his father. But

it must be admitted that the fixing, which had to come first, was the

more difficult task:—what secular avocation on earth was there for a

young man (whose friends could not get him an “appointment”) which was

at once gentlemanly, lucrative, and to be followed without special

knowledge? Riding along the lanes by Frick in this mood, and slackening

his pace while he reflected whether he should venture to go round by

Lowick Parsonage to call on Mary, he could see over the hedges from one

field to another. Suddenly a noise roused his attention, and on the far

side of a field on his left hand he could see six or seven men in

smock-frocks with hay-forks in their hands making an offensive approach

towards the four railway agents who were facing them, while Caleb Garth

and his assistant were hastening across the field to join the

threatened group. Fred, delayed a few moments by having to find the

gate, could not gallop up to the spot before the party in smock-frocks,

whose work of turning the hay had not been too pressing after

swallowing their mid-day beer, were driving the men in coats before

them with their hay-forks; while Caleb Garth’s assistant, a lad of

seventeen, who had snatched up the spirit-level at Caleb’s order, had

been knocked down and seemed to be lying helpless. The coated men had

the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by getting in

front of the smock-frocks and charging them suddenly enough to throw

their chase into confusion. “What do you confounded fools mean?”

shouted Fred, pursuing the divided group in a zigzag, and cutting right

and left with his whip. “I’ll swear to every one of you before the

magistrate. You’ve knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I

know. You’ll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes, if you

don’t mind,” said Fred, who afterwards laughed heartily as he

remembered his own phrases.

The laborers had been driven through the gate-way into their hay-field,

and Fred had checked his horse, when Hiram Ford, observing himself at a

safe challenging distance, turned back and shouted a defiance which he

did not know to be Homeric.

“Yo’re a coward, yo are. Yo git off your horse, young measter, and I’ll

have a round wi’ ye, I wull. Yo daredn’t come on wi’out your hoss an’

whip. I’d soon knock the breath out on ye, I would.”

“Wait a minute, and I’ll come back presently, and have a round with you

all in turn, if you like,” said Fred, who felt confidence in his power

of boxing with his dearly beloved brethren. But just now he wanted to

hasten back to Caleb and the prostrate youth.

The lad’s ankle was strained, and he was in much pain from it, but he

was no further hurt, and Fred placed him on the horse that he might

ride to Yoddrell’s and be taken care of there.

“Let them put the horse in the stable, and tell the surveyors they can

come back for their traps,” said Fred. “The ground is clear now.”

“No, no,” said Caleb, “here’s a breakage. They’ll have to give up for

to-day, and it will be as well. Here, take the things before you on the

horse, Tom. They’ll see you coming, and they’ll turn back.”

“I’m glad I happened to be here at the right moment, Mr. Garth,” said

Fred, as Tom rode away. “No knowing what might have happened if the

cavalry had not come up in time.”

“Ay, ay, it was lucky,” said Caleb, speaking rather absently, and

looking towards the spot where he had been at work at the moment of

interruption. “But—deuce take it—this is what comes of men being

fools—I’m hindered of my day’s work. I can’t get along without somebody

to help me with the measuring-chain. However!” He was beginning to move

towards the spot with a look of vexation, as if he had forgotten Fred’s

presence, but suddenly he turned round and said quickly, “What have you

got to do to-day, young fellow?”

“Nothing, Mr. Garth. I’ll help you with pleasure—can I?” said Fred,

with a sense that he should be courting Mary when he was helping her

father.

“Well, you mustn’t mind stooping and getting hot.”

“I don’t mind anything. Only I want to go first and have a round with

that hulky fellow who turned to challenge me. It would be a good lesson

for him. I shall not be five minutes.”

“Nonsense!” said Caleb, with his most peremptory intonation. “I shall

go and speak to the men myself. It’s all ignorance. Somebody has been

telling them lies. The poor fools don’t know any better.”

“I shall go with you, then,” said Fred.

“No, no; stay where you are. I don’t want your young blood. I can take

care of myself.”

Caleb was a powerful man and knew little of any fear except the fear of

hurting others and the fear of having to speechify. But he felt it his

duty at this moment to try and give a little harangue. There was a

striking mixture in him—which came from his having always been a

hard-working man himself—of rigorous notions about workmen and

practical indulgence towards them. To do a good day’s work and to do it

well, he held to be part of their welfare, as it was the chief part of

his own happiness; but he had a strong sense of fellowship with them.

When he advanced towards the laborers they had not gone to work again,

but were standing in that form of rural grouping which consists in each

turning a shoulder towards the other, at a distance of two or three

yards. They looked rather sulkily at Caleb, who walked quickly with one

hand in his pocket and the other thrust between the buttons of his

waistcoat, and had his every-day mild air when he paused among them.

“Why, my lads, how’s this?” he began, taking as usual to brief phrases,

which seemed pregnant to himself, because he had many thoughts lying

under them, like the abundant roots of a plant that just manages to

peep above the water. “How came you to make such a mistake as this?

Somebody has been telling you lies. You thought those men up there

wanted to do mischief.”

“Aw!” was the answer, dropped at intervals by each according to his

degree of unreadiness.

“Nonsense! No such thing! They’re looking out to see which way the

railroad is to take. Now, my lads, you can’t hinder the railroad: it

will be made whether you like it or not. And if you go fighting against

it, you’ll get yourselves into trouble. The law gives those men leave

to come here on the land. The owner has nothing to say against it, and

if you meddle with them you’ll have to do with the constable and

Justice Blakesley, and with the handcuffs and Middlemarch jail. And you

might be in for it now, if anybody informed against you.”

Caleb paused here, and perhaps the greatest orator could not have

chosen either his pause or his images better for the occasion.

“But come, you didn’t mean any harm. Somebody told you the railroad was

a bad thing. That was a lie. It may do a bit of harm here and there, to

this and to that; and so does the sun in heaven. But the railway’s a

good thing.”

“Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on,” said old Timothy

Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been

gone on their spree;—“I’n seen lots o’ things turn up sin’ I war a

young un—the war an’ the peace, and the canells, an’ the oald King

George, an’ the Regen’, an’ the new King George, an’ the new un as has

got a new ne-ame—an’ it’s been all aloike to the poor mon. What’s the

canells been t’ him? They’n brought him neyther me-at nor be-acon, nor

wage to lay by, if he didn’t save it wi’ clemmin’ his own inside. Times

ha’ got wusser for him sin’ I war a young un. An’ so it’ll be wi’ the

railroads. They’ll on’y leave the poor mon furder behind. But them are

fools as meddle, and so I told the chaps here. This is the big folks’s

world, this is. But yo’re for the big folks, Muster Garth, yo are.”

Timothy was a wiry old laborer, of a type lingering in those times—who

had his savings in a stocking-foot, lived in a lone cottage, and was

not to be wrought on by any oratory, having as little of the feudal

spirit, and believing as little, as if he had not been totally

unacquainted with the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man. Caleb was in

a difficulty known to any person attempting in dark times and

unassisted by miracle to reason with rustics who are in possession of

an undeniable truth which they know through a hard process of feeling,

and can let it fall like a giant’s club on your neatly carved argument

for a social benefit which they do not feel. Caleb had no cant at

command, even if he could have chosen to use it; and he had been

accustomed to meet all such difficulties in no other way than by doing

his “business” faithfully. He answered—

“If you don’t think well of me, Tim, never mind; that’s neither here

nor there now. Things may be bad for the poor man—bad they are; but I

want the lads here not to do what will make things worse for

themselves. The cattle may have a heavy load, but it won’t help ’em to

throw it over into the roadside pit, when it’s partly their own

fodder.”

“We war on’y for a bit o’ foon,” said Hiram, who was beginning to see

consequences. “That war all we war arter.”

“Well, promise me not to meddle again, and I’ll see that nobody informs

against you.”

“I’n ne’er meddled, an’ I’n no call to promise,” said Timothy.

“No, but the rest. Come, I’m as hard at work as any of you to-day, and

I can’t spare much time. Say you’ll be quiet without the constable.”

“Aw, we wooant meddle—they may do as they loike for oos”—were the forms

in which Caleb got his pledges; and then he hastened back to Fred, who

had followed him, and watched him in the gateway.

They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously. His spirits had risen,

and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under the

hedgerow, which soiled his perfect summer trousers. Was it his

successful onset which had elated him, or the satisfaction of helping

Mary’s father? Something more. The accidents of the morning had helped

his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself which had

several attractions. I am not sure that certain fibres in Mr. Garth’s

mind had not resumed their old vibration towards the very end which now

revealed itself to Fred. For the effective accident is but the touch of

fire where there is oil and tow; and it always appeared to Fred that

the railway brought the needed touch. But they went on in silence

except when their business demanded speech. At last, when they had

finished and were walking away, Mr. Garth said—

“A young fellow needn’t be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?”

“I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.,” said

Fred. He paused a moment, and then added, more hesitatingly, “Do you

think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Garth?”

“My business is of many sorts, my boy,” said Mr. Garth, smiling. “A

good deal of what I know can only come from experience: you can’t learn

it off as you learn things out of a book. But you are young enough to

lay a foundation yet.” Caleb pronounced the last sentence emphatically,

but paused in some uncertainty. He had been under the impression lately

that Fred had made up his mind to enter the Church.

“You do think I could do some good at it, if I were to try?” said Fred,

more eagerly.

“That depends,” said Caleb, turning his head on one side and lowering

his voice, with the air of a man who felt himself to be saying

something deeply religious. “You must be sure of two things: you must

love your work, and not be always looking over the edge of it, wanting

your play to begin. And the other is, you must not be ashamed of your

work, and think it would be more honorable to you to be doing something

else. You must have a pride in your own work and in learning to do it

well, and not be always saying, There’s this and there’s that—if I had

this or that to do, I might make something of it. No matter what a man

is—I wouldn’t give twopence for him”—here Caleb’s mouth looked bitter,

and he snapped his fingers—“whether he was the prime minister or the

rick-thatcher, if he didn’t do well what he undertook to do.”

“I can never feel that I should do that in being a clergyman,” said

Fred, meaning to take a step in argument.

“Then let it alone, my boy,” said Caleb, abruptly, “else you’ll never

be easy. Or, if you _are_ easy, you’ll be a poor stick.”

“That is very nearly what Mary thinks about it,” said Fred, coloring.

“I think you must know what I feel for Mary, Mr. Garth: I hope it does

not displease you that I have always loved her better than any one

else, and that I shall never love any one as I love her.”

The expression of Caleb’s face was visibly softening while Fred spoke.

But he swung his head with a solemn slowness, and said—

“That makes things more serious, Fred, if you want to take Mary’s

happiness into your keeping.”

“I know that, Mr. Garth,” said Fred, eagerly, “and I would do anything

for _her_. She says she will never have me if I go into the Church; and

I shall be the most miserable devil in the world if I lose all hope of

Mary. Really, if I could get some other profession, business—anything

that I am at all fit for, I would work hard, I would deserve your good

opinion. I should like to have to do with outdoor things. I know a good

deal about land and cattle already. I used to believe, you know—though

you will think me rather foolish for it—that I should have land of my

own. I am sure knowledge of that sort would come easily to me,

especially if I could be under you in any way.”

“Softly, my boy,” said Caleb, having the image of “Susan” before his

eyes. “What have you said to your father about all this?”

“Nothing, yet; but I must tell him. I am only waiting to know what I

can do instead of entering the Church. I am very sorry to disappoint

him, but a man ought to be allowed to judge for himself when he is

four-and-twenty. How could I know when I was fifteen, what it would be

right for me to do now? My education was a mistake.”

“But hearken to this, Fred,” said Caleb. “Are you sure Mary is fond of

you, or would ever have you?”

“I asked Mr. Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden me—I

didn’t know what else to do,” said Fred, apologetically. “And he says

that I have every reason to hope, if I can put myself in an honorable

position—I mean, out of the Church. I dare say you think it

unwarrantable in me, Mr. Garth, to be troubling you and obtruding my

own wishes about Mary, before I have done anything at all for myself.

Of course I have not the least claim—indeed, I have already a debt to

you which will never be discharged, even when I have been able to pay

it in the shape of money.”

“Yes, my boy, you have a claim,” said Caleb, with much feeling in his

voice. “The young ones have always a claim on the old to help them

forward. I was young myself once and had to do without much help; but

help would have been welcome to me, if it had been only for the

fellow-feeling’s sake. But I must consider. Come to me to-morrow at the

office, at nine o’clock. At the office, mind.”

Mr. Garth would take no important step without consulting Susan, but it

must be confessed that before he reached home he had taken his

resolution. With regard to a large number of matters about which other

men are decided or obstinate, he was the most easily manageable man in

the world. He never knew what meat he would choose, and if Susan had

said that they ought to live in a four-roomed cottage, in order to

save, he would have said, “Let us go,” without inquiring into details.

But where Caleb’s feeling and judgment strongly pronounced, he was a

ruler; and in spite of his mildness and timidity in reproving, every

one about him knew that on the exceptional occasions when he chose, he

was absolute. He never, indeed, chose to be absolute except on some one

else’s behalf. On ninety-nine points Mrs. Garth decided, but on the

hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform the

singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to

make herself subordinate.

“It is come round as I thought, Susan,” said Caleb, when they were

seated alone in the evening. He had already narrated the adventure

which had brought about Fred’s sharing in his work, but had kept back

the further result. “The children _are_ fond of each other—I mean, Fred

and Mary.”

Mrs. Garth laid her work on her knee, and fixed her penetrating eyes

anxiously on her husband.

“After we’d done our work, Fred poured it all out to me. He can’t bear

to be a clergyman, and Mary says she won’t have him if he is one; and

the lad would like to be under me and give his mind to business. And

I’ve determined to take him and make a man of him.”

“Caleb!” said Mrs. Garth, in a deep contralto, expressive of resigned

astonishment.

“It’s a fine thing to do,” said Mr. Garth, settling himself firmly

against the back of his chair, and grasping the elbows. “I shall have

trouble with him, but I think I shall carry it through. The lad loves

Mary, and a true love for a good woman is a great thing, Susan. It

shapes many a rough fellow.”

“Has Mary spoken to you on the subject?” said Mrs Garth, secretly a

little hurt that she had to be informed on it herself.

“Not a word. I asked her about Fred once; I gave her a bit of a

warning. But she assured me she would never marry an idle

self-indulgent man—nothing since. But it seems Fred set on Mr.

Farebrother to talk to her, because she had forbidden him to speak

himself, and Mr. Farebrother has found out that she is fond of Fred,

but says he must not be a clergyman. Fred’s heart is fixed on Mary,

that I can see: it gives me a good opinion of the lad—and we always

liked him, Susan.”

“It is a pity for Mary, I think,” said Mrs. Garth.

“Why—a pity?”

“Because, Caleb, she might have had a man who is worth twenty Fred

Vincy’s.”

“Ah?” said Caleb, with surprise.

“I firmly believe that Mr. Farebrother is attached to her, and meant to

make her an offer; but of course, now that Fred has used him as an

envoy, there is an end to that better prospect.” There was a severe

precision in Mrs. Garth’s utterance. She was vexed and disappointed,

but she was bent on abstaining from useless words.

Caleb was silent a few moments under a conflict of feelings. He looked

at the floor and moved his head and hands in accompaniment to some

inward argumentation. At last he said—

“That would have made me very proud and happy, Susan, and I should have

been glad for your sake. I’ve always felt that your belongings have

never been on a level with you. But you took me, though I was a plain

man.”

“I took the best and cleverest man I had ever known,” said Mrs. Garth,

convinced that _she_ would never have loved any one who came short of

that mark.

“Well, perhaps others thought you might have done better. But it would

have been worse for me. And that is what touches me close about Fred.

The lad is good at bottom, and clever enough to do, if he’s put in the

right way; and he loves and honors my daughter beyond anything, and she

has given him a sort of promise according to what he turns out. I say,

that young man’s soul is in my hand; and I’ll do the best I can for

him, so help me God! It’s my duty, Susan.”

Mrs. Garth was not given to tears, but there was a large one rolling

down her face before her husband had finished. It came from the

pressure of various feelings, in which there was much affection and

some vexation. She wiped it away quickly, saying—

“Few men besides you would think it a duty to add to their anxieties in

that way, Caleb.”

“That signifies nothing—what other men would think. I’ve got a clear

feeling inside me, and that I shall follow; and I hope your heart will

go with me, Susan, in making everything as light as can be to Mary,

poor child.”

Caleb, leaning back in his chair, looked with anxious appeal towards

his wife. She rose and kissed him, saying, “God bless you, Caleb! Our

children have a good father.”

But she went out and had a hearty cry to make up for the suppression of

her words. She felt sure that her husband’s conduct would be

misunderstood, and about Fred she was rational and unhopeful. Which

would turn out to have the more foresight in it—her rationality or

Caleb’s ardent generosity?

When Fred went to the office the next morning, there was a test to be

gone through which he was not prepared for.

“Now Fred,” said Caleb, “you will have some desk-work. I have always

done a good deal of writing myself, but I can’t do without help, and as

I want you to understand the accounts and get the values into your

head, I mean to do without another clerk. So you must buckle to. How

are you at writing and arithmetic?”

Fred felt an awkward movement of the heart; he had not thought of

desk-work; but he was in a resolute mood, and not going to shrink. “I’m

not afraid of arithmetic, Mr. Garth: it always came easily to me. I

think you know my writing.”

“Let us see,” said Caleb, taking up a pen, examining it carefully and

handing it, well dipped, to Fred with a sheet of ruled paper. “Copy me

a line or two of that valuation, with the figures at the end.”

At that time the opinion existed that it was beneath a gentleman to

write legibly, or with a hand in the least suitable to a clerk. Fred

wrote the lines demanded in a hand as gentlemanly as that of any

viscount or bishop of the day: the vowels were all alike and the

consonants only distinguishable as turning up or down, the strokes had

a blotted solidity and the letters disdained to keep the line—in short,

it was a manuscript of that venerable kind easy to interpret when you

know beforehand what the writer means.

As Caleb looked on, his visage showed a growing depression, but when

Fred handed him the paper he gave something like a snarl, and rapped

the paper passionately with the back of his hand. Bad work like this

dispelled all Caleb’s mildness.

“The deuce!” he exclaimed, snarlingly. “To think that this is a country

where a man’s education may cost hundreds and hundreds, and it turns

you out this!” Then in a more pathetic tone, pushing up his spectacles

and looking at the unfortunate scribe, “The Lord have mercy on us,

Fred, I can’t put up with this!”

“What can I do, Mr. Garth?” said Fred, whose spirits had sunk very low,

not only at the estimate of his handwriting, but at the vision of

himself as liable to be ranked with office clerks.

“Do? Why, you must learn to form your letters and keep the line. What’s

the use of writing at all if nobody can understand it?” asked Caleb,

energetically, quite preoccupied with the bad quality of the work. “Is

there so little business in the world that you must be sending puzzles

over the country? But that’s the way people are brought up. I should

lose no end of time with the letters some people send me, if Susan did

not make them out for me. It’s disgusting.” Here Caleb tossed the paper

from him.

Any stranger peeping into the office at that moment might have wondered

what was the drama between the indignant man of business, and the

fine-looking young fellow whose blond complexion was getting rather

patchy as he bit his lip with mortification. Fred was struggling with

many thoughts. Mr. Garth had been so kind and encouraging at the

beginning of their interview, that gratitude and hopefulness had been

at a high pitch, and the downfall was proportionate. He had not thought

of desk-work—in fact, like the majority of young gentlemen, he wanted

an occupation which should be free from disagreeables. I cannot tell

what might have been the consequences if he had not distinctly promised

himself that he would go to Lowick to see Mary and tell her that he was

engaged to work under her father. He did not like to disappoint himself

there.

“I am very sorry,” were all the words that he could muster. But Mr.

Garth was already relenting.

“We must make the best of it, Fred,” he began, with a return to his

usual quiet tone. “Every man can learn to write. I taught myself. Go at

it with a will, and sit up at night if the day-time isn’t enough. We’ll

be patient, my boy. Callum shall go on with the books for a bit, while

you are learning. But now I must be off,” said Caleb, rising. “You must

let your father know our agreement. You’ll save me Callum’s salary, you

know, when you can write; and I can afford to give you eighty pounds

for the first year, and more after.”

When Fred made the necessary disclosure to his parents, the relative

effect on the two was a surprise which entered very deeply into his

memory. He went straight from Mr. Garth’s office to the warehouse,

rightly feeling that the most respectful way in which he could behave

to his father was to make the painful communication as gravely and

formally as possible. Moreover, the decision would be more certainly

understood to be final, if the interview took place in his father’s

gravest hours, which were always those spent in his private room at the

warehouse.

Fred entered on the subject directly, and declared briefly what he had

done and was resolved to do, expressing at the end his regret that he

should be the cause of disappointment to his father, and taking the

blame on his own deficiencies. The regret was genuine, and inspired

Fred with strong, simple words.

Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise without uttering even an

exclamation, a silence which in his impatient temperament was a sign of

unusual emotion. He had not been in good spirits about trade that

morning, and the slight bitterness in his lips grew intense as he

listened. When Fred had ended, there was a pause of nearly a minute,

during which Mr. Vincy replaced a book in his desk and turned the key

emphatically. Then he looked at his son steadily, and said—

“So you’ve made up your mind at last, sir?”

“Yes, father.”

“Very well; stick to it. I’ve no more to say. You’ve thrown away your

education, and gone down a step in life, when I had given you the means

of rising, that’s all.”

“I am very sorry that we differ, father. I think I can be quite as much

of a gentleman at the work I have undertaken, as if I had been a

curate. But I am grateful to you for wishing to do the best for me.”

“Very well; I have no more to say. I wash my hands of you. I only hope,

when you have a son of your own he will make a better return for the

pains you spend on him.”

This was very cutting to Fred. His father was using that unfair

advantage possessed by us all when we are in a pathetic situation and

see our own past as if it were simply part of the pathos. In reality,

Mr. Vincy’s wishes about his son had had a great deal of pride,

inconsiderateness, and egoistic folly in them. But still the

disappointed father held a strong lever; and Fred felt as if he were

being banished with a malediction.

“I hope you will not object to my remaining at home, sir?” he said,

after rising to go; “I shall have a sufficient salary to pay for my

board, as of course I should wish to do.”

“Board be hanged!” said Mr. Vincy, recovering himself in his disgust at

the notion that Fred’s keep would be missed at his table. “Of course

your mother will want you to stay. But I shall keep no horse for you,

you understand; and you will pay your own tailor. You will do with a

suit or two less, I fancy, when you have to pay for ’em.”

Fred lingered; there was still something to be said. At last it came.

“I hope you will shake hands with me, father, and forgive me the

vexation I have caused you.”

Mr. Vincy from his chair threw a quick glance upward at his son, who

had advanced near to him, and then gave his hand, saying hurriedly,

“Yes, yes, let us say no more.”

Fred went through much more narrative and explanation with his mother,

but she was inconsolable, having before her eyes what perhaps her

husband had never thought of, the certainty that Fred would marry Mary

Garth, that her life would henceforth be spoiled by a perpetual

infusion of Garths and their ways, and that her darling boy, with his

beautiful face and stylish air “beyond anybody else’s son in

Middlemarch,” would be sure to get like that family in plainness of

appearance and carelessness about his clothes. To her it seemed that

there was a Garth conspiracy to get possession of the desirable Fred,

but she dared not enlarge on this opinion, because a slight hint of it

had made him “fly out” at her as he had never done before. Her temper

was too sweet for her to show any anger, but she felt that her

happiness had received a bruise, and for several days merely to look at

Fred made her cry a little as if he were the subject of some baleful

prophecy. Perhaps she was the slower to recover her usual cheerfulness

because Fred had warned her that she must not reopen the sore question

with his father, who had accepted his decision and forgiven him. If her

husband had been vehement against Fred, she would have been urged into

defence of her darling. It was the end of the fourth day when Mr. Vincy

said to her—

“Come, Lucy, my dear, don’t be so down-hearted. You always have spoiled

the boy, and you must go on spoiling him.”

“Nothing ever did cut me so before, Vincy,” said the wife, her fair

throat and chin beginning to tremble again, “only his illness.”

“Pooh, pooh, never mind! We must expect to have trouble with our

children. Don’t make it worse by letting me see you out of spirits.”

“Well, I won’t,” said Mrs. Vincy, roused by this appeal and adjusting

herself with a little shake as of a bird which lays down its ruffled

plumage.

“It won’t do to begin making a fuss about one,” said Mr. Vincy, wishing

to combine a little grumbling with domestic cheerfulness. “There’s

Rosamond as well as Fred.”

“Yes, poor thing. I’m sure I felt for her being disappointed of her

baby; but she got over it nicely.”

“Baby, pooh! I can see Lydgate is making a mess of his practice, and

getting into debt too, by what I hear. I shall have Rosamond coming to

me with a pretty tale one of these days. But they’ll get no money from

me, I know. Let _his_ family help him. I never did like that marriage.

But it’s no use talking. Ring the bell for lemons, and don’t look dull

any more, Lucy. I’ll drive you and Louisa to Riverston to-morrow.”