Middlemarch

‘It is very handsome of you, sir.’

‘I should think it is,’ said Mr Featherstone, locking his box and replacing it, then taking off his spectacles deliberately, and at length, as if his inward meditation had more deeply convinced him, repeating, ‘I should think it is handsome.’

‘I assure you, sir, I am very grateful,’ said Fred, who had had time to recover his cheerful air.

‘So you ought to be. You want to cut a figure in the world, and I reckon Peter Featherstone is the only one you’ve got to trust to.’ Here the old man’s eyes gleamed with a curiously-mingled satisfaction in the consciousness that this smart young fellow relied upon him, and that the smart young fellow was rather a fool for doing so.

‘Yes, indeed: I was not born to very splendid chances. Few men have been more cramped than I have been,’ said Fred, with some sense of surprise at his own virtue, considering how hardly he was dealt with. ‘It really seems a little too bad to have to ride a broken-winded hunter, and see men, who are not half such good judges as yourself, able to throw away any amount of money on buying bad bargain.’

‘Well, you can buy yourself a fine hunter now. Eighty pound is enough for that, I reckon—and you’ll have twenty pound over to get yourself out of any little scrape,’ said Mr Featherstone, chuckling slightly.

‘You are very good, sir,’ said Fred, with a fine sense of contrast between the words and his feeling.

‘Ay, rather a better uncle than your fine uncle Bulstrode. You won’t get much out of his spekilations, I think. He’s got a pretty strong string round your father’s leg, by what I hear, eh?’

‘My father never tells me anything about his affairs, sir.’

‘Well, he shows some sense there. But other people find ’em out without his telling. He’ll never have much to leave you: he’ll most like die without a will—he’s the sort of man to do it—let ’em make him mayor of Middlemarch as much as they like. But you won’t get much by his dying without a will, though you are the eldest son.’

Fred thought that Mr Featherstone had never been so disagreeable before. True, he had never before given him quite so much money at once.

‘Shall I destroy this letter of Mr Bulstrode’s, sir?’ said Fred, rising with the letter as if he would put it in the fire.

‘Ay, ay, I don’t want it. It’s worth no money to me.’

Fred carried the letter to the fire, and thrust the poker through it with much zest. He longed to get out of the room, but he was a little ashamed before his inner self, as well as before his uncle, to run away immediately after pocketing the money. Presently, the farm-bailiff came up to give his master a report, and Fred, to his unspeakable relief, was dismissed with the injunction to come again soon.

He had longed not only to be set free from his uncle, but also to find Mary Garth. She was now in her usual place by the fire, with sewing in her hands and a book open on the little table by her side. Her eyelids had lost some of their redness now, and she had her usual air of self-command.

‘Am I wanted upstairs?’ she said, half rising as Fred entered.

‘No; I am only dismissed, because Simmons is gone up.’

Mary sat down again, and resumed her work. She was certainly treating him with more indifference than usual: she did not know how affectionately indignant he had felt on her behalf upstairs.

‘May I stay here a little, Mary, or shall I bore you?’

‘Pray sit down,’ said Mary; ‘you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr John Waule, who was here yesterday, and he sat down without asking my leave.’

‘Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.’

‘I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful. I should have thought that I, at least, might have been safe from all that. I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.

Mary did not mean to betray any feeling, but in spite of herself she ended in a tremulous tone of vexation.

‘Confound John Waule! I did not mean to make you angry. I didn’t know you had any reason for being grateful to him. I forgot what a great service you think it if any one snuffs a candle for you.’ Fred also had his pride, and was not going to show that he knew what had called forth this outburst of Mary’s.

‘Oh, I am not angry, except with the ways of the world. I do like to be spoken to as if I had common sense. I really often feel as if I could understand a little more than I ever hear even from young gentlemen who have been to college.’ Mary had recovered, and she spoke with a suppressed rippling undercurrent of laughter pleasant to hear.

‘I don’t care how merry you are at my expense this morning,’ said Fred, ‘I thought you looked so sad when you came upstairs. It is a shame you should stay here to be bullied in that way.’

‘Oh, I have an easy life—by comparison. I have tried being a teacher, and I am not fit for that: my mind is too fond of wandering on its own way. I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it. Everything here I can do as well as any one else could; perhaps better than some—Rosy, for example. Though she is just the sort of beautiful creature that is imprisoned with ogres in fairy tales.’

‘Rosy!’ cried Fred, in a tone of profound brotherly scepticism.

‘Come, Fred!’ said Mary, emphatically; ‘you have no right to be so critical.’

‘Do you mean anything particular—just now?’

‘No, I mean something general—always.’

‘Oh, that I am idle and extravagant. Well, I am not fit to be a poor man. I should not have made a bad fellow if I had been rich.’

‘You would have done your duty in that state of life to which it has not pleased God to call you,’ said Mary, laughing.

‘Well, I couldn’t do my duty as a clergyman, any more than you could do yours as a governess. You ought to have a little fellow-feeling there, Mary.’

‘I never said you ought to be a clergyman. There are other sorts of work. It seems to me very miserable not to resolve on some course and act accordingly.’

‘So I could, if—’ Fred broke off, and stood up, leaning against the mantelpiece.

‘If you were sure you should not have a fortune?’

‘I did not say that. You want to quarrel with me. It is too bad of you to be guided by what other people say about me.’

‘How can I want to quarrel with you! I should be quarrelling with all my new books,’ said Mary, lifting the volume on the table. ‘However naughty you may be to other people, you are good to me.’

‘Because I like you better than any one else. But I know you despise me.’

‘Yes, I do—a little,’ said Mary, nodding, with a smile.

‘You would admire a stupendous fellow, who would have wise opinions about everything.’

‘Yes, I should.’ Mary was sewing swiftly, and seemed provokingly mistress of the situation. When a conversation has taken a wrong turn for us, we only get further and further into the swamp of awkwardness.

This was what Fred Vincy felt.

‘I suppose a woman is never in love with any one she has always known—ever since she can remember; as a man often is. It is always some new fellow who strikes a girl.’

‘Let me see,’ said Mary, the corners of her mouth curling archly; ‘I must go back on my experience. There is Juliet—she seems an example of what you say. But then Ophelia had probably known Hamlet a long while; and Brenda Troil—she had known Mordaunt Merton ever since they were children; but then he seems to have been an estimable young man; and Minna was still more deeply in love with Cleveland, who was a stranger. Waverley was new to Flora MacIvor; but then she did not fall in love with him. And there are Olivia and Sophia Primrose, and Corinne—they may be said to have fallen in love with new men. Altogether, my experience is rather mixed.’

Mary looked up with some roguishness at Fred, and that look of hers was very dear to him, though the eyes were nothing more than clear windows where observation sate laughingly. He was certainly an affectionate fellow, and as he had grown from boy to man, he had grown in love with his old playmate, notwithstanding that share in the higher education of the country which had exalted his views of rank and income.

‘When a man is not loved, it is no use for him to say that he could be a better fellow—could do anything—I mean, if he were sure of being loved in return.’

‘Not of the least use in the world for him to say he could be better. Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries.’

‘I don’t see how a man is to be good for much unless he has some one woman to love him dearly.’