Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (351 page)

“I am exceedingly obliged to you,” said Ladislaw, proudly. “Since you are going to part with the ‘Pioneer,’ I need not trouble you about the steps I shall take. I may choose to continue here for the present.”

After Mr. Brooke had left him Will said to himself, “The rest of the family have been urging him to get rid of me, and he doesn’t care now about my going. I shall stay as long as I like. I shall go of my own movements and not because they are afraid of me.”

CHAPTER LII
.

 
“His heart

 
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.”

— WORDSWORTH.

On that June evening when Mr. Farebrother knew that he was to have the Lowick living, there was joy in the old fashioned parlor, and even the portraits of the great lawyers seemed to look on with satisfaction. His mother left her tea and toast untouched, but sat with her usual pretty primness, only showing her emotion by that flush in the cheeks and brightness in the eyes which give an old woman a touching momentary identity with her far-off youthful self, and saying decisively —

“The greatest comfort, Camden, is that you have deserved it.”

“When a man gets a good berth, mother, half the deserving must come after,” said the son, brimful of pleasure, and not trying to conceal it. The gladness in his face was of that active kind which seems to have energy enough not only to flash outwardly, but to light up busy vision within: one seemed to see thoughts, as well as delight, in his glances.

“Now, aunt,” he went on, rubbing his hands and looking at Miss Noble, who was making tender little beaver-like noises, “There shall be sugar-candy always on the table for you to steal and give to the children, and you shall have a great many new stockings to make presents of, and you shall darn your own more than ever!”

Miss Noble nodded at her nephew with a subdued half-frightened laugh, conscious of having already dropped an additional lump of sugar into her basket on the strength of the new preferment.

“As for you, Winny” — the Vicar went on — “I shall make no difficulty about your marrying any Lowick bachelor — Mr. Solomon Featherstone, for example, as soon as I find you are in love with him.”

Miss Winifred, who had been looking at her brother all the while and crying heartily, which was her way of rejoicing, smiled through her tears and said, “You must set me the example, Cam:
you
must marry now.”

“With all my heart. But who is in love with me? I am a seedy old fellow,” said the Vicar, rising, pushing his chair away and looking down at himself. “What do you say, mother?”

“You are a handsome man, Camden: though not so fine a figure of a man as your father,” said the old lady.

“I wish you would marry Miss Garth, brother,” said Miss Winifred. “She would make us so lively at Lowick.”

“Very fine! You talk as if young women were tied up to be chosen, like poultry at market; as if I had only to ask and everybody would have me,” said the Vicar, not caring to specify.

“We don’t want everybody,” said Miss Winifred. “But
you
would like Miss Garth, mother, shouldn’t you?”

“My son’s choice shall be mine,” said Mrs. Farebrother, with majestic discretion, “and a wife would be most welcome, Camden. You will want your whist at home when we go to Lowick, and Henrietta Noble never was a whist-player.” (Mrs. Farebrother always called her tiny old sister by that magnificent name.)

“I shall do without whist now, mother.”

“Why so, Camden? In my time whist was thought an undeniable amusement for a good churchman,” said Mrs. Farebrother, innocent of the meaning that whist had for her son, and speaking rather sharply, as at some dangerous countenancing of new doctrine.

“I shall be too busy for whist; I shall have two parishes,” said the Vicar, preferring not to discuss the virtues of that game.

He had already said to Dorothea, “I don’t feel bound to give up St. Botolph’s. It is protest enough against the pluralism they want to reform if I give somebody else most of the money. The stronger thing is not to give up power, but to use it well.”

“I have thought of that,” said Dorothea. “So far as self is concerned, I think it would be easier to give up power and money than to keep them. It seems very unfitting that I should have this patronage, yet I felt that I ought not to let it be used by some one else instead of me.”

“It is I who am bound to act so that you will not regret your power,” said Mr. Farebrother.

His was one of the natures in which conscience gets the more active when the yoke of life ceases to gall them. He made no display of humility on the subject, but in his heart he felt rather ashamed that his conduct had shown laches which others who did not get benefices were free from.

“I used often to wish I had been something else than a clergyman,” he said to Lydgate, “but perhaps it will be better to try and make as good a clergyman out of myself as I can. That is the well-beneficed point of view, you perceive, from which difficulties are much simplified,” he ended, smiling.

The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly — something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

Hardly a week later, Duty presented itself in his study under the disguise of Fred Vincy, now returned from Omnibus College with his bachelor’s degree.

“I am ashamed to trouble you, Mr. Farebrother,” said Fred, whose fair open face was propitiating, “but you are the only friend I can consult. I told you everything once before, and you were so good that I can’t help coming to you again.”

“Sit down, Fred, I’m ready to hear and do anything I can,” said the Vicar, who was busy packing some small objects for removal, and went on with his work.

“I wanted to tell you — “ Fred hesitated an instant and then went on plungingly, “I might go into the Church now; and really, look where I may, I can’t see anything else to do. I don’t like it, but I know it’s uncommonly hard on my father to say so, after he has spent a good deal of money in educating me for it.” Fred paused again an instant, and then repeated, “and I can’t see anything else to do.”

“I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way with him. He said it was too late. But you have got over one bridge now: what are your other difficulties?”

“Merely that I don’t like it. I don’t like divinity, and preaching, and feeling obliged to look serious. I like riding across country, and doing as other men do. I don’t mean that I want to be a bad fellow in any way; but I’ve no taste for the sort of thing people expect of a clergyman. And yet what else am I to do? My father can’t spare me any capital, else I might go into farming. And he has no room for me in his trade. And of course I can’t begin to study for law or physic now, when my father wants me to earn something. It’s all very well to say I’m wrong to go into the Church; but those who say so might as well tell me to go into the backwoods.”

Fred’s voice had taken a tone of grumbling remonstrance, and Mr. Farebrother might have been inclined to smile if his mind had not been too busy in imagining more than Fred told him.

“Have you any difficulties about doctrines — about the Articles?” he said, trying hard to think of the question simply for Fred’s sake.

“No; I suppose the Articles are right. I am not prepared with any arguments to disprove them, and much better, cleverer fellows than I am go in for them entirely. I think it would be rather ridiculous in me to urge scruples of that sort, as if I were a judge,” said Fred, quite simply.

“I suppose, then, it has occurred to you that you might be a fair parish priest without being much of a divine?”

“Of course, if I am obliged to be a clergyman, I shall try and do my duty, though I mayn’t like it. Do you think any body ought to blame me?”

“For going into the Church under the circumstances? That depends on your conscience, Fred — how far you have counted the cost, and seen what your position will require of you. I can only tell you about myself, that I have always been too lax, and have been uneasy in consequence.”

“But there is another hindrance,” said Fred, coloring. “I did not tell you before, though perhaps I may have said things that made you guess it. There is somebody I am very fond of: I have loved her ever since we were children.”

“Miss Garth, I suppose?” said the Vicar, examining some labels very closely.

“Yes. I shouldn’t mind anything if she would have me. And I know I could be a good fellow then.”

“And you think she returns the feeling?”

“She never will say so; and a good while ago she made me promise not to speak to her about it again. And she has set her mind especially against my being a clergyman; I know that. But I can’t give her up. I do think she cares about me. I saw Mrs. Garth last night, and she said that Mary was staying at Lowick Rectory with Miss Farebrother.”

“Yes, she is very kindly helping my sister. Do you wish to go there?”

“No, I want to ask a great favor of you. I am ashamed to bother you in this way; but Mary might listen to what you said, if you mentioned the subject to her — I mean about my going into the Church.”

“That is rather a delicate task, my dear Fred. I shall have to presuppose your attachment to her; and to enter on the subject as you wish me to do, will be asking her to tell me whether she returns it.”

“That is what I want her to tell you,” said Fred, bluntly. “I don’t know what to do, unless I can get at her feeling.”

“You mean that you would be guided by that as to your going into the Church?”

“If Mary said she would never have me I might as well go wrong in one way as another.”

“That is nonsense, Fred. Men outlive their love, but they don’t outlive the consequences of their recklessness.”

“Not my sort of love: I have never been without loving Mary. If I had to give her up, it would be like beginning to live on wooden legs.”

“Will she not be hurt at my intrusion?”

“No, I feel sure she will not. She respects you more than any one, and she would not put you off with fun as she does me. Of course I could not have told any one else, or asked any one else to speak to her, but you. There is no one else who could be such a friend to both of us.” Fred paused a moment, and then said, rather complainingly, “And she ought to acknowledge that I have worked in order to pass. She ought to believe that I would exert myself for her sake.”

There was a moment’s silence before Mr. Farebrother laid down his work, and putting out his hand to Fred said —

“Very well, my boy. I will do what you wish.”

That very day Mr. Farebrother went to Lowick parsonage on the nag which he had just set up. “Decidedly I am an old stalk,” he thought, “the young growths are pushing me aside.”

He found Mary in the garden gathering roses and sprinkling the petals on a sheet. The sun was low, and tall trees sent their shadows across the grassy walks where Mary was moving without bonnet or parasol. She did not observe Mr. Farebrother’s approach along the grass, and had just stooped down to lecture a small black-and-tan terrier, which would persist in walking on the sheet and smelling at the rose-leaves as Mary sprinkled them. She took his fore-paws in one hand, and lifted up the forefinger of the other, while the dog wrinkled his brows and looked embarrassed. “Fly, Fly, I am ashamed of you,” Mary was saying in a grave contralto. “This is not becoming in a sensible dog; anybody would think you were a silly young gentleman.”

“You are unmerciful to young gentlemen, Miss Garth,” said the Vicar, within two yards of her.

Mary started up and blushed. “It always answers to reason with Fly,” she said, laughingly.

“But not with young gentlemen?”

“Oh, with some, I suppose; since some of them turn into excellent men.”

“I am glad of that admission, because I want at this very moment to interest you in a young gentleman.”

“Not a silly one, I hope,” said Mary, beginning to pluck the roses again, and feeling her heart beat uncomfortably.