Middlemarch George Eliot (essential reading txt) 📖

“Children, run away,” said Mrs. Garth; “it is too warm to hang about your friends. Take your brother and show him the rabbits.”

The eldest understood, and led off the children immediately. Fred felt that Mrs. Garth wished to give him an opportunity of saying anything he had to say, but he could only begin by observing⁠—

“How glad you must be to have Christy here!”

“Yes; he has come sooner than I expected. He got down from the coach at nine o’clock, just after his father went out. I am longing for Caleb to come and hear what wonderful progress Christy is making. He has paid his expenses for the last year by giving lessons, carrying on hard study at the same time. He hopes soon to get a private tutorship and go abroad.”

“He is a great fellow,” said Fred, to whom these cheerful truths had a medicinal taste, “and no trouble to anybody.” After a slight pause, he added, “But I fear you will think that I am going to be a great deal of trouble to Mr. Garth.”

“Caleb likes taking trouble: he is one of those men who always do more than anyone would have thought of asking them to do,” answered Mrs. Garth. She was knitting, and could either look at Fred or not, as she chose⁠—always an advantage when one is bent on loading speech with salutary meaning; and though Mrs. Garth intended to be duly reserved, she did wish to say something that Fred might be the better for.

“I know you think me very undeserving, Mrs. Garth, and with good reason,” said Fred, his spirit rising a little at the perception of something like a disposition to lecture him. “I happen to have behaved just the worst to the people I can’t help wishing for the most from. But while two men like Mr. Garth and Mr. Farebrother have not given me up, I don’t see why I should give myself up.” Fred thought it might be well to suggest these masculine examples to Mrs. Garth.

“Assuredly,” said she, with gathering emphasis. “A young man for whom two such elders had devoted themselves would indeed be culpable if he threw himself away and made their sacrifices vain.”

Fred wondered a little at this strong language, but only said, “I hope it will not be so with me, Mrs. Garth, since I have some encouragement to believe that I may win Mary. Mr. Garth has told you about that? You were not surprised, I dare say?” Fred ended, innocently referring only to his own love as probably evident enough.

“Not surprised that Mary has given you encouragement?” returned Mrs. Garth, who thought it would be well for Fred to be more alive to the fact that Mary’s friends could not possibly have wished this beforehand, whatever the Vincys might suppose. “Yes, I confess I was surprised.”

“She never did give me any⁠—not the least in the world, when I talked to her myself,” said Fred, eager to vindicate Mary. “But when I asked Mr. Farebrother to speak for me, she allowed him to tell me there was a hope.”

The power of admonition which had begun to stir in Mrs. Garth had not yet discharged itself. It was a little too provoking even for her self-control that this blooming youngster should flourish on the disappointments of sadder and wiser people⁠—making a meal of a nightingale and never knowing it⁠—and that all the while his family should suppose that hers was in eager need of this sprig; and her vexation had fermented the more actively because of its total repression towards her husband. Exemplary wives will sometimes find scapegoats in this way. She now said with energetic decision, “You made a great mistake, Fred, in asking Mr. Farebrother to speak for you.”

“Did I?” said Fred, reddening instantaneously. He was alarmed, but at a loss to know what Mrs. Garth meant, and added, in an apologetic tone, “Mr. Farebrother has always been such a friend of ours; and Mary, I knew, would listen to him gravely; and he took it on himself quite readily.”

“Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others,” said Mrs. Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of her worsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.

“I cannot conceive how it could be any pain to Mr. Farebrother,” said Fred, who nevertheless felt that surprising conceptions were beginning to form themselves.

“Precisely; you cannot conceive,” said Mrs. Garth, cutting her words as neatly as possible.

For a moment Fred looked at the horizon with a dismayed anxiety, and then turning with a quick movement said almost sharply⁠—

“Do you mean to say, Mrs. Garth, that Mr. Farebrother is in love with Mary?”

“And if it were so, Fred, I think you are the last person who ought to be surprised,” returned Mrs. Garth, laying her knitting down beside her and folding her arms. It was an unwonted sign of emotion in her that she should put her work out of her hands. In fact her feelings were divided between the satisfaction of giving Fred his discipline and the sense of having gone a little too far. Fred took his hat and stick and rose quickly.

“Then you think I am standing in his way, and in Mary’s too?” he said, in a tone which seemed to demand an answer.

Mrs. Garth could not speak immediately. She had brought herself into the unpleasant position of being called on to say what she really felt, yet what she knew there were strong reasons for concealing. And to her the consciousness of having exceeded in words was peculiarly mortifying. Besides, Fred had given out unexpected electricity, and he now added, “Mr. Garth seemed pleased that Mary should be attached to me. He could not have known anything of this.”

Mrs. Garth felt a severe twinge at this mention of her husband, the fear that Caleb might think her in the wrong not being easily endurable. She answered, wanting to check unintended consequences⁠—

“I spoke from inference