old infirmary. The building stands in Mr. Farebrother’s parish. You know Mr. Farebrother?”
“I have seen him. He gave me his vote. I must call to thank him. He seems a very bright pleasant little fellow. And I understand he is a naturalist.”
“Mr. Farebrother, my dear sir, is a man deeply painful to contemplate. I suppose there is not a clergyman in this country who has greater talents.” Mr. Bulstrode paused and looked meditative.
“I have not yet been pained by finding any excessive talent in Middlemarch,” said Lydgate, bluntly.
“What I desire,” Mr. Bulstrode continued, looking still more serious, “is that Mr. Farebrother’s attendance at the hospital should be superseded by the appointment of a chaplain — of Mr. Tyke, in fact — and that no other spiritual aid should be called in.”
“As a medial man I could have no opinion on such a point unless I knew Mr. Tyke, and even then I should require to know the cases in which he was applied.” Lydgate smiled, but he was bent on being circumspect.
“Of course you cannot enter fully into the merits of this measure at present. But”— here Mr. Bulstrode began to speak with a more chiselled emphasis —”the subject is likely to be referred to the medical board of the infirmary, and what I trust I may ask of you is, that in virtue of the cooperation between us which I now look forward to, you will not, so far as you are concerned, be influenced by my opponents in this matter.”
“I hope I shall have nothing to do with clerical disputes,” said Lydgate. “The path I have chosen is to work well in my own profession.”
“My responsibility, Mr. Lydgate, is of a broader kind. With me, indeed, this question is one of sacred accountableness; whereas with my opponents, I have good reason to say that it is an occasion for gratifying a spirit of worldly opposition. But I shall not therefore drop one iota of my convictions, or cease to identify myself with that truth which an evil generation hates. I have devoted myself to this object of hospital-improvement, but I will boldly confess to you, Mr. Lydgate, that I should have no interest in hospitals if I believed that nothing more was concerned therein than the cure of mortal diseases. I have another ground of action, and in the face of persecution I will not conceal it.”
Mr. Bulstrode’s voice had become a loud and agitated whisper as he said the last words.
“There we certainly differ,” said Lydgate. But he was not sorry that the door was now opened, and Mr. Vincy was announced. That florid sociable personage was become more interesting to him since he had seen Rosamond. Not that, like her, he had been weaving any future in which their lots were united; but a man naturally remembers a charming girl with pleasure, and is willing to dine where he may see her again. Before he took leave, Mr. Vincy had given that invitation which he had been “in no hurry about,” for Rosamond at breakfast had mentioned that she thought her uncle Featherstone had taken the new doctor into great favor.
Mr. Bulstrode, alone with his brother-in-law, poured himself out a glass of water, and opened a sandwich-box.
“I cannot persuade you to adopt my regimen, Vincy?”
“No, no; I’ve no opinion of that system. Life wants padding,” said Mr. Vincy, unable to omit his portable theory. “However,” he went on, accenting the word, as if to dismiss all irrelevance, “what I came here to talk about was a little affair of my young scapegrace, Fred’s.”
“That is a subject on which you and I are likely to take quite as different views as on diet, Vincy.”
“I hope not this time.” (Mr. Vincy was resolved to be good-humored.) “The fact is, it’s about a whim of old Featherstone’s. Somebody has been cooking up a story out of spite, and telling it to the old man, to try to set him against Fred. He’s very fond of Fred, and is likely to do something handsome for him; indeed he has as good as told Fred that he means to leave him his land, and that makes other people jealous.”
“Vincy, I must repeat, that you will not get any concurrence from me as to the course you have pursued with your eldest son. It was entirely from worldly vanity that you destined him for the Church: with a family of three sons and four daughters, you were not warranted in devoting money to an expensive education which has succeeded in nothing but in giving him extravagant idle habits. You are now reaping the consequences.”
To point out other people’s errors was a duty that Mr. Bulstrode rarely shrank from, but Mr. Vincy was not equally prepared to be patient. When a man has the immediate prospect of being mayor, and is ready, in the interests of commerce, to take up a firm attitude on politics generally, he has naturally a sense of his importance to the framework of things which seems to throw questions of private conduct into the background. And this particular reproof irritated him more than any other. It was eminently superfluous to him to be told that he was reaping the consequences. But he felt his neck under Bulstrode’s yoke; and though he usually enjoyed kicking, he was anxious to refrain from that relief.
“As to that, Bulstrode, it’s no use going back. I’m not one of your pattern men, and I don’t pretend to be. I couldn’t foresee everything in the trade; there wasn’t a finer business in Middlemarch than ours, and the lad was clever. My poor brother was in the Church, and would have done well — had got preferment already, but that stomach fever took him off: else he might have been a dean by this time. I think I was justified in what I tried to do for Fred. If you come to religion, it seems to me a man shouldn’t want to carve out his meat to an ounce beforehand:— one must trust a little to Providence and be generous. It’s a good British feeling to try and raise your family a little: in my opinion, it’s a father’s duty to give his sons a fine chance.”
“I don’t wish to act otherwise than as your best friend, Vincy, when I say that what you have been uttering just now is one mass of worldliness and inconsistent folly.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Vincy, kicking in spite of resolutions, “I never professed to be anything but worldly; and, what’s more, I don’t see anybody else who is not worldly. I suppose you don’t conduct business on what you call unworldly principles. The only difference I see is that one worldliness is a little bit honester than another.”
“This kind of discussion is unfruitful, Vincy,” said Mr. Bulstrode, who, finishing his sandwich, had thrown himself back in his chair, and shaded his eyes as if weary. “You had some more particular business.”
“Yes, yes. The long and short of it is, somebody has told old Featherstone, giving you as the authority, that Fred has been borrowing or trying to borrow money on the prospect of his land. Of course you never said any such nonsense. But the old fellow will insist on it that Fred should bring him a denial in your handwriting; that is, just a bit of a note saying you don’t believe a word of such stuff, either of his having borrowed or tried to borrow in such a fool’s way. I suppose you can have no objection to do that.”
“Pardon me. I have an objection. I am by no means sure that your son, in his recklessness and ignorance — I will use no severer word — has not tried to raise money by holding out his future prospects, or even that some one may not have been foolish enough to supply him on so vague a presumption: there is plenty of such lax money-lending as of other folly in the world.”
“But Fred gives me his honor that he has never borrowed money on the pretence of any understanding about his uncle’s land. He is not a liar. I don’t want to make him better than he is. I have blown him up well — nobody can say I wink at what he does. But he is not a liar. And I should have thought — but I may be wrong — that there was no religion to hinder a man from believing the best of a young fellow, when you don’t know worse. It seems to me it would be a poor sort of religion to put a spoke in his wheel by refusing to say you don’t believe such harm of him as you’ve got no good reason to believe.”
“I am not at all sure that I should be befriending your son by smoothing his way to the future possession of Featherstone’s property. I cannot regard wealth as a blessing to those who use it simply as a harvest for this world. You do not like to hear these things, Vincy, but on this occasion I feel called upon to tell you that I have no motive