Middlemarch

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Mr. Vincy went home from the reading of the will with his point of view considerably changed. He threw an embroidered cap out of the smoking-room on to the hall-floor. “I hope you’ve made up your mind now to go up next term and pass your examination. I’ve taken my resolution.” Fred went away silently and his mother pleaded for him. “I call it a robbery,” said Mrs. Vincy.

“Took it away again!” said Mr. Vincy. “I tell you the lad’s an unlucky lad, Lucy. And you’ve always spoiled him.” But Mrs. Vincy reminded him of his pride in Rosamond and Mr. Lydgate. “I shouldn’t have wished Rosamond had not engaged herself. She might have met somebody on a visit who would have been a far better match.” “Damn relations!” said Mr. Vincy. “I shall have enough to do this year. I shan’t give my consent to their marrying. Let ’em wait.”

“Don’t be hard on the poor boy, Vincy. And you see—Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest company and been everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once.”

“I don’t believe he’ll ever make an income. He makes enemies; that’s all I hear of his making.” But Mrs. Vincy lost no time the next morning in letting Rosamond know what he had said. Rosamond, examining some muslin-work, listened in silence, and at the end gave a certain turn of her graceful neck, of which only long experience could teach you that it meant perfect obstinacy. “Papa does not mean anything of the kind,” said Rosamond. “He has always said that he wished me to marry the man I loved. And I shall marry Mr. Lydgate.”

Rosamond’s belief that she could manage her papa was well founded. Papa was not a rock, and his indirect though emphatic manner suffered much restraint in this case: Lydgate was a proud man towards whom innuendoes were obviously unsafe. The accepted lover spent most of his evenings in Lowick Gate, and a love-making not at all dependent on money-advances went on flourishingly under Mr. Vincy’s own eyes.

As for Lydgate, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept all the consequences he believed himself to foresee with perfect clearness. Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way. He had heard Rosamond speak with admiration of old Mrs. Bretton’s house, situated in Lowick Gate, and when it fell vacant he immediately entered into treaty for it. He bought a dinner-service in Brassing, and purchased forks and spoons at Kibble’s establishment, restraining his inclination for some plate of an old pattern.

Any inward debate Lydgate had as to the consequences of this engagement turned on the paucity of time rather than of money. “Marriage must be the best thing for a man who wants to work steadily. He has everything at home then—no teasing with personal speculations—he can get calmness and freedom.” He mentioned another reason for wishing to shorten the period of courtship: it was irritating to mingle so often with the family party at the Vincys’, and to enter so much into Middlemarch gossip. But that exquisite creature herself suffered in the same sort of way—it was at least one delightful thought that in marrying her, he could give her a much-needed transplantation.

“Why should we defer it?” he said, with ardent insistence. “I have taken the house now. Don’t you mind about new clothes. Those can be bought afterwards.” “What original notions you clever men have!” said Rosamond. “This is the first time I ever heard of wedding-clothes being bought after marriage.”

“Six weeks would be ample—say so, Rosamond,” insisted Lydgate. “Will you, then, mention it to papa?—I think it would be better to write to him.” She blushed and looked at him as the garden flowers look at us when we walk forth happily among them. He touched her ear and a little bit of neck under it with his lips, and they sat quite still for many minutes which flowed by them like a small gurgling brook with the kisses of the sun upon it.

Rosamond thought that no one could be more in love than she was; and Lydgate thought that after all his wild mistakes and absurd credulity, he had found perfect womanhood—felt as if already breathed upon by exquisite wedded affection such as would be bestowed by an accomplished creature who would create order in the home and accounts with still magic, yet keep her fingers ready to touch the lute and transform life into romance at any moment. Lydgate relied much on the innate submissiveness of the goose as beautifully corresponding to the strength of the gander.