Middlemarch

CHAPTER LVI.

Dorothea’s confidence in Caleb Garth’s knowledge, which had begun on hearing that he approved of her cottages, had grown fast during her stay at Freshitt. Caleb, who quite returned her admiration, told his wife that Mrs. Casaubon had a head for business most uncommon in a woman—he never meant money transactions by “business,” but the skilful application of labor. “She said a thing I often used to think myself when I was a lad: ‘Mr. Garth, I should like to feel, if I lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece of land and built a great many good cottages.’” He shook his head in admiration. “You would like to hear her speak, Susan. She speaks in such plain words, and a voice like music.”

It was natural then that Dorothea asked Caleb to undertake any business connected with the three farms and tenements of Lowick Manor. One form of business beginning to breed just then was the construction of railways. A projected line was to run through Lowick parish, and this infant struggle of the railway system entered into the affairs of Caleb Garth and determined the course of the history for two persons dear to him.

In the hundred to which Middlemarch belonged, railways were as exciting a topic as the Reform Bill or cholera. Women and landholders held the most decided views; the women thought travelling by steam presumptuous and dangerous, the proprietors were unanimous that these pernicious agencies must be made to pay a very high price. The slower wits, such as Mr. Solomon Featherstone and Mrs. Waule, took a long time to arrive at this conclusion, their minds halting at the vivid conception of cutting the Big Pasture into three-cornered bits. Solomon reasoned that the more spokes they put in the wheel, the more the company would pay to be let through. He went about his work in a thoroughly diplomatic manner, stimulating suspicion.

The mind of Frick was exactly suited to Mr. Solomon’s working upon. One morning, not long after that interview between Mr. Farebrother and Mary Garth in which she confessed her feeling for Fred Vincy, Caleb had business which took him toward Frick, measuring an outlying piece of land for Dorothea. Walking with his assistant along the lanes, he encountered the company’s agents adjusting their spirit-level. It was a gray morning after light rains, the clouds parting about noon to let through the sweet scent of earth.

Fred Vincy, riding along the lanes in this mood, could see over the hedges from one field to another. Suddenly a noise roused him: on the far side of a field he could see six or seven men in smock-frocks with hay-forks making an offensive approach on the four railway agents, while Caleb Garth and his assistant hastened across the field to join the threatened group. Fred, delayed by having to find the gate, could not gallop up before the party in smock-frocks were driving the men in coats before them; the assistant, a lad of seventeen, had been knocked down. The coated men had the advantage as runners, and Fred covered their retreat by charging the smock-frocks with his whip. “What do you confounded fools mean? I’ll swear to every one of you before the magistrate. You’ve knocked the lad down and killed him, for what I know. You’ll every one of you be hanged at the next assizes.” Hiram Ford, observing himself at a safe distance, shouted a Homeric defiance: “Yo’re a coward, yo are. Yo git off your horse, young measter, and I’ll have a round wi’ ye.”

The lad’s ankle was strained, and Fred placed him on the horse to be cared for at Yoddrell’s. Then Caleb said, “What have you got to do to-day, young fellow?” “Nothing, Mr. Garth. I’ll help you with pleasure—can I?” said Fred, with a sense that he should be courting Mary. They went to work, and Fred helped vigorously. His spirits had risen, and he heartily enjoyed a good slip in the moist earth under the hedgerow, soiling his perfect summer trousers. The accidents of the morning had helped his frustrated imagination to shape an employment for himself which had several attractions.

At last, when they had finished, Mr. Garth said, “A young fellow needn’t be a B. A. to do this sort of work, eh, Fred?” “I wish I had taken to it before I had thought of being a B. A.,” said Fred, more hesitatingly, “Do you think I am too old to learn your business, Mr. Garth?” “My business is of many sorts. A good deal of what I know can only come from experience. But you are young enough to lay a foundation yet.” Fred spoke of Mary, confessing his love and saying he could never feel that he should do well as a clergyman. “Then let it alone, my boy,” said Caleb, “else you’ll never be easy. Or, if you are easy, you’ll be a poor stick.” He agreed to take Fred into his office, with a salary of eighty pounds for the first year.

When Fred made the disclosure to his parents, the effect was a surprise entering very deeply into his memory. Mr. Vincy listened in profound surprise. “So you’ve made up your mind at last, sir?” “Yes, father.” “Very well; stick to it. I wash my hands of you. I only hope, when you have a son of your own he will make a better return for the pains you spend on him.” Mrs. Vincy was inconsolable, having before her eyes the certainty that Fred would marry Mary Garth, and that her darling boy would be sure to get like that family in plainness of appearance.