Léodgard

“ Lydgate had been moving about with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he awaited some assurance.
“I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear,” said Rosamond, letting her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of standing there like a brute. Lydgate had often fastened the plaits before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely-formed fingers. He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the tall comb (to such uses do men come!) ; and what could he do then but kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves? ”

“ One would know much better what to do if men’s characters were more consistent, and especially if one’s friends were invariably fit for any function they desired to undertake! Lydgate was convinced that if there had been no valid objection to Mr Farebrother, he would have voted for him, whatever Bulstrode might have felt on the subject: he did not intend to be a vassal of Bulstrode’s. On the other hand, there was Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simply curate at a chapel of ease in St Peter’s parish, and had time for extra duty. ”

“ I think it is a heavy responsibility, Mr Lydgate, to interfere with the prospects of any girl." Here Mrs Bulstrode fixed her eyes on him, with an unmistakable purpose of warning, if not of rebuke.
"Clearly," said Lydgate, looking at her—perhaps even staring a little in return. "On the other hand, a man must be a great coxcomb to go about with a notion that he must not pay attention to a young lady lest she should fall in love with him, or lest others should think she must."
"Oh, Mr Lydgate, you know well what your advantages are. You know that our young men here cannot cope with you. ”

“ Farebrother, who had been puffing at his pipe thoughtfully while Lydgate talked; “but as to the hostility in the town, you’ll weather it if you are prudent.”
“How am I to be prudent?” said Lydgate, “I just do what comes before me to do. I can’t help people’s ignorance and spite, any more than Vesalius could. It isn’t possible to square one’s conduct to silly conclusions which nobody can foresee.”
“Quite true; I didn’t mean that. I meant only two things. One is, keep yourself as separable from Bulstrode as you can: of course, you can go on doing good work of your own by his help ”

“ Then Leothric looked around him in the marshes where the night mist was passing away, and there was no fortress nor sound of dragon or mortal, only beside him lay an old man, wizened and evil and dead, whose head and hand were severed from his body.
And gradually over the wide lands the dawn was coming up, and ever growing in beauty as it came, like to the peal of an organ played by a master's hand, growing louder and lovelier as the soul of the master warms, and at last giving praise with all its mighty voice. ”

“ This epithet of Lodurr corresponds both with the nature of the gifts he bestows on the human child which is to be—that is, the blood and the human, originally divine, form—and also with his quality of fire-producer, if, as is probable, the friction-fire had the same symbolic meaning in the Teutonic mythology as in the Rigveda. Like Honer, Loder causes the knitting together of the human generations. While the former fructifies the embryo developing on the world-tree with ódr, it receives from Loder the warmth of the blood and human organism. ”

“ Has anything happened to Mr Bulstrode?”
“Some little nervous shock,” said Lydgate, evasively. He felt that it was not for him to make the painful revelation.
“But what brought it on?” said Mrs Bulstrode, looking directly at him with her large dark eyes.
“There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms,” said Lydgate. “Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people in proportion to the delicacy of their systems. It is often impossible to account for the precise moment of an attack—or rather, to say why the strength gives way at a particular moment.” ”

“ Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiæ of mental make in which one of us differs from another. Lydgate’s conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. He would do a great deal for noodles, being sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no power over him: he had thought of joining the Saint Simonians when he was in Paris, in order to turn them against some of their own doctrines. ”

“ It was some weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he was still at the old post in Middlemarch. Lydgate had no objection in general to Ladislaw’s coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth free. When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not regarding his entrance as an interruption. To a man galled with his harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has still pains in store. ”

“ He disagreed with her now.
"But, Dorothea," he said, remonstrantly, "you can't undertake to manage a man's life for him in that way. Lydgate must know—at least he will soon come to know how he stands. If he can clear himself, he will. He must act for himself."
"I think his friends must wait till they find an opportunity," added Mr Farebrother. ”

“ The time, too, nearly ripe for his great schemes, made it doubly necessary that he should exert himself, and prevent being shelved with a plausible excuse of tender compassion for his infirmities. As soon therefore as he learned that Legard had left Paris, he thought himself safe for a while in that quarter, and surrendered his thoughts wholly to his ambitious projects. ”

“ Lydgate, with the usual shallowness of a young bachelor, wondered that Mr Farebrother had not taught them better.
"My mother is not used to my having visitors who can take any interest in my hobbies," said the Vicar, as he opened the door of his study, which was indeed as bare of luxuries for the body as the ladies had implied, unless a short porcelain pipe and a tobacco-box were to be excepted.
"Men of your profession don’t generally smoke," he said. Lydgate smiled and shook his head. ”

“ It was the oldest church in Middlemarch; the living, however, was but a vicarage worth barely four hundred a-year. Lydgate had heard that, and he wondered now whether Mr Farebrother cared about the money he won at cards; thinking, "He seems a very pleasant fellow, but Bulstrode may have his good reasons." Many things would be easier to Lydgate if it should turn out that Mr Bulstrode was generally justifiable. "What is his religious doctrine to me, if he carries some good notions along with it? One must use such brains as are to be found." ”

“ In all failures, the beginning is certainly the half of the whole. After sitting two long moments while he moved his whip and could say nothing, Lydgate rose to go, and Rosamond, made nervous by her struggle between mortification and the wish not to betray it, dropped her chain as if startled, and rose too, mechanically. Lydgate instantaneously stooped to pick up the chain. ”

“ Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love. Will Ladislaw had written chatty letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had replied: their separation, she felt, was not likely to be final, and the change she now most longed for was that Lydgate should go to live in London ”

“ Once Judith saw a hawthorn hedge in winter, shining darkly with recent rain. Deep in the heart of its strong{19} maze of twigs moved a shadowy bird pecking, darting silently about in its small mysterious confined loneliness after a glowing berry or two. Suddenly Judith thought of Roddy. It was ridiculous of course, but there it was: the suggestion came of itself with the same queer pull of surprise and tenderness. A noiseless, intent creature moving alone among small brilliancies in a profound maze: there was—oh, what was there that was all of Roddy in that? ”

“ To Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardour for the more impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardour which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as sublime, though not in the least knowing why. ”

“ There was hardly ever so much unanimity among them as in the opinion that Lydgate was an arrogant young fellow, and yet ready for the sake of ultimately predominating to show a crawling subservience to Bulstrode. That Mr Farebrother, whose name was a chief flag of the anti-Bulstrode party, always defended Lydgate and made a friend of him, was referred to Farebrother's unaccountable way of fighting on both sides. ”

“ Lydgate’s opinion was not on the side of promise that this prayer would be fulfilled; and as the day advanced, Bulstrode felt himself getting irritated at the persistent life in this man, whom he would fain have seen sinking into the silence of death: imperious will stirred murderous impulses towards this brute life, over which will, by itself, had no power. He said inwardly that he was getting too much worn; he would not sit up with the patient to-night, but leave him to Mrs Abel, who, if necessary, could call her husband. ”

“ You can envelop yourselves in an atmosphere of moral and intellectual beauty, through which your otherwise plain faces will look forth like those of angels. Beautiful to Ledyard, stiffening in the cold of a northern winter, seemed the diminutive, smokestained women of Lapland, who wrapped him in their furs and ministered to his necessities with kindness and gentle words of compassion. ”

“ Lydgate, very good. I am at your commands, whenever you require any service of me,” said Mr. Trumbull, who felt pleasure in conjecturing that some new resources had been opened. “Rely on me, I beg. The affair shall go no further.”
That evening Lydgate was a little comforted by observing that Rosamond was more lively than she had usually been of late, and even seemed interested in doing what would please him without being asked. He thought, “If she will be happy and I can rub through, what does it all signify? It is only a narrow swamp that we have to pass in a long journey. ”

“ Only the wise Lodovin shook his head.
“If the boys begin like that,” said he, “what do you suppose the men will do? Take care how you praise those who respect no man’s property!” For Lodovin owned one of the deer which the boys had borrowed. As for fat little Riga, he had gained so [32] much glory (you must remember it was he who had discovered the smoke-pipe) by hanging in the chimney, that it became his favorite position, to the everlasting danger of the limbs of the tribe and his own head, and also to the great confusion of such unwary beings as weekly told secrets about the village fire. ”

“ It was significant of the separateness between Lydgate’s mind and Rosamond’s that he had no impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did not quite trust her reticence towards Will. And he was right there; though he had no vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to speak.
When she repeated Fred’s news to Lydgate, he said, “Take care you don’t drop the faintest hint to Ladislaw, Rosy. He is likely to fly out as if you insulted him. Of course it is a painful affair.” ”

“ I think him a remarkable fellow; he ought to have done more than he has done.”
“Why has he not done more?” said Dorothea, interested now in all who had slipped below their own intention.
“That's a hard question,” said Lydgate. “I find myself that it’s uncommonly difficult to make the right thing work: there are so many strings pulling at once. Farebrother often hints that he has got into the wrong profession; he wants a wider range than that of a poor clergyman, and I suppose he has no interest to help him on. ”

“ On returning home Lydgate had a visit from Mr Farebrother. The Vicar had not been in the town the day before, but the news that there was an execution in Lydgate’s house had got to Lowick by the evening, having been carried by Mr Spicer, shoemaker and parish-clerk, who had it from his brother, the respectable bell-hanger in Lowick Gate. Since that evening when Lydgate had come down from the billiard-room with Fred Vincy, Mr Farebrother’s thoughts about him had been rather gloomy. Playing at the Green Dragon once or oftener might have been a trifle in another man ”

“ The pain had been allayed for Dorothea, but it had left in her an awakened conjecture as to what Lydgate’s marriage might be to him, a susceptibility to the slightest hint about Mrs. Lydgate. These thoughts were like a drama to her, and made her eyes bright, and gave an attitude of suspense to her whole frame, though she was only looking out from the brown library on to the turf and the bright green buds which stood in relief against the dark evergreens. ”

“ He was glad of some one to talk to, this man of power whom Phil had met only twice: once on being employed and again on his return from the Southwest to promotion.
"Business will go to the devil!" said Ledyard. "Everybody is going to draw in and wait to see whether or not the world is coming to an end. I'd like to drive the Kaiser's war bonnet down over his head and strangle him. I confess that I never felt so helpless in my life. I can't even get a second-class passage. Steamship company paid no attention to my wires. ”