‘You expect I’m going to give you a little fortune, eh?’ he said, looking above his spectacles and pausing in the act of opening the lid.
‘Not at all, sir. You were good enough to speak of making me a present the other day, else, of course, I should not have thought of the matter.’ But Fred was of a hopeful disposition, and a vision had presented itself of a sum just large enough to deliver him from a certain anxiety. When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other—he did not necessarily conceive what—would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a whole one.
The deep-veined hands fingered many bank-notes one after the other, laying them down flat again, while Fred leaned back in his chair, scorning to look eager. He held himself to be a gentleman at heart, and did not like courting an old fellow for his money. At last, Mr Featherstone eyed him again over his spectacles and presented him with a little sheaf of notes: Fred could see distinctly that there were but five, as the less significant edges gaped towards him. But then, each might mean fifty pounds. He took them, saying—
‘I am very much obliged to you, sir,’ and was going to roll them up without seeming to think of their value. But this did not suit Mr Featherstone, who was eyeing him intently.
‘Come, don’t you think it worth your while to count ’em? You take money like a lord; I suppose you lose it like one.’
‘I thought I was not to look a gift-horse in the mouth, sir. But I shall be very happy to count them.’
Fred was not so happy, however, after he had counted them. For they actually presented the absurdity of being less than his hopefulness had decided that they must be. What can the fitness of things mean, if not their fitness to a man’s expectations? Failing this, absurdity and atheism gape behind him. The collapse for Fred was severe when he found that he held no more than five twenties, and his share in the higher education of this country did not seem to help him. Nevertheless he said, with rapid changes in his fair complexion,—
‘It is very handsome of you, sir.’
‘I should think it is,’ said Mr Featherstone, locking his box and replacing it, then taking off his spectacles deliberately, and at length, as if his inward meditation had more deeply convinced him, repeating, ‘I should think it is handsome.’
‘I assure you, sir, I am very grateful,’ said Fred, who had had time to recover his cheerful air.
‘So you ought to be. You want to cut a figure in the world, and I reckon Peter Featherstone is the only one you’ve got to trust to.’ Here the old man’s eyes gleamed with a curiously-mingled satisfaction in the consciousness that this smart young fellow relied upon him, and that the smart young fellow was rather a fool for doing so.
‘Yes, indeed: I was not born to very splendid chances. Few men have been more cramped than I have been,’ said Fred, with some sense of surprise at his own virtue, considering how hardly he was dealt with. ‘It really seems a little too bad to have to ride a broken-winded hunter, and see men, who are not half such good judges as yourself, able to throw away any amount of money on buying bad bargain.’
‘Well, you can buy yourself a fine hunter now. Eighty pound is enough for that, I reckon—and you’ll have twenty pound over to get yourself out of any little scrape,’ said Mr Featherstone, chuckling slightly.
‘You are very good, sir,’ said Fred, with a fine sense of contrast between the words and his feeling.
‘Ay, rather a better uncle than your fine uncle Bulstrode. You won’t get much out of his spekilations, I think. He’s got a pretty strong string round your father’s leg, by what I hear, eh?’
‘My father never tells me anything about his affairs, sir.’
‘Well, he shows some sense there. But other people find ’em out without his telling. He’ll never have much to leave you: he’ll most like die without a will—he’s the sort of man to do it—let ’em make him mayor of Middlemarch as much as they like. But you won’t get much by his dying without a will, though you are the eldest son.’
Fred thought that Mr Featherstone had never been so disagreeable before. True, he had never before given him quite so much money at once.
‘Shall I destroy this letter of Mr Bulstrode’s, sir?’ said Fred, rising with the letter as if he would put it in the fire.
‘Ay, ay, I don’t want it. It’s worth no money to me.’
Fred carried the letter to the fire, and thrust the poker through it with much zest. He longed to get out of the room, but he was a little ashamed before his inner self, as well as before his uncle, to run away immediately after pocketing the money. Presently, the farm-bailiff came up to give his master a report, and Fred, to his unspeakable relief, was dismissed with the injunction to come again soon.
He had longed not only to be set free from his uncle, but also to find Mary Garth. She was now in her usual place by the fire, with sewing in her hands and a book open on the little table by her side. Her eyelids had lost some of their redness now, and she had her usual air of self-command.
‘Am I wanted upstairs?’ she said, half rising as Fred entered.
‘No; I am only dismissed, because Simmons is gone up.’
Mary sat down again, and resumed her work. She was certainly treating him with more indifference than usual: she did not know how affectionately indignant he had felt on her behalf upstairs.
‘May I stay here a little, Mary, or shall I bore you?’
‘Pray sit down,’ said Mary; ‘you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr John Waule, who was here yesterday, and he sat down without asking my leave.’
‘Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.’
‘I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl’s life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful. I should have thought that I, at least, might have been safe from all that. I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.
Mary did not mean to betray any feeling, but in spite of herself she ended in a tremulous tone of vexation.
‘Confound John Waule! I did not mean to make you angry. I didn’t know you had any reason for being grateful to him. I forgot what a great service you think it if any one snuffs a candle for you.’ Fred also had his pride, and was not going to show that he knew what had called forth this outburst of Mary’s.
‘Oh, I am not angry, except with the ways of the world. I do like to be spoken to as if I had common sense. I really often feel as if I could understand a little more than I ever hear even from young gentlemen who have been to college.’ Mary had recovered, and she spoke with a suppressed rippling undercurrent of laughter pleasant to hear.
‘I don’t care how merry you are at my expense this morning,’ said Fred, ‘I thought you looked so sad when you came upstairs. It is a shame you should stay here to be bullied in that way.’
‘Oh, I have an easy life—by comparison. I have tried being a teacher, and I am not fit for that: my mind is too fond of wandering on its own way. I think any hardship is better than pretending to do what one is paid for, and never really doing it. Everything here I can do as well as any one else could; perhaps better than some—Rosy, for example. Though she is just the sort of beautiful creature that is imprisoned with ogres in fairy tales.’
‘Rosy!’ cried Fred, in a tone of profound brotherly scepticism.
‘Come,