‘You are aware I suppose, that it is not the coroner’s business to conduct the post mortem, but only to take the evidence of the medical witness?’ said Mr Chichely, with some scorn.
‘Who is often almost as ignorant as the coroner himself,’ said Lydgate. ‘Questions of medical jurisprudence ought not to be left to the chance of decent knowledge in a medical witness, and the coroner ought not to be a man who will believe that strychnine will destroy the coats of the stomach if an ignorant practitioner happens to tell him so.’
Lydgate had really lost sight of the fact that Mr Chichely was his Majesty’s coroner, and ended innocently with the question, ‘Don’t you agree with me, Dr Sprague?’
‘To a certain extent—with regard to populous districts, and in the metropolis,’ said the Doctor. ‘But I hope it will be long before this part of the country loses the services of my friend Chichely, even though it might get the best man in our profession to succeed him. I am sure Vincy will agree with me.’
‘Yes, yes, give me a coroner who is a good coursing man,’ said Mr Vincy, jovially. ‘And in my opinion, you’re safest with a lawyer. Nobody can know everything. Most things are ‘visitation of God.’ And as to poisoning, why, what you want to know is the law. Come, shall we join the ladies?’
Lydgate’s private opinion was that Mr Chichely might be the very coroner without bias as to the coats of the stomach, but he had not meant to be personal. This was one of the difficulties of moving in good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office. Fred Vincy had called Lydgate a prig, and now Mr Chichely was inclined to call him prick-eared; especially when, in the drawing-room, he seemed to be making himself eminently agreeable to Rosamond, whom he had easily monopolised in a tête-à-tête, since Mrs Vincy herself sat at the tea-table. She resigned no domestic function to her daughter; and the matron’s blooming good-natured face, with the too volatile pink strings floating from her fine throat, and her cheery manners to husband and children, was certainly among the great attractions of the Vincy house—attractions which made it all the easier to fall in love with the daughter. The tinge of unpretentious, inoffensive vulgarity in Mrs Vincy gave more effect to Rosamond’s refinement, which was beyond what Lydgate had expected.
Certainly, small feet and perfectly turned shoulders aid the impression of refined manners, and the right thing said seems quite astonishingly right when it is accompanied with exquisite curves of lip and eyelid. And Rosamond could say the right thing; for she was clever with that sort of cleverness which catches every tone except the humorous. Happily she never attempted to joke, and this perhaps was the most decisive mark of her cleverness.
She and Lydgate readily got into conversation. He regretted that he had not heard her sing the other day at Stone Court. The only pleasure he allowed himself during the latter part of his stay in Paris was to go and hear music.
‘You have studied music, probably?’ said Rosamond.
‘No, I know the notes of many birds, and I know many melodies by ear; but the music that I don’t know at all, and have no notion about, delights me—affects me. How stupid the world is that it does not make more use of such a pleasure within its reach!’
‘Yes, and you will find Middlemarch very tuneless. There are hardly any good musicians. I only know two gentlemen who sing at all well.’
‘I suppose it is the fashion to sing comic songs in a rhythmic way, leaving you to fancy the tune—very much as if it were tapped on a drum?’
‘Ah, you have heard Mr Bowyer,’ said Rosamond, with one of her rare smiles. ‘But we are speaking very ill of our neighbours.’
Lydgate was almost forgetting that he must carry on the conversation, in thinking how lovely this creature was, her garment seeming to be made out of the faintest blue sky, herself so immaculately blond, as if the petals of some gigantic flower had just opened and disclosed her; and yet with this infantine blondness showing so much ready, self-possessed grace, Since he had had the memory of Laure, Lydgate had lost all taste for large-eyed silence; the divine cow no longer attracted him, and Rosamond was her very opposite. But he recalled himself.
‘You will let me hear some music to-night, I hope.’
‘I will let you hear my attempts, if you like,’ said Rosamond. ‘Papa is sure to insist on my singing. But I shall tremble before you, who have heard the best singers in Paris. I have heard very little: I have only once been to London. But our organist at St Peter’s is a good musician, and I go on studying with him.’
‘Tell me what you saw in London.’
‘Very little.’ (A more naive girl would have said, ‘Oh, everything!’ But Rosamond knew better.) ‘A few of the ordinary sights, such as raw country girls are always taken to.’
‘Do you call yourself a raw country girl?’ said Lydgate, looking at her with an involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blush with pleasure. But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck a little, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hair-plaits—an habitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten’s paw. Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph caught young and educated at Mrs Lemon’s.
‘I assure you my mind is raw.’ she said immediately; ‘I pass at Middlemarch, I am not afraid of talking to our old neighbours. But I am really afraid of you.’
‘An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand things—as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so the bears can get taught.’
‘Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him from jarring all your nerves,’ said Rosamond, moving to the other side of the room, where Fred having opened the piano, at his father’s desire, that Rosamond might give them some music, was parenthetically performing ‘Cherry Ripe!’ with one hand. Able men who have passed their examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than the plucked Fred.
‘Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr Lydgate ill,’ said Rosamond. ‘He has an ear.’
Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.
Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, ‘You perceive, the bears will not always be taught.’
‘Now then, Rosy!’ said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it upward for her, with a hearty expectation of enjoyment. ‘Some good rousing tunes first.’
Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs Lemon’s school (close to a county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant’s instinct, had seized his manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo. It was almost startling, heard for the first time. A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Rosamond’s fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live on in perpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there goes somewhere an originating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter. Lydgate was taken possession of, and began to believe in her as something exceptional. After all, he thought, one need not be surprised to find the rare conjunctions of nature under circumstances apparently unfavourable: come where they may, they always depend on conditions that are not obvious. He sat looking at her, and did not rise to pay her any compliments, leaving that to others, now that his admiration was deepened.
Her singing was less remarkable, but also well trained, and