Lydgate divined some delicacy of feeling here, but did not half understand it. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘what has become of Trawley? I have quite lost sight of him. He was hot on the French social systems, and talked of going to the Backwoods to found a sort of Pythagorean community. Is he gone?’
‘Not at all. He is practising at a German bath, and has married a rich patient.’
‘Then my notions wear the best, so far,’ said Lydgate, with a short scornful laugh. ‘He would have it, the medical profession was an inevitable system of humbug. I said, the fault was in the men—men who truckle to lies and folly. Instead of preaching against humbug outside the walls it might be better to set up a disinfecting apparatus within. In short—I am reporting my own conversation—you may be sure I had all the good sense on my side.’
‘Your scheme is a good deal more difficult to carry out than the Pythagorean community, though. You have not only got the old Adam in yourself against you, but you have got all these descendants of the original Adam who form the society around you. You see, I have paid twelve or thirteen years more than you for my knowledge of difficulties. But’—Mr Farebrother broke off a moment, and then added, ‘you are eyeing that glass vase again. Do you want to make an exchange? You shall not have it without a fair barter.’
‘I have some sea-mice—fine specimens—in spirits. And I will throw in Robert Brown’s new thing—Microscopic Observations on the Pollen of Plants—if you don’t happen to have it already.’
‘Why, seeing how you long for the monster, I might ask a higher price. Suppose I ask you to look through my drawers and agree with me about all my new species?’ The Vicar, while he talked in this way, alternately moved about with his pipe in his mouth, and returned to hang rather fondly over his drawers. ‘That would be good discipline, you know, for a young doctor who has to please his patients in Middlemarch. You must learn to be bored, remember. However, you shall have the monster on your own terms.’
‘Don’t you think men overrate the necessity for humouring everybody’s nonsense, till they get despised by the very fools they humour?’ said Lydgate, moving to Mr Farebrother’s side, and looking rather absently at the insects ranged in fine graduation, with names subscribed in exquisite writing. ‘The shortest way is to make your value felt, so that people must put up with you whether you flatter them or not.’
‘With all my heart. But then you must be sure of having the value, and you must keep yourself independent. Very few men can do that. Either you slip out of service altogether, and become good for nothing, or you wear the harness and draw a good deal where your yoke-fellows pull you. But do look at these delicate orthoptera!’
Lydgate had after all to give some scrutiny to each drawer, the Vicar laughing at himself, and yet persisting in the exhibition.
‘A propos of what you said about wearing harness,’ Lydgate began, after they had sat down, ‘I made up my mind some time ago to do with as little of it as possible. That was why I determined not to try anything in London, for a good many years at least. I didn’t like what I saw when I was studying there—so much empty bigwiggism, and obstructive trickery. In the country, people have less pretension to knowledge, and are less of companions, but for that reason they affect one’s amour propre less: one makes less bad blood, and can follow one’s own course more quietly.’
‘Yes—well—you have got a good start; you are in the right profession, the work you feel yourself most fit for. Some people miss that, and repent too late. But you must not be too sure of keeping your independence.’
‘You mean of family ties?’ said Lydgate, conceiving that these might press rather tightly on Mr Farebrother.
‘Not altogether. Of course they make many things more difficult. But a good wife—a good unworldly woman—may really help a man, and keep him more independent. There’s a parishioner of mine—a fine fellow, but who would hardly have pulled through as he has done without his wife. Do you know the Garths? I think they were not Peacock’s patients.’
‘No; but there is a Miss Garth at old Featherstone’s, at Lowick.’
‘Their daughter: an excellent girl.’
‘She is very quiet—I have hardly noticed her.’
‘She has taken notice of you, though, depend upon it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Lydgate; he could hardly say ‘Of course.’
‘Oh, she gauges everybody. I prepared her for confirmation—she is a favourite of mine.’
Mr Farebrother puffed a few moments in silence, Lydgate not caring to know more about the Garths. At last the Vicar laid down his pipe, stretched out his legs, and turned his bright eyes with a smile towards Lydgate, saying,—
‘But we Middlemarchers are not so tame as you take us to be. We have our intrigues and our parties. I am a party man, for example, and Bulstrode is another. If you vote for me you will offend Bulstrode.’
‘What is there against Bulstrode?’ said Lydgate, emphatically.
‘I did not say there was anything against him except that. If you vote against him you will make him your enemy.’
‘I don’t know that I need mind about that,’ said Lydgate, rather proudly; ‘but he seems to have good ideas about hospitals, and he spends large sums on useful public objects. He might help me a good deal in carrying out my ideas. As to his religious notions—why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don’t mind about his incantations.’
‘Very good. But then you must not offend your arsenic-man. You will not offend me, you know,’ said Mr Farebrother, quite unaffectedly. ‘I don’t translate my own convenience into other people’s duties. I am opposed to Bulstrode in many ways. I don’t like the set he belongs to: they are a narrow ignorant set, and do more to make their neighbours uncomfortable than to make them better. Their system is a sort of worldly-spiritual cliqueism: they really look on the rest of mankind as a doomed carcass which is to nourish them for heaven. But,’ he added, smilingly, ‘I don’t say that Bulstrode’s new hospital is a bad thing; and as to his wanting to oust me from the old one—why, if he thinks me a mischievous fellow, he is only returning a compliment. And I am not a model clergyman—only a decent makeshift.’
Lydgate was not at all sure that the Vicar maligned himself. A model clergyman, like a model doctor, ought to think his own profession the finest in the world, and take all knowledge as mere nourishment to his moral pathology and therapeutics. He only said, ‘What reason does Bulstrode give for superseding you?’
‘That I don’t teach his opinions—which he calls spiritual religion; and that I have no time to spare. Both statements are true. But then I could make time, and I should be glad of the forty pounds. That is the plain fact of the case. But let us dismiss it. I only wanted to tell you that if you vote for your arsenic-man, you are not to cut me in consequence. I can’t spare you. You are a sort of circumnavigator come to settle among us, and will keep up my belief in the antipodes. Now tell me all about them in Paris.’
‘Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth
Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,
Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence;
Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line,
May languish with the scurvy.’
Some weeks passed after this conversation before the question of the chaplaincy