I believe he has never married because of them. I never heard such good preaching as his--such plain, easy eloquence. He would have done to preach at St. Paul's Cross after old Latimer. His talk is just as good about all subjects: original, simple, clear.
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.
He is very fond of Natural History and various scientific matters, and he is hampered in reconciling these tastes with his position.
He has no money to spare--hardly enough to use; and that has led him into card-playing--Middlemarch is a great place for whist.
He does play for money, and he wins a good deal. Of course that takes him into company a little beneath him, and makes him slack about some things; and yet, with all that, looking at him as a whole, I think he is one of the most blameless men I ever knew. He has neither venom nor doubleness in him, and those often go with a more correct outside.""I wonder whether he suffers in his conscience because of that habit,"said Dorothea; "I wonder whether he wishes he could leave it off.""I have no doubt he would leave it off, if he were transplanted into plenty: he would be glad of the time for other things.""My uncle says that Mr. Tyke is spoken of as an apostolic man,"said Dorothea, meditatively. She was wishing it were possible to restore the times of primitive zeal, and yet thinking of Mr. Farebrother with a strong desire to rescue him from his chance-gotten money.
"I don't pretend to say that Farebrother is apostolic," said Lydgate.
"His position is not quite like that of the Apostles: he is only a parson among parishioners whose lives he has to try and make better.
Practically I find that what is called being apostolic now, is an impatience of everything in which the parson doesn't cut the principal figure. I see something of that in Mr. Tyke at the Hospital: a good deal of his doctrine is a sort of pinching hard to make people uncomfortably--aware of him. Besides, an apostolic man at Lowick!--he ought to think, as St. Francis did, that it is needful to preach to the birds.""True," said Dorothea. "It is hard to imagine what sort of notions our farmers and laborers get from their teaching. I have been looking into a volume of sermons by Mr. Tyke: such sermons would be of no use at Lowick--I mean, about imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the Apocalypse. I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it.
It is surely better to pardon too much, than to condemn too much.
But I should like to see Mr. Farebrother and hear him preach.""Do," said Lydgate; "I trust to the effect of that. He is very much beloved, but he has his enemies too: there are always people who can't forgive an able man for differing from them.
And that money-winning business is really a blot. You don't, of course, see many Middlemarch people: but Mr. Ladislaw, who is constantly seeing Mr. Brooke, is a great friend of Mr. Farebrother's old ladies, and would be glad to sing the Vicar's praises.
One of the old ladies--Miss Noble, the aunt--is a wonderfully quaint picture of self-forgetful goodness, and Ladislaw gallants her about sometimes. I met them one day in a back street:
you know Ladislaw's look--a sort of Daphnis in coat and waistcoat;and this little old maid reaching up to his arm--they looked like a couple dropped out of a romantic comedy. But the best evidence about Farebrother is to see him and hear him."Happily Dorothea was in her private sitting-room when this conversation occurred, and there was no one present to make Lydgate's innocent introduction of Ladislaw painful to her. As was usual with him in matters of personal gossip, Lydgate had quite forgotten Rosamond's remark that she thought Will adored Mrs. Casaubon.
At that moment he was only caring for what would recommend the Farebrother family; and he had purposely given emphasis to the worst that could be said about the Vicar, in order to forestall objections.
In the weeks. since Mr. Casaubon's death he had hardly seen Ladislaw, and he had heard no rumor to warn him that Mr. Brooke's confidential secretary was a dangerous subject with Mrs. Casaubon.
When he was gone, his picture of Ladislaw lingered in her mind and disputed the ground with that question of the Lowick living.
What was Will Ladislaw thinking about her? Would he hear of that fact which made her cheeks burn as they never used to do?
And how would he feel when he heard it?--But she could see as well as possible how he smiled down at the little old maid.
An Italian with white mice!--on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every one's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance.
