Chapter XXIII
"Your horses of the Sun," he said,
"And first-rate whip Apollo !
Whate'er they be, I'll eat my head,
But I will beat them hollow."
Fred Vincy, we have seen. had a debt on his mind, and
though no such immaterial burthen could depress that
buoyant. hearted young gentleman for many hours together,
there were circumstances connected with this debt which made
the thought of it unusually importunate. The creditor was
Mr. Bambridge a horse-dealer of the neighborhood, whose
company was much sought in Middlemarch by young men
understood to be " addicted to pleasure." During the
vacations Fred had naturally required more amusements than
he had ready money for, and Mr. Bambridge had been
accommodating enough not only to trust him for the hire of
horses and the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter,
but also to make a small advance by which he might be able
to meet some losses at billiards. The total debt was a
hundred and sixty pounds. Bambridge was in no alarm about
his money, being sure that young Vincy had backers; but he
had required something to show for it, and Fred had at first
given a bill with his own signature. Three months later he
had renewed this bill with the signature of Caleb Garth. On
both occasions Fred had felt confident that he should meet
the bill himself, having ample funds at disposal in his own
hopefulness. You will hardly demand that his confidence
should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we
know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a
comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom
of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of
luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual
value in the universe, will bring about agreeable issues,
such as are consistent with our good taste in costume, and
our general preference for the best style of thing. Fred
felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle, that
he should have a run of luck, that by dint of "swapping" he
should gradually metamorphose a horse worth forty pounds
into a horse that would fetch a hundred at any
moment — "judgment" being always equivalent to an unspecified
sum in hard cash. And in any case, even supposing negations
which only a morbid distrust could imagine, Fred had always
(at that time) his father's pocket as a last resource, so
that his assets of hopefulness had a sort of gorgeous
superfluity about them. Of what might be the capacity of
his father's pocket, Fred had only a vague notion: was not
trade elastic? And would not the deficiencies of one year
be made up for by the surplus of another? The Vincys lived
in an easy profuse way, not with any new ostentation, but
according to the family habits and traditions, so that the
children had no standard of economy, and the elder ones
retained some of their infantine notion that their father
might pay for anything if he would. Mr. Vincy himself had
expensive Middlemarch habits — spent money on coursing, on
his cellar, and on dinner-giving, while mamma had those
running accounts with tradespeople, which give a cheerful
sense of getting everything one wants without any question
of payment. But it was in the nature of fathers, Fred knew,
to bully one about expenses: there was always a little storm
over his extravagance if he had to disclose a debt, and Fred
disliked bad weather within doors. He was too filial to be
disrespectful to his father, and he bore the thunder with
the certainty that it was transient; but in the mean time it
was disagreeable to see his mother cry, and also to be
obliged to look sulky instead of having fun; for Fred was so
good-tempered that if he looked glum under scolding, it was
chiefly for propriety's sake. The
easier course
plainly, was to renew the bill with a friend's signature.
Why not? With the superfluous securities of hope at his
command, there was no reason why he should not have
increased other people's liabilities to any extent, but for
the fact that men whose names were good for anything were
usually pessimists, indisposed to believe that the universal
order of things would necessarily be agreeable to an
agreeable young gentleman.
With a favor to ask we review our list of friends, do
justice to their more amiable qualities, forgive their
little offenses, and concerning each in turn, try to arrive
at the conclusion that he will be eager to oblige us, our
own eagerness to be obliged being as communicable as other
warmth. Still there is always a certain number who are
dismissed as but moderately eager until the others have
refused; and it happened that Fred checked off all his
friends but one, on the ground that applying to them would
be disagreeable; being implicitly convinced that he at least
(whatever might be maintained about mankind generally) had a
right to be free from anything disagreeable. That he should
ever fall into a thoroughly unpleasant position — wear
trousers shrunk with washing, eat cold mutton, have to walk
for want of a horse, or to "duck under" in any sort of
way — was an absurdity irreconcilable with those cheerful
intuitions implanted in him by nature. And Fred winced
under the idea of being looked down upon as wanting funds
for small debts. Thus it came to pass that the friend whom
he chose to apply to was at once the poorest and the
kindest — namely, Caleb Garth.
The Garths were very fond of Fred, as he was of them;
for when he and Rosamond were little ones, and the Garths
were better off, the slight connection between the two
families through Mr. Featherstone's double marriage (the
first to Mr. Garth's sister, and the second to Mrs. Vincy's)
had led to an acquaintance which was carried on between the
children rather than the parents: the children drank tea
together out of their toy teacups, and spent whole days
together in play. Mary was a little hoyden, and Fred at six
years old thought her the nicest girl in the world making
her his wife with a brass
ring which he had cut from an
umbrella. Through all the stages of his education he had
kept his affection for the Garths, and his habit of going to
their house as a second home, though any intercourse between
them and the elders of his family had long ceased. Even
when Caleb Garth was prosperous, the Vincys were on
condescending terms with him and his wife, for there were
nice distinctions of rank in Middlemarch; and though old
manufacturers could not any more than dukes be connected
with none but equals, they were conscious of an inherent
social superiority which was defined with great nicety in
practice, though hardly expressible theoretically. Since
then Mr. Garth had failed in the building business, which he
had unfortunately added to his other avocations of surveyor,
valuer, and agent, had conducted that business for a time
entirely for the benefit of his assignees, and had been
living narrowly, exerting himself to the utmost that he
might after all pay twenty shillings in the pound. He had
now achieved this, and from all who did not think it a bad
precedent, his honorable exertions had won him due esteem;
but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on
esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete
dinner-service. Mrs. Vincy had never been at her ease with
Mrs. Garth, and frequently spoke of her as a woman who had
had to work for her bread — meaning that Mrs. Garth had been
a teacher before her marriage; in which case an intimacy
with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions was something
like a draper's discrimination of calico trademarks, or a
courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman who
was better off needed that sort of thing. And since Mary
had been keeping Mr. Featherstone's house, Mrs. Vincy's want
of liking for the Garths had been converted into something
more positive, by alarm lest Fred should engage himself to
this plain girl, whose parents "lived in such a small way."
Fred, being aware of this, never spoke at home of his visits
to Mrs. Garth, which had of late become more frequent, the
increasing ardor of his affection for Mary inclining him the
more towards those who belonged to her.
Mr. Garth had a small office in the town, and to this
Fred went with his request. He obtained it without much
difficulty, for a large amount of painful experience had not
sufficed to make Caleb Garth cautious about his own affairs,
or distrustful of his fellow-men when they had not proved
themselves untrustworthy; and he had the highest opinion of
Fred, was "sure the lad would turn out well — an open
affectionate fellow, with a good bottom to his
character — you might trust him for anything." Such was
Caleb's psychological argument. He was one of those rare
men who are rigid to themselves and indulgent to others. He
had a certain shame about his neighbors' errors, and never
spoke of them willingly; hence he was not likely to divert
his mind from the best mode of hardening timber and other
ingenious devices in order to preconceive those errors. If
he had to blame any one, it was necessary for him to move
all the papers within his reach, or describe various
diagrams with his stick, or make calculations with the odd
money in his pocket, before he could begin; and he would
rather do other men's work than find fault with their doing.
I fear he was a bad disciplinarian.
When Fred stated the circumstances of his debt, his wish
to meet it without troubling his father, and the certainty
that the money would be forthcoming so as to cause no one
any inconvenience, Caleb pushed his spectacles upward,
listened, looked into his favorite's clear young eyes, and
believed him, not distinguishing confidence about the future
from veracity about the past; but he felt that it was an
occasion for a friendly hint as to conduct, and that before
giving his signature he must give a rather strong
admonition. Accordingly, he took the paper and lowered his
spectacles, measured the space at his command, reached his
pen and examined it, dipped it in the ink and examined it
again, then pushed the paper a little way from him, lifted
up his spectacles again, showed a deepened depression in the
outer angle of his bushy eyebrows, which gave his face a
peculiar mildness (pardon these details for once — you would
have learned to love them if you had known Caleb Garth), and
said in a comfortable tone —
"It was a misfortune, eh, that breaking the horse's
knees?
And then, these exchanges, they don't answer
when you have 'cute jockeys to deal with. You'll be wiser
another time, my boy."
Whereupon Caleb drew down his spectacles, and proceeded
to write his signature with the care which he always gave to
that performance; for whatever he did in the way of business
he did well. He contemplated the large well-proportioned
letters and final flourish, with his head a trifle on one
side for an instant, then handed it to Fred, said "Good-by,"
and returned forthwith to his absorption in a plan for Sir
James Chettam's new farm-buildings.
Either because his interest in this work thrust the
incident of the signature from his memory, or for some
reason of which Caleb was more conscious, Mrs. Garth
remained ignorant of the affair.
Since it occurred, a change had come over Fred's sky,
which altered his view of the distance, and was the reason
why his uncle Featherstone's present of money was of
importance enough to make his color come and go, first with
a too definite expectation, and afterwards with a
proportionate disappointment. His failure in passing his
examination, had made his accumulation of college debts the
more unpardonable by his father, and there had been an
unprecedented storm at home. Mr. Vincy had sworn that if he
had anything more of that sort to put up with, Fred should
turn out and get his living how he could; and he had never
yet quite recovered his good-humored tone to his son, who
had especially enraged him by saying at this stage of things
that he did not want to be a clergyman, and would rather not
"go on with that." Fred was conscious that he would have
been yet more severely dealt with if his family as well as
himself had not secretly regarded him as Mr. Featherstone's
heir; that old gentleman's pride in him, and apparent
fondness for him, serving in the stead of more exemplary
conduct — just as when a youthful nobleman steals jewellery
we call the act kleptomania, speak of it with a
philosophical smile, and never think of his being sent to
the house of correction as if he were a ragged boy who had
stolen turnips. In fact, tacit expectations of what would
be done for him by uncle Featherstone determined the
angle at which most people viewed Fred Vincy in Middlemarch;
and in his own consciousness, what uncle Featherstone would
do for him in an emergency, or what he would do simply as an
incorporated luck, formed always an immeasurable depth of
aerial perspective. But that present of bank-notes, once
made, was measurable, and being applied to the amount of the
debt, showed a deficit which had still to be filled up
either by Fred's "judgment" or by luck in some other shape.
For that little episode of the alleged borrowing, in which
he had made his father the agent in getting the Bulstrode
certificate, was a new reason against going to his father
for money towards meeting his actual debt. Fred was keen
enough to foresee that anger would confuse distinctions, and
that his denial of having borrowed expressly on the strength
of his uncle's will would be taken as a falsehood. He had
gone to his father and told him one vexatious affair, and he
had left another untold: in such cases the complete
revelation always produces the impression of a previous
duplicity. Now Fred piqued himself on keeping clear of
lies, and even fibs; he often shrugged his shoulders and
made a significant grimace at what he called Rosamond's fibs
(it is only brothers who can associate such ideas with a
lovely girl); and rather than incur the accusation of
falsehood he would even incur some trouble and
self-restraint. It was under strong inward pressure of this
kind that Fred had taken the wise step of depositing the
eighty pounds with his mother. It was a pity that he had
not at once given them to Mr. Garth; but he meant to make
the sum complete with another sixty, and with a view to
this, he had kept twenty pounds in his own pocket as a sort
of seed-corn, which, planted by judgment, and watered by
luck, might yield more than threefold — a very poor rate of
multiplication when the field is a young gentleman's
infinite soul, with all the numerals at command.
Fred was not a gambler: he had not that specific disease
in which the suspension of the whole nervous energy on a
chance or risk becomes as necessary as the dram to the
drunkard; he had only the tendency to that diffusive form of
gambling
which has no alcoholic intensity, but is
carried on with the healthiest chyle-fed blood, keeping up a
joyous imaginative activity which fashions events according
to desire, and having no fears about its own weather, only
sees the advantage there must be to others in going aboard
with it. Hopefulness has a pleasure in making a throw of
any kind, because the prospect of success is certain; and
only a more generous pleasure in offering as many as
possible a share in the stake. Fred liked play, especially
billiards, as he liked hunting or riding a steeple-chase;
and he only liked it the better because he wanted money and
hoped to win. But the twenty pounds' worth of seed-corn had
been planted in vain in the seductive green plot — all of it
at least which had not been dispersed by the roadside — and
Fred found himself close upon the term of payment with no
money at command beyond the eighty pounds which he had
deposited with his mother. The broken-winded horse which he
rode represented a present which had been made to him a long
while ago by his uncle Featherstone: his father always
allowed him to keep a horse, Mr. Vincy's own habits making
him regard this as a reasonable demand even for a son who
was rather exasperating. This horse, then, was Fred's
property, and in his anxiety to meet the imminent bill he
determined to sacrifice a possession without which life
would certainly be worth little. He made the resolution
with a sense of heroism — heroism forced on him by the dread
of breaking his word to Mr. Garth, by his love for Mary and
awe of her opinion. He would start for Houndsley horse-fair
which was to be held the next morning, and — simply sell his
horse, bringing back the money by coach? — Well, the horse
would hardly fetch more than thirty pounds, and there was no
knowing what might happen; it would be folly to balk himself
of luck beforehand. It was a hundred to one that some good
chance would fall in his way; the longer he thought of it,
the less possible it seemed that he should not have a good
chance, and the less reasonable that he should not equip
himself with the powder and shot for bringing it down. He
would ride to Houndsley with Bambridge and with Horrock "the
vet," and without asking them anything expressly, he should
virtually
get the benefit of their opinion. Before he
set out, Fred got the eighty pounds from his mother.
Most of those who saw Fred riding out of Middlemarch in
company with Bambridge and Horrock, on his way of course to
Houndsley horse-fair, thought that young Vincy was
pleasure-seeking as usual; and but for an unwonted
consciousness of grave matters on hand, he himself would
have had a sense of dissipation, and of doing what might be
expected of a gay young fellow. Considering that Fred was
not at all coarse, that he rather looked down on the manners
and speech of young men who had not been to the university,
and that he had written stanzas as pastoral and unvoluptuous
as his flute-playing, his attraction towards Bambridge and
Horrock was an interesting fact which even the love of
horse-flesh would not wholly account for without that
mysterious influence of Naming which determinates so much of
mortal choice. Under any other name than "pleasure" the
society of Messieurs Bambridge and Horrock must certainly
have been regarded as monotonous; and to arrive with them at
Houndsley on a drizzling afternoon, to get down at the Red
Lion in a street shaded with coal-dust, and dine in a room
furnished with a dirt-enamelled map of the county, a bad
portrait of an anonymous horse in a stable, His Majesty
George the Fourth with legs and cravat, and various leaden
spittoons, might have seemed a hard business, but for the
sustaining power of nomenclature which determined that the
pursuit of these things was "gay."
In Mr. Horrock there was certainly an apparent
unfathomableness which offered play to the imagination.
Costume, at a glance, gave him a thrilling association with
horses (enough to specify the hat-brim which took the
slightest upward angle just to escape the suspicion of
bending downwards), and nature had given him a face which by
dint of Mongolian eyes, and a nose, mouth, and chin seeming
to follow his hat-brim in a moderate inclination upwards,
gave the effect of a subdued unchangeable sceptical smile,
of all expressions the most tyrannous over a susceptible
mind, and, when accompanied by adequate silence, likely to
create the reputation of an
invincible understanding,
an infinite fund of humor — too dry to flow, and probably in
a state of immovable crust, — and a critical judgment which,
if you could ever be fortunate enough to know it, would be
the thing and no other. It is a physiognomy seen in all
vocations, but perhaps it has never been more powerful over
the youth of England than in a judge of horses.
Mr. Horrock, at a question from Fred about his horse's
fetlock, turned sideways in his saddle, and watched the
horse's action for the space of three minutes, then turned
forward, twitched his own bridle, and remained silent with a
profile neither more nor less sceptical than it had been.
The part thus played in dialogue by Mr. Horrock was
terribly effective. A mixture of passions was excited in
Fred — a mad desire to thrash Horrock's opinion into
utterance, restrained by anxiety to retain the advantage of
his friendship. There was always the chance that Horrock
might say something quite invaluable at the right moment.
Mr. Bambridge had more open manners, and appeared to
give forth his ideas without economy. He was loud, robust,
and was sometimes spoken of as being "given to
indulgence" — chiefly in swearing, drinking, and beating his
wife. Some people who had lost by him called him a vicious
man; but he regarded horse-dealing as the finest of the
arts, and might have argued plausibly that it had nothing to
do with morality. He was undeniably a prosperous man, bore
his drinking better than others bore their moderation, and,
on the whole, flourished like the green bay-tree. But his
range of conversation was limited, and like the fine old
tune, "Drops of brandy," gave you after a while a sense of
returning upon itself in a way that might make weak heads
dizzy. But a slight infusion of Mr. Bambridge was felt to
give tone and character to several circles in Middlemarch;
and he was a distinguished figure in the bar and
billiard-room at the Green Dragon. He knew some anecdotes
about the heroes of the turf, and various clever tricks of
Marquesses and Viscounts which seemed to prove that blood
asserted its pre-eminence even among black-legs; but the
minute retentiveness of his memory was chiefly
shown
about the horses he had himself bought and sold; the number
of miles they would trot you in no time without turning a
hair being, after the lapse of years, still a subject of
passionate asseveration, in which he would assist the
imagination of his hearers by solemnly swearing that they
never saw anything like it. In short, Mr. Bambridge was a
man of pleasure and a gay companion.
Fred was subtle, and did not tell his friends that he
was going to Houndsley bent on selling his horse: he wished
to get indirectly at their genuine opinion of its value, not
being aware that a genuine opinion was the last thing likely
to be extracted from such eminent critics. It was not Mr.
Bambridge's weakness to be a gratuitous flatterer. He had
never before been so much struck with the fact that this
unfortunate bay was a roarer to a degree which required the
roundest word for perdition to give you any idea of it.
"You made a bad hand at swapping when you went to
anybody but me, Vincy! Why, you never threw your leg across
a finer horse than that chestnut, and you gave him for this
brute. If you set him cantering, he goes on like twenty
sawyers. I never heard but one worse roarer in my life, and
that was a roan: it belonged to Pegwell, the corn-factor; he
used to drive him in his gig seven years ago, and he wanted
me to take him, but I said, `Thank you, Peg, I don't deal in
wind-instruments.' That was what I said. It went the round
of the country, that joke did. But, what the hell! the
horse was a penny trumpet to that roarer of yours."
"Why, you said just now his was worse than mine," said
Fred, more irritable than usual.
"I said a lie, then," said Mr. Bambridge, emphatically.
"There wasn't a penny to choose between 'em."
Fred spurred his horse, and they trotted on a little
way. When they slackened again, Mr. Bambridge said —
"Not but what the roan was a better trotter than yours."
"I'm quite satisfied with his paces, I know," said Fred,
who required all the consciousness of being in gay company
to support him; "I say his trot is an uncommonly clean one,
eh, Horrock?"
Mr. Horrock looked before him with as complete a
neutrality as if he had been a portrait by a great master.
Fred gave up the fallacious hope of getting a genuine
opinion; but on reflection he saw that Bambridge's
depreciation and Horrock's silence were both virtually
encouraging, and indicated that they thought better of the
horse than they chose to say.
That very evening, indeed, before the fair had set in,
Fred thought he saw a favorable opening for disposing
advantageously of his horse, but an opening which made him
congratulate himself on his foresight in bringing with him
his eighty pounds. A young farmer, acquainted with Mr.
Bambridge, came into the Red Lion, and entered into
conversation about parting with a hunter, which he
introduced at once as Diamond, implying that it was a public
character. For himself he only wanted a useful hack, which
would draw upon occasion; being about to marry and to give
up hunting. The hunter was in a friend's stable at some
little distance; there was still time for gentlemen to see
it before dark. The friend's stable had to be reached
through a back street where you might as easily have been
poisoned without expense of drugs as in any grim street of
that unsanitary period. Fred was not fortified against
disgust by brandy, as his companions were, but the hope of
having at last seen the horse that would enable him to make
money was exhilarating enough to lead him over the same
ground again the first thing in the morning. He felt sure
that if he did not come to a bargain with the farmer,
Bambridge would; for the stress of circumstances, Fred felt,
was sharpening his acuteness and endowing him with all the
constructive power of suspicion. Bambridge had run down
Diamond in a way that he never would have done (the horse
being a friend's) if he had not thought of buying it; every
one who looked at the animal — even Horrock — was evidently
impressed with its merit. To get all the advantage of being
with men of this sort, you must know how to draw your
inferences, and not be a spoon who takes things literally.
The color of the horse was a dappled gray, and Fred happened
to know that Lord Medlicote's man was on the look-out for
just such a horse. After all his running down,
Bambridge let it out in the course of the evening, when the
farmer was absent, that he had seen worse horses go for
eighty pounds. Of course he contradicted himself twenty
times over, but when you know what is likely to be true you
can test a man's admissions. And Fred could not but reckon
his own judgment of a horse as worth something. The farmer
had paused over Fred's respectable though broken-winded
steed long enough to show that he thought it worth
consideration, and it seemed probable that he would take it,
with five-and-twenty pounds in addition, as the equivalent
of Diamond. In that case Fred, when he had parted with his
new horse for at least eighty pounds, would be fifty-five
pounds in pocket by the transaction, and would have a
hundred and thirty-five pounds towards meeting the bill; so
that the deficit temporarily thrown on Mr. Garth would at
the utmost be twenty-five pounds. By the time he was
hurrying on his clothes in the morning, he saw so clearly
the importance of not losing this rare chance, that if
Bambridge and Horrock had both dissuaded him, he would not
have been deluded into a direct interpretation of their
purpose: he would have been aware that those deep hands held
something else than a young fellow's interest. With regard
to horses, distrust was your only clew. But scepticism, as
we know, can never be thoroughly applied, else life would
come to a standstill: something we must believe in and do,
and whatever that something may be called, it is virtually
our own judgment, even when it seems like the most slavish
reliance on another. Fred believed in the excellence of his
bargain, and even before the fair had well set in, had got
possession of the dappled gray, at the price of his old
horse and thirty pounds in addition — only five pounds more
than he had expected to give.
But he felt a little worried and wearied, perhaps with
mental debate, and without waiting for the further gayeties
of the horse-fair, he set out alone on his fourteen miles'
journey, meaning to take it very quietly and keep his horse
fresh.