“Did he mention the precise order of occupation
to which he would addict himself?”
“No. But he said that he felt the danger
which lay for him in your generosity. Of course
he will write to you about it. Do you not think
better of him for his resolve?”
“I shall await his communication on the subject,”
said Mr. Casaubon.
“I told him I was sure that the thing you considered
in all you did for him was his own welfare.
I remembered your goodness in what you said about
him when I first saw him at Lowick,” said Dorothea,
putting her hand on her husband’s.
“I had a duty towards him,” said Mr. Casaubon,
laying his other hand on Dorothea’s in conscientious
acceptance of her caress, but with a glance which
he could not hinder from being uneasy. “The
young man, I confess, is not otherwise an object of
interest to me, nor need we, I think, discuss his
future course, which it is not ours to determine beyond
the limits which I have sufficiently indicated.”
Dorothea did not mention Will again.
WAITING FOR DEATH.
“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
