However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant
on the Vincys, and the event was a subject of general
conversation in Middlemarch. Some said, that
the Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy
had threatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused
him of poisoning her son. Others were of opinion
that Mr. Lydgate’s passing by was providential,
that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that
Bulstrode was in the right to bring him forward.
Many people believed that Lydgate’s coming to
the town at all was really due to Bulstrode; and Mrs.
Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered
her information in misleading fragments caught between
the rows of her knitting, had got it into her head
that Mr. Lydgate was a natural son of Bulstrode’s,
a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions of evangelical
laymen.
She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to
Mrs. Farebrother, who did not fail to tell her son
of it, observing—
“I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode,
but I should be sorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate.”
“Why, mother,” said Mr. Farebrother, after
an explosive laugh, “you know very well that
Lydgate is of a good family in the North. He
never heard of Bulstrode before he came here.”
“That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate
is concerned, Camden,” said the old lady, with
an air of precision.—“But as to Bulstrode—
the report may be true of some other son.”
Let the high Muse chant loves
Olympian:
We are but mortals, and must
sing of man.
An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify
even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene
light of science, has shown me this pregnant little
fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of
polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will
be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions;
but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre
of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to
arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric
circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable
that the scratches are going everywhere impartially
and it is only your candle which produces the flattering
illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling
with an exclusive optical selection. These things
are a parable. The scratches are events, and
the candle is the egoism of any person now absent—
of Miss Vincy, for example. Rosamond had a Providence
of her own who had kindly made her more charming than
other girls, and who seemed to have arranged Fred’s
illness and Mr. Wrench’s mistake in order to
bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity.
It would have been to contravene these arrangements
if Rosamond had consented to go away to Stone Court
or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do, especially
since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless.
Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the children were
sent away to a farmhouse the morning after Fred’s
illness had declared itself, Rosamond refused to leave
papa and mamma.
