"Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth

Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,

Breathing bad air, ran 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 gathered any practical import for Lydgate, and without

telling himself the reason, he deferred the predetermination on which

side he should give his vote. It would really have been a matter of

total indifference to him--that is to say, he would have taken the more

convenient side, and given his vote for the appointment of Tyke without

any hesitation--if he had not cared personally for Mr. Farebrother.

But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph's grew with growing

acquaintanceship. That, entering into Lydgate's position as a

new-comer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr.

Farebrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain

his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity, which

Lydgate's nature was keenly alive to. It went along with other points

of conduct in Mr. Farebrother which were exceptionally fine, and made

his character resemble those southern landscapes which seem divided

between natural grandeur and social slovenliness. Very few men could

have been as filial and chivalrous as he was to the mother, aunt, and

sister, whose dependence on him had in many ways shaped his life rather

uneasily for himself; few men who feel the pressure of small needs are

so nobly resolute not to dress up their inevitably self-interested

desires in a pretext of better motives. In these matters he was

conscious that his life would bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps

the consciousness encouraged a little defiance towards the critical

strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve

their domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account

for their actions. Then, his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like

the preaching of the English Church in its robust age, and his sermons

were delivered without book. People outside his parish went to hear

him; and, since to fill the church was always the most difficult part

of a clergyman's function, here was another ground for a careless sense

of superiority. Besides, he was a likable man: sweet-tempered,

ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or other

conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our

friends. Lydgate liked him heartily, and wished for his friendship.

With this feeling uppermost, he continued to waive the question of the

chaplaincy, and to persuade himself that it was not only no proper

business of his, but likely enough never to vex him with a demand for

his vote. Lydgate, at Mr. Bulstrode's request, was laying down plans

for the internal arrangements of the new hospital, and the two were

often in consultation. The banker was always presupposing that he

could count in general on Lydgate as a coadjutor, but made no special

recurrence to the coming decision between Tyke and Farebrother. When

the General Board of the Infirmary had met, however, and Lydgate had

notice that the question of the chaplaincy was thrown on a council of

the directors and medical men, to meet on the following Friday, he had

a vexed sense that he must make up his mind on this trivial Middlemarch

business. He could not help hearing within him the distinct

declaration that Bulstrode was prime minister, and that the Tyke affair

was a question of office or no office; and he could not help an equally

pronounced dislike to giving up the prospect of office. For his

observation was constantly confirming Mr. Farebrother's assurance that

the banker would not overlook opposition. "Confound their petty

politics!" was one of his thoughts for three mornings in the meditative

process of shaving, when he had begun to feel that he must really hold

a court of conscience on this matter. Certainly there were valid

things to be said against the election of Mr. Farebrother: he had too

much on his hands already, especially considering how much time he

spent on non-clerical occupations. Then again it was a continually

repeated shock, disturbing Lydgate's esteem, that the Vicar should

obviously play for the sake of money, liking the play indeed, but

evidently liking some end which it served. Mr. Farebrother contended

on theory for the desirability of all games, and said that Englishmen's

wit was stagnant for want of them; but Lydgate felt certain that he

would have played very much less but for the money. There was a

billiard-room at the Green Dragon, which some anxious mothers and wives

regarded as the chief temptation in Middlemarch. The Vicar was a

first-rate billiard-player, and though he did not frequent the Green

Dragon, there were reports that he had sometimes been there in the

daytime and had won money. And as to the chaplaincy, he did not

pretend that he cared for it, except for the sake of the forty pounds.

Lydgate was no Puritan, but he did not care for play, and winning money

at it had always seemed a meanness to him; besides, he had an ideal of

life which made this subservience of conduct to the gaining of small

sums thoroughly hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life his wants had

been supplied without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was

always to be liberal with half-crowns as matters of no importance to a

gentleman; it had never occurred to him to devise a plan for getting

half-crowns. He had always known in a general way that he was not

rich, but he had never felt poor, and he had no power of imagining the

part which the want of money plays in determining the actions of men.

Money had never been a motive to him. Hence he was not ready to frame

excuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains. It was altogether

repulsive to him, and he never entered into any calculation of the

ratio between the Vicar's income and his more or less necessary

expenditure. It was possible that he would not have made such a

calculation in his own case.




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