"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.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024