"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.