But irrational reproaches were easier to bear than the sense of being
instructed, or rather the sense that a younger man, like Lydgate,
inwardly considered him in need of instruction, for "in point of fact,"
Mr. Wrench afterwards said, Lydgate paraded flighty, foreign notions,
which would not wear. He swallowed his ire for the moment, but he
afterwards wrote to decline further attendance in the case. The house
might be a good one, but Mr. Wrench was not going to truckle to anybody
on a professional matter. He reflected, with much probability on his
side, that Lydgate would by-and-by be caught tripping too, and that his
ungentlemanly attempts to discredit the sale of drugs by his
professional brethren, would by-and-by recoil on himself. He threw out
biting remarks on Lydgate's tricks, worthy only of a quack, to get
himself a factitious reputation with credulous people. That cant about
cures was never got up by sound practitioners.
This was a point on which Lydgate smarted as much as Wrench could
desire. To be puffed by ignorance was not only humiliating, but
perilous, and not more enviable than the reputation of the
weather-prophet. He was impatient of the foolish expectations amidst
which all work must be carried on, and likely enough to damage himself
as much as Mr. Wrench could wish, by an unprofessional openness.
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."