MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

Chapter 27

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.

Poor mamma indeed was an object to touch any creature born of woman;

and Mr. Vincy, who doted on his wife, was more alarmed on her

account than on Fred's. But for his insistence she would have

taken no rest: her brightness was all bedimmed; unconscious of

her costume which had always been so fresh and gay, she was like

a sick bird with languid eye and plumage ruffled, her senses

dulled to the sights and sounds that used most to interest her.

Fred's delirium, in which he seemed to be wandering out of her reach,

tore her heart. After her first outburst against-Mr. Wrench

she went about very quietly: her one low cry was to Lydgate.

She would follow him out of the room and put her hand on his arm

moaning out, "Save my boy." Once she pleaded, "He has always been

good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he never had a hard word for his mother,"--

as if poor Fred's suffering were an accusation against him.

All the deepest fibres of the mother's memory were stirred, and the