(A more naïve girl would have said, “Oh, everything!” But Rosamond knew better.) “A few of the ordinary sights, such as raw country girls are always taken to.”
“Do you call yourself a raw country girl?” said Lydgate, looking at her with an involuntary emphasis of admiration, which made Rosamond blush with pleasure. But she remained simply serious, turned her long neck a little, and put up her hand to touch her wondrous hair-plaits—an habitual gesture with her as pretty as any movements of a kitten’s paw. Not that Rosamond was in the least like a kitten: she was a sylph caught young and educated at Mrs. Lemon’s.
“I assure you my mind is raw,” she said immediately; “I pass at Middlemarch. I am not afraid of talking to our old neighbors. But I am really afraid of you.”
“An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand things—as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so the bears can get taught.”
“Ah, there is Fred beginning to strum! I must go and hinder him from jarring all your nerves,” said Rosamond, moving to the other side of the room, where Fred having opened the piano, at his father’s desire, that Rosamond might give them some music, was parenthetically performing “Cherry Ripe!” with one hand. Able men who have passed their examinations will do these things sometimes, not less than the plucked Fred.
“Fred, pray defer your practising till to-morrow; you will make Mr. Lydgate ill,” said Rosamond. “He has an ear.”
Fred laughed, and went on with his tune to the end.
Rosamond turned to Lydgate, smiling gently, and said, “You perceive, the bears will not always be taught.”
“Now then, Rosy!” said Fred, springing from the stool and twisting it upward for her, with a hearty expectation of enjoyment. “Some good rousing tunes first.”
Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemon’s school (close to a county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant’s instinct, had seized his manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo. It was almost startling, heard for the first time. A hidden soul seemed to be flowing forth from Rosamond’s fingers; and so indeed it was, since souls live on in perpetual echoes, and to all fine expression there goes somewhere an originating activity, if it be only that of an interpreter. Lydgate was taken possession of, and began to believe in her as something exceptional. After all, he thought, one need not be surprised to find the rare conjunctions of nature under circumstances apparently unfavorable: come where they may, they always depend on conditions that are not obvious. He sat looking at her, and did not rise to pay her any compliments, leaving that to others, now that his admiration was deepened.
Her singing was less remarkable, but also well trained, and sweet to hear as a chime perfectly in tune. It is true she sang “Meet me by moonlight,” and “I’ve been roaming”; for mortals must share the fashions of their time, and none but the ancients can be always classical. But Rosamond could also sing “Black-eyed Susan” with effect, or Haydn’s canzonets, or “Voi, che sapete,” or “Batti, batti”—she only wanted to know what her audience liked.
Her father looked round at the company, delighting in their admiration. Her mother sat, like a Niobe before her troubles, with her youngest little girl on her lap, softly beating the child’s hand up and down in time to the music. And Fred, notwithstanding his general scepticism about Rosy, listened to her music with perfect allegiance, wishing he could do the same thing on his flute. It was the pleasantest family party that Lydgate had seen since he came to Middlemarch. The Vincys had the readiness to enjoy, the rejection of all anxiety, and the belief in life as a merry lot, which made a house exceptional in most county towns at that time, when Evangelicalism had cast a certain suspicion as of plague-infection over the few amusements which survived in the provinces. At the Vincys’ there was always whist, and the card-tables stood ready now, making some of the company secretly impatient of the music. Before it ceased Mr. Farebrother came in—a handsome, broad-chested but otherwise small man, about forty, whose black was very threadbare: the brilliancy was all in his quick gray eyes. He came like a pleasant change in the light, arresting little Louisa with fatherly nonsense as she was being led out of the room by Miss Morgan, greeting everybody with some special word, and seeming to condense more talk into ten minutes than had been held all through the evening. He claimed from Lydgate the fulfilment of a promise to come and see him. “I can’t let you off, you know, because I have some beetles to show you. We collectors feel an interest in every new man till he has seen all we have to show him.”
But soon he swerved to the whist-table, rubbing his hands and saying, “Come now, let us be serious! Mr. Lydgate? not play? Ah! you are too young and light for this kind of thing.”
Lydgate said to himself that the clergyman whose abilities were so painful to Mr. Bulstrode, appeared to have found an agreeable resort in this certainly not erudite household. He could half understand it: the good-humor, the good looks of elder and younger, and the provision for passing the time without any labor of intelligence, might make the house beguiling to people who had no particular use for their odd hours.
Everything looked blooming and joyous except Miss Morgan, who was brown, dull, and resigned, and altogether, as Mrs. Vincy often said, just the sort of person for a governess. Lydgate did not mean to pay many such visits himself. They were a wretched waste of the evenings; and now, when he had talked a little more to Rosamond, he meant to excuse himself and go.
“You will not like us at Middlemarch, I feel sure,” she said, when the whist-players were settled. “We are very stupid, and you have been used to something quite different.”
“I suppose all country towns are pretty much alike,” said Lydgate. “But I have noticed that one always believes one’s own town to be more stupid than any other. I have made up my mind to take Middlemarch as it comes, and shall be much obliged if the town will take me in the same way. I have certainly found some charms in it which are much greater than I had expected.”
“You mean the rides towards Tipton and Lowick; every one is pleased with those,” said Rosamond, with simplicity.
“No, I mean something much nearer to me.”
Rosamond rose and reached her netting, and then said, “Do you care about dancing at all? I am not quite sure whether clever men ever dance.”
“I would dance with you if you would allow me.”
“Oh!” said Rosamond, with a slight deprecatory laugh. “I was only going to say that we sometimes have dancing, and I wanted to know whether you would feel insulted if you were asked to come.”
“Not on the condition I mentioned.”
After this chat Lydgate thought that he was going, but on moving towards the whist-tables, he got interested in watching Mr. Farebrother’s play, which was masterly, and also his face, which was a striking mixture of the shrewd and the mild. At ten o’clock supper was brought in (such were the customs of Middlemarch) and there was punch-drinking; but Mr. Farebrother had only a glass of water. He was winning, but there seemed to be no reason why the renewal of rubbers should end, and Lydgate at last took his leave.
But as it was not eleven o’clock, he chose to walk in the brisk air towards the tower of St. Botolph’s,
