"Now that is too bad, Mary," said Fred. "Just look at the edges of these coat-cuffs! It is only by dint of good brushing that Ilook respectable. I am saving up three suits--one for a wedding-suit.""How very droll you will look!--like a gentleman in an old fashion-book.""Oh no, they will keep two years."
"Two years! be reasonable, Fred," said Mary, turning to walk.
"Don't encourage flattering expectations.""Why not? One lives on them better than on unflattering ones.
If we can't be married in two years, the truth will be quite bad enough when it comes.""I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged flattering expectations, and they did him harm.""Mary, if you've got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt;I shall go into the house to Mr. Garth. I am out of spirits.
My father is so cut up--home is not like itself. I can't bear any more bad news.""Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live at Stone Court, and manage the farm, and be remarkably prudent, and save money every year till all the stock and furniture were your own, and you were a distinguished agricultural character, as Mr. Borthrop Trumbull says--rather stout, I fear, and with the Greek and Latin sadly weather-worn?""You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?" said Fred, coloring slightly nevertheless.
"That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen, and he never talks nonsense," said Mary, looking up at Fred now, while he grasped her hand as they walked, till it rather hurt her;but she would not complain.
"Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could be married directly.""Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer our marriage for some years? That would leave you time to misbehave, and then if I liked some one else better, I should have an excuse for jilting you.""Pray don't joke, Mary," said Fred, with strong feeling. "Tell me seriously that all this is true, and that you are happy because of it--because you love me best."
"It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it--because I love you best," said Mary, in a tone of obedient recitation.
They lingered on the door-step under the steep-roofed porch, and Fred almost in a whisper said--"When we were first engaged, with the umbrella-ring, Mary, you used to--"The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary's eyes, but the fatal Ben came running to the door with Brownie yapping behind him, and, bouncing against them, said--"Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in?--or may I eat your cake?"FINALE.
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension;latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.
Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic--the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.
Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world.
All who have oared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to know that these two made no such failure, but achieved a solid mutual happiness. Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways.
He became rather distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic and practical farmer, and produced a work on the "Cultivation of Green Crops and the Economy of Cattle-Feeding" which won him high congratulations at agricultural meetings. In Middlemarch admiration was more reserved: most persons there were inclined to believe that the merit of Fred's authorship was due to his wife, since they had never expected Fred Vincy to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.
But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories of Great Men, taken from Plutarch," and had it printed and published by Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing to give the credit of this work to Fred, observing that he had been to the University, "where the ancients were studied,"and might have been a clergyman if he had chosen.
In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived, and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book, since it was always done by somebody else.
Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady. Some years after his marriage he told Mary that his happiness was half owing to Farebrother, who gave him a strong pull-up at the right moment.
I cannot say that he was never again misled by his hopefulness:
the yield of crops or the profits of a cattle sale usually fell below his estimate; and he was always prone to believe that he could make money by the purchase of a horse which turned out badly--though this, Mary observed, was of course the fault of the horse, not of Fred's judgment. He kept his love of horsemanship, but he rarely allowed himself a day's hunting; and when he did so, it was remarkable that he submitted to be laughed at for cowardliness at the fences, seeming to see Mary and the boys sitting on the five-barred gate, or showing their curly heads between hedge and ditch.