Old Featherstone would not begin the dialogue till the door had been closed. He continued to look at Fred with the same twinkle and with one of his habitual grimaces, alternately screwing and widening his mouth; and when he spoke, it was in a low tone, which might be taken for that of an informer ready to be bought off, rather than for the tone of an offended senior. He was not a man to feel any strong moral indignation even on account of trespasses against himself. It was natural that others should want to get an advantage over him, but then, he was a little too cunning for them.
"So, sir, you've been paying ten per cent for money which you've promised to pay off by mortgaging my land when I'm dead and gone, eh? You put my life at a twelvemonth, say. But I can alter my will yet."Fred blushed. He had not borrowed money in that way, for excellent reasons. But he was conscious of having spoken with some confidence (perhaps with more than he exactly remembered) about his prospect of getting Featherstone's land as a future means of paying present debts.
"I don't know what you refer to, sir. I have certainly never borrowed any money on such an insecurity. Please to explain.""No, sir, it's you must explain. I can alter my will yet, let me tell you. I'm of sound mind--can reckon compound interest in my head, and remember every fool's name as well as I could twenty years ago.
What the deuce? I'm under eighty. I say, you must contradict this story.""I have contradicted it, sir," Fred answered, with a touch of impatience, not remembering that his uncle did not verbally discriminate contradicting from disproving, though no one was further from confounding the two ideas than old Featherstone, who often wondered that so many fools took his own assertions for proofs.
"But I contradict it again. The story is a silly lie.""Nonsense! you must bring dockiments. It comes from authority.""Name the authority, and make him name the man of whom I borrowed the money, and then I can disprove the story.""It's pretty good authority, I think--a man who knows most of what goes on in Middlemarch. It's that fine, religious, charitable uncle o' yours. Come now!" Here Mr. Featherstone had his peculiar inward shake which signified merriment.
"Mr. Bulstrode?"
"Who else, eh?"
"Then the story has grown into this lie out of some sermonizing words he may have let fall about me. Do they pretend that he named the man who lent me the money?""If there is such a man, depend upon it Bulstrode knows him.
But, supposing you only tried to get the money lent, and didn't get it--Bulstrode 'ud know that too. You bring me a writing from Bulstrode to say he doesn't believe you've ever promised to pay your debts out o' my land. Come now!"Mr. Featherstone's face required its whole scale of grimaces as a muscular outlet to his silent triumph in the soundness of his faculties.
Fred felt himself to be in a disgusting dilemma.
"You must be joking, sir. Mr. Bulstrode, like other men, believes scores of things that are not true, and he has a prejudice against me.
I could easily get him to write that he knew no facts in proof of the report you speak of, though it might lead to unpleasantness.
But I could hardly ask him to write down what he believes or does not believe about me." Fred paused an instant, and then added, in politic appeal to his uncle's vanity, "That is hardly a thing for a gentleman to ask." But he was disappointed in the result.
"Ay, I know what you mean. You'd sooner offend me than Bulstrode.
And what's he?--he's got no land hereabout that ever I heard tell of.
A speckilating fellow! He may come down any day, when the devil leaves off backing him. And that's what his religion means: he wants God A'mighty to come in. That's nonsense! There's one thing I made out pretty clear when I used to go to church--and it's this: God A'mighty sticks to the land. He promises land, and He gives land, and He makes chaps rich with corn and cattle.
But you take the other side. You like Bulstrode and speckilation better than Featherstone and land.""I beg your pardon, sir," said Fred, rising, standing with his back to the fire and beating his boot with his whip. "I like neither Bulstrode nor speculation." He spoke rather sulkily, feeling himself stalemated.
"Well, well, you can do without me, that's pretty clear,"said old Featherstone, secretly disliking the possibility that Fred would show himself at all independent. "You neither want a bit of land to make a squire of you instead of a starving parson, nor a lift of a hundred pound by the way. It's all one to me.
I can make five codicils if I like, and I shall keep my bank-notes for a nest-egg. It's all one to me."Fred colored again. Featherstone had rarely given him presents of money, and at this moment it seemed almost harder to part with the immediate prospect of bank-notes than with the more distant prospect of the land.
"I am not ungrateful, sir. I never meant to show disregard for any kind intentions you might have towards me. On the contrary.""Very good. Then prove it. You bring me a letter from Bulstrode saying he doesn't believe you've been cracking and promising to pay your debts out o' my land, and then, if there's any scrape you've got into, we'll see if I can't back you a bit.
Come now! That's a bargain. Here, give me your arm. I'll try and walk round the room."Fred, in spite of his irritation, had kindness enough in him to be a little sorry for the unloved, unvenerated old man, who with his dropsical legs looked more than usually pitiable in walking.
While giving his arm, he thought that he should not himself like to be an old fellow with his constitution breaking up;and he waited good-temperedly, first before the window to hear the wonted remarks about the guinea-fowls and the weather-cock, and then before the scanty book-shelves, of which the chief glories in dark calf were Josephus, Culpepper, Klopstock's "Messiah,"and several volumes of the "Gentleman's Magazine.""Read me the names o' the books. Come now! you're a college man."Fred gave him the titles.