MIDDLEMARCH (Completed)

BOOK 3- WAITING FOR DEATH- Chapter 23

"Your horses of the Sun," he said,

"And first-rate whip Apollo!

Whate'er they be, I'll eat my head,

But I will beat them hollow."

Fred Vincy, we have seen, had a debt on his mind, and though no

such immaterial burthen could depress that buoyant-hearted young

gentleman for many hours together, there were circumstances connected

with this debt which made the thought of it unusually importunate.

The creditor was Mr. Bambridge a horse-dealer of the neighborhood,

whose company was much sought in Middlemarch by young men understood

to be "addicted to pleasure." During the vacations Fred had naturally

required more amusements than he had ready money for, and Mr. Bambridge

had been accommodating enough not only to trust him for the hire

of horses and the accidental expense of ruining a fine hunter,

but also to make a small advance by which he might be able to meet some

losses at billiards. The total debt was a hundred and sixty pounds.

Bambridge was in no alarm about his money, being sure that young

Vincy had backers; but he had required something to show for it,

and Fred had at first given a bill with his own signature.

Three months later he had renewed this bill with the signature

of Caleb Garth. On both occasions Fred had felt confident that he

should meet the bill himself, having ample funds at disposal in

his own hopefulness. You will hardly demand that his confidence

should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know,

is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a comfortable

disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or

the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater

mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring

about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste

in costume, and our general preference for the best style of thing.

Fred felt sure that he should have a present from his uncle,

that he should have a run of luck, that by dint of "swapping" he

should gradually metamorphose a horse worth forty pounds into a horse

that would fetch a hundred at any moment--"judgment" being always

equivalent to an unspecified sum in hard cash. And in any case,

even supposing negations which only a morbid distrust could imagine,

Fred had always (at that time) his father's pocket as a last resource,

so that his assets of hopefulness had a sort of gorgeous superfluity

about them. Of what might be the capacity of his father's pocket,