Middlemarch

While Peter Featherstone is bedridden, his blood-relations — sensing the approach of inheritance — descend on Stone Court like beetles drawn to warmth they usually avoid. The rich ones, Solomon and Sister Jane (Mrs. Waule), had never been banished and reason that Featherstone will reward prosperous wealth with more. The poor ones — Brother Jonah, Sister Martha from the Chalky Flats, young Cranch — argue that a man lying there with dropsy must feel that blood is thicker than water, and if he has not provided for them in life he will at the last. All parties agree that someone should be on the premises watching against the others. Jonah settles in the kitchen in his best suit, within sight of good cheer. Young Cranch — "not exactly the balancing point between the wit and the idiot, verging slightly towards the latter type, and squinting" — sits beside his uncle to watch him. Together they follow Mary Garth with cold detective eyes whenever she passes through. Mary describes the kitchen scene to Fred, who cannot resist going to look; at the sight of the four eyes he flees to the dairy and laughs until the hollow resonance is perfectly audible in the kitchen. In the wainscoted parlor, Solomon and Mrs. Waule sit hour after hour, occasionally producing dry wrinkly indications of crying, scrutinizing "the cunning Mary Garth" who "was so deep that she could be found out in nothing." They had once appeared together in the bedroom doorway — both in black, Mrs. Waule with her white handkerchief partially unfolded — only to be met with Featherstone seizing his gold-headed stick and sweeping it in a wide arc: "Back, back, Mrs. Waule! Back, Solomon!" Solomon attempts to raise the Three Crofts and the Manganese; the old man reverses his stick for close fighting and tells him "The Almighty knows what I've got on my mind." "Then He knows more than I want to know." They are dismissed. The outstanding figure among the visitors is Mr. Borthrop Trumbull, distinguished bachelor and auctioneer — second cousin to Peter, named as a Bearer in the funeral programme, "an amateur of superior phrases" who never uses poor language without immediately correcting himself. He alone has had the privilege of seeing Featherstone upstairs, and hints broadly at inside knowledge he does not possess. He reads aloud from Mary's copy of Anne of Geierstein — pronouncing it 'Jeersteen' — with sonorous emphasis, as if offering it for sale. He notes that things never 'began' with him: they always 'commenced.' He praises the ham extravagantly and departs with a fine bow, leaving Solomon to reflect that Mr. Trumbull's talk proves that Featherstone has left Mary Garth "a lumping sum." Mrs. Waule replies: "Auctioneers talk wild. Not but what Trumbull has made money."