Featherstone's Final Performance — Middlemarch

Peter Featherstone is buried in a chilly May with blossoms blowing over Lowick churchyard and a crowd watching three mourning-coaches arranged to his written orders. Eliot notes he loved money and loved making others uncomfortable; goodness in him, if any, kept to extreme privacy. Mr. Cadwallader buries him because Featherstone hated Casaubon in the pew and preferred a parson who had once asked a favor about the trout stream.

Mrs. Cadwallader drags Sir James and Celia to watch from Lowick Manor as a mixed funeral party emerges. Dorothea, pulled from the library, wants to know how neighbors live, not only cottagers; she finds the rite dismal and says it is a blot on the morning to die and leave no love behind. Brooke arrives to check on Casaubon and blurts that Will Ladislaw is his guest at the Grange. Celia spots Will in the churchyard and cries that Dodo never said he had come again. Dorothea pales; Casaubon hears with cold politeness while Mrs. Cadwallader asks who this sprig is.

Brooke praises Will as companionable, offers the Aquinas portrait, and goes to fetch him. Dorothea cannot explain she never asked her uncle to invite Will; Casaubon masters irritation while jealousy and pride tighten around a face Celia calls like the miniature in the boudoir. The funeral ends; a new relative has entered the neighborhood's sightlines, and Lowick's marriage grows one secret heavier.