 but he did not care
for play, and winning money at it had always seemed a meanness to him; besides,
he had an ideal of life which made this subservience of conduct to the gaining
of small sums thoroughly hateful to him. Hitherto in his own life his wants had
been supplied without any trouble to himself, and his first impulse was always
to be liberal with half-crowns as matters of no importance to a gentleman; it
had never occurred to him to devise a plan for getting half-crowns. He had
always known in a general way that he was not rich, but he had never felt poor,
and he had no power of imagining the part which the want of money plays in
determining the actions of men. Money had never been a motive to him. Hence he
was not ready to frame excuses for this deliberate pursuit of small gains. It
was altogether repulsive to him, and he never entered into any calculation of
the ratio between the Vicar's income and his more or less necessary expenditure.
It was possible that he would not have made such a calculation in his own case.
    And now, when the question of voting had come, this repulsive fact told more
strongly against Mr. Farebrother than it had done before. One would know much
better what to do if men's characters were more consistent, and especially if
one's friends were invariably fit for any function they desired to undertake!
Lydgate was convinced that if there had been no valid objection to Mr.
Farebrother, he would have voted for him, whatever Bulstrode might have felt on
the subject: he did not intend to be a vassal of Bulstrode's. On the other hand,
there was Tyke, a man entirely given to his clerical office, who was simply
curate at a chapel of ease in St Peter's parish, and had time for extra duty.
Nobody had anything to say against Mr. Tyke, except that they could not bear
him, and suspected him of cant. Really, from his point of view, Bulstrode was
thoroughly justified.
    But whichever way Lydgate began to incline, there was something to make him
wince; and being a proud man, he was a little exasperated at being obliged to
wince. He did not like frustrating his own best purposes by getting on bad terms
with Bulstrode; he did not like voting against Farebrother, and helping to
deprive him of function and salary; and the question occurred whether the
additional forty pounds might not leave the Vicar free from that ignoble care
about winning at cards. Moreover, Lydgate did not like the
