George Eliot: Middlemarch

BOOK VII. TWO TEMPTATIONS. 64. CHAPTER LXIV.

  1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.
  2d Gent.  Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright
                The coming pest with border fortresses,
                Or catch your carp with subtle argument.
                All force is twain in one:  cause is not cause
                Unless effect be there; and action's self
                Must needs contain a passive.  So command
                Exists but with obedience."

Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs, he knew that it would have hardly been in Mr. Farebrother's power to give him the help he immediately wanted. With the year's bills coming in from his tradesmen, with Dover's threatening hold on his furniture, and with nothing to depend on but slow dribbling payments from patients who must not be offended--for the handsome fees he had had from Freshitt Hall and Lowick Manor had been easily absorbed--nothing less than a thousand pounds would have freed him from actual embarrassment, and left a residue which, according to the favorite phrase of hopefulness in such circumstances, would have given him "time to look about him."

Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year, when fellow-citizens expect to be paid for the trouble and goods they have smilingly bestowed on their neighbors, had so tightened the pressure of sordid cares on Lydgate's mind that it was hardly possible for him to think unbrokenly of any other subject, even the most habitual and soliciting. He was not an ill-tempered man; his intellectual activity, the ardent kindness of his heart, as well as his strong frame, would always, under tolerably easy conditions, have kept him above the petty uncontrolled susceptibilities which make bad temper. But he was now a prey to that worst irritation which arises not simply from annoyances, but from the second consciousness underlying those annoyances, of wasted energy and a degrading preoccupation, which was the reverse of all his former purposes. "THIS is what I am thinking of; and THAT is what I might have been thinking of," was the bitter incessant murmur within him, making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.