Middlemarch By George Eliot

But one morning after Lydgate had gone out, a letter came addressed
to him, which Rosamond saw clearly to be from Sir Godwin. She was full
of hope. Perhaps there might be a particular note to her enclosed;
but Lydgate was naturally addressed on the question of money or other aid,
and the fact that he was written to, nay, the very delay in writing
at all, seemed to certify that the answer was thoroughly compliant.
She was too much excited by these thoughts to do anything but light
stitching in a warm corner of the dining-room, with the outside
of this momentous letter lying on the table before her. About twelve
she heard her husband's step in the passage, and tripping to open
the door, she said in her lightest tones, "Tertius, come in here--
here is a letter for you."
"Ah?" he said, not taking off his hat, but just turning her round
within his arm to walk towards the spot where the letter lay.
"My uncle Godwin!" he exclaimed, while Rosamond reseated herself,
and watched him as he opened the letter. She had expected him to
be surprised.
While Lydgate's eyes glanced rapidly over the brief letter, she saw
his face, usually of a pale brown, taking on a dry whiteness;
with nostrils and lips quivering he tossed down the letter before her,
and said violently--
"It will be impossible to endure life with you, if you will always
be acting secretly--acting in opposition to me and hiding your actions."
He checked his speech and turned his back on her--then wheeled
round and walked about, sat down, and got up again restlessly,
grasping hard the objects deep down in his pockets. He was afraid
of saying something irremediably cruel.
Rosamond too had changed color as she read. The letter ran
in this way:--
"DEAR TERTIUS,--Don't set your wife to write to me when you have
anything to ask. It is a roundabout wheedling sort of thing
which I should not have credited you with. I never choose to write
to a woman on matters of business. As to my supplying you with a
thousand pounds, or only half that sum, I can do nothing of the sort.
My own family drains me to the last penny. With two younger sons
and three daughters, I am not likely to have cash to spare. You seem
to have got through your own money pretty quickly, and to have made
a mess where you are; the sooner you go somewhere else the better.
But I have nothing to do with men of your profession, and can't
help you there. I did the best I could for you as guardian,
and let you have your own way in taking to medicine. You might
have gone into the army or the Church. Your money would have held
out for that, and there would have been a surer ladder before you.
Your uncle Charles has had a grudge against you for not going
into his profession, but not I. I have always wished you well,
but you must consider yourself on your own legs entirely now.
Your affectionate uncle,
GODWIN LYDGATE."
When Rosamond had finished reading the letter she sat quite still,
with her hands folded before her, restraining any show of her
keen disappointment, and intrenching herself in quiet passivity
under her husband's wrath Lydgate paused in his movements,
looked at her again, and said, with biting severity--
"Will this be enough to convince you of the harm you may
do by secret meddling? Have you sense enough to recognize
now your incompetence to judge and act for me--to interfere
with your ignorance in affairs which it belongs to me to decide on?"
The words were hard; but this was not the first time that Lydgate
had been frustrated by her. She did not look at him, and made
no reply.
"I had nearly resolved on going to Quallingham. It would have cost
me pain enough to do it, yet it might have been of some use.
But it has been of no use for me to think of anything.
You have always been counteracting me secretly. You delude me
with a false assent, and then I am at the mercy of your devices.
If you mean to resist every wish I express, say so and defy me.
I shall at least know what I am doing then."
It is a terrible moment in young lives when the closeness of love's
bond has turned to this power of galling. In spite of Rosamond's
self-control a tear fell silently and rolled over her lips. She still
said nothing; but under that quietude was hidden an intense effect:
she was in such entire disgust with her husband that she wished she
had never seen him. Sir Godwin's rudeness towards her and utter
want of feeling ranged him with Dover and all other creditors--
disagreeable people who only thought of themselves, and did not
mind how annoying they were to her. Even her father was unkind,
and might have done more for them. In fact there was but one person
in Rosamond's world whom she did not regard as blameworthy, and that
was the graceful creature with blond plaits and with little hands
crossed before her, who had never expressed herself unbecomingly,
and had always acted for the best--the best naturally being what she
best liked.
Lydgate pausing and looking at her began to feel that half-maddening
sense of helplessness which comes over passionate people when their
passion is met by an innocent-looking silence whose meek victimized
air seems to put them in the wrong, and at last infects even the
justest indignation with a doubt of its justice. He needed to
recover the full sense that he was in the right by moderating his words.
"Can you not see, Rosamond," he began again, trying to be simply
grave and not bitter, "that nothing can be so fatal as a want of
openness and confidence between us? It has happened again and again
that I have expressed a decided wish, and you have seemed to assent,
yet after that you have secretly disobeyed my wish. In that way I can
never know what I have to trust to. There would be some hope for us
if you would admit this. Am I such an unreasonable, furious brute?
Why should you not be open with me?" Still silence.
"Will you only say that you have been mistaken, and that I may
depend on your not acting secretly in future?" said Lydgate,
urgently, but with something of request in his tone which Rosamond
was quick to perceive. She spoke with coolness.
"I cannot possibly make admissions or promises in answer to such
words as you have used towards me. I have not been accustomed
to language of that kind. You have spoken of my `secret meddling,'
and my `interfering ignorance,' and my `false assent.' I have never
expressed myself in that way to you, and I think that you ought
to apologize. You spoke of its being impossible to live with me.
Certainly you have not made my life pleasant to me of late.
I think it was to be expected that I should try to avert some of
the hardships which our marriage has brought on me." Another tear
fell as Rosamond ceased speaking, and she pressed it away as quietly
as the first.
Lydgate flung himself into a chair, feeling checkmated. What place
was there in her mind for a remonstrance to lodge in? He laid down
his hat, flung an arm over the back of his chair, and looked down
for some moments without speaking. Rosamond had the double purchase
over him of insensibility to the point of justice in his reproach,
and of sensibility to the undeniable hardships now present in her
married life. Although her duplicity in the affair of the house
had exceeded what he knew, and had really hindered the Plymdales
from knowing of it, she had no consciousness that her action could
rightly be called false. We are not obliged to identify our own acts
according to a strict classification, any more than the materials
of our grocery and clothes. Rosamond felt that she was aggrieved,
and that this was what Lydgate had to recognize.
As for him, the need of accommodating himself to her nature, which was
inflexible in proportion to its negations, held him as with pincers.
He had begun to have an alarmed foresight of her irrevocable loss
of love for him, and the consequent dreariness of their life.
The ready fulness of his emotions made this dread alternate quickly
with the first violent movements of his anger. It would assuredly
have been a vain boast in him to say that he was her master.
"You have not made my life pleasant to me of late"--"the hardships
which our marriage has brought on me"--these words were
stinging his imagination as a pain makes an exaggerated dream.
If he were not only to sink from his highest resolve,
but to sink into the hideous fettering of domestic hate?
"Rosamond," he said, turning his eyes on her with a melancholy look,
"you should allow for a man's words when he is disappointed
and provoked. You and I cannot have opposite interests.
I cannot part my happiness from yours. If I am angry with you,
it is that you seem not to see how any concealment divides us.
How could I wish to make anything hard to you either by my words
or conduct? When I hurt you, I hurt part of my own life. I should
never be angry with you if you would be quite open with me."
"I have only wished to prevent you from hurrying us into wretchedness
without any necessity," said Rosamond, the tears coming again
from a softened feeling now that her husband had softened.
"It is so very hard to be disgraced here among all the people we know,
and to live in such a miserable way. I wish I had died with the baby."
She spoke and wept with that gentleness which makes such words
and tears omnipotent over a loving-hearted man. Lydgate drew
his chair near to hers and pressed her delicate head against
his cheek with his powerful tender hand. He only caressed her;
he did not say anything; for what was there to say? He could not
promise to shield her from the dreaded wretchedness, for he could
see no sure means of doing so. When he left her to go out again,
he told himself that it was ten times harder for her than for him:
he had a life away from home, and constant appeals to his activity on
behalf of others. He wished to excuse everything in her if he could--
but it was inevitable that in that excusing mood he should think
of her as if she were an animal of another and feebler species.
Nevertheless she had mastered him.
CHAPTER LXVI.
"'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall."
--Measure for Measure.
Lydgate certainly had good reason to reflect on the service
his practice did him in counteracting his personal cares.
He had no longer free energy enough for spontaneous research and
speculative thinking, but by the bedside of patients, the direct
external calls on his judgment and sympathies brought the added
impulse needed to draw him out of himself. It was not simply
that beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live
respectably and unhappy men to live calmly--it was a perpetual
claim on the immediate fresh application of thought, and on the
consideration of another's need and trial. Many of us looking back
through life would say that the kindest man we have ever known
has been a medical man, or perhaps that surgeon whose fine tact,
directed by deeply informed perception, has come to us in our need
with a more sublime beneficence than that of miracle-workers. Some
of that twice-blessed mercy was always with Lydgate in his work at the
Hospital or in private houses, serving better than any opiate to quiet
and sustain him under his anxieties and his sense of mental degeneracy.
Mr. Farebrother's suspicion as to the opiate was true, however.
Under the first galling pressure of foreseen difficulties,
and the first perception that his marriage, if it were not to be
a yoked loneliness, must be a state of effort to go on loving
without too much care about being loved, he had once or twice
tried a dose of opium. But he had no hereditary constitutional
craving after such transient escapes from the hauntings of misery.
He was strong, could drink a great deal of wine, but did not care
about it; and when the men round him were drinking spirits, he took
sugar and water, having a contemptuous pity even for the earliest
stages of excitement from drink. It was the same with gambling.
He had looked on at a great deal of gambling in Paris, watching it
as if it had been a disease. He was no more tempted by such winning
than he was by drink. He had said to himself that the only winning
he cared for must be attained by a conscious process of high,
difficult combination tending towards a beneficent result.
The power he longed for could not be represented by agitated fingers
clutching a heap of coin, or by the half-barbarous, half-idiotic
triumph in the eyes of a man who sweeps within his arms the ventures
of twenty chapfallen companions.
But just as he had tried opium, so his thought now began to turn
upon gambling--not with appetite for its excitement, but with a
sort of wistful inward gaze after that easy way of getting money,
which implied no asking and brought no responsibility. If he had been
in London or Paris at that time, it is probable that such thoughts,
seconded by opportunity, would have taken him into a gambling-house,
no longer to watch the gamblers, but to watch with them in
kindred eagerness. Repugnance would have been surmounted by the
immense need to win, if chance would be kind enough to let him.
An incident which happened not very long after that airy notion
of getting aid from his uncle had been excluded, was a strong sign
of the effect that might have followed any extant opportunity of gambling.
The billiard-room at the Green Dragon was the constant resort of
a certain set, most of whom, like our acquaintance Mr. Bambridge,
were regarded as men of pleasure. It was here that poor Fred Vincy
had made part of his memorable debt, having lost money in betting,
and been obliged to borrow of that gay companion. It was generally known
in Middlemarch that a good deal of money was lost and won in this way;
and the consequent repute of the Green Dragon as a place of dissipation
naturally heightened in some quarters the temptation to go there.
Probably its regular visitants, like the initiates of freemasonry,
wished that there were something a little more tremendous to keep
to themselves concerning it; but they were not a closed community,
and many decent seniors as well as juniors occasionally turned into
the billiard-room to see what was going on. Lydgate, who had the
muscular aptitude for billiards, and was fond of the game, had once
or twice in the early days after his arrival in Middlemarch taken
his turn with the cue at the Green Dragon; but afterwards he had no
leisure for the game, and no inclination for the socialities there.
One evening, however, he had occasion to seek Mr. Bambridge at
that resort. The horsedealer had engaged to get him a customer
for his remaining good horse, for which Lydgate had determined
to substitute a cheap hack, hoping by this reduction of style
to get perhaps twenty pounds; and he cared now for every small sum,
as a help towards feeding the patience of his tradesmen. To run up
to the billiard-room, as he was passing, would save time.
Mr. Bambridge was not yet come, bat would be sure to arrive by-and-by,
said his friend Mr. Horrock; and Lydgate stayed, playing a game
for the sake of passing the time. That evening he had the peculiar
light in the eyes and the unusual vivacity which had been once
noticed in him by Mr. Farebrother. The exceptional fact of his
presence was much noticed in the room, where there was a good deal
of Middlemarch company; and several lookers-on, as well as some of
the players, were betting with animation. Lydgate was playing well,
and felt confident; the bets were dropping round him, and with a swift
glancing thought of the probable gain which might double the sum
he was saving from his horse, he began to bet on his own play,
and won again and again. Mr. Bambridge had come in, but Lydgate
did not notice him. He was not only excited with his play,
but visions were gleaming on him of going the next day to Brassing,
where there was gambling on a grander scale to be had, and where,
by one powerful snatch at the devil's bait, he might carry it off
without the hook, and buy his rescue from his daily solicitings.
He was still winning when two new visitors entered. One of them
was a young Hawley, just come from his law studies in town, and the
other was Fred Vincy, who had spent several evenings of late at this
old haunt of his. Young Hawley, an accomplished billiard-player,
brought a cool fresh hand to the cue. But Fred Vincy, startled at
seeing Lydgate, and astonished to see him betting with an excited air,
stood aside, and kept out of the circle round the table.
Fred had been rewarding resolution by a little laxity of late.
He had been working heartily for six months at all outdoor occupations
under Mr. Garth, and by dint of severe practice had nearly mastered
the defects of his handwriting, this practice being, perhaps,
a little the less severe that it was often carried on in the evening
at Mr. Garth's under the eyes of Mary. But the last fortnight
Mary had been staying at Lowick Parsonage with the ladies there,
during Mr. Farebrother's residence in Middlemarch, where he was
carrying out some parochial plans; and Fred, not seeing anything
more agreeable to do, had turned into the Green Dragon, partly to
play at billiards, partly to taste the old flavor of discourse
about horses, sport, and things in general, considered from a point
of view which was not strenuously correct. He had not been out
hunting once this season, had had no horse of his own to ride,
and had gone from place to place chiefly with Mr. Garth in his gig,
or on the sober cob which Mr. Garth could lend him. It was a little
too bad, Fred began to think, that he should be kept in the traces
with more severity than if he had been a clergyman. "I will tell
you what, Mistress Mary--it will be rather harder work to learn
surveying and drawing plans than it would have been to write sermons,"
he had said, wishing her to appreciate what he went through for
her sake; "and as to Hercules and Theseus, they were nothing to me.
They had sport, and never learned to write a bookkeeping hand."
And now, Mary being out of the way for a little while, Fred,
like any other strong dog who cannot slip his collar, had pulled
up the staple of his chain and made a small escape, not of course
meaning to go fast or far. There could be no reason why he
should not play at billiards, but he was determined not to bet.
As to money just now, Fred had in his mind the heroic project of
saving almost all of the eighty pounds that Mr. Garth offered him,
and returning it, which he could easily do by giving up all futile
money-spending, since he had a superfluous stock of clothes,
and no expense in his board. In that way he could, in one year,
go a good way towards repaying the ninety pounds of which he had
deprived Mrs. Garth, unhappily at a time when she needed that sum
more than she did now. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged
that on this evening, which was the fifth of his recent visits
to the billiard-room, Fred had, not in his pocket, but in his mind,
the ten pounds which he meant to reserve for himself from his
half-year's salary (having before him the pleasure of carrying
thirty to Mrs. Garth when Mary was likely to be come home again)--
he had those ten pounds in his mind as a fund from which he
might risk something, if there were a chance of a good bet.
Why? Well, when sovereigns were flying about, why shouldn't
he catch a few? He would never go far along that road again;
but a man likes to assure himself, and men of pleasure generally,
what he could do in the way of mischief if he chose, and that
if he abstains from making himself ill, or beggaring himself,
or talking with the utmost looseness which the narrow limits
of human capacity will allow, it is not because he is a spooney.
Fred did not enter into formal reasons, which are a very artificial,
inexact way of representing the tingling returns of old habit,
and the caprices of young blood: but there was lurking in him
a prophetic sense that evening, that when he began to play he should
also begin to bet--that he should enjoy some punch-drinking, and in
general prepare himself for feeling "rather seedy" in the morning.
It is in such indefinable movements that action often begins.
But the last thing likely to have entered Fred's expectation
was that he should see his brother-in-law Lydgate--of whom he
had never quite dropped the old opinion that he was a prig,
and tremendously conscious of his superiority--looking excited
and betting, just as he himself might have done. Fred felt a shock
greater than he could quite account for by the vague knowledge that
Lydgate was in debt, and that his father had refused to help him;
and his own inclination to enter into the play was suddenly checked.
It was a strange reversal of attitudes: Fred's blond face and blue eyes,
usually bright and careless, ready to give attention to anything
that held out a promise of amusement, looking involuntarily grave
and almost embarrassed as if by the sight of something unfitting;
while Lydgate, who had habitually an air of self-possessed strength,
and a certain meditativeness that seemed to lie behind his most
observant attention, was acting, watching, speaking with that excited
narrow consciousness which reminds one of an animal with fierce
eyes and retractile claws.
Lydgate, by betting on his own strokes, had won sixteen pounds;
but young Hawley's arrival had changed the poise of things. He made
first-rate strokes himself, and began to bet against Lydgate's strokes,
the strain of whose nerves was thus changed from simple confidence
in his own movements to defying another person's doubt in them.
The defiance was more exciting than the confidence, but it was less sure.
He continued to bet on his own play, but began often to fail. Still he
went on, for his mind was as utterly narrowed into that precipitous
crevice of play as if he had been the most ignorant lounger there.
Fred observed that Lydgate was losing fast, and found himself in the
new situation of puzzling his brains to think of some device by which,
without being offensive, he could withdraw Lydgate's attention,
and perhaps suggest to him a reason for quitting the room. He saw
that others were observing Lydgate's strange unlikeness to himself,
and it occurred to him that merely to touch his elbow and call
him aside for a moment might rouse him from his absorption.
He could think of nothing cleverer than the daring improbability
of saying that he wanted to see Rosy, and wished to know if she
were at home this evening; and he was going desperately to carry
out this weak device, when a waiter came up to him with a message,
saying that Mr. Farebrother was below, and begged to speak with him.
Fred was surprised, not quite comfortably, but sending word
that he would be down immediately, he went with a new impulse up
to Lydgate, said, "Can I speak to you a moment?" and drew him aside.
"Farebrother has just sent up a message to say that he wants to speak
to me. He is below. I thought you might like to know he was there,
if you had anything to say to him."
Fred had simply snatched up this pretext for speaking, because he
could not say, "You are losing confoundedly, and are making everybody
stare at you; you had better come away." But inspiration could
hardly have served him better. Lydgate had not before seen that
Fred was present, and his sudden appearance with an announcement
of Mr. Farebrother had the effect of a sharp concussion.
"No, no," said Lydgate; "I have nothing particular to say to him.
But--the game is up--I must be going--I came in just to see Bambridge."
"Bambridge is over there, but he is making a row--I don't think
he's ready for business. Come down with me to Farebrother.
I expect he is going to blow me up, and you will shield me,"
said Fred, with some adroitness.
Lydgate felt shame, but could not bear to act as if he felt it,
by refusing to see Mr. Farebrother; and he went down. They merely
shook hands, however, and spoke of the frost; and when all
three had turned into the street, the Vicar seemed quite willing
to say good-by to Lydgate. His present purpose was clearly
to talk with Fred alone, and he said, kindly, "I disturbed you,
young gentleman, because I have some pressing business with you.
Walk with me to St. Botolph's, will you?"
It was a fine night, the sky thick with stars, and Mr. Farebrother
proposed that they should make a circuit to the old church
by the London road. The next thing he said was--
"I thought Lydgate never went to the Green Dragon?"
"So did I," said Fred. "But he said that he went to see Bambridge."
"He was not playing, then?"
Fred had not meant to tell this, but he was obliged now to say,
"Yes, he was. But I suppose it was an accidental thing. I have
never seen him there before."
"You have been going often yourself, then, lately?"
"Oh, about five or six times."
"I think you had some good reason for giving up the habit of going there?"
"Yes. You know all about it," said Fred, not liking to be catechised
in this way. "I made a clean breast to you."
"I suppose that gives me a warrant to speak about the matter now.
It is understood between us, is it not?--that we are on a footing
of open friendship: I have listened to you, and you will be
willing to listen to me. I may take my turn in talking a little
about myself?"
"I am under the deepest obligation to you, Mr. Farebrother,"
said Fred, in a state of uncomfortable surmise.
"I will not affect to deny that you are under some obligation to me.
But I am going to confess to you, Fred, that I have been tempted
to reverse all that by keeping silence with you just now.
When somebody said to me, `Young Vincy has taken to being at the
billiard-table every night again--he won't bear the curb long;'
I was tempted to do the opposite of what I am doing--to hold my tongue
and wait while you went down the ladder again, betting first and then--"
"I have not made any bets," said Fred, hastily.
"Glad to hear it. But I say, my prompting was to look on and see
you take the wrong turning, wear out Garth's patience, and lose
the best opportunity of your life--the opportunity which you made
some rather difficult effort to secure. You can guess the feeling
which raised that temptation in me--I am sure you know it.
I am sure you know that the satisfaction of your affections stands
in the way of mine."
There was a pause. Mr. Farebrother seemed to wait for a recognition
of the fact; and the emotion perceptible in the tones of his fine
voice gave solemnity to his words. But no feeling could quell
Fred's alarm.
"I could not be expected to give her up," he said, after a
moment's hesitation: it was not a case for any pretence of generosity.
"Clearly not, when her affection met yours. But relations of this sort,
even when they are of long standing, are always liable to change.
I can easily conceive that you might act in a way to loosen the tie
she feels towards you--it must be remembered that she is only
conditionally bound to you--and that in that ease, another man,
who may flatter himself that he has a hold on her regard,
might succeed in winning that firm place in her love as well
as respect which you had let slip. I can easily conceive such
a result," repeated Mr. Farebrother, emphatically. "There is
a companionship of ready sympathy, which might get the advantage
even over the longest associations." It seemed to Fred that if
Mr. Farebrother had had a beak and talons instead of his very
capable tongue, his mode of attack could hardly be more cruel.
He had a horrible conviction that behind all this hypothetic
statement there was a knowledge of some actual change in Mary's feeling.
"Of course I know it might easily be all up with me," he said,
in a troubled voice. "If she is beginning to compare--" He broke off,
not liking to betray all he felt, and then said, by the help of a
little bitterness, "But I thought you were friendly to me."
"So I am; that is why we are here. But I have had a strong disposition
to be otherwise. I have said to myself, `If there is a likelihood
of that youngster doing himself harm, why should you interfere?
Aren't you worth as much as he is, and don't your sixteen years
over and above his, in which you have gone rather hungry, give you
more right to satisfaction than he has? If there's a chance of his
going to the dogs, let him--perhaps you could nohow hinder it--
and do you take the benefit.'"
There was a pause, in which Fred was seized by a most uncomfortable
chill. What was coming next? He dreaded to hear that something
had been said to Mary--he felt as if he were listening to a
threat rather than a warning. When the Vicar began again there
was a change in his tone like the encouraging transition to a major key.
"But I had once meant better than that, and I am come back to my
old intention. I thought that I could hardly SECURE MYSELF
in it better, Fred, than by telling you just what had gone on in me.
And now, do you understand me? want you to make the happiness of her
life and your own, and if there is any chance that a word of warning
from me may turn aside any risk to the contrary--well, I have uttered it."
There was a drop in the Vicar's voice when he spoke the last words
He paused--they were standing on a patch of green where the road
diverged towards St. Botolph's, and he put out his hand, as if to
imply that the conversation was closed. Fred was moved quite newly.
Some one highly susceptible to the contemplation of a fine
act has said, that it produces a sort of regenerating shudder
through the frame, and makes one feel ready to begin a new life.
A good degree of that effect was just then present in Fred Vincy.
"I will try to be worthy," he said, breaking off before he could
say "of you as well as of her." And meanwhile Mr. Farebrother
had gathered the impulse to say something more.
"You must not imagine that I believe there is at present any
decline in her preference of you, Fred. Set your heart at rest,
that if you keep right, other things will keep right."
"I shall never forget what you have done," Fred answered.
"I can't say anything that seems worth saying--only I will try
that your goodness shall not be thrown away."
"That's enough. Good-by, and God bless you."
In that way they parted. But both of them walked about a long
while before they went out of the starlight. Much of Fred's
rumination might be summed up in the words, "It certainly would
have been a fine thing for her to marry Farebrother--but if she
loves me best and I am a good husband?"
Perhaps Mr. Farebrother's might be concentrated into a single shrug
and one little speech. "To think of the part one little woman can
play in the life of a man, so that to renounce her may be a very
good imitation of heroism, and to win her may be a discipline!"
CHAPTER LXVII.
Now is there civil war within the soul:
Resolve is thrust from off the sacred throne
By clamorous Needs, and Pride the grand-vizier
Makes humble compact, plays the supple part
Of envoy and deft-tongued apologist
For hungry rebels.
Happily Lydgate had ended by losing in the billiard-room, and brought
away no encouragement to make a raid on luck. On the contrary,
he felt unmixed disgust with himself the next day when he had to
pay four or five pounds over and above his gains, and he carried
about with him a most unpleasant vision of the figure he had made,
not only rubbing elbows with the men at the Green Dragon but behaving
just as they did. A philosopher fallen to betting is hardly
distinguishable from a Philistine under the same circumstances:
the difference will chiefly be found in his subsequent reflections,
and Lydgate chewed a very disagreeable cud in that way. His reason
told him how the affair might have been magnified into ruin by a
slight change of scenery--if it had been a gambling-house that he
had turned into, where chance could be clutched with both hands
instead of being picked up with thumb and fore-finger. Nevertheless,
though reason strangled the desire to gamble, there remained
the feeling that, with an assurance of luck to the needful amount,
he would have liked to gamble, rather than take the alternative
which was beginning to urge itself as inevitable.
That alternative was to apply to Mr. Bulstrode. Lydgate had
so many times boasted both to himself and others that he was
totally independent of Bulstrode, to whose plans he had lent
himself solely because they enabled him to carry out his own ideas
of professional work and public benefit--he had so constantly
in their personal intercourse had his pride sustained by the sense
that he was making a good social use of this predominating banker,
whose opinions he thought contemptible and whose motives often
seemed to him an absurd mixture of contradictory impressions--
that he had been creating for himself strong ideal obstacles
to the proffering of any considerable request to him on his own account.
Still, early in March his affairs were at that pass in which men begin
to say that their oaths were delivered in ignorance, and to perceive
that the act which they had called impossible to them is becoming
manifestly possible. With Dover's ugly security soon to be put
in force, with the proceeds of his practice immediately absorbed
in paying back debts, and with the chance, if the worst were known,
of daily supplies being refused on credit, above all with the
vision of Rosamond's hopeless discontent continually haunting him,
Lydgate had begun to see that he should inevitably bend himself to ask
help from somebody or other. At first he had considered whether he
should write to Mr. Vincy; but on questioning Rosamond he found that,
as he had suspected, she had already applied twice to her father,
the last time being since the disappointment from Sir Godwin;
and papa had said that Lydgate must look out for himself. "Papa said
he had come, with one bad year after another, to trade more and
more on borrowed capital, and had had to give up many indulgences;
he could not spare a single hundred from the charges of his family.
He said, let Lydgate ask Bulstrode: they have always been hand
and glove."
Indeed, Lydgate himself had come to the conclusion that if he
must end by asking for a free loan, his relations with Bulstrode,
more at least than with any other man, might take the shape of a
claim which was not purely personal. Bulstrode had indirectly
helped to cause the failure of his practice, and had also been
highly gratified by getting a medical partner in his plans:--
but who among us ever reduced himself to the sort of dependence
in which Lydgate now stood, without trying to believe that he had
claims which diminished the humiliation of asking? It was true
that of late there had seemed to be a new languor of interest
in Bulstrode about the Hospital; but his health had got worse,
and showed signs of a deep-seated nervous affection. In other respects
he did not appear to be changed: he had always been highly polite,
but Lydgate had observed in him from the first a marked coldness about
his marriage and other private circumstances, a coldness which he
had hitherto preferred to any warmth of familiarity between them.
He deferred the intention from day to day, his habit of acting on his
conclusions being made infirm by his repugnance to every possible
conclusion and its consequent act. He saw Mr. Bulstrode often,
but he did not try to use any occasion for his private purpose.
At one moment he thought, "I will write a letter: I prefer that to
any circuitous talk;" at another he thought, "No; if I were talking
to him, I could make a retreat before any signs of disinclination."
Still the days passed and no letter was written, no special
interview sought. In his shrinking from the humiliation of a
dependent attitude towards Bulstrode, he began to familiarize his
imagination with another step even more unlike his remembered self.
He began spontaneously to consider whether it would be possible
to carry out that puerile notion of Rosamond's which had often made
him angry, namely, that they should quit Middlemarch without seeing
anything beyond that preface. The question came--"Would any man
buy the practice of me even now, for as little as it is worth?
Then the sale might happen as a necessary preparation for going away."
But against his taking this step, which he still felt to be
a contemptible relinquishment of present work, a guilty turning
aside from what was a real and might be a widening channel for
worthy activity, to start again without any justified destination,
there was this obstacle, that the purchaser, if procurable at all,
might not be quickly forthcoming. And afterwards? Rosamond in
a poor lodging, though in the largest city or most distant town,
would not find the life that could save her from gloom,
and save him from the reproach of having plunged her into it.
For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes, he may
stay a long while there in spite of professional accomplishment.
In the British climate there is no incompatibility between scientific
insight and furnished lodgings: the incompatibility is chiefly
between scientific ambition and a wife who objects to that kind
of residence.
But in the midst of his hesitation, opportunity came to decide him.
A note from Mr. Bulstrode requested Lydgate to call on him at
the Bank. A hypochondriacal tendency had shown itself in the
banker's constitution of late; and a lack of sleep, which was
really only a slight exaggeration of an habitual dyspeptic symptom,
had been dwelt on by him as a sign of threatening insanity.
He wanted to consult Lydgate without delay on that particular morning,
although he had nothing to tell beyond what he had told before.
He listened eagerly to what Lydgate had to say in dissipation
of his fears, though this too was only repetition; and this moment
in which Bulstrode was receiving a medical opinion with a sense
of comfort, seemed to make the communication of a personal need to
him easier than it had been in Lydgate's contemplation beforehand.
He had been insisting that it would be well for Mr. Bulstrode to relax
his attention to business.
"One sees how any mental strain, however slight, may affect
a delicate frame," said Lydgate at that stage of the consultation
when the remarks tend to pass from the personal to the general,
"by the deep stamp which anxiety will make for a time even on
the young and vigorous. I am naturally very strong; yet I
have been thoroughly shaken lately by an accumulation of trouble."
"I presume that a constitution in the susceptible state in which
mine at present is, would be especially liable to fall a victim
to cholera, if it visited our district. And since its appearance
near London, we may well besiege the Mercy-seat for our protection,"
said Mr. Bulstrode, not intending to evade Lydgate's allusion,
but really preoccupied with alarms about himself.
"You have at all events taken your share in using good practical
precautions for the town, and that is the best mode of asking
for protection," said Lydgate, with a strong distaste for
the broken metaphor and bad logic of the banker's religion,
somewhat increased by the apparent deafness of his sympathy.
But his mind had taken up its long-prepared movement towards
getting help, and was not yet arrested. He added, "The town
has done well in the way of cleansing, and finding appliances;
and I think that if the cholera should come, even our enemies
will admit that the arrangements in the Hospital are a public good."
"Truly," said Mr. Bulstrode, with some coldness. "With regard to
what you say, Mr. Lydgate, about the relaxation of my mental labor,
I have for some time been entertaining a purpose to that effect--
a purpose of a very decided character. I contemplate at least
a temporary withdrawal from the management of much business,
whether benevolent or commercial. Also I think of changing my residence
for a time: probably I shall close or let `The Shrubs,' and take
some place near the coast--under advice of course as to salubrity.
That would be a measure which you would recommend?"
"Oh yes," said Lydgate, falling backward in his chair,
with ill-repressed impatience under the banker's pale earnest
eyes and intense preoccupation with himself.
"I have for some time felt that I should open this subject with you in
relation to our Hospital," continued Bulstrode. "Under the circumstances
I have indicated, of course I must cease to have any personal share
in the management, and it is contrary to my views of responsibility
to continue a large application of means to an institution which I
cannot watch over and to some extent regulate. I shall therefore,
in case of my ultimate decision to leave Middlemarch, consider that I
withdraw other support to the New Hospital than that which will subsist
in the fact that I chiefly supplied the expenses of building it,
and have contributed further large sums to its successful working."
Lydgate's thought, when Bulstrode paused according to his wont,
was, "He has perhaps been losing a good deal of money."
This was the most plausible explanation of a speech which had caused
rather a startling change in his expectations. He said in reply--
"The loss to the Hospital can hardly be made up, I fear."
"Hardly," returned Bulstrode, in the same deliberate, silvery tone;
"except by some changes of plan. The only person who may be certainly
counted on as willing to increase her contributions is Mrs. Casaubon.
I have had an interview with her on the subject, and I have pointed
out to her, as I am about to do to you, that it will be desirable to win
a more general support to the New Hospital by a change of system."
Another pause, but Lydgate did not speak.
"The change I mean is an amalgamation with the Infirmary,
so that the New Hospital shall be regarded as a special addition
to the elder institution, having the same directing board.
It will be necessary, also, that the medical management of the
two shall be combined. In this way any difficulty as to the
adequate maintenance of our new establishment will be removed;
the benevolent interests of the town will cease to be divided."
Mr. Bulstrode had lowered his eyes from Lydgate's face to the buttons
of his coat as he again paused.
"No doubt that is a good device as to ways and means," said Lydgate,
with an edge of irony in his tone. "But I can't be expected
to rejoice in it at once, since one of the first results will be
that the other medical men will upset or interrupt my methods,
if it were only because they are mine."
"I myself, as you know, Mr. Lydgate, highly valued the opportunity
of new and independent procedure which you have diligently employed:
the original plan, I confess, was one which I had much at heart,
under submission to the Divine Will. But since providential
indications demand a renunciation from me, I renounce."
Bulstrode showed a rather exasperating ability in this conversation.
The broken metaphor and bad logic of motive which had stirred
his hearer's contempt were quite consistent with a mode of putting
the facts which made it difficult for Lydgate to vent his own
indignation and disappointment. After some rapid reflection,
he only asked--
"What did Mrs. Casaubon say?"
"That was the further statement which I wished to make to you,"
said Bulstrode, who had thoroughly prepared his ministerial explanation.
"She is, you are aware, a woman of most munificent disposition,
and happily in possession--not I presume of great wealth, but of
funds which she can well spare. She has informed me that though
she has destined the chief part of those funds to another purpose,
she is willing to consider whether she cannot fully take my place
in relation to the Hospital. But she wishes for ample time to mature
her thoughts on the subject, and I have told her that there is no need
for haste--that, in fact, my own plans are not yet absolute."
Lydgate was ready to say, "If Mrs. Casaubon would take your place,
there would be gain, instead of loss." But there was still
a weight on his mind which arrested this cheerful candor.
He replied, "I suppose, then, that I may enter into the subject
with Mrs. Casaubon."
"Precisely; that is what she expressly desires. Her decision,
she says, will much depend on what you can tell her. But not
at present: she is, I believe, just setting out on a journey.
I have her letter here," said Mr. Bulstrode, drawing it out,
and reading from it. "`I am immediately otherwise engaged,' she says.
`I am going into Yorkshire with Sir James and Lady Chettam; and the
conclusions I come to about some land which I am to see there may
affect my power of contributing to the Hospital.' Thus, Mr. Lydgate,
there is no haste necessary in this matter; but I wished to apprise
you beforehand of what may possibly occur."
Mr. Bulstrode returned the letter to his side-pocket, and changed
his attitude as if his business were closed. Lydgate, whose renewed
hope about the Hospital only made him more conscious of the facts
which poisoned his hope, felt that his effort after help, if made
at all, must be made now and vigorously.
"I am much obliged to you for giving me full notice," he said,
with a firm intention in his tone, yet with an interruptedness in
his delivery which showed that he spoke unwillingly. "The highest
object to me is my profession, and I had identified the Hospital with
the best use I can at present make of my profession. But the best
use is not always the same with monetary success. Everything which
has made the Hospital unpopular has helped with other causes--
I think they are all connected with my professional zeal--to make me
unpopular as a practitioner. I get chiefly patients who can't pay me.
I should like them best, if I had nobody to pay on my own side."
Lydgate waited a little, but Bulstrode only bowed, looking at
him fixedly, and he went on with the same interrupted enunciation--
as if he were biting an objectional leek.
"I have slipped into money difficulties which I can see no way out of,
unless some one who trusts me and my future will advance me a sum
without other security. I had very little fortune left when I
came here. I have no prospects of money from my own family.
My expenses, in consequence of my marriage, have been very much
greater than I had expected. The result at this moment is that it
would take a thousand pounds to clear me. I mean, to free me from
the risk of having all my goods sold in security of my largest debt--
as well as to pay my other debts--and leave anything to keep us
a little beforehand with our small income. I find that it is out
of the question that my wife's father should make such an advance.
That is why I mention my position to--to the only other man who
may be held to have some personal connection with my prosperity
or ruin."
Lydgate hated to hear himself. But he had spoken now, and had spoken
with unmistakable directness. Mr. Bulstrode replied without haste,
but also without hesitation.
"I am grieved, though, I confess, not surprised by this information,
Mr. Lydgate. For my own part, I regretted your alliance with my
brother-in-law's family, which has always been of prodigal habits,
and which has already been much indebted to me for sustainment
in its present position. My advice to you, Mr. Lydgate, would be,
that instead of involving yourself in further obligations,
and continuing a doubtful struggle, you should simply become
a bankrupt."
"That would not improve my prospect," said Lydgate, rising and
speaking bitterly, "even if it were a more agreeable thing in itself."
"It is always a trial," said Mr. Bulstrode; "but trial, my dear sir,
is our portion here, and is a needed corrective. I recommend you
to weigh the advice I have given."
"Thank you," said Lydgate, not quite knowing what he said.
"I have occupied you too long. Good-day."
CHAPTER LXVIII.
"What suit of grace hath Virtue to put on
If Vice shall wear as good, and do as well?
If Wrong, if Craft, if Indiscretion
Act as fair parts with ends as laudable?
Which all this mighty volume of events
The world, the universal map of deeds,
Strongly controls, and proves from all descents,
That the directest course still best succeeds.
For should not grave and learn'd Experience
That looks with the eyes of all the world beside,
And with all ages holds intelligence,
Go safer than Deceit without a guide!
--DANIEL: Musophilus.
That change of plan and shifting of interest which Bulstrode stated
or betrayed in his conversation with Lydgate, had been determined in him
by some severe experience which he had gone through since the epoch
of Mr. Larcher's sale, when Raffles had recognized Will Ladislaw,
and when the banker had in vain attempted an act of restitution
which might move Divine Providence to arrest painful consequences.
His certainty that Raffles, unless he were dead, would return to
Middlemarch before long, had been justified. On Christmas Eve he
had reappeared at The Shrubs. Bulstrode was at home to receive him,
and hinder his communication with the rest of the family, but he
could not altogether hinder the circumstances of the visit from
compromising himself and alarming his wife. Raffles proved more
unmanageable than he had shown himself to be in his former appearances,
his chronic state of mental restlessness, the growing effect
of habitual intemperance, quickly shaking off every impression
from what was said to him. He insisted on staying in the house,
and Bulstrode, weighing two sets of evils, felt that this was
at least not a worse alternative than his going into the town.
He kept him in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed,
Raffles all the while amusing himself with the annoyance he was
causing this decent and highly prosperous fellow-sinner, an amusement
which he facetiously expressed as sympathy with his friend's pleasure
in entertaining a man who had been serviceable to him, and who had
not had all his earnings. There was a cunning calculation under this
noisy joking--a cool resolve to extract something the handsomer
from Bulstrode as payment for release from this new application
of torture. But his cunning had a little overcast its mark.
Bulstrode was indeed more tortured than the coarse fibre of Raffles could
enable him to imagine. He had told his wife that he was simply taking
care of this wretched creature, the victim of vice, who might otherwise
injure himself; he implied, without the direct form of falsehood,
that there was a family tie which bound him to this care, and that
there were signs of mental alienation in Raffles which urged caution.
He would himself drive the unfortunate being away the next morning.
In these hints he felt that he was supplying Mrs. Bulstrode
with precautionary information for his daughters and servants,
and accounting for his allowing no one but himself to enter the room
even with food and drink. But he sat in an agony of fear lest Raffles
should be overheard in his loud and plain references to past facts--
lest Mrs. Bulstrode should be even tempted to listen at the door.
How could he hinder her, how betray his terror by opening the door
to detect her? She was a woman of honest direct habits, and little
likely to take so low a course in order to arrive at painful knowledge;
but fear was stronger than the calculation of probabilities.
In this way Raffles had pushed the torture too far, and produced
an effect which had not been in his plan. By showing himself
hopelessly unmanageable he had made Bulstrode feel that a strong
defiance was the only resource left. After taking Raffles to bed
that night the banker ordered his closed carriage to be ready at
half-past seven the next morning. At six o'clock he had already
been long dressed, and had spent some of his wretchedness in prayer,
pleading his motives for averting the worst evil if in anything he had
used falsity and spoken what was not true before God. For Bulstrode
shrank from a direct lie with an intensity disproportionate to the
number of his more indirect misdeeds. But many of these misdeeds
were like the subtle muscular movements which are not taken account
of in the consciousness, though they bring about the end that we
fix our mind on and desire. And it is only what we are vividly
conscious of that we can vividly imagine to be seen by Omniscience.
Bulstrode carried his candle to the bedside of Raffles, who was
apparently in a painful dream. He stood silent, hoping that the presence
of the light would serve to waken the sleeper gradually and gently,
for he feared some noise as the consequence of a too sudden awakening.
He had watched for a couple of minutes or more the shudderings
and pantings which seemed likely to end in waking, when Raffles,
with a long half-stifled moan, started up and stared round him
in terror, trembling and gasping. But he made no further noise,
and Bulstrode, setting down the candle, awaited his recovery.
It was a quarter of an hour later before Bulstrode, with a cold
peremptoriness of manner which he had not before shown, said, "I came
to call you thus early, Mr. Raffles, because I have ordered the carriage
to be ready at half-past seven, and intend myself to conduct you as far
as Ilsely, where you can either take the railway or await a coach."
Raffles was about to speak, but Bulstrode anticipated him imperiously
with the words, "Be silent, sir, and hear what I have to say.
I shall supply you with money now, and I will furnish you with a
reasonable sum from time to time, on your application to me by letter;
but if you choose to present yourself here again, if you return
to Middlemarch, if you use your tongue in a manner injurious to me,
you will have to live on such fruits as your malice can bring you,
without help from me. Nobody will pay you well for blasting my name:
I know the worst you can do against me, and I shall brave it if you
dare to thrust yourself upon me again. Get up, sir, and do as I
order you, without noise, or I will send for a policeman to take
you off my premises, and you may carry your stories into every
pothouse in the town, but you shall have no sixpence from me to pay
your expenses there."
Bulstrode had rarely in his life spoken with such nervous energy:
he had been deliberating on this speech and its probable effects
through a large part of the night; and though he did not trust to its
ultimately saving him from any return of Raffles, he had concluded
that it was the best throw he could make. It succeeded in enforcing
submission from the jaded man this morning: his empoisoned system
at this moment quailed before Bulstrode's cold, resolute bearing,
and he was taken off quietly in the carriage before the family
breakfast time. The servants imagined him to be a poor relation,
and were not surprised that a strict man like their master, who held
his head high in the world, should be ashamed of such a cousin
and want to get rid of him. The banker's drive of ten miles with
his hated companion was a dreary beginning of the Christmas day;
but at the end of the drive, Raffles had recovered his spirits,
and parted in a contentment for which there was the good reason
that the banker had given him a hundred pounds. Various motives
urged Bulstrode to this open-handedness, but he did not himself
inquire closely into all of them. As he had stood watching Raffles
in his uneasy sleep, it had certainly entered his mind that the man
had been much shattered since the first gift of two hundred pounds.
He had taken care to repeat the incisive statement of his resolve
not to be played on any more; and had tried to penetrate Raffles
with the fact that he had shown the risks of bribing him to be
quite equal to the risks of defying him. But when, freed from his
repulsive presence, Bulstrode returned to his quiet home, he brought
with him no confidence that he had secured more than a respite.
It was as if he had had a loathsome dream, and could not shake off
its images with their hateful kindred of sensations--as if on all
the pleasant surroundings of his life a dangerous reptile had left
his slimy traces.
Who can know how much of his most inward life is made up of the
thoughts he believes other men to have about him, until that fabric
of opinion is threatened with ruin?
Bulstrode was only the more conscious that there was a deposit
of uneasy presentiment in his wife's mind, because she carefully
avoided any allusion to it. He had been used every day to taste
the flavor of supremacy and the tribute of complete deference:
and the certainty that he was watched or measured with a hidden
suspicion of his having some discreditable secret, made his voice
totter when he was speaking to edification. Foreseeing, to men
of Bulstrode's anxious temperament, is often worse than seeing;
and his imagination continually heightened the anguish of an
imminent disgrace. Yes, imminent; for if his defiance of Raffles
did not keep the man away--and though he prayed for this result he
hardly hoped for it--the disgrace was certain. In vain he said
to himself that, if permitted, it would be a divine visitation,
a chastisement, a preparation; he recoiled from the imagined burning;
and he judged that it must be more for the Divine glory that he
should escape dishonor. That recoil had at last urged him to make
preparations for quitting Middlemarch. If evil truth must be reported
of him, he would then be at a less scorching distance from the
contempt of his old neighbors; and in a new scene, where his life
would not have gathered the same wide sensibility, the tormentor,
if he pursued him, would be less formidable. To leave the place
finally would, he knew, be extremely painful to his wife, and on other
grounds he would have preferred to stay where he had struck root.
Hence he made his preparations at first in a conditional way,
wishing to leave on all sides an opening for his return after
brief absence, if any favorable intervention of Providence should
dissipate his fears. He was preparing to transfer his management
of the Bank, and to give up any active control of other commercial
affairs in the neighborhood, on the ground of his failing health,
but without excluding his future resumption of such work. The measure
would cause him some added expense and some diminution of income beyond
what he had already undergone from the general depression of trade;
and the Hospital presented itself as a principal object of outlay
on which he could fairly economize.
This was the experience which had determined his conversation
with Lydgate. But at this time his arrangements had most of them
gone no farther than a stage at which he could recall them if they
proved to be unnecessary. He continually deferred the final steps;
in the midst of his fears, like many a man who is in danger of
shipwreck or of being dashed from his carriage by runaway horses,
he had a clinging impression that something would happen to hinder
the worst, and that to spoil his life by a late transplantation
might be over-hasty--especially since it was difficult to account
satisfactorily to his wife for the project of their indefinite exile
from the only place where she would like to live.
Among the affairs Bulstrode had to care for, was the management
of the farm at Stone Court in case of his absence; and on this
as well as on all other matters connected with any houses and land
he possessed in or about Middlemarch, he had consulted Caleb Garth.
Like every one else who had business of that sort, he wanted to get the
agent who was more anxious for his employer's interests than his own.
With regard to Stone Court, since Bulstrode wished to retain his hold
on the stock, and to have an arrangement by which he himself could,
if he chose, resume his favorite recreation of superintendence,
Caleb had advised him not to trust to a mere bailiff, but to let
the land, stock, and implements yearly, and take a proportionate
share of the proceeds.
"May I trust to you to find me a tenant on these terms, Mr. Garth?"
said Bulstrode. "And will you mention to me the yearly sum
which would repay you for managing these affairs which we have
discussed together?"
"I'll think about it," said Caleb, in his blunt way. "I'll see
how I can make it out."
If it had not been that he had to consider Fred Vincy's future,
Mr. Garth would not probably have been glad of any addition to his work,
of which his wife was always fearing an excess for him as he grew older.
But on quitting Bulstrode after that conversation, a very alluring
idea occurred to him about this said letting of Stone Court.
What if Bulstrode would agree to his placing Fred Vincy there
on the understanding that he, Caleb Garth, should be responsible
for the management? It would be an excellent schooling for Fred;
he might make a modest income there, and still have time left to get
knowledge by helping in other business. He mentioned his notion
to Mrs. Garth with such evident delight that she could not bear
to chill his pleasure by expressing her constant fear of his
undertaking too much.
"The lad would be as happy as two," he said, throwing himself
back in his chair, and looking radiant, "if I could tell him it
was all settled. Think; Susan! His mind had been running on
that place for years before old Featherstone died. And it would
be as pretty a turn of things as could be that he should hold
the place in a good industrious way after all--by his taking
to business. For it's likely enough Bulstrode might let him go on,
and gradually buy the stock. He hasn't made up his mind, I can see,
whether or not he shall settle somewhere else as a lasting thing.
I never was better pleased with a notion in my life. And then
the children might be married by-and-by, Susan."
"You will not give any hint of the plan to Fred, until you are
sure that Bulstrode would agree to the plan?" said Mrs. Garth,
in a tone of gentle caution. "And as to marriage, Caleb, we old
people need not help to hasten it."
"Oh, I don't know," said Caleb, swinging his head aside.
"Marriage is a taming thing. Fred would want less of my bit
and bridle. However, I shall say nothing till I know the ground
I'm treading on. I shall speak to Bulstrode again."
He took his earliest opportunity of doing so. Bulstrode had anything
but a warm interest in his nephew Fred Vincy, but he had a strong
wish to secure Mr. Garth's services on many scattered points of
business at which he was sure to be a considerable loser, if they
were under less conscientious management. On that ground he made
no objection to Mr. Garth's proposal; and there was also another
reason why he was not sorry to give a consent which was to benefit
one of the Vincy family. It was that Mrs. Bulstrode, having heard
of Lydgate's debts, had been anxious to know whether her husband could
not do something for poor Rosamond, and had been much troubled on
learning from him that Lydgate's affairs were not easily remediable,
and that the wisest plan was to let them "take their course."
Mrs. Bulstrode had then said for the first time, "I think you are
always a little hard towards my family, Nicholas. And I am sure I
have no reason to deny any of my relatives. Too worldly they may be,
but no one ever had to say that they were not respectable."
"My dear Harriet," said Mr. Bulstrode, wincing under his wife's eyes,
which were filling with tears, "I have supplied your brother
with a great deal of capital. I cannot be expected to take care
of his married children."
That seemed to be true, and Mrs. Bulstrode's remonstrance subsided
into pity for poor Rosamond, whose extravagant education she had
always foreseen the fruits of.
But remembering that dialogue, Mr. Bulstrode felt that when he had
to talk to his wife fully about his plan of quitting Middlemarch,
he should be glad to tell her that he had made an arrangement
which might be for the good of her nephew Fred. At present he had
merely mentioned to her that he thought of shutting up The Shrubs
for a few months, and taking a house on the Southern Coast.
Hence Mr. Garth got the assurance he desired, namely, that in case
of Bulstrode's departure from Middlemarch for an indefinite time,
Fred Vincy should be allowed to have the tenancy of Stone Court on
the terms proposed.
Caleb was so elated with his hope of this "neat turn" being given
to things, that if his self-control had not been braced by a little
affectionate wifely scolding, he would have betrayed everything to Mary,
wanting "to give the child comfort." However, he restrained himself,
and kept in strict privacy from Fred certain visits which he
was making to Stone Court, in order to look more thoroughly into
the state of the land and stock, and take a preliminary estimate.
He was certainly more eager in these visits than the probable speed
of events required him to be; but he was stimulated by a fatherly
delight in occupying his mind with this bit of probable happiness
which he held in store like a hidden birthday gift for Fred and Mary.
"But suppose the whole scheme should turn out to be a castle
in the air?" said Mrs. Garth.
"Well, well," replied Caleb; "the castle will tumble about nobody's head."
CHAPTER LXIX.
"If thou hast heard a word, let it die with thee."
--Ecclesiasticus.
Mr. Bulstrode was still seated in his manager's room at the Bank,
about three o'clock of the same day on which he had received Lydgate
there, when the clerk entered to say that his horse was waiting,
and also that Mr. Garth was outside and begged to speak with him.
"By all means," said Bulstrode; and Caleb entered. "Pray sit down,
Mr. Garth," continued the banker, in his suavest tone.
"I am glad that you arrived just in time to find me here.
I know you count your minutes."
"Oh," said Caleb, gently, with a slow swing of his head on one side,
as he seated himself and laid his hat on the floor.
He looked at the ground, leaning forward and letting his long fingers
droop between his legs, while each finger moved in succession,
as if it were sharing some thought which filled his large quiet brow.
Mr. Bulstrode, like every one else who knew Caleb, was used
to his slowness in beginning to speak on any topic which he felt
to be important, and rather expected that he was about to recur
to the buying of some houses in Blindman's Court, for the sake
of pulling them down, as a sacrifice of property which would be
well repaid by the influx of air and light on that spot. It was
by propositions of this kind that Caleb was sometimes troublesome
to his employers; but he had usually found Bulstrode ready to meet
him in projects of improvement, and they had got on well together.
When he spoke again, however, it was to say, in rather a subdued voice--
"I have just come away from Stone Court, Mr. Bulstrode."
"You found nothing wrong there, I hope," said the banker; "I was
there myself yesterday. Abel has done well with the lambs this year."
"Why, yes," said Caleb, looking up gravely, "there is something wrong--
a stranger, who is very ill, I think. He wants a doctor, and I came
to tell you of that. His name is Raffles."
He saw the shock of his words passing through Bulstrode's frame.
On this subject the banker had thought that his fears were too constantly
on the watch to be taken by surprise; but he had been mistaken.
"Poor wretch!" he said in a compassionate tone, though his lips
trembled a little. "Do you know how he came there?"
"I took him myself," said Caleb, quietly--"took him up in my gig.
He had got down from the coach, and was walking a little
beyond the turning from the toll-house, and I overtook him.
He remembered seeing me with you once before, at Stone Court,
and he asked me to take him on. I saw he was ill: it seemed
to me the right thing to do, to carry him under shelter.
And now I think you should lose no time in getting advice for him."
Caleb took up his hat from the floor as he ended, and rose slowly
from his seat.
"Certainly," said Bulstrode, whose mind was very active at this moment.
"Perhaps you will yourself oblige me, Mr. Garth, by calling at
Mr. Lydgate's as you pass--or stay! he may at this hour probably
be at the Hospital. I will first send my man on the horse there
with a note this instant, and then I will myself ride to Stone Court."
Bulstrode quickly wrote a note, and went out himself to give
the commission to his man. When he returned, Caleb was standing
as before with one hand on the back of the chair, holding his hat
with the other. In Bulstrode's mind the dominant thought was,
"Perhaps Raffles only spoke to Garth of his illness. Garth may wonder,
as he must have done before, at this disreputable fellow's claiming
intimacy with me; but he will know nothing. And he is friendly to me--
I can be of use to him."
He longed for some confirmation of this hopeful conjecture,
but to have asked any question as to what Raffles had said or done
would have been to betray fear.
"I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mr. Garth," he said, in his usual
tone of politeness. "My servant will be back in a few minutes,
and I shall then go myself to see what can be done for this
unfortunate man. Perhaps you had some other business with me?
If so, pray be seated."
"Thank you," said Caleb, making a slight gesture with his right
hand to waive the invitation. "I wish to say, Mr. Bulstrode,
that I must request you to put your business into some other hands
than mine. I am obliged to you for your handsome way of meeting me--
about the letting of Stone Court, and all other business.
But I must give it up." A sharp certainty entered like a stab into
Bulstrode's soul.
"This is sudden, Mr. Garth," was all he could say at first.
"It is," said Caleb; "but it is quite fixed. I must give it up."
He spoke with a firmness which was very gentle, and yet he could see
that Bulstrode seemed to cower under that gentleness, his face looking
dried and his eyes swerving away from the glance which rested on him.
Caleb felt a deep pity for him, but he could have used no pretexts
to account for his resolve, even if they would have been of any use.
"You have been led to this, I apprehend, by some slanders
concerning me uttered by that unhappy creature," said Bulstrode,
anxious now to know the utmost.
"That is true. I can't deny that I act upon what I heard from him."
"You are a conscientious man, Mr. Garth--a man, I trust,
who feels himself accountable to God. You would not wish to injure
me by being too ready to believe a slander," said Bulstrode,
casting about for pleas that might be adapted to his hearer's mind.
"That is a poor reason for giving up a connection which I think
I may say will be mutually beneficial."
"I would injure no man if I could help it," said Caleb; "even if I
thought God winked at it. I hope I should have a feeling for my
fellow-creature. But, sir--I am obliged to believe that this Raffles
has told me the truth. And I can't be happy in working with you,
or profiting by you. It hurts my mind. I must beg you to seek
another agent."
"Very well, Mr. Garth. But I must at least claim to know the worst
that he has told you. I must know what is the foul speech that I
am liable to be the victim of," said Bulstrode, a certain amount
of anger beginning to mingle with his humiliation before this quiet
man who renounced his benefits.
"That's needless," said Caleb, waving his hand, bowing his head slightly,
and not swerving from the tone which had in it the merciful intention
to spare this pitiable man. "What he has said to me will never
pass from my lips, unless something now unknown forces it from me.
If you led a harmful life for gain, and kept others out of their
rights by deceit, to get the more for yourself, I dare say you repent--
you would like to go back, and can't: that must be a bitter thing"--
Caleb paused a moment and shook his head--"it is not for me to make
your life harder to you."
"But you do--you do make it harder to me," said Bulstrode constrained
into a genuine, pleading cry. "You make it harder to me by turning
your back on me."
"That I'm forced to do," said Caleb, still more gently, lifting up
his hand. "I am sorry. I don't judge you and say, he is wicked,
and I am righteous. God forbid. I don't know everything. A man
may do wrong, and his will may rise clear out of it, though he can't
get his life clear. That's a bad punishment. If it is so with you,--
well, I'm very sorry for you. But I have that feeling inside me,
that I can't go on working with you. That's all, Mr. Bulstrode.
Everything else is buried, so far as my will goes. And I wish
you good-day."
"One moment, Mr. Garth!" said Bulstrode, hurriedly. "I may trust
then to your solemn assurance that you will not repeat either
to man or woman what--even if it have any degree of truth in it--
is yet a malicious representation?" Caleb's wrath was stirred,
and he said, indignantly--
"Why should I have said it if I didn't mean it? I am in no fear
of you. Such tales as that will never tempt my tongue."
"Excuse me--I am agitated--I am the victim of this abandoned man."
"Stop a bit! you have got to consider whether you didn't help
to make him worse, when you profited by his vices."
"You are wronging me by too readily believing him," said Bulstrode,
oppressed, as by a nightmare, with the inability to deny flatly
what Raffles might have said; and yet feeling it an escape
that Caleb had not so stated it to him as to ask for that flat denial.
"No," said Caleb, lifting his hand deprecatingly; "I am ready to
believe better, when better is proved. I rob you of no good chance.
As to speaking, I hold it a crime to expose a man's sin unless
I'm clear it must be done to save the innocent. That is my way
of thinking, Mr. Bulstrode, and what I say, I've no need to swear.
I wish you good-day."
Some hours later, when he was at home, Caleb said to his wife,
incidentally, that he had had some little differences with Bulstrode,
and that in consequence, he had given up all notion of taking
Stone Court, and indeed had resigned doing further business for him.
"He was disposed to interfere too much, was he?" said Mrs. Garth,
imagining that her husband had been touched on his sensitive point,
and not been allowed to do what he thought right as to materials
and modes of work.
"Oh," said Caleb, bowing his head and waving his hand gravely.
And Mrs. Garth knew that this was a sign of his not intending to speak
further on the subject.
As for Bulstrode, he had almost immediately mounted his horse and set
off for Stone Court, being anxious to arrive there before Lydgate.
His mind was crowded with images and conjectures, which were a language
to his hopes and fears, just as we hear tones from the vibrations
which shake our whole system. The deep humiliation with which he
had winced under Caleb Garth's knowledge of his past and rejection
of his patronage, alternated with and almost gave way to the sense
of safety in the fact that Garth, and no other, had been the man
to whom Raffles had spoken. It seemed to him a sort of earnest
that Providence intended his rescue from worse consequences;
the way being thus left open for the hope of secrecy. That Raffles
should be afflicted with illness, that he should have been led
to Stone Court rather than elsewhere--Bulstrode's heart fluttered
at the vision of probabilities which these events conjured up.
If it should turn out that he was freed from all danger of disgrace--
if he could breathe in perfect liberty--his life should be more
consecrated than it had ever been before. He mentally lifted
up this vow as if it would urge the result he longed for--
he tried to believe in the potency of that prayerful resolution--
its potency to determine death. He knew that he ought to say,
"Thy will be done;" and he said it often. But the intense desire
remained that the will of God might be the death of that hated man.
Yet when he arrived at Stone Court he could not see the change
in Raffles without a shock. But for his pallor and feebleness,
Bulstrode would have called the change in him entirely mental.
Instead of his loud tormenting mood, he showed an intense, vague terror,
and seemed to deprecate Bulstrode's anger, because the money was
all gone--he had been robbed--it had half of it been taken from him.
He had only come here because he was ill and somebody was hunting him--
somebody was after him he had told nobody anything, he had kept
his mouth shut. Bulstrode, not knowing the significance of
these symptoms, interpreted this new nervous susceptibility into
a means of alarming Raffles into true confessions, and taxed him
with falsehood in saying that he had not told anything, since he
had just told the man who took him up in his gig and brought him
to Stone Court. Raffles denied this with solemn adjurations;
the fact being that the links of consciousness were interrupted in him,
and that his minute terror-stricken narrative to Caleb Garth had been
delivered under a set of visionary impulses which had dropped back
into darkness.
Bulstrode's heart sank again at this sign that he could get no
grasp over the wretched man's mind, and that no word of Raffles
could be trusted as to the fact which he most wanted to know,
namely, whether or not he had really kept silence to every one in
the neighborhood except Caleb Garth. The housekeeper had told him
without the least constraint of manner that since Mr. Garth left,
Raffles had asked her for beer, and after that had not spoken,
seeming very ill. On that side it might be concluded that there
had been no betrayal. Mrs. Abel thought, like the servants at
The Shrubs, that the strange man belonged to the unpleasant "kin"
who are among the troubles of the rich; she had at first referred
the kinship to Mr. Rigg, and where there was property left,
the buzzing presence of such large blue-bottles seemed natural enough.
How he could be "kin" to Bulstrode as well was not so clear,
but Mrs. Abel agreed with her husband that there was "no knowing,"
a proposition which had a great deal of mental food for her,
so that she shook her head over it without further speculation.
In less than an hour Lydgate arrived. Bulstrode met him outside
the wainscoted parlor, where Raffles was, and said--
"I have called you in, Mr. Lydgate, to an unfortunate man who was once
in my employment, many years ago. Afterwards he went to America,
and returned I fear to an idle dissolute life. Being destitute,
he has a claim on me. He was slightly connected with Rigg,
the former owner of this place, and in consequence found his way here.
I believe he is seriously ill: apparently his mind is affected.
I feel bound to do the utmost for him."
Lydgate, who had the remembrance of his last conversation with
Bulstrode strongly upon him, was not disposed to say an unnecessary
word to him, and bowed slightly in answer to this account;
but just before entering the room he turned automatically
and said, "What is his name?"--to know names being as much a part
of the medical man's accomplishment as of the practical politician's.
"Raffles, John Raffles," said Bulstrode, who hoped that whatever
became of Raffles, Lydgate would never know any more of him.
When he had thoroughly examined and considered the patient, Lydgate
ordered that he should go to bed, and be kept there in as complete
quiet as possible, and then went with Bulstrode into another room.
"It is a serious case, I apprehend," said the banker, before Lydgate
began to speak.
"No--and yes," said Lydgate, half dubiously. "It is difficult
to decide as to the possible effect of long-standing complications;
but the man had a robust constitution to begin with. I should not
expect this attack to be fatal, though of course the system is
in a ticklish state. He should be well watched and attended to."
"I will remain here myself," said Bulstrode. "Mrs. Abel and her
husband are inexperienced. I can easily remain here for the night,
if you will oblige me by taking a note for Mrs. Bulstrode."
"I should think that is hardly necessary," said Lydgate. "He seems
tame and terrified enough. He might become more unmanageable.
But there is a man here--is there not?"
"I have more than once stayed here a few nights for the sake
of seclusion," said Bulstrode, indifferently; "I am quite disposed
to do so now. Mrs. Abel and her husband can relieve or aid me,
if necessary."
"Very well. Then I need give my directions only to you," said Lydgate,
not feeling surprised at a little peculiarity in Bulstrode.
"You think, then, that the case is hopeful?" said Bulstrode,
when Lydgate had ended giving his orders.
"Unless there turn out to be further complications, such as I
have not at present detected--yes," said Lydgate. "He may pass
on to a worse stage; but I should not wonder if ho got better
in a few days, by adhering to the treatment I have prescribed.
There must be firmness. Remember, if he calls for liquors of any sort,
not to give them to him. In my opinion, men in his condition are
oftener killed by treatment than by the disease. Still, new symptoms
may arise. I shall come again to-morrow morning."
After waiting for the note to be carried to Mrs. Bulstrode,
Lydgate rode away, forming no conjectures, in the first instance,
about the history of Raffles, but rehearsing the whole argument,
which had lately been much stirred by the publication of Dr. Ware's
abundant experience in America, as to the right way of treating
cases of alcoholic poisoning such as this. Lydgate, when abroad,
had already been interested in this question: he was strongly
convinced against the prevalent practice of allowing alcohol
and persistently administering large doses of opium; and he had
repeatedly acted on this conviction with a favorable result.
"The man is in a diseased state," he thought, "but there's a good deal
of wear in him still. I suppose he is an object of charity to Bulstrode.
It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by
side in men's dispositions. Bulstrode seems the most unsympathetic
fellow I ever saw about some people, and yet he has taken no end
of trouble, and spent a great deal of money, on benevolent objects.
I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven
cares for--he has made up his mind that it doesn't care for me."
This streak of bitterness came from a plenteous source, and kept
widening in the current of his thought as he neared Lowick Gate.
He had not been there since his first interview with Bulstrode
in the morning, having been found at the Hospital by the banker's
messenger; and for the first time he was returning to his home
without the vision of any expedient in the background which left
him a hope of raising money enough to deliver him from the coming
destitution of everything which made his married life tolerable--
everything which saved him and Rosamond from that bare isolation
in which they would be forced to recognize how little of a comfort
they could be to each other. It was more bearable to do without
tenderness for himself than to see that his own tenderness could
make no amends for the lack of other things to her. The sufferings
of his own pride from humiliations past and to come were keen enough,
yet they were hardly distinguishable to himself from that more acute
pain which dominated them--the pain of foreseeing that Rosamond
would come to regard him chiefly as the cause of disappointment and
unhappiness to her. He had never liked the makeshifts of poverty,
and they had never before entered into his prospects for himself;
but he was beginning now to imagine how two creatures who loved
each other, and had a stock of thoughts in common, might laugh
over their shabby furniture, and their calculations how far they
could afford butter and eggs. But the glimpse of that poetry
seemed as far off from him as the carelessness of the golden age;
in poor Rosamond's mind there was not room enough for luxuries to look
small in. He got down from his horse in a very sad mood, and went
into the house, not expecting to be cheered except by his dinner,
and reflecting that before the evening closed it would be wise
to tell Rosamond of his application to Bulstrode and its failure.
It would be well not to lose time in preparing her for the worst.
But his dinner waited long for him before he was able to eat it.
For on entering he found that Dover's agent had already put a man
in the house, and when he asked where Mrs. Lydgate was, he was told
that she was in her bedroom. He went up and found her stretched
on the bed pale and silent, without an answer even in her face
to any word or look of his. He sat down by the bed and leaning
over her said with almost a cry of prayer--
"Forgive me for this misery, my poor Rosamond! Let us only love
one another."
She looked at him silently, still with the blank despair on her face;
but then the tears began to fill her blue eyes, and her lip trembled.
The strong man had had too much to bear that day. He let his head
fall beside hers and sobbed.
He did not hinder her from going to her father early in the morning--
it seemed now that he ought not to hinder her from doing as she pleased.
In half an hour she came back, and said that papa and mamma wished her
to go and stay with them while things were in this miserable state.
Papa said he could do nothing about the debt--if he paid this,
there would be half-a-dozen more. She had better come back
home again till Lydgate had got a comfortable home for her.
"Do you object, Tertius?"
"Do as you like," said Lydgate. "But things are not coming
to a crisis immediately. There is no hurry."
"I should not go till to-morrow," said Rosamond; "I shall want
to pack my clothes."
"Oh, I would wait a little longer than to-morrow--there is no
knowing what may happen," said Lydgate, with bitter irony.
"I may get my neck broken, and that may make things easier to you."
It was Lydgate's misfortune and Rosamond's too, that his tenderness
towards her, which was both an emotional prompting and a well-considered
resolve, was inevitably interrupted by these outbursts of indignation
either ironical or remonstrant. She thought them totally unwarranted,
and the repulsion which this exceptional severity excited in
her was in danger of making the more persistent tenderness unacceptable.
"I see you do not wish me to go," she said, with chill mildness;
"why can you not say so, without that kind of violence? I shall stay
until you request me to do otherwise."
Lydgate said no more, but went out on his rounds. He felt bruised
and shattered, and there was a dark line under his eyes which
Rosamond had not seen before. She could not bear to look at him.
Tertius had a way of taking things which made them a great deal
worse for her.
CHAPTER LXX.
Our deeds still travel with us from afar,
And what we have been makes us what we are."
Bulstrode's first object after Lydgate had left Stone Court was
to examine Raffles's pockets, which he imagined were sure to carry
signs in the shape of hotel-bills of the places he had stopped in,
if he had not told the truth in saying that he had come straight
from Liverpool because he was ill and had no money. There were
various bills crammed into his pocketbook, but none of a later
date than Christmas at any other place, except one, which bore
date that morning. This was crumpled up with a hand-bill about
a horse-fair in one of his tail-pockets, and represented the cost
of three days' stay at an inn at Bilkley, where the fair was held--
a town at least forty miles from Middlemarch. The bill was heavy,
and since Raffles had no luggage with him, it seemed probable that he
had left his portmanteau behind in payment, in order to save money
for his travelling fare; for his purse was empty, and he had only
a couple of sixpences and some loose pence in his pockets.
Bulstrode gathered a sense of safety from these indications that
Raffles had really kept at a distance from Middlemarch since his
memorable visit at Christmas. At a distance and among people who
were strangers to Bulstrode, what satisfaction could there be to
Raffles's tormenting, self-magnifying vein in telling old scandalous
stories about a Middlemarch banker? And what harm if he did talk?
The chief point now was to keep watch over him as long as there
was any danger of that intelligible raving, that unaccountable
impulse to tell, which seemed to have acted towards Caleb Garth;
and Bulstrode felt much anxiety lest some such impulse should come
over him at the sight of Lydgate. He sat up alone with him through
the night, only ordering the housekeeper to lie down in her clothes,
so as to be ready when he called her, alleging his own indisposition
to sleep, and his anxiety to carry out the doctor's orders.
He did carry them out faithfully, although Raffles was incessantly
asking for brandy, and declaring that he was sinking away--
that the earth was sinking away from under him. He was restless
and sleepless, but still quailing and manageable. On the offer
of the food ordered by Lydgate, which he refused, and the denial
of other things which he demanded, he seemed to concentrate
all his terror on Bulstrode, imploringly deprecating his anger,
his revenge on him by starvation, and declaring with strong oaths
that he had never told any mortal a word against him. Even this
Bulstrode felt that he would not have liked Lydgate to hear;
but a more alarming sign of fitful alternation in his delirium was,
that in-the morning twilight Raffles suddenly seemed to imagine
a doctor present, addressing him and declaring that Bulstrode
wanted to starve him to death out of revenge for telling, when he
never had told.
Bulstrode's native imperiousness and strength of determination served
him well. This delicate-looking man, himself nervously perturbed,
found the needed stimulus in his strenuous circumstances, and through
that difficult night and morning, while he had the air of an animated
corpse returned to movement without warmth, holding the mastery
by its chill impassibility his mind was intensely at work thinking
of what he had to guard against and what would win him security.
Whatever prayers he might lift up, whatever statements he might inwardly
make of this man's wretched spiritual condition, and the duty he
himself was under to submit to the punishment divinely appointed for
him rather than to wish for evil to another--through all this effort
to condense words into a solid mental state, there pierced and spread
with irresistible vividness the images of the events he desired.
And in the train of those images came their apology. He could not
but see the death of Raffles, and see in it his own deliverance.
What was the removal of this wretched creature? He was impenitent--
but were not public criminals impenitent?--yet the law decided
on their fate. Should Providence in this case award death,
there was no sin in contemplating death as the desirable issue--
if he kept his hands from hastening it--if he scrupulously did
what was prescribed. Even here there might be a mistake:
human prescriptions were fallible things: Lydgate had said that
treatment had hastened death,--why not his own method of treatment?
But of course intention was everything in the question of right
and wrong.
And Bulstrode set himself to keep his intention separate from
his desire. He inwardly declared that he intended to obey orders.
Why should he have got into any argument about the validity of
these orders? It was only the common trick of desire--which avails
itself of any irrelevant scepticism, finding larger room for itself
in all uncertainty about effects, in every obscurity that looks
like the absence of law. Still, he did obey the orders.
His anxieties continually glanced towards Lydgate, and his remembrance
of what had taken place between them the morning before was accompanied
with sensibilities which had not been roused at all during the
actual scene. He had then cared but little about Lydgate's painful
impressions with regard to the suggested change in the Hospital,
or about the disposition towards himself which what he held to be his
justifiable refusal of a rather exorbitant request might call forth.
He recurred to the scene now with a perception that he had probably
made Lydgate his enemy, and with an awakened desire to propitiate him,
or rather to create in him a strong sense of personal obligation.
He regretted that he had not at once made even an unreasonable
money-sacrifice. For in case of unpleasant suspicions, or even
knowledge gathered from the raving of Raffles, Bulstrode would have
felt that he had a defence in Lydgate's mind by having conferred
a momentous benefit on him. Bat the regret had perhaps come too late.
Strange, piteous conflict in the soul of this unhappy man,
who had longed for years to be better than he was--who had taken
his selfish passions into discipline and clad them in severe robes,
so that he had walked with them as a devout choir, till now that
a terror had risen among them, and they could chant no longer,
but threw out their common cries for safety.
It was nearly the middle of the day before Lydgate arrived:
he had meant to come earlier, but had been detained, he said;
and his shattered looks were noticed by Balstrode. But he immediately
threw himself into the consideration of the patient, and inquired
strictly into all that had occurred. Raffles was worse, would take
hardly any food, was persistently wakeful and restlessly raving;
but still not violent. Contrary to Bulstrode's alarmed expectation,
he took little notice of Lydgate's presence, and continued to talk or
murmur incoherently.
"What do you think of him?" said Bulstrode, in private.
"The symptoms are worse."
"You are less hopeful?"
"No; I still think he may come round. Are you going to stay here yourself?"
said Lydgate, looking at Bulstrode with an abrupt question, which made
him uneasy, though in reality it was not due to any suspicious conjecture.
"Yes, I think so," said Bulstrode, governing himself and speaking
with deliberation. "Mrs. Bulstrode is advised of the reasons which
detain me. Mrs. Abel and her husband are not experienced enough
to be left quite alone, and this kind of responsibility is scarcely
included in their service of me. You have some fresh instructions,
I presume."
The chief new instruction that Lydgate had to give was on
the administration of extremely moderate doses of opium,
in case of the sleeplessness continuing after several hours.
He had taken the precaution of bringing opium in his pocket, and he
gave minute directions to Bulstrode as to the doses, and the point
at which they should cease. He insisted on the risk of not ceasing;
and repeated his order that no alcohol should be given.
"From what I see of the case," he ended, "narcotism is the only
thing I should be much afraid of. He may wear through even without
much food. There's a good deal of strength in him."
"You look ill yourself, Mr. Lydgate--a most unusual, I may say
unprecedented thing in my knowledge of you," said Bulstrode,
showing a solicitude as unlike his indifference the day before,
as his present recklessness about his own fatigue was unlike his
habitual self-cherishing anxiety. "I fear you are harassed."
"Yes, I am," said Lydgate, brusquely, holding his hat, and ready
to go.
"Something new, I fear," said Bulstrode, inquiringly. "Pray be seated."
"No, thank you," said Lydgate, with some hauteur. "I mentioned
to you yesterday what was the state of my affairs. There is nothing
to add, except that the execution has since then been actually put into
my house. One can tell a good deal of trouble in a short sentence.
I will say good morning."
"Stay, Mr. Lydgate, stay," said Bulstrode; "I have been
reconsidering this subject. I was yesterday taken by surprise,
and saw it superficially. Mrs. Bulstrode is anxious for her niece,
and I myself should grieve at a calamitous change in your position.
Claims on me are numerous, but on reconsideration, I esteem it right
that I should incur a small sacrifice rather than leave you unaided.
You said, I think, that a thousand pounds would suffice entirely to
free you from your burthens, and enable you to recover a firm stand?"
"Yes," said Lydgate, a great leap of joy within him surmounting every
other feeling; "that would pay all my debts, and leave me a little
on hand. I could set about economizing in our way of living.
And by-and-by my practice might look up."
"If you will wait a moment, Mr. Lydgate, I will draw a cheek to
that amount. I am aware that help, to be effectual in these cases,
should be thorough."
While Bulstrode wrote, Lydgate turned to the window thinking of his home--
thinking of his life with its good start saved from frustration,
its good purposes still unbroken.
"You can give me a note of hand for this, Mr. Lydgate," said the banker,
advancing towards him with the check. "And by-and-by, I hope,
you may be in circumstances gradually to repay me. Meanwhile, I have
pleasure in thinking that you will be released from further difficulty."
"I am deeply obliged to you," said Lydgate. "You have restored
to me the prospect of working with some happiness and some chance
of good."
It appeared to him a very natural movement in Bulstrode that he
should have reconsidered his refusal: it corresponded with the more
munificent side of his character. But as he put his hack into
a canter, that he might get the sooner home, and tell the good news
to Rosamond, and get cash at the bank to pay over to Dover's agent,
there crossed his mind, with an unpleasant impression, as from
a dark-winged flight of evil augury across his vision, the thought
of that contrast in himself which a few months had brought--that he
should be overjoyed at being under a strong personal obligation--
that he should be overjoyed at getting money for himself from Bulstrode.
The banker felt that he had done something to nullify one cause
of uneasiness, and yet he was scarcely the easier. He did not measure
the quantity of diseased motive which had made him wish for Lydgate's
good-will, but the quantity was none the less actively there,
like an irritating agent in his blood. A man vows, and yet will not
east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly
means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break
it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination,
and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself
over again the reasons for his vow. Raffles, recovering quickly,
returning to the free use of his odious powers--how could Bulstrode
wish for that? Raffles dead was the image that brought release,
and indirectly he prayed for that way of release, beseeching that,
if it were possible, the rest of his days here below might be
freed from the threat of an ignominy which would break him utterly
as an instrument of God's service. Lydgate's opinion was not
on the side of promise that this prayer would be fulfilled;
and as the day advanced, Bulstrode felt himself getting irritated
at the persistent life in this man, whom he would fain have seen
sinking into the silence of death imperious will stirred murderous
impulses towards this brute life, over which will, by itself,
had no power. He said inwardly that he was getting too much worn;
he would not sit up with the patient to-night, but leave him to
Mrs. Abel, who, if necessary, could call her husband.
At six o'clock, Raffles, having had only fitful perturbed
snatches of sleep, from which he waked with fresh restlessness
and perpetual cries that he was sinking away, Bulstrode began
to administer the opium according to Lydgate's directions.
At the end of half an hour or more he called Mrs. Abel and told
her that he found himself unfit for further watching. He must
now consign the patient to her care; and he proceeded to repeat
to her Lydgate's directions as to the quantity of each dose.
Mrs. Abel had not before known anything of Lydgate's prescriptions;
she had simply prepared and brought whatever Bulstrode ordered,
and had done what he pointed out to her. She began now to ask
what else she should do besides administering the opium.
"Nothing at present, except the offer of the soup or the soda-water:
you can come to me for further directions. Unless there is any
important change, I shall not come into the room again to-night. You
will ask your husband for help if necessary. I must go to bed early."
"You've much need, sir, I'm sure," said Mrs. Abel, "and to take
something more strengthening than what you've done.
Bulstrode went-away now without anxiety as to what Raffles might say
in his raving, which had taken on a muttering incoherence not likely
to create any dangerous belief. At any rate he must risk this.
He went down into the wainscoted parlor first, and began to
consider whether he would not have his horse saddled and go home
by the moonlight, and give up caring for earthly consequences.
Then, he wished that he had begged Lydgate to come again
that evening. Perhaps he might deliver a different opinion,
and think that Raffles was getting into a less hopeful state.
Should he send for Lydgate? If Raffles were really getting worse,
and slowly dying, Bulstrode felt that he could go to bed and sleep
in gratitude to Providence. But was he worse? Lydgate might come
and simply say that he was going on as he expected, and predict
that he would by-and-by fall into a good sleep, and get well.
What was the use of sending for him? Bulstrode shrank from that result.
No ideas or opinions could hinder him from seeing the one probability
to be, that Raffles recovered would be just the same man as before,
with his strength as a tormentor renewed, obliging him to drag away
his wife to spend her years apart from her friends and native place,
carrying an alienating suspicion against him in her heart.
He had sat an hour and a half in this conflict by the firelight only,
when a sudden thought made him rise and light the bed-candle,
which he had brought down with him. The thought was, that he
had not told Mrs. Abel when the doses of opium must cease.
He took hold of the candlestick, but stood motionless for a long while.
She might already have given him more than Lydgate had prescribed.
But it was excusable in him, that he should forget part of an order,
in his present wearied condition. He walked up-stairs, candle
in hand, not knowing whether he should straightway enter his own
room and go to bed, or turn to the patient's room and rectify
his omission. He paused in the passage, with his face turned towards
Raffles's room, and he could hear him moaning and murmuring.
He was not asleep, then. Who could know that Lydgate's prescription
would not be better disobeyed than followed, since there was still
no sleep?
He turned into his own room. Before he had quite undressed,
Mrs. Abel rapped at the door; he opened it an inch, so that he
could hear her speak low.
"If you please, sir, should I have no brandy nor nothing to give
the poor creetur? He feels sinking away, and nothing else will
he swaller--and but little strength in it, if he did--only the opium.
And he says more and more he's sinking down through the earth."
To her surprise, Mr. Bulstrode did not answer. A struggle was going
on within him.
"I think he must die for want o' support, if he goes on in that way.
When I nursed my poor master, Mr. Robisson, I had to give him port-wine
and brandy constant, and a big glass at a time," added Mrs. Abel,
with a touch of remonstrance in her tone.
But again Mr. Bulstrode did not answer immediately, and she continued,
"It's not a time to spare when people are at death's door, nor would
you wish it, sir, I'm sure. Else I should give him our own bottle o'
rum as we keep by us. But a sitter-up so as you've been, and doing
everything as laid in your power--"
Here a key was thrust through the inch of doorway, and Mr. Bulstrode
said huskily, "That is the key of the wine-cooler. You will find
plenty of brandy there."
Early in the morning--about six--Mr. Bulstrode rose and spent
some time in prayer. Does any one suppose that private prayer
is necessarily candid--necessarily goes to the roots of action?
Private prayer is inaudible speech, and speech is representative:
who can represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections?
Bulstrode had not yet unravelled in his thought the confused promptings
of the last four-and-twenty hours.
He listened in the passage, and could hear hard stertorous breathing.
Then he walked out in the garden, and looked at the early rime on
the grass and fresh spring leaves. When he re-entered the house,
he felt startled at the sight of Mrs. Abel.
"How is your patient--asleep, I think?" he said, with an attempt
at cheerfulness in his tone.
"He's gone very deep, sir," said Mrs. Abel. "He went off gradual
between three and four o'clock. Would you please to go and look
at him? I thought it no harm to leave him. My man's gone afield,
and the little girl's seeing to the kettles."
Bulstrode went up. At a glance he knew that Raffles was not in
the sleep which brings revival, but in the sleep which streams
deeper and deeper into the gulf of death.
He looked round the room and saw a bottle with some brandy in it,
and the almost empty opium phial. He put the phial out of sight,
and carried the brandy-bottle down-stairs with him, locking it again
in the wine-cooler.
While breakfasting he considered whether he should ride to
Middlemarch at once, or wait for Lydgate's arrival. He decided
to wait, and told Mrs. Abel that she might go about her work--
he could watch in the bed-chamber.
As he sat there and beheld the enemy of his peace going irrevocably
into silence, he felt more at rest than he had done for many months.
His conscience was soothed by the enfolding wing of secrecy,
which seemed just then like an angel sent down for his relief.
He drew out his pocket-book to review various memoranda there as
to the arrangements he had projected and partly carried out in the
prospect of quitting Middlemarch, and considered how far he would
let them stand or recall them, now that his absence would be brief.
Some economies which he felt desirable might still find a suitable
occasion in his temporary withdrawal from management, and he hoped
still that Mrs. Casaubon would take a large share in the expenses
of the Hospital. In that way the moments passed, until a change
in the stertorous breathing was marked enough to draw his attention
wholly to the bed, and forced him to think of the departing life,
which had once been subservient to his own--which he had once been
glad to find base enough for him to act on as he would. It was his
gladness then which impelled him now to be glad that the life was at
an end.
And who could say that the death of Raffles had been hastened?
Who knew what would have saved him?
Lydgate arrived at half-past ten, in time to witness the final
pause of the breath. When he entered the room Bulstrode observed
a sudden expression in his face, which was not so much surprise as a
recognition that he had not judged correctly. He stood by the bed
in silence for some time, with his eyes turned on the dying man,
but with that subdued activity of expression which showed that he
was carrying on an inward debate.
"When did this change begin?" said he, looking at Bulstrode.
"I did not watch by him last night," said Bulstrode.
"I was over-worn, and left him under Mrs. Abel's care.
She said that he sank into sleep between three and four o'clock.
When I came in before eight he was nearly in this condition."
Lydgate did not ask another question, but watched in silence until
he said, "It's all over."
This morning Lydgate was in a state of recovered hope and freedom.
He had set out on his work with all his old animation, and felt himself
strong enough to bear all the deficiencies of his married life.
And he was conscious that Bulstrode had been a benefactor to him.
But he was uneasy about this case. He had not expected it to
terminate as it had done. Yet he hardly knew how to put a question
on the subject to Bulstrode without appearing to insult him;
and if he examined the housekeeper--why, the man was dead.
There seemed to be no use in implying that somebody's ignorance
or imprudence had killed him. And after all, he himself might
be wrong.
He and Bulstrode rode back to Middlemarch together, talking of
many things--chiefly cholera and the chances of the Reform Bill
in the House of Lords, and the firm resolve of the political Unions.
Nothing was said about Raffles, except that Bulstrode mentioned
the necessity of having a grave for him in Lowick churchyard,
and observed that, so far as he knew, the poor man had no connections,
except Rigg, whom he had stated to be unfriendly towards him.
On returning home Lydgate had a visit from Mr. Farebrother. The Vicar
had not been in the town the day before, but the news that there
was an execution in Lydgate's house had got to Lowick by the evening,
having been carried by Mr. Spicer, shoemaker and parish-clerk, who had
it from his brother, the respectable bell-hanger in Lowick Gate.
Since that evening when Lydgate had come down from the billiard
room with Fred Vincy, Mr. Farebrother's thoughts about him had
been rather gloomy. Playing at the Green Dragon once or oftener
might have been a trifle in another man; but in Lydgate it was
one of several signs that he was getting unlike his former self.
He was beginning to do things for which he had formerly even an
excessive scorn. Whatever certain dissatisfactions in marriage,
which some silly tinklings of gossip had given him hints of,
might have to do with this change, Mr. Farebrother felt sure
that it was chiefly connected with the debts which were being
more and more distinctly reported, and he began to fear that any
notion of Lydgate's having resources or friends in the background
must be quite illusory. The rebuff he had met with in his first
attempt to win Lydgate's confidence, disinclined him to a second;
but this news of the execution being actually in the house,
determined the Vicar to overcome his reluctance.
Lydgate had just dismissed a poor patient, in whom he was much interested,
and he came forward to put out his hand--with an open cheerfulness
which surprised Mr. Farebrother. Could this too be a proud rejection of
sympathy and help? Never mind; the sympathy and help should be offered.
"How are you, Lydgate? I came to see you because I had heard
something which made me anxious about you," said the Vicar, in the
tone of a good brother, only that there was no reproach in it.
They were both seated by this time, and Lydgate answered immediately--
"I think I know what you mean. You had heard that there was
an execution in the house?"
"Yes; is it true?"
"It was true," said Lydgate, with an air of freedom, as if he did
not mind talking about the affair now. "But the danger is over;
the debt is paid. I am out of my difficulties now: I shall be freed
from debts, and able, I hope, to start afresh on a better plan."
"I am very thankful to hear it," said the Vicar, falling back in
his chair, and speaking with that low-toned quickness which often
follows the removal of a load. "I like that better than all
the news in the `Times.' I confess I came to you with a heavy heart."
"Thank you for coming," said Lydgate, cordially. "I can enjoy
the kindness all the more because I am happier. I have certainly
been a good deal crushed. I'm afraid I shall find the bruises
still painful by-and by," he added, smiling rather sadly;
"but just now I can only feel that the torture-screw is off."
Mr. Farebrother was silent for a moment, and then said earnestly,
"My dear fellow, let me ask you one question. Forgive me if I take
a liberty."
"I don't believe you will ask anything that ought to offend me."
"Then--this is necessary to set my heart quite at rest--you have not--
have you?--in order to pay your debts, incurred another debt which
may harass you worse hereafter?"
"No," said Lydgate, coloring slightly. "There is no reason why I
should not tell you--since the fact is so--that the person to whom I
am indebted is Bulstrode. He has made me a very handsome advance--
a thousand pounds--and he can afford to wait for repayment."
"Well, that is generous," said Mr. Farebrother, compelling himself
to approve of the man whom he disliked. His delicate feeling shrank
from dwelling even in his thought on the fact that he had always
urged Lydgate to avoid any personal entanglement with Bulstrode.
He added immediately, "And Bulstrode must naturally feel an interest
in your welfare, after you have worked with him in a way which has
probably reduced your income instead of adding to it. I am glad
to think that he has acted accordingly."
Lydgate felt uncomfortable under these kindly suppositions.
They made more distinct within him the uneasy consciousness
which had shown its first dim stirrings only a few hours before,
that Bulstrode's motives for his sudden beneficence following
close upon the chillest indifference might be merely selfish.
He let the kindly suppositions pass. He could not tell the history
of the loan, but it was more vividly present with him than ever,
as well as the fact which the Vicar delicately ignored--that this
relation of personal indebtedness to Bulstrode was what he had once
been most resolved to avoid.
He began, instead of answering, to speak of his projected economies,
and of his having come to look at his life from a different point
of view.
"I shall set up a surgery," he said. "I really think I made
a mistaken effort in that respect. And if Rosamond will not mind,
I shall take an apprentice. I don't like these things, but if
one carries them out faithfully they are not really lowering.
I have had a severe galling to begin with: that will make the small
rubs seem easy."
Poor Lydgate! the "if Rosamond will not mind," which had fallen
from him involuntarily as part of his thought, was a significant
mark of the yoke he bore. But Mr. Farebrother, whose hopes entered
strongly into the same current with Lydgate's, and who knew
nothing about him that could now raise a melancholy presentiment,
left him with affectionate congratulation.
CHAPTER LXXI.
Clown. . . . 'Twas in the Bunch of Grapes, where, indeed,
you have a delight to sit, have you not?
Froth. I have so: because it is an open room, and good for winter.
Clo. Why, very well then: I hope here be truths.
--Measure for Measure.
Five days after the death of Raffles, Mr. Bambridge was standing
at his leisure under the large archway leading into the yard of the
Green Dragon. He was not fond of solitary contemplation, but he
had only just come out of the house, and any human figure standing
at ease under the archway in the early afternoon was as certain
to attract companionship as a pigeon which has found something worth
peeking at. In this case there was no material object to feed upon,
but the eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the
shape of gossip. Mr. Hopkins, the meek-mannered draper opposite,
was the first to act on this inward vision, being the more ambitious
of a little masculine talk because his customers were chiefly women.
Mr. Bambridge was rather curt to the draper, feeling that Hopkins
was of course glad to talk to HIM, but that he was not going
to waste much of his talk on Hopkins. Soon, however, there was
a small cluster of more important listeners, who were either
deposited from the passers-by, or had sauntered to the spot expressly
to see if there were anything going on at the Green Dragon;
and Mr. Bambridge was finding it worth his while to say many
impressive things about the fine studs he had been seeing and the
purchases he had made on a journey in the north from which he had
just returned. Gentlemen present were assured that when they could
show him anything to cut out a blood mare, a bay, rising four,
which was to be seen at Doncaster if they chose to go and look
at it, Mr. Bambridge would gratify them by being shot "from here
to Hereford." Also, a pair of blacks which he was going to put
into the break recalled vividly to his mind a pair which he had sold
to Faulkner in '19, for a hundred guineas, and which Faulkner had
sold for a hundred and sixty two months later--any gent who could
disprove this statement being offered the privilege of calling
Mr. Bambridge by a very ugly name until the exercise made his throat dry.
When the discourse was at this point of animation, came up Mr. Frank
Hawley. He was not a man to compromise his dignity by lounging at
the Green Dragon, but happening to pass along the High Street and
seeing Bambridge on the other side, he took some of his long strides
across to ask the horsedealer whether he had found the first-rate
gig-horse which he had engaged to look for. Mr. Hawley was requested
to wait until he had seen a gray selected at Bilkley: if that did
not meet his wishes to a hair, Bambridge did not know a horse when he
saw it, which seemed to be the highest conceivable unlikelihood.
Mr. Hawley, standing with his back to the street, was fixing a time for
looking at the gray and seeing it tried, when a horseman passed slowly by.
"Bulstrode!" said two or three voices at once in a low tone, one of them,
which was the draper's, respectfully prefixing the "Mr.;" but nobody
having more intention in this interjectural naming than if they had said
"the Riverston coach" when that vehicle appeared in the distance.
Mr. Hawley gave a careless glance round at Bulstrode's back,
but as Bambridge's eyes followed it he made a sarcastic grimace.
"By jingo! that reminds me," he began, lowering his voice a little,
"I picked up something else at Bilkley besides your gig-horse,
Mr. Hawley. I picked up a fine story about Bulstrode.
Do you know how he came by his fortune? Any gentleman wanting
a bit of curious information, I can give it him free of expense.
If everybody got their deserts, Bulstrode might have had to say
his prayers at Botany Bay."
"What do you mean?" said Mr. Hawley, thrusting his hands into
his pockets, and pushing a little forward under the archway.
If Bulstrode should turn out to be a rascal, Frank Hawley had
a prophetic soul.
"I had it from a party who was an old chum of Bulstrode's.
I'll tell you where I first picked him up," said Bambridge,
with a sudden gesture of his fore-finger. "He was at Larcher's sale,
but I knew nothing of him then--he slipped through my fingers--
was after Bulstrode, no doubt. He tells me he can tap Bulstrode
to any amount, knows all his secrets. However, he blabbed to me
at Bilkley: he takes a stiff glass. Damme if I think he meant
to turn king's evidence; but he's that sort of bragging fellow,
the bragging runs over hedge and ditch with him, till he'd brag of a
spavin as if it 'ud fetch money. A man should know when to pull up."
Mr. Bambridge made this remark with an air of disgust, satisfied that
his own bragging showed a fine sense of the marketable.
"What's the man's name? Where can he be found?" said Mr. Hawley.
"As to where he is to be found, I left him to it at the Saracen's Head;
but his name is Raffles."
"Raffles!" exclaimed Mr. Hopkins. "I furnished his funeral yesterday.
He was buried at Lowick. Mr. Bulstrode followed him. A very
decent funeral." There was a strong sensation among the listeners.
Mr. Bambridge gave an ejaculation in which "brimstone" was the
mildest word, and Mr. Hawley, knitting his brows and bending
his head forward, exclaimed, "What?--where did the man die?"
"At Stone Court," said the draper. "The housekeeper said he was
a relation of the master's. He came there ill on Friday."
"Why, it was on Wednesday I took a glass with him," interposed Bambridge.
"Did any doctor attend him?" said Mr. Hawley
"Yes. Mr. Lydgate. Mr. Bulstrode sat up with him one night.
He died the third morning."
"Go on, Bambridge," said Mr. Hawley, insistently. "What did this
fellow say about Bulstrode?"
The group had already become larger, the town-clerk's presence being
a guarantee that something worth listening to was going on there;
and Mr. Bambridge delivered his narrative in the hearing of seven.
It was mainly what we know, including the fact about Will Ladislaw,
with some local color and circumstance added: it was what Bulstrode
had dreaded the betrayal of--and hoped to have buried forever with
the corpse of Raffles--it was that haunting ghost of his earlier
life which as he rode past the archway of the Green Dragon he was
trusting that Providence had delivered him from. Yes, Providence.
He had not confessed to himself yet that he had done anything
in the way of contrivance to this end; he had accepted what seemed
to have been offered. It was impossible to prove that he had done
anything which hastened the departure of that man's soul.
But this gossip about Bulstrode spread through Middlemarch like
the smell of fire. Mr. Frank Hawley followed up his information
by sending a clerk whom he could trust to Stone Court on a pretext
of inquiring about hay, but really to gather all that could be
learned about Raffles and his illness from Mrs. Abel. In this way
it came to his knowledge that Mr. Garth had carried the man to Stone
Court in his gig; and Mr. Hawley in consequence took an opportunity
of seeing Caleb, calling at his office to ask whether he had time
to undertake an arbitration if it were required, and then asking
him incidentally about Raffles. Caleb was betrayed into no word
injurious to Bulstrode beyond the fact which he was forced to admit,
that he had given up acting for him within the last week.
Mr Hawley drew his inferences, and feeling convinced that Raffles
had told his story to Garth, and that Garth had given up Bulstrode's
affairs in consequence, said so a few hours later to Mr. Toller.
The statement was passed on until it had quite lost the stamp
of an inference, and was taken as information coming straight
from Garth, so that even a diligent historian might have concluded
Caleb to be the chief publisher of Bulstrode's misdemeanors.
Mr. Hawley was not slow to perceive that there was no handle
for the law either in the revelations made by Raffles or in the
circumstances of his death. He had himself ridden to Lowick village
that he might look at the register and talk over the whole matter
with Mr. Farebrother, who was not more surprised than the lawyer
that an ugly secret should have come to light about Bulstrode,
though he had always had justice enough in him to hinder his antipathy
from turning into conclusions. But while they were talking another
combination was silently going forward in Mr. Farebrother's mind,
which foreshadowed what was soon to be loudly spoken of in Middlemarch
as a necessary "putting of two and two together." With the reasons
which kept Bulstrode in dread of Raffles there flashed the thought
that the dread might have something to do with his munificence
towards his medical man; and though he resisted the suggestion
that it had been consciously accepted in any way as a bribe, he had
a foreboding that this complication of things might be of malignant
effect on Lydgate's reputation. He perceived that Mr. Hawley knew
nothing at present of the sudden relief from debt, and he himself
was careful to glide away from all approaches towards the subject.
"Well," he said, with a deep breath, wanting to wind up the
illimitable discussion of what might have been, though nothing could
be legally proven, "it is a strange story. So our mercurial Ladislaw
has a queer genealogy! A high-spirited young lady and a musical
Polish patriot made a likely enough stock for him to spring from,
but I should never have suspected a grafting of the Jew pawnbroker.
However, there's no knowing what a mixture will turn out beforehand.
Some sorts of dirt serve to clarify."
"It's just what I should have expected," said Mr. Hawley,
mounting his horse. "Any cursed alien blood, Jew, Corsican, or Gypsy."
"I know he's one of your black sheep, Hawley. But he is really
a disinterested, unworldly fellow," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling.
"Ay, ay, that is your Whiggish twist," said Mr. Hawley, who had been
in the habit of saying apologetically that Farebrother was such
a damned pleasant good-hearted fellow you would mistake him for a Tory.
Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance on
Raffles in any other light than as a piece of evidence on the side
of Bulstrode. But the news that Lydgate had all at once become
able not only to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay
all his debts in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round
it conjectures and comments which gave it new body and impetus,
and soon filling the ears of other persons besides Mr. Hawley,
who were not slow to see a significant relation between this sudden
command of money and Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal
of Raffles. That the money came from Bulstrode would infallibly
have been guessed even if there had been no direct evidence of it;
for it had beforehand entered into the gossip about Lydgate's affairs,
that neither his father-in-law nor his own family would do anything
for him, and direct evidence was furnished not only by a clerk
at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs. Bulstrode herself, who mentioned
the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who mentioned it to her daughter-in-law
of the house of Toller, who mentioned it generally. The business
was felt to be so public and important that it required dinners
to feed it, and many invitations were just then issued and accepted
on the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate;
wives, widows, and single ladies took their work and went out to tea
oftener than usual; and all public conviviality, from the Green
Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which could not be won from
the question whether the Lords would throw out the Reform Bill.
For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or other was at
the bottom of Bulstrode's liberality to Lydgate. Mr. Hawley indeed,
in the first instance, invited a select party, including the
two physicians, with Mr Toller and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold
a close discussion as to the probabilities of Raffles's illness,
reciting to them all the particulars which had been gathered from
Mrs. Abel in connection with Lydgate's certificate, that the death
was due to delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who all
stood undisturbedly on the old paths in relation to this disease,
declared that they could see nothing in these particulars which could
be transformed into a positive ground of suspicion. But the moral
grounds of suspicion remained: the strong motives Bulstrode
clearly had for wishing to be rid of Raffles, and the fact that at
this critical moment he had given Lydgate the help which he must
for some time have known the need for; the disposition, moreover,
to believe that Bulstrode would be unscrupulous, and the absence
of any indisposition to believe that Lydgate might be as easily
bribed as other haughty-minded men when they have found themselves
in want of money. Even if the money had been given merely to make
him hold his tongue about the scandal of Bulstrode's earlier life,
the fact threw an odious light on Lydgate, who had long been sneered
at as making himself subservient to the banker for the sake of working
himself into predominance, and discrediting the elder members of
his profession. Hence, in spite of the negative as to any direct
sign of guilt in relation to the death at Stone Court, Mr. Hawley's
select party broke up with the sense that the affair had "an ugly look."
But this vague conviction of indeterminable guilt, which was enough
to keep up much head-shaking and biting innuendo even among substantial
professional seniors, had for the general mind all the superior
power of mystery over fact. Everybody liked better to conjecture
how the thing was, than simply to know it; for conjecture soon became
more confident than knowledge, and had a more liberal allowance
for the incompatible. Even the more definite scandal concerning
Bulstrode's earlier life was, for some minds, melted into the mass
of mystery, as so much lively metal to be poured out in dialogue,
and to take such fantastic shapes as heaven pleased.
This was the tone of thought chiefly sanctioned by Mrs. Dollop,
the spirited landlady of the Tankard in Slaughter Lane, who had often
to resist the shallow pragmatism of customers disposed to think
that their reports from the outer world were of equal force with
what had "come up" in her mind. How it had been brought to her she
didn't know, but it was there before her as if it had been scored
with the chalk on the chimney-board--" as Bulstrode should say,
his inside was THAT BLACK as if the hairs of his head knowed
the thoughts of his heart, he'd tear 'em up by the roots."
"That's odd," said Mr. Limp, a meditative shoemaker, with weak
eyes and a piping voice. "Why, I read in the `Trumpet' that was
what the Duke of Wellington said when he turned his coat and went
over to the Romans."
"Very like," said Mrs. Dollop. "If one raskill said it, it's more
reason why another should. But hypoCRITE as he's been,
and holding things with that high hand, as there was no parson i'
the country good enough for him, he was forced to take Old Harry
into his counsel, and Old Harry's been too many for him."
"Ay, ay, he's a 'complice you can't send out o' the country,"
said Mr. Crabbe, the glazier, who gathered much news and groped
among it dimly. "But by what I can make out, there's them says
Bulstrode was for running away, for fear o' being found out,
before now."
"He'll be drove away, whether or no," said Mr. Dill, the barber,
who had just dropped in. "I shaved Fletcher, Hawley's clerk,
this morning--he's got a bad finger--and he says they're all of one
mind to get rid of Bulstrode. Mr. Thesiger is turned against him,
and wants him out o' the parish. And there's gentlemen in this town
says they'd as soon dine with a fellow from the hulks. `And a deal
sooner I would,' says Fletcher; `for what's more against one's stomach
than a man coming and making himself bad company with his religion,
and giving out as the Ten Commandments are not enough for him,
and all the while he's worse than half the men at the tread-mill?'
Fletcher said so himself."
"It'll be a bad thing for the town though, if Bulstrode's money
goes out of it," said Mr. Limp, quaveringly.
"Ah, there's better folks spend their money worse," said a
firm-voiced dyer, whose crimson hands looked out of keeping
with his good-natured face.
"But he won't keep his money, by what I can make out," said the glazier.
"Don't they say as there's somebody can strip it off him?
By what I can understan', they could take every penny off him,
if they went to lawing."
"No such thing!" said the barber, who felt himself a little above
his company at Dollop's, but liked it none the worse. "Fletcher says
it's no such thing. He says they might prove over and over again
whose child this young Ladislaw was, and they'd do no more than
if they proved I came out of the Fens--he couldn't touch a penny."
"Look you there now!" said Mrs. Dollop, indignantly. "I thank
the Lord he took my children to Himself, if that's all the law
can do for the motherless. Then by that, it's o' no use who your
father and mother is. But as to listening to what one lawyer says
without asking another--I wonder at a man o' your cleverness,
Mr. Dill. It's well known there's always two sides, if no more;
else who'd go to law, I should like to know? It's a poor tale,
with all the law as there is up and down, if it's no use proving
whose child you are. Fletcher may say that if he likes, but I say,
don't Fletcher ME!"
Mr. Dill affected to laugh in a complimentary way at Mrs. Dollop,
as a woman who was more than a match for the lawyers; being disposed
to submit to much twitting from a landlady who had a long score
against him.
"If they come to lawing, and it's all true as folks say,
there's more to be looked to nor money," said the glazier.
"There's this poor creetur as is dead and gone; by what I can make out,
he'd seen the day when he was a deal finer gentleman nor Bulstrode."
"Finer gentleman! I'll warrant him," said Mrs. Dollop; "and a far
personabler man, by what I can hear. As I said when Mr. Baldwin,
the tax-gatherer, comes in, a-standing where you sit, and says,
`Bulstrode got all his money as he brought into this town by thieving
and swindling,'--I said, `You don't make me no wiser, Mr. Baldwin:
it's set my blood a-creeping to look at him ever sin' here he came
into Slaughter Lane a-wanting to buy the house over my head:
folks don't look the color o' the dough-tub and stare at you as if they
wanted to see into your backbone for nothingk.' That was what I said,
and Mr. Baldwin can bear me witness."
"And in the rights of it too," said Mr. Crabbe. "For by what I can
make out, this Raffles, as they call him, was a lusty, fresh-colored man
as you'd wish to see, and the best o' company--though dead he lies
in Lowick churchyard sure enough; and by what I can understan',
there's them knows more than they SHOULD know about how he got there."
"I'll believe you!" said Mrs. Dallop, with a touch of scorn
at Mr. Crabbe's apparent dimness. "When a man's been 'ticed
to a lone house, and there's them can pay for hospitals and nurses
for half the country-side choose to be sitters-up night and day,
and nobody to come near but a doctor as is known to stick at nothingk,
and as poor as he can hang together, and after that so flush o'
money as he can pay off Mr. Byles the butcher as his bill has
been running on for the best o' joints since last Michaelmas was
a twelvemonth--I don't want anybody to come and tell me as there's
been more going on nor the Prayer-book's got a service for--
I don't want to stand winking and blinking and thinking."
Mrs. Dollop looked round with the air of a landlady accustomed
to dominate her company. There was a chorus of adhesion from the
more courageous; but Mr. Limp, after taking a draught, placed his
fiat hands together and pressed them hard between his knees,
looking down at them with blear-eyed contemplation, as if the scorching
power of Mrs. Dollop's speech had quite dried up and nullified
his wits until they could be brought round again by further moisture.
"Why shouldn't they dig the man up and have the Crowner?"
said the dyer. "It's been done many and many's the time.
If there's been foul play they might find it out."
"Not they, Mr. Jonas!" said Mrs Dollop, emphatically."I know
what doctors are. They're a deal too cunning to be found out.
And this Doctor Lydgate that's been for cutting up everybody before
the breath was well out o' their body--it's plain enough what use
he wanted to make o' looking into respectable people's insides.
He knows drugs, you may be sure, as you can neither smell nor see,
neither before they're swallowed nor after. Why, I've seen drops
myself ordered by Doctor Gambit, as is our club doctor and a
good charikter, and has brought more live children into the world nor
ever another i' Middlemarch--I say I've seen drops myself as made
no difference whether they was in the glass or out, and yet have
griped you the next day. So I'll leave your own sense to judge.
Don't tell me! All I say is, it's a mercy they didn't take this Doctor
Lydgate on to our club. There's many a mother's child might ha'
rued it."
The heads of this discussion at "Dollop's" had been the common
theme among all classes in the town, had been carried to Lowick
Parsonage on one side and to Tipton Grange on the other, had come
fully to the ears of the Vincy family, and had been discussed with
sad reference to "poor Harriet" by all Mrs. Bulstrode's friends,
before Lydgate knew distinctly why people were looking strangely at him,
and before Bulstrode himself suspected the betrayal of his secrets.
He had not been accustomed to very cordial relations with his neighbors,
and hence he could not miss the signs of cordiality; moreover, he had
been taking journeys on business of various kinds, having now made
up his mind that he need not quit Middlemarch, and feeling able
consequently to determine on matters which he had before left in suspense.
"We will make a journey to Cheltenham in the course of a month or two,"
he had said to his wife. "There are great spiritual advantages
to be had in that town along with the air and the waters, and six
weeks there will be eminently refreshing to us."
He really believed in the spiritual advantages, and meant that his
life henceforth should be the more devoted because of those later sins
which he represented to himself as hypothetic, praying hypothetically
for their pardon:--"if I have herein transgressed." as to the Hospital,
he avoided saying anything further to Lydgate, fearing to manifest
a too sudden change of plans immediately on the death of Raffles.
In his secret soul he believed that Lydgate suspected his orders to have
been intentionally disobeyed, and suspecting this he must also suspect
a motive. But nothing had been betrayed to him as to the history
of Raffles, and Bulstrode was anxious not to do anything which would
give emphasis to his undefined suspicions. As to any certainty
that a particular method of treatment would either save or kill,
Lydgate himself was constantly arguing against such dogmatism;
he had no right to speak, and he had every motive for being silent.
Hence Bulstrode felt himself providentially secured. The only
incident he had strongly winced under had been an occasional encounter
with Caleb Garth, who, however, had raised his hat with mild gravity.
Meanwhile, on the part of the principal townsmen a strong
determination was growing against him.
A meeting was to be held in the Town-Hall on a sanitary question
which had risen into pressing importance by the occurrence of a cholera
case in the town. Since the Act of Parliament, which had been
hurriedly passed, authorizing assessments for sanitary measures,
there had been a Board for the superintendence of such measures
appointed in Middlemarch, and much cleansing and preparation
had been concurred in by Whigs and Tories. The question now was,
whether a piece of ground outside the town should be secured as a
burial-ground by means of assessment or by private subscription.
The meeting was to be open, and almost everybody of importance
in the town was expected to be there.
Mr. Bulstrode was a member of the Board, and just before twelve
o'clock he started from the Bank with the intention of urging the plan
of private subscription. Under the hesitation of his projects,
he had for some time kept himself in the background, and he felt
that he should this morning resume his old position as a man of action
and influence in the public affairs of the town where he expected to
end his days. Among the various persons going in the same direction,
he saw Lydgate; they joined, talked over the object of the meeting,
and entered it together.
It seemed that everybody of mark had been earlier than they.
But there were still spaces left near the head of the large
central table, and they made their way thither. Mr. Farebrother
sat opposite, not far from Mr. Hawley; all the medical men were there;
Mr. Thesiger was in the chair, and Mr. Brooke of Tipton was on his
right hand.
Lydgate noticed a peculiar interchange of glances when he
and Bulstrode took their seats.
After the business had been fully opened by the chairman,
who pointed out the advantages of purchasing by subscription a piece
of ground large enough to be ultimately used as a general cemetery,
Mr. Bulstrode, whose rather high-pitched but subdued and fluent
voice the town was used to at meetings of this sort, rose and asked
leave to deliver his opinion. Lydgate could see again the peculiar
interchange of glances before Mr. Hawley started up, and said
in his firm resonant voice, "Mr. Chairman, I request that before
any one delivers his opinion on this point I may be permitted
to speak on a question of public feeling, which not only by myself,
but by many gentlemen present, is regarded as preliminary."
Mr. Hawley's mode of speech, even when public decorum repressed his
"awful language," was formidable in its curtness and self-possession.
Mr. Thesiger sanctioned the request, Mr. Bulstrode sat down,
and Mr. Hawley continued.
"In what I have to say, Mr. Chairman, I am not speaking simply
on my own behalf: I am speaking with the concurrence and at
the express request of no fewer than eight of my fellow-townsmen,
who are immediately around us. It is our united sentiment that
Mr. Bulstrode should be called upon--and I do now call upon him--
to resign public positions which he holds not simply as a tax-payer,
but as a gentleman among gentlemen. There are practices and there
are acts which, owing to circumstances, the law cannot visit,
though they may be worse than many things which are legally punishable.
Honest men and gentlemen, if they don't want the company of people who
perpetrate such acts, have got to defend themselves as they best can,
and that is what I and the friends whom I may call my clients in this
affair are determined to do. I don't say that Mr. Bulstrode has
been guilty of shameful acts, but I call upon him either publicly
to deny and confute the scandalous statements made against him by a
man now dead, and who died in his house--the statement that he was
for many years engaged in nefarious practices, and that he won his
fortune by dishonest procedures--or else to withdraw from positions
which could only have been allowed him as a gentleman among gentlemen."
All eyes in the room were turned on Mr. Bulstrode, who, since the first
mention of his name, had been going through a crisis of feeling almost
too violent for his delicate frame to support. Lydgate, who himself
was undergoing a shock as from the terrible practical interpretation
of some faint augury, felt, nevertheless, that his own movement
of resentful hatred was checked by that instinct of the Healer
which thinks first of bringing rescue or relief to the sufferer,
when he looked at the shrunken misery of Bulstrode's livid face.
The quick vision that his life was after all a failure, that he was
a dishonored man, and must quail before the glance of those towards
whom he had habitually assumed the attitude of a reprover--that God
had disowned him before men and left him unscreened to the triumphant
scorn of those who were glad to have their hatred justified--the sense
of utter futility in that equivocation with his conscience in dealing
with the life of his accomplice, an equivocation which now turned
venomously upon him with the full-grown fang of a discovered lie:--
all this rushed through him like the agony of terror which fails to kill,
and leaves the ears still open to the returning wave of execration.
The sudden sense of exposure after the re-established sense of
safety came--not to the coarse organization of a criminal but to--
the susceptible nerve of a man whose intensest being lay in such
mastery and predominance as the conditions of his life had shaped
for him.
But in that intense being lay the strength of reaction. Through all
his bodily infirmity there ran a tenacious nerve of ambitious
self-preserving will, which had continually leaped out like a flame,
scattering all doctrinal fears, and which, even while he sat
an object of compassion for the merciful, was beginning to stir
and glow under his ashy paleness. Before the last words were
out of Mr. Hawley's mouth, Bulstrode felt that he should answer,
and that his answer would be a retort. He dared not get up and say,
"I am not guilty, the whole story is false"--even if he had
dared this, it would have seemed to him, under his present keen sense
of betrayal, as vain as to pull, for covering to his nakedness,
a frail rag which would rend at every little strain.
For a few moments there was total silence, while every man
in the room was looking at Bulstrode. He sat perfectly still,
leaning hard against the back of his chair; he could not venture
to rise, and when he began to speak he pressed his hands upon
the seat on each side of him. But his voice was perfectly audible,
though hoarser than usual, and his words were distinctly pronounced,
though he paused between sentence as if short of breath. He said,
turning first toward Mr. Thesiger, and then looking at Mr. Hawley--
"I protest before you, sir, as a Christian minister, against the sanction
of proceedings towards me which are dictated by virulent hatred.
Those who are hostile to me are glad to believe any libel uttered
by a loose tongue against me. And their consciences become strict
against me. Say that the evil-speaking of which I am to be made
the victim accuses me of malpractices--" here Bulstrode's voice
rose and took on a more biting accent, till it seemed a low cry--
"who shall be my accuser? Not men whose own lives are unchristian,
nay, scandalous--not men who themselves use low instruments to
carry out their ends--whose profession is a tissue of chicanery--
who have been spending their income on their own sensual enjoyments,
while I have been devoting mine to advance the best objects with
regard to this life and the next."
After the word chicanery there was a growing noise, half of murmurs
and half of hisses, while four persons started up at once--Mr. Hawley,
Mr. Toller, Mr. Chichely, and Mr. Hackbutt; but Mr. Hawley's
outburst was instantaneous, and left the others behind in silence.
"If you mean me, sir, I call you and every one else to the inspection
of my professional life. As to Christian or unchristian, I repudiate
your canting palavering Christianity; and as to the way in which I
spend my income, it is not my principle to maintain thieves and cheat
offspring of their due inheritance in order to support religion
and set myself up as a saintly Killjoy. I affect no niceness
of conscience--I have not found any nice standards necessary yet
to measure your actions by, sir. And I again call upon you to enter
into satisfactory explanations concerning the scandals against you,
or else to withdraw from posts in which we at any rate decline you
as a colleague. I say, sir, we decline to co-operate with a man
whose character is not cleared from infamous lights cast upon it,
not only by reports but by recent actions."
"Allow me, Mr. Hawley," said the chairman; and Mr. Hawley,
still fuming, bowed half impatiently, and sat down with his hands
thrust deep in his pockets.
"Mr. Bulstrode, it is not desirable, I think, to prolong the
present discussion," said Mr. Thesiger, turning to the pallid
trembling man; "I must so far concur with what has fallen from
Mr. Hawley in expression of a general feeling, as to think it
due to your Christian profession that you should clear yourself,
if possible, from unhappy aspersions. I for my part should be
willing to give you full opportunity and hearing. But I must say
that your present attitude is painfully inconsistent with those
principles which you have sought to identify yourself with, and for
the honor of which I am bound to care. I recommend you at present,
as your clergyman, and one who hopes for your reinstatement
in respect, to quit the room, and avoid further hindrance to business."
Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his hat from the
floor and slowly rose, but he grasped the corner of the chair
so totteringly that Lydgate felt sure there was not strength
enough in him to walk away without support. What could he do?
He could not see a man sink close to him for want of help.
He rose and gave his arm to Bulstrode, and in that way led him out
of the room; yet this act, which might have been one of gentle duty
and pure compassion, was at this moment unspeakably bitter to him.
It seemed as if he were putting his sign-manual to that association
of himself with Bulstrode, of which he now saw the full meaning
as it must have presented itself to other minds. He now felt the
conviction that this man who was leaning tremblingly on his arm,
had given him the thousand pounds as a bribe, and that somehow the
treatment of Raffles had been tampered with from an evil motive.
The inferences were closely linked enough; the town knew of the loan,
believed it to be a bribe, and believed that he took it as a bribe.
Poor Lydgate, his mind struggling under the terrible clutch
of this revelation, was all the while morally forced to take
Mr. Bulstrode to the Bank, send a man off for his carriage,
and wait to accompany him home.
Meanwhile the business of the meeting was despatched, and fringed
off into eager discussion among various groups concerning this
affair of Bulstrode--and Lydgate.
Mr. Brooke, who had before heard only imperfect hints of it,
and was very uneasy that he had "gone a little too far"
in countenancing Bulstrode, now got himself fully informed,
and felt some benevolent sadness in talking to Mr. Farebrother
about the ugly light in which Lydgate had come to be regarded.
Mr. Farebrother was going to walk back to Lowick.
"Step into my carriage," said Mr. Brooke. "I am going round to see
Mrs. Casaubon. She was to come back from Yorkshire last night.
She will like to see me, you know."
So they drove along, Mr. Brooke chatting with good-natured hope
that there had not really been anything black in Lydgate's behavior--
a young fellow whom he had seen to be quite above the common mark,
when he brought a letter from his uncle Sir Godwin. Mr. Farebrother
said little: he was deeply mournful: with a keen perception of
human weakness, he could not be confident that under the pressure
of humiliating needs Lydgate had not fallen below himself.
When the carriage drove up to the gate of the Manor, Dorothea was
out on the gravel, and came to greet them.
"Well, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have just come from a meeting--
a sanitary meeting, you know."
"Was Mr. Lydgate there?" said Dorothea, who looked full of health
and animation, and stood with her head bare under the gleaming
April lights. "I want to see him and have a great consultation
with him about the Hospital. I have engaged with Mr. Bulstrode
to do so."
"Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing bad news--
bad news, you know."
They walked through the garden towards the churchyard gate,
Mr. Farebrother wanting to go on to the parsonage; and Dorothea
heard the whole sad story.
She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear twice over the
facts and impressions concerning Lydgate. After a short silence,
pausing at the churchyard gate, and addressing Mr. Farebrother,
she said energetically--
"You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of anything base?
I will not believe it. Let us find out the truth and clear him!"
BOOK VIII.
SUNSET AND SUNRISE.
CHAPTER LXXII.
Full souls are double mirrors, making still
An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.
Dorothea's impetuous generosity, which would have leaped at once
to the vindication of Lydgate from the suspicion of having
accepted money as a bribe, underwent a melancholy check when she
came to consider all the circumstances of the case by the light
of Mr. Farebrother's experience.
"It is a delicate matter to touch," he said. "How can we begin
to inquire into it? It must be either publicly by setting the
magistrate and coroner to work, or privately by questioning Lydgate.
As to the first proceeding there is no solid ground to go upon,
else Hawley would have adopted it; and as to opening the subject
with Lydgate, I confess I should shrink from it. He would probably
take it as a deadly insult. I have more than once experienced the
difficulty of speaking to him on personal matters. And--one should
know the truth about his conduct beforehand, to feel very confident
of a good result."
"I feel convinced that his conduct has not been guilty: I believe that
people are almost always better than their neighbors think they are,"
said Dorothea. Some of her intensest experience in the last two
years had set her mind strongly in opposition to any unfavorable
construction of others; and for the first time she felt rather
discontented with Mr. Farebrother. She disliked this cautious
weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent faith in efforts
of justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force.
Two days afterwards, he was dining at the Manor with her uncle
and the Chettams, and when the dessert was standing uneaten,
the servants were out of the room, and Mr. Brooke was nodding
in a nap, she returned to the subject with renewed vivacity.
"Mr. Lydgate would understand that if his friends hear a calumny
about him their first wish must be to justify him. What do we
live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me
in MY trouble, and attended me in my illness."
Dorothea's tone and manner were not more energetic than they
had been when she was at the head of her uncle's table nearly
three years before, and her experience since had given her more
right to express a decided opinion. But Sir James Chettam was no
longer the diffident and acquiescent suitor: he was the anxious
brother-in-law, with a devout admiration for his sister, but with a
constant alarm lest she should fall under some new illusion almost
as bad as marrying Casaubon. He smiled much less; when he said
"Exactly" it was more often an introduction to a dissentient opinion
than in those submissive bachelor days; and Dorothea found to her
surprise that she had to resolve not to be afraid of him--all the
more because he was really her best friend. He disagreed with her now.
"But, Dorothea," he said, remonstrantly, "you can't undertake
to manage a man's life for him in that way. Lydgate must know--
at least he will soon come to know how he stands. If he can
clear himself, he will. He must act for himself."
"I think his friends must wait till they find an opportunity,"
added Mr. Farebrother. "It is possible--I have often felt
so much weakness in myself that I can conceive even a man of
honorable disposition, such as I have always believed Lydgate to be,
succumbing to such a temptation as that of accepting money which was
offered more or less indirectly as a bribe to insure his silence
about scandalous facts long gone by. I say, I can conceive this,
if he were under the pressure of hard circumstances--if he had been
harassed as I feel sure Lydgate has been. I would not believe
anything worse of him except under stringent proof. But there is
the terrible Nemesis following on some errors, that it is always
possible for those who like it to interpret them into a crime:
there is no proof in favor of the man outside his own consciousness
and assertion."
"Oh, how cruel!" said Dorothea, clasping her hands. "And would you
not like to be the one person who believed in that man's innocence,
if the rest of the world belied him? Besides, there is a man's
character beforehand to speak for him."
"But, my dear Mrs. Casaubon," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling gently
at her ardor, "character is not cut in marble--it is not something
solid and unalterable. It is something living and changing,
and may become diseased as our bodies do."
"Then it may be rescued and healed," said Dorothea "I should not
be afraid of asking Mr. Lydgate to tell me the truth, that I might
help him. Why should I be afraid? Now that I am not to have
the land, James, I might do as Mr. Bulstrode proposed, and take
his place in providing for the Hospital; and I have to consult
Mr. Lydgate, to know thoroughly what are the prospects of doing
good by keeping up the present plans. There is the best opportunity
in the world for me to ask for his confidence; and he would be able
to tell me things which might make all the circumstances clear.
Then we would all stand by him and bring him out of his trouble.
People glorify all sorts of bravery except the bravery they might
show on behalf of their nearest neighbors." Dorothea's eyes had
a moist brightness in them, and the changed tones of her voice
roused her uncle, who began to listen.
"It is true that a woman may venture on some efforts of sympathy which
would hardly succeed if we men undertook them," said Mr. Farebrother,
almost converted by Dorothea's ardor.
"Surely, a woman is bound to be cautious and listen to those who
know the world better than she does." said Sir James, with his
little frown. "Whatever you do in the end, Dorothea, you should
really keep back at present, and not volunteer any meddling with
this Bulstrode business. We don't know yet what may turn up.
You must agree with me?" he ended, looking at Mr. Farebrother.
"I do think it would be better to wait," said the latter.
"Yes, yes, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, not quite knowing at what point
the discussion had arrived, but coming up to it with a contribution
which was generally appropriate. "It is easy to go too far, you know.
You must not let your ideas run away with you. And as to being
in a hurry to put money into schemes--it won't do, you know.
Garth has drawn me in uncommonly with repairs, draining, that sort
of thing: I'm uncommonly out of pocket with one thing or another.
I must pull up. As for you, Chettam, you are spending a fortune on
those oak fences round your demesne."
Dorothea, submitting uneasily to this discouragement, went with
Celia into the library, which was her usual drawing-room.
"Now, Dodo, do listen to what James says," said Celia, "else you
will be getting into a scrape. You always did, and you always will,
when you set about doing as you please. And I think it is a mercy
now after all that you have got James to think for you. He lets
you have your plans, only he hinders you from being taken in.
And that is the good of having a brother instead of a husband.
A husband would not let you have your plans."
"As if I wanted a husband!" said Dorothea. "I only want not to
have my feelings checked at every turn." Mrs. Casaubon was still
undisciplined enough to burst into angry tears.
"Now, really, Dodo," said Celia, with rather a deeper guttural than usual,
"you ARE contradictory: first one thing and then another.
You used to submit to Mr. Casaubon quite shamefully: I think you
would have given up ever coming to see me if he had asked you."
"Of course I submitted to him, because it was my duty; it was my
feeling for him," said Dorothea, looking through the prism of her tears.
"Then why can't you think it your duty to submit a little to what
James wishes?" said Celia, with a sense of stringency in her argument.
"Because he only wishes what is for your own good. And, of course,
men know best about everything, except what women know better."
Dorothea laughed and forgot her tears.
"Well, I mean about babies and those things," explained Celia.
"I should not give up to James when I knew he was wrong, as you used
to do to Mr. Casaubon."
CHAPTER LXXIII.
Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
May visit you and me.
When Lydgate had allayed Mrs. Bulstrode's anxiety by telling her
that her husband had been seized with faintness at the meeting,
but that he trusted soon to see him better and would call again
the next day, unless she-sent for him earlier, he went directly home,
got on his horse, and rode three miles out of the town for the sake
of being out of reach.
He felt himself becoming violent and unreasonable as if raging
under the pain of stings: he was ready to curse the day on
which he had come to Middlemarch. Everything that bad happened
to him there seemed a mere preparation for this hateful fatality,
which had come as a blight on his honorable ambition, and must make
even people who had only vulgar standards regard his reputation
as irrevocably damaged. In such moments a man can hardly escape
being unloving. Lydgate thought of himself as the sufferer,
and of others as the agents who had injured his lot. He had meant
everything to turn out differently; and others had thrust themselves
into his life and thwarted his purposes. His marriage seemed an
unmitigated calamity; and he was afraid of going to Rosamond before
he had vented himself in this solitary rage, lest the mere sight
of her should exasperate him and make him behave unwarrantably.
There are episodes in most men's lives in which their highest
qualities can only cast a deterring shadow over the objects that fill
their inward vision: Lydgate's tenderheartedness was present just
then only as a dread lest he should offend against it, not as an
emotion that swayed him to tenderness. For he was very miserable.
Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life--
the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it--
can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity
into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.
How was he to live on without vindicating himself among people
who suspected him of baseness? How could he go silently away from
Middlemarch as if he were retreating before a just condemnation?
And yet how was he to set about vindicating himself?
For that scene at the meeting, which he had just witnessed,
although it had told him no particulars, had been enough to make
his own situation thoroughly clear to him. Bulstrode had been
in dread of scandalous disclosures on the part of Raffles.
Lydgate could now construct all the probabilities of the case.
"He was afraid of some betrayal in my hearing: all he wanted was
to bind me to him by a strong obligation: that was why he passed
on a sudden from hardness to liberality. And he may have tampered
with the patient--he may have disobeyed my orders. I fear he did.
But whether he did or not, the world believes that he somehow or other
poisoned the man and that I winked at the crime, if I didn't help
in it. And yet--and yet he may not be guilty of the last offence;
and it is just possible that the change towards me may have been a
genuine relenting--the effect of second thoughts such as he alleged.
What we call the `just possible' is sometimes true and the thing we
find it easier to believe is grossly false. In his last dealings
with this man Bulstrode may have kept his hands pure, in spite of my
suspicion to the contrary."
There was a benumbing cruelty in his position. Even if he renounced
every other consideration than that of justifying himself--
if he met shrugs, cold glances, and avoidance as an accusation,
and made a public statement of all the facts as he knew them,
who would be convinced? It would be playing the part of a fool
to offer his own testimony on behalf of himself, and say, "I did
not take the money as a bribe." The circumstances would always
be stronger than his assertion. And besides, to come forward
and tell everything about himself must include declarations about
Bulstrode which would darken the suspicions of others against him.
He must tell that he had not known of Raffles's existence when he
first mentioned his pressing need of money to Bulstrode, and that
he took the money innocently as a result of that communication,
not knowing that a new motive for the loan might have arisen on
his being called in to this man. And after all, the suspicion
of Bulstrode's motives might be unjust.
But then came the question whether he should have acted in precisely
the same way if he had not taken the money? Certainly, if Raffles had
continued alive and susceptible of further treatment when he arrived,
and he had then imagined any disobedience to his orders on the part
of Bulstrode, he would have made a strict inquiry, and if his conjecture
had been verified he would have thrown up the case, in spite of his
recent heavy obligation. But if he had not received any money--
if Bulstrode had never revoked his cold recommendation of bankruptcy--
would he, Lydgate, have abstained from all inquiry even on finding
the man dead?--would the shrinking from an insult to Bulstrode--
would the dubiousness of all medical treatment and the argument
that his own treatment would pass for the wrong with most members
of his profession--have had just the same force or significance
with him?
That was the uneasy corner of Lydgate's consciousness while he
was reviewing the facts and resisting all reproach. If he
had been independent, this matter of a patient's treatment
and the distinct rule that he must do or see done that which he
believed best for the life committed to him, would have been
the point on which he would have been the sturdiest. As it was,
he had rested in the consideration that disobedience to his orders,
however it might have arisen, could not be considered a crime,
that in the dominant opinion obedience to his orders was just as
likely to be fatal, and that the affair was simply one of etiquette.
Whereas, again and again, in his time of freedom, he had denounced
the perversion of pathological doubt into moral doubt and had said--
"the purest experiment in treatment may still be conscientious:
my business is to take care of life, and to do the best I can
think of for it. Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma.
Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science
is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive."
Alas! the scientific conscience had got into the debasing company of
money obligation and selfish respects.
"Is there a medical man of them all in Middlemarch who would question
himself as I do?" said poor Lydgate, with a renewed outburst of
rebellion against the oppression of his lot. "And yet they will all
feel warranted in making a wide space between me and them, as if I
were a leper! My practice and my reputation are utterly damned--
I can see that. Even if I could be cleared by valid evidence,
it would make little difference to the blessed world here.
I have been set down as tainted and should be cheapened to them
all the same."
Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him,
that just when he had been paying off his debts and getting cheerfully
on his feet, the townsmen were avoiding him or looking strangely.
at him, and in two instances it came to his knowledge that patients
of his had called in another practitioner. The reasons were too
plain now. The general black-balling had begun.
No wonder that in Lydgate's energetic nature the sense of a
hopeless misconstruction easily turned into a dogged resistance.
The scowl which occasionally showed itself on his square brow was not
a meaningless accident. Already when he was re-entering the town
after that ride taken in the first hours of stinging pain, he was
setting his mind on remaining in Middlemarch in spite of the worst
that could be done against him. He would not retreat before calumny,
as if he submitted to it. He would face it to the utmost, and no act
of his should show that he was afraid. It belonged to the generosity
as well as defiant force of his nature that he resolved not to shrink
from showing to the full his sense of obligation to Bulstrode.
It was true that the association with this man had been fatal to him--
true that if he had had the thousand pounds still in his hands with
all his debts unpaid he would have returned the money to Bulstrode,
and taken beggary rather than the rescue which had been sullied with
the suspicion of a bribe (for, remember, he was one of the proudest
among the sons of men)--nevertheless, he would not turn away from
this crushed fellow-mortal whose aid he had used, and make a pitiful
effort to get acquittal for himself by howling against another.
"I shall do as I think right, and explain to nobody. They will try
to starve me out, but--" he was going on with an obstinate resolve,
but he was getting near home, and the thought of Rosamond urged
itself again into that chief place from which it had been thrust
by the agonized struggles of wounded honor and pride.
How would Rosamond take it all? Here was another weight of chain to drag,
and poor Lydgate was in a bad mood for bearing her dumb mastery.
He had no impulse to tell her the trouble which must soon be common
to them both. He preferred waiting for the incidental disclosure
which events must soon bring about.
CHAPTER LXXIV.
"Mercifully grant that we may grow aged together."
--BOOK OF TOBIT: Marriage Prayer.
In Middlemarch a wife could not long remain ignorant that the town
held a bad opinion of her husband. No feminine intimate might carry
her friendship so far as to make a plain statement to the wife of the
unpleasant fact known or believed about her husband; but when a woman
with her thoughts much at leisure got them suddenly employed on
something grievously disadvantageous to her neighbors, various moral
impulses were called into play which tended to stimulate utterance.
Candor was one. To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant,
to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you
did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct,
or their position; and a robust candor never waited to be asked for
its opinion. Then, again, there was the love of truth--a wide phrase,
but meaning in this relation, a lively objection to seeing a wife
look happier than her husband's character warranted, or manifest
too much satisfaction in her lot--the poor thing should have some hint
given her that if she knew the truth she would have less complacency
in her bonnet, and in light dishes for a supper-party. Stronger
than all, there was the regard for a friend's moral improvement,
sometimes called her soul, which was likely to be benefited by remarks
tending to gloom, uttered with the accompaniment of pensive staring
at the furniture and a manner implying that the speaker would not tell
what was on her mind, from regard to the feelings of her hearer.
On the whole, one might say that an ardent charity was at work
setting the virtuous mind to make a neighbor unhappy for her good.
There were hardly any wives in Middlemarch whose matrimonial misfortunes
would in different ways be likely to call forth more of this moral
activity than Rosamond and her aunt Bulstrode. Mrs. Bulstrode
was not an object of dislike, and had never consciously injured any
human being. Men had always thought her a handsome comfortable woman,
and had reckoned it among the signs of Bulstrode's hypocrisy that he
had chosen a red-blooded Vincy, instead of a ghastly and melancholy
person suited to his low esteem for earthly pleasure. When the scandal
about her husband was disclosed they remarked of her--"Ah, poor woman!
She's as honest as the day--SHE never suspected anything wrong
in him, you may depend on it." Women, who were intimate with her,
talked together much of "poor Harriet," imagined what her feelings
must be when she came to know everything, and conjectured how much
she had already come to know. There was no spiteful disposition
towards her; rather, there was a busy benevolence anxious to ascertain
what it would be well for her to feel and do under the circumstances,
which of course kept the imagination occupied with her character
and history from the times when she was Harriet Vincy till now.
With the review of Mrs. Bulstrode and her position it was inevitable
to associate Rosamond, whose prospects were under the same blight
with her aunt's. Rosamond was more severely criticised and less pitied,
though she too, as one of the good old Vincy family who had always
been known in Middlemarch, was regarded as a victim to marriage
with an interloper. The Vincys had their weaknesses, but then they
lay on the surface: there was never anything bad to be "found out"
concerning them. Mrs. Bulstrode was vindicated from any resemblance
to her husband. Harriet's faults were her own.
"She has always been showy," said Mrs. Hackbutt, making tea for
a small party, "though she has got into the way of putting her
religion forward, to conform to her husband; she has tried to hold
her head up above Middlemarch by making it known that she invites
clergymen and heaven-knows-who from Riverston and those places."
"We can hardly blame her for that," said Mrs. Sprague; "because few
of the best people in the town cared to associate with Balstrode,
and she must have somebody to sit down at her table."
"Mr. Thesiger has always countenanced him," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"I think he must be sorry now."
"But he was never fond of him in his heart--that every one knows,"
said Mrs. Tom Toller. "Mr. Thesiger never goes into extremes.
He keeps to the truth in what is evangelical. It is only clergymen
like Mr. Tyke, who want to use Dissenting hymn-books and that low kind
of religion, who ever found Bulstrode to their taste."
"I understand, Mr. Tyke is in great distress about him,"
said Mrs. Hackbutt. "And well he may be: they say the Bulstrodes
have half kept the Tyke family."
"And of coarse it is a discredit to his doctrines," said Mrs. Sprague,
who was elderly, and old-fashioned in her opinions.
"People will not make a boast of being methodistical in Middlemarch
for a good while to come."
"I think we must not set down people's bad actions to their religion,"
said falcon-faced Mrs. Plymdale, who had been listening hitherto.
"Oh, my dear, we are forgetting," said Mrs. Sprague. "We ought
not to be talking of this before you."
"I am sure I have no reason to be partial," said Mrs. Plymdale,
coloring. "It's true Mr. Plymdale has always been on good terms
with Mr. Bulstrode, and Harriet Vincy was my friend long before
she married him. But I have always kept my own opinions and told
her where she was wrong, poor thing. Still, in point of religion,
I must say, Mr. Bulstrode might have done what he has, and worse,
and yet have been a man of no religion. I don't say that there
has not been a little too much of that--I like moderation myself.
But truth is truth. The men tried at the assizes are not all
over-religious, I suppose."
"Well," said Mrs. Hackbutt, wheeling adroitly, "all I can say is,
that I think she ought to separate from him."
"I can't say that," said Mrs. Sprague. "She took him for better
or worse, you know."
"But `worse' can never mean finding out that your husband is fit
for Newgate," said Mrs. Hackbutt. "Fancy living with such a man!
I should expect to be poisoned."
"Yes, I think myself it is an encouragement to crime if such men are
to be taken care of and waited on by good wives," said Mrs. Tom Toller.
"And a good wife poor Harriet has been," said Mrs. Plymdale.
"She thinks her husband the first of men. It's true he has never
denied her anything."
"Well, we shall see what she will do," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"I suppose she knows nothing yet, poor creature. I do hope and trust
I shall not see her, for I should be frightened to death lest I
should say anything about her husband. Do you think any hint has
reached her?"
"I should hardly think so," said Mrs. Tom Toller. "We hear that he
is ill, and has never stirred out of the house since the meeting
on Thursday; but she was with her girls at church yesterday,
and they had new Tuscan bonnets. Her own had a feather in it.
I have never seen that her religion made any difference in her dress."
"She wears very neat patterns always," said Mrs. Plymdale,
a little stung. "And that feather I know she got dyed a pale
lavender on purpose to be consistent. I must say it of Harriet
that she wishes to do right."
"As to her knowing what has happened, it can't be kept from her long,"
said Mrs. Hackbutt. "The Vincys know, for Mr. Vincy was at the meeting.
It will he a great blow to him. There is his daughter as well
as his sister."
"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Sprague. "Nobody supposes that Mr. Lydgate
can go on holding up his head in Middlemarch, things look so black
about the thousand pounds he took just at that man's death.
It really makes one shudder."
"Pride must have a fall," said Mrs. Hackbutt.
"I am not so sorry for Rosamond Vincy that was as I am for her aunt,"
said Mrs. Plymdale. "She needed a lesson."
"I suppose the Bulstrodes will go and live abroad somewhere,"
said Mrs. Sprague. "That is what is generally done when there is
anything disgraceful in a family."
"And a most deadly blow it will be to Harriet," said Mrs. Plymdale.
"If ever a woman was crushed, she will be. I pity her from my heart.
And with all her faults, few women are better. From a girl she had
the neatest ways, and was always good-hearted, and as open as the day.
You might look into her drawers when you would--always the same.
And so she has brought up Kate and Ellen. You may think how hard it
will be for her to go among foreigners."
"The doctor says that is what he should recommend the Lydgates to do,"
said Mrs. Sprague. "He says Lydgate ought to have kept among
the French."
"That would suit HER well enough, I dare say," said Mrs. Plymdale;
"there is that kind of lightness about her. But she got that from
her mother; she never got it from her aunt Bulstrode, who always
gave her good advice, and to my knowledge would rather have had
her marry elsewhere."
Mrs. Plymdale was in a situation which caused her some complication
of feeling. There had been not only her intimacy with Mrs. Bulstrode,
but also a profitable business relation of the great Plymdale dyeing
house with Mr. Bulstrode, which on the one hand would have inclined
her to desire that the mildest view of his character should be
the true one, but on the other, made her the more afraid of seeming
to palliate his culpability. Again, the late alliance of her family
with the Tollers had brought her in connection with the best circle,
which gratified her in every direction except in the inclination to
those serious views which she believed to be the best in another sense.
The sharp little woman's conscience was somewhat troubled in
the adjustment of these opposing "bests," and of her griefs and
satisfactions under late events, which were likely to humble those
who needed humbling, but also to fall heavily on her old friend whose
faults she would have preferred seeing on a background of prosperity.
Poor Mrs. Bulstrode, meanwhile, had been no further shaken by the
oncoming tread of calamity than in the busier stirring of that secret
uneasiness which had always been present in her since the last
visit of Raffles to The Shrubs. That the hateful man had come ill
to Stone Court, and that her husband had chosen to remain there
and watch over him, she allowed to be explained by the fact that
Raffles had been employed and aided in earlier-days, and that this
made a tie of benevolence towards him in his degraded helplessness;
and she had been since then innocently cheered by her husband's
more hopeful speech about his own health and ability to continue
his attention to business. The calm was disturbed when Lydgate had
brought him home ill from the meeting, and in spite of comforting
assurances during the next few days, she cried in private from
the conviction that her husband was not suffering from bodily
illness merely, but from something that afflicted his mind.
He would not allow her to read to him, and scarcely to sit with him,
alleging nervous susceptibility to sounds and movements; yet she
suspected that in shutting himself up in his private room he wanted
to be busy with his papers. Something, she felt sure, had happened.
Perhaps it was some great loss of money; and she was kept in the dark.
Not daring to question her husband, she said to Lydgate, on the fifth
day after the meeting, when she had not left home except to go to church--
"Mr. Lydgate, pray be open with me: I like to know the truth.
Has anything happened to Mr. Bulstrode?"
"Some little nervous shock," said Lydgate, evasively. He felt
that it was not for him to make the painful revelation.
"But what brought it on?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, looking directly
at him with her large dark eyes.
"There is often something poisonous in the air of public rooms,"
said Lydgate. "Strong men can stand it, but it tells on people
in proportion to the delicacy of their systems. It is often
impossible to account for the precise moment of an attack--or rather,
to say why the strength gives way at a particular moment."
Mrs. Bulstrode was not satisfied with this answer. There remained
in her the belief that some calamity had befallen her husband,
of which she was to be kept in ignorance; and it was in her nature
strongly to object to such concealment. She begged leave for her
daughters to sit with their father, and drove into the town to pay
some visits, conjecturing that if anything were known to have gone
wrong in Mr. Bulstrode's affairs, she should see or hear some sign
of it.
She called on Mrs. Thesiger, who was not at home, and then
drove to Mrs. Hackbutt's on the other side of the churchyard.
Mrs. Hackbutt saw her coming from an up-stairs window, and remembering
her former alarm lest she should meet Mrs. Bulstrode, felt almost
bound in consistency to send word that she was not at home;
but against that, there was a sudden strong desire within her for
the excitement of an interview in which she was quite determined
not to make the slightest allusion to what was in her mind.
Hence Mrs. Bulstrode was shown into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Hackbutt
went to her, with more tightness of lip and rubbing of her hands than
was usually observable in her, these being precautions adopted against
freedom of speech. She was resolved not to ask how Mr. Bulstrode was.
"I have not been anywhere except to church for nearly a week,"
said Mrs. Bulstrode, after a few introductory remarks.
"But Mr. Bulstrode was taken so ill at the meeting on Thursday
that I have not liked to leave the house."
Mrs. Hackbutt rubbed the back of one hand with the palm of the other
held against her chest, and let her eyes ramble over the pattern
on the rug.
"Was Mr. Hackbutt at the meeting?" persevered Mrs. Bulstrode.
"Yes, he was," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with the same attitude.
"The land is to be bought by subscription, I believe."
"Let us hope that there will be no more cases of cholera to be
buried in it," said Mrs. Bulstrode. "It is an awful visitation.
But I always think Middlemarch a very healthy spot. I suppose it
is being used to it from a child; but I never saw the town I should
like to live at better, and especially our end."
"I am sure I should be glad that you always should live at Middlemarch,
Mrs. Bulstrode," said Mrs. Hackbutt, with a slight sigh. "Still, we
must learn to resign ourselves, wherever our lot may be east.
Though I am sure there will always be people in this town who will
wish you well."
Mrs. Hackbutt longed to say, "if you take my advice you will part
from your husband," but it seemed clear to her that the poor
woman knew nothing of the thunder ready to bolt on her head,
and she herself could do no more than prepare her a little.
Mrs. Bulstrode felt suddenly rather chill and trembling: there was
evidently something unusual behind this speech of Mrs. Hackbutt's;
but though she had set out with the desire to be fully informed,
she found herself unable now to pursue her brave purpose, and turning
the conversation by an inquiry about the young Hackbutts, she soon
took her leave saying that she was going to see Mrs. Plymdale.
On her way thither she tried to imagine that there might have been
some unusually warm sparring at the meeting between Mr. Bulstrode and
some of his frequent opponents--perhaps Mr. Hackbutt might have been
one of them. That would account for everything.
But when she was in conversation with Mrs. Plymdale that comforting
explanation seemed no longer tenable. "Selina" received her with a
pathetic affectionateness and a disposition to give edifying answers on
the commonest topics, which could hardly have reference to an ordinary
quarrel of which the most important consequence was a perturbation
of Mr. Bulstrode's health. Beforehand Mrs. Bulstrode had thought
that she would sooner question Mrs. Plymdale than any one else;
but she found to her surprise that an old friend is not always
the person whom it is easiest to make a confidant of: there was
the barrier of remembered communication under other circumstances--
there was the dislike of being pitied and informed by one who had been
long wont to allow her the superiority. For certain words of mysterious
appropriateness that Mrs. Plymdale let fall about her resolution
never to turn her back on her friends, convinced Mrs. Bulstrode
that what had happened must be some kind of misfortune, and instead
of being able to say with her native directness, "What is it that you
have in your mind?" she found herself anxious to get away before she
had heard anything more explicit. She began to have an agitating
certainty that the misfortune was something more than the mere
loss of money, being keenly sensitive to the fact that Selina now,
just as Mrs. Hackbutt had done before, avoided noticing what she said
about her husband, as they would have avoided noticing a personal blemish.
She said good-by with nervous haste, and told the coachman to drive
to Mr. Vincy's warehouse. In that short drive her dread gathered
so much force from the sense of darkness, that when she entered
the private counting-house where her brother sat at his desk,
her knees trembled and her usually florid face was deathly pale.
Something of the same effect was produced in him by the sight of her:
he rose from his seat to meet her, took her by the hand, and said,
with his impulsive rashness--
"God help you, Harriet! you know all."
That moment was perhaps worse than any which came after. It contained
that concentrated experience which in great crises of emotion
reveals the bias of a nature, and is prophetic of the ultimate
act which will end an intermediate struggle. Without that memory
of Raffles she might still have thought only of monetary ruin,
but now along with her brother's look and words there darted into
her mind the idea of some guilt in her husband--then, under the
working of terror came the image of her husband exposed to disgrace--
and then, after an instant of scorching shame in which she felt
only the eyes of the world, with one leap of her heart she was
at his side in mournful but unreproaching fellowship with shame
and isolation. All this went on within her in a mere flash of time--
while she sank into the chair, and raised her eyes to her brother,
who stood over her. "I know nothing, Walter. What is it?"
she said, faintly.
He told her everything, very inartificially, in slow fragments,
making her aware that the scandal went much beyond proof,
especially as to the end of Raffles.
"People will talk," he said. "Even if a man has been acquitted by
a jury, they'll talk, and nod and wink--and as far as the world goes,
a man might often as well be guilty as not. It's a breakdown blow,
and it damages Lydgate as much as Bulstrode. I don't pretend to say
what is the truth. I only wish we had never heard the name of either
Bulstrode or Lydgate. You'd better have been a Vincy all your life,
and so had Rosamond." Mrs. Bulstrode made no reply.
"But you must bear up as well as you can, Harriet. People don't blame
YOU. And I'll stand by you whatever you make up your mind to do,"
said the brother, with rough but well-meaning affectionateness.
"Give me your arm to the carriage, Walter," said Mrs. Bulstrode.
"I feel very weak."
And when she got home she was obliged to say to her daughter, "I am
not well, my dear; I must go and lie down. Attend to your papa.
Leave me in quiet. I shall take no dinner."
She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her
maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk
steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen
on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently:
the twenty years in which she had believed in him and venerated
him by virtue of his concealments came back with particulars
that made them seem an odious deceit. He had married her with
that bad past life hidden behind him, and she had no faith left
to protest his innocence of the worst that was imputed to him.
Her honest ostentatious nature made the sharing of a merited
dishonor as bitter as it could be to any mortal.
But this imperfectly taught woman, whose phrases and habits were
an odd patchwork, had a loyal spirit within her. The man whose
prosperity she had shared through nearly half a life, and who
had unvaryingly cherished her--now that punishment had befallen
him it was not possible to her in any sense to forsake him.
There is a forsaking which still sits at the same board and lies
on the same couch with the forsaken soul, withering it the more by
unloving proximity. She knew, when she locked her door, that she
should unlock it ready to go down to her unhappy husband and espouse
his sorrow, and say of his guilt, I will mourn and not reproach.
But she needed time to gather up her strength; she needed to sob
out her farewell to all the gladness and pride of her life.
When she had resolved to go down, she prepared herself by some
little acts which might seem mere folly to a hard onlooker;
they were her way of expressing to all spectators visible or invisible
that she had begun a new life in which she embraced humiliation.
She took off all her ornaments and put on a plain black gown,
and instead of wearing her much-adorned cap and large bows of hair,
she brushed her hair down and put on a plain bonnet-cap, which made
her look suddenly like an early Methodist.
Bulstrode, who knew that his wife had been out and had come in
saying that she was not well, had spent the time in an agitation
equal to hers. He had looked forward to her learning the truth
from others, and had acquiesced in that probability, as something
easier to him than any confession. But now that he imagined the
moment of her knowledge come, he awaited the result in anguish.
His daughters had been obliged to consent to leave him, and though he
had allowed some food to be brought to him, he had not touched it.
He felt himself perishing slowly in unpitied misery. Perhaps he
should never see his wife's face with affection in it again.
And if he turned to God there seemed to be no answer but the pressure
of retribution.
It was eight o'clock in the evening before the door opened and his
wife entered. He dared not look up at her. He sat with his eyes
bent down, and as she went towards him she thought he looked smaller--
he seemed so withered and shrunken. A movement of new compassion
and old tenderness went through her like a great wave, and putting
one hand on his which rested on the arm of the chair, and the other
on his shoulder, she said, solemnly but kindly--
"Look up, Nicholas."
He raised his eyes with a little start and looked at her half
amazed for a moment: her pale face, her changed, mourning dress,
the trembling about her mouth, all said, "I know;" and her hands
and eyes rested gently on him. He burst out crying and they
cried together, she sitting at his side. They could not yet speak
to each other of the shame which she was bearing with him, or of the
acts which had brought it down on them. His confession was silent,
and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Open-minded as she was,
she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their
mutual consciousness, as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire.
She could not say, "How much is only slander and false suspicion?"
and he did not say, "I am innocent."
CHAPTER LXXV.
"Le sentiment de la faussete' des plaisirs presents, et l'ignorance
de la vanite des plaisirs absents, causent l'inconstance."--PASCAL.
Rosamond had a gleam of returning cheerfulness when the house was freed
from the threatening figure, and when all the disagreeable creditors
were paid. But she was not joyous: her married life had fulfilled
none of her hopes, and had been quite spoiled for her imagination.
In this brief interval of calm, Lydgate, remembering that he had
often been stormy in his hours of perturbation, and mindful of the
pain Rosamond had had to bear, was carefully gentle towards her;
but he, too, had lost some of his old spirit, and he still felt it
necessary to refer to an economical change in their way of living
as a matter of course, trying to reconcile her to it gradually,
and repressing his anger when she answered by wishing that he
would go to live in London. When she did not make this answer,
she listened languidly, and wondered what she had that was worth
living for. The hard and contemptuous words which had fallen from
her husband in his anger had deeply offended that vanity which he
had at first called into active enjoyment; and what she regarded
as his perverse way of looking at things, kept up a secret repulsion,
which made her receive all his tenderness as a poor substitute
for the happiness he had failed to give her. They were at a
disadvantage with their neighbors, and there was no longer any
outlook towards Quallingham--there was no outlook anywhere except
in an occasional letter from Will Ladislaw. She had felt stung and
disappointed by Will's resolution to quit Middlemarch, for in spite
of what she knew and guessed about his admiration for Dorothea,
she secretly cherished the belief that he had, or would necessarily
come to have, much more admiration for herself; Rosamond being one
of those women who live much in the idea that each man they meet
would have preferred them if the preference had not been hopeless.
Mrs. Casaubon was all very well; but Will's interest in her dated before
he knew Mrs. Lydgate. Rosamond took his way of talking to herself,
which was a mixture of playful fault-finding and hyperbolical gallantry,
as the disguise of a deeper feeling; and in his presence she felt
that agreeable titillation of vanity and sense of romantic drama
which Lydgate's presence had no longer the magic to create.
She even fancied--what will not men and women fancy in these matters?--
that Will exaggerated his admiration for Mrs. Casaubon in order
to pique herself. In this way poor Rosamond's brain had been
busy before Will's departure. He would have made, she thought,
a much more suitable husband for her than she had found in Lydgate.
No notion could have been falser than this, for Rosamond's discontent
in her marriage was due to the conditions of marriage itself,
to its demand for self-suppression and tolerance, and not to the
nature of her husband; but the easy conception of an unreal Better
had a sentimental charm which diverted her ennui. She constructed
a little romance which was to vary the flatness of her life:
Will Ladislaw was always to be a bachelor and live near her,
always to be at her command, and have an understood though never
fully expressed passion for her, which would be sending out lambent
flames every now and then in interesting scenes. His departure
had been a proportionate disappointment, and had sadly increased
her weariness of Middlemarch; but at first she had the alternative
dream of pleasures in store from her intercourse with the family
at Quallingham. Since then the troubles of her married life
had deepened, and the absence of other relief encouraged her regretful
rumination over that thin romance which she had once fed on.
Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their
vague uneasy longings, sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion,
and oftener still for a mighty love. Will Ladislaw had written
chatty letters, half to her and half to Lydgate, and she had replied:
their separation, she felt, was not likely to be final, and the change
she now most longed for was that Lydgate should go to live in London;
everything would be agreeable in London; and she had set to work
with quiet determination to win this result, when there came a sudden,
delightful promise which inspirited her.
It came shortly before the memorable meeting at the town-hall,
and was nothing less than a letter from Will Ladislaw to Lydgate,
which turned indeed chiefly on his new interest in plans of colonization,
but mentioned incidentally, that he might find it necessary to pay
a visit to Middlemarch within the next few weeks--a very pleasant
necessity, he said, almost as good as holidays to a schoolboy.
He hoped there was his old place on the rug, and a great deal of
music in store for him. But he was quite uncertain as to the time.
While Lydgate was reading the letter to Rosamond, her face looked
like a reviving flower--it grew prettier and more blooming.
There was nothing unendurable now: the debts were paid, Mr. Ladislaw
was coming, and Lydgate would be persuaded to leave Middlemarch
and settle in London, which was "so different from a provincial town."
That was a bright bit of morning. But soon the sky became black
over poor Rosamond. The presence of a new gloom in her husband,
about which he was entirely reserved towards her--for he dreaded
to expose his lacerated feeling to her neutrality and misconception--
soon received a painfully strange explanation, alien to all her
previous notions of what could affect her happiness. In the new
gayety of her spirits, thinking that Lydgate had merely a worse fit
of moodiness than usual, causing him to leave her remarks unanswered,
and evidently to keep out of her way as much as possible, she chose,
a few days after the meeting, and without speaking to him on
the subject, to send out notes of invitation for a small evening party,
feeling convinced that this was a judicious step, since people seemed
to have been keeping aloof from them, and wanted restoring to the
old habit of intercourse. When the invitations had been accepted,
she would tell Lydgate, and give him a wise admonition as to how
a medical man should behave to his neighbors; for Rosamond had
the gravest little airs possible about other people's duties.
But all the invitations were declined, and the last answer came
into Lydgate's hands.
"This is Chichely's scratch. What is he writing to you about?"
said Lydgate, wonderingly, as he handed the note to her.
She was obliged to let him see it, and, looking at her severely,
he said--
"Why on earth have you been sending out invitations without
telling me, Rosamond? I beg, I insist that you will not invite
any one to this house. I suppose you have been inviting others,
and they have refused too." She said nothing.
"Do you hear me?" thundered Lydgate.
"Yes, certainly I hear you," said Rosamond, turning her head aside
with the movement of a graceful long-necked bird.
Lydgate tossed his head without any grace and walked out of the room,
feeling himself dangerous. Rosamond's thought was, that he
was getting more and more unbearable--not that there was any new
special reason for this peremptoriness His indisposition to tell
her anything in which he was sure beforehand that she would not be
interested was growing into an unreflecting habit, and she was in
ignorance of everything connected with the thousand pounds except
that the loan had come from her uncle Bulstrode. Lydgate's odious
humors and their neighbors' apparent avoidance of them had an
unaccountable date for her in their relief from money difficulties.
If the invitations had been accepted she would have gone to invite
her mamma and the rest, whom she had seen nothing of for several days;
and she now put on her bonnet to go and inquire what had become
of them all, suddenly feeling as if there were a conspiracy to leave
her in isolation with a husband disposed to offend everybody.
It was after the dinner hour, and she found her father and mother
seated together alone in the drawing-room. They greeted her with
sad looks, saying "Well, my dear!" and no more. She had never seen
her father look so downcast; and seating herself near him she said--
"Is there anything the matter, papa?"
He did not answer, but Mrs. Vincy said, "Oh, my dear, have you
heard nothing? It won't be long before it reaches you."
"Is it anything about Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning pale.
The idea of trouble immediately connected itself with what had been
unaccountable to her in him.
"Oh, my dear, yes. To think of your marrying into this trouble.
Debt was bad enough, but this will be worse."
"Stay, stay, Lucy," said Mr. Vincy. "Have you heard nothing about
your uncle Bulstrode, Rosamond?"
"No, papa," said the poor thing, feeling as if trouble were not
anything she had before experienced, but some invisible power
with an iron grasp that made her soul faint within her.
Her father told her everything, saying at the end, "It's better
for you to know, my dear. I think Lydgate must leave the town.
Things have gone against him. I dare say he couldn't help it.
I don't accuse him of any harm," said Mr. Vincy. He had always before
been disposed to find the utmost fault with Lydgate.
The shock to Rosamond was terrible. It seemed to her that no lot
could be so cruelly hard as hers to have married a man who had
become the centre of infamous suspicions. In many cases it is
inevitable that the shame is felt to be the worst part of crime;
and it would have required a great deal of disentangling reflection,
such as had never entered into Rosamond's life, for her in these
moments to feel that her trouble was less than if her husband
had been certainly known to have done something criminal.
All the shame seemed to be there. And she had innocently married
this man with the belief that he and his family were a glory to her!
She showed her usual reticence to her parents, and only said,
that if Lydgate had done as she wished he would have left Middlemarch
long ago.
"She bears it beyond anything," said her mother when she was gone.
"Ah, thank God!" said Mr. Vincy, who was much broken down.
But Rosamond went home with a sense of justified repugnance towards
her husband. What had he really done--how had he really acted?
She did not know. Why had he not told her everything? He did not
speak to her on the subject, and of course she could not speak to him.
It came into her mind once that she would ask her father to let
her go home again; but dwelling on that prospect made it seem utter
dreariness to her: a married woman gone back to live with her parents--
life seemed to have no meaning for her in such a position:
she could not contemplate herself in it.
The next two days Lydgate observed a change in her, and believed that she
had heard the bad news. Would she speak to him about it, or would she
go on forever in the silence which seemed to imply that she believed
him guilty? We must remember that he was in a morbid state of mind,
in which almost all contact was pain. Certainly Rosamond in this
case had equal reason to complain of reserve and want of confidence
on his part; but in the bitterness of his soul he excused himself;--
was he not justified in shrinking from the task of telling her,
since now she knew the truth she had no impulse to speak to him?
But a deeper-lying consciousness that he was in fault made
him restless, and the silence between them became intolerable to him;
it was as if they were both adrift on one piece of wreck and looked
away from each other.
He thought, "I am a fool. Haven't I given up expecting anything?
I have married care, not help." And that evening he said--
"Rosamond, have you heard anything that distresses you?"
"Yes," she answered, laying down her work, which she had been carrying
on with a languid semi-consciousness, most unlike her usual self.
"What have you heard?"
"Everything, I suppose. Papa told me."
"That people think me disgraced?"
"Yes," said Rosamond, faintly, beginning to sew again automatically.
There was silence. Lydgate thought, "If she has any trust in me--
any notion of what I am, she ought to speak now and say that she does
not believe I have deserved disgrace."
But Rosamond on her side went on moving her fingers languidly.
Whatever was to be said on the subject she expected to come from Tertius.
What did she know? And if he were innocent of any wrong, why did
he not do something to clear himself?
This silence of hers brought a new rush of gall to that bitter mood
in which Lydgate had been saying to himself that nobody believed
in him--even Farebrother had not come forward. He had begun to
question her with the intent that their conversation should disperse
the chill fog which had gathered between them, but he felt his
resolution checked by despairing resentment. Even this trouble,
like the rest, she seemed to regard as if it were hers alone.
He was always to her a being apart, doing what she objected to.
He started from his chair with an angry impulse, and thrusting his hands
in his pockets, walked up and down the room. There was an underlying
consciousness all the while that he should have to master this anger,
and tell her everything, and convince her of the facts. For he had
almost learned the lesson that he must bend himself to her nature,
and that because she came short in her sympathy, he must give the more.
Soon he recurred to his intention of opening himself: the occasion
must not be lost. If he could bring her to feel with some solemnity
that here was a slander which must be met and not run away from,
and that the whole trouble had come out of his desperate want of money,
it would be a moment for urging powerfully on her that they should be
one in the resolve to do with as little money as possible, so that
they might weather the bad time and keep themselves independent.
He would mention the definite measures which he desired to take,
and win her to a willing spirit. He was bound to try this--and what
else was there for him to do?
He did not know how long he had been walking uneasily backwards
and forwards, but Rosamond felt that it was long, and wished that he
would sit down. She too had begun to think this an opportunity for
urging on Tertius what he ought to do. Whatever might be the truth
about all this misery, there was one dread which asserted itself.
Lydgate at last seated himself, not in his usual chair,
but in one nearer to Rosamond, leaning aside in it towards her,
and looking at her gravely before he reopened the sad subject.
He had conquered himself so far, and was about to speak with a sense
of solemnity, as on an occasion which was not to be repeated.
He had even opened his lips, when Rosamond, letting her hands fall,
looked at him and said--
"Surely, Tertius--"
"Well?"
"Surely now at last you have given up the idea of staying in Middlemarch.
I cannot go on living here. Let us go to London. Papa, and every
one else, says you had better go. Whatever misery I have to put
up with, it will be easier away from here."
Lydgate felt miserably jarred. Instead of that critical outpouring
for which he had prepared himself with effort, here was the old
round to be gone through again. He could not bear it. With a quick
change of countenance he rose and went out of the room.
Perhaps if he had been strong enough to persist in his determination
to be the more because she was less, that evening might have had
a better issue. If his energy could have borne down that check,
he might still have wrought on Rosamond's vision and will.
We cannot be sure that any natures, however inflexible or peculiar,
will resist this effect from a more massive being than their own.
They may be taken by storm and for the moment converted, becoming part
of the soul which enwraps them in the ardor of its movement.
But poor Lydgate had a throbbing pain within him, and his energy
had fallen short of its task.
The beginning of mutual understanding and resolve seemed as far off
as ever; nay, it seemed blocked out by the sense of unsuccessful effort.
They lived on from day to day with their thoughts still apart,
Lydgate going about what work he had in a mood of despair,
and Rosamond feeling, with some justification, that he was
behaving cruelly. It was of no use to say anything to Tertius;
but when Will Ladislaw came, she was determined to tell him everything.
In spite of her general reticence, she needed some one who would
recognize her wrongs.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
"To mercy, pity, peace, and love
All pray in their distress,
And to these virtues of delight,
Return their thankfulness.
. . . . . .
For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face;
And Love, the human form divine;
And Peace, the human dress.
--WILLIAM BLAKE: Songs of Innocence.
Some days later, Lydgate was riding to Lowick Manor, in consequence
of a summons from Dorothea. The summons had not been unexpected,
since it had followed a letter from Mr. Bulstrode, in which he stated
that he had resumed his arrangements for quitting Middlemarch, and must
remind Lydgate of his previous communications about the Hospital,
to the purport of which he still adhered. It had been his duty,
before taking further steps, to reopen the subject with Mrs. Casaubon,
who now wished, as before, to discuss the question with Lydgate.
"Your views may possibly have undergone some change," wrote Mr. Bulstrode;
"but, in that case also, it is desirable that you should lay them
before her."
Dorothea awaited his arrival with eager interest. Though, in
deference to her masculine advisers, she had refrained from what
Sir James had called "interfering in this Bulstrode business,"
the hardship of Lydgate's position was continually in her mind,
and when Bulstrode applied to her again about the hospital,
she felt that the opportunity was come to her which she had been
hindered from hastening. In her luxurious home, wandering under
the boughs of her own great trees, her thought was going out over
the lot of others, and her emotions were imprisoned. The idea
of some active good within her reach, "haunted her like a passion,"
and another's need having once come to her as a distinct image,
preoccupied her desire with the yearning to give relief, and made
her own ease tasteless. She was full of confident hope about
this interview with Lydgate, never heeding what was said of his
personal reserve; never heeding that she was a very young woman.
Nothing could have seemed more irrelevant to Dorothea than insistence
on her youth and sex when she was moved to show her human fellowship.
As she sat waiting in the library, she could do nothing but live through
again all the past scenes which had brought Lydgate into her memories.
They all owed their significance to her marriage and its troubles--
but no; there were two occasions in which the image of Lydgate
had come painfully in connection with his wife and some one else.
The pain had been allayed for Dorothea, but it had left in her an
awakened conjecture as to what Lydgate's marriage might be to him,
a susceptibility to the slightest hint about Mrs. Lydgate.
These thoughts were like a drama to her, and made her eyes bright,
and gave an attitude of suspense to her whole frame, though she was
only looking out from the brown library on to the turf and the bright
green buds which stood in relief against the dark evergreens.
When Lydgate came in, she was almost shocked at the change in his face,
which was strikingly perceptible to her who had not seen him for
two months. It was not the change of emaciation, but that effect
which even young faces will very soon show from the persistent presence
of resentment and despondency. Her cordial look, when she put
out her hand to him, softened his expression, but only with melancholy.
"I have wished very much to see you for a long while, Mr. Lydgate,"
said Dorothea when they were seated opposite each other; "but I put
off asking you to come until Mr. Bulstrode applied to me again about
the Hospital. I know that the advantage of keeping the management
of it separate from that of the Infirmary depends on you, or, at least,
on the good which you are encouraged to hope for from having it
under your control. And I am sure you will not refuse to tell me
exactly what you think."
"You want to decide whether you should give a generous support
to the Hospital," said Lydgate. "I cannot conscientiously
advise you to do it in dependence on any activity of mine.
I may be obliged to leave the town."
He spoke curtly, feeling the ache of despair as to his being able
to carry out any purpose that Rosamond had set her mind against.
"Not because there is no one to believe in you?" said Dorothea,
pouring out her words in clearness from a full heart. "I know
the unhappy mistakes about you. I knew them from the first moment
to be mistakes. You have never done anything vile. You would not
do anything dishonorable."
It was the first assurance of belief in him that had fallen on
Lydgate's ears. He drew a deep breath, and said, "Thank you."
He could say no more: it was something very new and strange in his
life that these few words of trust from a woman should be so much
to him.
"I beseech you to tell me how everything was," said Dorothea,
fearlessly. "I am sure that the truth would clear you."
Lydgate started up from his chair and went towards the window,
forgetting where he was. He had so often gone over in his mind
the possibility of explaining everything without aggravating
appearances that would tell, perhaps unfairly, against Bulstrode,
and had so often decided against it--he had so often said to
himself that his assertions would not change people's impressions--
that Dorothea's words sounded like a temptation to do something
which in his soberness he had pronounced to be unreasonable.
"Tell me, pray," said Dorothea, with simple earnestness;
"then we can consult together. It is wicked to let people think
evil of any one falsely, when it can be hindered."
Lydgate turned, remembering where he was, and saw Dorothea's face
looking up at him with a sweet trustful gravity. The presence
of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity,
changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger,
quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged
in the wholeness of our character. That influence was beginning
to act on Lydgate, who had for many days been seeing all life as one
who is dragged and struggling amid the throng. He sat down again,
and felt that he was recovering his old self in the consciousness
that he was with one who believed in it.
"I don't want," he said, "to bear hard on Bulstrode, who has lent
me money of which I was in need--though I would rather have gone
without it now. He is hunted down and miserable, and has only a poor
thread of life in him. But I should like to tell you everything.
It will be a comfort to me to speak where belief has gone beforehand,
and where I shall not seem to be offering assertions of my own honesty.
You will feel what is fair to another, as you feel what is fair
to me."
"Do trust me," said Dorothea; "I will not repeat anything without
your leave. But at the very least, I could say that you have made
all the circumstances clear to me, and that I know you are not in
any way guilty. Mr. Farebrother would believe me, and my uncle,
and Sir James Chettam. Nay, there are persons in Middlemarch to
whom I could go; although they don't know much of me, they would
believe me. They would know that I could have no other motive
than truth and justice. I would take any pains to clear you.
I have very little to do. There is nothing better that I can do
in the world."
Dorothea's voice, as she made this childlike picture of what she
would do, might have been almost taken as a proof that she could
do it effectively. The searching tenderness of her woman's tones
seemed made for a defence against ready accusers. Lydgate did
not stay to think that she was Quixotic: he gave himself up,
for the first time in his life, to the exquisite sense of leaning
entirely on a generous sympathy, without any check of proud reserve.
And he told her everything, from the time when, under the pressure
of his difficulties, he unwillingly made his first application
to Bulstrode; gradually, in the relief of speaking, getting into
a more thorough utterance of what had gone on in his mind--
entering fully into the fact that his treatment of the patient
was opposed to the dominant practice, into his doubts at the last,
his ideal of medical duty, and his uneasy consciousness that the
acceptance of the money had made some difference in his private
inclination and professional behavior, though not in his fulfilment
of any publicly recognized obligation.
"It has come to my knowledge since," he added, "that Hawley sent
some one to examine the housekeeper at Stone Court, and she said
that she gave the patient all the opium in the phial I left,
as well as a good deal of brandy. But that would not have been
opposed to ordinary prescriptions, even of first-rate men.
The suspicions against me had no hold there: they are grounded
on the knowledge that I took money, that Bulstrode had strong
motives for wishing the man to die, and that he gave me the money
as a bribe to concur in some malpractices or other against
the patient--that in any case I accepted a bribe to hold my tongue.
They are just the suspicions that cling the most obstinately,
because they lie in people's inclination and can never be disproved.
How my orders came to be disobeyed is a question to which I don't
know the answer. It is still possible that Bulstrode was innocent
of any criminal intention--even possible that he had nothing to do
with the disobedience, and merely abstained from mentioning it.
But all that has nothing to do with the public belief. It is one of
those cases on which a man is condemned on the ground of his character--
it is believed that he has committed a crime in some undefined way,
because he had the motive for doing it; and Bulstrode's character
has enveloped me, because I took his money. I am simply blighted--
like a damaged ear of corn--the business is done and can't
be undone."
"Oh, it is hard!" said Dorothea. "I understand the difficulty there
is in your vindicating yourself. And that all this should have come
to you who had meant to lead a higher life than the common, and to find
out better ways--I cannot bear to rest in this as unchangeable.
I know you meant that. I remember what you said to me when you first
spoke to me about the hospital. There is no sorrow I have thought
more about than that--to love what is great, and try to reach it,
and yet to fail."
"Yes," said Lydgate, feeling that here he had found room for the full
meaning of his grief. "I had some ambition. I meant everything to be
different with me. I thought I had more strength and mastery. But
the most terrible obstacles are such as nobody can see except oneself."
"Suppose," said Dorothea, meditatively,--"suppose we kept on the
Hospital according to the present plan, and you stayed here though
only with the friendship and support of a few, the evil feeling
towards you would gradually die out; there would come opportunities
in which people would be forced to acknowledge that they had been
unjust to you, because they would see that your purposes were pure.
You may still win a great fame like the Louis and Laennec I have
heard you speak of, and we shall all be proud of you," she ended,
with a smile.
"That might do if I had my old trust in myself," said Lydgate,
mournfully. "Nothing galls me more than the notion of turning round
and running away before this slander, leaving it unchecked behind me.
Still, I can't ask any one to put a great deal of money into a plan
which depends on me."
"It would be quite worth my while," said Dorothea, simply. "Only think.
I am very uncomfortable with my money, because they tell me I have too
little for any great scheme of the sort I like best, and yet I have
too much. I don't know what to do. I have seven hundred a-year of my
own fortune, and nineteen hundred a-year that Mr. Casaubon left me,
and between three and four thousand of ready money in the bank.
I wished to raise money and pay it off gradually out of my income
which I don't want, to buy land with and found a village which should
be a school of industry; but Sir James and my uncle have convinced
me that the risk would be too great. So you see that what I should
most rejoice at would be to have something good to do with my money:
I should like it to make other people's lives better to them.
It makes me very uneasy--coming all to me who don't want it."
A smile broke through the gloom of Lydgate's face. The childlike
grave-eyed earnestness with which Dorothea said all this
was irresistible--blent into an adorable whale with her ready
understanding of high experience. (Of lower experience such as
plays a great part in the world, poor Mrs. Casaubon had a very
blurred shortsighted knowledge, little helped by her imagination.)
But she took the smile as encouragement of her plan.
"I think you see now that you spoke too scrupulously," she said,
in a tone of persuasion. "The hospital would be one good; and making
your life quite whole and well again would be another."
Lydgate's smile had died away. "You have the goodness as well
as the money to do all that; if it could be done," he said.
"But--"
He hesitated a little while, looking vaguely towards the window;
and she sat in silent expectation. At last he turned towards her and
said impetuously--
"Why should I not tell you?--you know what sort of bond marriage is.
You will understand everything."
Dorothea felt her heart beginning to beat faster. Had he that
sorrow too? But she feared to say any word, and he went on immediately.
"It is impossible for me now to do anything--to take any step
without considering my wife's happiness. The thing that I might
like to do if I were alone, is become impossible to me. I can't see
her miserable. She married me without knowing what she was going into,
and it might have been better for her if she had not married me."
"I know, I know--you could not give her pain, if you were not obliged
to do it," said Dorothea, with keen memory of her own life.
"And she has set her mind against staying. She wishes to go.
The troubles she has had here have wearied her," said Lydgate,
breaking off again, lest he should say too much.
"But when she saw the good that might come of staying--"said
Dorothea, remonstrantly, looking at Lydgate as if he had forgotten
the reasons which had just been considered. He did not speak immediately.
"She would not see it," he said at last, curtly, feeling at first
that this statement must do without explanation. "And, indeed,
I have lost all spirit about carrying on my life here." He paused
a moment and then, following the impulse to let Dorothea see deeper
into the difficulty of his life, he said, "The fact is, this trouble
has come upon her confusedly. We have not been able to speak to
each other about it. I am not sure what is in her mind about it:
she may fear that I have really done something base. It is my fault;
I ought to be more open. But I have been suffering cruelly."
"May I go and see her?" said Dorothea, eagerly. "Would she accept
my sympathy? I would tell her that you have not been blamable
before any one's judgment but your own. I would tell her that you
shall be cleared in every fair mind. I would cheer her heart.
Will you ask her if I may go to see her? I did see her once."
"I am sure you may," said Lydgate, seizing the proposition with
some hope. "She would feel honored--cheered, I think, by the proof
that you at least have some respect for me. I will not speak to her
about your coming--that she may not connect it with my wishes at all.
I know very well that I ought not to have left anything to be told
her by others, but--"
He broke off, and there was a moment's silence. Dorothea refrained
from saying what was in her mind--how well she knew that there
might be invisible barriers to speech between husband and wife.
This was a point on which even sympathy might make a wound.
She returned to the more outward aspect of Lydgate's position,
saying cheerfully--
"And if Mrs. Lydgate knew that there were friends who would believe
in you and support you, she might then be glad that you should stay
in your place and recover your hopes--and do what you meant to do.
Perhaps then you would see that it was right to agree with what I
proposed about your continuing at the Hospital. Surely you would,
if you still have faith in it as a means of making your knowledge useful?"
Lydgate did not answer, and she saw that he was debating with himself.
"You need not decide immediately," she said, gently. "A few days hence
it will be early enough for me to send my answer to Mr. Bulstrode."
Lydgate still waited, but at last turned to speak in his most
decisive tones.
"No; I prefer that there should be no interval left for wavering.
I am no longer sure enough of myself--I mean of what it would be
possible for me to do under the changed circumstances of my life.
It would be dishonorable to let others engage themselves to anything
serious in dependence on me. I might be obliged to go away after all;
I see little chance of anything else. The whole thing is too problematic;
I cannot consent to be the cause of your goodness being wasted.
No--let the new Hospital be joined with the old Infirmary,
and everything go on as it might have done if I had never come.
I have kept a valuable register since I have been there; I shall
send it to a man who will make use of it," he ended bitterly.
"I can think of nothing for a long while but getting an income."
"It hurts me very much to hear you speak so hopelessly," said Dorothea.
"It would be a happiness to your friends, who believe in your future,
in your power to do great things, if you would let them save you
from that. Think how much money I have; it would be like taking
a burthen from me if you took some of it every year till you got
free from this fettering want of income. Why should not people
do these things? It is so difficult to make shares at all even.
This is one way."
"God bless you, Mrs. Casaubon!" said Lydgate, rising as if with the
same impulse that made his words energetic, and resting his arm
on the back of the great leather chair he had been sitting in.
"It is good that you should have such feelings. But I am not the man
who ought to allow himself to benefit by them. I have not given
guarantees enough. I must not at least sink into the degradation
of being pensioned for work that I never achieved. It is very clear
to me that I must not count on anything else than getting away
from Middlemarch as soon as I can manage it. I should not be able
for a long while, at the very best, to get an income here, and--
and it is easier to make necessary changes in a new place.
I must do as other men do, and think what will please the world
and bring in money; look for a little opening in the London crowd,
and push myself; set up in a watering-place, or go to some southern
town where there are plenty of idle English, and get myself puffed,--
that is the sort of shell I must creep into and try to keep my soul
alive in."
"Now that is not brave," said Dorothea,--"to give up the fight."
"No, it is not brave," said Lydgate, "but if a man is afraid
of creeping paralysis?" Then, in another tone, "Yet you have made
a great difference in my courage by believing in me. Everything seems
more bearable since I have talked to you; and if you can clear
me in a few other minds, especially in Farebrother's, I shall be
deeply grateful. The point I wish you not to mention is the fact
of disobedience to my orders. That would soon get distorted.
After all, there is no evidence for me but people's opinion
of me beforehand. You can only repeat my own report of myself."
"Mr. Farebrother will believe--others will believe," said Dorothea.
"I can say of you what will make it stupidity to suppose that you
would be bribed to do a wickedness."
"I don't know," said Lydgate, with something like a groan
in his voice. "I have not taken a bribe yet. But there is
a pale shade of bribery which is sometimes called prosperity.
You will do me another great kindness, then, and come to see my wife?"
"Yes, I will. I remember how pretty she is," said Dorothea,
into whose mind every impression about Rosamond had cut deep.
"I hope she will like me."
As Lydgate rode away, he thought, "This young creature has a heart
large enough for the Virgin Mary. She evidently thinks nothing
of her own future, and would pledge away half her income at once,
as if she wanted nothing for herself but a chair to sit in from which
she can look down with those clear eyes at the poor mortals who pray
to her. She seems to have what I never saw in any woman before--
a fountain of friendship towards men--a man can make a friend of her.
Casaubon must have raised some heroic hallucination in her.
I wonder if she could have any other sort of passion for a man?
Ladislaw?--there was certainly an unusual feeling between them.
And Casaubon must have had a notion of it. Well--her love might help
a man more than her money."
Dorothea on her side had immediately formed a plan of relieving
Lydgate from his obligation to Bulstrode, which she felt sure
was a part, though small, of the galling pressure he had to bear.
She sat down at once under the inspiration of their interview,
and wrote a brief note, in which she pleaded that she had more claim
than Mr. Bulstrode had to the satisfaction of providing the money which
had been serviceable to Lydgate--that it would be unkind in Lydgate
not to grant her the position of being his helper in this small matter,
the favor being entirely to her who had so little that was plainly
marked out for her to do with her superfluous money. He might call
her a creditor or by any other name if it did but imply that he
granted her request. She enclosed a check for a thousand pounds,
and determined to take the letter with her the next day when she
went to see Rosamond.
CHAPTER LXXVII.
"And thus thy fall hath left a kind of blot,
To mark the full-fraught man and best indued
With some suspicion."
--Henry V.
The next day Lydgate had to go to Brassing, and told Rosamond
that he should be away until the evening. Of late she had
never gone beyond her own house and garden, except to church,
and once to see her papa, to whom she said, "If Tertius goes away,
you will help us to move, will you not, papa? I suppose we shall
have very little money. I am sure I hope some one will help us."
And Mr. Vincy had said, "Yes, child, I don't mind a hundred or two.
I can see the end of that." With these exceptions she had sat
at home in languid melancholy and suspense, fixing her mind on
Will Ladislaw's coming as the one point of hope and interest,
and associating this with some new urgency on Lydgate to make immediate
arrangements for leaving Middlemarch and going to London, till she
felt assured that the coming would be a potent cause of the going,
without at all seeing how. This way of establishing sequences is
too common to be fairly regarded as a peculiar folly in Rosamond.
And it is precisely this sort of sequence which causes the greatest
shock when it is sundered: for to see how an effect may be produced
is often to see possible missings and checks; but to see nothing
except the desirable cause, and close upon it the desirable effect,
rids us of doubt and makes our minds strongly intuitive. That was
the process going on in poor Rosamond, while she arranged all objects
around her with the same nicety as ever, only with more slowness--
or sat down to the piano, meaning to play, and then desisting,
yet lingering on the music stool with her white fingers suspended
on the wooden front, and looking before her in dreamy ennui.
Her melancholy had become so marked that Lydgate felt a strange
timidity before it, as a perpetual silent reproach, and the strong man,
mastered by his keen sensibilities towards this fair fragile creature
whose life he seemed somehow to have bruised, shrank from her look,
and sometimes started at her approach, fear of her and fear for her
rushing in only the more forcibly after it had been momentarily expelled
by exasperation.
But this morning Rosamond descended from her room upstairs--
where she sometimes sat the whole day when Lydgate was out--
equipped for a walk in the town. She had a letter to post--a letter
addressed to Mr. Ladislaw and written with charming discretion,
but intended to hasten his arrival by a hint of trouble.
The servant-maid, their sole house-servant now, noticed her coming
down-stairs in her walking dress, and thought "there never did
anybody look so pretty in a bonnet poor thing."
Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was filled with her project of going
to Rosamond, and with the many thoughts, both of the past and the
probable future, which gathered round the idea of that visit.
Until yesterday when Lydgate had opened to her a glimpse
of some trouble in his married life, the image of Mrs. Lydgate
had always been associated for her with that of Will Ladislaw.
Even in her most uneasy moments--even when she had been agitated
by Mrs. Cadwallader's painfully graphic report of gossip--
her effort, nay, her strongest impulsive prompting, had been towards
the vindication of Will from any sullying surmises; and when,
in her meeting with him afterwards, she had at first interpreted
his words as a probable allusion to a feeling towards Mrs. Lydgate
which he was determined to cut himself off from indulging, she had
had a quick, sad, excusing vision of the charm there might be in his
constant opportunities of companionship with that fair creature,
who most likely shared his other tastes as she evidently did
his delight in music. But there had followed his parting words--
the few passionate words in which he had implied that she herself
was the object of whom his love held him in dread, that it was his
love for her only which he was resolved not to declare but to carry
away into banishment. From the time of that parting, Dorothea,
believing in Will's love for her, believing with a proud delight in
his delicate sense of honor and his determination that no one should
impeach him justly, felt her heart quite at rest as to the regard he
might have for Mrs. Lydgate. She was sure that the regard was blameless.
There are natures in which, if they love us, we are conscious
of having a sort of baptism and consecration: they bind us
over to rectitude and purity by their pure belief about us;
and our sins become that worst kind of sacrilege which tears down
the invisible altar of trust. "If you are not good, none is good"--
those little words may give a terrific meaning to responsibility,
may hold a vitriolic intensity for remorse.
Dorothea's nature was of that kind: her own passionate faults lay
along the easily counted open channels of her ardent character;
and while she was full of pity for the, visible mistakes of others,
she had not yet any material within her experience for subtle
constructions and suspicions of hidden wrong. But that simplicity
of hers, holding up an ideal for others in her believing conception
of them, was one of the great powers of her womanhood. And it
had from the first acted strongly on Will Ladislaw. He felt,
when he parted from her, that the brief words by which he had tried
to convey to her his feeling about herself and the division which
her fortune made between them, would only profit by their brevity
when Dorothea had to interpret them: he felt that in her mind he
had found his highest estimate.
And he was right there. In the months since their parting Dorothea
had felt a delicious though sad repose in their relation to each other,
as one which was inwardly whole and without blemish. She had an
active force of antagonism within her, when the antagonism turned
on the defence either of plans or persons that she believed in;
and the wrongs which she felt that Will had received from her husband,
and the external conditions which to others were grounds for
slighting him, only gave the more tenacity to her affection
and admiring judgment. And now with the disclosures about
Bulstrode had come another fact affecting Will's social position,
which roused afresh Dorothea's inward resistance to what was
said about him in that part of her world which lay within park palings.
"Young Ladislaw the grandson of a thieving Jew pawnbroker"
was a phrase which had entered emphatically into the dialogues
about the Bulstrode business, at Lowick, Tipton, and Freshitt,
and was a worse kind of placard on poor Will's back than the "Italian
with white mice." Upright Sir James Chettam was convinced that his
own satisfaction was righteous when he thought with some complacency
that here was an added league to that mountainous distance between
Ladislaw and Dorothea, which enabled him to dismiss any anxiety
in that direction as too absurd. And perhaps there had been
some pleasure in pointing Mr. Brooke's attention to this ugly bit
of Ladislaw's genealogy, as a fresh candle for him to see his own
folly by. Dorothea had observed the animus with which Will's part
in the painful story had been recalled more than once; but she had
uttered no word, being checked now, as she had not been formerly
in speaking of Will, by the consciousness of a deeper relation
between them which must always remain in consecrated secrecy.
But her silence shrouded her resistant emotion into a more
thorough glow; and this misfortune in Will's lot which, it seemed,
others were wishing to fling at his back as an opprobrium,
only gave something more of enthusiasm to her clinging thought.
She entertained no visions of their ever coming into nearer union,
and yet she had taken no posture of renunciation. She had accepted
her whole relation to Will very simply as part of her marriage sorrows,
and would have thought it very sinful in her to keep up an inward
wail because she was not completely happy, being rather disposed
to dwell on the superfluities of her lot. She could bear that the
chief pleasures of her tenderness should lie in memory, and the idea
of marriage came to her solely as a repulsive proposition from
some suitor of whom she at present knew nothing, but whose merits,
as seen by her friends, would be a source of torment to her:--
"somebody who will manage your property for you, my dear,"
was Mr. Brooke's attractive suggestion of suitable characteristics.
"I should like to manage it myself, if I knew what to do with it,"
said Dorothea. No--she adhered to her declaration that she would
never be married again, and in the long valley of her life which
looked so flat and empty of waymarks, guidance would come as she
walked along the road, and saw her fellow-passengers by the way.
This habitual state of feeling about Will Ladislaw had been strong.
in all her waking hours since she had proposed to pay a visit
to Mrs. Lydgate, making a sort of background against which she
saw Rosamond's figure presented to her without hindrances to her
interest and compassion. There was evidently some mental separation,
some barrier to complete confidence which had arisen between this
wife and the husband who had yet made her happiness a law to him.
That was a trouble which no third person must directly touch.
But Dorothea thought with deep pity of the loneliness which must
have come upon Rosamond from the suspicions cast on her husband;
and there would surely be help in the manifestation of respect for
Lydgate and sympathy with her.
"I shall talk to her about her husband," thought Dorothea, as she
was being driven towards the town. The clear spring morning,
the scent of the moist earth, the fresh leaves just showing their
creased-up wealth of greenery from out their half-opened sheaths,
seemed part of the cheerfulness she was feeling from a long conversation
with Mr. Farebrother, who had joyfully accepted the justifying
explanation of Lydgate's conduct. "I shall take Mrs. Lydgate good news,
and perhaps she will like to talk to me and make a friend of me."
Dorothea had another errand in Lowick Gate: it was about a new
fine-toned bell for the school-house, and as she had to get out
of her carriage very near to Lydgate's, she walked thither across
the street, having told the coachman to wait for some packages.
The street door was open, and the servant was taking the opportunity
of looking out at the carriage which was pausing within sight
when it became apparent to her that the lady who "belonged to it"
was coming towards her.
"Is Mrs. Lydgate at home?" said Dorothea.
"I'm not sure, my lady; I'll see, if you'll please to walk in,"
said Martha, a little confused on the score of her kitchen apron,
but collected enough to be sure that "mum" was not the right title
for this queenly young widow with a carriage and pair. "Will you
please to walk in, and I'll go and see."
"Say that I am Mrs. Casaubon," said Dorothea, as Martha moved
forward intending to show her into the drawing-room and then to go
up-stairs to see if Rosamond had returned from her walk.
They crossed the broader part of the entrance-hall, and turned
up the passage which led to the garden. The drawing-room door
was unlatched, and Martha, pushing it without looking into the room,
waited for Mrs. Casaubon to enter and then turned away, the door
having swung open and swung back again without noise.
Dorothea had less of outward vision than usual this morning,
being filled with images of things as they had been and were going
to be. She found herself on the other side of the door without
seeing anything remarkable, but immediately she heard a voice
speaking in low tones which startled her as with a sense of dreaming
in daylight, and advancing unconsciously a step or two beyond the
projecting slab of a bookcase, she saw, in the terrible illumination
of a certainty which filled up all outlines, something which made
her pause, motionless, without self-possession enough to speak.
Seated with his back towards her on a sofa which stood against
the wall on a line with the door by which she had entered, she saw
Will Ladislaw: close by him and turned towards him with a flushed
tearfulness which gave a new brilliancy to her face sat Rosamond,
her bonnet hanging back, while Will leaning towards her clasped
both her upraised hands in his and spoke with low-toned fervor.
Rosamond in her agitated absorption had not noticed the silently
advancing figure; but when Dorothea, after the first immeasurable
instant of this vision, moved confusedly backward and found herself
impeded by some piece of furniture, Rosamond was suddenly aware
of her presence, and with a spasmodic movement snatched away her
hands and rose, looking at Dorothea who was necessarily arrested.
Will Ladislaw, starting up, looked round also, and meeting Dorothea's
eyes with a new lightning in them, seemed changing to marble:
But she immediately turned them away from him to Rosamond and said
in a firm voice--
"Excuse me, Mrs. Lydgate, the servant did not know that you were here.
I called to deliver an important letter for Mr. Lydgate, which I
wished to put into your own hands."
She laid down the letter on the small table which had checked
her retreat, and then including Rosamond and Will in one distant
glance and bow, she went quickly out of the room, meeting in the
passage the surprised Martha, who said she was sorry the mistress
was not at home, and then showed the strange lady out with an inward
reflection that grand people were probably more impatient than others.
Dorothea walked across the street with her most elastic step
and was quickly in her carriage again.
"Drive on to Freshitt Hall," she said to the coachman, and any one looking
at her might have thought that though she was paler than usual she was
never animated by a more self-possessed energy. And that was really
her experience. It was as if she had drunk a great draught of scorn
that stimulated her beyond the susceptibility to other feelings.
She had seen something so far below her belief, that her emotions
rushed back from it and made an excited throng without an object.
She needed something active to turn her excitement out upon.
She felt power to walk and work for a day, without meat or drink.
And she would carry out the purpose with which she had started
in the morning, of going to Freshitt and Tipton to tell Sir James
and her uncle all that she wished them to know about Lydgate,
whose married loneliness under his trial now presented itself to her
with new significance, and made her more ardent in readiness to be
his champion. She had never felt anything like this triumphant power
of indignation in the struggle of her married life, in which there
had always been a quickly subduing pang; and she took it as a sign
of new strength.
"Dodo, how very bright your eyes are!" said Celia, when Sir James
was gone out of the room. "And you don't see anything you look at,
Arthur or anything. You are going to do something uncomfortable,
I know. Is it all about Mr. Lydgate, or has something else happened?"
Celia had been used to watch her sister with expectation.
"Yes, dear, a great many things have happened," said Dodo,
in her full tones.
"I wonder what," said Celia, folding her arms cozily and leaning
forward upon them.
"Oh, all the troubles of all people on the face of the earth,"
said Dorothea, lifting her arms to the back of her head.
"Dear me, Dodo, are you going to have a scheme for them?" said Celia,
a little uneasy at this Hamlet-like raving.
But Sir James came in again, ready to accompany Dorothea to the Grange,
and she finished her expedition well, not swerving in her resolution
until she descended at her own door.
CHAPTER LXXVIII.
Would it were yesterday and I i' the grave,
With her sweet faith above for monument "
Rosamond and Will stood motionless--they did not know how long--
he looking towards the spot where Dorothea had stood, and she looking
towards him with doubt. It seemed an endless time to Rosamond,
in whose inmost soul there was hardly so much annoyance as
gratification from what had just happened. Shallow natures dream
of an easy sway over the emotions of others, trusting implicitly
in their own petty magic to turn the deepest streams, and confident,
by pretty gestures and remarks, of making the thing that is not
as though it were. She knew that Will had received a severe blow,
but she had been little used to imagining other people's states
of mind except as a material cut into shape by her own wishes;
and she believed in her own power to soothe or subdue. Even Tertius,
that most perverse of men, was always subdued in the long-run:
events had been obstinate, but still Rosamond would have said now,
as she did before her marriage, that she never gave up what she had set
her mind on.
She put out her arm and laid the tips of her fingers on Will's
coat-sleeve.
"Don't touch me!" he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash,
darting from her, and changing from pink to white and back again,
as if his whole frame were tingling with the pain of the sting.
He wheeled round to the other side of the room and stood opposite to her,
with the tips of his fingers in his pockets and his head thrown back,
looking fiercely not at Rosamond but at a point a few inches away
from her.
She was keenly offended, but the Signs she made of this were such
as only Lydgate was used to interpret. She became suddenly quiet
and seated herself, untying her hanging bonnet and laying it down with
her shawl. Her little hands which she folded before her were very cold.
It would have been safer for Will in the first instance to have taken
up his hat and gone away; but he had felt no impulse to do this;
on the contrary, he had a horrible inclination to stay and shatter
Rosamond with his anger. It seemed as impossible to bear the fatality
she had drawn down on him without venting his fury as it would be
to a panther to bear the javelin-wound without springing and biting.
And yet--how could he tell a woman that he was ready to curse her?
He was fuming under a repressive law which he was forced to acknowledge:
he was dangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the
decisive vibration. In flute-like tones of sarcasm she said--
"You can easily go after Mrs. Casaubon and explain your preference."
"Go after her!" he burst out, with a sharp edge in his voice.
"Do you think she would turn to look at me, or value any word I ever
uttered to her again at more than a dirty feather?--Explain! How can
a man explain at the expense of a woman?"
"You can tell her what you please," said Rosamond with more tremor.
"Do you suppose she would like me better for sacrificing you?
She is not a woman to be flattered because I made myself despicable--
to believe that I must be true to her because I was a dastard
to you."
He began to move about with the restlessness of a wild animal
that sees prey but cannot reach it. Presently he burst out again--
"I had no hope before--not much--of anything better to come.
But I had one certainty--that she believed in me. Whatever people
had said or done about me, she believed in me.--That's gone!
She'll never again think me anything but a paltry pretence--
too nice to take heaven except upon flattering conditions, and yet
selling myself for any devil's change by the sly. She'll think
of me as an incarnate insult to her, from the first moment we--"
Will stopped as if he had found himself grasping something that must
not be thrown and shattered. He found another vent for his rage
by snatching up Rosamond's words again, as if they were reptiles
to be throttled and flung off.
"Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell!
Explain my preference! I never had a PREFERENCE for her,
any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists
by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead,
than I would touch any other woman's living."
Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her,
was almost losing the sense of her identity, and seemed to be
waking into some new terrible existence. She had no sense
of chill resolute repulsion, of reticent self-justification
such as she had known under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure:
all her sensibility was turned into a bewildering novelty of pain;
she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash never experienced before.
What another nature felt in opposition to her own was being burnt
and bitten into her consciousness. When Will had ceased to speak
she had become an image of sickened misery: her lips were pale,
and her eyes had a tearless dismay in them. If it had been Tertius
who stood opposite to her, that look of misery would have been
a pang to him, and he would have sunk by her side to comfort her,
with that strong-armed comfort which, she had often held very cheap.
Let it be forgiven to Will that he had no such movement of pity.
He had felt no bond beforehand to this woman who had spoiled
the ideal treasure of his life, and he held himself blameless.
He knew that he was cruel, but he had no relenting in him yet.
After he had done speaking, he still moved about, half in absence
of mind, and Rosamond sat perfectly still. At length Will, seeming to
bethink himself, took up his hat, yet stood some moments irresolute.
He had spoken to her in a way that made a phrase of common politeness
difficult to utter; and yet, now that he had come to the point
of going away from her without further speech, he shrank from it
as a brutality; he felt checked and stultified in his anger.
He walked towards the mantel-piece and leaned his arm on it,
and waited in silence for--he hardly knew what. The vindictive fire
was still burning in him, and he could utter no word of retractation;
but it was nevertheless in his mind that having come back to this
hearth where he had enjoyed a caressing friendship he had found.
calamity seated there--he had had suddenly revealed to him a trouble
that lay outside the home as well as within it. And what seemed
a foreboding was pressing upon him as with slow pincers:--that his
life might come to be enslaved by this helpless woman who had thrown
herself upon him in the dreary sadness of her heart. But he was
in gloomy rebellion against the fact that his quick apprehensiveness
foreshadowed to him, and when his eyes fell on Rosamond's blighted
face it seemed to him that he was the more pitiable of the two;
for pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can
turn into compassion.
And so they remained for many minutes, opposite each other,
far apart, in silence; Will's face still possessed by a mute rage,
and Rosamond's by a mute misery. The poor thing had no force to fling
out any passion in return; the terrible collapse of the illusion
towards which all her hope had been strained was a stroke which had
too thoroughly shaken her: her little world was in ruins, and she
felt herself tottering in the midst as a lonely bewildered consciousness.
Will wished that she would speak and bring some mitigating shadow
across his own cruel speech, which seemed to stand staring at them
both in mockery of any attempt at revived fellowship. But she
said nothing, and at last with a desperate effort over himself,
he asked, "Shall I come in and see Lydgate this evening?"
"If you like," Rosamond answered, just audibly.
And then Will went out of the house, Martha never knowing that he
had been in.
After he was gone, Rosamond tried to get up from her seat, but fell
back fainting. When she came to herself again, she felt too ill
to make the exertion of rising to ring the bell, and she remained
helpless until the girl, surprised at her long absence, thought for
the first time of looking for her in all the down-stairs rooms.
Rosamond said that she had felt suddenly sick and faint, and wanted
to be helped up-stairs. When there she threw herself on the bed
with her clothes on, and lay in apparent torpor, as she had done
once before on a memorable day of grief.
Lydgate came home earlier than he had expected, about half-past five,
and found her there. The perception that she was ill threw every
other thought into the background. When he felt her pulse,
her eyes rested on him with more persistence than they had done
for a long while, as if she felt some content that he was there.
He perceived the difference in a moment, and seating himself
by her put his arm gently under her, and bending over her said,
"My poor Rosamond! has something agitated you?" Clinging to him
she fell into hysterical sobbings and cries, and for the next hour
he did nothing but soothe and tend her. He imagined that Dorothea
had been to see her, and that all this effect on her nervous system,
which evidently involved some new turning towards himself,
was due to the excitement of the new impressions which that visit
had raised.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
"Now, I saw in my dream, that just as they had ended their talk,
they drew nigh to a very miry slough, that was in the midst of the plain;
and they, being heedless, did both fall suddenly into the bog.
The name of the slough was Despond."--BUNYAN.
When Rosamond was quiet, and Lydgate had left her, hoping that she
might soon sleep under the effect of an anodyne, he went into the
drawing-room to fetch a book which he had left there, meaning to spend
the evening in his work-room, and he saw on the table Dorothea's
letter addressed to him. He had not ventured to ask Rosamond if
Mrs. Casaubon had called, but the reading of this letter assured him
of the fact, for Dorothea mentioned that it was to be carried by herself.
When Will Ladislaw came in a little later Lydgate met him with
a surprise which made it clear that he had not been told of the
earlier visit, and Will could not say, "Did not Mrs. Lydgate
tell you that I came this morning?"
"Poor Rosamond is ill," Lydgate added immediately on his greeting.
"Not seriously, I hope," said Will.
"No--only a slight nervous shock--the effect of some agitation.
She has been overwrought lately. The truth is, Ladislaw, I am an
unlucky devil. We have gone through several rounds of purgatory since
you left, and I have lately got on to a worse ledge of it than ever.
I suppose you are only just come down--you look rather battered--
you have not been long enough in the town to hear anything?"
"I travelled all night and got to the White Hart at eight o'clock
this morning. I have been shutting myself up and resting," said Will,
feeling himself a sneak, but seeing no alternative to this evasion.
And then he heard Lydgate's account of the troubles which Rosamond
had already depicted to him in her way. She had not mentioned
the fact of Will's name being connected with the public story--
this detail not immediately affecting her--and he now heard it
for the first time.
"I thought it better to tell you that your name is mixed up
with the disclosures," said Lydgate, who could understand better
than most men how Ladislaw might be stung by the revelation.
"You will be sure to hear it as soon as you turn out into the town.
I suppose it is true that Raffles spoke to you."
"Yes," said Will, sardonically. "I shall be fortunate if gossip
does not make me the most disreputable person in the whole affair.
I should think the latest version must be, that I plotted with Raffles
to murder Bulstrode, and ran away from Middlemarch for the purpose."
He was thinking "Here is a new ring in the sound of my name to
recommend it in her hearing; however--what does it signify now?"
But he said nothing of Bulstrode's offer to him. Will was very
open and careless about his personal affairs, but it was among
the more exquisite touches in nature's modelling of him that he
had a delicate generosity which warned him into reticence here.
He shrank from saying that he had rejected Bulstrode's money,
in the moment when he was learning that it was Lydgate's misfortune
to have accepted it.
Lydgate too was reticent in the midst of his confidence. He made no
allusion to Rosamond's feeling under their trouble, and of Dorothea
he only said, "Mrs. Casaubon has been the one person to come forward
and say that she had no belief in any of the suspicions against me."
Observing a change in Will's face, he avoided any further mention
of her, feeling himself too ignorant of their relation to each
other not to fear that his words might have some hidden painful
bearing on it. And it occurred to him that Dorothea was the real
cause of the present visit to Middlemarch.
The two men were pitying each other, but it was only Will who
guessed the extent of his companion's trouble. When Lydgate
spoke with desperate resignation of going to settle in London,
and said with a faint smile, "We shall have you again, old fellow."
Will felt inexpressibly mournful, and said nothing. Rosamond had
that morning entreated him to urge this step on Lydgate; and it
seemed to him as if he were beholding in a magic panorama a future
where he himself was sliding into that pleasureless yielding
to the small solicitations of circumstance, which is a commoner
history of perdition than any single momentous bargain.
We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our
future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into
insipid misdoing and shabby achievement. Poor Lydgate was inwardly
groaning on that margin, and Will was arriving at it. It seemed
to him this evening as if the cruelty of his outburst to Rosamond
had made an obligation for him, and he dreaded the obligation:
he dreaded Lydgate's unsuspecting good-will: he dreaded his own distaste
for his spoiled life, which would leave him in motiveless levity.
CHAPTER LXXX.
"Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face;
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong;
And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.
--WORDSWORTH: Ode to Duty.
When Dorothea had seen Mr. Farebrother in the morning, she had
promised to go and dine at the parsonage on her return from Freshitt.
There was a frequent interchange of visits between her and the
Farebrother family, which enabled her to say that she was not at
all lonely at the Manor, and to resist for the present the severe
prescription of a lady companion. When she reached home and remembered
her engagement, she was glad of it; and finding that she had still
an hour before she could dress for dinner, she walked straight
to the schoolhouse and entered into a conversation with the master
and mistress about the new bell, giving eager attention to their small
details and repetitions, and getting up a dramatic sense that her life
was very busy. She paused on her way back to talk to old Master
Bunney who was putting in some garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely
with that rural sage about the crops that would make the most return
on a perch of ground, and the result of sixty years' experience as
to soils--namely, that if your soil was pretty mellow it would do,
but if there came wet, wet, wet to make it all of a mummy, why then--
Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into being rather late,
she dressed hastily and went over to the parsonage rather earlier
than was necessary. That house was never dull, Mr. Farebrother,
like another White of Selborne, having continually something new
to tell of his inarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was
teaching the boys not to torment; and he had just set up a pair
of beautiful goats to be pets of the village in general, and to
walk at large as sacred animals. The evening went by cheerfully
till after tea, Dorothea talking more than usual and dilating
with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of creatures that
converse compendiously with their antennae, and for aught we know
may hold reformed parliaments; when suddenly some inarticulate
little sounds were heard which called everybody's attention.
"Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sister
moving about the furniture-legs distressfully, "what is the matter?"
"I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the kitten has
rolled it away," said the tiny old lady, involuntarily coutinuing
her beaver-like notes.
"Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up
his glasses and looking at the carpet.
"Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble. "A German box--
very pretty, but if it falls it always spins away as far as it can."
"Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present," said Mr. Farebrother,
in a deep tone of comprehension, getting up and hunting.
The box was found at last under a chiffonier, and Miss Noble
grasped it with delight, saying, "it was under a fender the last time."
"That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother,
smiling at Dorothea, as he reseated himself.
"If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon,"
said his mother, emphatically,--"she is like a dog--she would take
their shoes for a pillow and sleep the better."
"Mr. Ladislaw's shoes, I would," said Henrietta Noble.
Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return. She was surprised
and annoyed to find that her heart was palpitating violently,
and that it was quite useless to try after a recovery of her
former animation. Alarmed at herself--fearing some further betrayal
of a change so marked in its occasion, she rose and said in a low
voice with undisguised anxiety, "I must go; I have overtired myself."
Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true;
you must have half-exhausted yourself in talking about Lydgate.
That sort of work tells upon one after the excitement is over."
He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt
to speak, even when he said good-night.
The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helpless within
the clutch of inescapable anguish. Dismissing Tantripp with a few faint
words, she locked her door, and turning away from it towards the vacant
room she pressed her hands hard on the top of her head, and moaned out--
"Oh, I did love him!"
Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her too
thoroughly to leave any power of thought. She could only cry
in loud whispers, between her sobs, after her lost belief which she
had planted and kept alive from a very little seed since the days
in Rome--after her lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith
to one who, misprized by others, was worthy in her thought--
after her lost woman's pride of reigning in his memory--after her sweet
dim perspective of hope, that along some pathway they should meet
with unchanged recognition and take up the backward years as a yesterday.
In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude
have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man--
she besought hardness and coldness and aching weariness to bring
her relief from the mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish:
she lay on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her;
while her grand woman's frame was shaken by sobs as if she had been
a despairing child.
There were two images--two living forms that tore her heart in two,
as if it had been the heart of a mother who seems to see her child
divided by the sword, and presses one bleeding half to her breast
while her gaze goes forth in agony towards the half which is carried
away by the lying woman that has never known the mother's pang.
Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within the
vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the bright creature whom she
had trusted--who had come to her like the spirit of morning visiting
the dim vault where she sat as the bride of a worn-out life;
and now, with a full consciousness which had never awakened before,
she stretched out her arms towards him and cried with bitter
cries that their nearness was a parting vision: she discovered
her passion to herself in the unshrinking utterance of despair.
And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever
she moved, was the Will Ladislaw' who was a changed belief
exhausted of hope, a detected illusion--no, a living man towards
whom there could not yet struggle any wail of regretful pity,
from the midst of scorn and indignation and jealous offended pride.
The fire of Dorothea's anger was not easily spent, and it flamed
out in fitful returns of spurning reproach. Why had he come
obtruding his life into hers, hers that might have been whole
enough without him? Why had he brought his cheap regard and his
lip-born words to her who had nothing paltry to give in exchange?
He knew that he was deluding her--wished, in the very moment
of farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole
price of her heart, and knew that he had spent it half before.
Why had he not stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing--
but only prayed that they might be less contemptible?
But she lost energy at last even for her loud-whispered cries
and moans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and on the cold floor
she sobbed herself to sleep.
In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim
around her, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she
was or what had happened, but with the clearest consciousness
that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow. She rose,
and wrapped warm things around her, and seated
herself in a great chair where she had often watched before.
She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling
ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked
to a new condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from
its terrible conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief,
but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer
in her thoughts. For now the thoughts came thickly. It was not
in Dorothea's nature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm,
to sit in the narrow cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery
of a consciousness that only sees another's lot as an accident
of its own.
She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberately again,
forcing herself to dwell on every detail and its possible meaning.
Was she alone in that scene? Was it her event only? She forced
herself to think of it as bound up with another woman's life--a woman
towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry some clearness
and comfort into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap of jealous
indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful room, she had
flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that visit.
She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it
seemed to her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever.
But that base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival
than to a faithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence
in Dorothea when the dominant spirit of justice within her had once
overcome the tumult and had once shown her the truer measure of things.
All the active thought with which she had before been representing to
herself the trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union which,
like her own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles--
all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power:
it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will
not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said
to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful,
instead of driving her back from effort.
And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose
contact with hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been
suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects of her rescue
were not to be sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her.
She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a
throne within her, and rule her errant will. "What should I do--
how should I act now, this very day, if I could clutch my own pain,
and compel it to silence, and think of those three?"
It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was
light piercing into the room. She opened her curtains, and looked
out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond
outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle
on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could
see figures moving--perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off
in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness
of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance.
She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could
neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator,
nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.
What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear,
but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching
murmur which would soon gather distinctness. She took off the clothes
which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them,
and began to make her toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp,
who came in her dressing-gown.
"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night,"
burst out Tantripp, looking first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face,
which in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a
mater dolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you WILL. Anybody
might think now you had a right to give yourself a little comfort."
"Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling. "I have slept;
I am not ill. I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.
And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall want
my new bonnet to-day."
"They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam,
and most thankful I shall be to see you with a couple o' pounds'
worth less of crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire.
"There's a reason in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds
at the bottom of your skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet--
and if ever anybody looked like an angel, it's you in a net quilling--
is what's consistent for a second year. At least, that's MY
thinking," ended Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire;
"and if anybody was to marry me flattering himself I should wear
those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be deceived by his
own vanity, that's all."
"The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she
used to do in the old Lausanne days, only with a very low voice;
"get me the coffee."
She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against
it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering
at this strange contrariness in her young mistress--that just the
morning when she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should
have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived before.
Tantripp would never have found the clew to this mystery.
Dorothea wished to acknowledge that she had not the less an
active life before her because she had buried a private joy;
and the tradition that fresh garments belonged to all initiation,
haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that slight outward
help towards calm resolve. For the resolve was not easy.
Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch,
having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably
as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
"Du Erde warst auch diese Nacht bestandig,
Und athmest neu erquickt zu meinen Fussen,
Beginnest schon mit Lust mich zu umgeben,
Zum regst und ruhrst ein kraftiges Reschliessen
Zum hochsten Dasein immerfort zu streben.
--Faust: 2r Theil.
When Dorothea was again at Lydgate's door speaking to Martha,
he was in the room close by with the door ajar, preparing to go out.
He heard her voice, and immediately came to her.
"Do you think that Mrs. Lydgate can receive me this morning?"
she said, having reflected that it would be better to leave out all
allusion to her previous visit.
"I have no doubt she will," said Lydgate, suppressing his thought
about Dorothea's looks, which were as much changed as Rosamond's,
"if you will be kind enough to come in and let me tell her that you
are here. She has not been very well since you were here yesterday,
but she is better this morning, and I think it is very likely
that she will be cheered by seeing you again."
It was plain that Lydgate, as Dorothea had expected, knew nothing
about the circumstances of her yesterday's visit; nay, he appeared
to imagine that she had carried it out according to her intention.
She had prepared a little note asking Rosamond to see her, which she
would have given to the servant if he had not been in the way,
but now she was in much anxiety as to the result of his announcement.
After leading her into the drawing-room, he paused to take a letter
from his pocket and put it into her hands, saying, "I wrote this
last night, and was going to carry it to Lowick in my ride.
When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks,
writing is less unsatisfactory than speech one does not at least
HEAR how inadequate the words are."
Dorothea's face brightened. "It is I who have most to thank for,
since you have let me take that place. You HAVE consented?"
she said, suddenly doubting.
"Yes, the check is going to Bulstrode to-day."
He said no more, but went up-stairs to Rosamond, who had but lately
finished dressing herself, and sat languidly wondering what she
should do next, her habitual industry in small things, even in the
days of her sadness, prompting her to begin some kind of occupation,
which she dragged through slowly or paused in from lack of interest.
She looked ill, but had recovered her usual quietude of manner,
and Lydgate had feared to disturb her by any questions. He had
told her of Dorothea's letter containing the check, and afterwards
he had said, "Ladislaw is come, Rosy; he sat with me last night;
I dare say he will be here again to-day. I thought he looked rather
battered and depressed." And Rosamond had made no reply.
Now, when he came up, he said to her very gently, "Rosy, dear,
Mrs. Casaubon is come to see you again; you would like to see her,
would you not?" That she colored and gave rather a startled
movement did not surprise him after the agitation produced by the
interview yesterday--a beneficent agitation, he thought, since it
seemed to have made her turn to him again.
Rosamond dared not say no. She dared not with a tone of her voice
touch the facts of yesterday. Why had Mrs. Casaubon come again?
The answer was a blank which Rosamond could only fill up
with dread, for Will Ladislaw's lacerating words had made every
thought of Dorothea a fresh smart to her. Nevertheless, in her
new humiliating uncertainty she dared do nothing but comply.
She did not say yes, but she rose and let Lydgate put a light shawl
over her shoulders, while he said, "I am going out immediately."
Then something crossed her mind which prompted her to say,
"Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else into the drawing-room."
And Lydgate assented, thinking that he fully understood this wish.
He led her down to the drawing-room door, and then turned away,
observing to himself that he was rather a blundering husband
to be dependent for his wife's trust in him on the influence of
another woman.
Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as she walked
towards Dorothea, was inwardly wrapping her soul in cold reserve.
Had Mrs. Casaubon come to say anything to her about Will? If so,
it was a liberty that Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself
to meet every word with polite impassibility. Will had bruised
her pride too sorely for her to feel any compunction towards
him and Dorothea: her own injury seemed much the greater.
Dorothea was not only the "preferred" woman, but had also a
formidable advantage in being Lydgate's benefactor; and to poor
Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed that this Mrs. Casaubon--
this woman who predominated in all things concerning her--must have
come now with the sense of having the advantage, and with animosity
prompting her to use it. Indeed, not Rosamond only, but any one else,
knowing the outer facts of the case, and not the simple inspiration
on which Dorothea acted, might well have wondered why she came.
Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful slimness
wrapped in her soft white shawl, the rounded infantine mouth
and cheek inevitably suggesting mildness and innocence, Rosamond
paused at three yards' distance from her visitor and bowed.
But Dorothea, who had taken off her gloves, from an impulse
which she could never resist when she wanted a sense of freedom,
came forward, and with her face full of a sad yet sweet openness,
put out her hand. Rosamond could not avoid meeting her glance,
could not avoid putting her small hand into Dorothea's, which clasped
it with gentle motherliness; and immediately a doubt of her own
prepossessions began to stir within her. Rosamond's eye was quick
for faces; she saw that Mrs. Casaubon's face looked pale and changed
since yesterday, yet gentle, and like the firm softness of her hand.
But Dorothea had counted a little too much on her own strength:
the clearness and intensity of her mental action this morning
were the continuance of a nervous exaltation which made her frame
as dangerously responsive as a bit of finest Venetian crystal;
and in looking at Rosamond, she suddenly found her heart swelling,
and was unable to speak--all her effort was required to keep back tears.
She succeeded in that, and the emotion only passed over her face
like the spirit of a sob; but it added to Rosamond's impression
that Mrs. Casaubon's state of mind must be something quite different
from what she had imagined.
So they sat down without a word of preface on the two chairs that
happened to be nearest, and happened also to be close together;
though Rosamond's notion when she first bowed was that she should
stay a long way off from Mrs. Casaubon. But she ceased thinking
how anything would turn out--merely wondering what would come.
And Dorothea began to speak quite simply, gathering firmness as she
went on.
"I had an errand yesterday which I did not finish; that is why I am
here again so soon. You will not think me too troublesome when I
tell you that I came to talk to you about the injustice that has
been shown towards Mr. Lydgate. It will cheer you--will it not?--
to know a great deal about him, that he may not like to speak
about himself just because it is in his own vindication and to his
own honor. You will like to know that your husband has warm friends,
who have not left off believing in his high character? You will let
me speak of this without thinking that I take a liberty?"
The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow with generous
heedlessness above all the facts which had filled Rosamond's mind
as grounds of obstruction and hatred between her and this woman,
came as soothingly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears.
Of course Mrs. Casaubon had the facts in her mind, but she was
not going to speak of anything connected with them. That relief
was too great for Rosamond to feel much else at the moment.
She answered prettily, in the new ease of her soul--
"I know you have been very good. I shall like to hear anything
you will say to me about Tertius."
"The day before yesterday," said Dorothea, "when I had asked him to
come to Lowick to give me his opinion on the affairs of the Hospital,
he told me everything about his conduct and feelings in this sad event
which has made ignorant people cast suspicions on him. The reason he
told me was because I was very bold and asked him. I believed that he
had never acted dishonorably, and I begged him to tell me the history.
He confessed to me that he had never told it before, not even
to you, because he had a great dislike to say, `I was not wrong,'
as if that were proof, when there are guilty people who will say so.
The truth is, he knew nothing of this man Raffles, or that there
were any bad secrets about him; and he thought that Mr. Bulstrode
offered him the money because he repented, out of kindness, of having
refused it before. All his anxiety about his patient was to treat
him rightly, and he was a little uncomfortable that the case did
not end as he had expected; but he thought then and still thinks
that there may have been no wrong in it on any one's part. And I
have told Mr. Farebrother, and Mr. Brooke, and Sir James Chettam:
they all believe in your husband. That will cheer you, will it not?
That will give you courage?"
Dorothea's face had become animated, and as it beamed on Rosamond
very close to her, she felt something like bashful timidity before
a superior, in the presence of this self-forgetful ardor. She said,
with blushing embarrassment, "Thank you: you are very kind."
"And he felt that he had been so wrong not to pour out everything
about this to you. But you will forgive him. It was because he
feels so much more about your happiness than anything else--
he feels his life bound into one with yours, and it hurts
him more than anything, that his misfortunes must hurt you.
He could speak to me because I am an indifferent person.
And then I asked him if I might come to see you; because I felt
so much for his trouble and yours. That is why I came yesterday,
and why I am come to-day. Trouble is so hard to bear, is it not?--
How can we live and think that any one has trouble--piercing trouble--
and we could help them, and never try?"
Dorothea, completely swayed by the feeling that she was uttering,
forgot everything but that she was speaking from out the heart
of her own trial to Rosamond's. The emotion had wrought itself
more and more into her utterance, till the tones might have gone
to one's very marrow, like a low cry from some suffering creature
in the darkness. And she had unconsciously laid her hand again
on the little hand that she had pressed before.
Rosamond, with an overmastering pang, as if a wound within her
had been probed, burst into hysterical crying as she had done
the day before when she clung to her husband. Poor Dorothea
was feeling a great wave of her own sorrow returning over her--
her thought being drawn to the possible share that Will Ladislaw
might have in Rosamond's mental tumult. She was beginning to fear
that she should not be able to suppress herself enough to the end of
this meeting, and while her hand was still resting on Rosamond's lap,
though the hand underneath it was withdrawn, she was struggling
against her own rising sobs. She tried to master herself with
the thought that this might be a turning-point in three lives--
not in her own; no, there the irrevocable had happened, but--
in those three lives which were touching hers with the solemn
neighborhood of danger and distress. The fragile creature who was
crying close to her--there might still be time to rescue her from
the misery of false incompatible bonds; and this moment was unlike
any other: she and Rosamond could never be together again with
the same thrilling consciousness of yesterday within them both.
She felt the relation between them to be peculiar enough to give
her a peculiar influence, though she had no conception that the way
in which her own feelings were involved was fully known to Mrs. Lydgate.
It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea
could imagine: she was under the first great shock that had shattered
her dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself
and critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation
of feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking
aversion and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred
towards her, made her soul totter all the more with a sense that she
had been walking in an unknown world which had just broken in upon her.
When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she
withdrew the handkerchief with which she had been hiding her face,
her eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers.
What was the use of thinking about behavior after this crying?
And Dorothea looked almost as childish, with the neglected trace of a
silent tear. Pride was broken down between these two.
"We were talking about your husband," Dorothea said, with some timidity.
"I thought his looks were sadly changed with suffering the other day.
I had not seen him for many weeks before. He said he had been
feeling very lonely in his trial; but I think he would have borne
it all better if he had been able to be quite open with you."
"Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say anything," said Rosamond,
imagining that he had been complaining of her to Dorothea. "He ought
not to wonder that I object to speak to him on painful subjects."
"It was himself he blamed for not speaking," said Dorothea.
"What he said of you was, that he could not be happy in doing anything
which made you unhappy--that his marriage was of course a bond
which must affect his choice about everything; and for that reason he
refused my proposal that he should keep his position at the Hospital,
because that would bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not
undertake to do anything which would be painful to you. He could say
that to me, because he knows that I had much trial in my marriage,
from my husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him;
and he knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear
of hurting another who is tied to us."
Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing
over Rosamond's face. But there was no answer, and she went on,
with a gathering tremor, "Marriage is so unlike everything else.
There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we
loved some one else better than--than those we were married to,
it would be no use"--poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety,
could only seize her language brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks
up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort
of love. I know it may be very dear--but it murders our marriage--
and then the marriage stays with us like a murder--and everything
else is gone. And then our husband--if he loved and trusted us,
and we have not helped him, but made a curse in his life--"
Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming
too far, and of speaking as if she herself were perfection
addressing error. She was too much preoccupied with her own anxiety,
to be aware that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the need
to express pitying fellowship rather than rebuke, she put her hands on
Rosamond's, and said with more agitated rapidity,--"I know, I know that
the feeling may be very dear--it has taken hold of us unawares--it is so
hard, it may seem like death to part with it--and we are weak--I am weak--"
The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling
to save another, rushed over Dorothea with conquering force.
She stopped in speechless agitation. not crying, but feeling
as if she were being inwardly grappled. Her face had become of a
deathlier paleness, her lips trembled, and she pressed her hands
helplessly on the hands that lay under them.
Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own--
hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new,
awful, undefined aspect--could find no words, but involuntarily
she put her lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her,
and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they
had been in a shipwreck.
"You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager
half-whisper, while she was still feeling Dorothea's arms round her--
urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself from something
that oppressed her as if it were blood guiltiness.
They moved apart, looking at each other.
"When you came in yesterday--it was not as you thought,"
said Rosamond in the same tone.
There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea She expected
a vindication of Rosamond herself.
"He was telling me how he loved another woman, that I might know
he could never love me," said Rosamond, getting more and more
hurried as she went on. "And now I think he hates me because--
because you mistook him yesterday. He says it is through me
that you will think ill of him--think that he is a false person.
But it shall not be through me. He has never had any love for me--
I know he has not--he has always thought slightly of me.
He said yesterday that no other woman existed for him beside you.
The blame of what happened is entirely mine. He said he could never
explain to you--because of me. He said you could never think well
of him again. But now I have told you, and he cannot reproach me
any more."
Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses which she had not
known before. She had begun her confession under the subduing
influence of Dorothea's emotion; and as she went on she had
gathered the sense that she was repelling Will's reproaches,
which were still like a knife-wound within her.
The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy.
It was a tumult in which the terrible strain of the night and
morning made a resistant pain:--she could only perceive that this
would be joy when she had recovered her power of feeling it.
Her immediate consciousness was one of immense sympathy without cheek;
she cared for Rosamond without struggle now, and responded earnestly
to her last words--
"No, he cannot reproach you any more."
With her usual tendency to over-estimate the good in others,
she felt a great outgoing of her heart towards Rosamond,
for the generous effort which had redeemed her from suffering,
not counting that the effort was a reflex of her own energy.
After they had been silent a little, she said--
"You are not sorry that I came this morning?"
"No, you have been very good to me," said Rosamond. "I did not think
that you would be so good. I was very unhappy. I am not happy now.
Everything is so sad."
"But better days will come. Your husband will be rightly valued.
And he depends on you for comfort. He loves you best.
The worst loss would be to lose that--and you have not lost it,"
said Dorothea.
She tried to thrust away the too overpowering thought of her
own relief, lest she should fail to win some sign that Rosamond's
affection was yearning back towards her husband.
"Tertius did not find fault with me, then?" said Rosamond,
understanding now that Lydgate might have said anything to
Mrs. Casaubon, and that she certainly was different from other women.
Perhaps there was a faint taste of jealousy in the question.
A smile began to play over Dorothea's face as she said--
"No, indeed! How could you imagine it?" But here the door opened,
and Lydgate entered.
"I am come back in my quality of doctor," he said. "After I
went away, I was haunted by two pale faces: Mrs. Casaubon looked
as much in need of care as you, Rosy. And I thought that I
had not done my duty in leaving you together; so when I had been
to Coleman's I came home again. I noticed that you were walking,
Mrs. Casaubon, and the sky has changed--I think we may have rain.
May I send some one to order your carriage to come for you?"
"Oh, no! I am strong: I need the walk," said Dorothea,
rising with animation in her face. "Mrs. Lydgate and I
have chatted a great deal, and it is time for me to go.
I have always been accused of being immoderate and saying too much."
She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet good-by
without kiss or other show of effusion: there had been between them
too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it superficially.
As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing of Rosamond,
but told him of Mr. Farebrother and the other friends who had
listened with belief to his story.
When he came back to Rosamond, she had already thrown herself
on the sofa, in resigned fatigue.
"Well, Rosy," he said, standing over her, and touching her hair,
"what do you think of Mrs. Casaubon now you have seen so much
of her?"
"I think she must be better than any one," said Rosamond,
"and she is very beautiful. If you go to talk to her so often,
you will be more discontented with me than ever!"
Lydgate laughed at the "so often." "But has she made you any less
discontented with me?"
"I think she has," said Rosamond, looking up in his face.
"How heavy your eyes are, Tertius--and do push your hair back."
He lifted up his large white hand to obey her, and felt thankful
for this little mark of interest in him. Poor Rosamond's vagrant
fancy had come back terribly scourged--meek enough to nestle
under the old despised shelter. And the shelter was still there:
Lydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with sad resignation.
He had chosen this fragile creature, and had taken the burthen
of her life upon his arms. He must walk as he could, carrying that
burthen pitifully.
CHAPTER LXXXII.
"My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
--SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely to stay
in banishment unless they are obliged. When Will Ladislaw exiled
himself from Middlemarch he had placed no stronger obstacle to his
return than his own resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier,
but simply a state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other
states of mind, and to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving
place with polite facility. As the months went on, it had seemed
more and more difficult to him to say why he should not run down
to Middlemarch--merely for the sake of hearing something about Dorothea;
and if on such a flying visit he should chance by some strange
coincidence to meet with her, there was no reason for him to be
ashamed of having taken an innocent journey which he had beforehand
supposed that he should not take. Since he was hopelessly
divided from her, he might surely venture into her neighborhood;
and as to the suspicious friends who kept a dragon watch over her--
their opinions seemed less and less important with time and change
of air.
And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, which seemed
to make a journey to Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty.
Will had given a disinterested attention to an intended settlement
on a new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to
carry out a good design had set him on debating with himself whether
it would not be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode,
to urge the application of that money which had been offered to himself
as a means of carrying out a scheme likely to be largely beneficial.
The question seemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance
to again entering into any relation with the banker might have made
him dismiss it quickly, if there had not arisen in his imagination
the probability that his judgment might be more safely determined
by a visit to Middlemarch.
That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason
for coming down. He had meant to confide in Lydgate, and discuss
the money question with him, and he had meant to amuse himself
for the few evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music
and badinage with fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends
at Lowick Parsonage:--if the Parsonage was close to the Manor,
that was no fault of his. He had neglected the Farebrothers before
his departure, from a proud resistance to the possible accusation
of indirectly seeking interviews with Dorothea; but hunger tames us,
and Will had become very hungry for the vision of a certain form
and the sound of a certain voice. Nothing, had done instead--
not the opera, or the converse of zealous politicians, or the flattering
reception (in dim corners) of his new hand in leading articles.
Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost
everything would be in his familiar little world; fearing, indeed,
that there would be no surprises in his visit. But he had found
that humdrum world in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even
badinage and lyrism had turned explosive; and the first day of this
visit had become the most fatal epoch of his life. The next
morning he felt so harassed with the nightmare of consequences--
he dreaded so much the immediate issues before him--that seeing
while he breakfasted the arrival of the Riverston coach, he went
out hurriedly and took his place on it, that he might be relieved,
at least for a day, from the necessity of doing or saying anything
in Middlemarch. Will Ladislaw was in one of those tangled crises
which are commoner in experience than one might imagine, from the
shallow absoluteness of men's judgments. He had found Lydgate,
for whom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances which
claimed his thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the reason why,
in spite of that claim, it would have been better for Will to have
avoided all further intimacy, or even contact, with Lydgate,
was precisely of the kind to make such a course appear impossible.
To a creature of Will's susceptible temperament--without any neutral
region of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that
befell him into the collisions of a passionate drama--the revelation
that Rosamond had made her happiness in any way dependent on him was
a difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably
increased for him. He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded
to show the fulness of his relenting: he must go to her again;
the friendship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness
was a power which he dreaded. And all the while there was no more
foretaste of enjoyment in the life before him than if his limbs
had been lopped off and he was making his fresh start on crutches.
In the night he had debated whether he should not get on the coach,
not for Riverston, but for London, leaving a note to Lydgate
which would give a makeshift reason for his retreat. But there
were strong cords pulling him back from that abrupt departure:
the blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing
of that chief hope which had remained in spite of the acknowledged
necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery for him to
resign himself to it and go straightway into a distance which was
also despair.
Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach.
He came back again by it while it was still daylight, having made
up his mind that he must go to Lydgate's that evening.
The Rubicon, we know, was a very insignificant stream to look at;
its significance lay entirely in certain invisible conditions.
Will felt as if he were forced to cross his small boundary ditch,
and what he saw beyond it was not empire, but discontented subjection.
But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day life to
witness the saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy
of rescue that may lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship.
If Dorothea, after her night's anguish, had not taken that walk
to Rosamond--why, she perhaps would have been a woman who gained
a higher character for discretion, but it would certainly not have
been as well for those three who were on one hearth in Lydgate's
house at half-past seven that evening.
Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received him with a
languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous exhaustion,
of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to Will.
And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he innocently
apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean backward
and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the part
of a friend who was making his first appearance and greeting to Rosamond,
while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since that scene
of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,
like the painful vision of a double madness. It happened that nothing
called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea,
and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded
paper in his saucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he
went back to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper.
What Rosamond had written to him would probably deepen the painful
impressions of the evening. Still, he opened and read it by his
bed-candle. There were only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:--
"I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you.
I told her because she came to see me and was very kind. You will
have nothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any
difference to you."
The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelt
on them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning
at the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond--
at the uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity
wounded in having an explanation of his conduct offered to her.
There might still remain in her mind a changed association with him
which made an irremediable difference--a lasting flaw. With active
fancy he wrought himself into a state of doubt little more easy
than that of the man who has escaped from wreck by night and stands
on unknown ground in the darkness. Until that wretched yesterday--
except the moment of vexation long ago in the very same room and
in the very same presence--all their vision, all their thought of
each other, had been as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on
tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.
But now--would Dorothea meet him in that world again?
CHAPTER LXXXIII.
"And now good-morrow to our waking souls
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere."
--DR. DONNE.
On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosamond, she had had
two nights of sound sleep, and had not only lost all traces of fatigue,
but felt as if she had a great deal of superfluous strength--
that is to say, more strength than she could manage to concentrate
on any occupation. The day before, she had taken long walks
outside the grounds, and had paid two visits to the Parsonage;
but she never in her life told any one the reason why she spent
her time in that fruitless manner, and this morning she was rather
angry with herself for her childish restlessness. To-day was to be
spent quite differently. What was there to be done in the village?
Oh dear! nothing. Everybody was well and had flannel; nobody's pig
had died; and it was Saturday morning, when there was a general
scrubbing of doors and door-stones, and when it was useless to go
into the school. But there were various subjects that Dorothea
was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved to throw herself
energetically into the gravest of all. She sat down in the library
before her particular little heap of books on political economy and
kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light as to the
best way of spending money so as not to injure one's neighbors, or--
what comes to the same thing--so as to do them the most good.
Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of it,
would certainly keep her mind steady. Unhappily her mind slipped
off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading
sentences twice over with an intense consciousness of many things,
but not of any one thing contained in the text. This was hopeless.
Should she order the carriage and drive to Tipton? No; for some
reason or other she preferred staying at Lowick. But her vagrant
mind must be reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline;
and she walked round and round the brown library considering by
what sort of manoeuvre she could arrest her wandering thoughts.
Perhaps a mere task was the best means--something to which she
must go doggedly. Was there not the geography of Asia Minor,
in which her slackness had often been rebuked by Mr. Casaubon?
She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one: this morning
she might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia was not on
the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the Chalybes
firmly on the shores of the Euxine. A map was a fine thing to study
when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up
of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them.
Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering
the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime.
She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience--
nodding her head and marking the names off on her fingers,
with a little pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off
to put her hands on each side of her face and say, "Oh dear!
oh dear!"
There was no reason why this should end any more than a merry-go-round;
but it was at last interrupted by the opening of the door and the
announcement of Miss Noble.
The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea's shoulder,
was warmly welcomed, but while her hand was being pressed she made
many of her beaver-like noises, as if she had something difficult
to say.
"Do sit down," said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward. "Am I
wanted for anything? I shall be so glad if I can do anything."
"I will not stay," said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her small
basket, and holding some article inside it nervously; "I have left
a friend in the churchyard." She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds,
and unconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering.
It was the tortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea felt the color
mounting to her cheeks.
"Mr. Ladislaw," continued the timid little woman. "He fears he
has offended you, and has begged me to ask if you will see him
for a few minutes."
Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mind
that she could not receive him in this library, where her husband's
prohibition seemed to dwell. She looked towards the window.
Could she go out and meet him in the grounds? The sky was heavy,
and the trees had begun to shiver as at a coming storm. Besides,
she shrank from going out to him.
"Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon," said Miss Noble, pathetically; "else I
must go back and say No, and that will hurt him."
"Yes, I will see him," said Dorothea. "Pray tell him to come."
What else was there to be done? There was nothing that she longed
for at that moment except to see Will: the possibility of seeing him
had thrust itself insistently between her and every other object;
and yet she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her--
a sense that she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.
When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood
in the middle of the library with her hands falling clasped
before her, making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude
of dignified unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of just
then was her own body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in
Will's mind, and of the hard feelings that others had had about him.
How could any duty bind her to hardness? Resistance to unjust
dispraise had mingled with her feeling for him from the very first,
and now in the rebound of her heart after her anguish the resistance
was stronger than ever. "If I love him too much it is because he
has been used so ill:"--there was a voice within her saying this
to some imagined audience in the library, when the door was opened,
and she saw Will before her.
She did not move, and he came towards her with more doubt and timidity
in his face than she had ever seen before. He was in a state
of uncertainty which made him afraid lest some look or word of his
should condemn him to a new distance from her; and Dorothea was afraid
of her OWN emotion. She looked as if there were a spell upon her,
keeping her motionless and hindering her from unclasping her hands,
while some intense, grave yearning was imprisoned within her eyes.
Seeing that she did not put out her hand as usual, Will paused
a yard from her and said with embarrassment, "I am so grateful
to you for seeing me."
"I wanted to see you," said Dorothea, having no other words at command.
It did not occur to her to sit down, and Will did not give
a cheerful interpretation to this queenly way of receiving him;
but he went on to say what he had made up his mind to say.
"I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for coming back
so soon. I have been punished for my impatience. You know--
every one knows now---a painful story about my parentage. I knew
of it before I went away, and I always meant to tell you of it if--
if we ever met again."
There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she unclasped her hands,
but immediately folded them over each other.
"But the affair is matter of gossip now," Will continued. "I wished
you to know that something connected with it--something which
happened before I went away, helped to bring me down here again.
At least I thought it excused my coming. It was the idea of getting
Bulstrode to apply some money to a public purpose--some money which
he had thought of giving me. Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode's
credit that he privately offered me compensation for an old injury:
he offered to give me a good income to make amends; but I suppose
you know the disagreeable story?"
Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner was gathering
some of the defiant courage with which he always thought of this
fact in his destiny. He added, "You know that it must be altogether
painful to me."
"Yes--yes--I know," said Dorothea, hastily.
"I did not choose to accept an income from such a source. I was
sure that you would not think well of me if I did so," said Will.
Why should he mind saying anything of that sort to her now?
She knew that he had avowed his love for her. "I felt that"--
he broke off, nevertheless.
"You acted as I should have expected you to act," said Dorothea,
her face brightening and her head becoming a little more erect on
its beautiful stem.
"I did not believe that you would let any circumstance of my birth
create a prejudice in you against me, though it was sure to do so
in others," said Will, shaking his head backward in his old way,
and looking with a grave appeal into her eyes.
"If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason for me to cling
to you," said Dorothea, fervidly. "Nothing could have changed
me but--"her heart was swelling, and it was difficult to go on;
she made a great effort over herself to say in a low tremulous voice,
"but thinking that you were different--not so good as I had believed
you to be."
"You are sure to believe me better than I am in everything but one,"
said Will, giving way to his own feeling in the evidence of hers.
"I mean, in my truth to you. When I thought you doubted of that,
I didn't care about anything that was left. I thought it was
all over with me, and there was nothing to try for--only things
to endure."
"I don't doubt you any longer," said Dorothea, putting out her hand;
a vague fear for him impelling her unutterable affection.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips with something like a sob.
But he stood with his hat and gloves in the other hand, and might
have done for the portrait of a Royalist. Still it was difficult
to loose the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion
that distressed her, looked and moved away.
"See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed,"
she said, walking towards the window, yet speaking and moving with
only a dim sense of what she was doing.
Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned against the tall back
of a leather chair, on which he ventured now to lay his hat and gloves,
and free himself from the intolerable durance of formality to which
he had been for the first time condemned in Dorothea's presence.
It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that moment leaning
on the chair. He was not much afraid of anything that she might feel now.
They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking
at the evergreens which were being tossed, and were showing
the pale underside of their leaves against the blackening sky.
Will never enjoyed the prospect of a storm so much: it delivered
him from the necessity of going away. Leaves and little branches
were hurled about, and the thunder was getting nearer. The light
was more and more sombre, but there came a flash of lightning
which made them start and look at each other, and then smile.
Dorothea began to say what she had been thinking of.
"That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have
had nothing to try for. If we had lost our own chief good,
other people's good would remain, and that is worth trying for.
Some can be happy. I seemed to see that more clearly than ever,
when I was the most wretched. I can hardly think how I could have
borne the trouble, if that feeling had not come to me to make strength."
"You have never felt the sort of misery I felt," said Will;
"the misery of knowing that you must despise me."
"But I have felt worse--it was worse to think ill--" Dorothea
had begun impetuously, but broke off.
Will colored. He had the sense that whatever she said was uttered
in the vision of a fatality that kept them apart. He was silent
a moment, and then said passionately--
"We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each other
without disguise. Since I must go away--since we must always
be divided--you may think of me as one on the brink of the grave."
While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit
each of them up for the other--and the light seemed to be the terror
of a hopeless love. Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window;
Will followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement;
and so they stood, with their hands clasped, like two children,
looking out on the storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack
and roll above them, and the rain began to pour down. Then they
turned their faces towards each other, with the memory of his last
words in them, and they did not loose each other's hands.
"There is no hope for me," said Will. "Even if you loved
me as well as I love you--even if I were everything to you--
I shall most likely always be very poor: on a sober calculation,
one can count on nothing but a creeping lot. It is impossible
for us ever to belong to each other. It is perhaps base of me
to have asked for a word from you. I meant to go away into silence,
but I have not been able to do what I meant."
"Don't be sorry," said Dorothea, in her clear tender tones.
"I would rather share all the trouble of our parting."
Her lips trembled, and so did his. It was never known which lips were
the first to move towards the other lips; but they kissed tremblingly,
and then they moved apart.
The rain was dashing against the window-panes as if an angry spirit
were within it, and behind it was the great swoop of the wind;
it was one of those moments in which both the busy and the idle
pause with a certain awe.
Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a long low ottoman
in the middle of the room, and with her hands folded over each
other on her lap, looked at the drear outer world. Will stood
still an instant looking at her, then seated himself beside her,
and laid his hand on hers, which turned itself upward to be clasped.
They sat in that way without looking at each other, until the rain
abated and began to fall in stillness. Each had been full of thoughts
which neither of them could begin to utter.
But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to look at Will.
With passionate exclamation, as if some torture screw were
threatening him, he started up and said, "It is impossible!"
He went and leaned on the back of the chair again, and seemed to be
battling with his own anger, while she looked towards him sadly.
"It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that divides people,"
he burst out again; "it is more intolerable--to have our life maimed
by petty accidents."
"No--don't say that--your life need not be maimed," said Dorothea, gently.
"Yes, it must," said Will, angrily. "It is cruel of you to speak
in that way--as if there were any comfort. You may see beyond
the misery of it, but I don't. It is unkind--it is throwing back
my love for you as if it were a trifle, to speak in that way
in the face of the fact. We can never be married."
"Some time--we might," said Dorothea, in a trembling voice.
"When?" said Will, bitterly. "What is the use of counting on
any success of mine? It is a mere toss up whether I shall ever
do more than keep myself decently, unless I choose to sell myself
as a mere pen and a mouthpiece. I can see that clearly enough.
I could not offer myself to any woman, even if she had no luxuries
to renounce."
There was silence. Dorothea's heart was full of something that she
wanted to say, and yet the words were too difficult. She was wholly
possessed by them: at that moment debate was mute within her.
And it was very hard that she could not say what she wanted to say.
Will was looking out of the window angrily. If he would have looked
at her and not gone away from her side, she thought everything
would have been easier. At last he turned, still resting against
the chair, and stretching his hand automatically towards his hat,
said with a sort of exasperation, "Good-by."
"Oh, I cannot bear it--my heart will break," said Dorothea,
starting from her seat, the flood of her young passion bearing down
all the obstructions which had kept her silent--the great tears
rising and falling in an instant:"I don't mind about poverty--
I hate my wealth."
In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms round her,
but she drew her head back and held his away gently that she might go
on speaking, her large tear-filled eyes looking at his very simply,
while she said in a sobbing childlike way, "We could live quite
well on my own fortune--it is too much--seven hundred a-year--I want
so little--no new clothes--and I will learn what everything costs."
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
"Though it be songe of old and yonge,
That I sholde be to blame,
Theyrs be the charge, that spoke so large
In hurtynge of my name."
--The Not-browne Mayde.
It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill:
that explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be walking on the
slope of the lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall,
holding the "Times" in his hands behind him, while he talked
with a trout-fisher's dispassionateness about the prospects
of the country to Sir James Chettam. Mrs. Cadwallader,
the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were sometimes seated on
garden-chairs, sometimes walking to meet little Arthur, who was
being drawn in his chariot, and, as became the infantine Bouddha,
was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome silken fringe.
The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully.
Mrs. Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation of peers:
she had it for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone
over to the other side entirely at the instigation of his wife,
who had scented peerages in the air from the very first introduction
of the Reform question, and would sign her soul away to take precedence
of her younger sister, who had married a baronet. Lady Chettam
thought that such conduct was very reprehensible, and remembered
that Mrs. Truberry's mother was a Miss Walsingham of Melspring.
Celia confessed it was nicer to be "Lady" than "Mrs.," and that Dodo
never minded about precedence if she could have her own way.
Mrs. Cadwallader held that it was a poor satisfaction to take
precedence when everybody about you knew that you had not a drop
of good blood in your veins; and Celia again, stopping to look
at Arthur, said, "It would be very nice, though, if he were a Viscount--
and his lordship's little tooth coming through! He might have been,
if James had been an Earl."
"My dear Celia," said the Dowager, "James's title is worth far more
than any new earldom. I never wished his father to be anything
else than Sir James."
"Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth," said Celia,
comfortably. "But see, here is my uncle coming."
She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James and Mr. Cadwallader
came forward to make one group with the ladies. Celia had slipped
her arm through her uncle's, and he patted her hand with a rather
melancholy "Well, my dear!" As they approached, it was evident
that Mr. Brooke was looking dejected, but this was fully accounted
for by the state of politics; and as he was shaking hands all round
without more greeting than a "Well, you're all here, you know,"
the Rector said, laughingly--
"Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke;
you've got all the riff-raff of the country on your side."
"The Bill, eh? ah!" said Mr. Brooke, with a mild distractedness
of manner. "Thrown out, you know, eh? The Lords are going
too far, though. They'll have to pull up. Sad news, you know.
I mean, here at home--sad news. But you must not blame me, Chettam."
"What is the matter?" said Sir James. "Not another gamekeeper shot,
I hope? It's what I should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass
is let off so easily."
"Gamekeeper? No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house,
you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at the Cadwalladers, to show
that he included them in his confidence. "As to poachers like
Trapping Bass, you know, Chettam," he continued, as they were entering,
"when you are a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to commit.
Severity is all very well, but it's a great deal easier when you've
got somebody to do it for you. You have a soft place in your
heart yourself, you know--you're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort
of thing."
Mr. Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation.
When he had something painful to tell, it was usually his way
to introduce it among a number of disjointed particulars, as if it
were a medicine that would get a milder flavor by mixing He continued
his chat with Sir James about the poachers until they were all seated,
and Mrs. Cadwallader, impatient of this drivelling, said--
"I'm dying to know the sad news. The gamekeeper is not shot:
that is settled. What is it, then?"
"Well, it's a very trying thing, you know," said Mr. Brooke.
"I'm glad you and the Rector are here; it's a family matter--
but you will help us all to bear it, Cadwallader. I've got
to break it to you, my dear." Here Mr. Brooke looked at Celia--
"You've no notion what it is, you know. And, Chettam, it will annoy
you uncommonly--but, you see, you have not been able to hinder it,
any more than I have. There's something singular in things:
they come round, you know."
"It must be about Dodo," said Celia, who had been used to think
of her sister as the dangerous part of the family machinery.
She had seated herself on a low stool against her husband's knee.
"For God's sake let us hear what it is!" said Sir James.
"Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's will:
it was a sort of will to make things worse."
"Exactly," said Sir James, hastily. "But WHAT is worse?"
"Dorothea is going to be married again, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
nodding towards Celia, who immediately looked up at her husband
with a frightened glance, and put her hand on his knee. Sir James
was almost white with anger, but he did not speak.
"Merciful heaven!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Not to YOUNG Ladislaw?"
Mr. Brooke nodded, saying, "Yes; to Ladislaw," and then fell into
a prudential silence.
"You see, Humphrey!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her arm towards
her husband. "Another time you will admit that I have some foresight;
or rather you will contradict me and be just as blind as ever.
YOU supposed that the young gentleman was gone out of the country."
"So he might be, and yet come back," said the Rector, quietly
"When did you learn this?" said Sir James, not liking to hear
any one else speak, though finding it difficult to speak himself.
"Yesterday," said Mr. Brooke, meekly. "I went to Lowick.
Dorothea sent for me, you know. It had come about quite suddenly--
neither of them had any idea two days ago--not any idea, you know.
There's something singular in things. But Dorothea is quite
determined--it is no use opposing. I put it strongly to her.
I did my duty, Chettam. But she can act as she likes, you know."
"It would have been better if I had called him out and shot
him a year ago," said Sir James, not from bloody-mindedness,
but because he needed something strong to say.
"Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable," said Celia.
"Be reasonable, Chettam. Look at the affair more quietly,"
said Mr. Cadwallader, sorry to see his good-natured friend
so overmastered by anger.
"That is not so very easy for a man of any dignity--with any
sense of right--when the affair happens to be in his own family,"
said Sir James, still in his white indignation. "It is
perfectly scandalous. If Ladislaw had had a spark of honor he would
have gone out of the country at once, and never shown his face
in it again. However, I am not surprised. The day after Casaubon's
funeral I said what ought to be done. But I was not listened to."
"You wanted what was impossible, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke.
"You wanted him shipped off. I told you Ladislaw was not to be done
as we liked with: he had his ideas. He was a remarkable fellow--
I always said he was a remarkable fellow."
"Yes," said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, "it is rather
a pity you formed that high opinion of him. We are indebted to that
for his being lodged in this neighborhood. We are indebted to that
for seeing a woman like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying him."
Sir James made little stoppages between his clauses, the words
not coming easily. "A man so marked out by her husband's will,
that delicacy ought to have forbidden her from seeing him again--
who takes her out of her proper rank--into poverty--has the meanness
to accept such a sacrifice--has always had an objectionable position--
a bad origin--and, I BELIEVE, is a man of little principle and
light character. That is my opinion." Sir James ended emphatically,
turning aside and crossing his leg.
"I pointed everything out to her," said Mr. Brooke, apologetically--
"I mean the poverty, and abandoning her position. I said, `My dear,
you don't know what it is to live on seven hundred a-year,
and have no carriage, and that kind of thing, and go amongst
people who don't know who you are.' I put it strongly to her.
But I advise you to talk to Dorothea herself. The fact is, she has
a dislike to Casaubon's property. You will hear what she says,
you know."
"No--excuse me--I shall not," said Sir James, with more coolness.
"I cannot bear to see her again; it is too painful. It hurts me too
much that a woman like Dorothea should have done what is wrong."
"Be just, Chettam," said the easy, large-lipped Rector,
who objected to all this unnecessary discomfort. "Mrs. Casaubon
may be acting imprudently: she is giving up a fortune for the sake
of a man, and we men have so poor an opinion of each other that we
can hardly call a woman wise who does that. But I think you should
not condemn it as a wrong action, in the strict sense of the word."
"Yes, I do," answered Sir James. "I think that Dorothea commits
a wrong action in marrying Ladislaw."
"My dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because
it is unpleasant to us," said the Rector, quietly. Like many men
who take life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth
occasionally to those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper.
Sir James took out his handkerchief and began to bite the corner.
"It is very dreadful of Dodo, though," said Celia, wishing to
justify her husband. "She said she NEVER WOULD marry again--
not anybody at all."
"I heard her say the same thing myself," said Lady Chettam,
majestically, as if this were royal evidence.
"Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases,"
said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The only wonder to me is, that any of
you are surprised. You did nothing to hinder it. If you would
have had Lord Triton down here to woo her with his philanthropy,
he might have carried her off before the year was over. There was
no safety in anything else. Mr. Casaubon had prepared all this
as beautifully as possible. He made himself disagreeable--or it
pleased God to make him so--and then he dared her to contradict him.
It's the way to make any trumpery tempting, to ticket it at a high
price in that way."
"I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cadwallader," said Sir James,
still feeling a little stung, and turning round in his chair
towards the Rector. "He's not a man we can take into the family.
At least, I must speak for myself," he continued, carefully keeping
his eyes off Mr. Brooke. "I suppose others will find his society
too pleasant to care about the propriety of the thing."
"Well, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, good-humoredly, nursing
his leg, "I can't turn my back on Dorothea. I must be a father
to her up to a certain point. I said, `My dear, I won't refuse
to give you away.' I had spoken strongly before. But I can cut
off the entail, you know. It will cost money and be troublesome;
but I can do it, you know."
Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing
his own force of resolution and propitiating what was just in the
Baronet's vexation. He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than
he was aware of. He had touched a motive of which Sir James was ashamed.
The mass of his feeling about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was
due partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion,
partly to a jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladislaw's case
than in Casaubon's. He was convinced that the marriage was a fatal
one for Dorothea. But amid that mass ran a vein of which he was
too good and honorable a man to like the avowal even to himself:
it was undeniable that the union of the two estates--Tipton and Freshitt--
lying charmingly within a ring-fence, was a prospect that flattered
him for his son and heir. Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed
to that motive, Sir James felt a sudden embarrassment; there was
a stoppage in his throat; he even blushed. He had found more words
than usual in the first jet of his anger, but Mr. Brooke's propitiation
was more clogging to his tongue than Mr. Cadwallader's caustic hint.
But Celia was glad to have room for speech after her uncle's suggestion
of the marriage ceremony, and she said, though with as little eagerness
of manner as if the question had turned on an invitation to dinner,
"Do you mean that Dodo is going to be married directly, uncle?"
"In three weeks, you know," said Mr. Brooke, helplessly. "I can do
nothing to hinder it, Cadwallader," he added, turning for a little
countenance toward the Rector, who said--
"--I--should not make any fuss about it. If she likes to be poor,
that is her affair. Nobody would have said anything if she had
married the young fellow because he was rich. Plenty of beneficed
clergy are poorer than they will be. Here is Elinor," continued the
provoking husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly
a thousand a-year--I was a lout--nobody could see anything in me--
my shoes were not the right cut--all the men wondered how a woman
could like me. Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I
hear more harm of him."
"Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife.
"Everything is all one--that is the beginning and end with you.
As if you had not been a Cadwallader! Does any one suppose that I
would have taken such a monster as you by any other name?"
"And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation.
"Elinor cannot be said to have descended below her rank. It is
difficult to say what Mr. Ladislaw is, eh, James?"
Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less respectful than
his usual mode of answering his mother. Celia looked up at him
like a thoughtful kitten.
"It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!"
said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with,
and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing-master, was it?--
and then an old clo--"
"Nonsense, Elinor," said the Rector, rising. "It is time for us
to go."
"After all, he is a pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, rising too,
and wishing to make amends. "He is like the fine old Crichley
portraits before the idiots came in."
"I'll go with you," said Mr. Brooke, starting up with alacrity.
"You must all come and dine with me to-morrow, you know--eh, Celia,
my dear?"
"You will, James--won't you?" said Celia, taking her husband's hand.
"Oh, of course, if you like," said Sir James, pulling down his waistcoat,
but unable yet to adjust his face good-humoredly. "That is to say,
if it is not to meet anybody else.':
"No, no, no," said Mr. Brooke, understanding the condition.
"Dorothea would not come, you know, unless you had been to see her."
When Sir James and Celia were alone, she said, "Do you mind about
my having the carriage to go to, Lowick, James?"
"What, now, directly?" he answered, with some surprise.
"Yes, it is very important," said Celia.
"Remember, Celia, I cannot see her," said Sir James.
"Not if she gave up marrying?"
"What is the use of saying that?--however, I'm going to the stables.
I'll tell Briggs to bring the carriage round."
Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least
to take a journey to Lowick in order to influence Dorothea's mind.
All through their girlhood she had felt that she could act on
her sister by a word judiciously placed--by opening a little
window for the daylight of her own understanding to enter among
the strange colored lamps by which Dodo habitually saw. And Celia
the matron naturally felt more able to advise her childless sister.
How could any one understand Dodo so well as Celia did or love her
so tenderly?
Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure at the sight
of her sister so soon after the revelation of her intended marriage.
She had prefigured to herself, even with exaggeration, the disgust
of her friends, and she had even feared that Celia might be kept
aloof from her.
"O Kitty, I am delighted to see you!" said Dorothea, putting her
hands on Celia's shoulders, and beaming on her. "I almost thought
you would not come to me."
"I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry," said Celia,
and they sat down on two small chairs opposite each other,
with their knees touching.
"You know, Dodo, it is very bad," said Celia, in her placid guttural,
looking as prettily free from humors as possible. "You have disappointed
us all so. And I can't think that it ever WILL be--you never
can go and live in that way. And then there are all your plans!
You never can have thought of that. James would have taken any trouble
for you, and you might have gone on all your life doing what you liked."
"On the contrary, dear," said Dorothea, "I never could do anything
that I liked. I have never carried out any plan yet."
"Because you always wanted things that wouldn't do. But other plans
would have come. And how can you marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of us
ever thought you COULD marry? It shocks James so dreadfully.
And then it is all so different from what you have always been.
You would have Mr. Casaubon because he had such a great soul,
and was so and dismal and learned; and now, to think of marrying
Mr. Ladislaw, who has got no estate or anything. I suppose it
is because you must be making yourself uncomfortable in some way
or other."
Dorothea laughed.
"Well, it is very serious, Dodo," said Celia, becoming more impressive.
"How will you live? and you will go away among queer people.
And I shall never see you--and you won't mind about little Arthur--
and I thought you always would--"
Celia's rare tears had got into her eyes, and the corners of her
mouth were agitated.
"Dear Celia," said Dorothea, with tender gravity, "if you don't
ever see me, it will not be my fault."
"Yes, it will," said Celia, with the same touching distortion
of her small features. "How can I come to you or have you with me
when James can't bear it?--that is because he thinks it is not right--
he thinks you are so wrong, Dodo. But you always were wrong: only I
can't help loving you. And nobody can think where you will live:
where can you go?"
"I am going to London," said Dorothea.
"How can you always live in a street? And you will be so poor.
I could give you half my things, only how can I, when I never
see you?"
"Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth. "Take comfort:
perhaps James will forgive me some time."
"But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia,
drying her eyes, and returning to her argument; "then there would
be nothing uncomfortable. And you would not do what nobody thought
you could do. James always said you ought to be a queen; but this
is not at all being like a queen. You know what mistakes you
have always been making, Dodo, and this is another. Nobody thinks
Mr. Ladislaw a proper husband for you. And you SAID YOU would
never be married again."
"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said Dorothea,
"and that I might have done something better, if I had been better.
But this is what I am going to do. I have promised to marry
Mr. Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him."
The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long
learned to recognize. She was silent a few moments, and then said,
as if she had dismissed all contest, "Is he very fond of you, Dodo?"
"I hope so. I am very fond of him."
"That is nice," said Celia, comfortably. "Only I rather you had such
a sort of husband as James is, with a place very near, that I could
drive to."
Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative.
Presently she said, "I cannot think how it all came about."
Celia thought it would be pleasant to hear the story.
"I dare say not," said-Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin.
"If you knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you."
"Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily.
"No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."
CHAPTER LIXXV.
"Then went the jury out whose names were Mr. Blindman, Mr. No-good,
Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind,
Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, Mr. Implacable,
who every one gave in his private verdict against him among themselves,
and afterwards unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty
before the judge. And first among themselves, Mr. Blindman,
the foreman, said, I see clearly that this man is a heretic.
Then said Mr. No-good, Away with such a fellow from the earth!
Ay, said Mr. Malice, for I hate the very look of him. Then said
Mr. Love-lust, I could never endure him. Nor I, said Mr. Live-loose;
for he would be always condemning my way. Hang him, hang him,
said Mr. Heady. A sorry scrub, said Mr. High-mind. My heart riseth
against him, said Mr. Enmity. He is a rogue, said Mr. Liar.
Hanging is too good for him, said Mr. Cruelty. Let us despatch
him out of the way said Mr. Hate-light. Then said Mr. Implacable,
Might I have all the world given me, I could not be reconciled to him;
therefore let us forthwith bring him in guilty of death."
--Pilgrim's Progress.
When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions
bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful?
That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have
not attained, to know ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd--
to be sure that what we are denounced for is solely the good in us.
The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call himself a martyr
even though he were to persuade himself that the men who stoned
him were but ugly passions incarnate--who knows that he is stoned,
not for professing the Right, but for not being the man he professed
to be.
This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he
made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end
his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.
The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from
one dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a
tribunal before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy.
His equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had
sustained the conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to,
yet he had a terror upon him which would not let him expose them
to judgment by a full confession to his wife: the acts which he had
washed and diluted with inward argument and motive, and for which it
seemed comparatively easy to win invisible pardon--what name would
she call them by? That she should ever silently call his acts
Murder was what he could not bear. He felt shrouded by her doubt:
he got strength to face her from the sense that she could not yet
feel warranted in pronouncing that worst condemnation on him.
Some time, perhaps--when he was dying--he would tell her all:
in the deep shadow of that time, when she held his hand in the
gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling from
his touch. Perhaps: but concealment had been the habit of his life,
and the impulse to confession had no power against the dread
of a deeper humiliation.
He was full of timid care for his wife, not only because he
deprecated any harshness of judgment from her, but because he
felt a deep distress at the sight of her suffering. She had
sent her daughters away to board at a school on the coast,
that this crisis might be hidden from them as far as possible.
Set free by their absence from the intolerable necessity of
accounting for her grief or of beholding their frightened wonder,
she could live unconstrainedly with the sorrow that was every
day streaking her hair with whiteness and making her eyelids languid.
"Tell me anything that you would like to have me do, Harriet,"
Bulstrode had said to her; "I mean with regard to arrangements
of property. It is my intention not to sell the land I possess
in this neighborhood, but to leave it to you as a safe provision.
If you have any wish on such subjects, do not conceal it from me."
A few days afterwards, when she had returned from a visit to
her brother's, she began to speak to her husband on a subject
which had for some time been in her mind.
"I SHOULD like to do something for my brother's family,
Nicholas; and I think we are bound to make some amends to Rosamond
and her husband. Walter says Mr. Lydgate must leave the town,
and his practice is almost good for nothing, and they have very little
left to settle anywhere with. I would rather do without something
for ourselves, to make some amends to my poor brother's family."
Mrs. Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the facts than in the phrase
"make some amends;" knowing that her husband must understand her.
He had a particular reason, which she was not aware of, for wincing
under her suggestion. He hesitated before he said--
"It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way you propose,
my dear. Mr. Lydgate has virtually rejected any further service
from me. He has returned the thousand pounds which I lent him.
Mrs. Casaubon advanced him the sum for that purpose. Here is
his letter."
The letter seemed to cut Mrs. Bulstrode severely. The mention of
Mrs. Casaubon's loan seemed a reflection of that public feeling which
held it a matter of course that every one would avoid a connection
with her husband. She was silent for some time; and the tears fell
one after the other, her chin trembling as she wiped them away.
Bulstrode, sitting opposite to her, ached at the sight of that
grief-worn face, which two months before had been bright and blooming.
It had aged to keep sad company with his own withered features.
Urged into some effort at comforting her, he said--
"There is another means, Harriet, by which I might do a service
to your brother's family, if you like to act in it. And it would,
I think, be beneficial to you: it would be an advantageous way
of managing the land which I mean to be yours."
She looked attentive.
"Garth once thought of undertaking the management of Stone Court
in order to place your nephew Fred there. The stock was to remain
as it is, and they were to pay a certain share of the profits
instead of an ordinary rent. That would be a desirable beginning
for the young man, in conjunction with his employment under Garth.
Would it be a satisfaction to you?"
"Yes, it would," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with some return of energy.
"Poor Walter is so cast down; I would try anything in my power
to do him some good before I go away. We have always been brother
and sister."
"You must make the proposal to Garth yourself, Harriet,"
said Mr. Bulstrode, not liking what he had to say, but desiring
the end he had in view, for other reasons besides the consolation
of his wife. "You must state to him that the land is virtually yours,
and that he need have no transactions with me. Communications can
be made through Standish. I mention this, because Garth gave
up being my agent. I can put into your hands a paper which he
himself drew up, stating conditions; and you can propose his
renewed acceptance of them. I think it is not unlikely that
he will accept when you propose the thing for the sake of your nephew."
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
"Le coeur se sature d'amour comme d'un sel divin qui le conserve;
de la l'incorruptible adherence de ceux qui se sont aimes des
l'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles amours prolonges.
Il existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est de Daphnis et Chloe
que sont faits Philemon et Baucis. Cette vieillesse la,
ressemblance du soir avec l'aurore."
--VICTOR HUGO: L'homme qui rit.
Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about tea-time, opened
the parlor-door and said, "There you are, Caleb. Have you had
your dinner?" (Mr. Garth's meals were much subordinated to "business.")
"Oh yes, a good dinner--cold mutton and I don't know what.
Where is Mary?"
"In the garden with Letty, I think."
"Fred is not come yet?"
"No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?"
said Mrs. Garth, seeing that her absent-minded husband
was putting on again the hat which he had just taken off.
"No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute."
Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing
loftily hung between two pear-trees. She had a pink kerchief tied
over her head, making a little poke to shade her eyes from the
level sunbeams, while she was giving a glorious swing to Letty,
who laughed and screamed wildly.
Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him,
pushing back the pink kerchief and smiling afar off at him with
the involuntary smile of loving pleasure.
"I came to look for you, Mary," said Mr. Garth. "Let us-walk
about a bit." Mary knew quite well that her father had something
particular to say: his eyebrows made their pathetic angle,
and there was a tender gravity in his voice: these things had been
signs to her when she was Letty's age. She put her arm within his,
and they turned by the row of nut-trees.
"It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary," said her father,
not looking at her, but at the end of the stick which he held in his other
hand.
"Not a sad while, father--I mean to be merry," said Mary,
laughingly. "I have been single and merry for four-and-twenty
years and more: I suppose it will not be quite as long again
as that." Then, after a little pause, she said, more gravely,
bending her face before her father's, "If you are contented with Fred?"
Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head aside wisely.
"Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday. You said he
had an uncommon notion of stock, and a good eye for things."
"Did I?" said Caleb, rather slyly.
"Yes, I put it all down, and the date, anno Domini, and everything,"
said Mary. "You like things to be neatly booked. And then his
behavior to you, father, is really good; he has a deep respect for you;
and it is impossible to have a better temper than Fred has."
"Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match."
"No, indeed, father. I don't love him because he is a fine match."
"What for, then?"
"Oh, dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like
scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought
of in a husband."
"Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?" said Caleb, returning to
his first tone. "There's no other wish come into it since things
have been going on as they have been of late?" (Caleb meant a great
deal in that vague phrase;) "because, better late than never.
A woman must not force her heart--she'll do a man no good by that."
"My feelings have not changed, father," said Mary, calmly.
"I shall be constant to Fred as long as he is constant to me.
I don't think either of us could spare the other, or like any one
else better, however much we might admire them. It would make too
great a difference to us--like seeing all the old places altered,
and changing the name for everything. We must wait for each other
a long while; but Fred knows that."
Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood still and screwed his
stick on the grassy walk. Then he said, with emotion in his voice,
"Well, I've got a bit of news. What do you think of Fred going
to live at Stone Court, and managing the land there?"
"How can that ever be, father?" said Mary, wonderingly.
"He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode. The poor woman has
been to me begging and praying. She wants to do the lad good,
and it might be a fine thing for him. With saving, he might gradually
buy the stock, and he has a turn for farming."
"Oh, Fred would be so happy! It is too good to believe."
"Ah, but mind you," said Caleb, turning his head warningly, "I must take
it on MY shoulders, and be responsible, and see after everything;
and that will grieve your mother a bit, though she mayn't say so.
Fred had need be careful."
"Perhaps it is too much, father," said Mary, checked in her joy.
"There would be no happiness in bringing you any fresh trouble."
"Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it doesn't vex your mother.
And then, if you and Fred get married," here Caleb's voice shook
just perceptibly, "he'll be steady and saving; and you've got
your mother's cleverness, and mine too, in a woman's sort of way;
and you'll keep him in order. He'll be coming by-and-by, so I
wanted to tell you first, because I think you'd like to tell HIM
by yourselves. After that, I could talk it well over with him,
and we could go into business and the nature of things."
"Oh, you dear good father!" cried Mary, putting her hands round her
father's neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed.
"I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world!"
"Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better."
"Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; "husbands
are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order."
When they were entering the house with Letty, who had run to join them,
Mary saw Fred at the orchard-gate, and went to meet him.
"What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant youth!" said Mary,
as Fred stood still and raised his hat to her with playful formality.
"You are not learning economy."
"Now that is too bad, Mary," said Fred. "Just look at the edges
of these coat-cuffs! It is only by dint of good brushing that I
look respectable. I am saving up three suits--one for a wedding-suit."
"How very droll you will look!--like a gentleman in an old fashion-book."
"Oh no, they will keep two years."
"Two years! be reasonable, Fred," said Mary, turning to walk.
"Don't encourage flattering expectations."
"Why not? One lives on them better than on unflattering ones.
If we can't be married in two years, the truth will be quite bad
enough when it comes."
"I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged
flattering expectations, and they did him harm."
"Mary, if you've got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt;
I shall go into the house to Mr. Garth. I am out of spirits.
My father is so cut up--home is not like itself. I can't bear any
more bad news."
"Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live
at Stone Court, and manage the farm, and be remarkably prudent,
and save money every year till all the stock and furniture were
your own, and you were a distinguished agricultural character,
as Mr. Borthrop Trumbull says--rather stout, I fear, and with the
Greek and Latin sadly weather-worn?"
"You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?" said Fred,
coloring slightly nevertheless.
"That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen,
and he never talks nonsense," said Mary, looking up at Fred now,
while he grasped her hand as they walked, till it rather hurt her;
but she would not complain.
"Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could
be married directly."
"Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer
our marriage for some years? That would leave you time to misbehave,
and then if I liked some one else better, I should have an excuse
for jilting you."
"Pray don't joke, Mary," said Fred, with strong feeling. "Tell me
seriously that all this is true, and that you are happy because of it--
because you love me best."
"It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it--because I love
you best," said Mary, in a tone of obedient recitation.
They lingered on the door-step under the steep-roofed porch,
and Fred almost in a whisper said--
"When we were first engaged, with the umbrella-ring, Mary, you used to--"
The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary's eyes,
but the fatal Ben came running to the door with Brownie yapping
behind him, and, bouncing against them, said--
"Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in?--or may I eat your cake?"
FINALE.
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young
lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know
what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life,
however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may
not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension;
latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error
may urge a grand retrieval.
Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives,
is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept
their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the
thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning
of the home epic--the gradual conquest or irremediable loss
of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax,
and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.
Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment
of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience
with each other and the world.
All who have oared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to
know that these two made no such failure, but achieved a solid
mutual happiness. Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways.
He became rather distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic
and practical farmer, and produced a work on the "Cultivation of
Green Crops and the Economy of Cattle-Feeding" which won him high
congratulations at agricultural meetings. In Middlemarch admiration
was more reserved: most persons there were inclined to believe
that the merit of Fred's authorship was due to his wife, since they
had never expected Fred Vincy to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.
But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories
of Great Men, taken from Plutarch," and had it printed and published
by Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing
to give the credit of this work to Fred, observing that he
had been to the University, "where the ancients were studied,"
and might have been a clergyman if he had chosen.
In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived,
and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book,
since it was always done by somebody else.
Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady. Some years after
his marriage he told Mary that his happiness was half owing
to Farebrother, who gave him a strong pull-up at the right moment.
I cannot say that he was never again misled by his hopefulness:
the yield of crops or the profits of a cattle sale usually fell
below his estimate; and he was always prone to believe that he
could make money by the purchase of a horse which turned out badly--
though this, Mary observed, was of course the fault of the horse,
not of Fred's judgment. He kept his love of horsemanship, but he rarely
allowed himself a day's hunting; and when he did so, it was remarkable
that he submitted to be laughed at for cowardliness at the fences,
seeming to see Mary and the boys sitting on the five-barred gate,
or showing their curly heads between hedge and ditch.
There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought
forth men-children only; and when Fred wished to have a girl like her,
she said, laughingly, "that would be too great a trial to your mother."
Mrs. Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished lustre of
her housekeeping, was much comforted by her perception that two at least
of Fred's boys were real Vincys, and did not "feature the Garths."
But Mary secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three was very
much what her father must have been when he wore a round jacket,
and showed a marvellous nicety of aim in playing at marbles,
or in throwing stones to bring down the mellow pears.
Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well
in their teens, disputed much as to whether nephews or nieces were
more desirable; Ben contending that it was clear girls were good
for less than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats,
which showed how little they were meant for; whereupon Letty,
who argued much from books, got angry in replying that God made coats
of skins for both Adam and Eve alike--also it occurred to her that
in the East the men too wore petticoats. But this latter argument,
obscuring the majesty of the former, was one too many, for Ben
answered contemptuously, "The more spooneys they!" and immediately
appealed to his mother whether boys were not better than girls.
Mrs. Garth pronounced that both were alike naughty, but that boys
were undoubtedly stronger, could run faster, and throw with more
precision to a greater distance. With this oracular sentence Ben was
well satisfied, not minding the naughtiness; but Letty took it ill,
her feeling of superiority being stronger than her muscles.
Fred never became rich--his hopefulness had not led him to expect that;
but he gradually saved enough to become owner of the stock and furniture
at Stone Court, and the work which Mr. Garth put into his hands
carried him in plenty through those "bad times" which are always
present with farmers. Mary, in her matronly days, became as solid
in figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little
formal teaching, so that Mrs. Garth was alarmed lest they should never
be well grounded in grammar and geography. Nevertheless, they were
found quite forward enough when they went to school; perhaps,
because they had liked nothing so well as being with their mother.
When Fred was riding home on winter evenings he had a pleasant
vision beforehand of the bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor,
and was sorry for other men who could not have Mary for their wife;
especially for Mr. Farebrother. "He was ten times worthier of you
than I was," Fred could now say to her, magnanimously. "To be sure
he was," Mary answered; "and for that reason he could do better
without me. But you--I shudder to think what you would have been--
a curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric pocket-handkerchiefs!"
On inquiry it might possibly be found that Fred and Mary still
inhabit Stone Court--that the creeping plants still cast the foam
of their blossoms over the fine stone-wall into the field where the
walnut-trees stand in stately row--and that on sunny days the two
lovers who were first engaged with the umbrella-ring may be seen
in white-haired placidity at the open window from which Mary Garth,
in the days of old Peter Featherstone, had often been ordered
to look out for Mr. Lydgate.
Lydgate's hair never became white. He died when he was only fifty,
leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance
on his life. He had gained an excellent practice, alternating,
according to the season, between London and a Continental bathing-place;
having written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal
of wealth on its side. His skill was relied on by many paying patients,
but he always regarded himself as a failure: he had not done what he
once meant to do. His acquaintances thought him enviable to have
so charming a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion.
Rosamond never committed a second compromising indiscretion. She simply
continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment,
disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him
by stratagem. As the years went on he opposed her less and less,
whence Rosamond concluded that he had learned the value of her opinion;
on the other hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents
now that he gained a good income, and instead of the threatened cage
in Bride Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the
bird of paradise that she resembled. In brief, Lydgate was what is
called a successful man. But he died prematurely of diphtheria,
and Rosamond afterwards married an elderly and wealthy physician,
who took kindly to her four children. She made a very pretty show
with her daughters, driving out in her carriage, and often spoke
of her happiness as "a reward"--she did not say for what, but probably
she meant that it was a reward for her patience with Tertius,
whose temper never became faultless, and to the last occasionally
let slip a bitter speech which was more memorable than the signs
he made of his repentance. He once called her his basil plant;
and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant
which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains.
Rosamond had a placid but strong answer to such speeches. Why then
had he chosen her? It was a pity he had not had Mrs. Ladislaw,
whom he was always praising and placing above her. And thus
the conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's side.
But it would be unjust not to tell, that she never uttered a word
in depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance
the generosity which had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of
her life.
Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women,
feeling that there was always something better which she might have done,
if she had only been better and known better. Still, she never
repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry
Will Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well
as sorrow to him if she had repented. They were bound to each other
by a love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it.
No life would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled
with emotion, and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent
activity which she had not the doubtful pains of discovering
and marking out for herself. Will became an ardent public man,
working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young
hopefulness of immediate good which has been much checked in our days,
and getting at last returned to Parliament by a constituency
who paid his expenses. Dorothea could have liked nothing better,
since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick
of a struggle against them, and that she should give him wifely help.
Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare
a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another,
and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother.
But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought
rather to have done--not even Sir James Chettam, who went no further
than the negative prescription that she ought not to have married
Will Ladislaw.
But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the
way in which the family was made whole again was characteristic
of all concerned. Mr. Brooke could not resist the pleasure of
corresponding with Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen
had been remarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal Reform,
it ran off into an invitation to the Grange, which, once written,
could not be done away with at less cost than the sacrifice
(hardly to be conceived) of the whole valuable letter.
During the months of this correspondence Mr. Brooke had continually,
in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been presupposing or hinting
that the intention of cutting off the entail was still maintained;
and the day on which his pen gave the daring invitation, he went
to Freshitt expressly to intimate that he had a stronger sense than
ever of the reasons for taking that energetic step as a precaution
against any mixture of low blood in the heir of the Brookes.
But that morning something exciting had happened at the Hall.
A letter had come to Celia which made her cry silently as she read it;
and when Sir James, unused to see her in tears, asked anxiously what
was the matter, she burst out in a wail such as he had never heard
from her before.
"Dorothea has a little boy. And you will not let me go and see her.
And I am sure she wants to see me. And she will not know what to do
with the baby--she will do wrong things with it. And they thought
she would die. It is very dreadful! Suppose it had been me and
little Arthur, and Dodo had been hindered from coming to see me!
I wish you would be less unkind, James!"
"Good heavens, Celia!" said Sir James, much wrought upon, "what do
you wish? I will do anything you like. I will take you to town
to-morrow if you wish it." And Celia did wish it.
It was after this that Mr. Brooke came, and meeting the Baronet
in the grounds, began to chat with him in ignorance of the news,
which Sir James for some reason did not care to tell him immediately.
But when the entail was touched on in the usual way, he said,
"My dear sir, it is not for me to dictate to you, but for my part I
would let that alone. I would let things remain as they are."
Mr. Brooke felt so much surprised that he did not at once find
out how much he was relieved by the sense that he was not expected
to do anything in particular.
Such being the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James
should consent to a reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband.
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to have Sir
James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing
of reciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when Dorothea
and Celia were present.
It became an understood thing that Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaw should pay
at least two visits during the year to the Grange, and there came
gradually a small row of cousins at Freshitt who enjoyed playing
with the two cousins Visiting Tipton as much as if the blood
of these cousins had been less dubiously mixed.
Mr. Brooke lived to a good old age, and his estate was inherited by
Dorothea's son, who might have represented Middlemarch, but declined,
thinking that his opinions had less chance of being stifled if he
remained out of doors.
Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a mistake;
and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in Middlemarch,
where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine girl
who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and in
little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry
his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property,
and not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea
usually observed that she could not have been "a nice woman,"
else she would not have married either the one or the other.
Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful.
They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling
amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great
feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the
aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is
so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.
A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming
a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her
heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial:
the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is forever gone.
But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are
preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present
a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.
Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were
not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus
broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great
name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around
her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world
is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so
ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the
number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.