Middlemarch
by
George Eliot
Part 14 out of 18
"Lydgate has been living at a great rate for a young beginner,"
said Mr. Harry Toller, the brewer. "I suppose his relations in the
North back him up."
"I hope so," said Mr. Chichely, "else he ought not to have married
that nice girl we were all so fond of. Hang it, one has a grudge
against a man who carries off the prettiest girl in the town."
"Ay, by God! and the best too," said Mr. Standish.
"My friend Vincy didn't half like the marriage, I know that,"
said Mr. Chichely. "_He_ wouldn't do much. How the relations
on the other side may have come down I can't say." There was an
emphatic kind of reticence in Mr. Chichely's manner of speaking.
"Oh, I shouldn't think Lydgate ever looked to practice for a living,"
said Mr. Toller, with a slight touch of sarcasm, and there the subject
was dropped.
This was not the first time that Mr. Farebrother had heard hints of
Lydgate's expenses being obviously too great to be met by his practice,
but he thought it not unlikely that there were resources or expectations
which excused the large outlay at the time of Lydgate's marriage,
and which might hinder any bad consequences from the disappointment
in his practice. One evening, when he took the pains to go
to Middlemarch on purpose to have a chat with Lydgate as of old,
he noticed in him an air of excited effort quite unlike his usual easy
way of keeping silence or breaking it with abrupt energy whenever
he had anything to say. Lydgate talked persistently when they were
in his work-room, putting arguments for and against the probability
of certain biological views; but he had none of those definite
things to say or to show which give the waymarks of a patient
uninterrupted pursuit, such as he used himself to insist on,
saying that "there must be a systole and diastole in all inquiry,"
and that "a man's mind must be continually expanding and shrinking
between the whole human horizon and the horizon of an object-glass."
That evening he seemed to be talking widely for the sake of resisting
any personal bearing; and before long they went into the drawing room,
where Lydgate, having asked Rosamond to give them music, sank back
in his chair in silence, but with a strange light in his eyes.
"He may have been taking an opiate," was a thought that crossed
Mr. Farebrother's mind--"tic-douloureux perhaps--or medical worries."
It did not occur to him that Lydgate's marriage was not delightful:
he believed, as the rest did, that Rosamond was an amiable,
docile creature, though he had always thought her rather uninteresting--
a little too much the pattern-card of the finishing-school;
and his mother could not forgive Rosamond because she never seemed
to see that Henrietta Noble was in the room. "However, Lydgate
fell in love with her," said the Vicar to himself, "and she must
be to his taste."
Mr. Farebrother was aware that Lydgate was a proud man, but having
very little corresponding fibre in himself, and perhaps too little care
about personal dignity, except the dignity of not being mean or foolish,
he could hardly allow enough for the way in which Lydgate shrank,
as from a burn, from the utterance of any word about his private affairs.
And soon after that conversation at Mr. Toller's, the Vicar
learned something which made him watch the more eagerly for an
opportunity of indirectly letting Lydgate know that if he wanted
to open himself about any difficulty there was a friendly ear ready.
The opportunity came at Mr. Vincy's, where, on New Year's Day,
there was a party, to which Mr. Farebrother was irresistibly invited,
on the plea that he must not forsake his old friends on the first
new year of his being a greater man, and Rector as well as Vicar.
And this party was thoroughly friendly: all the ladies of the
Farebrother family were present; the Vincy children all dined
at the table, and Fred had persuaded his mother that if she did
not invite Mary Garth, the Farebrothers would regard it as a slight
to themselves, Mary being their particular friend. Mary came, and Fred
was in high spirits, though his enjoyment was of a checkered kind--
triumph that his mother should see Mary's importance with the chief
personages in the party being much streaked with jealousy when
Mr. Farebrother sat down by her. Fred used to be much more easy
about his own accomplishments in the days when he had not begun
to dread being "bowled out by Farebrother," and this terror was
still before him. Mrs. Vincy, in her fullest matronly bloom,
looked at Mary's little figure, rough wavy hair, and visage quite
without lilies and roses, and wondered; trying unsuccessfully
to fancy herself caring about Mary's appearance in wedding clothes,
or feeling complacency in grandchildren who would "feature" the Garths.
However, the party was a merry one, and Mary was particularly bright;
being glad, for Fred's sake, that his friends were getting
kinder to her, and being also quite willing that they should
see how much she was valued by others whom they must admit to be judges.
Mr. Farebrother noticed that Lydgate seemed bored, and that Mr. Vincy
spoke as little as possible to his son-in-law. Rosamond was perfectly
graceful and calm, and only a subtle observation such as the Vicar
had not been roused to bestow on her would have perceived the total
absence of that interest in her husband's presence which a loving
wife is sure to betray, even if etiquette keeps her aloof from him.
When Lydgate was taking part in the conversation, she never looked
towards him any more than if she had been a sculptured Psyche modelled
to look another way: and when, after being called out for an hour
or two, he re-entered the room, she seemed unconscious of the fact,
which eighteen months before would have had the effect of a numeral
before ciphers. In reality, however, she was intensely aware
of Lydgate's voice and movements; and her pretty good-tempered air
of unconsciousness was a studied negation by which she satisfied
her inward opposition to him without compromise of propriety.
When the ladies were in the drawing-room after Lydgate had been
called away from the dessert, Mrs. Farebrother, when Rosamond
happened to be near her, said--"You have to give up a great deal
of your husband's society, Mrs. Lydgate."
"Yes, the life of a medical man is very arduous: especially when he
is so devoted to his profession as Mr. Lydgate is," said Rosamond,
who was standing, and moved easily away at the end of this correct
little speech.
"It is dreadfully dull for her when there is no company,"
said Mrs. Vincy, who was seated at the old lady's side.
"I am sure I thought so when Rosamond was ill, and I was staying
with her. You know, Mrs. Farebrother, ours is a cheerful house.
I am of a cheerful disposition myself, and Mr. Vincy always likes
something to be going on. That is what Rosamond has been used to.
Very different from a husband out at odd hours, and never knowing
when he will come home, and of a close, proud disposition,
_I_ think"--indiscreet Mrs. Vincy did lower her tone slightly with
this parenthesis. "But Rosamond always had an angel of a temper;
her brothers used very often not to please her, but she was never
the girl to show temper; from a baby she was always as good as good,
and with a complexion beyond anything. But my children are all
good-tempered, thank God."
This was easily credible to any one looking at Mrs. Vincy as she threw
back her broad cap-strings, and smiled towards her three little girls,
aged from seven to eleven. But in that smiling glance she was
obliged to include Mary Garth, whom the three girls had got into
a corner to make her tell them stories. Mary was just finishing
the delicious tale of Rumpelstiltskin, which she had well by heart,
because Letty was never tired of communicating it to her ignorant
elders from a favorite red volume. Louisa, Mrs. Vincy's darling,
now ran to her with wide-eyed serious excitement, crying, "Oh mamma,
mamma, the little man stamped so hard on the floor he couldn't
get his leg out again!"
"Bless you, my cherub!" said mamma; "you shall tell me all about it
to-morrow. Go and listen!" and then, as her eyes followed Louisa
back towards the attractive corner, she thought that if Fred wished
her to invite Mary again she would make no objection, the children
being so pleased with her.
But presently the corner became still more animated, for Mr. Farebrother
came in, and seating himself behind Louisa, took her on his lap;
whereupon the girls all insisted that he must hear Rumpelstiltskin,
and Mary must tell it over again. He insisted too, and Mary,
without fuss, began again in her neat fashion, with precisely
the same words as before. Fred, who had also seated himself near,
would have felt unmixed triumph in Mary's effectiveness if
Mr. Farebrother had not been looking at her with evident admiration,
while he dramatized an intense interest in the tale to please
the children.
"You will never care any more about my one-eyed giant, Loo,"
said Fred at the end.
"Yes, I shall. Tell about him now," said Louisa.
"Oh, I dare say; I am quite cut out. Ask Mr. Farebrother."
"Yes," added Mary; "ask Mr. Farebrother to tell you about the ants
whose beautiful house was knocked down by a giant named Tom,
and he thought they didn't mind because he couldn't hear them cry,
or see them use their pocket-handkerchiefs."
"Please," said Louisa, looking up at the Vicar.
"No, no, I am a grave old parson. If I try to draw a story out
of my bag a sermon comes instead. Shall I preach you a sermon?"
said he, putting on his short-sighted glasses, and pursing up
his lips.
"Yes," said Louisa, falteringly.
"Let me see, then. Against cakes: how cakes are bad things,
especially if they are sweet and have plums in them."
Louisa took the affair rather seriously, and got down from the
Vicar's knee to go to Fred.
"Ah, I see it will not do to preach on New Year's Day,"
said Mr. Farebrother, rising and walking away. He had discovered
of late that Fred had become jealous of him, and also that he
himself was not losing his preference for Mary above all other women.
"A delightful young person is Miss Garth," said Mrs. Farebrother,
who had been watching her son's movements.
"Yes," said Mrs. Vincy, obliged to reply, as the old lady turned
to her expectantly. "It is a pity she is not better-looking."
"I cannot say that," said Mrs. Farebrother, decisively. "I like
her countenance. We must not always ask for beauty, when a good
God has seen fit to make an excellent young woman without it.
I put good manners first, and Miss Garth will know how to conduct
herself in any station."
The old lady was a little sharp in her tone, having a prospective
reference to Mary's becoming her daughter-in-law; for there was this
inconvenience in Mary's position with regard to Fred, that it was
not suitable to be made public, and hence the three ladies at Lowick
Parsonage were still hoping that Camden would choose Miss Garth.
New visitors entered, and the drawing-room was given up to music
and games, while whist-tables were prepared in the quiet room
on the other side of the hall. Mr. Farebrother played a rubber
to satisfy his mother, who regarded her occasional whist as a
protest against scandal and novelty of opinion, in which light
even a revoke had its dignity. But at the end he got Mr. Chichely
to take his place, and left the room. As he crossed the hall,
Lydgate had just come in and was taking off his great-coat.
"You are the man I was going to look for," said the Vicar;
and instead of entering the drawing-room, they walked along the hall
and stood against the fireplace, where the frosty air helped to make
a glowing bank. "You see, I can leave the whist-table easily enough,"
he went on, smiling at Lydgate, "now I don't play for money.
I owe that to you, Mrs. Casaubon says."
"How?" said Lydgate, coldly.
"Ah, you didn't mean me to know it; I call that ungenerous reticence.
You should let a man have the pleasure of feeling that you have
done him a good turn. I don't enter into some people's dislike
of being under an obligation: upon my word, I prefer being under
an obligation to everybody for behaving well to me."
"I can't tell what you mean," said Lydgate, "unless it is that I once
spoke of you to Mrs. Casaubon. But I did not think that she would
break her promise not to mention that I had done so," said Lydgate,
leaning his back against the corner of the mantel-piece, and showing
no radiance in his face.
"It was Brooke who let it out, only the other day. He paid me
the compliment of saying that he was very glad I had the living
though you had come across his tactics, and had praised me up as a
lien and a Tillotson, and that sort of thing, till Mrs. Casaubon
would hear of no one else."
"Oh, Brooke is such a leaky-minded fool," said Lydgate, contemptuously.
"Well, I was glad of the leakiness then. I don't see why you
shouldn't like me to know that you wished to do me a service,
my dear fellow. And you certainly have done me one. It's rather
a strong check to one's self-complacency to find how much of one's
right doing depends on not being in want of money. A man will not
be tempted to say the Lord's Prayer backward to please the devil,
if he doesn't want the devil's services. I have no need to hang
on the smiles of chance now."
"I don't see that there's any money-getting without chance,"
said Lydgate; "if a man gets it in a profession, it's pretty sure
to come by chance."
Mr. Farebrother thought he could account for this speech, in striking
contrast with Lydgate's former way of talking, as the perversity
which will often spring from the moodiness of a man ill at ease
in his affairs. He answered in a tone of good-humored admission--
"Ah, there's enormous patience wanted with the way of the world.
But it is the easier for a man to wait patiently when he has friends
who love him, and ask for nothing better than to help him through,
so far as it lies in their power."
"Oh yes," said Lydgate, in a careless tone, changing his attitude
and looking at his watch. "People make much more of their
difficulties than they need to do."
He knew as distinctly as possible that this was an offer of help
to himself from Mr. Farebrother, and he could not bear it.
So strangely determined are we mortals, that, after having been
long gratified with the sense that he had privately done the Vicar
a service, the suggestion that the Vicar discerned his need of a
service in return made him shrink into unconquerable reticence.
Besides, behind all making of such offers what else must come?--that he
should "mention his case," imply that he wanted specific things.
At that moment, suicide seemed easier.
Mr. Farebrother was too keen a man not to know the meaning of that reply,
and there was a certain massiveness in Lydgate's manner and tone,
corresponding with his physique, which if he repelled your advances
in the first instance seemed to put persuasive devices out of question.
"What time are you?" said the Vicar, devouring his wounded feeling.
"After eleven," said Lydgate. And they went into the drawing-room.
CHAPTER LXIV.
1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.
2d Gent. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright
The coming pest with border fortresses,
Or catch your carp with subtle argument.
All force is twain in one: cause is not cause
Unless effect be there; and action's self
Must needs contain a passive. So command
Exists but with obedience."
Even if Lydgate had been inclined to be quite open about his affairs,
he knew that it would have hardly been in Mr. Farebrother's power
to give him the help he immediately wanted. With the year's bills
coming in from his tradesmen, with Dover's threatening hold on
his furniture, and with nothing to depend on but slow dribbling
payments from patients who must not be offended--for the handsome
fees he had had from Freshitt Hall and Lowick Manor had been
easily absorbed--nothing less than a thousand pounds would have
freed him from actual embarrassment, and left a residue which,
according to the favorite phrase of hopefulness in such circumstances,
would have given him "time to look about him."
Naturally, the merry Christmas bringing the happy New Year,
when fellow-citizens expect to be paid for the trouble and goods
they have smilingly bestowed on their neighbors, had so tightened
the pressure of sordid cares on Lydgate's mind that it was hardly
possible for him to think unbrokenly of any other subject, even the
most habitual and soliciting. He was not an ill-tempered man;
his intellectual activity, the ardent kindness of his heart, as well
as his strong frame, would always, under tolerably easy conditions,
have kept him above the petty uncontrolled susceptibilities which make
bad temper. But he was now a prey to that worst irritation which
arises not simply from annoyances, but from the second consciousness
underlying those annoyances, of wasted energy and a degrading
preoccupation, which was the reverse of all his former purposes.
"_This_ is what I am thinking of; and _that_ is what I might
have been thinking of," was the bitter incessant murmur within him,
making every difficulty a double goad to impatience.
Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general
discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their
great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous
self and an insignificant world may have its consolations.
Lydgate's discontent was much harder to bear: it was the sense that
there was a grand existence in thought and effective action lying
around him, while his self was being narrowed into the miserable
isolation of egoistic fears, and vulgar anxieties for events that might
allay such fears. His troubles will perhaps appear miserably sordid,
and beneath the attention of lofty persons who can know nothing
of debt except on a magnificent scale. Doubtless they were sordid;
and for the majority, who are not lofty, there is no escape from
sordidness but by being free from money-craving, with all its base
hopes and temptations, its watching for death, its hinted requests.
its horse-dealer's desire to make bad work pass for good,
its seeking for function which ought to be another's, its compulsion
often to long for Luck in the shape of a wide calamity.
It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck
beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen into a bitter moody state
which was continually widening Rosamond's alienation from him.
After the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made
many efforts to draw her into sympathy with him about possible
measures for narrowing their expenses, and with the threatening
approach of Christmas his propositions grew more and more definite.
"We two can do with only one servant, and live on very little,"
he said, "and I shall manage with one horse." For Lydgate,
as we have seen, had begun to reason, with a more distinct vision,
about the expenses of living, and any share of pride he had given to
appearances of that sort was meagre compared with the pride which made
him revolt from exposure as a debtor, or from asking men to help him
with their money.
"Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like,"
said Rosamond; "but I should have thought it would be very injurious
to your position for us to live in a poor way. You must expect
your practice to be lowered."
"My dear Rosamond, it is not a question of choice. We have begun
too expensively. Peacock, you know, lived in a much smaller house
than this. It is my fault: I ought to have known better, and I
deserve a thrashing--if there were anybody who had a right to give
it me--for bringing you into the necessity of living in a poorer
way than you have been used to. But we married because we loved
each other, I suppose. And that may help us to pull along till
things get better. Come, dear, put down that work and come to me."
He was really in chill gloom about her at that moment, but he dreaded
a future without affection, and was determined to resist the oncoming
of division between them. Rosamond obeyed him, and he took her on
his knee, but in her secret soul she was utterly aloof from him.
The poor thing saw only that the world was not ordered to her liking,
and Lydgate was part of that world. But he held her waist with one
hand and laid the other gently on both of hers; for this rather abrupt
man had much tenderness in his manners towards women, seeming to
have always present in his imagination the weakness of their frames
and the delicate poise of their health both in body and mind.
And he began again to speak persuasively.
"I find, now I look into things a little, Rosy, that it is wonderful
what an amount of money slips away in our housekeeping. I suppose
the servants are careless, and we have had a great many people coming.
But there must be many in our rank who manage with much less:
they must do with commoner things, I suppose, and look after
the scraps. It seems, money goes but a little way in these matters,
for Wrench has everything as plain as possible, and he has a very
large practice."
"Oh, if you think of living as the Wrenches do!" said Rosamond,
with a little turn of her neck. "But I have heard you express your
disgust at that way of living."
"Yes, they have bad taste in everything--they make economy look ugly.
We needn't do that. I only meant that they avoid expenses,
although Wrench has a capital practice."
"Why should not you have a good practice, Tertius? Mr. Peacock had.
You should be more careful not to offend people, and you should
send out medicines as the others do. I am sure you began well,
and you got several good houses. It cannot answer to be eccentric;
you should think what will be generally liked," said Rosamond, in a
decided little tone of admonition.
Lydgate's anger rose: he was prepared to be indulgent towards
feminine weakness, but not towards feminine dictation.
The shallowness of a waternixie's soul may have a charm until
she becomes didactic. But he controlled himself, and only said,
with a touch of despotic firmness--
"What I am to do in my practice, Rosy, it is for me to judge.
That is not the question between us. It is enough for you
to know that our income is likely to be a very narrow one--
hardly four hundred, perhaps less, for a long time to come, and we
must try to re-arrange our lives in accordance with that fact."
Rosamond was silent for a moment or two, looking before her,
and then said, "My uncle Bulstrode ought to allow you a salary
for the time you give to the Hospital: it is not right that you
should work for nothing."
"It was understood from the beginning that my services would
be gratuitous. That, again, need not enter into our discussion.
I have pointed out what is the only probability," said Lydgate,
impatiently. Then checking himself, he went on more quietly--
"I think I see one resource which would free us from a good deal
of the present difficulty. I hear that young Ned Plymdale is going
to be married to Miss Sophy Toller. They are rich, and it is not often
that a good house is vacant in Middlemarch. I feel sure that they
would be glad to take this house from us with most of our furniture,
and they would be willing to pay handsomely for the lease.
I can employ Trumbull to speak to Plymdale about it."
Rosamond left her husband's knee and walked slowly to the other
end of the room; when she turned round and walked towards him it
was evident that the tears had come, and that she was biting her
under-lip and clasping her hands to keep herself from crying.
Lydgate was wretched--shaken with anger and yet feeling that it
would be unmanly to vent the anger just now.
"I am very sorry, Rosamond; I know this is painful."
"I thought, at least, when I had borne to send the plate back
and have that man taking an inventory of the furniture--I should
have thought _that_ would suffice."
"I explained it to you at the time, dear. That was only a security
and behind that Security there is a debt. And that debt must be paid
within the next few months, else we shall have our furniture sold.
If young Plymdale will take our house and most of our furniture,
we shall be able to pay that debt, and some others too, and we
shall be quit of a place too expensive for us. We might take
a smaller house: Trumbull, I know, has a very decent one to let
at thirty pounds a-year, and this is ninety." Lydgate uttered this
speech in the curt hammering way with which we usually try to nail
down a vague mind to imperative facts. Tears rolled silently down
Rosamond's cheeks; she just pressed her handkerchief against them,
and stood looking at the large vase on the mantel-piece. It was
a moment of more intense bitterness than she had ever felt before.
At last she said, without hurry and with careful emphasis--
"I never could have believed that you would like to act in that way."
"Like it?" burst out Lydgate, rising from his chair, thrusting his
hands in his pockets and stalking away from the hearth; "it's not
a question of liking. Of course, I don't like it; it's the only
thing I can do." He wheeled round there, and turned towards her.
"I should have thought there were many other means than that,"
said Rosamond. "Let us have a sale and leave Middlemarch altogether."
"To do what? What is the use of my leaving my work in Middlemarch
to go where I have none? We should be just as penniless elsewhere
as we are here," said Lydgate still more angrily.
"If we are to be in that position it will be entirely your
own doing, Tertius," said Rosamond, turning round to speak
with the fullest conviction. "You will not behave as you ought
to do to your own family. You offended Captain Lydgate.
Sir Godwin was very kind to me when we were at Quallingham,
and I am sure if you showed proper regard to him and told him
your affairs, he would do anything for you. But rather than that,
you like giving up our house and furniture to Mr. Ned Plymdale."
There was something like fierceness in Lydgate's eyes, as he
answered with new violence, "Well, then, if you will have it so,
I do like it. I admit that I like it better than making a fool
of myself by going to beg where it's of no use. Understand then,
that it is what I _like to do._"
There was a tone in the last sentence which was equivalent
to the clutch of his strong hand on Rosamond's delicate arm.
But for all that, his will was not a whit stronger than hers.
She immediately walked out of the room in silence, but with an intense
determination to hinder what Lydgate liked to do.
He went out of the house, but as his blood cooled he felt that the chief
result of the discussion was a deposit of dread within him at the idea
of opening with his wife in future subjects which might again urge
him to violent speech. It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal
had begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might mate it fatal.
His marriage would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could
not go on loving each other. He had long ago made up his mind to
what he thought was her negative character--her want of sensibility,
which showed itself in disregard both of his specific wishes and of
his general aims. The first great disappointment had been borne:
the tender devotedness and docile adoration of the ideal wife must
be renounced, and life must be taken up on a lower stage of expectation,
as it is by men who have lost their limbs. But the real wife
had not only her claims, she had still a hold on his heart,
and it was his intense desire that the hold should remain strong.
In marriage, the certainty, "She will never love me much,"
is easier to bear than the fear, "I shall love her no more." Hence,
after that outburst, his inward effort was entirely to excuse her,
and to blame the hard circumstances which were partly his fault.
He tried that evening, by petting her, to heal the wound he had
made in the morning, and it was not in Rosamond's nature to be
repellent or sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that her husband
loved her and was under control. But this was something quite
distinct from loving _him_. Lydgate would not have chosen soon
to recur to the plan of parting with the house; he was resolved
to carry it out, and say as little more about it as possible.
But Rosamond herself touched on it at breakfast by saying, mildly--
"Have you spoken to Trumbull yet?"
"No," said Lydgate, "but I shall call on him as I go by this morning.
No time must be lost." He took Rosamond's question as a sign that
she withdrew her inward opposition, and kissed her head caressingly
when he got up to go away.
As soon as it was late enough to make a call, Rosamond went to Mrs.
Plymdale, Mr. Ned's mother, and entered with pretty congratulations
into the subject of the coming marriage. Mrs. Plymdale's maternal
view was, that Rosamond might possibly now have retrospective
glimpses of her own folly; and feeling the advantages to be at
present all on the side of her son, was too kind a woman not to
behave graciously.
"Yes, Ned is most happy, I must say. And Sophy Toller is all
I could desire in a daughter-in-law. Of course her father is
able to do something handsome for her--that is only what would
be expected with a brewery like his. And the connection is
everything we should desire. But that is not what I look at.
She is such a very nice girl--no airs, no pretensions, though on
a level with the first. I don't mean with the titled aristocracy.
I see very little good in people aiming out of their own sphere.
I mean that Sophy is equal to the best in the town, and she is
contented with that."
"I have always thought her very agreeable," said Rosamond.
"I look upon it as a reward for Ned, who never held his head
too high, that he should have got into the very best connection,"
continued Mrs. Plymdale, her native sharpness softened by a fervid
sense that she was taking a correct view. "And such particular people
as the Tollers are, they might have objected because some of our
friends are not theirs. It is well known that your aunt Bulstrode
and I have been intimate from our youth, and Mr. Plymdale has been
always on Mr. Bulstrode's side. And I myself prefer serious opinions.
But the Tollers have welcomed Ned all the same."
"I am sure he is a very deserving, well-principled young man,"
said Rosamond, with a neat air of patronage in return for
Mrs. Plymdale's wholesome corrections.
"Oh, he has not the style of a captain in the army, or that sort
of carriage as if everybody was beneath him, or that showy kind
of talking, and singing, and intellectual talent. But I am thankful
he has not. It is a poor preparation both for here and Hereafter."
"Oh dear, yes; appearances have very little to do with happiness,"
said Rosamond. "I think there is every prospect of their being a
happy couple. What house will they take?"
"Oh, as for that, they must put up with what they can get.
They have been looking at the house in St. Peter's Place, next to
Mr. Hackbutt's; it belongs to him, and he is putting it nicely
in repair. I suppose they are not likely to hear of a better.
Indeed, I think Ned will decide the matter to-day."
"I should think it is a nice house; I like St. Peter's Place."
"Well, it is near the Church, and a genteel situation.
But the windows are narrow, and it is all ups and downs.
You don't happen to know of any other that would be at liberty?"
said Mrs. Plymdale, fixing her round black eyes on Rosamond
with the animation of a sudden thought in them.
"Oh no; I hear so little of those things."
Rosamond had not foreseen that question and answer in setting out to pay
her visit; she had simply meant to gather any information which would
help her to avert the parting with her own house under circumstances
thoroughly disagreeable to her. As to the untruth in her reply,
she no more reflected on it than she did on the untruth there was
in her saying that appearances had very little to do with happiness.
Her object, she was convinced, was thoroughly justifiable:
it was Lydgate whose intention was inexcusable; and there was a plan
in her mind which, when she had carried it out fully, would prove
how very false a step it would have been for him to have descended
from his position.
She returned home by Mr. Borthrop Trumbull's office, meaning to
call there. It was the first time in her life that Rosamond had
thought of doing anything in the form of business, but she felt
equal to the occasion. That she should be obliged to do what she
intensely disliked, was an idea which turned her quiet tenacity
into active invention. Here was a case in which it could not be
enough simply to disobey and be serenely, placidly obstinate:
she must act according to her judgment, and she said to herself
that her judgment was right--"indeed, if it had not been,
she would not have wished to act on it."
Mr. Trumbull was in the back-room of his office, and received
Rosamond with his finest manners, not only because he had much
sensibility to her charms, but because the good-natured fibre in him
was stirred by his certainty that Lydgate was in difficulties,
and that this uncommonly pretty woman--this young lady with the highest
personal attractions--was likely to feel the pinch of trouble--
to find herself involved in circumstances beyond her control.
He begged her to do him the honor to take a seat, and stood before
her trimming and comporting himself with an eager solicitude,
which was chiefly benevolent. Rosamond's first question was,
whether her husband had called on Mr. Trumbull that morning, to speak
about disposing of their house.
"Yes, ma'am, yes, he did; he did so," said the good auctioneer,
trying to throw something soothing into his iteration.
"I was about to fulfil his order, if possible, this afternoon.
He wished me not to procrastinate."
"I called to tell you not to go any further, Mr. Trumbull;
and I beg of you not to mention what has been said on the subject.
Will you oblige me?"
"Certainly I will, Mrs. Lydgate, certainly. Confidence is sacred
with me on business or any other topic. I am then to consider the
commission withdrawn?" said Mr. Trumbull, adjusting the long ends
of his blue cravat with both hands, and looking at Rosamond deferentially.
"Yes, if you please. I find that Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house--
the one in St. Peter's Place next to Mr. Hackbutt's. Mr. Lydgate
would be annoyed that his orders should be fulfilled uselessly.
And besides that, there are other circumstances which render the
proposal unnecessary."
"Very good, Mrs. Lydgate, very good. I am at your commands,
whenever you require any service of me," said Mr. Trumbull, who felt
pleasure in conjecturing that some new resources had been opened.
"Rely on me, I beg. The affair shall go no further."
That evening Lydgate was a little comforted by observing that Rosamond
was more lively than she had usually been of late, and even seemed
interested in doing what would please him without being asked.
He thought, "If she will be happy and I can rub through, what does
it all signify? It is only a narrow swamp that we have to pass
in a long journey. If I can get my mind clear again, I shall do."
He was so much cheered that he began to search for an account
of experiments which he had long ago meant to look up, and had
neglected out of that creeping self-despair which comes in the train
of petty anxieties. He felt again some of the old delightful
absorption in a far-reaching inquiry, while Rosamond played the
quiet music which was as helpful to his meditation as the plash
of an oar on the evening lake. It was rather late; he had pushed
away all the books, and was looking at the fire with his hands
clasped behind his head in forgetfulness of everything except the
construction of a new controlling experiment, when Rosamond, who
had left the piano and was leaning back in her chair watching him, said--
"Mr. Ned Plymdale has taken a house already."
Lydgate, startled and jarred, looked up in silence for a moment,
like a man who has been disturbed in his sleep. Then flushing
with an unpleasant consciousness, he asked--
"How do you know?"
"I called at Mrs. Plymdale's this morning, and she told me that he
had taken the house in St. Peter's Place, next to Mr. Hackbutt's."
Lydgate was silent. He drew his hands from behind his head and
pressed them against the hair which was hanging, as it was apt to do,
in a mass on his forehead, while he rested his elbows on his knees.
He was feeling bitter disappointment, as if he had opened
a door out of a suffocating place and had found it walled up;
but he also felt sure that Rosamond was pleased with the cause of
his disappointment. He preferred not looking at her and not speaking,
until he had got over the first spasm of vexation. After all,
he said in his bitterness, what can a woman care about so much
as house and furniture? a husband without them is an absurdity.
When he looked up and pushed his hair aside, his dark eyes had
a miserable blank non-expectance of sympathy in them, but he
only said, coolly--
"Perhaps some one else may turn up. I told Trumbull to be on
the look-out if he failed with Plymdale."
Rosamond made no remark. She trusted to the chance that nothing
more would pass between her husband and the auctioneer until some
issue should have justified her interference; at any rate, she had
hindered the event which she immediately dreaded. After a pause,
she said--
"How much money is it that those disagreeable people want?"
"What disagreeable people?"
"Those who took the list--and the others. I mean, how much money
would satisfy them so that you need not be troubled any more?"
Lydgate surveyed her for a moment, as if he were looking for symptoms,
and then said, "Oh, if I could have got six hundred from Plymdale
for furniture and as premium, I might have managed. I could have
paid off Dover, and given enough on account to the others to make
them wait patiently, if we contracted our expenses."
"But I mean how much should you want if we stayed in this house?"
"More than I am likely to get anywhere," said Lydgate, with rather
a grating sarcasm in his tone. It angered him to perceive that
Rosamond's mind was wandering over impracticable wishes instead
of facing possible efforts.
"Why should you not mention the sum?" said Rosamond, with a mild
indication that she did not like his manners.
"Well," said Lydgate in a guessing tone, "it would take at least
a thousand to set me at ease. But," he added, incisively, "I have
to consider what I shall do without it, not with it."
Rosamond said no more.
But the next day she carried out her plan of writing to Sir
Godwin Lydgate. Since the Captain's visit, she had received a
letter from him, and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his married sister,
condoling with her on the loss of her baby, and expressing
vaguely the hope that they should see her again at Quallingham.
Lydgate had told her that this politeness meant nothing; but she
was secretly convinced that any backwardness in Lydgate's family
towards him was due to his cold and contemptuous behavior, and she
had answered the letters in her most charming manner, feeling some
confidence that a specific invitation would follow. But there had
been total silence. The Captain evidently was not a great penman,
and Rosamond reflected that the sisters might have been abroad.
However, the season was come for thinking of friends at home,
and at any rate Sir Godwin, who had chucked her under the chin,
and pronounced her to be like the celebrated beauty, Mrs. Croly,
who had made a conquest of him in 1790, would be touched by any appeal
from her, and would find it pleasant for her sake to behave as he ought
to do towards his nephew. Rosamond was naively convinced of what an
old gentleman ought to do to prevent her from suffering annoyance.
And she wrote what she considered the most judicious letter possible--
one which would strike Sir Godwin as a proof of her excellent sense--
pointing out how desirable it was that Tertius should quit such a place
as Middlemarch for one more fitted to his talents, how the unpleasant
character of the inhabitants had hindered his professional success,
and how in consequence he was in money difficulties, from which it
would require a thousand pounds thoroughly to extricate him.
She did not say that Tertius was unaware of her intention to write;
for she had the idea that his supposed sanction of her letter would
be in accordance with what she did say of his great regard for his
uncle Godwin as the relative who had always been his best friend.
Such was the force of Poor Rosamond's tactics now she applied them
to affairs.
This had happened before the party on New Year's Day, and no answer
had yet come from Sir Godwin. But on the morning of that day
Lydgate had to learn that Rosamond had revoked his order to
Borthrop Trumbull. Feeling it necessary that she should be gradually
accustomed to the idea of their quitting the house in Lowick Gate,
he overcame his reluctance to speak to her again on the subject,
and when they were breakfasting said--
"I shall try to see Trumbull this morning, and tell him to.
advertise the house in the `Pioneer' and the `Trumpet.' If the thing
were advertised, some one might be inclined to take it who would
not otherwise have thought of a change. In these country places
many people go on in their old houses when their families are too
large for them, for want of knowing where they can find another.
And Trumbull seems to have got no bite at all."
Rosamond knew that the inevitable moment was come. "I ordered
Trumbull not to inquire further," she said, with a careful calmness
which was evidently defensive.
Lydgate stared at her in mute amazement. Only half an hour
before he had been fastening up her plaits for her, and talking
the "little language" of affection, which Rosamond, though not
returning it, accepted as if she had been a serene and lovely image,
now and then miraculously dimpling towards her votary.
With such fibres still astir in him, the shock he received could
not at once be distinctly anger; it was confused pain. He laid
down the knife and fork with which he was carving, and throwing
himself back in his chair, said at last, with a cool irony in his tone--
"May I ask when and why you did so?"
"When I knew that the Plymdales had taken a house, I called to tell
him not to mention ours to them; and at the same time I told him
not to let the affair go on any further. I knew that it would be
very injurious to you if it were known that you wished to part with
your house and furniture, and I had a very strong objection to it.
I think that was reason enough."
"It was of no consequence then that I had told you imperative
reasons of another kind; of no consequence that I had come to a
different conclusion, and given an order accordingly?" said Lydgate,
bitingly, the thunder and lightning gathering about his brow and eyes.
The effect of any one's anger on Rosamond had always been to make
her shrink in cold dislike, and to become all the more calmly correct,
in the conviction that she was not the person to misbehave whatever
others might do. She replied--
"I think I had a perfect right to speak on a subject which concerns
me at least as much as you."
"Clearly--you had a right to speak, but only to me. You had no right
to contradict my orders secretly, and treat me as if I were a fool,"
said Lydgate, in the same tone as before. Then with some added scorn,
"Is it possible to make you understand what the consequences will be?
Is it of any use for me to tell you again why we must try to part
with the house?"
"It is not necessary for you to tell me again," said Rosamond,
in a voice that fell and trickled like cold water-drops. "I remembered
what you said. You spoke just as violently as you do now.
But that does not alter my opinion that you ought to try every
other means rather than take a step which is so painful to me.
And as to advertising the house, I think it would be perfectly
degrading to you."
"And suppose I disregard your opinion as you disregard mine?"
"You can do so, of course. But I think you ought to have told me
before we were married that you would place me in the worst position,
rather than give up your own will."
Lydgate did not speak, but tossed his head on one side, and twitched
the corners of his mouth in despair. Rosamond, seeing that he was
not looking at her, rose and set his cup of coffee before him; but he
took no notice of it, and went on with an inward drama and argument,
occasionally moving in his seat, resting one arm on the table,
and rubbing his hand against his hair. There was a conflux of emotions
and thoughts in him that would not let him either give thorough
way to his anger or persevere with simple rigidity of resolve.
Rosamond took advantage of his silence.
"When we were married everyone felt that your position was very high.
I could not have imagined then that you would want to sell our furniture,
and take a house in Bride Street, where the rooms are like cages.
If we are to live in that way let us at least leave Middlemarch."
"These would be very strong considerations," said Lydgate,
half ironically--still there was a withered paleness about his
lips as he looked at his coffee, and did not drink--"these would
be very strong considerations if I did not happen to be in debt."
"Many persons must have been in debt in the same way, but if they
are respectable, people trust them. I am sure I have heard papa
say that the Torbits were in debt, and they went on very well. It
cannot be good to act rashly," said Rosamond, with serene wisdom.
Lydgate sat paralyzed by opposing impulses: since no reasoning
he could apply to Rosamond seemed likely to conquer her assent,
he wanted to smash and grind some object on which he could at least
produce an impression, or else to tell her brutally that he was master,
and she must obey. But he not only dreaded the effect of such
extremities on their mutual life--he had a growing dread of Rosamond's
quiet elusive obstinacy, which would not allow any assertion of power
to be final; and again, she had touched him in a spot of keenest
feeling by implying that she had been deluded with a false vision
of happiness in marrying him. As to saying that he was master,
it was not the fact. The very resolution to which he had wrought
himself by dint of logic and honorable pride was beginning to relax
under her torpedo contact. He swallowed half his cup of coffee,
and then rose to go.
"I may at least request that you will not go to Trumbull at present--
until it has been seen that there are no other means," said Rosamond.
Although she was not subject to much fear, she felt it safer not
to betray that she had written to Sir Godwin. "Promise me that you
will not go to him for a few weeks, or without telling me."
Lydgate gave a short laugh. "I think it is I who should exact
a promise that you will do nothing without telling me," he said,
turning his eyes sharply upon her, and then moving to the door.
"You remember that we are going to dine at papa's," said Rosamond,
wishing that he should turn and make a more thorough concession
to her. But he only said "Oh yes," impatiently, and went away.
She held it to be very odious in him that he did not think
the painful propositions he had had to make to her were enough,
without showing so unpleasant a temper. And when she put the
moderate request that he would defer going to Trumbull again,
it was cruel in him not to assure her of what he meant to do.
She was convinced of her having acted in every way for the best;
and each grating or angry speech of Lydgate's served only
as an addition to the register of offences in her mind.
Poor Rosamond for months had begun to associate her husband with
feelings of disappointment, and the terribly inflexible relation
of marriage had lost its charm of encouraging delightful dreams.
It had freed her from the disagreeables of her father's house,
but it had not given her everything that she had wished and hoped.
The Lydgate with whom she had been in love had been a group of airy
conditions for her, most of which had disappeared, while their
place had been taken by every-day details which must be lived
through slowly from hour to hour, not floated through with a rapid
selection of favorable aspects. The habits of Lydgate's profession,
his home preoccupation with scientific subjects, which seemed
to her almost like a morbid vampire's taste, his peculiar views
of things which had never entered into the dialogue of courtship--
all these continually alienating influences, even without the fact
of his having placed himself at a disadvantage in the town,
and without that first shock of revelation about Dover's debt,
would have made his presence dull to her. There was another
presence which ever since the early days of her marriage, until four
months ago, had been an agreeable excitement, but that was gone:
Rosamond would not confess to herself how much the consequent blank
had to do with her utter ennui; and it seemed to her (perhaps
she was right) that an invitation to Quallingham, and an opening
for Lydgate to settle elsewhere than in Middlemarch--in London,
or somewhere likely to be free from unpleasantness--would satisfy her
quite well, and make her indifferent to the absence of Will Ladislaw,
towards whom she felt some resentment for his exaltation of
Mrs. Casaubon.
That was the state of things with Lydgate and Rosamond on the New
Year's Day when they dined at her father's, she looking mildly
neutral towards him in remembrance of his ill-tempered behavior
at breakfast, and he carrying a much deeper effect from the inward
conflict in which that morning scene was only one of many epochs.
His flushed effort while talking to Mr. Farebrother--his effort after
the cynical pretence that all ways of getting money are essentially
the same, and that chance has an empire which reduces choice
to a fool's illusion--was but the symptom of a wavering resolve,
a benumbed response to the old stimuli of enthusiasm.
What was he to do? He saw even more keenly than Rosamond did
the dreariness of taking her into the small house in Bride Street,
where she would have scanty furniture around her and discontent within:
a life of privation and life with Rosamond were two images which
had become more and more irreconcilable ever since the threat
of privation had disclosed itself. But even if his resolves had
forced the two images into combination, the useful preliminaries
to that hard change were not visibly within reach. And though
he had not given the promise which his wife had asked for,
he did not go again to Trumbull. He even began to think
of taking a rapid journey to the North and seeing Sir Godwin.
He had once believed that nothing would urge him into making
an application for money to his uncle, but he had not then known
the full pressure of alternatives yet more disagreeable. He could
not depend on the effect of a letter; it was only in an interview,
however disagreeable this might be to himself, that he could give
a thorough explanation and could test the effectiveness of kinship.
No sooner had Lydgate begun to represent this step to himself as
the easiest than there was a reaction of anger that he--he who had
long ago determined to live aloof from such abject calculations,
such self-interested anxiety about the inclinations and the pockets
of men with whom he had been proud to have no aims in common--should have
fallen not simply to their level, but to the level of soliciting them.
CHAPTER LXV.
"One of us two must bowen douteless,
And, sith a man is more reasonable
Than woman is, ye [men] moste be suffrable.
--CHAUCER: Canterbury Tales.
The bias of human nature to be slow in correspondence triumphs
even over the present quickening in the general pace of things:
what wonder then that in 1832 old Sir Godwin Lydgate was slow
to write a letter which was of consequence to others rather
than to himself? Nearly three weeks of the new year were gone,
and Rosamond, awaiting an answer to her winning appeal, was every
day disappointed. Lydgate, in total ignorance of her expectations,
was seeing the bills come in, and feeling that Dover's use of
his advantage over other creditors was imminent. He had never
mentioned to Rosamond his brooding purpose of going to Quallingham:
he did not want to admit what would appear to her a concession
to her wishes after indignant refusal, until the last moment;
but he was really expecting to set off soon. A slice of the railway
would enable him to manage the whole journey and back in four days.
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 case, 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? I 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
Back to Full Books
|