Middlemarch
by
George Eliot
Part 17 out of 18
towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry some clearness
and comfort into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap of jealous
indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful room, she had
flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that visit.
She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it
seemed to her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever.
But that base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival
than to a faithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence
in Dorothea when the dominant spirit of justice within her had once
overcome the tumult and had once shown her the truer measure of things.
All the active thought with which she had before been representing to
herself the trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union which,
like her own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles--
all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power:
it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will
not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said
to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful,
instead of driving her back from effort.
And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose
contact with hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been
suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects of her rescue
were not to be sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her.
She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a
throne within her, and rule her errant will. "What should I do--
how should I act now, this very day, if I could clutch my own pain,
and compel it to silence, and think of those three?"
It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was
light piercing into the room. She opened her curtains, and looked
out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond
outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle
on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could
see figures moving--perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off
in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness
of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance.
She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could
neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator,
nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining.
What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear,
but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching
murmur which would soon gather distinctness. She took off the clothes
which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them,
and began to make her toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp,
who came in her dressing-gown.
"Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night,"
burst out Tantripp, looking first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face,
which in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a
mater dolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you _will_. Anybody
might think now you had a right to give yourself a little comfort."
"Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling. "I have slept;
I am not ill. I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible.
And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall want
my new bonnet to-day."
"They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam,
and most thankful I shall be to see you with a couple o' pounds'
worth less of crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire.
"There's a reason in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds
at the bottom of your skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet--
and if ever anybody looked like an angel, it's you in a net quilling--
is what's consistent for a second year. At least, that's _my_
thinking," ended Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire;
"and if anybody was to marry me flattering himself I should wear
those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be deceived by his
own vanity, that's all."
"The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she
used to do in the old Lausanne days, only with a very low voice;
"get me the coffee."
She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against
it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering
at this strange contrariness in her young mistress--that just the
morning when she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should
have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived before.
Tantripp would never have found the clew to this mystery.
Dorothea wished to acknowledge that she had not the less an
active life before her because she had buried a private joy;
and the tradition that fresh garments belonged to all initiation,
haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that slight outward
help towards calm resolve. For the resolve was not easy.
Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch,
having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably
as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
"Du Erde warst auch diese Nacht bestandig,
Und athmest neu erquickt zu meinen Fussen,
Beginnest schon mit Lust mich zu umgeben,
Zum regst und ruhrst ein kraftiges Reschliessen
Zum hochsten Dasein immerfort zu streben.
--Faust: 2r Theil.
When Dorothea was again at Lydgate's door speaking to Martha,
he was in the room close by with the door ajar, preparing to go out.
He heard her voice, and immediately came to her.
"Do you think that Mrs. Lydgate can receive me this morning?"
she said, having reflected that it would be better to leave out all
allusion to her previous visit.
"I have no doubt she will," said Lydgate, suppressing his thought
about Dorothea's looks, which were as much changed as Rosamond's,
"if you will be kind enough to come in and let me tell her that you
are here. She has not been very well since you were here yesterday,
but she is better this morning, and I think it is very likely
that she will be cheered by seeing you again."
It was plain that Lydgate, as Dorothea had expected, knew nothing
about the circumstances of her yesterday's visit; nay, he appeared
to imagine that she had carried it out according to her intention.
She had prepared a little note asking Rosamond to see her, which she
would have given to the servant if he had not been in the way,
but now she was in much anxiety as to the result of his announcement.
After leading her into the drawing-room, he paused to take a letter
from his pocket and put it into her hands, saying, "I wrote this
last night, and was going to carry it to Lowick in my ride.
When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks,
writing is less unsatisfactory than speech--one does not at least
_hear_ how inadequate the words are."
Dorothea's face brightened. "It is I who have most to thank for,
since you have let me take that place. You _have_ consented?"
she said, suddenly doubting.
"Yes, the check is going to Bulstrode to-day."
He said no more, but went up-stairs to Rosamond, who had but lately
finished dressing herself, and sat languidly wondering what she
should do next, her habitual industry in small things, even in the
days of her sadness, prompting her to begin some kind of occupation,
which she dragged through slowly or paused in from lack of interest.
She looked ill, but had recovered her usual quietude of manner,
and Lydgate had feared to disturb her by any questions. He had
told her of Dorothea's letter containing the check, and afterwards
he had said, "Ladislaw is come, Rosy; he sat with me last night;
I dare say he will be here again to-day. I thought he looked rather
battered and depressed." And Rosamond had made no reply.
Now, when he came up, he said to her very gently, "Rosy, dear,
Mrs. Casaubon is come to see you again; you would like to see her,
would you not?" That she colored and gave rather a startled
movement did not surprise him after the agitation produced by the
interview yesterday--a beneficent agitation, he thought, since it
seemed to have made her turn to him again.
Rosamond dared not say no. She dared not with a tone of her voice
touch the facts of yesterday. Why had Mrs. Casaubon come again?
The answer was a blank which Rosamond could only fill up
with dread, for Will Ladislaw's lacerating words had made every
thought of Dorothea a fresh smart to her. Nevertheless, in her
new humiliating uncertainty she dared do nothing but comply.
She did not say yes, but she rose and let Lydgate put a light shawl
over her shoulders, while he said, "I am going out immediately."
Then something crossed her mind which prompted her to say,
"Pray tell Martha not to bring any one else into the drawing-room."
And Lydgate assented, thinking that he fully understood this wish.
He led her down to the drawing-room door, and then turned away,
observing to himself that he was rather a blundering husband
to be dependent for his wife's trust in him on the influence of
another woman.
Rosamond, wrapping her soft shawl around her as she walked
towards Dorothea, was inwardly wrapping her soul in cold reserve.
Had Mrs. Casaubon come to say anything to her about Will? If so,
it was a liberty that Rosamond resented; and she prepared herself
to meet every word with polite impassibility. Will had bruised
her pride too sorely for her to feel any compunction towards
him and Dorothea: her own injury seemed much the greater.
Dorothea was not only the "preferred" woman, but had also a
formidable advantage in being Lydgate's benefactor; and to poor
Rosamond's pained confused vision it seemed that this Mrs. Casaubon--
this woman who predominated in all things concerning her--must have
come now with the sense of having the advantage, and with animosity
prompting her to use it. Indeed, not Rosamond only, but any one else,
knowing the outer facts of the case, and not the simple inspiration
on which Dorothea acted, might well have wondered why she came.
Looking like the lovely ghost of herself, her graceful slimness
wrapped in her soft white shawl, the rounded infantine mouth
and cheek inevitably suggesting mildness and innocence, Rosamond
paused at three yards' distance from her visitor and bowed.
But Dorothea, who had taken off her gloves, from an impulse
which she could never resist when she wanted a sense of freedom,
came forward, and with her face full of a sad yet sweet openness,
put out her hand. Rosamond could not avoid meeting her glance,
could not avoid putting her small hand into Dorothea's, which clasped
it with gentle motherliness; and immediately a doubt of her own
prepossessions began to stir within her. Rosamond's eye was quick
for faces; she saw that Mrs. Casaubon's face looked pale and changed
since yesterday, yet gentle, and like the firm softness of her hand.
But Dorothea had counted a little too much on her own strength:
the clearness and intensity of her mental action this morning
were the continuance of a nervous exaltation which made her frame
as dangerously responsive as a bit of finest Venetian crystal;
and in looking at Rosamond, she suddenly found her heart swelling,
and was unable to speak--all her effort was required to keep back tears.
She succeeded in that, and the emotion only passed over her face
like the spirit of a sob; but it added to Rosamond's impression
that Mrs. Casaubon's state of mind must be something quite different
from what she had imagined.
So they sat down without a word of preface on the two chairs that
happened to be nearest, and happened also to be close together;
though Rosamond's notion when she first bowed was that she should
stay a long way off from Mrs. Casaubon. But she ceased thinking
how anything would turn out--merely wondering what would come.
And Dorothea began to speak quite simply, gathering firmness as she
went on.
"I had an errand yesterday which I did not finish; that is why I am
here again so soon. You will not think me too troublesome when I
tell you that I came to talk to you about the injustice that has
been shown towards Mr. Lydgate. It will cheer you--will it not?--
to know a great deal about him, that he may not like to speak
about himself just because it is in his own vindication and to his
own honor. You will like to know that your husband has warm friends,
who have not left off believing in his high character? You will let
me speak of this without thinking that I take a liberty?"
The cordial, pleading tones which seemed to flow with generous
heedlessness above all the facts which had filled Rosamond's mind
as grounds of obstruction and hatred between her and this woman,
came as soothingly as a warm stream over her shrinking fears.
Of course Mrs. Casaubon had the facts in her mind, but she was
not going to speak of anything connected with them. That relief
was too great for Rosamond to feel much else at the moment.
She answered prettily, in the new ease of her soul--
"I know you have been very good. I shall like to hear anything
you will say to me about Tertius."
"The day before yesterday," said Dorothea, "when I had asked him to
come to Lowick to give me his opinion on the affairs of the Hospital,
he told me everything about his conduct and feelings in this sad event
which has made ignorant people cast suspicions on him. The reason he
told me was because I was very bold and asked him. I believed that he
had never acted dishonorably, and I begged him to tell me the history.
He confessed to me that he had never told it before, not even
to you, because he had a great dislike to say, `I was not wrong,'
as if that were proof, when there are guilty people who will say so.
The truth is, he knew nothing of this man Raffles, or that there
were any bad secrets about him; and he thought that Mr. Bulstrode
offered him the money because he repented, out of kindness, of having
refused it before. All his anxiety about his patient was to treat
him rightly, and he was a little uncomfortable that the case did
not end as he had expected; but he thought then and still thinks
that there may have been no wrong in it on any one's part. And I
have told Mr. Farebrother, and Mr. Brooke, and Sir James Chettam:
they all believe in your husband. That will cheer you, will it not?
That will give you courage?"
Dorothea's face had become animated, and as it beamed on Rosamond
very close to her, she felt something like bashful timidity before
a superior, in the presence of this self-forgetful ardor. She said,
with blushing embarrassment, "Thank you: you are very kind."
"And he felt that he had been so wrong not to pour out everything
about this to you. But you will forgive him. It was because he
feels so much more about your happiness than anything else--
he feels his life bound into one with yours, and it hurts
him more than anything, that his misfortunes must hurt you.
He could speak to me because I am an indifferent person.
And then I asked him if I might come to see you; because I felt
so much for his trouble and yours. That is why I came yesterday,
and why I am come to-day. Trouble is so hard to bear, is it not?--
How can we live and think that any one has trouble--piercing trouble--
and we could help them, and never try?"
Dorothea, completely swayed by the feeling that she was uttering,
forgot everything but that she was speaking from out the heart
of her own trial to Rosamond's. The emotion had wrought itself
more and more into her utterance, till the tones might have gone
to one's very marrow, like a low cry from some suffering creature
in the darkness. And she had unconsciously laid her hand again
on the little hand that she had pressed before.
Rosamond, with an overmastering pang, as if a wound within her
had been probed, burst into hysterical crying as she had done
the day before when she clung to her husband. Poor Dorothea
was feeling a great wave of her own sorrow returning over her--
her thought being drawn to the possible share that Will Ladislaw
might have in Rosamond's mental tumult. She was beginning to fear
that she should not be able to suppress herself enough to the end of
this meeting, and while her hand was still resting on Rosamond's lap,
though the hand underneath it was withdrawn, she was struggling
against her own rising sobs. She tried to master herself with
the thought that this might be a turning-point in three lives--
not in her own; no, there the irrevocable had happened, but--
in those three lives which were touching hers with the solemn
neighborhood of danger and distress. The fragile creature who was
crying close to her--there might still be time to rescue her from
the misery of false incompatible bonds; and this moment was unlike
any other: she and Rosamond could never be together again with
the same thrilling consciousness of yesterday within them both.
She felt the relation between them to be peculiar enough to give
her a peculiar influence, though she had no conception that the way
in which her own feelings were involved was fully known to Mrs. Lydgate.
It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea
could imagine: she was under the first great shock that had shattered
her dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself
and critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation
of feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking
aversion and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred
towards her, made her soul totter all the more with a sense that she
had been walking in an unknown world which had just broken in upon her.
When Rosamond's convulsed throat was subsiding into calm, and she
withdrew the handkerchief with which she had been hiding her face,
her eyes met Dorothea's as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers.
What was the use of thinking about behavior after this crying?
And Dorothea looked almost as childish, with the neglected trace of a
silent tear. Pride was broken down between these two.
"We were talking about your husband," Dorothea said, with some timidity.
"I thought his looks were sadly changed with suffering the other day.
I had not seen him for many weeks before. He said he had been
feeling very lonely in his trial; but I think he would have borne
it all better if he had been able to be quite open with you."
"Tertius is so angry and impatient if I say anything," said Rosamond,
imagining that he had been complaining of her to Dorothea. "He ought
not to wonder that I object to speak to him on painful subjects."
"It was himself he blamed for not speaking," said Dorothea.
"What he said of you was, that he could not be happy in doing anything
which made you unhappy--that his marriage was of course a bond
which must affect his choice about everything; and for that reason he
refused my proposal that he should keep his position at the Hospital,
because that would bind him to stay in Middlemarch, and he would not
undertake to do anything which would be painful to you. He could say
that to me, because he knows that I had much trial in my marriage,
from my husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him;
and he knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear
of hurting another who is tied to us."
Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing
over Rosamond's face. But there was no answer, and she went on,
with a gathering tremor, "Marriage is so unlike everything else.
There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we
loved some one else better than--than those we were married to,
it would be no use"--poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety,
could only seize her language brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks
up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort
of love. I know it may be very dear--but it murders our marriage--
and then the marriage stays with us like a murder--and everything
else is gone. And then our husband--if he loved and trusted us,
and we have not helped him, but made a curse in his life--"
Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming
too far, and of speaking as if she herself were perfection
addressing error. She was too much preoccupied with her own anxiety,
to be aware that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the need
to express pitying fellowship rather than rebuke, she put her hands on
Rosamond's, and said with more agitated rapidity,--"I know, I know that
the feeling may be very dear--it has taken hold of us unawares--it is so
hard, it may seem like death to part with it--and we are weak--I am weak--"
The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling
to save another, rushed over Dorothea with conquering force.
She stopped in speechless agitation, not crying, but feeling
as if she were being inwardly grappled. Her face had become of a
deathlier paleness, her lips trembled, and she pressed her hands
helplessly on the hands that lay under them.
Rosamond, taken hold of by an emotion stronger than her own--
hurried along in a new movement which gave all things some new,
awful, undefined aspect--could find no words, but involuntarily
she put her lips to Dorothea's forehead which was very near her,
and then for a minute the two women clasped each other as if they
had been in a shipwreck.
"You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager
half-whisper, while she was still feeling Dorothea's arms round her--
urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself from something
that oppressed her as if it were blood guiltiness.
They moved apart, looking at each other.
"When you came in yesterday--it was not as you thought,"
said Rosamond in the same tone.
There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea. She
expected a vindication of Rosamond herself.
"He was telling me how he loved another woman, that I might know
he could never love me," said Rosamond, getting more and more
hurried as she went on. "And now I think he hates me because--
because you mistook him yesterday. He says it is through me
that you will think ill of him--think that he is a false person.
But it shall not be through me. He has never had any love for me--
I know he has not--he has always thought slightly of me.
He said yesterday that no other woman existed for him beside you.
The blame of what happened is entirely mine. He said he could never
explain to you--because of me. He said you could never think well
of him again. But now I have told you, and he cannot reproach me
any more."
Rosamond had delivered her soul under impulses which she had not
known before. She had begun her confession under the subduing
influence of Dorothea's emotion; and as she went on she had
gathered the sense that she was repelling Will's reproaches,
which were still like a knife-wound within her.
The revulsion of feeling in Dorothea was too strong to be called joy.
It was a tumult in which the terrible strain of the night and
morning made a resistant pain:--she could only perceive that this
would be joy when she had recovered her power of feeling it.
Her immediate consciousness was one of immense sympathy without cheek;
she cared for Rosamond without struggle now, and responded earnestly
to her last words--
"No, he cannot reproach you any more."
With her usual tendency to over-estimate the good in others,
she felt a great outgoing of her heart towards Rosamond,
for the generous effort which had redeemed her from suffering,
not counting that the effort was a reflex of her own energy.
After they had been silent a little, she said--
"You are not sorry that I came this morning?"
"No, you have been very good to me," said Rosamond. "I did not think
that you would be so good. I was very unhappy. I am not happy now.
Everything is so sad."
"But better days will come. Your husband will be rightly valued.
And he depends on you for comfort. He loves you best.
The worst loss would be to lose that--and you have not lost it,"
said Dorothea.
She tried to thrust away the too overpowering thought of her
own relief, lest she should fail to win some sign that Rosamond's
affection was yearning back towards her husband.
"Tertius did not find fault with me, then?" said Rosamond,
understanding now that Lydgate might have said anything to
Mrs. Casaubon, and that she certainly was different from other women.
Perhaps there was a faint taste of jealousy in the question.
A smile began to play over Dorothea's face as she said--
"No, indeed! How could you imagine it?" But here the door opened,
and Lydgate entered.
"I am come back in my quality of doctor," he said. "After I
went away, I was haunted by two pale faces: Mrs. Casaubon looked
as much in need of care as you, Rosy. And I thought that I
had not done my duty in leaving you together; so when I had been
to Coleman's I came home again. I noticed that you were walking,
Mrs. Casaubon, and the sky has changed--I think we may have rain.
May I send some one to order your carriage to come for you?"
"Oh, no! I am strong: I need the walk," said Dorothea,
rising with animation in her face. "Mrs. Lydgate and I
have chatted a great deal, and it is time for me to go.
I have always been accused of being immoderate and saying too much."
She put out her hand to Rosamond, and they said an earnest, quiet good-by
without kiss or other show of effusion: there had been between them
too much serious emotion for them to use the signs of it superficially.
As Lydgate took her to the door she said nothing of Rosamond,
but told him of Mr. Farebrother and the other friends who had
listened with belief to his story.
When he came back to Rosamond, she had already thrown herself
on the sofa, in resigned fatigue.
"Well, Rosy," he said, standing over her, and touching her hair,
"what do you think of Mrs. Casaubon now you have seen so much
of her?"
"I think she must be better than any one," said Rosamond,
"and she is very beautiful. If you go to talk to her so often,
you will be more discontented with me than ever!"
Lydgate laughed at the "so often." "But has she made you any less
discontented with me?"
"I think she has," said Rosamond, looking up in his face.
"How heavy your eyes are, Tertius--and do push your hair back."
He lifted up his large white hand to obey her, and felt thankful
for this little mark of interest in him. Poor Rosamond's vagrant
fancy had come back terribly scourged--meek enough to nestle
under the old despised shelter. And the shelter was still there:
Lydgate had accepted his narrowed lot with sad resignation.
He had chosen this fragile creature, and had taken the burthen
of her life upon his arms. He must walk as he could, carrying that
burthen pitifully.
CHAPTER LXXXII.
"My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
--SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets.
Exiles notoriously feed much on hopes, and are unlikely to stay
in banishment unless they are obliged. When Will Ladislaw exiled
himself from Middlemarch he had placed no stronger obstacle to his
return than his own resolve, which was by no means an iron barrier,
but simply a state of mind liable to melt into a minuet with other
states of mind, and to find itself bowing, smiling, and giving
place with polite facility. As the months went on, it had seemed
more and more difficult to him to say why he should not run down
to Middlemarch--merely for the sake of hearing something about Dorothea;
and if on such a flying visit he should chance by some strange
coincidence to meet with her, there was no reason for him to be
ashamed of having taken an innocent journey which he had beforehand
supposed that he should not take. Since he was hopelessly
divided from her, he might surely venture into her neighborhood;
and as to the suspicious friends who kept a dragon watch over her--
their opinions seemed less and less important with time and change
of air.
And there had come a reason quite irrespective of Dorothea, which seemed
to make a journey to Middlemarch a sort of philanthropic duty.
Will had given a disinterested attention to an intended settlement
on a new plan in the Far West, and the need for funds in order to
carry out a good design had set him on debating with himself whether
it would not be a laudable use to make of his claim on Bulstrode,
to urge the application of that money which had been offered to himself
as a means of carrying out a scheme likely to be largely beneficial.
The question seemed a very dubious one to Will, and his repugnance
to again entering into any relation with the banker might have made
him dismiss it quickly, if there had not arisen in his imagination
the probability that his judgment might be more safely determined
by a visit to Middlemarch.
That was the object which Will stated to himself as a reason
for coming down. He had meant to confide in Lydgate, and discuss
the money question with him, and he had meant to amuse himself
for the few evenings of his stay by having a great deal of music
and badinage with fair Rosamond, without neglecting his friends
at Lowick Parsonage:--if the Parsonage was close to the Manor,
that was no fault of his. He had neglected the Farebrothers before
his departure, from a proud resistance to the possible accusation
of indirectly seeking interviews with Dorothea; but hunger tames us,
and Will had become very hungry for the vision of a certain form
and the sound of a certain voice. Nothing, had done instead--
not the opera, or the converse of zealous politicians, or the flattering
reception (in dim corners) of his new hand in leading articles.
Thus he had come down, foreseeing with confidence how almost
everything would be in his familiar little world; fearing, indeed,
that there would be no surprises in his visit. But he had found
that humdrum world in a terribly dynamic condition, in which even
badinage and lyrism had turned explosive; and the first day of this
visit had become the most fatal epoch of his life. The next
morning he felt so harassed with the nightmare of consequences--
he dreaded so much the immediate issues before him--that seeing
while he breakfasted the arrival of the Riverston coach, he went
out hurriedly and took his place on it, that he might be relieved,
at least for a day, from the necessity of doing or saying anything
in Middlemarch. Will Ladislaw was in one of those tangled crises
which are commoner in experience than one might imagine, from the
shallow absoluteness of men's judgments. He had found Lydgate,
for whom he had the sincerest respect, under circumstances which
claimed his thorough and frankly declared sympathy; and the reason why,
in spite of that claim, it would have been better for Will to have
avoided all further intimacy, or even contact, with Lydgate,
was precisely of the kind to make such a course appear impossible.
To a creature of Will's susceptible temperament--without any neutral
region of indifference in his nature, ready to turn everything that
befell him into the collisions of a passionate drama--the revelation
that Rosamond had made her happiness in any way dependent on him was
a difficulty which his outburst of rage towards her had immeasurably
increased for him. He hated his own cruelty, and yet he dreaded
to show the fulness of his relenting: he must go to her again;
the friendship could not be put to a sudden end; and her unhappiness
was a power which he dreaded. And all the while there was no more
foretaste of enjoyment in the life before him than if his limbs
had been lopped off and he was making his fresh start on crutches.
In the night he had debated whether he should not get on the coach,
not for Riverston, but for London, leaving a note to Lydgate
which would give a makeshift reason for his retreat. But there
were strong cords pulling him back from that abrupt departure:
the blight on his happiness in thinking of Dorothea, the crushing
of that chief hope which had remained in spite of the acknowledged
necessity for renunciation, was too fresh a misery for him to
resign himself to it and go straightway into a distance which was
also despair.
Thus he did nothing more decided than taking the Riverston coach.
He came back again by it while it was still daylight, having made
up his mind that he must go to Lydgate's that evening.
The Rubicon, we know, was a very insignificant stream to look at;
its significance lay entirely in certain invisible conditions.
Will felt as if he were forced to cross his small boundary ditch,
and what he saw beyond it was not empire, but discontented subjection.
But it is given to us sometimes even in our every-day life to
witness the saving influence of a noble nature, the divine efficacy
of rescue that may lie in a self-subduing act of fellowship.
If Dorothea, after her night's anguish, had not taken that walk
to Rosamond--why, she perhaps would have been a woman who gained
a higher character for discretion, but it would certainly not have
been as well for those three who were on one hearth in Lydgate's
house at half-past seven that evening.
Rosamond had been prepared for Will's visit, and she received him with a
languid coldness which Lydgate accounted for by her nervous exhaustion,
of which he could not suppose that it had any relation to Will.
And when she sat in silence bending over a bit of work, he innocently
apologized for her in an indirect way by begging her to lean backward
and rest. Will was miserable in the necessity for playing the part
of a friend who was making his first appearance and greeting to Rosamond,
while his thoughts were busy about her feeling since that scene
of yesterday, which seemed still inexorably to enclose them both,
like the painful vision of a double madness. It happened that nothing
called Lydgate out of the room; but when Rosamond poured out the tea,
and Will came near to fetch it, she placed a tiny bit of folded
paper in his saucer. He saw it and secured it quickly, but as he
went back to his inn he had no eagerness to unfold the paper.
What Rosamond had written to him would probably deepen the painful
impressions of the evening. Still, he opened and read it by his
bed-candle. There were only these few words in her neatly flowing hand:--
"I have told Mrs. Casaubon. She is not under any mistake about you.
I told her because she came to see me and was very kind. You will
have nothing to reproach me with now. I shall not have made any
difference to you."
The effect of these words was not quite all gladness. As Will dwelt
on them with excited imagination, he felt his cheeks and ears burning
at the thought of what had occurred between Dorothea and Rosamond--
at the uncertainty how far Dorothea might still feel her dignity
wounded in having an explanation of his conduct offered to her.
There might still remain in her mind a changed association with him
which made an irremediable difference--a lasting flaw. With active
fancy he wrought himself into a state of doubt little more easy
than that of the man who has escaped from wreck by night and stands
on unknown ground in the darkness. Until that wretched yesterday--
except the moment of vexation long ago in the very same room and
in the very same presence--all their vision, all their thought of
each other, had been as in a world apart, where the sunshine fell on
tall white lilies, where no evil lurked, and no other soul entered.
But now--would Dorothea meet him in that world again?
CHAPTER LXXXIII.
"And now good-morrow to our waking souls
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere."
--DR. DONNE.
On the second morning after Dorothea's visit to Rosamond, she had had
two nights of sound sleep, and had not only lost all traces of fatigue,
but felt as if she had a great deal of superfluous strength--
that is to say, more strength than she could manage to concentrate
on any occupation. The day before, she had taken long walks
outside the grounds, and had paid two visits to the Parsonage;
but she never in her life told any one the reason why she spent
her time in that fruitless manner, and this morning she was rather
angry with herself for her childish restlessness. To-day was to be
spent quite differently. What was there to be done in the village?
Oh dear! nothing. Everybody was well and had flannel; nobody's pig
had died; and it was Saturday morning, when there was a general
scrubbing of doors and door-stones, and when it was useless to go
into the school. But there were various subjects that Dorothea
was trying to get clear upon, and she resolved to throw herself
energetically into the gravest of all. She sat down in the library
before her particular little heap of books on political economy and
kindred matters, out of which she was trying to get light as to the
best way of spending money so as not to injure one's neighbors, or--
what comes to the same thing--so as to do them the most good.
Here was a weighty subject which, if she could but lay hold of it,
would certainly keep her mind steady. Unhappily her mind slipped
off it for a whole hour; and at the end she found herself reading
sentences twice over with an intense consciousness of many things,
but not of any one thing contained in the text. This was hopeless.
Should she order the carriage and drive to Tipton? No; for some
reason or other she preferred staying at Lowick. But her vagrant
mind must be reduced to order: there was an art in self-discipline;
and she walked round and round the brown library considering by
what sort of manoeuvre she could arrest her wandering thoughts.
Perhaps a mere task was the best means--something to which she
must go doggedly. Was there not the geography of Asia Minor,
in which her slackness had often been rebuked by Mr. Casaubon?
She went to the cabinet of maps and unrolled one: this morning
she might make herself finally sure that Paphlagonia was not on
the Levantine coast, and fix her total darkness about the Chalybes
firmly on the shores of the Euxine. A map was a fine thing to study
when you were disposed to think of something else, being made up
of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them.
Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering
the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime.
She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience--
nodding her head and marking the names off on her fingers,
with a little pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off
to put her hands on each side of her face and say, "Oh dear!
oh dear!"
There was no reason why this should end any more than a merry-go-round;
but it was at last interrupted by the opening of the door and the
announcement of Miss Noble.
The little old lady, whose bonnet hardly reached Dorothea's shoulder,
was warmly welcomed, but while her hand was being pressed she made
many of her beaver-like noises, as if she had something difficult
to say.
"Do sit down," said Dorothea, rolling a chair forward. "Am I
wanted for anything? I shall be so glad if I can do anything."
"I will not stay," said Miss Noble, putting her hand into her small
basket, and holding some article inside it nervously; "I have left
a friend in the churchyard." She lapsed into her inarticulate sounds,
and unconsciously drew forth the article which she was fingering.
It was the tortoise-shell lozenge-box, and Dorothea felt the color
mounting to her cheeks.
"Mr. Ladislaw," continued the timid little woman. "He fears he
has offended you, and has begged me to ask if you will see him
for a few minutes."
Dorothea did not answer on the instant: it was crossing her mind
that she could not receive him in this library, where her husband's
prohibition seemed to dwell. She looked towards the window.
Could she go out and meet him in the grounds? The sky was heavy,
and the trees had begun to shiver as at a coming storm. Besides,
she shrank from going out to him.
"Do see him, Mrs. Casaubon," said Miss Noble, pathetically; "else I
must go back and say No, and that will hurt him."
"Yes, I will see him," said Dorothea. "Pray tell him to come."
What else was there to be done? There was nothing that she longed
for at that moment except to see Will: the possibility of seeing him
had thrust itself insistently between her and every other object;
and yet she had a throbbing excitement like an alarm upon her--
a sense that she was doing something daringly defiant for his sake.
When the little lady had trotted away on her mission, Dorothea stood
in the middle of the library with her hands falling clasped
before her, making no attempt to compose herself in an attitude
of dignified unconsciousness. What she was least conscious of just
then was her own body: she was thinking of what was likely to be in
Will's mind, and of the hard feelings that others had had about him.
How could any duty bind her to hardness? Resistance to unjust
dispraise had mingled with her feeling for him from the very first,
and now in the rebound of her heart after her anguish the resistance
was stronger than ever. "If I love him too much it is because he
has been used so ill:"--there was a voice within her saying this
to some imagined audience in the library, when the door was opened,
and she saw Will before her.
She did not move, and he came towards her with more doubt and timidity
in his face than she had ever seen before. He was in a state
of uncertainty which made him afraid lest some look or word of his
should condemn him to a new distance from her; and Dorothea was afraid
of her _own_ emotion. She looked as if there were a spell upon her,
keeping her motionless and hindering her from unclasping her hands,
while some intense, grave yearning was imprisoned within her eyes.
Seeing that she did not put out her hand as usual, Will paused
a yard from her and said with embarrassment, "I am so grateful
to you for seeing me."
"I wanted to see you," said Dorothea, having no other words at command.
It did not occur to her to sit down, and Will did not give
a cheerful interpretation to this queenly way of receiving him;
but he went on to say what he had made up his mind to say.
"I fear you think me foolish and perhaps wrong for coming back
so soon. I have been punished for my impatience. You know--
every one knows now---a painful story about my parentage. I knew
of it before I went away, and I always meant to tell you of it if--
if we ever met again."
There was a slight movement in Dorothea, and she unclasped her hands,
but immediately folded them over each other.
"But the affair is matter of gossip now," Will continued. "I wished
you to know that something connected with it--something which
happened before I went away, helped to bring me down here again.
At least I thought it excused my coming. It was the idea of getting
Bulstrode to apply some money to a public purpose--some money which
he had thought of giving me. Perhaps it is rather to Bulstrode's
credit that he privately offered me compensation for an old injury:
he offered to give me a good income to make amends; but I suppose
you know the disagreeable story?"
Will looked doubtfully at Dorothea, but his manner was gathering
some of the defiant courage with which he always thought of this
fact in his destiny. He added, "You know that it must be altogether
painful to me."
"Yes--yes--I know," said Dorothea, hastily.
"I did not choose to accept an income from such a source. I was
sure that you would not think well of me if I did so," said Will.
Why should he mind saying anything of that sort to her now?
She knew that he had avowed his love for her. "I felt that"--
he broke off, nevertheless.
"You acted as I should have expected you to act," said Dorothea,
her face brightening and her head becoming a little more erect on
its beautiful stem.
"I did not believe that you would let any circumstance of my birth
create a prejudice in you against me, though it was sure to do so
in others," said Will, shaking his head backward in his old way,
and looking with a grave appeal into her eyes.
"If it were a new hardship it would be a new reason for me to cling
to you," said Dorothea, fervidly. "Nothing could have changed
me but--" her heart was swelling, and it was difficult to go on;
she made a great effort over herself to say in a low tremulous voice,
"but thinking that you were different--not so good as I had believed
you to be."
"You are sure to believe me better than I am in everything but one,"
said Will, giving way to his own feeling in the evidence of hers.
"I mean, in my truth to you. When I thought you doubted of that,
I didn't care about anything that was left. I thought it was
all over with me, and there was nothing to try for--only things
to endure."
"I don't doubt you any longer," said Dorothea, putting out her hand;
a vague fear for him impelling her unutterable affection.
He took her hand and raised it to his lips with something like a sob.
But he stood with his hat and gloves in the other hand, and might
have done for the portrait of a Royalist. Still it was difficult
to loose the hand, and Dorothea, withdrawing it in a confusion
that distressed her, looked and moved away.
"See how dark the clouds have become, and how the trees are tossed,"
she said, walking towards the window, yet speaking and moving with
only a dim sense of what she was doing.
Will followed her at a little distance, and leaned against the tall back
of a leather chair, on which he ventured now to lay his hat and gloves,
and free himself from the intolerable durance of formality to which
he had been for the first time condemned in Dorothea's presence.
It must be confessed that he felt very happy at that moment leaning
on the chair. He was not much afraid of anything that she might feel now.
They stood silent, not looking at each other, but looking
at the evergreens which were being tossed, and were showing
the pale underside of their leaves against the blackening sky.
Will never enjoyed the prospect of a storm so much: it delivered
him from the necessity of going away. Leaves and little branches
were hurled about, and the thunder was getting nearer. The light
was more and more sombre, but there came a flash of lightning
which made them start and look at each other, and then smile.
Dorothea began to say what she had been thinking of.
"That was a wrong thing for you to say, that you would have
had nothing to try for. If we had lost our own chief good,
other people's good would remain, and that is worth trying for.
Some can be happy. I seemed to see that more clearly than ever,
when I was the most wretched. I can hardly think how I could have
borne the trouble, if that feeling had not come to me to make strength."
"You have never felt the sort of misery I felt," said Will;
"the misery of knowing that you must despise me."
"But I have felt worse--it was worse to think ill--" Dorothea
had begun impetuously, but broke off.
Will colored. He had the sense that whatever she said was uttered
in the vision of a fatality that kept them apart. He was silent
a moment, and then said passionately--
"We may at least have the comfort of speaking to each other
without disguise. Since I must go away--since we must always
be divided--you may think of me as one on the brink of the grave."
While he was speaking there came a vivid flash of lightning which lit
each of them up for the other--and the light seemed to be the terror
of a hopeless love. Dorothea darted instantaneously from the window;
Will followed her, seizing her hand with a spasmodic movement;
and so they stood, with their hands clasped, like two children,
looking out on the storm, while the thunder gave a tremendous crack
and roll above them, and the rain began to pour down. Then they
turned their faces towards each other, with the memory of his last
words in them, and they did not loose each other's hands.
"There is no hope for me," said Will. "Even if you loved
me as well as I love you--even if I were everything to you--
I shall most likely always be very poor: on a sober calculation,
one can count on nothing but a creeping lot. It is impossible
for us ever to belong to each other. It is perhaps base of me
to have asked for a word from you. I meant to go away into silence,
but I have not been able to do what I meant."
"Don't be sorry," said Dorothea, in her clear tender tones.
"I would rather share all the trouble of our parting."
Her lips trembled, and so did his. It was never known which lips were
the first to move towards the other lips; but they kissed tremblingly,
and then they moved apart.
The rain was dashing against the window-panes as if an angry spirit
were within it, and behind it was the great swoop of the wind;
it was one of those moments in which both the busy and the idle
pause with a certain awe.
Dorothea sat down on the seat nearest to her, a long low ottoman
in the middle of the room, and with her hands folded over each
other on her lap, looked at the drear outer world. Will stood
still an instant looking at her, then seated himself beside her,
and laid his hand on hers, which turned itself upward to be clasped.
They sat in that way without looking at each other, until the rain
abated and began to fall in stillness. Each had been full of thoughts
which neither of them could begin to utter.
But when the rain was quiet, Dorothea turned to look at Will.
With passionate exclamation, as if some torture screw were
threatening him, he started up and said, "It is impossible!"
He went and leaned on the back of the chair again, and seemed to be
battling with his own anger, while she looked towards him sadly.
"It is as fatal as a murder or any other horror that divides people,"
he burst out again; "it is more intolerable--to have our life maimed
by petty accidents."
"No--don't say that--your life need not be maimed," said Dorothea, gently.
"Yes, it must," said Will, angrily. "It is cruel of you to speak
in that way--as if there were any comfort. You may see beyond
the misery of it, but I don't. It is unkind--it is throwing back
my love for you as if it were a trifle, to speak in that way
in the face of the fact. We can never be married."
"Some time--we might," said Dorothea, in a trembling voice.
"When?" said Will, bitterly. "What is the use of counting on
any success of mine? It is a mere toss up whether I shall ever
do more than keep myself decently, unless I choose to sell myself
as a mere pen and a mouthpiece. I can see that clearly enough.
I could not offer myself to any woman, even if she had no luxuries
to renounce."
There was silence. Dorothea's heart was full of something that she
wanted to say, and yet the words were too difficult. She was wholly
possessed by them: at that moment debate was mute within her.
And it was very hard that she could not say what she wanted to say.
Will was looking out of the window angrily. If he would have looked
at her and not gone away from her side, she thought everything
would have been easier. At last he turned, still resting against
the chair, and stretching his hand automatically towards his hat,
said with a sort of exasperation, "Good-by."
"Oh, I cannot bear it--my heart will break," said Dorothea,
starting from her seat, the flood of her young passion bearing down
all the obstructions which had kept her silent--the great tears
rising and falling in an instant: "I don't mind about poverty--
I hate my wealth."
In an instant Will was close to her and had his arms round her,
but she drew her head back and held his away gently that she might go
on speaking, her large tear-filled eyes looking at his very simply,
while she said in a sobbing childlike way, "We could live quite
well on my own fortune--it is too much--seven hundred a-year--I want
so little--no new clothes--and I will learn what everything costs."
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
"Though it be songe of old and yonge,
That I sholde be to blame,
Theyrs be the charge, that spoke so large
In hurtynge of my name."
--The Not-Browne Mayde.
It was just after the Lords had thrown out the Reform Bill:
that explains how Mr. Cadwallader came to be walking on the
slope of the lawn near the great conservatory at Freshitt Hall,
holding the "Times" in his hands behind him, while he talked
with a trout-fisher's dispassionateness about the prospects
of the country to Sir James Chettam. Mrs. Cadwallader,
the Dowager Lady Chettam, and Celia were sometimes seated on
garden-chairs, sometimes walking to meet little Arthur, who was
being drawn in his chariot, and, as became the infantine Bouddha,
was sheltered by his sacred umbrella with handsome silken fringe.
The ladies also talked politics, though more fitfully.
Mrs. Cadwallader was strong on the intended creation of peers:
she had it for certain from her cousin that Truberry had gone
over to the other side entirely at the instigation of his wife,
who had scented peerages in the air from the very first introduction
of the Reform question, and would sign her soul away to take precedence
of her younger sister, who had married a baronet. Lady Chettam
thought that such conduct was very reprehensible, and remembered
that Mrs. Truberry's mother was a Miss Walsingham of Melspring.
Celia confessed it was nicer to be "Lady" than "Mrs.," and that Dodo
never minded about precedence if she could have her own way.
Mrs. Cadwallader held that it was a poor satisfaction to take
precedence when everybody about you knew that you had not a drop
of good blood in your veins; and Celia again, stopping to look
at Arthur, said, "It would be very nice, though, if he were a Viscount--
and his lordship's little tooth coming through! He might have been,
if James had been an Earl."
"My dear Celia," said the Dowager, "James's title is worth far more
than any new earldom. I never wished his father to be anything
else than Sir James."
"Oh, I only meant about Arthur's little tooth," said Celia,
comfortably. "But see, here is my uncle coming."
She tripped off to meet her uncle, while Sir James and Mr. Cadwallader
came forward to make one group with the ladies. Celia had slipped
her arm through her uncle's, and he patted her hand with a rather
melancholy "Well, my dear!" As they approached, it was evident
that Mr. Brooke was looking dejected, but this was fully accounted
for by the state of politics; and as he was shaking hands all round
without more greeting than a "Well, you're all here, you know,"
the Rector said, laughingly--
"Don't take the throwing out of the Bill so much to heart, Brooke;
you've got all the riff-raff of the country on your side."
"The Bill, eh? ah!" said Mr. Brooke, with a mild distractedness
of manner. "Thrown out, you know, eh? The Lords are going
too far, though. They'll have to pull up. Sad news, you know.
I mean, here at home--sad news. But you must not blame me, Chettam."
"What is the matter?" said Sir James. "Not another gamekeeper shot,
I hope? It's what I should expect, when a fellow like Trapping Bass
is let off so easily."
"Gamekeeper? No. Let us go in; I can tell you all in the house,
you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding at the Cadwalladers, to show
that he included them in his confidence. "As to poachers like
Trapping Bass, you know, Chettam," he continued, as they were entering,
"when you are a magistrate, you'll not find it so easy to commit.
Severity is all very well, but it's a great deal easier when you've
got somebody to do it for you. You have a soft place in your
heart yourself, you know--you're not a Draco, a Jeffreys, that sort
of thing."
Mr. Brooke was evidently in a state of nervous perturbation.
When he had something painful to tell, it was usually his way
to introduce it among a number of disjointed particulars, as if it
were a medicine that would get a milder flavor by mixing. He continued
his chat with Sir James about the poachers until they were all seated,
and Mrs. Cadwallader, impatient of this drivelling, said--
"I'm dying to know the sad news. The gamekeeper is not shot:
that is settled. What is it, then?"
"Well, it's a very trying thing, you know," said Mr. Brooke.
"I'm glad you and the Rector are here; it's a family matter--
but you will help us all to bear it, Cadwallader. I've got
to break it to you, my dear." Here Mr. Brooke looked at Celia--
"You've no notion what it is, you know. And, Chettam, it will annoy
you uncommonly--but, you see, you have not been able to hinder it,
any more than I have. There's something singular in things:
they come round, you know."
"It must be about Dodo," said Celia, who had been used to think
of her sister as the dangerous part of the family machinery.
She had seated herself on a low stool against her husband's knee.
"For God's sake let us hear what it is!" said Sir James.
"Well, you know, Chettam, I couldn't help Casaubon's will:
it was a sort of will to make things worse."
"Exactly," said Sir James, hastily. "But _what_ is worse?"
"Dorothea is going to be married again, you know," said Mr. Brooke,
nodding towards Celia, who immediately looked up at her husband
with a frightened glance, and put her hand on his knee. Sir James
was almost white with anger, but he did not speak.
"Merciful heaven!" said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Not to _young_ Ladislaw?"
Mr. Brooke nodded, saying, "Yes; to Ladislaw," and then fell into
a prudential silence.
"You see, Humphrey!" said Mrs. Cadwallader, waving her arm towards
her husband. "Another time you will admit that I have some foresight;
or rather you will contradict me and be just as blind as ever.
_you_ supposed that the young gentleman was gone out of the country."
"So he might be, and yet come back," said the Rector, quietly
"When did you learn this?" said Sir James, not liking to hear
any one else speak, though finding it difficult to speak himself.
"Yesterday," said Mr. Brooke, meekly. "I went to Lowick.
Dorothea sent for me, you know. It had come about quite suddenly--
neither of them had any idea two days ago--not any idea, you know.
There's something singular in things. But Dorothea is quite
determined--it is no use opposing. I put it strongly to her.
I did my duty, Chettam. But she can act as she likes, you know."
"It would have been better if I had called him out and shot
him a year ago," said Sir James, not from bloody-mindedness,
but because he needed something strong to say.
"Really, James, that would have been very disagreeable," said Celia.
"Be reasonable, Chettam. Look at the affair more quietly,"
said Mr. Cadwallader, sorry to see his good-natured friend
so overmastered by anger.
"That is not so very easy for a man of any dignity--with any
sense of right--when the affair happens to be in his own family,"
said Sir James, still in his white indignation. "It is
perfectly scandalous. If Ladislaw had had a spark of honor he would
have gone out of the country at once, and never shown his face
in it again. However, I am not surprised. The day after Casaubon's
funeral I said what ought to be done. But I was not listened to."
"You wanted what was impossible, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke.
"You wanted him shipped off. I told you Ladislaw was not to be done
as we liked with: he had his ideas. He was a remarkable fellow--
I always said he was a remarkable fellow."
"Yes," said Sir James, unable to repress a retort, "it is rather
a pity you formed that high opinion of him. We are indebted to that
for his being lodged in this neighborhood. We are indebted to that
for seeing a woman like Dorothea degrading herself by marrying him."
Sir James made little stoppages between his clauses, the words
not coming easily. "A man so marked out by her husband's will,
that delicacy ought to have forbidden her from seeing him again--
who takes her out of her proper rank--into poverty--has the meanness
to accept such a sacrifice--has always had an objectionable position--
a bad origin--and, I _believe_, is a man of little principle and
light character. That is my opinion." Sir James ended emphatically,
turning aside and crossing his leg.
"I pointed everything out to her," said Mr. Brooke, apologetically--
"I mean the poverty, and abandoning her position. I said, `My dear,
you don't know what it is to live on seven hundred a-year,
and have no carriage, and that kind of thing, and go amongst
people who don't know who you are.' I put it strongly to her.
But I advise you to talk to Dorothea herself. The fact is, she has
a dislike to Casaubon's property. You will hear what she says,
you know."
"No--excuse me--I shall not," said Sir James, with more coolness.
"I cannot bear to see her again; it is too painful. It hurts me too
much that a woman like Dorothea should have done what is wrong."
"Be just, Chettam," said the easy, large-lipped Rector,
who objected to all this unnecessary discomfort. "Mrs. Casaubon
may be acting imprudently: she is giving up a fortune for the sake
of a man, and we men have so poor an opinion of each other that we
can hardly call a woman wise who does that. But I think you should
not condemn it as a wrong action, in the strict sense of the word."
"Yes, I do," answered Sir James. "I think that Dorothea commits
a wrong action in marrying Ladislaw."
"My dear fellow, we are rather apt to consider an act wrong because
it is unpleasant to us," said the Rector, quietly. Like many men
who take life easily, he had the knack of saying a home truth
occasionally to those who felt themselves virtuously out of temper.
Sir James took out his handkerchief and began to bite the corner.
"It is very dreadful of Dodo, though," said Celia, wishing to
justify her husband. "She said she _never would_ marry again--
not anybody at all."
"I heard her say the same thing myself," said Lady Chettam,
majestically, as if this were royal evidence.
"Oh, there is usually a silent exception in such cases,"
said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The only wonder to me is, that any of
you are surprised. You did nothing to hinder it. If you would
have had Lord Triton down here to woo her with his philanthropy,
he might have carried her off before the year was over. There was
no safety in anything else. Mr. Casaubon had prepared all this
as beautifully as possible. He made himself disagreeable--or it
pleased God to make him so--and then he dared her to contradict him.
It's the way to make any trumpery tempting, to ticket it at a high
price in that way."
"I don't know what you mean by wrong, Cadwallader," said Sir James,
still feeling a little stung, and turning round in his chair
towards the Rector. "He's not a man we can take into the family.
At least, I must speak for myself," he continued, carefully keeping
his eyes off Mr. Brooke. "I suppose others will find his society
too pleasant to care about the propriety of the thing."
"Well, you know, Chettam," said Mr. Brooke, good-humoredly, nursing
his leg, "I can't turn my back on Dorothea. I must be a father
to her up to a certain point. I said, `My dear, I won't refuse
to give you away.' I had spoken strongly before. But I can cut
off the entail, you know. It will cost money and be troublesome;
but I can do it, you know."
Mr. Brooke nodded at Sir James, and felt that he was both showing
his own force of resolution and propitiating what was just in the
Baronet's vexation. He had hit on a more ingenious mode of parrying than
he was aware of. He had touched a motive of which Sir James was ashamed.
The mass of his feeling about Dorothea's marriage to Ladislaw was
due partly to excusable prejudice, or even justifiable opinion,
partly to a jealous repugnance hardly less in Ladislaw's case
than in Casaubon's. He was convinced that the marriage was a fatal
one for Dorothea. But amid that mass ran a vein of which he was
too good and honorable a man to like the avowal even to himself:
it was undeniable that the union of the two estates--Tipton and Freshitt--
lying charmingly within a ring-fence, was a prospect that flattered
him for his son and heir. Hence when Mr. Brooke noddingly appealed
to that motive, Sir James felt a sudden embarrassment; there was
a stoppage in his throat; he even blushed. He had found more words
than usual in the first jet of his anger, but Mr. Brooke's propitiation
was more clogging to his tongue than Mr. Cadwallader's caustic hint.
But Celia was glad to have room for speech after her uncle's suggestion
of the marriage ceremony, and she said, though with as little eagerness
of manner as if the question had turned on an invitation to dinner,
"Do you mean that Dodo is going to be married directly, uncle?"
"In three weeks, you know," said Mr. Brooke, helplessly. "I can do
nothing to hinder it, Cadwallader," he added, turning for a little
countenance toward the Rector, who said--
"--I--should not make any fuss about it. If she likes to be poor,
that is her affair. Nobody would have said anything if she had
married the young fellow because he was rich. Plenty of beneficed
clergy are poorer than they will be. Here is Elinor," continued the
provoking husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly
a thousand a-year--I was a lout--nobody could see anything in me--
my shoes were not the right cut--all the men wondered how a woman
could like me. Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I
hear more harm of him."
"Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife.
"Everything is all one--that is the beginning and end with you.
As if you had not been a Cadwallader! Does any one suppose that I
would have taken such a monster as you by any other name?"
"And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation.
"Elinor cannot be said to have descended below her rank. It is
difficult to say what Mr. Ladislaw is, eh, James?"
Sir James gave a small grunt, which was less respectful than
his usual mode of answering his mother. Celia looked up at him
like a thoughtful kitten.
"It must be admitted that his blood is a frightful mixture!"
said Mrs. Cadwallader. "The Casaubon cuttle-fish fluid to begin with,
and then a rebellious Polish fiddler or dancing-master, was it?--
and then an old clo--"
"Nonsense, Elinor," said the Rector, rising. "It is time for us
to go."
"After all, he is a pretty sprig," said Mrs. Cadwallader, rising too,
and wishing to make amends. "He is like the fine old Crichley
portraits before the idiots came in."
"I'll go with you," said Mr. Brooke, starting up with alacrity.
"You must all come and dine with me to-morrow, you know--eh, Celia,
my dear?"
"You will, James--won't you?" said Celia, taking her husband's hand.
"Oh, of course, if you like," said Sir James, pulling down his waistcoat,
but unable yet to adjust his face good-humoredly. "That is to say,
if it is not to meet anybody else.':
"No, no, no," said Mr. Brooke, understanding the condition.
"Dorothea would not come, you know, unless you had been to see her."
When Sir James and Celia were alone, she said, "Do you mind about
my having the carriage to go to, Lowick, James?"
"What, now, directly?" he answered, with some surprise.
"Yes, it is very important," said Celia.
"Remember, Celia, I cannot see her," said Sir James.
"Not if she gave up marrying?"
"What is the use of saying that?--however, I'm going to the stables.
I'll tell Briggs to bring the carriage round."
Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least
to take a journey to Lowick in order to influence Dorothea's mind.
All through their girlhood she had felt that she could act on
her sister by a word judiciously placed--by opening a little
window for the daylight of her own understanding to enter among
the strange colored lamps by which Dodo habitually saw. And Celia
the matron naturally felt more able to advise her childless sister.
How could any one understand Dodo so well as Celia did or love her
so tenderly?
Dorothea, busy in her boudoir, felt a glow of pleasure at the sight
of her sister so soon after the revelation of her intended marriage.
She had prefigured to herself, even with exaggeration, the disgust
of her friends, and she had even feared that Celia might be kept
aloof from her.
"O Kitty, I am delighted to see you!" said Dorothea, putting her
hands on Celia's shoulders, and beaming on her. "I almost thought
you would not come to me."
"I have not brought Arthur, because I was in a hurry," said Celia,
and they sat down on two small chairs opposite each other,
with their knees touching.
"You know, Dodo, it is very bad," said Celia, in her placid guttural,
looking as prettily free from humors as possible. "You have disappointed
us all so. And I can't think that it ever _will_ be--you never
can go and live in that way. And then there are all your plans!
You never can have thought of that. James would have taken any trouble
for you, and you might have gone on all your life doing what you liked."
"On the contrary, dear," said Dorothea, "I never could do anything
that I liked. I have never carried out any plan yet."
"Because you always wanted things that wouldn't do. But other plans
would have come. And how can you marry Mr. Ladislaw, that we none of us
ever thought you _could_ marry? It shocks James so dreadfully.
And then it is all so different from what you have always been.
You would have Mr. Casaubon because he had such a great soul,
and was so and dismal and learned; and now, to think of marrying
Mr. Ladislaw, who has got no estate or anything. I suppose it
is because you must be making yourself uncomfortable in some way
or other."
Dorothea laughed.
"Well, it is very serious, Dodo," said Celia, becoming more impressive.
"How will you live? and you will go away among queer people.
And I shall never see you--and you won't mind about little Arthur--
and I thought you always would--"
Celia's rare tears had got into her eyes, and the corners of her
mouth were agitated.
"Dear Celia," said Dorothea, with tender gravity, "if you don't
ever see me, it will not be my fault."
"Yes, it will," said Celia, with the same touching distortion
of her small features. "How can I come to you or have you with me
when James can't bear it?--that is because he thinks it is not right--
he thinks you are so wrong, Dodo. But you always were wrong: only I
can't help loving you. And nobody can think where you will live:
where can you go?"
"I am going to London," said Dorothea.
"How can you always live in a street? And you will be so poor.
I could give you half my things, only how can I, when I never
see you?"
"Bless you, Kitty," said Dorothea, with gentle warmth. "Take comfort:
perhaps James will forgive me some time."
"But it would be much better if you would not be married," said Celia,
drying her eyes, and returning to her argument; "then there would
be nothing uncomfortable. And you would not do what nobody thought
you could do. James always said you ought to be a queen; but this
is not at all being like a queen. You know what mistakes you
have always been making, Dodo, and this is another. Nobody thinks
Mr. Ladislaw a proper husband for you. And you _said you_ would
never be married again."
"It is quite true that I might be a wiser person, Celia," said Dorothea,
"and that I might have done something better, if I had been better.
But this is what I am going to do. I have promised to marry
Mr. Ladislaw; and I am going to marry him."
The tone in which Dorothea said this was a note that Celia had long
learned to recognize. She was silent a few moments, and then said,
as if she had dismissed all contest, "Is he very fond of you, Dodo?"
"I hope so. I am very fond of him."
"That is nice," said Celia, comfortably. "Only I rather you had such
a sort of husband as James is, with a place very near, that I could
drive to."
Dorothea smiled, and Celia looked rather meditative.
Presently she said, "I cannot think how it all came about."
Celia thought it would be pleasant to hear the story.
"I dare say not," said-Dorothea, pinching her sister's chin.
"If you knew how it came about, it would not seem wonderful to you."
"Can't you tell me?" said Celia, settling her arms cozily.
"No, dear, you would have to feel with me, else you would never know."
CHAPTER LIXXV.
"Then went the jury out whose names were Mr. Blindman, Mr.
No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-loose, Mr.
Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr.
Hate-light, Mr. Implacable, who every one gave in his
private verdict against him among themselves, and afterwards
unanimously concluded to bring him in guilty before the
judge. And first among themselves, Mr. Blindman, the
foreman, said, I see clearly that this man is a heretic.
Then said Mr. No-good, Away with such a fellow from the
earth! Ay, said Mr. Malice, for I hate the very look of him.
Then said Mr. Love-lust, I could never endure him. Nor I,
said Mr. Live-loose; for he would be always condemning my
way. Hang him, hang him, said Mr. Heady. A sorry scrub, said
Mr. High-mind. My heart riseth against him, said Mr. Enmity.
He is a rogue, said Mr. Liar. Hanging is too good for him,
said Mr. Cruelty. Let us despatch him out of the way said
Mr. Hate-light. Then said Mr. Implacable, Might I have all
the world given me, I could not be reconciled to him;
therefore let us forthwith bring him in guilty of death."
--Pilgrim's Progress.
When immortal Bunyan makes his picture of the persecuting passions
bringing in their verdict of guilty, who pities Faithful?
That is a rare and blessed lot which some greatest men have
not attained, to know ourselves guiltless before a condemning crowd--
to be sure that what we are denounced for is solely the good in us.
The pitiable lot is that of the man who could not call himself a martyr
even though he were to persuade himself that the men who stoned
him were but ugly passions incarnate--who knows that he is stoned,
not for professing the Right, but for not being the man he professed
to be.
This was the consciousness that Bulstrode was withering under while he
made his preparations for departing from Middlemarch, and going to end
his stricken life in that sad refuge, the indifference of new faces.
The duteous merciful constancy of his wife had delivered him from
one dread, but it could not hinder her presence from being still a
tribunal before which he shrank from confession and desired advocacy.
His equivocations with himself about the death of Raffles had
sustained the conception of an Omniscience whom he prayed to,
yet he had a terror upon him which would not let him expose them
to judgment by a full confession to his wife: the acts which he had
washed and diluted with inward argument and motive, and for which it
seemed comparatively easy to win invisible pardon--what name would
she call them by? That she should ever silently call his acts
Murder was what he could not bear. He felt shrouded by her doubt:
he got strength to face her from the sense that she could not yet
feel warranted in pronouncing that worst condemnation on him.
Some time, perhaps--when he was dying--he would tell her all:
in the deep shadow of that time, when she held his hand in the
gathering darkness, she might listen without recoiling from
his touch. Perhaps: but concealment had been the habit of his life,
and the impulse to confession had no power against the dread
of a deeper humiliation.
He was full of timid care for his wife, not only because he
deprecated any harshness of judgment from her, but because he
felt a deep distress at the sight of her suffering. She had
sent her daughters away to board at a school on the coast,
that this crisis might be hidden from them as far as possible.
Set free by their absence from the intolerable necessity of
accounting for her grief or of beholding their frightened wonder,
she could live unconstrainedly with the sorrow that was every
day streaking her hair with whiteness and making her eyelids languid.
"Tell me anything that you would like to have me do, Harriet,"
Bulstrode had said to her; "I mean with regard to arrangements
of property. It is my intention not to sell the land I possess
in this neighborhood, but to leave it to you as a safe provision.
If you have any wish on such subjects, do not conceal it from me."
A few days afterwards, when she had returned from a visit to
her brother's, she began to speak to her husband on a subject
which had for some time been in her mind.
"I _should_ like to do something for my brother's family,
Nicholas; and I think we are bound to make some amends to Rosamond
and her husband. Walter says Mr. Lydgate must leave the town,
and his practice is almost good for nothing, and they have very little
left to settle anywhere with. I would rather do without something
for ourselves, to make some amends to my poor brother's family."
Mrs. Bulstrode did not wish to go nearer to the facts than in the phrase
"make some amends;" knowing that her husband must understand her.
He had a particular reason, which she was not aware of, for wincing
under her suggestion. He hesitated before he said--
"It is not possible to carry out your wish in the way you propose,
my dear. Mr. Lydgate has virtually rejected any further service
from me. He has returned the thousand pounds which I lent him.
Mrs. Casaubon advanced him the sum for that purpose. Here is
his letter."
The letter seemed to cut Mrs. Bulstrode severely. The mention of
Mrs. Casaubon's loan seemed a reflection of that public feeling which
held it a matter of course that every one would avoid a connection
with her husband. She was silent for some time; and the tears fell
one after the other, her chin trembling as she wiped them away.
Bulstrode, sitting opposite to her, ached at the sight of that
grief-worn face, which two months before had been bright and blooming.
It had aged to keep sad company with his own withered features.
Urged into some effort at comforting her, he said--
"There is another means, Harriet, by which I might do a service
to your brother's family, if you like to act in it. And it would,
I think, be beneficial to you: it would be an advantageous way
of managing the land which I mean to be yours."
She looked attentive.
"Garth once thought of undertaking the management of Stone Court
in order to place your nephew Fred there. The stock was to remain
as it is, and they were to pay a certain share of the profits
instead of an ordinary rent. That would be a desirable beginning
for the young man, in conjunction with his employment under Garth.
Would it be a satisfaction to you?"
"Yes, it would," said Mrs. Bulstrode, with some return of energy.
"Poor Walter is so cast down; I would try anything in my power
to do him some good before I go away. We have always been brother
and sister."
"You must make the proposal to Garth yourself, Harriet,"
said Mr. Bulstrode, not liking what he had to say, but desiring
the end he had in view, for other reasons besides the consolation
of his wife. "You must state to him that the land is virtually yours,
and that he need have no transactions with me. Communications can
be made through Standish. I mention this, because Garth gave
up being my agent. I can put into your hands a paper which he
himself drew up, stating conditions; and you can propose his
renewed acceptance of them. I think it is not unlikely that
he will accept when you propose the thing for the sake of your nephew."
CHAPTER LXXXVI.
"Le coeur se sature d'amour comme d'un sel divin qui le
conserve; de la l'incorruptible adherence de ceux qui se
sont aimes des l'aube de la vie, et la fraicheur des vielles
amours prolonges. Il existe un embaumement d'amour. C'est de
Daphnis et Chloe que sont faits Philemon et Baucis. Cette
vieillesse la, ressemblance du soir avec l'aurore."
--VICTOR HUGO: L'homme qui rit.
Mrs. Garth, hearing Caleb enter the passage about tea-time, opened
the parlor-door and said, "There you are, Caleb. Have you had
your dinner?" (Mr. Garth's meals were much subordinated to "business.")
"Oh yes, a good dinner--cold mutton and I don't know what.
Where is Mary?"
"In the garden with Letty, I think."
"Fred is not come yet?"
"No. Are you going out again without taking tea, Caleb?"
said Mrs. Garth, seeing that her absent-minded husband
was putting on again the hat which he had just taken off.
"No, no; I'm only going to Mary a minute."
Mary was in a grassy corner of the garden, where there was a swing
loftily hung between two pear-trees. She had a pink kerchief tied
over her head, making a little poke to shade her eyes from the
level sunbeams, while she was giving a glorious swing to Letty,
who laughed and screamed wildly.
Seeing her father, Mary left the swing and went to meet him,
pushing back the pink kerchief and smiling afar off at him with
the involuntary smile of loving pleasure.
"I came to look for you, Mary," said Mr. Garth. "Let us walk
about a bit."
Mary knew quite well that her father had something particular to say:
his eyebrows made their pathetic angle, and there was a tender gravity
in his voice: these things had been signs to her when she was Letty's
age. She put her arm within his, and they turned by the row of
nut-trees.
"It will be a sad while before you can be married, Mary," said her father,
not looking at her, but at the end of the stick which he held in his other
hand.
"Not a sad while, father--I mean to be merry," said Mary,
laughingly. "I have been single and merry for four-and-twenty
years and more: I suppose it will not be quite as long again
as that." Then, after a little pause, she said, more gravely,
bending her face before her father's, "If you are contented with Fred?"
Caleb screwed up his mouth and turned his head aside wisely.
"Now, father, you did praise him last Wednesday. You said he
had an uncommon notion of stock, and a good eye for things."
"Did I?" said Caleb, rather slyly.
"Yes, I put it all down, and the date, anno Domini, and everything,"
said Mary. "You like things to be neatly booked. And then his
behavior to you, father, is really good; he has a deep respect for you;
and it is impossible to have a better temper than Fred has."
"Ay, ay; you want to coax me into thinking him a fine match."
"No, indeed, father. I don't love him because he is a fine match."
"What for, then?"
"Oh, dear, because I have always loved him. I should never like
scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought
of in a husband."
"Your mind is quite settled, then, Mary?" said Caleb, returning to
his first tone. "There's no other wish come into it since things
have been going on as they have been of late?" (Caleb meant a great
deal in that vague phrase;) "because, better late than never.
A woman must not force her heart--she'll do a man no good by that."
"My feelings have not changed, father," said Mary, calmly.
"I shall be constant to Fred as long as he is constant to me.
I don't think either of us could spare the other, or like any one
else better, however much we might admire them. It would make too
great a difference to us--like seeing all the old places altered,
and changing the name for everything. We must wait for each other
a long while; but Fred knows that."
Instead of speaking immediately, Caleb stood still and screwed his
stick on the grassy walk. Then he said, with emotion in his voice,
"Well, I've got a bit of news. What do you think of Fred going
to live at Stone Court, and managing the land there?"
"How can that ever be, father?" said Mary, wonderingly.
"He would manage it for his aunt Bulstrode. The poor woman has
been to me begging and praying. She wants to do the lad good,
and it might be a fine thing for him. With saving, he might gradually
buy the stock, and he has a turn for farming."
"Oh, Fred would be so happy! It is too good to believe."
"Ah, but mind you," said Caleb, turning his head warningly, "I must take
it on _my_ shoulders, and be responsible, and see after everything;
and that will grieve your mother a bit, though she mayn't say so.
Fred had need be careful."
"Perhaps it is too much, father," said Mary, checked in her joy.
"There would be no happiness in bringing you any fresh trouble."
"Nay, nay; work is my delight, child, when it doesn't vex your mother.
And then, if you and Fred get married," here Caleb's voice shook
just perceptibly, "he'll be steady and saving; and you've got
your mother's cleverness, and mine too, in a woman's sort of way;
and you'll keep him in order. He'll be coming by-and-by, so I
wanted to tell you first, because I think you'd like to tell _him_
by yourselves. After that, I could talk it well over with him,
and we could go into business and the nature of things."
"Oh, you dear good father!" cried Mary, putting her hands round her
father's neck, while he bent his head placidly, willing to be caressed.
"I wonder if any other girl thinks her father the best man in the world!"
"Nonsense, child; you'll think your husband better."
"Impossible," said Mary, relapsing into her usual tone; "husbands
are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order."
When they were entering the house with Letty, who had run to join them,
Mary saw Fred at the orchard-gate, and went to meet him.
"What fine clothes you wear, you extravagant youth!" said Mary,
as Fred stood still and raised his hat to her with playful formality.
"You are not learning economy."
"Now that is too bad, Mary," said Fred. "Just look at the edges
of these coat-cuffs! It is only by dint of good brushing that I
look respectable. I am saving up three suits--one for a wedding-suit."
"How very droll you will look!--like a gentleman in an old fashion-book."
"Oh no, they will keep two years."
"Two years! be reasonable, Fred," said Mary, turning to walk.
"Don't encourage flattering expectations."
"Why not? One lives on them better than on unflattering ones.
If we can't be married in two years, the truth will be quite bad
enough when it comes."
"I have heard a story of a young gentleman who once encouraged
flattering expectations, and they did him harm."
"Mary, if you've got something discouraging to tell me, I shall bolt;
I shall go into the house to Mr. Garth. I am out of spirits.
My father is so cut up--home is not like itself. I can't bear any
more bad news."
"Should you call it bad news to be told that you were to live
at Stone Court, and manage the farm, and be remarkably prudent,
and save money every year till all the stock and furniture were
your own, and you were a distinguished agricultural character,
as Mr. Borthrop Trumbull says--rather stout, I fear, and with the
Greek and Latin sadly weather-worn?"
"You don't mean anything except nonsense, Mary?" said Fred,
coloring slightly nevertheless.
"That is what my father has just told me of as what may happen,
and he never talks nonsense," said Mary, looking up at Fred now,
while he grasped her hand as they walked, till it rather hurt her;
but she would not complain.
"Oh, I could be a tremendously good fellow then, Mary, and we could
be married directly."
"Not so fast, sir; how do you know that I would not rather defer
our marriage for some years? That would leave you time to misbehave,
and then if I liked some one else better, I should have an excuse
for jilting you."
"Pray don't joke, Mary," said Fred, with strong feeling. "Tell me
seriously that all this is true, and that you are happy because of it--
because you love me best."
"It is all true, Fred, and I am happy because of it--because I love
you best," said Mary, in a tone of obedient recitation.
They lingered on the door-step under the steep-roofed porch,
and Fred almost in a whisper said--
"When we were first engaged, with the umbrella-ring, Mary, you used to--"
The spirit of joy began to laugh more decidedly in Mary's eyes,
but the fatal Ben came running to the door with Brownie yapping
behind him, and, bouncing against them, said--
"Fred and Mary! are you ever coming in?--or may I eat your cake?"
FINALE.
Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young
lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know
what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life,
however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may
not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension;
latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error
may urge a grand retrieval.
Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives,
is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept
their honeymoon in Eden, but had their first little one among the
thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning
of the home epic--the gradual conquest or irremediable loss
of that complete union which makes the advancing years a climax,
and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.
Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment
of hope and enthusiasm and get broken by the way, wanting patience
with each other and the world.
All who have cared for Fred Vincy and Mary Garth will like to
know that these two made no such failure, but achieved a solid
mutual happiness. Fred surprised his neighbors in various ways.
He became rather distinguished in his side of the county as a theoretic
and practical farmer, and produced a work on the "Cultivation of
Green Crops and the Economy of Cattle-Feeding" which won him high
congratulations at agricultural meetings. In Middlemarch admiration
was more reserved: most persons there were inclined to believe
that the merit of Fred's authorship was due to his wife, since they
had never expected Fred Vincy to write on turnips and mangel-wurzel.
But when Mary wrote a little book for her boys, called "Stories
of Great Men, taken from Plutarch," and had it printed and published
by Gripp & Co., Middlemarch, every one in the town was willing
to give the credit of this work to Fred, observing that he
had been to the University, "where the ancients were studied,"
and might have been a clergyman if he had chosen.
In this way it was made clear that Middlemarch had never been deceived,
and that there was no need to praise anybody for writing a book,
since it was always done by somebody else.
Moreover, Fred remained unswervingly steady. Some years after
his marriage he told Mary that his happiness was half owing
to Farebrother, who gave him a strong pull-up at the right moment.
I cannot say that he was never again misled by his hopefulness:
the yield of crops or the profits of a cattle sale usually fell
below his estimate; and he was always prone to believe that he
could make money by the purchase of a horse which turned out badly--
though this, Mary observed, was of course the fault of the horse,
not of Fred's judgment. He kept his love of horsemanship, but he rarely
allowed himself a day's hunting; and when he did so, it was remarkable
that he submitted to be laughed at for cowardliness at the fences,
seeming to see Mary and the boys sitting on the five-barred gate,
or showing their curly heads between hedge and ditch.
There were three boys: Mary was not discontented that she brought
forth men-children only; and when Fred wished to have a girl like her,
she said, laughingly, "that would be too great a trial to your mother."
Mrs. Vincy in her declining years, and in the diminished lustre of
her housekeeping, was much comforted by her perception that two at least
of Fred's boys were real Vincys, and did not "feature the Garths."
But Mary secretly rejoiced that the youngest of the three was very
much what her father must have been when he wore a round jacket,
and showed a marvellous nicety of aim in playing at marbles,
or in throwing stones to bring down the mellow pears.
Ben and Letty Garth, who were uncle and aunt before they were well
in their teens, disputed much as to whether nephews or nieces were
more desirable; Ben contending that it was clear girls were good
for less than boys, else they would not be always in petticoats,
which showed how little they were meant for; whereupon Letty,
who argued much from books, got angry in replying that God made coats
of skins for both Adam and Eve alike--also it occurred to her that
in the East the men too wore petticoats. But this latter argument,
obscuring the majesty of the former, was one too many, for Ben
answered contemptuously, "The more spooneys they!" and immediately
appealed to his mother whether boys were not better than girls.
Mrs. Garth pronounced that both were alike naughty, but that boys
were undoubtedly stronger, could run faster, and throw with more
precision to a greater distance. With this oracular sentence Ben was
well satisfied, not minding the naughtiness; but Letty took it ill,
her feeling of superiority being stronger than her muscles.
Fred never became rich--his hopefulness had not led him to expect that;
but he gradually saved enough to become owner of the stock and furniture
at Stone Court, and the work which Mr. Garth put into his hands
carried him in plenty through those "bad times" which are always
present with farmers. Mary, in her matronly days, became as solid
in figure as her mother; but, unlike her, gave the boys little
formal teaching, so that Mrs. Garth was alarmed lest they should never
be well grounded in grammar and geography. Nevertheless, they were
found quite forward enough when they went to school; perhaps,
because they had liked nothing so well as being with their mother.
When Fred was riding home on winter evenings he had a pleasant
vision beforehand of the bright hearth in the wainscoted parlor,
and was sorry for other men who could not have Mary for their wife;
especially for Mr. Farebrother. "He was ten times worthier of you
than I was," Fred could now say to her, magnanimously. "To be sure
he was," Mary answered; "and for that reason he could do better
without me. But you--I shudder to think what you would have been--
a curate in debt for horse-hire and cambric pocket-handkerchiefs!"
On inquiry it might possibly be found that Fred and Mary still
inhabit Stone Court--that the creeping plants still cast the foam
of their blossoms over the fine stone-wall into the field where the
walnut-trees stand in stately row--and that on sunny days the two
lovers who were first engaged with the umbrella-ring may be seen
in white-haired placidity at the open window from which Mary Garth,
in the days of old Peter Featherstone, had often been ordered
to look out for Mr. Lydgate.
Lydgate's hair never became white. He died when he was only fifty,
leaving his wife and children provided for by a heavy insurance
on his life. He had gained an excellent practice, alternating,
according to the season, between London and a Continental bathing-place;
having written a treatise on Gout, a disease which has a good deal
of wealth on its side. His skill was relied on by many paying patients,
but he always regarded himself as a failure: he had not done what he
once meant to do. His acquaintances thought him enviable to have
so charming a wife, and nothing happened to shake their opinion.
Rosamond never committed a second compromising indiscretion. She simply
continued to be mild in her temper, inflexible in her judgment,
disposed to admonish her husband, and able to frustrate him
by stratagem. As the years went on he opposed her less and less,
whence Rosamond concluded that he had learned the value of her opinion;
on the other hand, she had a more thorough conviction of his talents
now that he gained a good income, and instead of the threatened cage
in Bride Street provided one all flowers and gilding, fit for the
bird of paradise that she resembled. In brief, Lydgate was what is
called a successful man. But he died prematurely of diphtheria,
and Rosamond afterwards married an elderly and wealthy physician,
who took kindly to her four children. She made a very pretty show
with her daughters, driving out in her carriage, and often spoke
of her happiness as "a reward"--she did not say for what, but probably
she meant that it was a reward for her patience with Tertius,
whose temper never became faultless, and to the last occasionally
let slip a bitter speech which was more memorable than the signs
he made of his repentance. He once called her his basil plant;
and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant
which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains.
Rosamond had a placid but strong answer to such speeches. Why then
had he chosen her? It was a pity he had not had Mrs. Ladislaw,
whom he was always praising and placing above her. And thus
the conversation ended with the advantage on Rosamond's side.
But it would be unjust not to tell, that she never uttered a word
in depreciation of Dorothea, keeping in religious remembrance
the generosity which had come to her aid in the sharpest crisis of
her life.
Dorothea herself had no dreams of being praised above other women,
feeling that there was always something better which she might have done,
if she had only been better and known better. Still, she never
repented that she had given up position and fortune to marry
Will Ladislaw, and he would have held it the greatest shame as well
as sorrow to him if she had repented. They were bound to each other
by a love stronger than any impulses which could have marred it.
No life would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled
with emotion, and she had now a life filled also with a beneficent
activity which she had not the doubtful pains of discovering
and marking out for herself. Will became an ardent public man,
working well in those times when reforms were begun with a young
hopefulness of immediate good which has been much checked in our days,
and getting at last returned to Parliament by a constituency
who paid his expenses. Dorothea could have liked nothing better,
since wrongs existed, than that her husband should be in the thick
of a struggle against them, and that she should give him wifely help.
Many who knew her, thought it a pity that so substantive and rare
a creature should have been absorbed into the life of another,
and be only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother.
But no one stated exactly what else that was in her power she ought
rather to have done--not even Sir James Chettam, who went no further
than the negative prescription that she ought not to have married
Will Ladislaw.
But this opinion of his did not cause a lasting alienation; and the
way in which the family was made whole again was characteristic
of all concerned. Mr. Brooke could not resist the pleasure of
corresponding with Will and Dorothea; and one morning when his pen
had been remarkably fluent on the prospects of Municipal Reform,
it ran off into an invitation to the Grange, which, once written,
could not be done away with at less cost than the sacrifice
(hardly to be conceived) of the whole valuable letter.
During the months of this correspondence Mr. Brooke had continually,
in his talk with Sir James Chettam, been presupposing or hinting
that the intention of cutting off the entail was still maintained;
and the day on which his pen gave the daring invitation, he went
to Freshitt expressly to intimate that he had a stronger sense than
ever of the reasons for taking that energetic step as a precaution
against any mixture of low blood in the heir of the Brookes.
But that morning something exciting had happened at the Hall.
A letter had come to Celia which made her cry silently as she read it;
and when Sir James, unused to see her in tears, asked anxiously what
was the matter, she burst out in a wail such as he had never heard
from her before.
"Dorothea has a little boy. And you will not let me go and see her.
And I am sure she wants to see me. And she will not know what to do
with the baby--she will do wrong things with it. And they thought
she would die. It is very dreadful! Suppose it had been me and
little Arthur, and Dodo had been hindered from coming to see me!
I wish you would be less unkind, James!"
"Good heavens, Celia!" said Sir James, much wrought upon, "what do
you wish? I will do anything you like. I will take you to town
to-morrow if you wish it." And Celia did wish it.
It was after this that Mr. Brooke came, and meeting the Baronet
in the grounds, began to chat with him in ignorance of the news,
which Sir James for some reason did not care to tell him immediately.
But when the entail was touched on in the usual way, he said,
"My dear sir, it is not for me to dictate to you, but for my part I
would let that alone. I would let things remain as they are."
Mr. Brooke felt so much surprised that he did not at once find
out how much he was relieved by the sense that he was not expected
to do anything in particular.
Such being the bent of Celia's heart, it was inevitable that Sir James
should consent to a reconciliation with Dorothea and her husband.
Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.
Sir James never liked Ladislaw, and Will always preferred to have Sir
James's company mixed with another kind: they were on a footing
of reciprocal tolerance which was made quite easy only when Dorothea
and Celia were present.
It became an understood thing that Mr. and Mrs. Ladislaw should pay
at least two visits during the year to the Grange, and there came
gradually a small row of cousins at Freshitt who enjoyed playing
with the two cousins visiting Tipton as much as if the blood
of these cousins had been less dubiously mixed.
Mr. Brooke lived to a good old age, and his estate was inherited by
Dorothea's son, who might have represented Middlemarch, but declined,
thinking that his opinions had less chance of being stifled if he
remained out of doors.
Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a mistake;
and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in Middlemarch,
where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine girl
who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and in
little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry
his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property,
and not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea
usually observed that she could not have been "a nice woman,"
else she would not have married either the one or the other.
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